Hinterland Book 3: The Wolf's Hunt (Hinterland Series)

by K. T. Harding

  He sprang at Angela one more time. She took aim, but before she could fire again, an unseen hand smacked the weapon out of her hand. It flew across the ring and fell among the Eol’i.

  The cats screeched and cavorted wilder than ever at this development. Raleigh wrung her hands. This was terrible. Angela didn’t try to reach any of the other weapons stowed all over her body under her clothes. The Eochehxea would disable them, too. They would find a way to stop her fighting back.

  Ariel pounced on top of her. His forepaws came to rest on her shoulders, and he lunged at her face to bite and tear. He towered a head taller than she when he stood on his hind legs. She dodged aside just in time and buried her head under his chin where he couldn’t damage her.

  He sank his claws into her clothes and wrenched her sideways. He dragged her down and pinned her under one enormous paw. He let out a stomach-wrenching snarl and drove his bared fangs at her face.

  Raleigh couldn’t stand around a second longer. She couldn’t watch this, and she couldn’t leave Angela to face it alone. She yanked her cube weapon in one hand and her throwing blade in the other and charged into the ring.

  Teif’s voice followed her down the last steps. “No! You can’t!”

  Raleigh paid no attention. She hurdled the last cats and broke through to charge the lion.

  Chapter 23

  The force holding the audience away from the ring cut off all sound. The noise outside died, and an eerie silence fell over Raleigh’s ears.

  Raleigh didn’t give herself a chance to think twice. She launched herself at the lion on top of Angela. Raleigh bellowed her war cry and slashed her blade down across the cat’s shoulder.

  He reared back spitting mad. His legs coiled under him and he leapt at Raleigh the way he leapt on Angela. She let loose with her cube, but he compensated. He must have fought those weapons many times. They didn’t disturb him at all. In a split second, he covered the ring and hit Raleigh full force.

  He knocked her on her back, and his hideous snapping teeth lashed into her face. She scrambled over on her stomach and slithered back between his legs to get away. She got under his stomach and rolled over on her back. She cut him across the belly with her blade and broke free.

  He howled in rage and pain. Blood stained his fur, but the wound didn’t slow him down. He twisted onto his feet, and in a few loping steps, he set off running her down. Raleigh bolted across the ring, but she could never outrun that cat.

  He bounded up behind her. Raleigh’s instincts took over, and she went into combat mode. She spun around and fired her cube at close range where she couldn’t miss. She hit him in the chest with everything she had. The scorching energy shot out of her hand and catapulted him backward. He struck the barrier across the ring and slide down to the floor.

  Raleigh didn’t stop running. She raced across the ring to the very far side and spun around on her heel. She fought monsters bigger and stronger than him, and she knew how to deal with them.

  She wheeled to face him and whipped her crossbow off her shoulder. In one fluid movement, she pulled a bolt from her wallet and fitted it to the string. Ariel’s liquid body compacted for another spring. Raleigh braced her legs under her and shouldered her bow to fire.

  In that last quiet moment, her fear and anxiety dissolved to ice-cold determination. She squinted down her sights and let her bolt fly. It struck the big lion in the eye.

  His momentum kept him flying through the air. He would have hit Raleigh again, but she danced to one side. He bumped his head on the barrier behind her and fell into a lifeless heap at her feet.

  Raleigh drew another bolt. She nocked it on the string and aimed it down at his twitching body, but he didn’t rise again. His muscles spasmed all over, his eyes glazed over, and his lips quivered over his dripping fangs.

  Raleigh kept her bow in position while she backed over to Angela. She helped her friend to her feet. “Are you all right?”

  Angela nodded. “You okay?”

  Raleigh nodded back, but she couldn’t speak over her panting breaths. She and Angela stood back to back, and Raleigh swept her bow over the crowd in a wordless challenge. Who would face her next? Adrenaline burned through her chest. She was ready for anything they could throw at her.

  Angela gasped behind her. “Look, Raleigh!”

  Raleigh didn’t like to take her eyes off the crowd. Their staring eyes returned her challenge. They would come up with some way to repay her for this. The Eol’i hissed and snarled. She killed their great hero. She couldn’t expect to walk out of here. She couldn’t walk out of here if she tried. She had to wait for Dax.

  Angela shook her by the arm so she had to look back. That’s when she saw what Angela wanted her to see. Instead of a huge lion, a man lay on the floor where the lion fell. He wore a green velvet doublet and knee breeches, white stockings and black buckle shoes. A sword in its scabbard hung from his belt and lay askew against his legs. Golden curls bobbed around his suntanned cheeks, and his clean-shaven face looked beautifully angelic. Only the bolt embedded in his left eye marred his features.

  Angela whispered under her breath. “Eol’i.”

  Raleigh went back to scanning the crowd for any sign of attack. “What?”

  “He’s Eol’i. “

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They’re all like this. They can change into people.”

  Raleigh’s eyes darted around the stands. “Are you telling me every one of these cats can change into a person?”

  “Yes.”

  Raleigh didn’t answer. What was the point of facing these hundreds upon hundreds of creatures with a crossbow and a handful of bolts? Each and every one of them could handle a weapon as powerful or more so. They would overrun her in seconds.

  At that moment, the deafening noise from the stands pounded against Raleigh’s ears. It took her one terrible instant to understand. The barrier was down. Whoever watched and controlled this scene from out of sight erased the force field separating her from the crowd.

  The Eol’i understood at the same moment she realized what was happening. In one wild torrent of flailing bodies, they launched themselves into the ring. Fur and claws and high-pitched shrieks filled the air.

  Raleigh let her bolt fly and drew another three between her fingers. An Eol’i she didn’t know hit the ground. She plucked another three out of the air, but hundreds more sailed at her from every direction. She could fire without aiming and hit something no matter which way she turned.

  Angela pressed into her from behind. Her arms moving told Raleigh Angela had her weapons out, too. No one could hear a thing over the din. Far in the back of the stands, men got to their feet and started running down the cloud-ramps to join the fight.

  Somewhere in the back of Raleigh’s mind, she registered the subtle change in the rules of engagement. The Eochehxea took down the barrier. They also let Raleigh kill Ariel and gave Angela free access to her weapons.

  The Eochehxea weren’t imposing any further disadvantages on Raleigh and Angela anymore. They let the Eol’i and the Guildsman move in to attack. The Eochehxea wanted to see this fight. They wanted to pit their guests against each other and observe the outcome.

  Raleigh had too much to worry about to give the Eochehxea a second thought. If she survived the next few minutes, she could worry about the Eochehxea later, along with the problem of getting herself and Angela out of Solaris.

  In the meantime, she spent all her bolts. She threw her bow over her shoulder and got out her cube again. She fired willy-nilly into the crowd, and the blood-curdling screeches of Eol’i falling right and left gave her a grim satisfaction. Every cat she shot was one she wouldn’t have to fight later.

  Any Eol’i that came too close to shoot, she slashed to a bloody pulp with her blade. She severed their little heads and hacked off their limbs. Their blood splattered her face and sent her into a killing frenzy. She licked their blood off her lips and gloried
in the taste.

  She almost forgot to use her cube in the satisfying crunch of her blade in flesh and bone. Guts and brain covered her skin and clothes. She became a harbinger of death. She roared her challenge to anyone she saw. Who wanted to take their chances against her? Who wanted to meet their death at the end of her arm?

  She cleared a space around herself, and the Eol’i hesitated before they launched in to attack her. They hung back, but the Guildsmen rushed in to fill the gap. They came at Raleigh and Angela from all sides, and they wielded weapons as strong as hers to gun her down.

  The Eol’i watched the Guildsmen move in, and a strange change came over the crowd. At the sight of people charging forward to attack, the Eol’i started to transform. First ones and twos here and there rose on their hind feet. Their faces flattened out, and their limbs grew longer.

  Faster and faster, the terrible transformation swept over the crowd. The Eol’i changed into people, all armed and ready to fight. Hard on the Guildsmen’s heels, the next wave rushed in.

  Raleigh quaked in her boots. Two Guildsmen led the charge. They drew their swords in one hand and whirled them over their heads. They aimed their cubes in their other hands. Raleigh couldn’t fight all these warriors. At least she and Angela would meet their deaths quickly.

  Another scream stabbed her in the head, and Angela’s protective presence disappeared from behind Raleigh’s back. She glanced back just as the Guildsmen closed in to see Angela rising into the air the same way she did before. That mystic force plucked her out of the melee and carried her skyward.

  Raleigh whipped around. “Angela!”

  Angela screamed and screamed, but her voice dwindled farther and farther into the cloud-studded sky. She soared far away until she shrank to a distant speck. Her screams echoed down the wind to the far corners of the Earth.

  Chapter 24

  Raleigh wheeled to meet her fate. The two Guildsmen and all their comrades closed in on her. She raised her cube to fire when her stomach jumped into her throat. She collapsed, and the whole battle scene rushed upward as fast as gravity could pull her down. She punched through the floor into open space.

  Her weapons fell out of her hands. She grasped at nothing, and she plummeted through the floor with nothing holding her up. At the last second, she caught hold of the pants leg of the nearest Guildsman who still stood on something solid. She fumbled for a desperate hold, but her weight hauled him over the brink and he tumbled down with her.

  She writhed in all directions for anything to check her fall, but the Guildsman hurtled past her and knocked her hands free. In an instant, he plunged past her and fell screaming toward the Earth far below.

  Raleigh caught hold of something. It was a cat’s tail. She yanked it hard and batted her other hand up around the hole through which she fell. The cat yowled in surprise. Raleigh barely got hold of a piece of cloud before her efforts tore the cat off its moorings and it vanished along with the Guildsman.

  She dug in her fingernails to hold on. Guildsman and Eol’i stared down through the opening. No one dared come near her now. Her bootheels kicked in the sky. Raleigh looked everywhere for some help. She was completely alone. Dax, Bishop, Angela—all gone.

  She turned her pleading eyes on the Guildsmen all around her. Her breath rasped in her throat so bad she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t hold on much longer before she tumbled to Earth like the others.

  Those heartless Eochehxea did this to her. Just when she faced the fight of her life, they wiped out the ground beneath her feet. They didn’t fight fair. That was the first and only thing she learned about them.

  All of a sudden, her eye lit on the tiny kitten sitting a few rows up in the stands. He scrutinized the whole event in placid indifference. He straightened his whiskers and turned his pointed face back and forth. Nothing surprised him.

  “Teif!” she croaked. She swallowed to get her voice to work. “Teif, help me!”

  He didn’t respond. A few other Eol’i turned around to look at him. What was she thinking, calling out to him to help her? He was her enemy. He was one of these people. He was a cold-blooded killer. He laughed when the Uk attacked Bishop. He wouldn’t lift a paw to help her now. He probably thought this was entertaining and amusing, too.

  Raleigh started to lose hope. “Teif,” she sobbed. “Teif, please help me.”

  He looked away with a growl. “Oh, blast it all! I always was a sucker for an attractive female.”

  He hopped off the seat, and the moment his dainty paws touched the cloudy floor, he changed. A shimmer of energy rippled up his body from the tips of his toes to his pointed ears. He got longer until a well-built man in a black velvet suit stood in the kitten’s place.

  He wore his jet-black hair cropped close to his head on all sides and in back, with longer, straight hair combed to one side on top. His black beard pointed down his chin in a crisp black arrow around his ruby-red mouth.

  He drew a sword from a scabbard at his belt and slashed his way into the crowd. He cut down Guildsmen and Eol’i indiscriminately before they realized what was happening. They tumbled before him, and he fought his way to the hole.

  By the time he got there, the rest of the crowd recovered their surprise. They pressed in to attack him. He went down on his knee by the hole and fought them off with one hand while he stuck out his other hand to Raleigh. “Catch hold and I’ll haul you up.”

  She dared not let go, but she had to. She was done for, either way, and he went to all the trouble of helping her. She summoned her resolve and made a grab for his hand. Her fingers strapped around his wrist.

  He didn’t lift her up right away. Too many assailants pinned him down, but he had her. He stopped her from falling to her death. In a few seconds, he drove back his own people enough to raise her to solid ground again.

  Raleigh scrambled out of the hole, but she had no time to thank him for his help. She floundered in her pockets and found another cube and a bunch of splatter grenades. She activated one of them and threw it a few feet away. She set off one grenade after another in a circle around her. They blew enough Guildsmen to pieces for her and Teif to inch away from the hole into the stands.

  Teif bellowed over his shoulder. “Come on. This way.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Away from here,” he called back.

  Shoulder to shoulder, they fought their way out of the amphitheater, but all their efforts couldn’t defeat so many. Their assailants cut off their retreat before they got out of the building.

  Raleigh’s arms ached from fighting so hard, but Teif lashed his sword in all directions as fast as ever. He pulled a cube from somewhere and squeezed that off between cuts. Who was he really? Raleigh hated to think.

  They stood at the top of the steps. Their enemies closed around them in a tight circle when the clouds parted and Dax rushed into view. He took one look around the amphitheater and barreled through the wall of bodies to Raleigh’s side.

  “Where have you been?” Raleigh cried. “Where’s Bishop?”

  “I can’t find him,” Dax yelled back. “I searched everywhere.”

  “The Eochehxea,” Raleigh growled. “They must be hiding him.”

  “I can find him for you,” Teif called.

  “You!” Raleigh exclaimed. “How would you find him?”

  “It’s easy. You must use your Epistemological abilities. Use your mind.”

  Dax and Raleigh looked at each other. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s like this,” Teif started to explain. “Close your eyes and concentrate on your subject. Then you…”

  “Oh, forget it!” Raleigh screamed. “We don’t have time for that. Dax, use your powers You got us here. Take us to Bishop. It doesn’t matter where he is. Just take us there.”

  “I already tried that,” Dax replied. “Since I don’t know where he is, I can’t see him in my mind’s eye. I can’t get to him.”

 
; Raleigh spun around to face him. “Do it, Dax. You don’t have to see him. Imagine him the way he used to look back home. Imagine him standing in Mrs. Mitchell’s kitchen, and go to him. It’s that simple.”

  Just for a moment, Dax stood still and quiet. Then his face cleared. He placed his hand on Raleigh’s shoulder, and the whole battle scene vaporized in a puff of cloud. The noise died away, and they stood alone out in the cloudy Solaris landscape where they first appeared in this strange city.

  Raleigh pursed her lips to complain, but Dax already turned away to enter the nearest cloud. He stuck his hand through the vapors and pulled. A battered arm came into view, and the next thing Raleigh knew, Bishop stood in front of her.

  She blinked at him, and he looked back and forth between her and Dax. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Of the three of them, only Dax kept his composure. “Are you all right, Sir? We’re here to take you home.”

  Bishop cleared his throat. “I’m fine now, boy. I’m ready to go whenever you are.”

  Raleigh choked back tears. “Take him home, Dax. Take all of us home.”

  Dax smiled, but at that moment, the clouds overhead opened up. Thousands of Uk shot down out of the sky. At the same instant, the cloud banks all around Raleigh mistook for buildings cracked asunder. The Guildsmen and Eol’i and many other creatures Raleigh didn’t know charged into view.

  She spun around to fight, but she couldn’t decide what adversary to face first. She patted her pockets in search of any weapon when the first Uk struck her in the head. Searing pain shattered her mind. She batted the Uk away, but they stuck fast. More and more bit into her skin from all sides. She couldn’t get rid of them.

  Bishop screamed and fought them off a few feet away. She tried to get her mind to work. She formed the words over and over, but she couldn’t get them out. Take him home, Dax. Take us all home. Why didn’t he do it? Why didn’t he transport them all out of there now?