by Joe Jackson
Eve of Redemption, Book V
The Huntresses’ Game
Copyright 2017 by Joe Jackson
All rights reserved
Cover Art by Andreas Zafeiratos
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The Eve of Redemption Series
Salvation’s Dawn
White Serpent, Black Dragon
Serpents Rising
Legacy of the Devil Queen
The Huntresses’ Game
Preludes to War (due 2017)
Convergence (due 2017)
“You have enemies? Good. That means you have stood up
for something, sometime in your life.”
– Sir Winston Churchill
For Eric Gouveia
Where would we be if we’d never known you, old friend?
Until we meet again…
Contents
Prologue
Chapter I – Serenity
Chapter II – Stability
Chapter III – Departure
Chapter IV – The Garden of the Huntress
Chapter V – The Breaking of Bread
Chapter VI – Huntresses
Chapter VII – The Ashen Fangs
Chapter VIII – Perspectives
Chapter IX – Fear and the Red Mask
Chapter X – The Huntresses’ Game
Chapter XI – Trail of Fire and Blood
Chapter XII – The Edge of Oblivion
Chapter XIII – Chasing Legends
Chapter XIV – The Cloud Dragon and the Oracle
Chapter XV – Revenge of the Red Mask
Chapter XVI – Sisters of the Blade
Chapter XVII – Unacceptable Loss
Thank Yous & Acknowledgements
Appendix A: The Many Unique Races of Citaria
Appendix B: The Merged Citarian-Koryonite Pantheons
Appendix C: Geography and History
Appendix D: The Kings and Races of Mehr’Durillia
Prologue
“Watch your flank! Come back to me,” Kari called, circling to keep her enemies before her. The flash of her silvery scimitar backed one of her opponents away, and she stepped in and cut across wickedly on its companion. A spray of black blood and a pained cry preceded the thump of a body hitting soft soil, and Kari’s toes dug in as she turned to intercept another attack.
The corlyps balked with Kari’s focus fully back upon it, but its attention was in the wrong place. Annabelle’s longsword pierced neatly through its armor, and though she failed to fully impale the demon, Kari slashed across its neck and then snapped the heavy tip of her scimitar up through the underside of its jaw. The creature collapsed in a heap, and Annabelle dashed past Kari so they stood back to back.
Five of the crimson-skinned corlypsi circled the two demonhunters. “Keep them in front of you,” Kari reminded her young partner. Though corlypsi were normally cowards, their confidence grew as their numbers did, and in a band this size, they were a lethal force. “On my mark.”
Kari suddenly threw her wings out, and the corlypsi before her hopped back defensively. Kari turned with Annabelle, and the two attacked the other corlypsi in tandem. The first, caught completely off-guard, fell quickly before the two well-armed and trained women. The others made to flank the demonhunters, but Annabelle put her back close enough to touch Kari’s wings again, and the women circled warily. Now only four corlypsi remained, and Kari knew from experience that as each one dropped, the others would lose confidence.
Annabelle split off from Kari and dashed at the two in front of her, and Kari mirrored her motions. It was a feint, however, and Kari swept her opponents out of range before backtracking to flank the very corlyps trying to flank Annabelle. Caught between the two demonhunters, the corlyps was cut down in seconds, but its partner capitalized on Annabelle’s attention being on its companion, and its claws tore through the terra-rir’s armor and drew blood.
Annabelle staggered, and Kari grabbed her by the wrist quickly and pulled the young demonhunter behind her. Kari met the rush of her attackers, stepping in on them rather than back. They were shocked at first, but they split up to triangulate their attacks. Kari danced and wove her weapons around her, just as her mentor and lover, Suler Tumureldi, had taught her. The corlypsi found their attacks stymied by the precise placement of her whirling scimitars, anticipating and stifling each attack, and they began to relay a strategy between them.
Once again, their attention was in the wrong place. Annabelle, her pauldron and bracer streaked with her silver blood, drove her offhand sword through the nearest corlyps, and Kari hardly paused in her dance of death as she relieved the wounded creature of its head. She came to a stop, sidestepping to her left to get the two remaining demons before her, and Annabelle wisely stayed behind her unharmed partner.
The corlypsi reacted just as Kari expected: they glanced at each other only briefly before they ran. They used a short rise in the ground to get some altitude and took wing, their crimson forms beating a hasty retreat into the forests to the north. Kari would have liked to pursue, but though she had wings, those of a terra-dracon were weak and unsuitable to attain flight for more than a minute. She could glide just fine, but the demons had flight and endurance on their side, and there was no way she could keep pace with them, on foot or otherwise.
Annabelle was stabbing the fallen demons through the diaphragm and up through the heart and lungs, just as she’d been taught. The terra-rir girl was in obvious pain, but despite her wounds, she was doing her best to continue to be an asset and not a liability to her senior partner. She hadn’t even taken a moment to call upon their deity’s power to stanch the flow of blood, and though that was somewhat silly, Kari still had to smile.
“Well fought,” she said to her young trainee. “You’re getting better and better. You’re not going to be training under me for much longer.”
Annabelle looked over and managed a smile through the grimace of pain, the corners of her draconic snout creasing upward. She looked much like Kari had in her youth, before the damnable terminal illness called Dracon’s Bane had sapped so much of her vitality. Both had ebon hair and eyes, and though Annabelle’s frame was a little slimmer, she was still well-toned and muscular, and a fine credit to the headmasters of their Order back in DarkWind. Non-rir might even mistake them for sisters, but Annabelle had a shorter, wider snout and a set to her brow that sometimes made her appear to be scowling for no reason.
“One of them got me, though,” Annabelle said, looking at the blood staining her armored shoulder and arm. “If I’d been alone, I’d be dead.”
“If you’d been alone, I trust you wouldn’t have engaged seven corlypsi,” Kari said. She stepped behind her partner and began undoing the straps that held her damaged pauldron in place. Once the armor was removed, Kari wiped at the gouges oozing blood. The cuts were deep, but the demonhunter touched her fingers to her friend’s shoulder and began to channel some of their deity’s power. Soon the bleeding stopped, and Kari had Annabelle sit down so she could properly dress the wounds to heal.
“I wouldn’t mind if they keep me assigned to you permanently,” Annabelle said.
Kari glanced at her, though the terra-rir girl was facing the other way. They made fine partners, an efficient duo when hunting demons and other problems plaguing the people of Terrassia. Still, the girl clearly wanted more from their friendship. She had taken advantage of Kari being drunk just a few weeks past to be intimate with her, and K
ari was still torn on how she felt about that. She considered Annabelle a sister, and the amorous nature of Annabelle’s infatuation with Kari left the demonhunter confused. And that, of course, was to say nothing of the fact that Kari was not going to live for many more years.
She sighed near-silently, finished the bandaging, and strapped the pauldron back into place. “Even if they do, you know I only have a few years left,” Kari said quietly.
Annabelle turned and hugged Kari tightly, and the terra-dracon demonhunter didn’t bother to avoid it or pull away. “But I can give you eternity,” Annabelle whispered in her ear, and then she sank her fangs into the side of Kari’s neck.
Chapter I – Serenity
The thunder woke Kari. She sighed quietly, trying not to wake Grakin or the children. The rumbles and their echoes weren’t bothering Uldriana, who lay curled up on Kari’s chest. Little Gray never stirred either. He was long past the point of being afraid of thunder, but still used it as an excuse to slip into his parents’ bed and sleep between them. It hardly mattered anymore; in the months since Uldriana’s birth, Grakin’s illness had continued to accelerate, and had resulted in impotence.
It was definitely odd to get a thunderstorm in the cold dawn of winter, but it seemed to match Kari’s mood. She rose cautiously from the bed, holding Uldriana tight to her breast. She put on a robe and headed down to the great fireplace room, a better spot to have some tea, warm herself in front of a fire, and nurse her child without disturbing the others. The house was silent in the pre-dawn except when another rumble of thunder passed overhead. Cradling her daughter in one arm, Kari stoked the fire and then set a full kettle over it.
She paced anxiously toward the kitchen and pantry to retrieve a mug and tea ball. She had that dream so many times now, and it always ended with her waking up as Annabelle sank her fangs into Kari’s neck. There was little doubt why the dreams were coming: Kari had never let go of the guilt of failing to put her friend to rest after she was turned into the undead. What she couldn’t quite understand was why she was dreaming so often and so furiously about it now. Was Zalkar telling her to go do something about her friend now, so many years later? Did that mean no one had ever put a stop to Annabelle in the centuries since Kari had tried?
Uldriana squeaked in her sleep, and Kari rubbed her back absently as she gathered the mug and tea ball. The symbol of Zalkar emblazoned on the little girl’s chest was a mystery, but one that required nothing in the way of alarm. She was marked by Zalkar for some reason, whether just because Kari had sworn a Blood Oath while pregnant, or because of a calling the girl was going to receive in seventeen-odd years to join either the Demonhunter Order or the Temple of Zalkar. Either way, it was nothing to be concerned with now: Uldriana was healthy and growing quickly.
Still, the thought of both prospects made Kari tired. She hadn’t slept very long or very well with the persistent nightmares and the crowded bed. Still, she would be heading to the campus of the Order not long after dawn to go help train the recruits. As she eased back into her role as the head of the Order, she was teaching Tumureldi’s fighting style to several groups of cadets, not the least of whom was her syrinthian assistant, Liria. The snake-girl had taken to the style easily, almost more so than any other hunter Kari had begun training. There was a certain irony in one of Kari’s best students being a former enemy and prisoner.
There was a grunt and a squeak from one of the side rooms on the main level, and Kari moved to grab another mug. Typhonix, still confined to a wheelchair, came rolling slowly out of his room moments later, and Kari held the mug up toward him. He nodded and rolled over to his spot between the two couches, and Kari moved over to sit next to him. He was restless and bored, with little to do managing her estate as winter set in, so Kari had taken him into her confidence on several matters before her. The last thing she wanted was for him to sink into another bout of depression and melancholy over his injuries.
She didn’t imagine he could forget how they had come any more than Kari could. Every time she saw him in the chair, she remembered the sight of him lying on the top step of the syrinthian temple, his spine exposed from the neck nearly to the base of his tail. Taesenus, the Demon Prince, son of the now-dead Devil Queen Seril, had ambushed Kari’s friends and family and nearly killed Ty. And there were times, Kari knew, that Ty wished he had. Ty, once a proud demonhunter and a drill sergeant on the Order’s campus, was now crippled, confined to a wheelchair, and thoroughly unhappy with his life.
Managing Kari’s estate kept him busy throughout the summer and harvest seasons, at least. Ty was a shrewd businessman and manager, which was surprising to most who saw him before he was in the wheelchair. Nearly six-foot-five and broad as an ox, most assumed he was a typical dumb warrior, but Ty was anything but. He was a student of history and economics, and the latter had turned out to be a blessing to Kari when she was granted the title of baroness and the estate that came with it. Without his help, she was sure her attempts to run the estate would have been disastrous, but instead, the land had turned a profit larger than Kari would likely have earned over the course of her lifetime working for the Order.
Her thoughts turned back to the man who’d crippled Ty. Taesenus had attacked Kari’s family and friends again just a few months before, when they were hunting down a demon called a Tilcimer. They had managed to best him again, and thankfully there were no serious injuries in the last conflict. Since then, Kari’s brother-in-law Erik and her father-in-law Corbanis, also both demonhunters, had been organizing searches for the Demon Prince. He was currently the Order’s top priority, though the search parties were under strict orders not to engage him without a considerable amount of backup.
Kari glanced at Ty and wondered how long she’d been daydreaming. The building whistle of the kettle told her well enough, and Ty moved to make the tea so Kari could stay seated with Uldriana in her lap. “Anything more we have to do for the winter?” she asked him when he handed her a mug of tea.
Ty shook his head. “No, everything is pretty much taken care of. Just looking to sell off the last of the inventory that our buyers didn’t want. Aside from that, I’m putting some money together to give the workers a New Year’s bonus, about a hundred gold apiece. That’ll still leave enough to pay the Duke his taxes and not even touch what we set aside for you.”
“I thought we paid the taxes already?” Kari said, taking a careful sip.
Her blonde brother-in-law laughed and waved a hand around. “We paid the taxes on the harvest,” he said. “You’re still due to pay property taxes on the first of the New Year.”
“How many other taxes are there?”
Ty shook his head. “That’s it, and you only pay the property tax because your barony isn’t required to keep a standing garrison for defense. Besides, some of that money goes to the Order. So it’s like you’re paying yourself.”
Kari chuckled. “But you said we’re giving the workers a hundred gold as a bonus? Isn’t that about what we pay them for the whole year?”
“Yup,” he answered, but didn’t elaborate.
Kari was happy with that. She was wealthy and living well, able to house her entire family and allow them all to share in the comforts of her home and barony. To further share her bounty with the workers was something Ty had advised her to do, and he was following through on it. It might cost her some employees if they ended up wealthy enough to move elsewhere, but when she had a reputation for being generous, replacing them wouldn’t be that difficult at all.
“Getting back to speaking of the Order, how’s your training going? The recruits giving you any trouble? I may be in a wheelchair, but the sound of my voice may still make some of them piss themselves.”
“It’s going well,” Kari answered with a smile. “It’s a lot of work, but most of them take to the style pretty easily. Of course, everyone wanted to sign up for the training, but unless they’re already proficient with dual-wielding, there’s not much I can do with them. So that narrowed down
the number of recruits significantly, and what I was left with were some of the easiest to train. Liria in particular has taken to the style like she was born to it.”
“I kinda like her, even if she is a snake,” Ty said. “The syrinthians you have working for you are a hard-working lot, too. The other workers are leery of them, but they’re dependable and they don’t complain much.”
“Probably still afraid to from having served Sekassus for so long,” Kari mused, referring to the demon king who ruled the realm of the syrinthians on Mehr’Durillia. Her brother-in-law nodded. The snake-folk she had in her employ had been sent to spy on her Order and maybe even kill Kari but, after being discovered and imprisoned, they had quickly defected, and now seemed quite happy living like commoners here on Citaria.
Uldriana woke and started to fuss a bit, so Kari put her on the breast, and the little girl settled right back down. Ty watched in wonder and smiled when Kari met his gaze, and she returned it. “How’s the search for Taesenus going? Any leads?”
Kari shook her head. “Nothing promising yet. It’s possible he fled to Mehr’Durillia again, so he may not even be here to be found. Amastri is supposed to be keeping her ears open to his movements on Mehr’Durillia, so if he shows up there, we should find out pretty quickly.” She met his gaze evenly again. “Don’t worry, Ty, he’s going to get what’s coming to him. I promise you.”
“Just wish I could be the one to give it to him,” he answered grimly.
They both turned as quiet footsteps sounded on the stairs. As was typical for her, Danilynn was up with the dawn so she could pray with the sunrise. The fures-rir priestess ruffled her long blue hair groggily when she reached the bottom of the stairs and greeted Kari and Ty. She was starting to show now, her normally flat, toned belly sticking out a little bit as it stretched to accommodate her new passenger. Even her breasts were already starting to fill out, though Kari understood that was more obvious because Danilynn was fures-rir; theirs were normally very small or virtually nonexistent until they had children, for some reason.