by Lee Ramsay
If I can kill the savage, I can eliminate Father, he thought with an anticipatory smile.
Urzgeth was old; the alpha’s joints snapped and cracked when he moved, and the aged huntsman moved slowly. While he respected his father’s surviving so many packs, age had cooled the fire burning in the old man’s breast. Methodical and patient, the elder Dushken had grown as overcautious as an old woman.
Killing the prey would anger the new grand duchess, but if he alone returned to Anahar with their heads and tales of how the others had died, he would not be punished. Augmented by the deaths of three powerful Dushken, he would either join another hunting pack or be made alpha of his own. He hoped for the latter; with such a position, he would have rights to unclaimed prime females and could challenge for leadership of his clan.
Lost in daydreams of rising prestige, he almost missed the faint sounds of movement nearby. He peered through the last gloaming as he crept off the road and into a hedgerow’s concealment. Three hundred feet ahead, the hedgerow broke, replaced with a split rail fence. A cottage not unlike the dozens of others he had passed faced the road. This one was partially burned; whitewashed walls bore black stains around empty windows, and the stench of smoke rose from the collapsed thatched roof.
Drazzag lifted his nose to the chill air and drew a long, slow breath. The scent of the three males was faint compared to that of the female. The musk of her sex mixed with the iron tang of moonblood. He had caught her scent from scat buried at a hedgerow’s base earlier in the day. Now the smell was hot, fresh, and close.
He forced himself to be patient and waited until the clouds drifted from the moon’s face. In the fall of silver light, he spied a pair of britches draped over a windowsill. He wrestled with his urge to rush in and claim his prey. There was no sign of movement in the moonlight, and his ears caught no sound other than the occasional snuffle or cough from the ruined cottage.
Perhaps they abandoned her. Is it possible that the girl has taken ill?
Females were weaker and more fragile. She may have sickened and been abandoned to purchase more time for the others to run; he had seen it often happen in the labyrinth. Yet humans were oddly protective of those weaker than themselves; they may not have abandoned her. Teeth gritted, Drazzag decided to wait and strained his ears and eyes for any sign the males were nearby.
After some time passed with no sign of the others, he sneered at himself. Fool. You are becoming as timid as Father. She is a girl, and alone.
Night’s chill bit through the quilted shirt and brigandine as he shrugged out of his coat and laid it aside. He wanted as little encumbrance as possible and leaned his two-handed sword against the hedge.
Axe in hand, Drazzag vaulted the fence and stalked toward the cottage. The girl’s scent strengthened the closer he drew to the ruined building, drowning out the weaker traces of the others. He wrenched the broken door from its frame and tossed it aside, and angled his broad shoulders to pass through the narrow doorway.
Ducking beneath the lintel, he issued a rumbling growl and squinted into the gloom. Silvery moonlight spilled through holes where the thatched roof had collapsed, glittering on heat-shattered glass strewn around the broken, burned furniture. A fallen door blocked the framework leading into another room to his left. The acrid stench of smoke rose from every surface.
Brenna leaned against the damaged table dominating the room’s center, the moonlight turning her eyes black in a marble-cold face. Her coat hung from her shoulders, the hem brushing the bare white skin of her knees – but she was not the spoor’s strongest source. The blood scent rose from the britches draped through the window and from black patches smeared on the doorframe.
A trap had been set, with the girl providing bait too tempting to ignore. The few heartbeats Drazzag’s eyes needed to adjust to the gloom and assess his target were enough for it to close around him.
The Anahari woman dropped and rolled beneath the table as he snarled and lifted his axe, but a sound from outside the house distracted him. The young huntsman whirled and peered through the ruined doorway as the Hillffolk jumped down from the hedgerow on the far side of the road.
Forgetting the girl, he bared his canines and snarled a challenge, but spun back around as another sound came from within the cottage. The shift saved him; the brigandine covering his shoulder deflected Rathus’s awkward sword thrust as the bard leaped the fallen door blocking the cottage’s other room.
Knuckles met bone as Drazzag backhanded the singer across the face. Blood flew from Rathus’s torn lips as he stumbled from the vicious blow, and the blade narrowly missed the bard’s foot as his sword fell from his loosened grip. Gripping the man’s throat, the huntsman tossed him across the room. Wood splintered as the bard smashed through a fire-weakened chair and landed against the cold hearth.
The effectiveness of Rathus’s attack was minimal, but as a distraction, it was flawless. In the moments necessary to render the bard ineffectual, Groush barreled through the doorway and smashed his shoulder into the huntsman’s kidney. Armor and gambeson did little to soften the impact; off-balance, Drazzag dropped his axe as he crashed through the table Brenna had disappeared beneath. The stout edge slipped between two of the brigandine’s boiled leather plates as the bull landed on top of him; his lowest rib snapped under the impact.
Spittle flying from bared canines, the huntsman whipped his head to the side and scored a bloody furrow in Hillffolk’s bicep. Groush ignored the injury and battered Drazzag’s face with his meaty hands.
The young warrior shrugged off the blows and gripped the bull’s throat and belt. Muscles tore through his shoulders as he called on his enhanced strength and heaved his opponent overhead and hurled the Hillffolk through what remained of the ruined table.
Drazzag’s eyes swept the room to place his foes and locate his dropped axe. Slender form obscured by shadows, Brenna scuttled away from the table. Near the hearth, Rathus groaned but staggered to his feet.
Groush was already rising on the far side of the ruined table. Black eyes locking, Dushken and Hillffolk roared and surged to the attack. The bull’s fists smeared the huntsman’s nose across his cheek with the first blow and snapped several teeth with the second. Drazzag’s fists thudded into the Hillffolk’s chest to drive him back several steps. Quicker on his feet, the Hillffolk bounded back into the fight. Strong fingers dug into the Dushken’s hair, and Groush wrenched the huntsman’s head down to meet a rising knee.
Blood flowed from Drazzag's smashed face, and he staggered from the impact. With a furious snarl, he shook off the dizziness and called upon his enhanced strength to push himself back into the fight – and dropped to his knee as a hatchet lodged in his shoulder with a spray of gore.
The huntsman’s augmented constitution allowed him to shrug off much of the blow. He flung a backfist as he whipped around; his knuckles grazed Tristan’s cheek and sent the young man stumbling. He used the precious moment to climb to his feet, and ignored the axe lodged in his shoulder as he lumbered toward the young man. Saliva flew as his jaws widened for an instinctive bite.
Groush yanked the hatchet’s handle and tore the bit free, foiling the attack against the sickly youth and jerking him off-balance.
Instinct and training combined to mark the Hillffolk as the greatest threat. Teeth clacked as Drazzag whirled and snapped at the bull, the bite missing its mark by a handspan. The move left his back exposed; pain blazed as steel severed his hamstring and dropped him to his knee once more. Roaring with pain, he swept his hand in another backhand and missed Brenna as the young woman scuttled backward with Rathus’s dropped sword in her hands.
Left leg dead below the hip, his right arm was useless, Drazzag realized how badly he had misjudged the prey. Baring his broken, bloodied teeth in defiance, he glowered at each of the four and dared them to strike him down. At least Father will benefit from my stupidity. He will find you, and he will tear you apart.
He expected Groush to kill him, tearing his throat out
with his teeth – it was the preferred way both Dushken and Hillffolk ended such fights. If Tristan delivered the final blow and wished to add to the ignominy of defeat, he would use the huntsman’s own axe.
The young warrior grunted as Brenna thrust her sword deep into his left shoulder, crippling the arm to prevent him from making another strike. Misery throbbed from the wound as he stared at the satisfaction on her face.
She smiled at his confusion as she released her grip on the sword’s hilt. “Cripple, not kill.”
Anahari. A dread chill flowed through him as he comprehended the seriousness of Urzgeth’s warning.
Chapter 67
Blood stung Urzgeth’s nose as he padded toward a ruined, moonlit cottage. His thick-soled boots moved silently, his heel-toe stride muffled by dead leaves strewn across the hard-packed road. The alpha slung his bow across his shoulders to free his hands and left his sword sheathed. He would need neither weapon.
The aged Dushken paused as he caught his son’s scent and leather from the hedgerow. He searched for the coat, but determined it had been retrieved and carried away. His son’s sword, however, lay hidden in the brush. Eyebrows knitting, he slung the baldric over his shoulder and wondered why the thieves had left the weapon behind.
Blood and his son’s unwashed musk in his nose as the alpha approached the cottage’s empty doorway. He did not need his eyes and ears to tell him the prey were gone; though their scent was intense, it was fading. Suspecting what he would find, he crossed the threshold.
Moonlight streaming through the gaps in the roof was sufficient for his superior vision to see what had happened; a simple but effective trap had been laid for the inexperienced huntsman. The walls’ closeness concentrated the sharpness of smoke and ash and limited Drazzag’s movement. Bloody smears on the door and window frames provided the bait. He sniffed a patch and recognized it for what it was. “Clever girl.”
Following a trail of blood, he ducked beneath a low doorframe leading into what was once a bedchamber. The roof was in better repair, and moonlight glittered in window frames still holding a few shards of glass.
“Father,” a hoarse, weak voice said from the darkness. Urzgeth waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. Against the far wall stood a bed, the wool-stuffed mattress and sheets missing. A deeper shadow rested on the ropes which had supported a mattress. The stink of hot blood and sour sweat coming from it made his mouth water as he crossed the room.
The alpha’s keen vision found the deep wound in his son’s shoulder; both the clavicle and the joint had been shattered. Brown skin lay exposed through cuts to the backs of the leather britches; Drazzag’s hamstrings were severed, the muscles contracted into thick knots below the buttocks.
Urzgeth fell to his knees beside the bed. The boy had been conceived following a raid on a Hillffolk village; he recalled the night well. He recalled watching his dam’s belly swell with the pregnancy, and laying the squalling infant on her bare breast when he was born. Fascination caught him as the child grew; he had missed his older sons’ and daughters’ first steps and first words. When he was older, the whelp often fought with older boys; the alpha remembered his irritated pride how the vicious child killed two with his bare hands.
He remembered, too, the pride swelling in his breast as Drazzag completed his trials and received the huntsman’s mark from Ankara’s hand, as well as the glyph which joined the boy to Urzgeth’s pack. Perhaps it was because Drazzag was of his blood, but the alpha had never experienced the connection so clearly as during that ritual.
“Father.” The boy’s mewling voice tugged Urzgeth’s heart as a ruined hand reached for him.
Ground beneath a bootheel until the bones snapped, Drazzag would forever have difficulty gripping a weapon. Hamstrung, he would never run again. He would forever be at a disadvantage in a fight. Even if Urzgeth had possessed what was needed to treat the wounds, he lacked the knowledge to do so. The boy would be lame and crippled if he survived, and there was no easy way to transport him home. Drazzag would never have the honor of a glorious hunt, the pride of victory, or the joy of taking a mate. No children would spring from his son’s loins.
The alpha pulled his gloves from his hands and cradled his son’s head in his palms. Drazzag’s thick beard was coarse and warm. The tears trickling from the boy’s eyes cooled against his thumb.
“Forgive me, Father.”
“I do, my son. Rest.”
A crack resounded through the small bedchamber as Urzgeth snapped the youth’s neck with a sharp twist. Air whistled through the twisted windpipe as the lungs expelled their last breath; the body spasmed as the signals from the brain grew confused. The heart stuttered, missing a beat before resuming an arrhythmic tattoo. Another beat skipped, followed by a long pause.
Drazzag’s taut muscles relaxed, and his black eyes grew glassy with reflected moonlight. Fingers tangled in his boy’s black hair, Urzgeth’s head fell back as the glyphs branded into his forehead and temples crawled and burned.
He did not need to see the hellish red glow against the blackened stones and fallen timbers; he had seen it forty-four times before. Coarse body hair rippled and stood on end as heat flooded through him, the muscles beneath his leathered skin contracting as fresh strength infused them. Aches in his joints faded, and his cock firmed as though he were a man of thirty winters rather than more than sixty.
Urzgeth’s lips peeled back from yellowing canines and sharp incisors, a vibrato growl resonating through his chest. Hate burned away his grief as his augmented senses sharpened. He would always carry the memories of his boy with him, and cherish the bonding few fathers and sons ever shared. As the fiery, enchanted runes seared into his flesh faded, Urzgeth knew that, in a way, Drazzag would be with him when he slaughtered the boy’s killers.
Soon.
It would take several hours for the transference to root itself within his flesh. Having outlived fourteen previous packs – fifteen, now – he was prepared for the disorientation that came with his augmented senses. More than vengeance, he required rest and food.
Steel hissed as the alpha drew the long-bladed dagger strapped to the small of his back. A flick of the wrist cut the lacings securing Drazzag’s gambeson. He tossed the garment away and sliced a long wedge from the corpse’s side.
Gore dribbled into his beard as he placed the greasy meat between his teeth, and allowed it to fuel his body as well as his hate.
Chapter 68
When Brenna proposed the ambush, Tristan agreed; he was every bit as tired of being pursued as she. Simmering anger replaced depressed lethargy at the thought of striking back at their pursuers. Fury, combined with exhaustion, left him open to her suggestion. Recognizing their need to fight, Groush reluctantly conceded. Rathus was all for running until the huntsmen caught them, but no one listened to his arguments.
The trap’s success gave the young man a sense of control over his life rather than being a victim of circumstance. He had been all for leaving the hamstrung warrior and continuing on their way; the Dushken was crippled. However, when Brenna drew her dagger in the fight’s aftermath, any satisfaction from their victory was spoiled.
“We have to be sure he cannot pursue us or tell Urzgeth our direction.” Her cold tone sent a shiver down the young man’s spine and caused Rathus to blanch. Even Groush seemed disturbed by the harshness of her words, but he had not flinched from holding the huntsman in place as she severed the tendons in his wrist.
Tristan and Rathus left them to their grisly task and put as much distance between themselves and the ruined structure as they safely could.
“There are stories about what happened during the War of Tenegath.” The bard’s face was a raccoon mask of blooming bruises. His breath caught as he drew his arms through the slits in his cloak; dislocated in the fight, the shoulder Groush had put back into its socket turned the nobleman gray and sweaty as the movement pained him. “By all accounts, Troppenheim soldiers committed atrocities all through the countrysi
de of Ravvos, Fershan, and Shreth. Ravvosi soldiers repaid the suffering. If the stories are true, the brutality worsened when Merid’s armies joined the conflict.”
“What’s your point?”
“We’re not too different from them – the Dushken, I mean. Civility is a thin veneer covering barbarism. Pushed far or hard enough, we are capable of anything.” Rathus flinched as another guttural shout came from the cottage, and his lips turned down beneath his close-cropped goatee. “It makes sense, then, that Brenna is striking back in this manner.”
“It may make sense. It doesn’t make it right.”
“If you had the opportunity to strike back at those who tormented you, could you be certain you wouldn’t do as she?”
Uncertain what he might say, the young man pushed his hands into his coat pockets and remained silent; he suspected he would not like his answer. When Brenna and Groush emerged from the cottage, he held his peace. There was an outward serenity to her bearing he had not seen before, but the tightness of her expression that put lie to the peace she exhibited.
Groush had discarded his cloak in favor of taking the crippled huntsman’s coat. Bones fell from the shoulders as the bull used his dagger to cut the threads securing them to the shoulders. “Two days, three at the most, before the last Dushken catches us. We make for the bridge at Wenggen. If we can get close enough, we may be safe.”
Tristan nodded but said nothing as he started walking. He suspected nothing short of killing death or reaching Caer Ravvos would stop Urzgeth.
TWO DAYS HAD PASSED since the fight in the cottage. Two days of Groush hustling them along, cursing and cajoling them when their pace flagged. Two days of little food, and snatching a few moments of sleep along the side of the road when the bull allowed them to rest.