Hunters Unlucky

by Abigail Hilton

  Arcove swallowed. “Put Roup in charge of Leeshwood,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “You won’t have to coerce him to stop the raids or to work with the ferryshaft. He’ll want to. He’s always wanted to. He’ll be good at it.”

  Keesha looked unimpressed. “You are really bad at begging.”

  Arcove plunged on. “He will give you the kind of peace you want, but you can’t tell him what happened to me. He won’t work with you if you do. Let him think you tried to save me and failed. Or make up a better story. Anything. Just don’t tell him.”

  Keesha looked incredulous. “Please tell me you’re not about to ask me to help you win this war.”

  “Not me,” said Arcove. “Roup…and Storm…and cats who will listen to you when this is over because they’ll be in your debt. But you can’t tell them about—”

  “I heard you the first time,” snapped Keesha.

  Arcove sank back down. The intense purpose of delivering his message began to dissipate. “When future generations are born, you can tell them I was responsible for the war,” he whispered. “Blame me for the raids, make Coden their hero. Let them hate me or forget me. Let me be a shadow on their past.” Every group needs a monster to hate, he thought. Claws in the forest. Teeth in the dark. “You and Storm and Charder will have your peace and your revenge, and Roup and Nadine and the rest will survive.”

  Arcove waited for Keesha to say something, but for once, he didn’t. Arcove felt too heavy to move. “And you’re right,” he said at last. His voice sounded small in his own ears. “I’m not very good at begging.”

  Keesha was silent and still for so long that Arcove finally decided to try raising his head. Keesha’s face didn’t tell him much. Arcove had never been good at distinguishing telshee expressions. Keesha was not snarling, and that was all he knew for certain. At last, Keesha said, “Do you want me to sing to you?”

  “No,” said Arcove. “If you come in here, and I’m alive and then you leave and I’m dead? No, that will never work. Maybe you can tell their cub’s cubs about your song, but right now—”

  “I don’t mean to sing the end of the song,” interrupted Keesha.

  Arcove finally lost his temper. “No, I don’t want you to keep taking me apart and putting me back together until you grow bored! No.”

  “You’ll die,” said Keesha. “Soon.”

  “Good.”

  “It will hurt.”

  “So does your singing.”

  Keesha was silent again. “Very well,” he said at last and Arcove thought he heard grudging respect in that sonorous voice. Although that’s probably just the delirium.

  * * * *

  Roup felt as though he could have ripped off Storm’s head without a shred of remorse. “I told you I wanted to speak to him!” he snarled.

  “You’ll get to,” said Storm desperately. “Calm down.”

  “Arcove is trapped up there with his worst enemy!” thundered Roup. “Do not tell me to calm down!”

  “Keesha can help him,” said Storm.

  “Oh, I’m sure he can,” said Roup, “but I doubt that he will. I doubt that very much.”

  They were standing in a large room a level down from the top. This one had a ceiling. Shaw was blocking the only entrance to the steep path that lead to the final level.

  Roup had been on the far side of the island when he’d heard the news that telshees had come ashore. By the time he’d reached the cave, they’d already entered. The creasia on watch were pacing back and forth in a nervous quandary. No one really wanted to tackle Shaw and Syra-lay. Storm kept insisting that they were not here to cause trouble.

  For once, Roup wished Halvery had been present with his quick temper and strike-first-ask-questions-later mentality. But, Halvery had been sleeping—a reasonable activity, since he’d been fighting all morning. Sharmel had hardly moved since dragging himself into the cave the night before.

  They’d both roused themselves, though, when they’d heard about the telshees, and now all three officers were growling and pacing in front of Shaw’s immovable glare. Even Charder had come up the steep, winding corridors to see what all the fuss was about. He sat in the back of the cave and watched.

  After what seemed an eternity, Keesha came gliding back down the passage. Roup took advantage of Shaw’s momentary distraction to wriggle past her. He met Keesha head on. “You and I need to talk,” he snarled.

  “Oh, we’ll be doing plenty of that, I expect.”

  Roup felt ill as he struggled around the telshee, cursing and tripping on his coils. No blood? Keesha’s coat looked as white as new-fallen snow. Roup raced up the passage to the room and confirmed that it was not smeared with the gore and entrails of his friend. In fact, Arcove didn’t look as though he’d moved from the last time Roup had visited. Roup stayed just long enough to see him take a breath and then whipped around and charged back down the passage.

  Halvery was standing at the bottom, looking up. “He’s fine,” said Roup quickly. Keesha was talking to Shaw and Storm. As he turned to go, Roup blocked his path.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “We are going to spend some time here.”

  Keesha looked weary. “And what are we going to do during this time?”

  “I am going to talk. You are going to listen.”

  Keesha rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “All the wrong people want to beg me for things today.”

  “I’m not going to beg you for anything,” said Roup. “I’m going to tell you a story. It’s not one I tell very often, so make yourself comfortable. It may take a while.”

  “As I said, we will have plenty of time for—”

  “Do you want to know why you lost the war, Syra-lay? Truly? I promise you haven’t heard this.”

  Keesha froze, watching him. Well, I finally have your attention.

  “Do you want to know how the Shable ended up in Groth?” asked Roup. “I can tell you that, too.”

  Now, he definitely had the full weight of those fathomless blue eyes. Keesha moved away from the exit to the room. “I’m listening…”

  * * * *

  Moro woke among the broken and trampled ghost plants. The sun seemed blinding as he dragged himself out from under the wreckage of his work. No, no, no…

  The plants that he’d cultivated with so much effort had been destroyed. Their juices squished under his feet as he staggered over and through the bent and shredded bowls and the woody bases that had been pounded into pulp. Even the fluorescence that had given him such joy when it had first begun to glow in the stems had darkened into lifelessness.

  Not too late.

  Moro blinked hard. He looked around for the voice, but nothing seemed to be moving in the clearing. When had the sun grown so bright? It was difficult to see properly.

  Better under the trees. Better at night.

  “What?” croaked Moro. He shook his head. He felt like a swarm of bees had taken up residence there. He realized that he was limping, although he felt no pain. Moro looked down and was shocked to see that something had apparently gnawed on his left foreleg. He could see white bone peeking through. He could also see places were fur had been ripped away, bruises where ferryshaft had trampled him. He could see, but he felt nothing.

  I’m in that space after injury when the body shuts down, he thought. I need to hide and rest.

  No. And now he distinctly heard the response as something separate from himself. We must find new hosts. We must hurry.

  “Lishties,” said Moro aloud.

  You are fortunate, said the thing in his head. We welcome you.

  Moro flinched. He could feel the thing rifling through his memories. At the same time, he had a sense of darkness and endless seas, of waiting, of longing, of hunger for sight and touch and sound. These are its memories, he realized.

  The sensation did not please him. To his horror, he had a sudden, intense memory of a cub he had killed a few months ago…only this time, he was in the cub’s head, and its terror nearly overwhe
lmed him. Moro shrieked. He toppled over and thrashed on the ground for a moment.

  Stop! shouted the lishty. You are harming this body! Stop!

  “You said,” panted Moro, “that we would live forever.”

  You will, said the voice in his head with terrible sincerity. We treasure all our memories. But yours are strange to us. We must study them.

  Moro was not reassured. “Am I my memories?” he asked aloud.

  To his further distress, he found that he was walking towards the lake without meaning to. “No,” he said, “stop. What are you doing? Stop!”

  We must find the others, said the voice in his head. We must find new hosts.

  Something was breaking through Moro’s gums. He could feel the points with his tongue, and this did hurt. “I need to rest,” he insisted. “I need to heal. I don’t want you in my head. We haven’t done enough tests yet. We don’t know if this is safe.”

  We are satisfied with the tests, said the lishty. We have crossed into four-legs. We are pleased with you.

  Moro wanted to scream, but he seemed to have lost the use of his voice. He was swimming. Once he reached the far shore, he staggered up the bank without shaking the water from his coat. He was dimly aware of deep, visceral pain, as though his insides were undergoing some wrenching change.

  Moro whimpered. His vision was flashing on and off. He walked. The wound on his leg opened wider, showing more bone, but he kept walking.

  Treace, he thought. Need to tell Treace this was a bad idea.

  The fangs pushing through his gums sent saliva and blood trickling down his chin. He did not lick it away. He could not.

  Moro died. And he kept walking.

  Chapter 22. Tell It All

  “I was raised by ferryshaft,” said Roup, “but you know that.” Keesha knew, but Roup was certain that at least one person in the room didn’t. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Halvery stiffen. Well, now you have a name for the thing about me that you’ve always hated.

  Sharmel didn’t react. Roup had always suspected that Sharmel knew or guessed his origins. Sharmel had been an adult when the rest of the officers were all cubs, and he might have heard rumors that Halvery would have missed. He’d been paying more attention than Halvery, too, in those early days when Roup had still made the occasional slip in accent or behavior.

  But here’s the part that even you probably don’t know, Sharmel. “Pathar brought me back to the herd after a raid because he wanted to learn about creasia,” continued Roup. “My eyes weren’t even open. Coden’s mother agreed to foster me, so I grew up right beside him.”

  Keesha looked impatient. “I knew all this long ago. It does not make me well-disposed towards you. You got your ‘brother’ killed while he protected you. Did you know that? He made me promise not to kill you.”

  Roup winced. Of course. Of course he did. “I am telling a story,” said Roup. “Shut up and listen.”

  Keesha huffed. From behind him, Roup heard Shaw snicker. It made him feel a little better. “I had a few friends among the ferryshaft,” said Roup, “or at least I thought they were my friends. I realized later that most of the ones who seemed kind were simply curious or anxious to test me. Hardly a day passed when a ferryshaft did not threaten to kill me, so I valued those who seemed friendly. They encouraged me to eat things that were not food to see whether I would survive, abandoned me in lonely places to test my tracking skills, dropped me into a tide pool once and let me tread water until I started to drown, and subjected me to a daily series of tortures which, at the time, seemed normal.”

  Charder stirred from where he was sitting against the wall. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t in favor of it, even back then.”

  “It was your herd,” said Roup.

  “I know,” said Charder. He didn’t seem to know what else to say and looked at the ground.

  Roup felt a twinge of guilt. Arcove has already made you sorry enough. “Coden was the only one who truly had no agenda with me. He defended me when others attacked me and kept me company in my loneliness and during those times when I was injured or sick. We both knew the adults would kill me before I grew big enough to be a serious threat.

  “When I was two years old, Coden helped me run away. He took me to the edge of the forest and left me there. We promised to meet again in a year. I could tell that he did not think I would survive. He’d heard all kinds of terrible things about creasia, but I knew almost nothing about my own kind.

  “Arcove found me by a stream. It was the middle of the day, but I was on a ferryshaft schedule. Arcove didn’t even try to talk to me. He knocked me down. We fought. He won.

  “Afterward, I asked whether he had a clique. I meant a clutter, but I didn’t know the word. He said, ‘I do now.’ Then he asked why I sounded like a ferryshaft. I told him. I figured that if he wanted to kill me, he would have done it during the fight. I knew it might be dangerous to tell, but I didn’t understand until later how dangerous.

  “Arcove didn’t comment except to tell me not to talk to anyone else. We went off and found a hiding place to sleep. He curled up around me like I was his only friend in the world. I guess I was.”

  Roup hesitated. No one said a word. Even Keesha was just listening. “It took me several days to piece together what had happened the night before. Arcove’s mother was an attractive female, which doesn’t always work out well for females. Not now, and certainly not then. Another male challenged Arcove’s father over her. They fought, and Arcove’s father was killed. The victor proceeded to kill all of his opponent’s cubs.”

  Storm raised his head. “He…did what?”

  Halvery spoke for the first time. “That happened a lot back then.”

  “Yes,” said Roup. “It makes the female come into season faster. Also, it was considered a mark of weakness in those days to raise the cubs of another male. So he killed Arcove’s brother and sister, but Arcove turned and fought.”

  Halvery smiled. Early in their acquaintance, he’d tried to get Roup to talk about Arcove’s first fights, and Roup had been standoffish, afraid that he would reveal too much of his own past. Roup’s apparent unfriendliness had set the tone for their relationship. Maybe I should have just told him.

  “All of Leeshwood knows this story,” said Roup, “but it’s grown a little in the telling. This part is true: Arcove was only two years old, and he killed a fifteen-year-old adult. Arcove was a big cub, almost as large as some three-year-olds, but he was still just a cub. I’ve heard cats say that Arcove only won his fights because he’s exceptionally large. That’s not true. He fought and killed cats many times his size at an age when most cubs are still at their mother’s teat.”

  Halvery was enjoying the story. “The one he killed was an officer, right?”

  Roup shifted. “The adult he killed was an officer of the king, yes, and that’s where the trouble started. Cats say that Arcove won his seat on the council when he was only two, but they forget that he didn’t claim that seat until he was four. At the time, it almost got him killed.

  “If the dead cat had been anyone else, the den would have praised their cub’s skill and bravery. But many of the officers were bullies, and they were all friends. The den mother feared retaliation, so she drove Arcove away. It was as good as a death sentence for a two-year-old cub.

  “That’s why Arcove was awake in the middle of the day when I wandered into Leeshwood. He’d never been alone in his life. Now his siblings and his father were dead, his mother had abandoned him, he’d been driven from his den, and he thought high-ranking adults might try to kill him.”

  Roup took a deep breath. “Then he found me, and I was nothing but a liability. Arcove wouldn’t let me talk to anyone else for months. He coached me until I could sound like a creasia. We hunted together—poached game because, with no territory, we didn’t have a choice. We lived alone for almost two years. No one wanted to call such a young cub their alpha, and Arcove wouldn’t bend his neck to anyone.


  “Arcove started forming a clutter a little before he turned four, mostly from rogues. All of them were older than we were. Arcove fought and beat them one by one, and they followed him. He didn’t trust them, though. He couldn’t afford to.”

  “But he trusted you,” said Storm thoughtfully, “because he knew your secret.”

  “He knew my secret,” agreed Roup, “and eventually I knew all of his. We used to sleep in turns because so many cats wanted us dead. When he turned four, Arcove went to a council meeting and announced that he was claiming his place, having killed Cranow—the one who’d killed his father and siblings. The officers were surprised and amused. Arcove ended up fighting one of them before they’d take him seriously. After that, it was three frustrating years on the council. He knew they were doing everything wrong, that they would never win the war. They didn’t even seem to think it could be won…or that it was a war.

  “There were only about a hundred adult males of fighting age in Leeshwood back then, and I swear to you that Arcove fought and beat every one of them at some point. Cats call him lucky, and he often was, but he fought for every scrap of their loyalty. When he turned seven, he challenged Ketch, the current king, and fought him to the death in the Great Clearing with everyone watching.

  “Arcove’s first act as king was to threaten death to anyone who killed a cub. He didn’t think he could stop them from killing each other over mates, but he told them that if they killed a cub, he would personally hunt them down. He said we needed every single cub, and he was right. He had to enforce that rule a few times before they understood that he meant it. Since that time, it’s become common for a male to raise his rival’s cubs if he wins a mate in battle. Mortality in fights over females has also decreased. When Arcove escalated the war with the ferryshaft five years later, we had more young creasia than anyone had ever seen.”