Forsaken Hunters_Book Zero of The Age of Dawn_A Prequel

by Everet Martins

  Nezo, the lead hunter, mumbled something in Tigerian, incomprehensible to Lillian.

  “How far did this one make it?” Helgar tugged at the tails of his jacket, leveling his gaze at the hunter.

  Nezo responded, the tone of his voice sounding regretful and his posture shrinking.

  Helgar stiffened his back, jaw flexing and hands wringing. He nodded a few times and peered up at the trees, eyes finding the pair of parrots. “Hiko!” Helgar barked over his shoulder. “Who was he scheduled to fight next week?”

  Hiko responded in Tigerian, producing another nod from Helgar who approached the man. Helgar wagged a pointed finger at the captured slave, lips drawn to a grimace.

  “I c-can’t do it anymore. I’m not a fighter. I was a philosopher, a writer. Can’t do it,” the man said, bursting into tears. His cheeks were scraped, knees bloodied, hair matted with plant matter.

  Lillian flexed her jaw so hard she thought her teeth might shatter. Her nails dug into her palms, one drawing blood.

  Helgar turned to regard Brenna and Lillian. “My hunters here, they’re good. They always find the runaways, they do.” Helgar’s eyes lingered on Lillian with a note of accusation. She blinked at him, forcing her face into stoic calm. Did he know? No. He couldn’t.

  Helgar heaved out a sigh, turning back to face the captured man. Rivulets of sweat streamed from the man’s temples and pattered from his square jaw. “Are you aware that my brawling operation is a business?”

  “I’m aware, sir— master,” the man stammered.

  “Are you aware that I’ve invested a hefty sum to acquire you? When I invest my marks, I expect a return as that is the very nature of an investment. But sometimes your investments do not work, and you must cut your losses before they become more severe.” Helgar leaned close to the man, no more than a foot between them. “It’s important to learn to like the small losses.”

  “I-I won two fights,” the man stared at his feet.

  Helgar gripped the man under the collar, dragging him within an inch of his face. “Where were you off to? To withdraw the rest of the funds to refund me for the other six brawls I expect from you?” That drew a roar of laughter from every Tigerian while every human was tight-lipped. Helgar screamed in his face, “Was it perhaps to drain the funds from your overstuffed bank box?”

  “C-can’t do it. C-can’t do it anymore,” the man broke into gulping sobs.

  “C-c-c-can’t do it anymore!” Helgar imitated, shoving him to the ground with a growl. The man crumpled like his bones had turned to dust. Helgar snarled and withdrew his pocket square, unfolding it, and using it to wipe the nothing from his hands. He let it fall from his fingers with a long sigh, fluttering and landing on the man’s heaving chest. He squatted down beside him. “You ran. You must pay for that. You must understand that this is a business operation.” Helgar slowly stood, giving the brawler a resigned shake of his head.

  Lillian realized it was the same man who had fought and won last night. Her stomach churned bile up her throat.

  Helgar turned his back and walked away, stopping about ten paces from him. A gust of wind blew spiraling organic debris around Helgar’s legs. He turned again to face the man, spreading his arms wide. “Well, where is it? Where is the refund for what I paid for you?” he asked with nonchalance.

  The man wiped a line of snot from his nose, rising to all fours, then sitting back on his heels. He stared at the earth as Helgar berated him.

  Strange yowls and yelps of laughter resounded from the hunters, gathered together like a pack of dogs. Their Tougeres were transfixed by the escaped man, some occasionally making a lunge for him, but reined back by a jerk on their spiked collars from their masters. She slowly peered over her shoulder to look at them, watching and laughing with unalloyed cruelty.

  Brenna stood from the carriage, cleared her throat, and shouted, “Helgar!” Everyone’s attention flicked to her. A broad smile crawled up Helgar’s mouth. “I will refund you from my own coffers.”

  “You’ll give me what he owes?” Helgar crossed his arms and cocked his head at Brenna.

  “Mhm.” Brenna nodded, cupping her full hip pouch, making the marks within jingle.

  Helgar sauntered towards her, thumb pointing over his back. “You’ll pay over a thousand marks for a brawler who’s all but used up?”

  Lillian chomped at her inner cheeks, drawing a surge of hot blood. She sucked it down. “No. No, she won’t. As your advisor, Brenna, I can’t recommend that. She’s just growing tired of you wasting our time with this matter. If you’re going to do what needs to be done, you might as well get on with it. I’m getting bored of it too, and there are few things worse than boredom.”

  A few chuckles rang from the hunters and Helgar’s sycophants. Helgar tugged on the first button of his high-collared shirt.

  Lillian continued. “We won’t pay a single mark for this used husk. He can’t fight because his spirit and confidence are both long broken. It’s plain to see he is all but useless. Do you not agree, Brenna?”

  Kalli shuffled beneath her, maybe sensing her fraying nerves. The words weren’t hers, but she had to play the part to win Helgar’s trust. He didn’t get to where he was without hardened scruples. This might be a test, and if it was, they needed to pass. And if it wasn’t a test, she was more than prepared to kill if it brought her closer to finding Baylan. There were always a few stray arrows before they found the bullseye. Sometimes they hit bystanders.

  Brenna’s tongue slid across her upper teeth, hand falling from her coin pouch. “As you can see, Helgar, I have a great need for continuing to employ Masa. Often, my soft heart gets the best of me.” Brenna sat down in the carriage, throwing an easy arm over the chair back beside Hiko.

  Nezo slowly walked to stand behind Helgar at his shoulder, hand resting on the hilt of his sheathed blade. Nezo stared at Lillian, expression unreadable. Helgar gave a stiff nod to Brenna, regarded the whimpering man, then set his gaze at Lillian. Helgar clapped his hands together and approached her, speaking in a low voice. “I must apologize for Nezo’s hard stare. He’s not familiar with one of my fighters fleeing. Typically, it’s just the farmhands who are so bold. But I think what truly piques his curiosity is a free humie on horseback.” The ghost of a smile flickered on his face. “Now, I don’t suppose you will have any objection regarding how I care for my possessions?” he asked, looking up and into her eyes.

  Lillian stared back, face forcibly relaxed from years of training her expression in the Silver Tower. It was a skill that almost every veteran wizard was taught for working through diplomatic issues. “What’s yours… is yours,” she said with a limp shrug.

  Helgar grinned at her. “Nezo, let the Tougeres eat.”

  Nezo let out a grim snicker, hurrying back to his knot of hunters. The hunters whooped and squealed with excitement, realizing what was said. They each gave their Tougeres a few fierce tugs on their collars, then let them go. The beasts roared with anticipation, the sound rumbling through Lillian’s chest. Their great bodies pounded over the distance, sinews flexing under skin tight as a drum.

  The doomed man stared at Helgar, facing his fate with unaffected poise. The Tougeres pounced on him in a flash of white claws and flexing muscle. Their giant mouths clamped onto his limbs, teeth like swords plunging through his flesh. One had an arm, and the other two his legs. They each drew back onto their hindquarters, savagely pulling and producing loud pops as the man’s limbs were dislocated. The Tougeres wagged their heads from side to side, trying to tear the man’s limbs free, unnaturally twisting and flopping in their jaws.

  The hunters gathered about the beasts, yelping, and cheering at the slaughter. Brenna rose from her seat. Her face was colorless, eyes shifting. The enslaved gang turned their heads and shuffled their feet, knowing it could’ve been any one of them. Helgar lowered his chin at the sight, eyes narrowed as the man shrieked and begged for a merciful death.

  Lillian was the fourth Tougere, sinking her fangs in
to his heart. She forced herself to watch, to listen as he suffered, to do anything but turn away. She was his executioner. She watched as his limbs were torn from his body in ragged strips. She watched as blood streaked the earth around him, pumping from what remained of his torso. His screams would haunt her until the end of her days, always there in those few moments before she drifted off to sleep.

  Brenna turned away from the sight, hand clasped tight around her mouth.

  Helgar chuckled at Lillian. “It seems your employer is not fond of seeing humies dying.”

  “It’s not that. She’s just not used to seeing them being torn limb from limb by Tougeres,” Lillian said distantly, setting an icy stare on Helgar

  Helgar nodded. “Oh.” His mouth opened and closed like a fish, searching for his next word. “And you are?” he asked, expression blank.

  Lillian set her gaze on the man’s twitching corpse. The Tougeres tore ragged sections of flesh and bone from his torso, growling at each other as they vied for the largest portion of flesh. “I’m just a bit more familiar with savagery than she is. If he was an example of one of your better brawlers, I must say I’m less than impressed. That’s three hours of riding that I’ll never reclaim.”

  Helgar’s dark countenance broke into a friendly chuckle. “Come on then,” Helgar beckoned then climbed back into his cart. He hailed for his driver to continue.

  Lillian heeled Kalli into motion, starting back on the path.

  Eight

  Found

  The chained slave gang who had followed them to the farthest point from the mansion was left with a handful of taskmasters in a field of sprouting potatoes. On each quarter of the grounds were dormitories where the enslaved slept. Lillian knew what those were like. The roofs leaked with the odd bout of rain. The walls spewed frozen air at night. The floors were covered in makeshift mattresses made of sacks stuffed with hay. Despite the air movement, it did nothing to abate the odor of unwashed bodies. Everything and everyone reeked like ancient, crystallized urine. Sleep came in gulps and spurts, and the sun always rose long before it should have. The work started with empty bellies and empty hearts.

  They finished their tour of the grounds by mid-afternoon, suffering through Helgar’s endless prattling about his business ventures. He had a diversified array of businesses from farming, human brawling, tailoring, and even blacksmithing. He had the manacles for his slaves made on the Oakmourn Plantation and realized he could sell them to the realm with enough production.

  Brenna bore the brunt of his conversation, though she was clearly shaken from the slave’s murder. She was unable to respond with more than one or two words and a grimace. Helgar didn’t seem to notice. As they approached the mansion, he commented how pleasant their conversation had been.

  The gilded stonework of the mansion shone brightly in the sun, glinting with infused crystals. A new group of about a dozen sycophants awaited their arrival. The majority of the group were servants from the mansion, all well-dressed and well-fed, the opposite of those working the fields. The servants wore crisp white shirts and dark trousers, all with hardly a single wrinkle. There were a few taskmasters among them, hands twitchy for a reason to use their lashes. Regarding dress, the taskmasters didn’t look much different from the enslaved working the fields, sporting torn trousers and rumpled shirts with a spattering of stains.

  Tall grasses flanked the road, gently swaying in a warm breeze. Helgar’s cart crunched under stones while hooves and paws thumped. Helgar took a long pull from his pipe, giving a nod of approval at his blossoming fiefdom. Lillian felt a presence watching her. She slowly swiveled her gaze toward the grasses and saw what she knew she would find.

  The illusion of Baylan stood there, rigid as a statue, watching her with wrinkled brows. She knew it wasn’t real, but she looked anyway. He raised his hands and cupped his palms together as if in contemplation. She blinked, and his arms were at his back. He gave a slight bow. She blinked again, and he was gone. Hope was clouding her mind with phantasms of a dead past.

  A lean elderly man trudged out from the mansion’s double doors, arms held behind his back and his chin raised at the approaching group. A thin strip of white hair ran down his chin and curled along his jawline. He wore a wine-red vest over his porcelain shirt and had a gold chain hanging from his belt. He was perhaps working as the manager of the lower level servants, Lillian guessed by the way he barked out something that might have been orders. As the group drew to the mansion’s front, Lillian heard him berating a servant for having his shirt untucked. The manager’s eyes found Lillian’s, and his mouth went wide, eyes seeming to double in size.

  He took a steadying grip on a nearby handrail like he might have fallen over without it. Lillian couldn’t help but let a chuckle escape her lips, drawing a dagger stare from Sofor. The manager’s expression became a frown, deepening into a scowl etched with lines of rage. Lillian drew up beside Brenna, now mounted on Stanley, and they both exchanged glances of shared humor. They stopped behind Helgar’s cart as he greeted the manager with a wave of his pipe.

  “Haru! Come on down at meet my new guests,” Helgar called to the manager.

  Haru limped down the front stairs, favoring one leg, the other shriveled down to the size of a Tigerian child’s, supporting himself with a cane. He started speaking in Tigerian, but Helgar beckoned for him to speak in Common. His hair was a dark gray rimmed in white, face traced in angry lines. “So, this is what happens when I’m sick for a few days? Humies on horseback,” he scoffed. “Now I think I’ve seen everything. Who are these strange folk?” Haru spoke in a voice far too loud.

  “You’re doing it again,” Helgar cocked his head at Haru.

  “Sorry, master, my ears are getting worse by the day,” Haru said, voice drawing down to a whisper.

  “A bit louder,” Helgar raised his palm, grimacing in annoyance.

  “Better? Like this?” Haru asked.

  “Just right.” Helgar nodded. “Feeling better now? I bet you’ve missed me.”

  Haru waved him away with a strange chortle. “Oh certainly. Like a thief misses a knife in his back.” Everyone but Brenna and Lillian bellowed out with great peals of laughter. Haru ambled his way around the cart to Helgar’s side, gripping its edge for balance. “I miss you like I miss having clods of sand in my smallclothes.” Their laughter dwindled down. “Now who are these guests, Helgar?”

  “I am Masa. And this is Brenna,” Lillian answered, drawing Haru’s withering gaze. “If there is something you’d like to know about us, we are more than pleased to answer.”

  Haru gaped, shifting his attention back and forth between Helgar and Lillian. “You better show your betters some respect or—”

  “Now, now, Haru. Did you not hear me say these are my guests?” Helgar scolded.

  Haru’s eyes narrowed further. “I know, but—”

  “Guests,” Helgar said again, pressing Haru’s mouth closed with two fingers under his jaw.

  Haru trudged over to Lillian, glaring up at her, his eyes blazing. “If you don’t show the master some respect, I’ll tear you from that mount and—”

  “Haru, Haru, Haru!” Helgar barked, rising to stand from his seat, hands resting on his hips, causing his jacket to part.

  Haru froze in his tracks, a rumble thrumming in his chest.

  “What did I just finish telling you?” Helgar said. Haru turned back to face Helgar, lowering his head as the growling faded. Helgar continued. “These women… are free. They are business associates, and you will treat them like any of my other business associates. Like any other Tigerian you may serve in your employment.”

  “These… these humies?” Haru balked.

  “That is correct, Haru, these humies are benevolent slavers. You have nothing to fear from them. Masa, Lillian meet Haru. He can be a little brash, and for that, I must apologize.” Helgar reached out to give Haru’s hunched shoulder a squeeze. “He doesn’t care much for the likes of humanity. Hates himself more than he likely
hates you. Isn’t that right, Haru?”

  Haru shrugged. “Suppose that’s right. But Helgar, why do you feel as if you must conduct business with them? Humies… it’s not natural.”

  Helgar shook his head, his long white whiskers twiddling. “What part about these are my guests did you not understand? These are clients, and you will treat them as if they were any other Tigerian. Understand?”

  “Yes, master. I understand. But why…?” Haru scratched his head, and dandruff flaked onto his back. His hair traveled down to his shoulders in waving gray curls.

  “It is not your duty to understand the ‘why’ of the thing. I do the thinking around here. You do the working. Do you understand?” Helgar growled, hands gripping the carriage’s edge.

  Haru swallowed then bowed. “Yes, master. I-I understand,” Haru conceded.

  “They’re going to spend the night here. Please, go ahead and prepare them rooms,” Helgar said, relaxing back into his chair.

  Lillian raised her eyebrow at Brenna in question. She gave her a slight nod, confirming that they would indeed spend the night. She supposed that was the only way they could explore the mansion if Baylan was here.

  “They’re going to spend the night?” Haru balked, his wrinkled hands balling up tight. “These humies? Them?”

  “They’re not like ordinary humies,” Helgar sighed, looking up at the sky. “Is there a problem with my words, Haru?”

  “Everything will have to burn when they leave. Their very presence will contaminate the rooms. Filthy humies, in your house?” Haru shook his head in disbelief.

  The fact that he was human was wholly lost on him. Lillian wondered how a man’s mind could become so corrupted, so twisted with loathing for his own kind. She wondered what severity of self-flagellation would be required to carry on in this manner of existence without slitting one’s throat.