Hooded

by A A Woods

  “Stay with me!”

  Tuk’s grip on her arm was loose, slipping, as they both cascaded over an outcropping, plunged into a deep basin, were held under as water crashed down on top of them. Carlette kicked out but she didn’t know which way was up.

  Darkness and light spun like living things.

  She was going to die.

  Panic filled her lungs in the absence of air.

  A sharp tug on her arm, and a body slammed against hers. Her head burst into the air like a popped cork. A spray of water glittered in the evening sun.

  “SWIM!” screamed a voice in her ear, earsplitting over the thrum of steady water.

  Two realizations struck Carlette in quick succession.

  First, they weren’t churning anymore. The water was thick and lazy here, tugging them along, approaching an edge. A haze of mist blotted out the sky.

  And two, the waterfall’s distant noise wasn’t so distant anymore.

  Throwing back the wet, clingy edges of her hood, Carlette kicked frantically toward shore. One hand clawed forward, the other caught by Tuk’s solid grip. She couldn’t feel her fingers, but she stretched them out anyways, desperate for land. The water towed them, unstoppable, greedy. But they were close. Her hand hit something, slid off. Tuk yanked on a tree root before it snapped in his grasp.

  With a final, shivering push Carlette managed to grab a low-hanging sapling. She gripped it with a numb hand, pulling them both in. Tuk shoved her forwards before yanking himself out of the water, his feet sliding against the slippery edge of the waterfall just as he managed to pull himself free.

  For a moment they both lay draped over the sapling, swallowing gluttonous gulps of chilly air. Carlette was shaking all over, as frozen as she’d ever been in her life.

  “Come on,” Tuk said at last, shimmying down the tree trunk towards shore. “We need to make a fire.”

  · · ─────── ·❅· ─────── · ·

  Carlette’s numbness went deeper than cold as she stumbled after her prisoner, letting Tuk lead them to a sparse area of foothills peppered with old mining caves. When he pulled her into a narrow tunnel, barely big enough for them to stand upright, she just waited there, pulsing with shock. She couldn’t muster even a perfunctory curiosity at the half-full iron cart rusting in the corner or the dusty, blackened firepit piled high with disintegrating wood. On the other side of the pit was a stack of old furs, so rotted that they barely resembled animal hides anymore.

  She only blinked at them.

  Her mind was a towel that had been brutally wrung dry and beaten with horrible understanding. The grueling experience of touching the Amonoux’s mind, of finding Quaina there, left her so empty and hollow that she could have curled up and died right at the mouth of the cave and hardly noticed. How does one continue with the burden of knowledge like that?

  Why would one bother?

  “Help me build a fire,” Tuk said, his teeth chattering.

  Carlette didn’t respond. She could feel sleep splashing against her mind, pulling at her the way the river had pulled them towards the waterfall. How lovely would it be to just drift into that nothingness, let it all wash away with the dark?

  “Carlette,” Tuk snapped, grabbing one shoulder with a manacled hand. “Stay with me, aye? You’re supposed to be the fighter here.”

  Shaking herself, Carlette blinked away the nimbus shape of the she-wolf imprinted on her eyelids. She let the world rush back in, vivid and painful and demanding.

  Right.

  She was a fighter. She was a weapon.

  She had to focus.

  “Let go of me,” she said, pulling her arm free. But she joined him in the slow work of gathering kindling.

  They were trembling so much it was almost impossible to pick up the branches and leaves around the cave entrance. But somehow Tuk managed to build a small pile of tinder. Carlette dragged in larger branches, barely conscious as she watched the young man try to light the damp wood, his tongue poking out between blue lips.

  He struck the flint once.

  Twice.

  On the third try, the dead leaves caught.

  Tuk let out a whoop of victory and blew on the little flame. His voice echoed. Carlette knew she should be worried about cairogs and spiders living in these abandoned caverns, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Her mind was still spinning, still reliving the encounter.

  “And they said I was hopeless at basic survival,” Tuk said with a grin.

  Carlette stared at the tiny flame. It wasn’t enough. They both knew it.

  She glared at him through tear-filled eyes, needing to know. “Why did you save me?”

  Tuk looked at her, his body vibrating with cold.

  “You were right,” he said with a shrug. “I can’t survive here without you.”

  Carlette could sense more brewing beneath the surface of that statement, a change in the boy’s eyes. But she dropped her gaze.

  “Back there… you looked like you’d seen a ghost,” Tuk ventured.

  Again, his question struck right into the red middle of her pain.

  “I did,” Carlette said.

  Her cheeks were wet. She curled herself into a tight ball, swallowing convulsively.

  No. Not in front of him.

  She couldn’t allow this to undo her, couldn’t fall to the memory. She thought she had learned to mash things down until there was only the scythe of function. Her hood. Her mission.

  You are a weapon.

  But Quaina’s soul brushing against her own, tangled into the she-wolf’s power, had been enough to smash Carlette’s foundation like a battering ram. Tuk lingered by the entrance of the cave, free to stay or flee or kill her. And she didn’t care. The pain was too much, eating her from the inside out.

  Quaina was trapped in that creature’s power, her soul imprisoned, and it was entirely Carlette’s fault.

  She dug her face into her knees, gasping for air.

  Instead of running, Tuk plopped down next to her, yanking over one of the putrid skins. Heavy fur fell over her, curling around the drenched hood. Carlette breathed through her mouth, shivering inside the makeshift canopy. There was a moment of calm, almost companionable silence. And then Tuk’s arm alighted against her shoulder like a timid songbird.

  Her head jerked up. She stared.

  He was smiling.

  It was cautious and resigned, the smile of someone just as confused as she was. But friendly.

  “This is foolish,” she rasped, her throat raw.

  “What? Being human?” He snorted. “Even witches can’t avoid that, aye?”

  An unwilling chuckle escaped Carlette’s numb lips.

  “Look, I don’t know what happened back there. But if there’s any way I can help—”

  “There isn’t,” Carlette said, too quickly.

  Tuk withdrew his arm. Carlette felt a strange surge of… loss? But it evaporated as the mechanic began to untie his jacket, a shy smile wrinkling his eyes.

  “Well, miss Carlette,” he said, shedding wet layers, “it looks like we’re going to get to know one another pretty well if we want to survive the night.”

  She swallowed, wishing she could argue, knowing she could not.

  It’s just another duty, she told herself, clenching her jaw. Just a way to get home.

  She glared up at Tuk with iron eyes.

  “Can you keep your witchcraft to yourself for a night?” he asked, shoulders hunched with the awkward weight of their predicament.

  “No promises.”

  Tuk laughed and Carlette found her lips curving without her permission as the boy’s face lit up like the harbor at night.

  She turned away.

  Stay the path.

  Chapter Twelve: Diversion

  Carlette woke to a hand covering her mouth.

  “Shhh,” Tuk hissed in her ear, pressing damp clothing into her hands. “I hear voices.”

  It was disorienting to wake up next to him, esp
ecially considering that Carlette had spent half the night struggling to stay conscious, keeping a prim distance between their almost-completely-naked bodies. It had been a challenge, when she was so cold and Tuk’s body seemed to radiate, ludicrously generous in its dispersal of heat. Carlette had listened to his breathing, tense first and then ebbing into soft exhales. She’d thought she would lie there all night, shivering, waiting for him to roll over and strangle her.

  But somehow, she’d slept.

  Now, she yanked a damp coat and fleeces on over her underthings, trying to ignore the rancid stink the decaying furs had left on her skin. Tuk was already dressed, crouching at the mouth of the cave.

  “They’re coming down the gully,” he said, peering up the rocky trail that wound through an ancient riverbed, long dried up.

  Strapping on her forearm-guards, Carlette joined Tuk at the mouth of the cave.

  “Collectors?” Carlette asked.

  Tuk shot her a wide-eyed look. “I hope not.”

  Before she could answer, Carlette heard whoops and hollers bouncing between the foothills. Animal sounds from human throats. Cawing. Shrieking.

  Howling.

  These weren’t traders.

  “Bloody Paws,” Carlette muttered, clenching her fists.

  Tuk’s face went white. “We can’t stay here. Their beasts will smell us.”

  “If we move, they’ll be able to track our footprints.”

  Carlette’s gaze was razor-sharp, staring at the bend as the group came into view.

  Twelve. She counted twelve rebels, seven on mountain stags, a handful of prisoners stumbling along behind. Even from this distance, Carlette could see the bleeding paw tattoos on their necks, claws reaching up almost to their cheekbones. Every one of them had braided their hair with leather thongs and bird feathers. Faces painted with animal blood. Furs matted with gore.

  But none were as intimidating as the woman riding at the front of the pack. Her face was made of angles, as if carved from the very slate beneath the hooves of her stag. On the woman’s collarbone rested a corded necklace of human teeth. On her head perched a tiara made of snapped femurs. The bladed bow that hung from her shoulder was strung with vertebrae and her boots were stitched with various small bones. She sat tall on the back of her stag, her expression even more vicious than the fanged beast below her.

  “Yokan,” Carlette whispered.

  “Who?” Tuk asked.

  “She leads the Bloody Paws. Our soldiers have been hunting her for years.”

  The woman was yanking her prisoners forward. Two of them were hoods, one red, one blue. Carlette couldn’t see faces beneath the thick wool of their cowls, but her fists clenched in anger.

  She leaned out.

  If she could bring back Yokan’s head, the Magistrate would forgive anything. The Bloody Paws were the scourge of Tuleaux, of the mountains. For months the long walk between Tuleaux and Jemelle had been almost too deadly to make.

  She had to act soon. The Bloody Paws caravan was closing in, growing nearer with each whoop and caw.

  Carlette’s muscles coiled.

  “Aye! You can’t go down there,” Tuk said, throwing his bound hands out to stop her.

  She rounded on him. “If I kill her, it would crush the rebels. We might be able to wipe them out for good.”

  “Do you really think you can get past those by yourself?”

  Carlette followed his finger.

  Her stomach clenched.

  Following the parade of Bloody Paws and their prisoners, slinking along the ridgeline like the shadows of clouds, were several cairogs. Like everything in the Giant’s Wood, they were enormous and lethal. At least as long as three fully-grown men and peppered with legs, they moved sinuously, flowing over rocks. Due to the color of their grey-black exoskeletons, the cairogs and their painted riders blended in with the obsidian mountain so much that Carlette might have missed them, had Tuk not pointed them out. Only flickering shadows and the patches of scattered snow gave away their many-legged movements.

  “You’d be eaten alive before you ever reach her.”

  Carlette’s fingers tightened, the spines in her gauntlet rippling. What she wouldn’t give for a crossbow or even a good throwing knife. She could end this right now from their invisible vantage point.

  “We need to go deeper into the caves,” Tuk said, pressing himself back. “We have a better chance of surviving if we hide in the mountain.”

  But Carlette wasn’t listening.

  Because at that moment, Yokan yanked her prisoners forward. One stumbled, foot catching a sharp piece of slate. With a flutter of crimson, the hood caught the wind. Pulled back. Auburn hair shimmered in the sunlight. The girl’s face—bruised and bloody—glared up at her captor.

  “Aheya!” Carlette gasped.

  Tuk grabbed her arm but she strained against him.

  “They. Will. Kill. You.” Tuk said, panting with every word as he tried to hold her back. “And then I’ll be wolf-food!”

  “That’s my friend!”

  “And those are Nuri soldiers,” Tuk hissed back, jerking his chin at two of the other captives. “You don’t see me about to commit suicide.”

  “We have to do something!”

  “Like what? We have no weapons, no advantage—”

  “I could enhabit her stag,” Carlette said, breath coming quickly. “Cause chaos. They might get away.”

  “That’s a terrible idea.”

  “You have a better one?”

  “Yes! Stay here!”

  “Tuk, why do you think they’re bringing those men and women back alive. To torture them. Their last moments will be spent screaming for mercy, and that’s if they’re lucky enough to have last moments.”

  Tuk narrowed his eyes, clutching the chain between his wrists as if for balance. “Since when do Ferrenese witches care about Nuri soldiers?”

  “They’re people, Tuk. Human beings. The Bloody Paws… even your men don’t deserve such a fate.”

  “And the fate that awaits me in Jemelle? Is it any different?”

  Carlette’s words caught in her throat. She stared at him for a moment, her lips a pursed line. Tuk didn’t break eye contact.

  She straightened.

  “If I had been caught by Nuri soldiers and our roles were reversed, what would they do to me? They would experiment on me, wouldn’t they? Tear me apart looking for the source of my magic. You tell me there aren’t breeding halls in Caika. Tell me there aren’t places where the screaming never stops. Because I don’t think your hands are any cleaner than mine.”

  Tuk’s thick eyebrows pulled together into one solid line.

  “You think I’m a witch,” Carlette continued. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am an aberration. I don’t know what to think anymore. But I do know that my friend is down there. Your men are down there. And I refuse to leave them to the savagery that the Bloody Paws have in store.”

  Tuk glowered at her for a long minute.

  Then, finally, his face broke into a grim smile.

  “A Nuri airman teaming up with a Delarese hood? No one will ever believe it.”

  Carlette didn’t answer. Her eyes were already scanning the Bloody Paws and prisoners. She was silent for a long moment, every muscle tense and waiting for a cairog to appear in the mouth of their tunnel or an enhabited bird to fly past and see them.

  Tuk peered out next to her, his shoulder warm against her own.

  “So? What did I just sign up for?”

  “I have a plan,” she said at last. “But you’re not going to like it.”

  · · ─────── ·❅· ─────── · ·

  Carlette felt exposed without her hood as she picked her way down the slope, careful not to leave footprints. She itched to pull red fabric around her body, the shield of her position protecting her from unwanted eyes. But here, with the Bloody Paws prancing through the gully below them, her hood would stand out against the stone like blood on snow.

&nb
sp; Carlette’s feet slid and there was a resonant crack as a pebble tumbled down below her. She ducked behind a rock, curling herself into a tight ball as the rough edges of strange minds brushed against her own.

  She had been found.

  Yokan called for a halt, the guttural Ebonal words scraping against the mountainside.

  “I think we have a rat hiding somewhere close,” Yokan said in gleeful Delarese. “Come out, little rodent, and we might not kill you.”

  Carlette worked quickly, slicing her still-raw hand open with the tiny dagger she kept in her boot. With grim determination, Carlette smeared the wound over her neck, covering her anchor tattoo, wincing at the protest of the inflamed flesh. She could hear the stags rustling below, their growling neighs rising as they smelled blood.

  Yokan barked another command in Ebonal. Carlette heard rocks shift, both above and below. Cairogs clicked over the stone face of the gully.

  Heading towards her.

  Come on, Tuk, Carlette thought, palms aching as she clenched her fists. Her mind was already reaching out, probing for Yokan’s mount. Yokan held the beast, but with only a distant, delicate touch. The trusting connection of a long-forged bond. A partnership, in which there was no need for the stranglehold of a full enhabitation.

  “I smell a girl-mind,” Yokan crowed in her accented Delarese. “How weak and cowardly, hiding from my brave soldiers. Come out of your hole, little girl. Face us in the light.”

  Carlette’s body was a study in tension, every muscle braced, her mind a reined-in horse. She kept her mind ready, waiting, gently brushing each of the stags. It would sap strength quickly to hold them all at once…

  A cairog appeared at the corner of her vision, skittering closer. Carlette felt the proximity of two stags, their wide nostrils humming as they sniffed her out.

  Suddenly, a mighty, metallic crash echoed down the gully.

  The rebels froze.

  “Landslide!” one captive screamed.

  Just on time, Tuk shoved the mining wagon out of their tiny tunnel, heaving the cart and all its contents down the hillside. Rocks tumbled into bigger rocks. Dust rose in clouds.