“An unfortunate by-product of my misspent centuries.”
“Do you regret them, Jean?” Aurora asked it with such a sad, sympathetic look, I pitted her, not me.
“I didn't, but I have of late. I believe it was my father who once told me of automatons, devices that resembled humanity, yet were without soul or true thought. They were hollow creatures without hope or future only servitude. I believe when my parents died, I became one. Only when I met Linka did this automaton develop the innards to transform it once again into a man.”
“Has she such power over you, Jean, such control?”
“Yes,” I replied, and for possibly the first time realised just how much.
“Howoooo!”
I had no time to dwell on it, as at that moment, the howl of a wolf reminded us other night dwellers roamed the evening, too.
“Sounds like our good friend Vladivar released the wolves with his dying breath.”
“Good friend?”
“Figure of speech.”
“I see,” replied Aurora. She gave one of her best pondering looks and brushed a stray lock from her cheek.
“I think it would be best if we recommenced our pursuit. The last time I met with Vladivar's wolf pack it did not end well for them. I took no pleasure in killing animals and would do so even less a second time.”
“Howoooo!” came a second even louder howl.
Aurora cocked her head again, as was her way, and listened with an intensity bordering on the palpable until the beast's echoes vanished into the oncoming evening. “That is not the sound of Vladivar's wolves,” she said when all became hushed.
“How can you be sure?”
“I am always sure.”
“And right,” I added.
“Always,” said she. “And it is not difficult to recognise such things.”
“What things?” I enquired.
“The sounds of the Arctic. The calls of my mother's wolves.”
“Your mother's!”
“She has sent them to hunt me down, Jean. For this, I apologise.”
“No need, I'm sure we can handle a few mangy mongrels between us.”
“So am I, but it is not they I apologise for.”
“Then what, my most cryptic of associates?”
Aurora sniffed at that and smiled. She then took the deepest breath I thought I'd ever seen, closed her eyes, and flicked a pool of milk-white hair from her shoulders.
“They hunt for my mother under the stewardship of others: Grella, Ragnar, and the twins are nearing.”
“Damn!”
Chapter Sixteen
-
Green
“We should go,” Aurora suggested.
“Any particular direction?”
“My brothers will find me sooner or later, so we may as well resume our pursuit. There is a chance we will catch up to those who hold Sunyin before my brothers reach us. That may cause confusion all-around.”
“Is that the best you can do?” I sniffed.
“I am not used to making decisions, I've been following you.”
“Hmm, you have a wicked sense of humour, dear girl, it crops up every now and again.”
“Really, I've never noticed.”
“If I had a drum, I would roll on it.”
“I don't see how rolling a drum will help?”
“If we make it through this day alive, I shall try to demonstrate.”
“Thank you,” Aurora replied politely, “I shall look forward to it. Now, Jean…”
“What?”
“Run.” She threw back her milk-white hair and vanished into the evening, a slipstream of stardust for a wake.
I shook my head, collected our food from the floor, and took off in pursuit.
We hurtled through valley after unending, barren valley. No sooner did I think we should have reached the end of one than we charged through another. Our world was one of rock, dust and steep-sided imprisonment. But no matter how fast we travelled, I could not shake the feeling we ran through a trap. I was unused to being preyed upon and didn't savour how it felt.
Another pained howl disrupted my morbid thoughts. The sound appeared no closer than before, but neither had we distanced ourselves from it. Someone kept pace with disturbing ease, which caused considerable frustration. I couldn't have run any faster if I'd tried. Aurora, on the other hand, appeared lost to the freedom of the wind. Elemental, devastating of form, almost feral in the way she skimmed the ground with only a passing concern for gravity, Aurora knew no bounds. If the girl's clothing had concealed her white-booted feet, I should have said she flew.
“Jean, this valley is a dead end,” she called across the space between us, indicating ahead with a gesture of her elegant chin.
“Then we have no option but to climb, my dear.”
“I wasn't sure if you could manage it, old man,” she returned. The moon glinted in sharp reflection off her sapphire eyes, captured forever in those bluest depths. A blink and it sank without trace.
“Oh, I wouldn't want you going easy on me just because I'm doing all the work,” I joked, the moon having returned to the sky where it belonged.
“I offered to help.”
“I know, but I can see what state you are in even without baggage. You should struggle to make the incline if burdened. I see my decision as more a necessity than a charitable gesture.”
“Really.” She grinned the toothy smile of a she-wolf.
Before I knew what had happened, Aurora had swept me aside, snatched the makeshift sack from my tiring fingers and redoubled her pace. I was left in her proverbial dust as a white blur streaked up the mountainside. She appeared as an avalanche reversed, not falling, but climbing, devastating and unstoppable. I'd have watched in awe if not for our howling, canine pursuers. Somewhere to our rear, the wolves gathered. I redoubled my efforts.
By the time I attained the top of the valley slopes having skidded my way over an infuriating amount of loose gravel, Aurora already stood there resplendent gleaming like a settled star.
“All right, you've proven your poi…”
“Shhh!” she said cutting me off mid-spiel.
Aurora turned a slow three hundred and sixty-degree rotation, paused, then signalled simultaneously in two opposite directions. Her left hand pointed north. I followed its indication, squinting my eyes to focus past the near vertical plunge of our position to a flattened landscape of twisted and grotesque forest that spread inexorably out far below. There, way off in the distance was the unmistakeable sight of a flickering fire. Smoke rose like an apparition contorting in and out of view in the clear night sky. That was the last thing I'd expected to see, as Eternals did not require heat. I put it down to some kind of false comfort on Chantelle's behalf, although it appeared stationary and I should have thought her to be making greater haste. I then spun to where Aurora's right hand still pointed directly in our wake.
“They close,” her words ominous in their cold delivery. “We lost track of our quarries back in the last valley, but our hunters have not lost track of us.”
“That cannot be,” I protested.
“No wheeled carriage could have made that incline, Jean. I do not know where or how we lost them, but we did. Now, my brothers approach and we have no place to hide.”
“But, I see nothing, Aurora.”
“Look closer, Jean, follow my line.”
Aurora pulled me uncomfortably close, so I looked straight down her outstretched arm all the way to the tip of her forefinger. I concentrated, steadied turbulent emotions, focused my mind, and there they were. There was no mistaking the sight of fast moving wolves and behind them a quartet of glistening shooting stars.
“Damn it!”
“You say that a lot.”
“It's appropriate,” I grumbled.
“Any thoughts?”
“You must hide. That's all I can suggest at the minute.” I made to lift her cowl, but Aurora waved me away.
“It is too late. If
I see them, then I can assure you they see me.”
“They won't once we start our descent.”
“Descent! We cannot, it is too steep even for such as us. Our only option is to retreat.”
“Oh, Aurora, still so much to learn.”
“I do not see this as a time for jesting,” she retorted.
“Neither do I, we shall descend.”
“It is impossible,” she declared.
“As impossible as it was for me to defeat the twins?”
“I… I do not know?” And for the first time, Aurora looked the young girl I knew her to be, relatively speaking, lost in the big wide world.
“Just follow me, my dear, we shall descend with grace, or fall with style.”
“Easy as that, then.”
“Easy as that,” I agreed and raised her cowl. She vanished into the night, eclipsed.
The cloak full of blood bags remained hovering five feet from the ground – not the best thing to be seen drifting down the mountainside – so I tied the top in a tight knot, took it from Aurora's hand and slung it down into the forested abyss.
“I presume you can still hear me even though I cannot see you,” I said, as I lowered myself over the rock face.
“I can, but I suspect you already knew that,” Aurora replied from below.
“Ah, so you've already gained on me. Well, just remember, my friend of the secret smile, I can fall past you anytime I choose.”
“Can you try not to?”
“I can't promise.”
“Well, if you have to, at least refrain from falling on me?”
“I shall do my best, dear girl. I shall do my best.”
I would have said more but for the fact I concentrated so hard in digging my fingernails into the granite, polished to a glasslike finish by northern winds, that if I hadn't, I would have been doing so right there and then. My task was hampered further by the sharp updraft that seemed determined to wrest me from my grip. Yet it is amazing how the prospect of extermination can push one's limits. The thought of a Nordic's hands wrapped around my precious throat caused an imperturbable tranquillity to fall upon my mind. Where I should have wandered in a daydream, I remained calmly focused on the task at hand.
We spent too long on that perilous descent. The moon's ethereal light passed from left shoulder to right long before we'd attained even half the required distance. I had climbed upwards against ridiculous odds on all too many occasions, but the strain of that wicked descent was beyond any comprehension of pain I'd ever experienced. I had lost the feeling in my fingers after minutes, my arms soon after that. Thereafter, I judged only if I maintained a grip by the metronomic disappearance of my blood strewn fingertips into the rock wall.
By the time I felt the first grasping branch of a tree strike my ankle, I had had enough, and simply let go. The fall was still some distance, I cared not. I landed in an exhausted heap amongst the loosened chunks of our own descent.
“Jean, are you hurt?” came my companion's clipped voice.
“Only my pride.”
“Look at your fingers!” Aurora sounded shocked.
I stared at my hands, or rather, the shredded remains of them. A mangled mess of blood, shards of nail and loose skin hung in tatters from my finger ends.
“This might help,” came the voice of my guardian angel from somewhere within the arboreal gloom. Her voice trailed away to be replaced by a gentle rustling as of someone, or something, walking over the crisp undergrowth. The next thing I knew a porcelain hand emerged from the dark carrying a blood bag which ripped open before my eyes and thrust itself over my extended right hand.
“Can I add nurse to your many talents?” I asked.
“If this works, yes.”
A witty reply was cut short by the deep-throated howling of a hunter who knew its quarries lost. “I think that shall have to do, Aurora,” was all I managed.
“I will carry our sustenance from now on, you can keep one hand at a time submerged in the blood.”
“But…”
“No buts, Jean, we need to move and move quickly. You will be a hindrance to yourself and therefore me if you lag with our supplies.”
“If I think you're smiling under that shadow of night, I shall not be amused.”
“I would never smile at your infirmities, nor mock them.”
“My what?” But Aurora's footsteps already moved off into that excuse for a forest, the cloak full of our liquid food bouncing off her unseen back. I followed in grumbling protest.
The trees, if they could truly be called that for they were closer in resemblance to the twisted bodies of the dead just larger, crowded over Aurora and I. Those contorted representations of a glorious past grasped and tore at us. Within minutes, my shirt was in tatters, the skin below shredded and raw. On the plus side, my fingers felt much better for the few minutes each had spent submerged. It was whilst looking at the repair job I noticed Aurora's burden had suffered the same shredding as I. The bundle of blood, lacerated right through my cloak's fabric, disgorged its contents over the forest floor. Accordingly, I bent to collect the fallen packets.
“Leave them,” my companion said.
“I'm quite able to carry them in my bare hands.”
“Leave them, Jean.”
“We're safe you know; nobody would attempt the descent we just made.”
“Wouldn't they?” came her querying voice as I felt a hand rest upon my shoulder and spin me slowly around. “Look up,” she instructed.
I did, but wished I hadn't.
At first, I saw nothing, so thick was the decaying tangle of limbs, but as had become uncomfortably frequent, I was very wrong.
“Do you see?”
Her words frosted my ear, crystalline and cool, each vowel, each consonant taking flight into the night. My eyes followed their trajectory, watched them gather high in the air, then fall again as four Eternal-sized snowflakes.
“Yes, I see them, Aurora. We may not have lost your brothers, but at least we've thrown off their wolves.”
“They will find another route.”
“You really are a barrel of laughs.”
“I am honest, nothing more.”
“Brutally, dear girl.”
“I suggest haste.”
“I concur.”
“Then follow, if you can.”
At first, I thought Aurora mocked me that she chose her words to chasten. She did not. The retied sack was hoisted over an invisible shoulder, then shot off through the gnarled landscape at such speed I was indeed hard-pressed to keep up. If I knew things would not end well if they caught us, Aurora knew it more so.
Secretly, I chastised myself for not realising the true implications of Aurora's desertion sooner. The Nordics were never going to allow her to leave without permission. In not doing more to return her whence she'd came, even if an innocent party in her escape, I had doomed us both. Yet still I ran forever hoping for a miracle. And despite the razor-sharp branches, bare of foliage, arthritic fingers grasping and reaching for the two of us, we swept all aside. If our hunters had reached the forest floor, who knew, but I felt sure even such as they could not have snuck up on us through so dense a setting.
“Howoooo!” was the answer to those thoughts.
“How the hell have they got down so quick?” I asked the nothingness.
“They are Arctic wolves, Jean, bred to hunt, to kill.”
“I didn't think there was anything left to kill!” I huffed.
“Not much, but some. When our kind hunt the orca the wolves will wait by the ice fringes and attack the whales the moment my people drag the leviathans ashore. If it were not for they, I fear our ranks would be more depleted than they are. I have even known the largest wolves to leap into the ocean after their keepers.”
“You speak as though proud of the canines.”
“I am. They are magnificent creatures.”
“How the hell can you talk so calmly after the descent we've just made, never mi
nd the fact we've been running non-stop for hours on end?”
“Good breeding.”
“If you said that with a smile, I may well feed you to those wolves,” I panted.
“Let us hope that will be unnecessary.”
“I hope so, too,” I agreed. My hushed words were lost as we burst into a clearing and the smouldering remains of a fire. “Damn it!” I cursed before realising how loud I'd been.
“Maybe it's just not meant to be, Jean.”
I don't know why I reacted as I did, but Aurora's words sounded so despondent, so resigned to their fate, I lost my usual composure under pressure.
I ripped the makeshift sack from my unseen companion's grip and was about to tell her just how wrong she was when I realised us watched. A dozen or so pairs of eyes gleamed in the remains of the firelight. The things lurked beyond the clearing's perimeter, unblinking and watchful. At first, I thought the wolves had caught and somehow overtaken us, but not even the Arctic canines stood so high from the floor? There were too many sets of eyes for it to be Aurora's brothers, so who?
The mystery was solved when a flash of russet garb revealed the identity of those we'd stumbled across. It was not the Marquis, nor Chantelle and her cohorts, but the Sunyins. I rushed over to the outstretched hand of one of the identical brothers.
“It is a great pleasure to see you again, Jean,” said the beaming monk.
“As it is you, my small friend.”
“Will you not introduce us to your companion?”
“How the? She's invisible!” I gasped.
“Sacks do not float in thin air, and I do not remember you as a man who would refer to himself in the second person.”
“Plus, you already knew.”
“Ah, you still surprise us, my friend.” The monk inclined his head. The momentary gleams of reflected light suggested the others did too.
“Well, you always seem to know everything before I, why not the fact I travel with another.”
“Not any other, Jean, but a princess.”
As if on cue, the crack of a twig and sudden luminescent revealing of Aurora's stunning self proved the monk right.
“I am very pleased to meet you and your brothers, Sunyin.”
“The honour is ours, Princess.”
“My friends call me Aurora.”
Hunter Hunted (The Eternals Book 2) Page 15