Blood Red (9781101637890) (15 page)

The Hounds would be following not scent, but the traces of Earth Magic she was deliberately throwing out behind her. But these traces worked just like scent, and running water confused or washed them away.

Markos would be doing the same as she, but he would be leaving a clearer trail, and nothing near as lengthy.
Her
trail would cover most of the many hundred acres that were personally owned by the Graf. His would stay mostly inside the grounds. This was not only a game for the children, it was an educational exercise. One day, perhaps sooner than their parents would like, they would be on a real Hunting Party, and what they learned today might bring that Hunt to a successful conclusion.

The water splashed around the gelding's knees, and he snorted, but not in dissatisfaction. He plowed willingly upstream until they came to a fence that ended on either bank. Once past that, she signaled him to climb the bank and work his way along a path on the bank barely wide enough for him.

She caught neither sign nor sound of Markos, and she wondered where he was. If he was riding, he'd have to choose a much slower horse than hers, or even a large pony, to make the Hunt fair for the children, but surely he wasn't going afoot, was he?

Well, it was possible. He certainly looked supremely fit. He was Hungarian, but she didn't know which part of Hungary he was from. If the plains, well, the plainsmen were practically born in the saddle, but if he was from the mountains he might well be accustomed to going afoot.

A path led away from the one along the bank, and she followed it until they broke out of the trees into the open. Here, there was an open meadow around a ruin—most would take it for artificial, but its real age cried out to her as she and the gelding galloped past. The Graf had left this meadow to grow freely rather than mowing it, and long grass swished just below her feet as the gelding surged through it. She threw out a particularly strong trace in the direction of the ruin as she passed it; they might waste time looking for her in the ruin when she was long gone.

By now the horse was well into the spirit of the exercise and responded instantly to whatever she asked of him. This was the other reason why she had chosen him; the mare sometimes turned contrary, and she didn't want to have to fight a sudden fit of contrariness at a bad time.

Back into the woods on the other side of the meadow they went, working their way to the eastern border of the estate lands. When they struck the orchard, she took a path that wove among the trees in a deliberate pattern that she had worked out ahead of time. She knew the pattern; her pursuers wouldn't, and as she crossed and recrossed her own trail, she knew she would be confounding them. She skirted the edges of the orchard in several places so when she exited, it wouldn't be obvious. This was a tactic that one of the werewolves she had hunted in the Schwarzwald had used—while it was a truism that the more a shifter went to the beast, the more of the beast took over the man when he took beast form, this particular magician had retained a high level of human reasoning. He had been particularly hard to Hunt, and in the end, she'd employed not only her own senses, but the help of a pack of Earth Elementals to decipher the trail.
They
were much better at seeing the “age” of a trace than she was.

The trees were full of little green apples, and there was a very, very faint apple scent in the air. She finished her pattern and exited at the south side of the orchard, but neither in the middle, nor at the corner. Then she took a straight gallop across another open space, a field left to go fallow with a fine flock of goats grazing on the weeds. From there, she galloped along the edges of a planted field, staying far enough away from the actual plowed and planted rows of rye that there was no risk any of the crop would be trampled by those behind her.

Back she dove into a little copse of trees, jumped the gelding over a hedge back onto the grounds of the palace, then she hit the first place where her path would cross the one that Markos was laying.

There was no outward sign of him, but she immediately detected a trace of Earth Magic, weaker than hers, but distinct. She was astonished. How had he gotten so far ahead of her?

Well good for him that he had. There was no way for her to tell how long ago he had passed; it could have been mere moments or a quarter of an hour. In either case, he was surely leading his young pursuers on a merry chase. She reined in her horse a moment and strained her ears, and sure enough, she heard, faint and far, childish shrieks and wild laughter in the distance. She sent the gray on his way, jumping back and forth over the hedge three times before striking a road that led through a proper gate in the hedge. She didn't bother with the gate, since the gelding was having no problems with jumping the hedge. Instead, she made a final leap, and ended up on the “farm” side.

The Hunt was supposed to last all afternoon, and she and Markos had determined to make sure that it did. They had minimized the amount of time they would be on open ground, but there were
some
places where that would work to her advantage. And one of them was coming right up.

She sent the gelding onto the road and trotted right into the Graf's village, where those who worked his farmlands lived. In the old days, before the Graf's ancestors had replaced it with the palace, the castle that guarded and ruled these lands had stood here; now there was a ruin on a hill in the midst of the village. Watching carefully for children darting out in front of her, she trotted around the village as she had trotted around the orchard, and then through as much of the ruins as she could, leaving liberal samples of magic and encountering Markos' traces more than once. Clever! The village wasn't
that
far outside of the grounds, and using it would give the children a challenge.

Once clear of the village, she galloped across another meadow filled with dairy cattle, startling the cows who gazed at her in astonishment, heading for the wildest part of the Graf's lands. She didn't bother to confuse her path this time—the fact that the hunters would have to search for widely-separated traces would be difficult enough. This corresponded to a place where the quarry was running away, and it would be a good exercise for those following her. The faster a hunted thing ran, the lighter its mark on the land.

She was heading for the woods at the farthest southern edge of the Graf's property, a substantial tract of primeval forest, carefully preserved by the Graf's ancestors for centuries. She expected to encounter a host of excited Earth Elementals here, all eager to help her with the Hunt.

But as she plunged into the shadow beneath the trees, without warning everything changed.

It felt as if she had plunged into icy water, but it was water that wanted desperately to murder her.

There was not a trace of any Elementals about, and the instant they had crossed the invisible boundary and the inimical power touched them, her horse screamed in panic and fought her, rearing and bucking furiously. Whatever was in that power had sent him mad with terror, and she had no more than a second to react.

She kicked her feet free of the stirrups and leapt free of him, aiming for a clear patch with a forgiving juniper bush in the middle of it. Whatever had been lying in wait here had gotten into place, here on the Graf's farmlands, without the Graf or his people detecting it. Its animosity felt intensely personal, and she didn't need to have to fight a hysterical horse at the same time something was trying to kill her!

As well that she made her leap off the horse, for as soon as she left the saddle, a spear of ice lanced through the air where she had been and shattered on a tree-trunk. She tumbled out of the prickly branches of the juniper bush and whirled to face the direction from which it had come.

She found herself face to face with a woman.

A blond woman, all in white, whose expression was distorted with fury and a hint of madness. A woman who stood in the middle of an iced-over pond in which undines struggled frantically to escape from ice closing around their waists. Rosa barely had a chance to register both Air
and
Water, and the impossible presence of a second spirit beside—or was it
inside?
—the woman, when she found herself dodging more icy daggers.

The pain and fear of the trapped and tortured undines added fuel to the woman's magic, and her accuracy and speed kept Rosa from bringing up the shields that might protect her from the attacks. All she could do was tumble and dodge, and curse herself that she had come out here unarmed. If only she had her knives, or her coach gun, or even her crossbow!

She dove and rolled between two trees, and the bark scraped bits of wool from her jacket as another ice-dagger shattered over her head, raining shards down on her. Chill pain lanced her face as one of them cut her, but she kept rolling into the temporary cover of some bushes. Her heart raced, and her breath burned in her lungs with cold. Air and Water . . . Air meant lightning!

A moment later, she felt the earth beneath her cry with jagged agony, and she lurched out of that cover and into the open in time for a lightning bolt to slam down where she had been.

A sharp scent burned her lungs and she staggered back and forth, trying to keep moving, half-blinded by the light. It hadn't been a huge strike, but it certainly had been enough to kill.

She felt, rather than saw, another ice-dagger impact her, but the thick wool of her jacket kept it from penetrating too far.

She blessed the hunters of the Schwarzwald for coming up with a garment that was as much protection from sharp objects as it was protection from the cold.

Through the glowing orbs that obscured her vision, she spotted the woman, and in desperation, Rosa ran
toward
her rather than away, leaping forward in an attempt to grapple as she felt the earth under her feet change to the ice of the frozen pond.

She didn't so much tackle the woman as crash into her, but it was enough to interrupt her attack. Rosa and her foe both tumbled together down onto the ice.

But Rosa didn't hit her squarely, and ended up bouncing away, sliding out of reach before she could pin the woman down. She slammed into the bank with her shoulder, seeing stars of pain as well as glowing orbs, and dug her nails into the earth, screaming her outrage and a warning into the land for as far as her magic would reach—more than enough to cover every inch of the Graf's estate. If she didn't survive this, the rest of the Graf's guests would turn from a Hounds and Hare hunt to a real Hunting Party and put an end to this monster! And if she could just stay alive until they got here—

She rolled to one side as she felt the earth and water cry again, and this time the lightning bolt hit so close she smelled burned wool from her jacket as well as the sharp lightning smell. But this time she kept her eyes closed, and didn't even try to get to her feet. Instead, in the moment of respite after the lightning struck, she slapped her hand down on the bank again, drawing on the raw power of the ground, and called up shields composed of Earth energies; shields both magical and physical. The Earth energies enveloped her like a cocoon, and a moment later she heard, rather than saw, a shower of ice-daggers shatter against the magic shell around her.

A howl filled with rage split the air as she staggered to her feet, bruised and bleeding, but now protected.

Her adversary ignored it.

The woman's attention was entirely riveted on Rosa; it was as if nothing else existed, and once again, Rosa had the disconcerting impression that there were not one, but two spirits staring at her out of those rage-filled eyes.

Again the earth cried out, but now Rosa stood firm, eyes narrowed against the glare, protected inside her shields. Earth energies grounded Air—and her foe might not know that.

The lightning struck—distinctly weaker this time—and disintegrated into a tracery not unlike white-hot veins that ran along the outside of her shields into the earth at her feet.

Then a black, furry projectile rocketed out of the bushes and hit the woman like a bullet from an elephant gun.

Unlike Rosa's clumsy attempt at a tackle, the beast struck true. They both crashed to the rock-hard ice. The woman's head hit the ice with a sickening
crack
, and for a moment, Rosa thought that the fight was over. Surely no one could remain conscious after a blow like that!

But she was down for only a moment. With a shriek like a harpy, she flung the beast off her before Rosa could even decide what it was, and redoubled her efforts, sending ice-daggers and smaller lightning-bolts after both of them. The beast, whatever it was, was unprotected against the assault and dodged into the cover of the brush, leaving the woman free to attack Rosa again.

Bargeist?
It was possible. Woden's bargeists were known to run through the Schwarzwald on stormy nights, and she suspected after her Hunt in Romania, she still had Woden's favor . . .

The undines entrapped in the ice struggled weakly, growing ever paler and more translucent. The woman was killing them, something Rosa hadn't known was even possible, and which made her furious and nauseous at the same time. She exploded her outrage outward, and her own Element answered, bringing a small—literally—army to her side.

A rock flew unerringly toward Rosa's adversary from the bushes, cracking against the side of her head. Not a second later, a dozen or more followed it, pelting her from all directions. As the woman ducked and tried to protect herself with upraised hands, Rosa got a glimpse of a little faun popping up out of cover, no trace of sleepy mischief on his face, whirling a sling over his head and letting fly at the magician before dropping back into hiding again.

Then the beast leapt from out of the bushes and struck her again, knocking her off her feet. This time he didn't pause to use those formidable jaws; he scrabbled back across the ice and into cover before she could get to her feet.

This gave Rosa the breathing space to expand her shields, and her fauns gathered to her, continuing to rain rocks on the woman, who had finally erected her own shields. The two of them stared at each other as the rocks and ice daggers shattered harmlessly on their shields.