The Sacred Hunt Duology (128 page)

A smile turned his lips up; he reached for a horn—his own, and deservedly so—and blew the harboring of the beast. They joined him, baying, as the beast came.

Spear became an extension of arm. Gilliam heard the beast roar, saw the glint of fur and fang as it leaped; he was not there to greet it. The shadow passed him, clawing at air and cloak. When Gilliam turned again, he brought the Spear to bear.

Through his hounds' acute senses he tried to penetrate the mystery of the creature. All things had a definitive scent, some mark of sweat and musk upon the air by which they could be identified. But the Hunter's Death
was
the forest scent, and no part of it could be pared from him. It was almost as if . . .

From death, life.

The moment of wonder held him still almost too long. The creature's lunge caught his cloak and shirt; he heard the snapping of a brittle, fine clasp—his mother's gift—seconds before claws traced a path across his thigh.
From death
, he thought, drawing painful breath across teeth as his leap proved the muscles hadn't been slashed. First blood.

But the death—the Hunter's Price—had already been paid. And paid. And paid. At once, the forest's shadows were harsher, sharper, longer. The dogs had come to stand at his side, but Stephen's place was empty, and would remain so. The beast roared, or so he thought until he felt the rawness of his throat as he drew breath.

Bringing the Spear to bear again, he backed up slowly; the shadow of a great tree crossed over his shoulder. Crouching, he tightened his grip on the Spear's plain haft, wishing for a boar-spear. The world slipped into shades of gray as he caught Salas' view of the moving beast's flank. It was coming for him, quickly.

• • •

“Stand your ground.”

At the curt command, the Kings' Sword—the Verrus Sivari—glanced up. His eyes became darkened, wary slits. “It is not our way to stand idle while our allies face death.”

The slender, platinum-haired mage frowned at the tone of the man's voice. “And it is your way, of course, to commit to death your own people. Stand your ground.”

“The Kings' Swords,” he said curtly, “take their orders from the Kings.”

Meralonne raised a pale brow and then bowed very low.

“Member APhaniel,” King Reymalyn said quietly. “What would you have of us?”

“I would have you,” Meralonne replied, his voice a study in neutrality, “save the lives of your servitors. They are gathering to intervene in the struggle.” He paused and spoke again only when it became clear that the King was waiting. “There is only one weapon in the city that can affect the creature you see before us. That man wields it, as he is oathsworn to do. Neither he, nor the creature, would benefit from the aid that you seek to offer—but neither he, nor the creature, would be injured by it either. Your men will break like a single wave against the seawall.”

Verrus Sivari bristled.

The Lord of the Compact, dirt-stained and bleeding but utterly unfazed by either, said, “My Lord, heed him.” No more. It was not to Verrus Sivari's liking.

King Reymalyn raised his hand and gave the order.

• • •

The beast moved slowly, stalking toward him like a giant cat as he shook the forest with his growling. Inches disappeared under the quiet fall of footpad and claw; Gilliam held the Spear before him as if its shaft were a shield behind which he might weather a strong attack. Hunters dreamed of such a moment; were, in their Hunt in the safety of the Sacred Forest, dreaming of it now.

Ashfel came from the left, seeking purchase in the shoulder haunch of the beast, at a safe remove from reach of its heavy head or jaws. But Ashfel was alaunt, and the beast was God; almost before he made his leap, he was flying in the wrong direction. Gilliam grimaced as he felt the impact, aware that the act of disposing of the slight threat had distracted the Death.

Ashfel rose from his bed of twigs and dirt, growling; had he hit tree or rock in his fall, more than dignity would have been injured. Gilliam caught him and held him back, weaving invisible couples around him and Salas. Connel was the wisest of the three—and, not coincidentally, the oldest; he was willing to wait upon the word of the Hunter Lord.

Looking up, unblinking, Gilliam stared into the eyes of the beast. A mistake, and almost his last, for the God stared back. Men give a hint of their intent by the
shifting of their eyes, by the narrowing or widening of their lids; the Hunter's Death was intent incarnate, and when he sprang, there was no change at all in the lidless depth of his gaze.

But perhaps there was something else; some spark of Godhood not consumed by the Hunt; perhaps the lives that he had already taken in the first flush of his victory had had their effect—although that should not have been possible—for the leap was heavy and fell short; jaws that should have snapped shut over the forearm and elbow cut grooves into flesh and slid free.

Old scars would be buried under new ones. Gilliam grunted in pain and then let the pain wash over him as if he were stone and it, liquid. This was why Hunters did not use bow and arrow; they did not wield crossbow; they did not throw javelins or ride—as was the custom in the West—after their dogs at a safe distance.

Mighty head coiled on muscled neck; the beast growled as Ashfel, Salas, and Connel joined the fray, harrying it at a vantage that teeth and claw could not easily reach. Gilliam willed the beast to turn, but the beast knew who the leader was. And knew best that to kill the Hunter was to destroy the pack. Had he not fashioned that truth and given it to the Breodani at the dawn of time?

His muscles were not severed; as the beast raked claws across Connel's side, Gilliam gritted his teeth and lunged forward with the Spear.

To the parish, to the village, the stag was the best kill; the largest and the one that provided for most. But to the Hunters, it was the boar that was the test; even the bear, cornered, was not so dangerous.

Gilliam had been tested. And he had passed that test because he
was
Breodani; he
was
Hunter Lord. The Spear's fine, unadorned tip found a home in the beast's throat an instant before its great jaws descended again.

The earth left Gilliam's feet, but his hands held fast to the haft of the Spear as the beast reared up on two legs, seeking to dislodge him.

Connel watched for him, seeing the whole event as he could not; Connel's eyes saw Gilliam's body as the beast sought to scrape him off on the bark of a great tree. He reacted to what the alaunt saw, as he had always done, bringing his feet up at the last minute to use the tree for leverage. To push the Spear farther home.

The beast roared, but the roar was a gurgle of anger and pain; he snapped his head to the side, and Gilliam once again held on to the Spear, nothing more, as he swung in a wide arc. Ashfel sought purchase in flank; Salas harried the beast's back.

Twice, the beast struck out with claw where fang would no longer reach; each time, he scored flesh, drew blood. This struggle was at the heart of the Hunter's dance, the Hunter's Death. They both knew its cadences, and its pain, and they knew its goal: One would weaken and die; the other would survive.

But Gods live forever.

Gilliam's hands were slick and sticky with wet blood, with drying blood; he slid an inch down the Spear's pole before his grip tightened enough to hold on. The beast dropped to all fours, suddenly pressing him to ground when he least expected it. Connel's vision was blurring; Gilliam knew that soon, the contest would be over. He could not hold his link and trance for much longer.

The Spear bit deeper, swallowed by fur and blood, but it was not deep enough—he knew that now.

Claws raked his chest, his stomach; he closed his eyes a moment and felt the heaviness of lids, the physical reluctance to see—to watch—his death.

And perhaps it was because his eyes were closed, perhaps because he could not see the physical world so clearly and so brightly, that he felt a glimmer of a familiar presence. It offered comfort, sent him strength. In the darkness of lidded eyes, he felt ghostly hands around his shuddering grip; they were gentle but firm as they closed around his knuckles, holding them in place.

He should have been surprised, but he couldn't be. The hounds, he had sent away, and they had returned because their place was the Hunt; Stephen, the Hunter God had taken, and his return, no matter how limited, no matter how slight, was no less right. He had never faced the Sacred Hunt without Stephen. This was their final Hunt together, a gift unlooked for. He wanted to hear Stephen's voice again, but he knew he never would—not outside of the Halls of Judgment.

A calm descended upon him, easing his pain a moment as he opened his eyes and stared up at the throat and upper chest of the Hunter's Death.

Stephen's confidence buoyed him, cutting through pain and exhaustion. Lips moving, Gilliam of Elseth spoke his huntbrother's name as he used the last of his strength to drive the Spear home.

• • •

Wind filled the arena; trees, or the shadows they cast across Gilliam's upturned face, dissolved into earth's night. But this wind did not roar, and as it traveled across the breadth of the coliseum, it touched everything with a subdued light.

The Lord of Elseth felt the shock of the sudden silence as he stared into the still, stiff face of the Hunter's Death. He expected a roar, some denial of the Spear that had finally found its mark, a final frenzy—but there were none of these things. Instead, a stillness, an odd quiet. The beast's eyes widened; it lifted its head blindly as if catching a scent on the wind that Gilliam couldn't detect. Then, slowly, that head came to rest, falling like an unbearably great weight to the broken ground.

He was gone.

The breeze came down like a summer shower, and everywhere that it touched the Hunter's Death, the creature was transformed. But it was not transformed into flesh of a different kind; it was dead, and the need for body was beyond it.
Instead, a pale light grew, like a halo, around each part of the great creature. That body faded slowly from sight, as if consumed by light—or returned to it.

The unmaking, Gilliam thought absurdly, of a God.

He did not speak; he had nothing left to say to a God who had, in the end, deprived him of the only person who meant anything. Or if he had, it was not particularly pious. He tried to rise to one elbow, and felt Ashfel's nose against his bloodied cheek.

Idiot
, he thought, as the dog jumped up on his chest, flattening him. He coughed and winced. Then he noticed that the Spear was gone with the God. He imagined that the Horn, as well, had vanished. He had no proof that he had Hunted this day at the behest of the God of the Breodanir; nothing to take to the King and the King's Hunters.

Was it worth it?

The wounds across his chest and thighs burned; he knew he was bleeding profusely.

Was it worth it, to lose every honor, to lose land and title and name?

A grim smile touched his lips.

• • •

Now, Meralonne thought, music. And so it came, although Kallandras was too broken in body and spirit to play the bard. There were no harps, no lutes, no instruments but the human voice, but these voices were enough. King Reymalyn started, for his voice was easily the better of the two Kings, and he sang “The Return of the Queen.”

Above them, high, high in the streets of Averalaan, upon rich and poor, upon powerful and weak, the sun's rays were breaking the shadow's grip. It was First Day; it was the New Year. Blessed be.

The Kings' Swords joined him in ones and twos, testing their voices in the silence of the coliseum's height. Even the Astari offered the cadences and harmonies of their choosing.

Only the Exalted of the Mother raised a dark brow at the song. Gathering her fallen cloak, and motioning her attendant—the one that remained standing—forward, she began her trek across the arena. When the young man stumbled and gained his feet, struggling all the while with her standard, she stopped.

What was said was not clear, but to Meralonne's amusement, the young man's face slackened into lines of horrified propriety that could easily be seen by any who cared to observe. The standard wavered a moment, and she spoke again. Glancing over his shoulder, the man reverently, even sorrowfully, laid the pennant down.

The battle was won; there was, in the mind of the Exalted of the Mother, no more need for heraldry if the choice was between that and the dying who waited upon her ministration. Although he had only met her a handful of times, and
during that handful she had never been more than civil, Meralonne watched her back fondly as she marched across the sand. The dead did not call her, but the living—no matter how slight or dim their spark—would; the patina of crusted blood and broken bone could not fool her blood-born instinct.

Meralonne looked down at Kallandras, thinking of healers, of the healer-born. The battles were always won—by one side or the other—and in their aftermath, the dead, the dying, and the injured remained. But there were some injuries that the healers here could not deal with, and some that healers, aligned, should not be privy to.

For to be healed, of course, was to be known.

But there were other ways. Older ways.

Gathering Kallandras in untiring arms, Meralonne APhaniel summoned what remained of his power, gathering its gray mantle around his slender shoulders. The bard was light enough to be little encumbrance, but even had he been a real weight, Meralonne APhaniel thought he might expend the power that he did not have to carry him to the open air of the city above.

“Sigurne,” he said, casting the words, with spell, to her distant ears, “I must depart. I will see you above.”

• • •

Gilliam of Elseth recognized the Exalted of the Mother when her face appeared in the periphery of his fading vision; when her torn and dusty robe gathered in folds at his side as she knelt there. Her hair, once a golden, severe knot, escaped to frame her face in loose, wavy strands; she looked younger somehow, although he wasn't sure why.