A jay screamed a warning as Simon crawled under a low, damp clump of evergreen bushes. The noisy bird threatened to alert the Hunters to his hiding place, and Simon despaired. Had he even the slightest wisp of a Gift, he would have silenced it. Lacking that option, he could only flatten himself to the cold earth under the branches and pray they had clueless fools for Huntsmen.
Too close, a hellbeast snarled. The Hunt drew near.
His breath whistled through his parted lips, and his lungs burned all the way into his throat. Now that he wasn’t running flat out through the grasslands, the sweat on his skin felt like ice, and a miserable shiver ran through his core. It would freeze hard tonight, but perhaps the weather did not matter. He did not expect to live through the day.
Six months ago, when he’d first been Marked, he would have easily eluded them. After an autumn and winter on the run, his normally lean frame had been reduced to scarred skin drawn tight over bone. Just for a moment, he closed his eyes. He could have slept right here in the cold dirt, sheltered by nothing but the needles of a scruffy pine tree — but he’d always been stubborn, and he would not succumb to sheer exhaustion now.
Simon burst from the dubious protection of the vegetation and into headlong flight, soles flapping on his worn-out boots. He refused to die in the bushes, hacked to pieces by drunken noblemen he’d once called friends. He would find a place to make a stand tonight and fight to the death — and take some of them with him to the Nine Hells.
As the day’s fading light slanted low across the mountains, he scrambled up a near-vertical ridge, ignoring the familiar pain of an ankle that had been snapped and badly healed more than two decades before. Rocks, kicked free by his passage, bounced into an abyss shrouded in shadows. The wind tousled his hair, and he impatiently shoved one strand out of his face and behind a pointed ear. Ahead, at the very top of the peak, an outcrop of boulders and one lone, scraggly oak stood sentinel against an endlessly blue sky. It seemed an ideal place to make one last stand, kill as many of them as he could, and die.
From this vantage point, Simon could see the men. Most were bundled against the cold, their faces obscured by warm hoods and woolen scarves. He held his battered sword aloft, signaling that, now, he would stand his ground and fight.
An excited cry rose up from the Hunting party, though a grimalkin man on foot among the horses simply stopped and stared at him. Simon judged that man to be enthralled, for few of his kind would ever take part in a Hunt except as the cursed quarry. In some ways, being geasbound to one of the Hunters made the grimalkin a greater threat than the humans. Geasbound warriors would take extreme risks, even to the point of certain death, in defense of their masters. Theirs was a cruel fate: Many went mad, and the rest became pale shadows of themselves as the geas twisted their perceptions of their masters to the point of obsession.
The hellbeast, by contrast with the cat-like grimalkin, had no more awareness than a reptile. Like snakes, they moved even after they were beheaded, and they were dangerous until chopped to bits. The one below was bespelled since it was not trying to mindlessly savage anyone.
He counted a dozen more besides the grimalkin, all nobles or wealthy merchants judging by the expensive dyes of their colorful attire, plus one man in the crimson and white robes of a blood mage. The mage pushed his hood back, revealing a pudgy, pasty face with a crooked nose. Then, Simon saw that two of the men wore the Halvers clan colors, and the betrayal threatened to choke him. People he’d once almost called family were down there, Hunting him as if he were a wild animal. He even recognized one of their horses, a loyal and brave bay mare — his own beloved mount, Elynal. Now, they rode her against him.
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His heart caught in his throat. Fighting men on horseback meant attacking the horses too, slashing at their legs and stabbing at their throats and guts. He couldn’t betray Elynal’s affection for him, built on a decade of training that had started the day she had been given to him as a still-wet newborn foal. He treasured her innocent, deep trust and love for him more than he had words to express.
At this distance, he could not tell who sat in the mare’s saddle, but he feared his lord’s sons were taking part in the Hunt. He bitterly doubted they’d miss him despite Simon being raised in their midst as Yienry’s fosterling. Though — if it were any of Yienry’s boys, they weren’t likely to charge ahead to be first in the fight with Simon, well-known for his ruthless fighting skill.
The mail that Simon wore and the sword in his hand had come from Lord Yienry, who had ‘carelessly’ left a mule tied up outside the Keep last fall while ‘grouse hunting.’ Yienry could not legally aid a condemned man, but Simon had ‘stolen’ the conveniently unattended mule, and had then discovered his armor, normally used only for sparring during festivals, tied behind the saddle, as well as a good overcoat and provisions in the saddlebags. The mailshirt was generations older than Simon, but bows and firearms were banned in a Hunt. It provided welcome protection from boar spears and steel blades.
That early autumn day felt like it had been a lifetime ago. The mule had died after a brutally hard ride to escape Hunters last winter, and everything else was used up, lost, or traded with widely scattered smallholders for food. All he owned now was the rusty mailshirt, a battered sword, and rags for clothing. He did not even have a belt for the sword, as he’d boiled and eaten the leather. His trousers were held up with braided grapevine.
Somewhat to his frustration — his preference would be to get the impending slaughter and his own death over with, since it seemed inevitable — the Hunters did not advance up the hill. Instead, they milled about, with no clear leader nor plan. Simon watched them with contempt, then picked up a rock and threw it as hard as he could. It bounced down the jagged hillside and caused several more fist-sized rocks to cascade down with it. A few horses, already primed to spook on a breezy, chilly day, shied at the unexpected noise and motion. One man fell off with a yell that echoed, landed ass-first, and slid downhill for a good twenty feet. When he stood up, his trousers were torn and bloodied.
Simon grinned savagely. That had to have hurt. He put every note of mocking scorn that he could into his voice and shouted, “I see your riding skill equals your honor!” but the wind whipped his words away. Had they even heard him?
The Hunters captured the loose horse, the fallen man remounted, and they moved back down the mountain to a more level patch of ground as Simon tossed more chunks of limestone at them. Too quickly, they were out of reach of his throwing arm. He looked about for a piece of wood that he could fashion a crude sort of atlatl with, to harass them with broken branches and more rocks, but nothing seemed suitable on this barren hill. He’d have given his soul for a good hunting bow if it meant he could send a rain of arrows their way.
They did not advance, even after several minutes of discussion. Did they fear him that much? He was one small elf, shoulder height to a human man, armed only with a battered sword, his wits, and his rage. Cowards, he thought. When they came for him, he would kill some of them, but was that not part of the Hunt? To test one’s mettle against a dangerous condemned man? They’d volunteered for the sport of pursuing and killing him as if he were no more than a beast. Surely, they’d understood that Simon would fight back!
He looked up at the darkening evening sky, where just a few early stars now glinted, and wondered if his mother, murdered so long ago by the same nobleman who had raised him, watched him now. Eventually, they would grow brave enough — or drunk enough — to finish the Hunt. Would he meet her in the afterlife when they killed him? Would she hate him for his admittedly guarded affection toward Yienry, who had killed her in brutal cold blood?
He wished fiercely for his mother’s help, even though all such entreaties in the past had gone unanswered. The bitter wind curling around his cheeks felt suddenly warmer, like a caress. Then, the air grew very, very still.
That was a coincidence, surely.
Far below, the rider on Elynal took several steps toward him. Simon bared his teeth in challenge. Let them come! He would fight until he could fight no more.
