Cry of the Ghost Wolf

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

They left the place of slaughter to the ravens. Hweilan had hoped that seeing his own people butchered might finally crack Darric’s resolve and send him home. Instead it did the reverse. His companions sheathed their weapons, but Darric walked with his blade in hand. Although Valsun and Mandan tried speaking to him several times, Darric kept his mouth shut and his gaze fixed on the path.

Late that afternoon, they left the mountains and entered the first of the foothills. But these were the Giantspires, and even the foothills were hard going. Still, they were now back in country Hweilan knew well. She had spent many happy childhood days in these woods with Scith and her family. And so Hweilan felt the change in the land much more acutely than the others did. No small animals rustled through the underbrush, but flies were thick in the shadows. Other than the occasional raven, no bird flitted through the trees. And even the few ravens seemed to be watching. As they passed an old, lightning-blasted tree, one alighted on a blackened branch. The bird did not cry out; it just sat there, watching them.

One of Flet’s archers picked up a stone.

“Don’t,” said Hweilan.

He turned and glared at her, but seeing the look on her face, he dropped his stone.

After they had moved on and the hobgoblin had walked out of earshot, Darric walked up to Hweilan. “What was that about?”

They were the first words he had spoken to anyone since leaving the ambush site.

“What?” she said.

“The raven. You stopped the archer from throwing the rock at it.”

Hweilan told him the story much as Gleed had once told it to her.

“In the days of creation, Raven and his clan were all the colors of the rainbow and his song was the sweetest in all the airs. Of all those who fly, Raven was dearest to Dedunan, the Forest Father-the one you know as Silvanus. But then came Jagun Ghen. Raven did not fear his fire, flying through flame and smoke in his hatred of our enemy. That hatred still burns in them, and as a sign of the smoke through which they have passed and the dark ones they hunt, their feathers are black, their song made harsh by smoke and blood. And so shall it be until the Last Day.”

Darric was silent for a while, and Hweilan thought he was preparing himself for a lecture on the holiness of Torm and how she had forsaken the path of her forefathers. But when he spoke, his voice was only curious.

“So the ravens, they are … watchmen of Silvanus? That is what you believe?”

A cautious smile crept onto Hweilan’s lips. “Something like that. More like allies.”

“They fight our fight, then?”

She shook her head. “Don’t think of them as servants. They fight the same fight we do. But if you think we can command them …”

“You need to understand something, Hweilan.”

Here it comes, she thought.

“You think I disapprove of you. Of what you’ve become. Of what you’re doing.”

“Darric-”

“No. Let me speak, Hweilan. Please. What’s happened to you … I confess I don’t understand much of it. But over the past days I have watched you fight and risk your life to save people you barely know. You even saved Maaqua. And now you are doing it again, fighting to save others. If you honor Silvanus or this Master of the Hunt or whomever in doing so, it is your deeds that matter. You’re fighting for those who can’t fight for themselves. And whether you admit it or not, Torm is on your side. And Mandan and Valsun and I, we are his strong right hand. Stop slapping it away.”

She watched him out of the side of her eyes as they walked. She’d never seen a look of such earnestness on anyone.

She said, “The tree of justice grows from the blood of the just.”

Words she had heard her father and Soran recite more times than she could count. They always did it after strapping on weapons and checking armor. They stood still with closed eyes, each man offering his own prayers, then recited those words. It gave them strength to give their lives in the service of others, believing that their sacrifice would not be in vain. Seeing that image again brought tears to Hweilan’s eyes, and she was glad for the mask covering her face.

“Yes,” said Darric.

“And this fight,” she said, “if it takes Mandan or Valsun’s life-or that young whelp following your brother who is only trying to care for his family-if they die in this fight, will you be able to live with that?”

Darric sighed. “Hweilan, the only way to stop evil in this world is to stand against it. If others will stand with you, embrace them. If my brothers die in that fight, then I will do everything in my power to show them that I would do the same for them. The rest … let the gods decide.”

That night, the group camped in a tangled copse of brush and trees on a high hill. Had any fires been burning in Highwatch, they could have seen them, for the fortress lay across the valley. In fact, they were not all that far from the graveyard where Hweilan had first faced Jatara and the Nar thug on the day Highwatch fell.

Both Rhan and Valsun cautioned the others against lighting fires.

“No sense in announcing our presence,” Valsun told them.

“It won’t matter,” said Hweilan. She was sitting on the ground, her back to a tree, her bow and bone mask on her lap, and Uncle beside her. The others lounged around, rubbing sore muscles or running whetstones along their swords. “He knows I’m here. He knows right where I am. Fires or not … it doesn’t matter.”

“Then why has no one tried to stop us,” said Jaden, “or come after us?”

All eyes looked to Hweilan.

“Why bother hunting your prey if it is coming to you?”

“So we’re walking into a trap?” said Valsun. “That’s your plan? Spring the trap?”

“Why?” said Vurgrim.

“Because this prey intends to kill him.”

The hobgoblins’ scowls deepened, but they kept sharpening their swords. The Damarans all exchanged glances, waiting for the other to speak.

“Well,” said Jaden at last. “Fires or not?”

“You cold, little man?” said Flet.

“No,” said Jaden and spat into the brush. “I could walk with snow down my pants, and that root Hweilan gave us would keep me warm. But if any visitors from Highwatch do decide to pay us a visit, I sure as the Hells are hot don’t want to fight them in the dark.”

And so they lit fires. They had no tea, but the Damarans heated water and threw in the strips of dried goat meat to soften them up. The waxing moon climbed high and bright into the sky, dimming the stars. No one could sleep. The Damarans were still running on the effects of the kanishta root, and the thought of a fight had the hobgoblins excited. After the meal, Darric, Mandan, and Valsun looked at each other. An unspoken thought seemed to pass between them, and they stood.

“Where’re you lot going?” said Vurgrim.

“We go to pray,” said Valsun.

The hobgoblins chuckled.

“In the dark?” said Vurgrim. “Your god will keep you safe in this dark?”

The Damarans shrugged off the jibe.

Mandan raised his voice for everyone, but he looked to Urlun when he spoke. “Anyone who wishes may join us.”

Hweilan didn’t think Urlun had enough Damaran to decipher Mandan’s words, but he obviously understood the meaning behind them. He glanced at the other hobgoblin warriors, then avoided Mandan’s gaze.

“As you wish,” said Mandan.

The Damarans walked off into the brush, making a terrible racket as they went.

“Hey, little man,” Vurgrim said to Jaden. “Why don’t you go pray with your friends?”

Jaden was running his own whetstone down his short sword. He stopped long enough to throw more sticks on the fire. “The gods can hear me just fine right here.”

The hobgoblins roared with laughter. All except for Hratt. He was sitting apart from the others, his head resting against a tree, his eyes closed. But Hweilan knew he wasn’t sleeping. She’d seen his eyelids crack open now and then, keeping watch on his fellow hobgoblins.

When the moon rose high enough that its blue light began to bleed through the branches, Hweilan stood and gathered her own weapons.

“Hey,” said Vurgrim, speaking in Goblin. “You going off to pray, too?”

“Everyone stay here,” she replied in kind. “If trouble comes from Highwatch, I’ll know it. If anything else comes at me in the dark, I’ll strike first and ask why afterward. And Vurgrim?”

“Eh?”

“A few prayers wouldn’t hurt you. I don’t think Maaqua would mind.”

His warriors watched him, eager for his reaction, but he only stared daggers at Hweilan.

She looked down at Uncle. “Chulet, Uncle. Keep an eye on them.”

Hweilan donned her bone mask to see better in the dark, then walked away.

“I am no one’s lackey, girl!” Vurgrim called after her. “You hear me?”

Hweilan left by the same way Darric and the others had, but she soon veered off. She really didn’t think the hobgoblins would try anything until after Jagun Ghen had been dealt with, but she wasn’t willing to bet their lives on it. Hobgoblin warriors won status by conquest-treacherous or otherwise-and Hweilan had more faith in the benevolence of scorpions than that of Maaqua.

At the edge of the copse, she stopped, sat cross-legged, and lay her unstrung bow across her lap. Arrows would be useless in such thick brush. She reached into her pack and withdrew the longest of the stakes she had made. Hrayeh ran down its length, and, looking at them through the bone mask’s eyes, she could see the power in them pulsing like a heartbeat. She planted the stake in the ground before her and closed her eyes.

Times like this, with the quiet in the dark and the moon and stars as the only light, she could most strongly feel the presence of Ashiin. There were no words, and she couldn’t hear Ashiin’s voice, but the Fox’s presence was there, as both a comfort and an added strength.

With Ashiin’s mind touching her own, she could hear every leaf and branch rattle and scratch in the breeze. She could hear the voices of the hobgoblins and even the crackle of the fires a hundred yards away. The stench of the hobgoblins and unwashed Damarans was a constant presence, but she could sift through them to find other smells in the air-cold soil, dead underbrush, new summer growth, even the metallic scent of snow carried by the breeze off the high mountains.

Hweilan closed her eyes and recalled the faces of family and friends.

Her grandfather the High Warden. Her mother and father. She had not seen her father in many years, but tonight his proud, smiling face came to her very clearly. She saw Scith, who had been a second father to Hweilan. Every skill and value Hweilan’s parents had planted in her, Scith had nourished and cherished. Her Uncle Soran, the strongest, most unyielding man she had ever known. But his unbending sense of justice had never blinded him to compassion and mercy. Jagun Ghen had murdered him and used his body as a mask to come after her. Remembering that, remembering the hungry fire in Soran’s eyes, Hweilan felt no fear. Just fury and hot rage. Her heartbeat quickened, her breath came faster, and she felt blood rushing under her skin. She saw Lendri and Menduarthis, who both had helped her, fought to protect her, and who were both now twisted versions of their former selves. And Ashiin herself, slain by Nendawen so that she could be free of her body to hunt Jagun Ghen across the worlds.

She held all their images in her mind, remembering Gleed’s words-The true warrior fights not because she hates what, is in front of her, but because she loves what she’s left behind.

Hweilan felt them all around her. The Ebun Nakweth, the Witness Cloud-those who had left this world but still watched with their gods, giving strength to those who stayed behind to continue the fight.

And through it all, Hweilan could sense that other presence. The gaze of green fire and the antlered hunter, watching, waiting.

Fury, loss, regret, fear, eagerness … all of it burned in Hweilan, robbing her of the proper words to pray. She could not find them. And so she simply held all of them in her heart and mind, until the words came on their own, spoken in the ancient tongue of her people. No chant. No formal prayer. Just pure need.

“Time is running out. Help me.”

Some time later, she heard the three Damarans finish their rites and return to the camp. But then two left again-and by the sounds she knew who it was. One lumbered through the brush with all the grace of a bull, branches catching on his mail and grabbing at the scabbard that rode his hip. Leading him was another, whose four feet made much less noise on the carpet of leaves and who managed to wend his way through all but the smallest branches.

Uncle led Darric to Hweilan, gave her a long look, the moonlight reflecting in his eyes, then turned and left.

Darric stood before her, unable to see her eyes in the dark and hesitant to disturb her.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“You wish to be alone?”

She opened her mouth to say yes, but stopped herself. Stop slapping it away, he had told her, and damn if it wasn’t good advice. Thinking on her friends and family had reminded her of that.

“Thank you, Darric. For coming. And for your words earlier.”

He gave a bow that on anyone else would have seemed comical. But his sincerity touched her.

Darric cleared his throat, then said, “I fear I wasn’t entirely truthful, Hweilan.”

“What do you mean?”

“Earlier. All my talk of fighting evil and defending the faith. All true. Every word. But that isn’t why I’m here. Valsun and Mandan have known it all along, yet still they stay with me. They are better men than I will ever be. True knights.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I came for you. I’m still here … for you.”

“Darric, I-”

“No. Let me speak. Hweilan, I … I have been in love with you since I was a boy. Since that day you helped me in the fight.”

“Darric, stop.”

She didn’t want to hear any more. Not now. Still, Gleed’s words came to her mind again. Hweilan had left nothing behind that she could ever go back to. It had all been taken from her. Of course, if she did manage to destroy the one responsible … what then? But she could not allow herself to be distracted. Not now. Not when she was so close. And yet, she had no desire to hurt Darric.

“You loved a fantasy. A hope of what I might be. But not the real me. You don’t know the real me.”

“You’re wrong. Last year when my father told me that he had been talking with the High Warden, and that you would be coming to stay at my home in hopes of … well, you know what they were hoping. I asked everyone-anyone who had ever heard the slightest rumor of you.”

And Hweilan had no doubt what he’d been told. Child of a half-breed barbarian who would rather spend her days hunting with the Nar than stitching with the court ladies.

Darric snorted. “My father told me that if half the stories about you were true, it would be up to me to tame you and make you a proper lady, fit to rule a Damaran house. My weapons master-when my father was not around, mind you-told me not to tame all the fire out of you. That a little wildness in a woman was a good thing, if …”

Darric stopped suddenly, aware that he’d said too much. Hweilan felt herself blushing and was grateful for the dark. She didn’t know whether to be furious at the gossiping court hens saying such things about her or furious that the court men had been envious at the prospect of their lord’s son taking such a wild one to his bed.

“You should go back to camp, Darric,” she said. “Now.”

“They were fools, Hweilan,” he said. “All of them. If they’d only met you, none of them would have talked of taming you. A man would have more success taming the wind. And the gods would damn the man who tried.”

Hweilan’s blush returned in full force, which only fueled her anger. “You-”

“No, listen. Please. When you first found us in the mountains, I admit I was horrified. I thought you were nothing like what I had expected. And I was right.”

“Darric-”

“You were more,” he said. “Damn it all, Hweilan, I won’t pretend to understand what you’ve become. But I swear to you that I’ll give my life for you. I was a fool to doubt you. You’re all I hope for and more than I deserve.”

He stopped. She waited for more. When none came, she took a deep breath and said, “Darric, do you really want to help me?”

“I swear it.”

“Swear?”

“On my life and the honor of my house.”

Hweilan smiled, though she knew he couldn’t see it in the dark. For all his bravery, Darric was still a boy in many ways. Boys swore so easily. She had seen enough to know better.

“Then listen …”

The moon had long gone behind the mountains and the first hints of dawn were creeping into the sky when those in camp heard Hweilan and Darric returning. A dotard with only half his hearing in one ear could have heard them. A graceful woodsman Darric was not, but even Hweilan crashed heedless through the branches and stomped over the carpet of leaves. Both of them were shouting.

“… all we’ve done for you!” said Darric. “You ungrateful wench! You-!”

“I never asked for your help,” said Hweilan.

“And we never asked for your help. Ever since we took up with you, we’ve been captured, tortured, and-”

Hweilan reached camp first. Darric was at her heels. All eyes turned to them, and Valsun stood, ever wanting to be the peace maker, but stunned into inaction by the vehemence of their words.

“And you’d still be there if not for me!” said Hweilan. She looked to the other Damarans. “Every last one of you.” She turned back to Darric and softened her tone. “Listen to me. If you love those men-if you’ve ever loved your people-take them and go home. Warn them about what’s coming. If I win today, then your father will need to know that Highwatch stands empty. And if I die … you need to warn them about what’s coming.”

Darric stepped forward and jabbed his finger in her shoulder. “I won’t turn tail and-”

Hweilan grabbed his wrist, twisted, and turned his whole arm. Then she shoved him in the chest, sending him sprawling into the nearest campfire. Sparks and ashes flew, but his thick wool and mail saved him from a scorching. He scrambled to his feet and slapped the embers off his tabard.

“Touch me again and I’ll break the arm next time,” she said.

The hobgoblins laughed at this, but Mandan stepped between Darric and Hweilan, his club raised. “You try and-”

“You’ll step back,” said Rhan, still calmly sitting by a fire and rubbing cold ashes into the cuts on his chest. The Greatsword of Impiltur lay naked on his lap. “You finish that thought and I’ll shove that club down your-”

“Enough!” Valsun found his voice at last. “Darric, Hweilan, please! This … there is no point in fighting among ourselves.”

“No,” said Darric, his voice cold. “We left our home to try to help yours, Hweilan, and you’ve shown us nothing but ingratitude and disdain. You dishonor us-and yourself. Valsun is right. Enough is enough.” He looked to his companions. “Gather your things. We’re leaving.”

Valsun’s jaw dropped and Mandan whirled to look at his brother. “What?” he said. “But we … you …”

“Have had enough,” said Darric. “She’s right. Damara must be warned. We’ve done all we can do here. Our fight lies elsewhere.”

“But-” said Valsun.

But Mandan cut him off. “Damn it, Brother! You love her!”

“I thought I did,” said Darric, and he looked at Hweilan as he spoke. “You’re sure about this?”

“I am,” said Hweilan. “Get gone.”

Darric nodded and grabbed his pack.

Valsun said, “My lord-”

“Enough!” said Darric. Then softer, “Enough, my friend. We’re done here. Come.”

He bent, picked up Valsun’s pack, and shoved it at him.

Valsun took it, but his eyes were wide, stunned.

Darric turned and stomped out of camp.

“Valsun,” said Mandan. “You can’t let him do this.”

Valsun looked to Hweilan. “We’ll talk to him.”

“You do that,” said Hweilan, then looked at Mandan and Jaden. “All of you. Go talk to him. But walk while you talk. Now.”

She put one hand on the dagger at her waist. Uncle padded to her side and growled.

Vurgrim stood. “You heard. Go.”

Trembling and looking like a faithful hound who had just been whipped by his master, Valsun followed after Darric.

Mandan looked to Rhan, then Vurgrim, and finally down at Urlun. “Come.”

He grabbed his own pack, slung his club over his shoulder, and followed his companions.

Jaden slammed his short sword back into the scabbard, shouldered his pack, and gave Hweilan a hesitant smile. “Said I wasn’t walking back by myself. Looks like I’m not by myself anymore.” He gave her a slight bow. “Good luck, lady.”

With that, he followed after Mandan.

Urlun was still sitting, startled. He looked after them, then at the hobgoblins.

“Time to choose, boy,” said Vurgrim.

Urlun grabbed his axe and his pack, and ran after the Damarans.

“And you?” Vurgrim called to Hratt. “You going to run off with your new friends?”

Hratt was still sitting with his head back against the bole of a tree. His eyes were closed, but his hand lay curved around the hilt of the sword that lay beside him. He opened his eyes and sat up. “I serve the Razor Heart,” he said.

The hobgoblins laughed. “And I sup with Shar!” one of them said, bringing more laughter.

The warriors stood and began to gather their own things.

Flet walked up to Hweilan and spoke, his voice low. “Should I take my archers after those five? We don’t want any surprises at our backs.”

“Let them go,” said Hweilan. “You’re going to need all your arrows for what’s in front.”