Cry of the Ghost Wolf

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Awarmth woke Hweilan. A familiar feeling on her skin, pleasant and light as down. Sunlight. The sun was shining on her.

Hweilan opened her eyes, and saw grass-green and taller than she had ever seen-waving in the wind

She sat up and stared at the canyon walls of Nar-sek Qu’istrade in the near distance. The morning sun was already well over them. She was in the valley beyond Kistrad. How …?

Just beyond her feet, Uncle lay in the grass, watching her. Others were nearby, their backs to her, but she knew them at once. Darric, sitting and leaning upon his knees. Mandan pacing in the sun. Others, bundled in their cloaks, lay next to Darric. She saw Menduarthis’s tousled mass of hair and recognized two of the others as hobgoblins. But two shrouded figures in particular held her attention.

They had been wrapped with care. Valsun was nearest, his pale skin made paler by the dried blood on it. Stones had been placed over his eyes.

Rhan lay next to him. The color was gone from the Champion’s face-or what was left of it. His cheeks and forehead were a mass of dry cuts and scratches, but it was the throat wound that had obviously killed him.

Uncle let out a low whine, drawing Mandan and Darric’s attention. When they saw Hweilan, Mandan stopped his pacing and eyed her warily. Darric stared, blinking, then stood and approached. She saw the hesitation, even fear, in his eyes.

It was only then that Hweilan looked down at herself. The shirt Kesh Naan had made for her was no more than torn bits of scrap dangling from her neck and shoulders, barely covering her enough for modesty. And every inch of her was soaked in blood, drying but still tacky to the touch and reeking of death.

“Hweilan?” said Darric, stopping beside Uncle. “Are you …” She thought he was going to ask if she was well, but he swallowed and said, “Are you Hweilan?”

“What?” she said, and then the taste in her mouth hit her senses. Blood. And oh, gods and ancestors, was that bits of skin between her teeth? Hweilan leaned over and retched into the grass. Lanks of hair fell into her face, and she saw that even her hair was clotted with blood. Looking down, she saw what she was throwing up, and retched even more.

When she was done, she rolled over and crawled away from her sick. Her limbs were trembling, her head hurt and felt light … empty.

It was gone. He was gone. The steady presence of Jagun Ghen like a hollow drumbeat in her skull … gone. There was a weaker pulse, very faint, and she could sense lesser enemies, but they were in a dozen different directions, and all of them far away.

She wiped her mouth on the back of her arm. It was no less bloody, but at least it was mostly dry. Hweilan forced herself to look back at Darric. “What … happened?”

He looked down at her, pity and relief warring in his countenance. “You don’t remember? Not any of it?”

Hweilan looked away and searched her memory. The battle in the courtyard, Jagun Ghen looking on her through Menduarthis’s eyes … that was all horrifyingly clear. After that, she had no more than blurry images, echoes … and music. The music in which she finally heard the words and saw that light, so pure and clean. And the name … “Jalan.”

“Jalan?” said Darric, his brows creased in confusion. “Who …?”

“Tell me what happened,” said Hweilan, more of the steel returning to her voice. “Tell me everything.”

Darric did, explaining how he and the others had followed her into Highwatch as she’d asked, staying behind the hobgoblins, watching and waiting for their treachery. He told her how they had found her on the mountainside. He recounted the final battle, the manner of Valsun’s and Rhan’s deaths. How she had fed Flet to the wolf to heal the animal’s wounds.

“When … when you were done …,” started Darric. He swallowed hard at the memory and would not look at her. “You looked at us, and I thought … I thought we were next. I didn’t know what to say, how to reach you, so I just said, ‘What are you going to do?’ You looked at me-only, only I knew it wasn’t you. It was him, the Hunter, looking at me through your eyes. You said, ‘I will hunt,’ and then … then you leaped! Over the side. A hundred feet at least, but when I looked down, I couldn’t see anything of you. Not in the dark.”

He sat silent a long time, staring at the wind tossing the grass, and Hweilan knew he was reliving what had happened.

“I … I would not leave the dead. Not our dead, anyway. We found a bit of gunhin on Flet and his band. Enough to heal the worst of our wounds and rouse Menduarthis. Mandan and I carried Valsun’s body.” Darric stopped, unable to continue.

“Jaden, Urlun, and I brought Rhan,” said Hratt, walking up. “But even with the three of us, we still had to drag him. Your wolf brought us through the mountain.”

“We had no torches,” Darric said. “No fire. We couldn’t see, We only knew we had to get back to Highwatch. It took us most of the night, but we made it back there at last. Your home holds nothing but the dead now.”

Hweilan knew of the battle she had instigated. But she knew there had been many Razor Heart still alive when Jagun Ghen took her.

“The Razor Heart warriors?” she asked. “They fled?”

Darric looked at her with haunted eyes, and Mandan would not make eye contact.

“Perhaps,” said Darric. “But I don’t think so. As we made our way out of the fortress, the dead … were everywhere. Torn to pieces. The cries of ravens and wolves echoed off the mountainside. That … that will haunt my sleep, Hweilan. What you did …”

She looked away and at last knew the full truth. Nendawen had given himself wholly to his master, becoming not just the Hand but the Hunter himself. That man had died in the fight with Jagun Ghen. But the Hunter, that primal spirit for which there could be no true death, was still here. Inside Hweilan. And the forces that kept the Hunter from this world except for one night each month … those forces still bound him. He would be free to hunt only under the light of the full moon. The Hunter was not of this world. But Hweilan was.

Find me, Hweilan. I may be your only hope.

The words came to her mind again, and she thought she could almost hear them at the back of the wind. The wind out of the east.

Hweilan stood and walked away from the men. The wolf rose and followed at her heels.

“Where are you going?” called Darric.

“To find a well,” she replied. “I need to wash.” She felt her stomach turn over again.

“Is it over, then?” said Darric. “Jagun Ghen, he’s … defeated? Gone?”

Hweilan nodded, but could not speak. Yes, Jagun Ghen had been defeated, his spirit weakened and bound in the Abyss. But she knew many baazuled had fled, scattering in every direction. More would not be able to come into the world, and Jagun Ghen’s play for godhood was as dead as Rhan and all the rest. But the undead would still be a danger, and she was the only one who knew how to deal with them. Walking through the grass, she saw the years stretching before her, hunt after hunt, kill after kill, and every full moon, shining over it all … Hweilan wept. She passed bones and the burned earth of old campfires. With no horses or cattle in the valley, the grass was already waist-high, and she had to rely on her wolf to find the well-a hole three feet across, ringed by a knee-high wall of mud and stone. A thick plank of wood crossed the well, a rope dangling from its middle.

Hweilan pulled up the bucket, again and again, drinking first, then soaking and scrubbing, soaking and scrubbing, using dirt and grass to scour the blood and gore from her skin. She undressed and soaked the remains of her shirt and trousers, squeezing and twisting the blood from the wet fabric. Whatever material Kesh Naan had used to make them shed the blood easily. Since Hweilan had nothing else to wear, she reluctantly put on the mostly clean, ragged wet clothes again.

Then she threw the bucket back down the well, and collapsed. She could not face the others. Not yet.

But her shadow had scarcely moved an inch along the ground before Uncle gave a slight yip, and Hweilan saw Darric approaching.

He stopped a few paces away, looked down at her, and said, “You look better.”

She said nothing.

“What now?” he said. “Now that the hunt has ended …”

Hweilan stood and looked him in the eye. Darric was taller than her, but not by much. “It hasn’t ended,” said Hweilan, her voice hard. “Not for me.” She took a breath and softened her tone. “First, I am going back to Highwatch. To find my bow and other things. The arrows especially are dangerous if another should find them.”

“Hratt has one of your knives.”

“And … and I need to say farewell to my home.”

“You sound like you aren’t coming back.”

Hweilan shrugged. “The gods know. Not me.”

Darric cleared his throat and said, “And then?”

Hweilan turned toward the castle, thrusting out of the northern horizon. She could not say this while looking at him. “I suggest you search the village and fortress. You’ll find shovels to bury our dead-or I will help you place them in my family’s tombs. Then, find what supplies you can and leave. It will not be long before Nar and every mountain clan will be eager to claim Highwatch as their own. You should be long gone by then.”

“Gone?” said Darric. “To where? The six of us through the Gap? We’ll never make it. Not even with you. Not with Maaqua roused and watching for us.”

“I’m not going with you.”

“What?” Darric grabbed her arm, and she heard the hurt in his voice.

She pulled away and put her back to him. “I will tell you of paths northward-you should avoid all routes to the south. It will take a long time, but if you go around the mountains and watch every step, you might make it back into Damara before winter. Especially if we can find you some horses.”

“But … but where will you go?”

“At first?” said Hweilan. “I’ll go east. There’s someone I have to find.”

“Someone?”

She turned back to him and was surprised at what she saw. She’d thought to find a look of hurt on his face to match the pain in his voice. But he looked grim, and for just a moment she saw a bit of her father and Uncle Soran in him. They were of the same people, she thought, as I was. Once.

“My grandfather,” she said. “My mother’s father. I think he can help me.”

“How?” said Darric.

“The Hunter …” Hweilan’s voice broke.

“Nendawen?” said Darric. “I thought he was … dead. We saw …”

“Nendawen was not the Hunter. Only the vessel. And now …”

“Now it’s you,” said Darric, understanding in his voice.

Hweilan nodded. “Most times, I will be … me, I think. I hope. But when the full moon rises …”

“You will hunt,” said Darric.

She nodded. “Jagun Ghen … is gone. To the Abyss. But many of his ilk escaped. I’m the only one who knows how to stop them. I can’t leave them to roam the world. It would be …”

“Wrong,” said Darric. She heard a hint of pride in his voice. “It would be a sin, Hweilan. And you know it.”

She held his gaze but said nothing.

“I will go with you.”

“No,” said Hweilan. “It’s not safe. You won’t be safe. Not with me, not at the full moon.”

Darric smiled. “But you-he didn’t kill us last night. Not after he found Flet to feed to Uncle. He could have. He certainly didn’t hesitate to kill every Razor Heart in the fortress. But he didn’t. Perhaps he is not as powerful as you think. He is part of you, you say. Perhaps you are part of him as well, now?”

Hweilan opened her mouth to argue, but then Gleed’s words came to her again-There’s something about you that even the Master had not planned on.

And she knew what that was now, or at least a part of it. Suffice to say that my father was … not of this world.

Whatever Jalan’s father was, that blood ran in her as well. She would have to ask Gleed about it someday.

“The others will need your help getting to Damara,” she said, but even she heard the weakness in her argument.

“Mandan will not go,” said Darric. “I know it, as do you. And Urlun will follow him. Buureg swore to protect the boy’s family, and I think he’ll keep that promise. And Hratt’s no fool. He knows if he goes home, he’s dead. As for Jaden? He may well leave off with the first caravan we run into, but until then, I think we are stuck with him.”

“Your family-”

“My father has other sons.”

“You are his heir.”

“I don’t want his lands or his titles.”

“Family is more than that. You have a responsibility-”

Darric grabbed her, one arm round her shoulders, one encircling her waist, and kissed her. She let herself return it, just for a moment, then pushed her face away.

“Stop it.”

She looked to the wolf, hoping he’d come snarling to her rescue. But he merely tilted his head, then turned and walked away. Darric’s arms were still around her. She planted both her hands on his chest and pushed.

“Let me go now, or you’re going in the well.”

He held her a moment, staring at her eye to eye, then released her and took a step back.

“You spoke truly, Hweilan. I do have a responsibility. To you. I love you, and whether you feel the same way or not, I won’t forsake you.”

Darric stared at her, his jaw working, waiting.

When no response came, he said, “And do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Feel … anything. For me?”

She wanted to escape, but that was the coward’s way. So she returned his gaze. “I don’t know, Darric. Right now … I only feel …” She searched for the word. There was only one. “Tired.”

A faint smile broke on Darric’s face, then disappeared. Hweilan almost missed it.

“It’s a lonely road, Hweilan. Do you want to walk it by yourself?”

He stepped forward, slowly this time, and held her. She buried her face in him.

“No.”