Hand of the Hunter

CHAPTER FIVE

On the northern ice the winter dark lasted for months, and even high summer could not melt the frost. Yet still people managed not only to survive there, but to thrive in their own way. It was a hard land, and the people harder still, but even so, Jatara could remember a time when she'd been allowed to be a little girl. Pampered by the elders. Fed the choicest meats from every hunt. Given the softest, warmest clothes. She'd even had a little doll, made from baby-soft sealskin. In the darkest winter nights when the wind howled over the ice and the elders made sacrifices to keep demons at bay, Jatara had huddled in her blankets near the fire, the doll cradled against her chest, and with her free hand she would stroke the soft sealskin over and over, imagining that she was her mother, and the doll little Jatara. No matter how the wind howled or the priests shrieked their blood rites, that little doll had helped Jatara feel safe. As an adult, when she thought home, it was not her clan's faces she saw, not her mother or father, but the scent of a fire, and the feel of that little doll against her palm.

"Home…" she said. It came out a croak. Her throat felt raw. The pain jolted her out of her reverie. She held the doll close and stroked it.

But something was wrong. Felt wrong. Not the softness of sealskin. She could feel the doll's skin, yes, but it was not seal soft. No. It was rough, torn, andWet.

Warm, yes, but that was quickly fading.

And the smell… no. Smell was the wrong word. The stench was tangy, coppery, and foul.

Jatara stroked the doll again, grasping for that reassurance of home, but the ragged wetness under her palm only drove it farther away.

With a very great effort, Jatara opened her eyes.

And remembered.

Home was far away. Not separated from her by hundreds of miles, but years upon years. She was not a little girl anymore. The doll long gone. Under her handA man's head lay in her lap. It was still loosely attached to the body by a mangled web of skin, flesh, and tendon. His jaw was gone, as were both eyes and an ear.

"What-?" she said.

Then her eyes saw the wet blackness under her nails, and she could feel more of the same in her teeth and gums.

A small part of Jatara-a very small part-screamed at the memory of what she had done. But the scream was very faint, like the final cry of a drowning man. Something else filled her. Immersed her. Like rich dye permeating old cloth.

Jatara laughed at that image. How fitting. The new presence within her was not her, but it filled every pore. She had no word for it.

"How do you feel?"

The voice came from behind her. She recognized it at once. Argalath… and something else. Something like her. Like flame is both heat and light, two separate things combined into one vibrant… power.

Jatara stood, and the corpse fell off her lap onto the blood-soaked grass. The sun was up, but hidden behind a curtain of thick cloud. The wind cut over the steppe, making a sound like a saw through dry wood. It still held the bite of winter, but she didn't flinch. The cold of Narfell was a kiss compared to the land where she'd been born. Swaths of snow still clung in the shadowed places of the hills or in the gullies, but dun-colored grass had broken through on the high ground where they had performed the rites. Where Jatara had been reborn.

She looked down at her hand and bare arm, black up to her elbow in blood and gore. It was like seeing it for the first time.

"I feel… alive," she said. "More than alive, I feel… there are no words."

"I know," said Argalath.

He stood nearby, his robes around him, his deep cowl pulled down so that she could see only his chin. But she heard the pleasure in his voice. And more, she could sense his mood, and his thoughts seemed just beyond her reach, almost as if there was some invisible string between them, vibrating with life, and together they formed a beautiful chord. Jatara was awestruck at the power she felt there, just below the surface. She was amazed that the man's skin didn't vibrate at containing such power.

Over Argalath's shoulder, she could see Vazhad standing atop the next rise, holding the reins of their horses. He was almost a quarter mile away as the crow flies, but even with only her one remaining eye she could count the stitches on the horses' saddles and see the few strands of hair that had come loose from Vazhad's topknot and wafted in the breeze. She could even smell the leather and sweat, and in the lulls of the breeze she thought she could hear Vazhad's heart beating. Something inside her stirred, and an urge struck her. For a moment, she wanted nothing in the world more than to bound over Argalath, use the raw power in her limbs to run over the grass, then seize Vazhad, throw him to the ground, and ever so slowly burrow her finger between his ribs until she could feel his heart thrumming. How he would scream… even Vazhad, who never laughed, who never cried out even in battle. He would scream if she did that.

Jatara swallowed and buried the urge.

"It worked," she said, and looked around. Carnage-the remains of the three Creel guards and one horse, the gore and torn earth obliterating all but a few traces of the pact circle Argalath had burned into the grass. She remembered the rite. The words of Argalath's incantation that had seemed so strange to her the previous night had a comfortable, even familiar flavor. She remembered the blade flashing in the firelight, the pain of the cut, and then the thing that had come, rising from the pact circle like a lover creeping through her bedroom window. For a moment, the old Jatara had recoiled. Sensing the mind of the other, she had wanted nothing more than to run. But she'd held one thing firm in her mind.

Kadrigul. Her brother. The only thing she had truly loved in the world. In the years since their clan had been slaughtered and they had had only each other to hold in the dark, he had been the one constant in her life. The one remaining bit of him that was more than memory. The memories were dear to her, but Kadrigul was flesh and blood. He was real, and he was hers. And he was dead.

And so she had opened herself to this new power.

"Oh, yes," said Argalath. "It worked. Now you see. Now you understand. Now you know."

"Now," she said. "I hunt."