Hand of the Hunter

CHAPTER NINE

The time had come. Jatara woke.

The last thing she remembered was the sound of steel cutting the air. A heavy blade. Iron wrought not for beauty or craft, but purely for the purpose of killing. Honed to a razor's edge.

It had pierced her cloak, her coat, her shirt, and the shift beneath with the ease of hailstones shattering spider silk. Skin and flesh beneath had parted just as easily. The bones between shoulder and neck had offered some resistance, but the weight of the iron and the strong hand wielding it had proved superior, and the sword had gone all the way into her right lung. The darkness that filled her vision had been hot-the heat of drowning in her own blood.

Tasting it.

Savoring it.

Reveling in it.

And when she woke, the world was cold. Dark. The chill of winter stone and sunless soil. Jatara could feel it all around her. The mountains' height. Their roots, buried in cold ground. The weeping of a thousand winters burying all in cold. In dark. In emptiness.

So empty…

She woke to hunger, and that overwhelmed everything else.

The hobgoblins had made their camp only two days' march from their nearest shelter-a cave stashed with provisions made worryingly low by a long, hard winter. But after this day's work, their worries were no more. They feasted on horseflesh, and better yet, on manflesh. It was a good day's work.

An ambush on the thirteen out of Highwatch had not been without sacrifice. They'd lost nine of their own-five to the pale woman with the strange, half-shaved head and one eye. That one eye had made them hesitate at first, for the god Gruumsh One Eye was hated and feared by their people. Just when they'd been on the verge of letting her go out of pure superstitious dread, she had dropped her steel and fallen to her knees, as if in a daze. As if Maglubiyet himself had stripped her soul and given it to them, an offering.

They'd dragged the slain riders behind them-clothes and armor and all, back to their camp. The sun fell, and they stoked their fires, bold and full, to beat back the cold, but the clan knew the ancient way of the warrior. They took the horses' limbs and ate the flesh raw off the bone, giving thanks to Maglubiyet and slaking their thirst in new blood.

But the riders, the ten men and three women…

These they cast in a pile after stripping them of their weapons. The Damarans and their leader had fought well, had brought glory to their gods. The clan would feast on them with all due ceremony after the proper rites.

And so Jatara lay in the pile of corpses, amidst her slain companions. Because she had been the leader, because she had been the last to fall, because she had killed more than any other among her fellows…

Because of these things the clan laid her topmost on the pile of corpses. They whispered prayers to Maglubiyet and sprinkled the blood of their feast upon her as they made the sign of the slain on her face and covered over her one staring eye.

And just when their revel was at its height, when the warriors had slaked their thirst, filled their hunger, and settled into their self-satisfied celebration…

Jatara woke.

The thing inside her stirred, and with its stirring, her limbs twitched with life, and awareness returned to her, like the stoking of fire from dormant ashes.

She blinked once, saw the stars overhead, framed by the snowcapped peaks, the darkness between them made all the blacker by the shine of starlight on frost.

Jatara smiled.

She could feel the wound on her right side, breaking all the way through muscle and bone, rendering her right arm useless. But that would be easily healed, given proper nourishment.

Jatara blinked again and sat up, stirring the pile of corpses beneath her. She could hear the hobgoblins nearby reveling around their fires. She could feel the stamp of their feet as they danced their victory. The tremor their feet sent through the earth mirrored the beating of their hearts…

… that sent the blood racing through their veins…

… that filled the night with its song…

… that called to Jatara and the new power within her.

She tumbled off the pile of corpses, her pale feet striking the ground. Her killers had taken her boots. The leather would be flayed into strips, the strips braided to harness armor or perhaps a belt.

Better this way, she thought. She could feel the pulse of their celebration in the ground. Could feel the stamp of their feet, the beats of their hearts, and the heat of the life within.

Her stomach growled.

Her mouth watered.

She came forward out of the dark.

The leader of the hobgoblins stood before the greatest fire, Jatara's sword held high above his head. He had stripped down to a loincloth and gouged his flesh in honor of Maglubiyet. He roared. He sang his song of victory into the dark. He waved the steel of his victim for all his followers to behold.

And then his victim stepped out of the darkness and into the heat of his fire. A blasphemy to the honor he did his god. She could feel the blood in his veins. So close. So hot. The life. The nourishment.

She ran from the darkness, left arm outstretched, fingers flexed to rend.

"Mine," she said, and fell upon him. It was the one thing that would not leave Jatara's mind. It set the rhythm of her heart. It sang in her blood. "Mine. Mine. Mine."

Killing the hobgoblin chief had been easy. Her fingers opened around his throat, closed, and pulled. His heart had still been beating when she'd ripped it from his chest. She'd done it so quickly that his people were too shocked to do anything but stand open-mouthed while their chief died. But it didn't last. Many had weapons in hand already, and in moments every empty hand had found steel or club. Then the slaughter began.

Jatara did not know how many blows she'd suffered. But the power was surging in her, the fire, burning and consuming and demanding ever more. Warm flesh and hot blood slaked her thirst, and her wounds healed. Broken bone fused. Torn flesh knit together. Even skin closed. And every strike upon her only fueled her fury. It did not take long for the hobgoblins to realize this foe was beyond any of them.

The clan shaman, an old crone of a goblin, fell on her knees before Jatara and closed her eyes. On the back of the old crone's eyelids, she had painted her skin so that they seemed to glow. "Blessed of Maglubiyet! Blessed of Maglubiyet!"

Jatara crushed the crone's neck beneath her left foot.

By then, most had already fled into the dark, but a few still in the blood ecstasy of their celebration fought on. They died with the rest. Even as Jatara let the last broken, lifeless body fall from her grasp, the final footfalls of the hobgoblins faded into the mountains.

So hot was the thing within her that she took no thought to find her boots or replace her torn clothes. She took only the sword that the hobgoblins had taken from her, then she was back on the hunt.

And that was when she noticed.

It had been many days since that wretched little wench had gouged out Jatara's eye. The physical pain had lasted for days. The blow to her pride had never healed. But now…

Jatara waved a palm in front of her face, just to be sure. Then, very carefully, like a baby bird taking its first step out of the nest, she closed her left eye. For the first time in days the world did not go black. She could see. The spirit inside her… the feast… it had not only brought her back from the verge of death. It had improved her. Not only could she see, she could see better than she ever had. Her vision could pierce the dark.

And still, she knew which way her brother had gone. Even though he was dead, still some cord connected them, past and present, and if she wanted to she could point to the paths he had taken, like a child with her eyes closed can still find the sun.

The trail was days old, but it had not faded to her new senses. Beyond sight or smell, she took the sense of the trail into her mind, like dry fleece soaking in a rich wine. The scent of her beloved and her quarry became one with her awareness. There was nothing but the hunt.

Two days after the slaughter of the hobgoblins, Jatara came to a hollow in the hills filled with the strangest standing stones she had ever seen. A casual glance might have mistaken them for ice, but Jatara's newfound senses knew they were crystal-albeit of no kind she had ever seen. Some stood almost straight up, many times her own height, but most leaned haphazardly at seemingly random angles.

Kadrigul had gone in there, she knew, and part of him had never come out again. Still, Jatara could sense something of him deeper in the mountains. There was no trail there. It was as if he had disappeared inside the standing stones and reappeared many miles away.

She didn't understand. But it was not understanding that drove her anymore. And so she continued on, deeper into the mountains.