The Dreaming Hunt (71 page)

He nearly did miss catching Phillipe's feint and spin this time.
Focus, Will
.

The hounds seemed to have gone into some sort of a blood fury where they were impervious or possibly even immune to most of the magics the three mages threw at them. The barrage of magic was amazing, and in moments the air took on an odor of sizzled fur and singed wool.

Phillipe lunged at him one more time. Will dodged the initial attack and stepped left with blinding speed to catch Phillipe in the spin, striking a vicious blow across his foe's midsection with the tip of his staff. The rat doubled over, the wind knocked out of him. Will jammed the tip with all his strength into the base of the rat's skull. Whether the blow itself or the magic with it killed the were-rat, Will didn't much care. He scooped the pouch off the rat's corpse and threw the shoulder strap over his head.

He straightened just in time to see Kendrick, in boar form, leap at the mages and hounds. “No!” Will yelled at him. “They'll kill you—” It was too late; the great bristled sides and tusked snout of the were-boar joined the tumbling, snapping tangle of hounds and mages.

“Where's their hunter?” Raina called.

Will looked around frantically, swatting away a pair of boglins, as well. The blind man had to be nearby. The hounds would never leave him, and he would never leave them.

A tall figure slipped through the trees to their right, and Tarryn cried out, “That's Kerryl!”

Cripes. How many more of their enemies were going to take the field against them? A series of magic flashes through the trees suggested that Kerryl had engaged the hunter. Will had no idea who would come out the winner in such a contest.

The mages disengaged momentarily from the attacking hounds and, as one, winked out of visible existence. Whether they'd gone into spirit forms or cast invisibility spells upon themselves, he could not tell.

But the Imperial hounds went mad. They rushed off through the trees, no doubt chasing their quarry by smell. Kendrick charged after them, disappearing from sight. Relative quiet fell around them. A few boglins yipped in the trees.

*   *   *

Eben searched frantically for any sign of his sister, but she and her companions were
gone
. Marikeen had saved his life by taking off her magical hood and letting the hounds catch her scent.
Why
had she done that? He would much rather have the hounds after him than her!

Where was Kerryl? He wouldn't leave all of his were-creatures behind and flee like a coward, would he?

Eben took off toward where Tarryn had spotted Kerryl chasing after the Imperial hunter. If he could take them both down, two of his three most pressing problems would be solved. The hounds would leave off tracking him and his friends, and Kerryl's hold over Kendrick would be broken. Then all he had to do was find Marikeen and talk some sense into her.

He spied a pair of humanoid figures grappling ahead of him, and he slowed. But then a black shape suddenly loomed beside him, startling him badly. He recognized Sha'Li.

“Come away,” Sha'Li breathed. “Back to the others we must go.”

“Not yet. I have business with both of those men.”

“Kill Kerryl you must not,” she whispered urgently.

“Kill that bastard I will,” he bit out.

She opened her mouth to argue further, but he was having none of it. He moved forward toward the fighting men, his sword in one hand, battle mace in the other. Both men looked the worse for wear and fought hand to hand, covered in blood and mud.

As he drew near, Kerryl got in a vicious punch to the blind hunter's jaw, spinning the fellow around and toppling him like a falling tree. Kerryl staggered back, a dagger sticking out of his side. The weapon looked small, and its angle did not point its blade at any vital organs. Nonetheless, Kerryl clasped the blade in pain. Perfect. One foe down and the other badly injured and distracted. He charged forward, coming in from behind Kerryl to take the nature guardian by surprise.

He raised his sword and was a bare instant from being in range when a voice rang out from the darkness, “Kerryl! Behind you!”

The nature guardian spun, throwing up his arm, and took the edge of Eben's blade on the Band of Beasts. Except his blade did no damage to the leather gauntlet. Kerryl pulled the dagger out of his own side and swung it with his off hand, nearly gutting Eben.

But Eben managed to halt his forward momentum just in time to avoid running himself onto the dagger. Kerryl leaped forward, grabbing Eben's wrists and wrestling the weapons away from them both. Given that the nature guardian used no magic, Eben could only assume that Kerryl had depleted all his magic against the hunter. Thank the stars.

Although Kerryl was strong, Eben was a tiny bit stronger. Slowly but surely, he pulled his arms back in to his sides and began twisting his wrists free by slow degrees. He felt Kerryl's grip begin to weaken.

“Cease chasing me, boy,” Kerryl grunted.

“Never. You took Kendrick and changed him. I'll kill you for that.” Buoyed by his anger, he gave a mighty wrench, and his sword arm broke free of Kerryl's grasp. He lifted the weapon and took a mighty downward blow, chopping down toward the nature guardian's exposed neck with all the force he could muster.

His blade impacted something hard and sharp, sliding along its length and passing harmlessly by Kerryl's neck to catch at the base of the blade. He followed the short blade with his shocked stare, finding a fist, and beyond, a black-scaled face and anguished eyes.

Furious, he tore the mace out of Kerryl's failing grasp and swung it, a truncated blow given the proximity of Kerryl's body, but again, Sha'Li's other claw flashed out to deflect the blow.

Kerryl fell to his knees between them, breathing heavily, like a beast of burden that had been run to exhaustion and beyond.

Eben stared, stunned, at the lizardman girl. What was she
doing
?

Kerryl rocked back onto his heels, away from the weapons and claws locked over his head. He staggered to his feet while Eben and Sha'Li's weapons strained against one another. Without breaking his horrified stare at Sha'Li, Eben sensed Kerryl taking a step backward. Another step.

The nature guardian turned and fled into the night.

Sha'Li's claws retracted with a metallic slither into her fists, and Eben's weapons fell to his sides. He watched in numb disbelief as she turned without a word and disappeared into the trees.

They'd followed Kerryl and Kendrick for
weeks
. Kendrick himself had told them he was enslaved to Kerryl. Sha'Li knew Eben's fondest wish in life was to free his friend and brother, Kendrick, and she'd foiled him. She'd chosen that filthy, mad nature guardian over him. Over their friendship. Over her admiration for Kendrick, an innocent in all of this.

Eben could only draw one conclusion. She'd betrayed him. She'd betrayed them all.

*   *   *

Will scowled as Rynn announced grimly, “Have a care. Tarryn is still out here somewhere in her bestial form. She will kill us as readily as she took down that hound.”

“Where is it?” Raina asked. “The hound she killed. I must try to save it.”

Will answered, “You will never find it. Tarryn could have dragged it hundreds of feet from here by now. Let the beast resurrect if it can.” And good riddance it was.

Raina opened her mouth to protest, but the unicorn whinnied in alarm just then. “Help me cut the unicorn loose,” she cried, wading urgently toward the beast.

It yanked violently against the ropes, snorting and shaking its head, in what looked like fury and panic. The creature was huge, its muscular back level with Will's nose. And it looked violent.

Raina held up her right hand, presumably showing the beast the ring upon her finger. Although if the ring was there, it was as covered in mud as the rest of her. But the unicorn stilled, breathing hard. Its great, brown eyes rolled, showing the whites, and its nostrils flared, red inside. But the trembling creature let Raina approach. Cautiously, she stroked its shoulder. It snorted under her touch, but it let her slide her hand to one of the thick ropes around its neck. Using the herb dagger from her belt, she commenced sawing at the heavy hemp.

“Let me do that,” Rynn said. “It'll take you a week using that tiny thing.” He scooped up one of the discarded short swords from the downed boglins and used its toothed edge to saw through the rope.

In the middle of the laborious sawing process, Eben returned to the clearing. He looked as if he'd seen a ghost. “You okay?” Will asked as he cautiously sawed at a rope around one of the unicorn's front legs.

Eben made a noncommittal sound.

“What of Kerryl and the hunter?”

“Kerryl dropped the hunter—” Raina lurched, and he added hastily, “But he did not kill the guy. As for Kerryl…” Eben paused, and then added shortly, “He got away.”

“Where's Sha'Li?” Raina asked the jann.

“No idea.”

“Should we go look for her?” Rosana chimed in.

“No!”

Will looked up, surprised at the sharpness of Eben's reply.

His jaw clenched, Eben went to work with his sword on the second rope on the other side of the unicorn's neck. The creature seemed to understand that they helped it and stayed still. Which was a boon. Will had never imagined that horses were this big or this intimidating.

“Can you talk to it?” Rosana asked him.

Will looked at her, surprised. “Me?”

“You have a connection to nature.”

He tried to cast his mind outward, to touch the thoughts of the beast in front of him. Nothing. His talent lay in plant-based life, not animals.

Raina laid her hand on the unicorn's side and spoke soothingly to it. “I'm going to find the rope around your hind leg now. Easy, Cerebus.”

The unicorn's ears flicked back toward her as if he recognized his name.

“Pass me a sword, Rynn.” Raina stuck her free hand out.

The paxan handed her the weapon, and she guided the blade below the muck to saw at unseen rope. Cerebus tossed his head from time to time, but he stood still while she went around to his far haunch and repeated the procedure on his other leg.

Will had been certain the beast would bolt the minute the last rope was freed, but strangely, it did not. Instead, it reached around and nudged Raina hard in the shoulder with its nose, nearly knocking her over.

“Why doesn't it teleport away from here to safety?” Rynn asked no one in particular.

Raina laid her hand on the beast's great, muscular neck. “Oh. Oh! I can hear him. The mud. It's magical. Keeps him from leaving. We must get it off of him.”

“Where?” Will demanded. They were all covered in the sticky, light brown stuff from head to foot.

“There was clear water outside the thorn wall,” Rosana offered.

“Can you lead it there?” he asked Raina.

She stared at nothing for a moment and then said, “He will come with us.”

They slogged back to the tangled wall without incident. For the moment, the boglins were hanging back and merely shouting invective from the trees in high-pitched voices. The unicorn was much larger than Will, so when he asked the vines to move aside for them, Will specifically asked for a very large opening.

They stepped through the thorn barrier. He'd never thought to be so glad to see plain, old swamp. Will closed the gap in the wall and joined the others in scooping up handfuls of water and rinsing themselves off. Hopefully, the boglins would remain trapped on the other side.

They headed for a patch of high ground. The unicorn stood fully a tall as Will, its shoulders and hindquarters broad and wrapped in muscle. The creature's neck arched proudly, but this was no dainty creature of hearth tales. This steed looked like it could defend itself violently or attack as necessary.

Raina poured her waterskin over the unicorn's back. He shivered and stamped his hooves in response. A patch of white horsehair plastered to dark skin became visible. The unicorn threw his head, sending mud from his mane flying everywhere.

There was no way to avoid the sheets of flying mud. Filthy, Will and the others refilled their waterskins and poured them over the unicorn again and again. It was a laborious process, for the mud was stubborn, and the surface area in need of cleaning large.

They had most of the unicorn's left side cleaned off and had moved around to work on the creature's right side when, without warning, a boglin ran up out of the darkness and flung a bucketful of mud at the unicorn's clean side, splashing it all over the gleaming white hide, and then darted away into the shadows.

“Are you kidding me?” Will groused.

Rynn actually laughed. Will might have found it funny were he not more than a little intimidated by the stomping hooves and tossing head of the skittish equine.

“All right,” Rynn said in amusement. “Everyone but the healers take up defensive positions around the horse while Raina and Rosana keep giving Cerebus his bath.”

It was infuriating how the boglins timed their attacks to throw buckets of mud at both unicorn and defenders just when one or the other managed to get mostly clean. They came in waves that made keeping them back from the partially washed unicorn nigh impossible.

Somewhere in the seemingly fruitless process, Tarryn waded—on two legs—out of the shadows toward them.

“Good to see you,” Eben said sincerely. “We were worried about you.”

Tarryn nodded but said nothing. Will wasn't sure what he would say if he'd recently been a gigantic alligator who attacked and ate everything in sight.

The next wave of boglins approached, buckets in hand. The first one tossed an arc of mud at Tarryn, catching her full in the chest.

“What the—” the kindari yelled. She growled, and Will was alarmed to see her left eye glowing scarlet as she looked around angrily. The boglins, en masse, dropped their buckets, squeaked in terror, and fled for their lives.