EXILED: Lord of Cragsclaw Read online

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  CLAWS FLEXED in anticipation, the hunter waited. Sunlight reflected in golden waves of his rich brown fur as his long, hard muscles braced for coming chase. His golden eyes narrowed to tiny slits, he watched the bundor graze.

  From his throat a deep rumble rose. He knew it was inaudible even a few paces away, but he fought it back anyway. To the rest of the hunters his dark fur made him conspicuous enough. He wanted no noise to render him more conspicuous still.

  One of the bucks raised its head. He froze, pressing his face into the dying grass. He felt his tail quiver, only his long years of practice stopping it from swishing with the tension of the moment.

  Across his back a curved sword was sheathed, its weight held by a crossed harness. His only other clothing was the knee-length pants fashioned from the skin of the aelish that ran wild in the lands near the sea. Dyed in wide strips of green and tan, they hid him in the dry autumn grasses. In the soft, warm earth beneath these grasses he now dug his claws, waiting, like the others, for the exact moment to spring.

  A bull raised its head. He was the largest male in the herd, easily ten mrem heavy. The hunter knew, merely from the animal’s movements, that this was the arbunda, the leader of the herd and the focus of their beast-magic. The arbunda’s nearly hairless skin was scarred from mating battles, while one horn, yellow and cracked, stood crooked on his head. The hunter knew this old hull would be wary. The unwary did not live to be old.

  The arbunda’s tail flinched. Talwe’s jerked in response. For a dozen heartbeats the huge bunda seemed to stare at the hunter’s feline figure, and Talwe’s claws dug deeper into the earth. But then the great animal bent once more to crop at the grass that filled the valley. When its head lifted up a few seconds later, Talwe wondered if the beast was watching to see if he’d moved again.

  If he was, he made no sign.

  Pressing his face to the ground, Talwe smelled the richness of the autumn soil. He felt his whiskers responding to a vagrant breeze that began to sway the drying stalks. Against his belly, the moist warmth of the earth contrasted pleasantly with the crispness of the autumn air that spilled down from the mountains on every side. Days ago he had seen the snow that was already staying on the mountain’s higher slopes; he knew that the winter would be cold and long.

  After today, there would be no more Hunts.

  This year had been better than most, with the field growing thick with grain and grass, and the bundor herds staying close by. The God of the Hunt had been kind, and the Goddess of the Harvest was soon to be generous. But the cold was early, and Talwe wondered what that meant. If it came too soon, the greatest harvest of all could not keep the village from knowing death.

  As he waited in silence, listening to the breeze through the songomore trees straight ahead, Talwe’s mind turned once more to the thoughts he could never renounce. Like all mrem of the wilds, he loved the Hunts and he loved the land, and as he lay here now he knew he should feel content. But he knew as well that the other mrem did not want him, and that if the Hunt claimed his life the Village would mourn but their life would go on as it always had.

  It bothered him to think of himself as an outsider. He had been raised in the village, his skills had provided meat for the village, and the village entrusted the secrets of the Hunt to him. But when the Hunt was not on, or when the village was not threatened, the village looked only at the strangeness of his fur. Talwe’s was brown, and his eyes were gold; to the others, with their fur of tan and their eyes of green, he was as alien and strange as the liskash of their dreams.

  He was with them, but he was apart. Strange how he knew these mrem, knew them as childhood playmates and sharers in mischief, knew them as fellow hunters and even fellow warriors, and yet, often, knew them not at all. For the hours of the day he felt himself one of them, sometimes joking and other times serious, sometimes at ease and other times intense, sometimes chasing females and other times chasing dreams. But at night, when there was not hunting, when there was no need for his skills, Talwe the hunter would sit in his hut and sense he still was not part of the village where he had spent his entire life. He felt that he was apart from them, but he wanted to be one with them.

  A rustling to the left jolted him. Ondra was crawling forward through the grass, moving slightly toward the front of the bundor’s advance, hoping to gain a better position for the chase. He had never earned the kill. Talwe glanced to his right, where Forun remained motionless, then to his rear, where all he could see was the grass gently sweeping in the breeze.

  His temptation was to move, to follow Ondra because moving was always better than lying still. But since nobody else was moving at all, why was Ondra? He risked a glance at the bull bunda. It was still visibly nervous. Even Forun, whose impatience caused the village no end of trouble, hadn’t begun to advance. What was Ondra doing? Slowly, noiselessly, Talwe carefully stretched his left arm toward his friend. His claws extended slightly from the strain. Moving too quickly would be a mistake, because it would alert Forun as well as the mrem behind him. So far, nobody seemed to have noticed Ondra’s movement, but Talwe was closest and his hearing had always been exceptional. The sound of Ondra’s fur brushing past the dried stalks sounded loud. It was only a matter of seconds before Ondra’s motion would be noticed by the big bunda.

  And if it was noticed, it might spoil the Hunt.

  Talwe’s arm snaked toward Ondra’s ankle. He moved so slowly his heart beat three dozen times before they almost touched. His friend was still too far, but only by inches. Talwe wanted to shift, to turn his body so his reach would be longer, but he couldn’t without making a sound of his own. Instead he waited, muscles tensed and hand starting to shake, for the exact moment to strike. Finally the bull turned, distracted by the flight of a bird.

  Now.

  His hand clutched Ondra’s ankle, and the crawling mrem stopped. Talwe squeezed with all his strength, until Ondra’s kicking reflex was entirely subdued, then carefully relaxed his grip. For several seconds Ondra lay completely silent, but Talwe could feel the youth’s leg shaking with barely harnessed tension. The young hunter’s tail was held rigid. His pale tan fur was rising along the spine. Slowly Ondra’s head turned toward him, and the two mrem stared hard at each other. Finally the younger mrem dropped his shoulders to the ground, and Talwe let his hand fall away.

  I’ll pay for that, he thought. And the thought sent a chill down his fur, for Ondra was the one mrem he called friend. So many others still barely tolerated him, even after all these years. Talwe was tired of being such easy game for the duels in the village that used words and feelings for weapons.

  Even if he were not slightly different, Talwe knew, still Ondra would exact some kind of revenge. He had to or admit his own error. In all likelihood nobody had even noticed the exchange, but Ondra would feel disgraced nonetheless. Ondra had tried to act, had tried to make this Hunt his own, and Talwe had stopped him. They needed a kill to stock the larders for the winter. The others would approve of Talwe’s action, but Ondra might hate him for it. And when Ondra was angry, when any young mrem was, always there would be a victim of that animosity. But especially when Talwe was the one hated. It had been that way so long, everyone accepted it as simply the way things were.

  If only he were exactly like them, he thought, instead of just almost like them. He too was a mrem, and just as worthy as any. He was brave in battle, and one of the best hunters. He often won the mock duels. He had even led the band that killed the bandits who had raided their tents two winters ago.

  They had praised him as fearless when he had scaled the cliff in a bl
izzard to save Sreema’s lost child. He had been afraid then. It was foolish not to be afraid of all the things that should be feared. Even now he dreaded the magic of the beasts. Like all villagemrem, he stood in terror of the Na-mrem, the nameless black-furred butchers who sailed up the Targra from the sea, raiding the villages along the coast and on the banks of the lower river. Travelers brought tales of their god-cursed killings, their slicing with blindingly fast claws any who stood in their path, their rape of the females, and their capture of the children. The elders told of how a few Na-mrem, long ago, had penetrated as far inland as the village just to the south. They were defeated by the villagemrem before they could do any damage to the buildings, but not before they had killed twice their number. For the most part, though, the Na-mrem stopped before they reached Ar, because the army of the great city was large and strong. But the Na-mrem were evil incarnate, as all mrem children knew.

  The Da-mrem were different. They were not villagers, because to the north few villages existed. They dwelled in the wilderness, finding whatever food and shelter they needed in the mountains and on the plains. And their attacks were only rumors, told in tales on a cloudless night when the godfeast was near its end. Only the elders had ever seen a Da-mrem, and these had only been silhouettes against the trees north of the mountains. The only reason to fear them, it seemed, was that they were strangers who lived differently and their fur, unlike the tan-colored fur of the villagemrem, was often a deeper, richer brown.

  Like Talwe’s.

  The fur down the mrem’s back bristled as the muscle below tightened. The tips of his claws scratched against the inside of his hands, almost drawing blood. Talwe didn’t notice, lost in his thoughts while waiting for the herd to settle.

  The Na-mrem and the Da-mrem invaded all children’s dreams. How he hated those stories. Hated them because during their telling, he knew that the eyes of the other mrem were on him, wondering if his fur was the fur of the Da-mrem, wondering if the Da-mrem had his gold eyes as well. Gold eyes, eyes the color of the glorious treasures of the great city of Ar, not the green of the reeds that line the banks of the Targra, the green that tells the villagemrem they are the children of the river god. But the tales said nothing of the Da-mrem’s eyes, only of the hue of their fur, and the tales said it is a dark brown, darker by far than the grain-brown of Talwe’s. In the minds of the others, though, Talwe’s brown was dark enough.

  Another sound. This time far ahead. The bundor were circling, he knew without raising his head, circling for their ritual of grazing and resting. As always, the circling was loud, the hooves of the animals trampling the grass almost in unison, as if the bundor knew what it was to dance. Talwe smiled at this, because the very thought was absurd. Dancing was a mrem-trait, not an animal-trait. Like all animals, the bundor knew only two things: how to find food, and how to use magic. Only the mrem were Dancers.

  And, oh, what Dancers! Talwe smiled as he thought of the night gone by, of the beauty and then the terror of the dance of story and the dance of battle, of the glorious rhythms that promised the graceful hunt of the bundor. He thought of Arigain, Torwen’s beautiful daughter, her fur glowing near-white against the brightness of the moon, her fur so soft to the touch. She had stepped and whirled, slowly and carefully at first, then quickly and wantonly, ending her ritual with a finger pointing not at Forun, whom she had favored, but at Talwe, who had never been chosen before. With this gesture, he well knew, came the expectation that he would succeed in the Hunt. And when he did she would reward him. Where that left Forun, nobody really knew.

  Forun’s reaction was easy to predict. He had left the dance, his eyes glaring hatred for the mrem chosen in his place. Doubly so since the mrem was Talwe.

  Suddenly Talwe’s head shook, the muscles on his neck contracting so severely that they hurt. The fur on his back, which had just settled, bristled once more as did that on his tail. Looking from side to side, for a moment he could not believe that Forun and Ondra were not reacting. Something was near, something was about to move against them. What, Talwe did not know. A stampede, maybe. It had happened before. Not too many years ago, three valleys over, a Hunt had lost twenty hunters to a stampede—a story too horrible even to be danced. Their village had to be abandoned when there was not enough meat for the next cold season. But the stamping of the bundor was the stamping of feeding, no different from any stamping he had ever heard before. He had, it seemed, no reason to worry.

  But again the muscles of his upper back spasmed, this time more violently. A sudden pain struck his heart, as if someone had thrown a rock at him or swung a hammer against his chest. His breath caught in his throat, and he could hear himself start to breathe sharply. Unknowingly, he extended the claws of his feet and hands. Then he understood. Not now, be prayed silently to his god, not now, when the Hunt is about to start. The others, their senses alert for the Hunt, would notice this time. The dark-furred hunter glanced guiltily at the hunter to his left.

  With all the force he could muster he commanded his screaming nerves not to react, willed his coiled muscles not to spring, disciplined his mind to think only of Her, because only with the goddess Inla’s strength could he hope to gather the calm he needed.

  He failed. Instead Talwe broke. A bolt of pain, sharper than any he had ever felt, stabbed him into movement. Frightened and shaking, Talwe had held back as long as he could, then when red began to blur his vision the hunter jumped to his feet, turned away from the bundor herd, and dived for the shelter of a small bush. He next found himself back on the ground, his head crashing against the foot of the mrem who lay behind him, and his back hot with the sting of blood.

  In that instant, from all around him, the mrem leapt to their feet. Toward the bundor they sprinted, one third breaking north, one third south, the final third approaching from where they lay near Talwe. Eighty hunters in all they were, some clutching swords, others long knives. Other, younger mrem, mostly those who stayed near Talwe, raised their wooden spears in the posture of the throw. They wouldn’t throw them, Talwe knew—at least not until the swordsmrem and the knifesmrem had failed. Spearmrem, now as always, saw action only when the rest of the Hunt had failed.

  Rolling himself over, Talwe felt each single long blade of grass burn into his throbbing back. He raised himself to his elbows, listening to the screams of the hunters as he waited for his sight to clear. When it did, his head fell to his chest. Where he had lain, embedded deep in the earth, was a songomore branch half the thickness of his body. A second longer, and more than his back would have suffered.

  The bundor had drifted near a cluster of bushes, a herd of thirty, all of them facing toward Talwe and the spearmrem. For a moment, nothing happened. A deceptive quiet returned. The swordsmrem waited on Talwe’s left, the knifesmrem to his right. Neither mrem nor bundor moved.

  Another branch began to tear loose. It made a rending, grinding sound that was loud in the expectant silence. The hunters remained still, willing to risk being speared rather than spook the herd.

  But then the arbunda raised his head and bellowed, and with that sound the hunters raised their weapons above their heads. The arbunda began to run, the cows and calves following, the younger bulls joining in at the rear. These young ones looked sleek, their muscles rippling beneath their black skin, their necks only beginning to gain the thick, blood-red coat of the arbunda. One day, each of the bulls would compete to be the arbunda of the herd, and they learned what they needed to know from the arbunda that led them now.

  He led them well. Straight at the swordsmrem he charged, gaining full speed within only a handful of strides. Talwe watched as the swordsmrem stood motionless, patiently waiting until the bundor were exactly close enough. Then the first mrem turned and, just as the arbunda reached him, danced out of the way and began the Sprint of the Kill. In that moment, the Hunt was officially on.

  Turning toward the north, the swordsmrem followed their leader. The knifesmrem,
too, seeing that the bundor had gone toward the swordsmrem instead of them, sped from their waiting area to try to close the distance. Seeing this, the spearmrem lowered their spears and began to race as well. Out of place because he carried a sword, Talwe nonetheless ran beside them, since the rules of the Hunt stated that no hunter is allowed to close more quickly than the others in his group. At this thought he spat: had it not been for that songomore branch, he might already be alongside the herd.

  Suddenly, a scream rose above the bundor’s thundering hooves. Looking to the front of the herd, Talwe saw the leading mrem fly through the air and crumple against the trunk of a songomore. As if in response, two other mrem closed on the herd, both heading toward the younger bulls at the rear of the pack. Raising his sword above his head, the first mrem attacked.

  He missed. There was no disgrace in missing, at least nothing that the village would hold disgraceful, since a hunter who misses is embarrassed enough. Nor are there any second chances. Each hunter gets one attack; if he only wounds a bunda he stays, but if he misses he runs back into his group.

  A second young swordsmrem stepped out of the group and lifted his sword. Raising the Sprint-cry, he worked his way toward the young bulls. There he ran alongside them, waiting for the precise moment when the largest of the trailing bundor would step a few strides toward him. Finally it happened, and the mrem was ready. He swung his sword sharply down, past the bunda’s left shoulder and down toward its left rear leg. The blood danced from the gash, and the mrem raised his sword high. With one leap to the front he sliced through the right front leg, and the wounded bunda stumbled forward, staggering away from his fellow bulls.

  One down and honor gained. With relief, Talwe saw the hunter wasn’t Forun. Then he spotted the other mrem dashing ahead of the other swordsmrem and closing on the herd.

  Talwe ground his teeth as he ran, impatient to be part of the band of swordsmrem. When he saw the bunda stumble, he thought of defying the rules of the Sprint and leaving the spearmrem behind, but in a moment of hesitation he decided against it. Just a few steps more, he knew, and then the three groups of hunters would merge. When that happened, the only difficulty would be in asserting his time to attack.