The Hallowed Hunt

He blew out the candle, went back to bed, lay stiffly for a time, then got up again and felt in the dark in his saddlebags for a length of rope. He tied a loop tightly around his ankle, played out a length, and tied another loop around a lower bedpost. Clumsily, he wrapped himself in his covers again.

His head throbbed, and his strained shoulder pulsed like a knot of fire under his skin. He tossed, turned, came up short against his rope. Well, at least it worked. He started to doze in sheer exhaustion, turned, and came up short again. He wallowed onto his back once more and lay staring up into the dark, teeth clenched. His eyes felt coated in sand.

Better than dreaming. He’d had the wolf dream again, for the first time in months, though it was now only slippery fragments in his memory. He had more than one reason to fear sleep, it seemed.

How did I get into this position? A week ago, he had been a happy man, or at least, contented enough. He had a comfortable chamber in Lord Hetwar’s palace, a manservant, horse and clothing and arms by his lord’s grace, a stipend sufficient for his amusements. The bustle of the hallow king’s capital city at his feet. Better, he had an engagingly irregular but solid rank in the sealmaster’s household, and a reputation as a trusted aide—not quite bravo, not quite clerk, but a man to be relied upon for unusual tasks discreetly done. As Hetwar’s high courier, he delivered rewards intact, and threats suitably nuanced. He was not, he thought, proudly honest, as some men; perhaps he’d simply lost too much already to be tempted by trumpery. Indifference served him quite as well as integrity, and sometimes served Hetwar even better. His most pleasurable reward had usually been to have his curiosity satisfied.

Bastard’s hell, three days ago he’d been an untroubled man. He had figured the retrieval of Boleso’s body and killer to be a joyless but perfectly straightforward task. Well within his capabilities as an experienced, tough-minded, shrewd, and above all, not in the least wolf-haunted or in any other way whatsoever uncanny royal servant.

The rope yanked his ankle again. His right hand clenched in the memory of his sword hilt. Curse that leopard girl! If she’d just lain down under Boleso like any other self-interested wench, spread her legs and thought of the jewelry and fine clothing she would undoubtedly have earned, all this could have been avoided. And Ingrey wouldn’t be lying here with a line of bloody embroidery itching in his hair, half the muscles in his body twitching in agony, tied to his own bed, waiting for a leaden dawn.

Wondering if he was still sane.

CHAPTER FOUR

THEY ESCAPED REEDMERE LATER IN THE MORNING THAN Ingrey had desired, owing to the insistence of the lord-divine in making a ceremony, with more choirs, out of loading Boleso’s coffin aboard its new carrier. The wagon at least was tolerable—very well made, with somber draperies disguising its bright paint, if not the distinct smell of beer lingering about it. The six horses that came with it were grand tawny beasts, massive of shoulder, haunch, and hoof, with orange and black ribbons braided in manes and bound-up tails. The bells on their glossy harness were muffled with black flannel, for which Ingrey, head still throbbing from yesterday’s blow, was grateful. Compared to their usual load, Ingrey imagined, the team would tow Boleso up hills and through mire as effortlessly as a child’s sled.

Rider Gesca recoiled at the close view of Ingrey when helping him to mount up, then intercepted Ingrey’s glower and swallowed any comment. Ingrey had shaved, and the divine’s servants had returned his riding leathers dry, supple, and buffed; but there was nothing he could do about the squinting, bloodshot eyes and gray, puffy face. He clenched his teeth, settling his aching body into his saddle, and endured the slow procession to the town gate through the clamor of bells and chants and billows of incense that Reedmere thought becoming to the prince’s send-off. Ingrey waited till the town had passed out of sight behind them before waving the new teamster to chirp his beasts into a lumbering trot. The dray horses seemed the only cheerful members of the party, fresh and ponderously frisky and apparently regarding the jaunt as some horse holiday.

Lady Ijada appeared as trim as she had yesterday morning, now in an even more elegant riding habit of gray-blue trimmed with silver thread. Clearly, she had slept through the night. Ingrey wavered between resentful and relieved, as his headache waxed and waned. An hour into the bright morning, he began to feel about as recovered as he was likely to get. Almost human. He gritted his teeth at the bitter joke and rode up and down the column taking stock.

Ijada’s new female attendant, one of the middle-aged Temple servants on loan from Reedmere, rode in the wagon. She was wary of her ward, much more frigid than the rural wife from Boar’s Head who had known more of Boleso. She seemed even more wary of Ingrey. He wondered if the woman had told Ijada of his sleepwalking episode.

Boleso’s retainers, too, seemed edgier today, as they drew closer to Easthome and whatever chastisement awaited them for their failure to keep their banished prince alive. More than one cast glances of dark resentment at Boleso’s victim-and-slayer, and Ingrey resolved to keep them from both drink and his prisoner until he could turn the whole lot and their dead leader over to someone, anyone, else. Ingrey had dispatched a Temple courier last night to Sealmaster Hetwar with the cortege’s projected itinerary. If Hetwar left it to his discretion, Ingrey decided, Boleso was going to be galloped to his burial in record time.

If not at a gallop, the great horses moved them briskly and steadily through a countryside growing kinder, with wider roads mostly in better repair. Narrow pastures surrounded by vast precipitous forests gave way to tracts of merely hilly woodlands surrounded by broad fields. The eye might see more than one hamlet on the horizon at a time. They began to pass other traffic—not just farm wagons, but well-clad riders and petty merchants with pack mules—all of whom hastened to give way. An exception was a drove of lean black pigs encountered in an oak woods. The swineherd and his boy, not expecting to encounter such a royal procession on their road, lost control of their half-wild beasts, and Ingrey’s and Boleso’s men, variously amused and annoyed, had to assist in clearing the path, hooting, swearing, and swinging the flats of their sheathed swords.

Ingrey checked himself; this squealing prey did not seem to attract or excite him unduly, which was as well. He sat his horse in grim silence till the pigs had been driven again into the tangled verge. Lady Ijada, he noted, also sat her horse quietly, waiting, although with a curious inward expression on her face.

He did not attempt speech with her on the ride. His guards, by his order, kept close to her while she was mounted, and the servant woman dutifully dogged her steps during the stops to rest the horses. But his eye returned to her constantly. All too often he crossed her grave glance at him: not a frown of fear, more a look of concern. As though he were her charge. It was most irritating, as though they were tied to each other by a tugging leash, like a pair of coupled hounds. Not looking at or speaking with her seemed to consume all his energy and attention, and left him exhausted.

It had been a long and wearisome day when they rumbled at last into the royal free town of Red Dike. The town’s proud status left it subject neither to local earl nor Temple lord-divine, but ruled by its own town council under a king’s charter. Alas, this did not result in any diminution of ceremony, and Ingrey was trapped for some time as his hosts carried Boleso’s coffin into the temple—stone-built in the Darthacan style, its five lobes rounded and domed—for the night.

The town’s superior size, however, meant it had not merely a larger inn, but three of them, and Ingrey had mustered the wit that morning to instruct his advance scout to bespeak rooms. The middle hostelry had also proved the cleanest. Ingrey himself escorted Lady Ijada and her warden up to its second floor, and the bedchamber and private parlor his man had secured. He inspected the portals. The windows overlooked the street, were small, and could not be readily accessed from the ground. The door bars were sound solid oak. Good.

He dug the rooms’ keys from his belt pouch and handed them to Lady Ijada. The woman warden frowned curiously at him, but did not dare demur.