Chapter 13: Chapter 13

We found the place in the early afternoon. All of us - the horses and the people, were feeling the exhaustion of no sleep and constant flight for our lives, but we kept pushing until the woods and hill split for a moment. Ahead was a wide crevasse in the side of a hill, another copse growing in its shelter, the back of which ended at a steep rock escarpment about thirty feet high.

The plan came together quickly. Everyone except Shilling and I would quickly make their way around the wide mouth of the crevasse and take up positions at the end on the highest ground. Shilling, being the youngest and most spry of us all, would wait on foot in the centre of the crevasse entrance until the wyldemen could clearly see him, and then he would scarper into the copse and then climb his way out at the back. The wyldemen would be trapped, and in their mindless state of rage we hoped they would simply attempt to climb after Shilling, leaving them easy pickings for the archers and staggered in their approach for the Lancers and man-at-arms at the cliff edge.

I left them there, clasping a hand with Gresham as he gave me a grim grin. Nodding with Sir Zeklan. Sir Constance and I just met gazes for a moment, and she offered me neither well nor ill wishes.

"Don't die," Giddy said just as I was peeling off, and the others were moving to circle around to their position on the far end of the escarpment.

"Have I done that yet?" I asked.

"No, but don't start practising," she said. "You still need to teach me how to swing a sword properly."

"Maybe we'll start with a knife," I said.

She smirked, though I could still see the worry in her eyes. "I'm holding you to that."

I left, riding Castor quickly in the opposite direction of the others and heading for a flat-topped hill I could see in the distance.

The braying remained at the back of my mind. It had been howling on the wind for so many hours now that I wondered if perhaps I was imagining it, or if it was still there. But when I turned, at the top of a rise, and looked back I could see the black mass of the wyldemen tearing their way out of a stand of trees, still following our trail.

They were near-human, at least in form. How were they simply able to push their bodies to such lengths? No food, no rest, running on often bare feet and naked through all manner of weather and forest, and they did not hesitate. I would have thought them undead, simply bodies controlled by some otherworldly mind, but they had instincts. They hunted.

"It doesn't matter," I sighed to myself, shaking my head. This would be over sooner than later, and one way or another. Hopefully, I'd be alive to know which it was.

When I reached my destination, I realized that my view of the battle site from the flat hilltop was marred by a tree line. More's the pity, I thought. My decisions couldn't be based on my troupe's success anyways.

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I unslung the horn from the side of my saddle. Morio had offered it to me, the jolly footman demanding its safe return. It was big even for a hunting horn, and he claimed it had been fashioned out of a minotaur's horn. I doubted it, though I had never seen one of the creatures myself, and assumed it was from some extra large bull. The rim, and the mouthpiece, were capped in shiny brass, and when I brought it to my lips I hesitated a moment and closed my eyes.

Fuck it, I thought and blasted air through the horn.

The first sound was a strangled, hollow whine. "Augh, fuck," I said, pulling the horn from my lips. I'd used horns before, but this thing was strange, almost too large. I placed it on my lips again and blew lower, and a deep resonant tone erupted from the thing as it vibrated in my hands. I blasted four more notes, hearing it echo back to me from the hills, then lowered it and waited.

You want a fight, I'll give you a fight, I thought. Come to me.

He did.

He came from the east, from the direction we had been travelling in, and he trod up the hill in a lazy saunter. His bottom half was equine at first appearance, with the bulk and shape of a mighty warhorse, except that instead of fetlocks and hooves each of his lower limbs ended in black clawed paws. The fur on this part of him was like that of a shaggy pony from the far southern climates, unpopular in the Kingdoms but considered a rarity because of the thick hair that required constant care. This beast certainly did not give himself that care, he was matted and ragged and unkempt. His torso, starting about where the base of the neck on a horse would be just as a centaur would, was lean and muscled but filthy with dirt and unwashed years of sweat and travel. He might have been considered skinny if it were not for his sheer size making that word sound ridiculous for the beast. His arms, corded with muscles in a structure that seemed wrong for his human-like shape, ended in gnarled hands with large, cracked nails thick enough to be called talons. The worst of him was his face - distended like that of the wyldemen but more equine than goat, except where they seemed crazed and almost a caricature of humanity this beast was predatory. His eyes were yellow, with slits like a snake instead of the boxy goat pupils of his fellows, and the nose at the end of his muzzle was pierced with a bone shard. He carried in one hand a spear, more like a glaive for the size of the iron blade at its tip, and around his neck on a leather thong he wore a jawbone with distinct, blackened teeth.

"You wanted a fight," I shouted at the beast, spreading my arms. "Here I am."

"Yes, here you are," the beast said, causing me to hesitate. His voice was deep, a rumble that I would expect would be the voice of a great plains cat, and his distended mouth twisted around the words of the common tongue like it was painful for him to speak it. I certainly hadn't been expecting that.

"Who are you?" I finally asked. "Why do the wyldemen chase us?"

He chuckled, like gravel grinding on gravel. "I am the herald of my master, the Hunter, who shall bring down the walls and return all to its natural state. And they chase because they can, and because they hunger for the soft flesh of prey."

"Do I seem like prey to you?" I asked, hefting my lance in my hand.

He smirked and sniffed through those large nostrils on his snout. "No, kin-thing. You smell like a runt in need of a lesson."

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