Don Bassingthwaite - The Killing Song

Geth blinked. “Medala?” he asked and Breff nodded.

Ekhaas stared at the hunter. “You’ve seen her with the horde?” she asked in disbelief. Breff’s face darkened again, though this time in shame instead of anger.

“The Bonetree clan is not what it was,” he said. “Our numbers are small. We’ve left the ancestor mound. Other clans eat our territory and would hunt us if they could find us. We live by stealth now instead of strength.” He looked up again and thrust out his chest. “But we still live, and we see more than we did when we were strong. We’ve been among the horde. We have seen. If you let us, weretouched, we will stand with you to bring down one who brought us down.”

The words and the gesture made Geth look at him for second time, and he realized with a start that Breff was younger than he’d taken him to be-not as young as the girl who stood behind him, but still a young man. Young, daring, and angry. Maybe the same age as Ashi. Maybe the same age Geth had been at Narath.

Cousin Bear and Grandmother Wolf, he thought, was that what I was like?

Ekhaas’s ears, however, bent at Breff’s words and her eyes narrowed. “The weretouched,” she said, “also brought you down, didn’t he? He fought the Bonetree clan. He wounded Dah’mir. Will you try to bring him down too?”

Breff turned on her, his entire body stiff. “Rond betch! You strike my honor! The weretouched has rond e reis . We’ve met blood for blood. He fights as I fight. He is an enemy to be valued, not one to betray. If I meant to bring him down-”

“-we wouldn’t be talking.” Ekhaas bent her head. “I apologize.”

And in doing so glanced sideways at Geth. He saw approval in her eyes. She thought Breff could be trusted.

Except that Geth wasn’t sure he wanted to trust the huntmaster and his hunters.

He could understand respect for an enemy. He’d battled foes worthy of respect. He could understand uniting against a common enemy-he’d done that too.

But working with the enemy that had devastated Bull Hollow made his stomach churn. He could see the hamlet burning, hear the screams of terror, could recall the names of the dead. All of them, not just Adolan. He could remember exchanging blows with Breff too, the hunter’s blade crashing against his gauntlet and against Wrath …

No, he realized, that wasn’t right. In Bull Hollow he’d still carried his old Blademarks-issue sword. If he’d fought Breff with Wrath, it had been at the battle before the Bonetree mound. And had it been Breff? He’d fought through so many dolgrims and Bonetree hunters in both battles that he couldn’t be sure.

We’ve met blood for blood, Breff had said. Geth looked at the huntmaster and at the hunters standing behind him, hands still on their weapons. How many of their friends had he killed? Ashi had been a Bonetree hunter. She would have been huntmaster if she hadn’t turned her back on Dah’mir. How many of her friends had he killed? They’d never talked about it. He’d never thought of it. Had Ashi?

Blood for blood. The Bonetree had been devastated just as Bull Hollow had. If they’d left the mound, they must have been broken, and like Ashi, they’d turned their back on Dah’mir. They weren’t a threat anymore.

But Medala and whatever plan was unfolding in her mad mind were.

Geth’s stomach still churned, but he clenched his jaw against it and glared at Breff. “You can stand with me against Medala,” he said, “but if we ever meet again on another battlefield, I’ll cut you down.”

Breff’s smile was cold. “And I would do the same.” He squatted down and picked another blushing fruit out of the pile. “Tell me what your plan is, weretouched. Both you and the horde travel toward the ancestor mound. You’ll find nothing there. It is a haunted place now.”

“My name is Geth, not ‘weretouched,’” Geth growled at him. “And yes, we travel toward the mound. We have to reach it before the blue moon is full and before the orc horde.” He said nothing of Medala’s prediction that Dah’mir would return. He had a feeling it might change the hunter’s mind about their alliance.

“You might reach it before the moon, but not before the horde. The orcs travel faster than you. They’ll catch up to you. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow.” Breff studied Geth, then bit into the fruit. “What would happen,” he asked, juice running from the corner of his mouth, “if you reached the mound after them?”

They hid in an abandoned animal den tucked among the roots of an old and dying tree. The tree stood at the base of a low bluff carved by some vanished river, leaning at such an angle that Geth could guess it had begun its life higher up the bluff and been carried down by the collapse of the slope.

They were packed in close together, all except the youngest of the Bonetree hunters, who still lingered outside, keeping watch. The sweat from their bodies was strong in Geth’s nose. Breff had run all of them through much of the night-the moonlight was bright enough for the human hunters to see-before they reached the den. The rabbits and grass rats that the hunters had brought along didn’t help either.

Breff had insisted that the orcs of the horde wouldn’t notice. “They will come and be gone,” he had said, “then we will emerge and follow them without danger. Che rond orc sao to sari che -the fierce orc sees only what is ahead.”

They wouldn’t be able to scout the area around the Bonetree mound before the horde arrived, but Geth had to admit that the idea was far better than having the horde catch them on the way there. And once they did reach the mound, they would have expert guides as well. It had been the hunters’ home for generations, after all.

What would they find there? Over the nights that he and Ekhaas had run before the horde, Geth had built a picture in his head of the Bonetree clan waiting for the orcs, angry at their defeat in the first battle before the mound and ready to take their revenge. From what Breff had described as they ran through the night, his imagination had been far from the mark. He’d assured Geth that the mound was abandoned. Even the dolgrims had retreated into the tunnels beneath and hadn’t ventured out. The declaration made Geth wondered even more about Medala’s motives in leading the horde to the mound. Could she really just want revenge on Dah’mir?

He tried to still his thoughts and empty his mind. Waiting for an enemy’s approach had never been his strength. Waiting before an attack, picking the time to strike, stalking an enemy-that he could handle. It brought an energy to him. Waiting for someone else to attack just made him fidget.

And fidgeting brought him a sharp elbow in the side from Ekhaas. The hobgoblin lay squeezed in at his left in the darkness. “Remain still,” she threatened him softly, “or I will sing you into paralysis.”

Geth let out a hissing breath in an attempt to calm himself. Ekhaas hissed in return. “Your breath smells.”

“We all smell,” he grumbled at her. He held his breath for a moment, though, trying to calm his racing heart. When the thunder of it had eased a little, he glanced at Ekhaas. For the night-blind humans, the den must have been in deep darkness. The little light that crept through the mouth of the hole was enough to let him see her clearly. “Tak for taking charge when we met the hunters,” he said. “I was too angry to talk to them.”

She snorted slightly, raising a small puff of dust from the ground. “That was obvious.”

“How did you know what to say to Breff?”

Ekhaas’s ears stood up. “I am a duur’kala . We are the diplomats of the heirs of Dhakaan.”

“That wasn’t like any diplomacy I’ve ever seen.”