Энтони Райан - Queen of Fire

The hunters crawled forward until they formed a line parallel to the shaman, lying prone with spears in hand. The grass that grew on the tundra was stunted, providing little cover but also a clear view of the horizon. Each hunter carried three spears, all with barbed iron heads, Vaelin noting the scratchlike script with which they had decorated the hafts. Every spear had its own story, it seemed.

“Ever hunt the great elk?” Kiral asked, notching an arrow to her bow.

Vaelin shook his head, readying his own bow. His arrows were all suited for war rather than hunting, narrow and pointed to pierce mail or armour, so Kiral passed him three of her own, barbed like the huntersʼ spear-heads but fashioned from the same unbreakable black glass used by the Seordah. “One wonʼt suffice,” she told him. “Ignore the flanks and aim for the neck.”

He heard them before he saw them, a thunderous tremor reverberating through the ground accompanied by the faint yelping of wolves. When the leading elk came into view it seemed at first as if a tree had suddenly sprouted on the skyline, a broad-branching silhouette bobbing as it grew in size, a small forest springing up around it. He had seen the Eorhil sporting fragments of elk antler and gained an appreciation of their size from the Wolf Peopleʼs cave painting, but the sight of a living beast was truly impressive. The first stag to appear had antlers fully ten feet across, the animal itself standing almost as high as two men, raising a thick cloud of dust as it sped towards them, head low, the tips of the antlers as long as sword blades.

When the elk were within thirty paces the hunters rose as one, their spears flying free in quick succession, the lead stag and two others tumbling to the ground in a mass of flailing hooves and shattered antlers. The rest of the herd veered away from the danger, streaking off to the north with the wolves in pursuit. One of the wounded stags managed to rise, snorting and swaying its part-broken antlers about, before charging directly at the nearest hunter. Kiral sent an arrow into its neck, Vaelin following with two more, but the animal barely slowed, antlers scraping the ground as it bore down on the hunter. However, it transpired he had little need of their help, sprinting forward at the last second to leap over the stagʼs head, revolving in the air to plant both hands on its neck and vault himself over it in a somersault that would have impressed any acrobat.

The stag snorted and wheeled about, trailing blood and bellowing in frustration before Kiral finished it with a carefully aimed shaft through its eye, a feat of archery Vaelin doubted even Reva could have matched. Vaelin moved to Astorek as the hunters fell to butchering their prey, long knives flashing as they gutted and dismembered the carcasses with automatic speed. He could see the wolves a hundred paces off, clustered around another carcass, their usual placidity vanished as they squabbled and snapped at each other, white fur besmirched with gore from snout to tail.

“Their reward,” Astorek said. “Isnʼt good to bind them too tight. Sometimes they need to remember what they are.”

In the distance a dust cloud told of the remaining elk continuing their flight. “You donʼt take them all,” Vaelin observed.

“If we do, thereʼll be none to take next year.”

“When we come to fight the Volarians it will not be a hunt, but a battle. None can be allowed to flee. We will take them all.”

“You imagine I have some scruple about killing my former people? Itʼs nothing I havenʼt done before.”

“This will be different. This time they are led by something far worse than an overambitious general.”

Kiral approached, wiping gore from her arrows and casting a cautious glance at the shaman. “Lord Vaelin speaks true,” she told him. “I feel your compassion. But it will kill you when we face the Allyʼs favoured dog.”

Astorek frowned, shaking his head in bafflement. “Ally?”

“And it lives in this… beyond place? A place beyond death?”

Vaelin struggled to formulate a precise answer. Explaining the concept of the Beyond to someone raised without any form of faith was proving difficult. Also, unlike the people who had adopted him, Astorek felt no worshipful tendencies towards the green fire that continued to flicker in the night sky, though its light was now just a dim glow on the northern horizon. “One of natureʼs many mysteries,” was his only opinion.

They had begun the march the day before, the Wolf Peopleʼs warriors gathering together in loose affiliation and moving south without particular order or ceremony save brief, intimate farewells to family. However, there were some who would neither be travelling south nor staying on the tundra. Vaelin watched as a group of people gathered on the shoreline, men and women of advanced age each with his or her own canoe carrying only a small stock of provisions. He saw Far Walker among them, handing out various items to a group of younger folk he took to be the elderʼs children or grandchildren: a knife, a necklace, a spear. They all accepted the gifts in silent respect, the youngest sniffling as the old man climbed alone into his canoe and pushed away from the shore, paddling off towards the north without a backward glance. His will, Vaelin thought.

Later he joined Astorek at the head of the army, leading Scar at a walk as the shaman sent his wolves ahead to scout their line of march.

“I realise it may be hard to credit,” Vaelin said. “But I have been there, and heard his voice. Much as I would like to dismiss him as a figment of legend or delusion, his hunger for our destruction is all too real.”

“I thought you had to die to gain entry to the Beyond.”

Vaelin turned his gaze to the horizon. Talking of what had happened at Alltor was never easy, perhaps because so much of it still escaped his understanding. “You do.”

“Then how do you come to be here?”

Vaelin glanced back at Dahrena, laughing with Cara as their cats rolled together in a play fight a short way off. “I have always been greatly fortunate in my friends.”

Another weekʼs march brought them in sight of the mountains, a range of steep-sided ridges and peaks stretching away south for as far as they could see. The valleys seemed rich in pine but the peaks were mostly bare granite, painted a pale blue in the haze. Off to the east a dim orange glow could be seen beneath a low bank of dark cloud. “Fire mountains,” Astorek said. “Even the tribesfolk donʼt go there.”

“Do your people trade with them?” Vaelin asked. “Speak their language?”

“They speak Volarian, of a sort. Difficult to make out for the less-attuned ear. And no, there is no trade between us. They keep to their hills fighting their endless feuds, or the Volarians when they come to fill their slave quotas, rarely venturing across the tundra.” Astorek glanced up at the ever-present swirl of spear-hawks as a group separated from the main flock to fly towards the hills. “Mother will warn of any who come to greet us.”

But there was no one waiting as they crested the foothills, the heights ahead free of any sign their way might be barred. “My people would do the same,” Alturk said, eyes narrowed as he scanned the silent hills. “Allow us to enter, march on until we imagine ourselves safe then attack in the night.”

“There are no eyes on us,” Kiral said with a note of certainty. She turned to Vaelin, her expression grave, “But someone comes. My song is clear: we should wait.”

They camped on a series of hills affording good views of the surrounding country, the spear-hawks providing constant vigilance and the wolves kept in tight packs on the perimeter. But still the hills remained silent. As night fell the glow of the eastern fire mountains grew bright, occasional flashes of lightning threading through the smoke they cast into the sky.