Crimson Bound (21 page)

Instead, she stroked his hair like he was a pet and then said—her voice quiet but carrying—“Ride well for me, and you might live till morning.”

She could see the edge of his smile. “Yes, my lady,” he said, and then the horns called again and the hunt started. Armand straightened; Rachelle wrapped her arms around his waist. She could feel the movement of his ribs as he breathed.

And they rode, through the wind and through the night, the Great Forest whispering around them, the air full of hoofbeats and hunting calls and the wild, tuneless singing of the forestborn.

Far too soon, they stopped. Rachelle had so lost herself in the thrill of speed that it took her a moment to remember why they had been riding with the hunt.

“Dismount,” said the hunter, and Rachelle slid off the horse’s back. She staggered a moment, then straightened in time to catch Armand as he dismounted.

“Walk forward,” said the hunter, “and you will be returned.”

“Thank you,” said Rachelle, and instantly wondered if forestborn ever thanked anyone.

“Remember me,” he said, “when our lord returns.”

And then the Wild Hunt streamed around them and was gone into the night.

Rachelle realized that her heart was pounding and she was gasping for breath. They had ridden with the Wild Hunt, and they had
lived
.

She looked at Armand. “Are you all right?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Then walk,” said Rachelle, and started forward, Armand following her. They were out of the Great Forest now, she realized; the darkness was flatter, the wind thin and drab.

“The forestborn were stranger than I expected,” said Armand.

“Why?” she asked. “What was yours like?”

“Well,” Armand said after a moment, “he had more clothes on.”

“Clearly, yours was special,” said Rachelle.

Or had hers been special? She could remember the faces of the forestborn they had ridden with just now; they had been terrible to look upon because of the inhuman power she could sense dwelling within them, but they had been
shaped
like human faces. She could remember the lines of their eyes and noses and mouths. The face of her forestborn had always left her memory the instant she looked away from him. Was he older and more powerful? Or did all forestborn have the ability to hide their faces, and he was just the only one who bothered?

“They’re immortal children of the Devourer who have lost their human hearts,” she went on. “What would you expect them to look like?”

“What does that mean?” asked Armand. “Losing their hearts?”

“Do you know what’s the difference between bloodbound and forestborn? It’s not just how powerful they are. When bloodbound turn into forestborn, they lose their hearts. The power of the Forest burns them away, and they can’t love or pity anyone. They can’t want anything except destruction. That’s why some of them go mad. The loss of their hearts destroys their reason.”

In her first month at Rocamadour, she’d seen a mad bloodbound executed. He could no longer talk, and when he wasn’t chained up, he would try to attack anyone in sight. There was nothing left of him but the desire for blood.

Armand was quiet a few moments. Then he said carefully, “The forestborn I met was cruel. But he wasn’t mindless. Or much more inhuman than anyone at court. I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“Then what makes them all turn that way?” asked Rachelle. “Every time?”

“Maybe it’s just that, once they’re so deep in the Forest’s power, they don’t want to remember loving anyone.”

“Why are you trying to convince me that we can be saved?”

His grin sliced through the darkness. “You’re my jailer. Of course I want to think you might have a change of heart.”

For a little while they walked on in silence.

Then the screams started.

The hunt
, thought Rachelle, and there was nothing she could do—nobody fought the Wild Hunt and lived—but she was already running forward, Armand right behind her.

There were not just screams, but shouts and crashes. Clangs. Snarls. Woodspawn, perhaps? She could fight woodspawn. She pushed herself to run faster.

And there was an open field ahead of them, with the low stone wall that all northern folk used to keep the trees back from their lands. Rachelle vaulted it in a moment, then remembered Armand, but when she glanced back, he was already over the wall.

Rachelle flung herself forward into an all-out run. At the far end of the field, she could see flickering lights from the village. Bonfire? Torches? Or had an actual fire broken out?

She was closer now. She could see human figures running between the houses—yes, one of them was on fire—and wolf-shaped creatures running among them. Woodspawn.

She caught a glint of metal and heard a clang. They were trying to fight the
woodspawn with scythes and hoes. Not bad weapons. But against this many woodspawn, human hands were much too slow.

And then she was charging into the ring of houses and the flickering firelight, and there was no more time to think. She drew her sword and lunged at the nearest woodspawn; the blade slid easily into its neck, but as the creature dissolved into muck, two more sprang at her.

One of them she got in time. The other one slammed into her, knocking her to the ground. Instinctively Rachelle threw an arm over her face, then screamed when the woodspawn’s jaws crunched down on her arm.

She’d dropped her sword. She couldn’t see it.

So she reached up with her free hand and slid it into the woodspawn’s eye socket. It was scalding hot, but she clenched her fist on the slimy mess and ripped it out.

The woodspawn howled, letting go of her arm. She rolled free, found her sword, and stabbed it three times.

Panting, she looked around. There were only two more woodspawn left. One of them was already injured and surrounded by a crowd of men with scythes; they could probably manage to kill it.

The other one was crouched atop the roof of a cottage.

Rachelle groaned. She could barely use her right arm, but she clambered up the side of the house and hauled herself onto the roof—just as the woodspawn sprang at her. She grabbed it by the scruff and they went over the side of the house together. Luckily she landed on top; she felt its ribs crunch underneath, and that bought her an extra moment to grab her sword and slice its head off.

She staggered to her feet.

The first thing she looked for was the other woodspawn. It was dead, only a puddle of dark, viscous mud left to mark its passing. The men that had been attacking it turned to face her.

Everyone was staring at her.

Something was wrong. She could hardly think past the pounding in her head and the pain in her arm, but something was wrong.

She looked for Armand: he was safe, standing to one side, eyes wide. That was good. But there was still something not right about the crowd of people staring at her.

They could see the black fleur-de-lis on her coat. They knew she was a bloodbound. People always stared at her when they realized she was bloodbound—

And then she realized. All the people staring at her—she knew them. Claude, the baker. André, the blacksmith. Jean, the hunter.

Her father.

This was her village. The Wild Hunt had brought her home to face judgment.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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W
hen Rachelle was seven years old, she slipped into Aunt Léonie’s house while she was out. She put on her aunt’s spare cloak, got into her yarn, and pretended to weave charms. When Aunt Léonie came back early and raised her eyebrows, the shame had felt like scalding-hot water poured over every bit of her body.

She felt that way now: like an idiotic child caught playing pretend. For one moment, all she wanted to do was drop her sword, strip off her coat, and slink back into her family’s house and scrub the floor until she was forgiven.

Then she heard the crackle of the burning house. She remembered what people in the countryside did to bloodbound.

She was not a child anymore. There was not going to be any forgiveness.

And right now, she couldn’t accept judgment.

Her head still ached. Her arm burned with pain. But the icy calm of a fight was seeping over her skin. She tightened her grip on her sword.

“Everybody stay back,” she said. “Armand, get over here.”

Instantly she realized that she had just told them whom to take hostage, but since none of them were Erec, maybe it wouldn’t occur to them at once.

Armand started to step forward; she saw the people noticing him for the first time, wondering who the other stranger was.

“Here’s what will happen,” she snapped, because she couldn’t let them pay enough attention to realize Armand was defenseless. “My friend and I will leave. You stay here. Nobody gets hurt.”

“Who are you?” called out Claude, and for a moment Rachelle couldn’t breathe. Of course they didn’t know her, she was just another faceless bloodbound now, and if only she’d had the wit to pretend—

“Rachelle Brinon?” said André. He was a big, bluff man and confusion looked utterly strange on his face.

She saw the recognition ripple across the faces in the crowd, saw the shift in their stances as they realized she was dangerous. An enemy.

She didn’t see her father; he must have fled as soon as he recognized her.

She raised her sword. “I will kill you all if you give me any trouble,” she declared, but inside she was shaking with terror. She couldn’t hurt these people she’d known all her life.

She couldn’t die here. She still had to find Joyeuse.

Then suddenly Armand was between her and the crowd. “Nobody’s fighting,” he said, pressing his back against her and grabbing her arm. “Nobody is fighting anyone without going through me.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” Rachelle demanded.

She felt his back stiffen. “If they want to punish you for shedding innocent blood, they can hardly cut through me to do it.”

“Did nobody teach you how vengeance works?”

“Besides, I doubt I’d survive walking back through the woods on my own, so if they want you dead, then this will save time, really.”

“Stand back!” a woman called out. A moment later, the crowd parted.

Aunt Léonie stepped out.

For one sick, horrifying moment, that was whom she saw. Then she realized that the woman clad in white and red was too tall to be Aunt Léonie; her hair was too light, her face too pointy. It was just another woodwife.

“I will deal with them,” she said.

André grabbed her by the arm. “You don’t understand, it’s—”

She gave him a single look and he let go. “I understand perfectly,” she said. “This is the girl from your village who murdered my predecessor and became a bloodbound. Is that not so?” She looked around at the crowd. “Then I have the right, don’t I, to
administer justice in this matter?”

Silence. Nobody moved as the woman strode forward toward Rachelle.

“Mademoiselle,” said Armand, “she just helped save your village. And she has saved a lot of other people in the last few years. It doesn’t seem right to repay her with death.”

“She killed the previous woodwife of this village,” said the woman. “Did you know that?”

“I knew she was bloodbound,” said Armand. “The person she murdered had to come from somewhere.”

“You have the right to kill me,” said Rachelle. Her voice felt like a great length of rusty iron chains. “But I can’t die right now. So I will fight my way out if I must.”

The woman looked her up and down. “I don’t intend to kill you,” she said. “I know what would happen to this village if we killed the King’s bloodbound. But you will come to my house and speak with me before you leave.”

“I won’t go back to that house,” said Rachelle.

“We burned that house,” said the woodwife. “Did you think anything human could bear to live in it again? They built me a new one when I came here.”

The new house was closer than Aunt Léonie’s had been, just on the other side of the village wall. “It’s too dangerous, now, to live further away,” Aunt Léonie had said.

Rachelle was hardly paying attention at that point. Between exhaustion and the still-bleeding wound in her arm, she could barely see straight.

“I’m going to sleep,” she said, and then lay down on the floor without waiting for an answer. Nobody kicked her, so she supposed it must be all right. She fell asleep almost instantly.

When she awoke the next morning, the woodwife was sitting beside her, watching her with a narrow, unyielding gaze. Behind her was the normal clutter of a woodwife’s house: spindles and baskets of wool. Bunches of herbs hanging from the ceiling, and in between them many-colored charms, like woolen snowflakes. It was so comfortingly familiar that for a moment she almost felt safe.

Then she realized who was missing.

She bolted up. “Where’s Armand?”

The woodwife waved a hand. “Your friend? Safe. Outside. I didn’t want him hearing us.”

“I remember, you said you wanted to speak with me.” Rachelle paused. “Thank you for last night.”