Read The Art of Hunting Online
Authors: Alan Campbell
The Art of Hunting
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CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
The soldier walked to the edge of the compound to sit in the dirt and drink the last of his rum and think about how he came to be in this dismal hole on the final morning of
his life. He found a munitions crate on which to rest but he couldn’t see much beyond the low mud-brick palisade wall. This sand storm had been raging since dawn and his goggles were already
scoured so badly they were practically useless. He perceived his surroundings as uncertain shapes in a red haze. Only the dim circle of the sun offered him some sense of orientation. It hung there
like a plague lantern. You couldn’t fight in this weather because you couldn’t see what was coming for you.
That was probably for the best.
In the compound behind him he could hear his commander barking orders at the other men. They were loading the gunpowder mortars with nails pulled from the wrecked farmstead over by the southern
wall, for all the good that would do. Seated on his crate, the soldier scooped up a handful of sand and let it pour out between his fingers until it was all gone. This struck him as a fitting
metaphor for a morning like this. He wondered, briefly, if he ought to construct a poem along these lines. He could carve it into an earthen brick so that others would know what happened here in
the Adad Godu wastes. But then he dismissed the idea. It sounded too much like the sort of thing an Unmer soldier would do. Leave a poem. Leave a legacy. Instead, he took a long draught of rum and
spat out sand. Sand got in everything here – your food and drink and even your leathers. You couldn’t escape from it. As inevitable as time.
The soldier sighed. This is what happened when you had too much time to think about things and you hadn’t yet drunk enough booze to blot it all out. He raised his canteen to his lips
again, but halted.
He had spotted movement out there in the crimson murk. His muscles tautened. His hand shifted instinctively to his sword. His heart was suddenly racing. Had he . . .?
There.
He saw it again. However, this time he was able to relax somewhat. It was only a solitary figure: an archer, probably another one of Queen Aria’s mercenaries lost in the storm. The
stranger was tall and wore a woolspun cloak wrapped around his head and shoulders to keep the blowing sand from his eyes. He reached the compound’s low earthen barrier and vaulted lightly
over it. And then he came strolling up towards the place where the soldier was sitting.
The soldier offered his canteen. ‘How’s things in Jabanin?’
The archer looked down at the canteen, but did not reach for it. He was carrying a white bow carved from a dragon’s rib and had a fine and unusual quiver – a black glass cylinder
patterned with runes – lashed to his belt. ‘I didn’t come from Jabanin,’ he said.
‘I thought everyone passed through Jabanin.’
The stranger did not reply.
The soldier grunted. ‘Well, it makes sense, I suppose. It explains why you’re here. You won’t have heard the news.’
‘What news?’
‘You’d better take a drink, my friend,’ the soldier said, ‘because I’m afraid you’ve just walked into the most dismal and dangerous backwater shithole in the
entire world.’ He thrust his canteen up towards the other man.
‘Have you sighted the entity?’
The soldier blinked. Slowly he lowered the canteen. ‘You know? You know about the slaughter at Arrash and Morqueth?’
‘I know Jonas Marquetta’s sorcerer has summoned one of the entities that you refer to as the elder gods. I know there have been two confrontations at the villages you mentioned. And
I know that it’s now headed this way.’
The soldier looked at him. ‘You came here deliberately?’
The archer nodded.
‘The last person I’ll ever speak to,’ the soldier said, ‘and he’s a lunatic.’ His shoulders slumped and he took another drink. ‘Until three days ago I
thought we’d won this war. An end to bloody Unmer rule. An end to two decades of slavery.’ He glanced at the archer, but couldn’t see his face behind the wrappings of his cloak.
‘I was sold twice, you know? Twice in three years, to two different Unmer masters, though one of them was a woman.’ He let his mind wander back to those days. ‘And when the
Haurstaf fleet arrived in Losoto, I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe those psychic witches could do what people said they could do. And then I saw it myself.’ He smiled.
‘Two women, just girls really. I saw them paralyse two whole divisions of Unmer soldiers – and their unit commanders and attendant sorcerers. All those armed men writhing in agony on
the streets of the capital, unable to think, barely able to breathe under a psychic assault.’ He shook his head. ‘And that was just two little girls.’
The archer continued to observe him.
‘When they drove the Unmer out of Losoto or rounded them all up into their ghettos, I thought that was an end to it,’ the soldier went on. ‘The Haurstaf’s dominance over
the Unmer was every bit as complete as the Unmer’s dominance over us.’ He took another swallow from the canteen. ‘Didn’t figure on this long drawn-out conflict.’ He
shook his head. ‘But now it’s obvious why the bastards have been stretching it out, running and hiding. They were buying themselves time for their bloody schemes. Enough time to summon
that . . . thing.’
‘The war isn’t over yet.’
The soldier shot him a fierce look. ‘If the stories we’ve heard are true, then the war is very definitely over. The Unmer have a god on their side.’
‘A goddess,’ the archer said. ‘And gods fall as men do.’
The soldier coughed and shook his head. ‘You know how many Samarol were in Morqueth? Didn’t so much as slow it down. You have heard what happened there? You heard what this goddess
is riding?’
‘An entropic beast.’
The soldier grunted. ‘A what?’ He frowned. ‘That’s not what I’d call it.’ He paused, his brow still furrowed as he studied the other man. ‘You know, you
never did say where you were from. I’ve been trying to place that accent of yours. I’ve heard it before, somewhere, but . . .’
But his ruminations were disturbed, for at that moment a new sound could be heard over the gusting wind and the rasp of the sand. Both men turned their heads towards the northwest. At first it
was faint, like a low tone plucked by gales from a cave or a hollow in the rocks, but as the moments passed it quickly became unmistakable: a distant, steady pounding, like something huge stalking
the earth. And overlaying this was another sound, of a higher pitch – as though the wind itself had grown keener.
The soldier put his canteen to his lips and upended it, finishing the last of his rum. Then he dusted sand from his hands and rose unsteadily to his feet. Back in the compound he could just
perceive the dim silhouettes of his brothers in arms rushing to and fro. ‘I suppose this is it,’ he said.
The archer nodded. ‘This entity can manipulate entropy at will,’ he said. ‘This storm is its voice. The men whom it killed have become its teeth. And when it bares them, it
will be to strike terror into your hearts. Do not let it, or the beast upon which it rides, touch you. Doing so would condemn yourself to an eternity of unimaginable horrors.’
‘I wasn’t planning on going hand to hand with the thing. That’s what our cannons and mortars are for.’
‘Cannons and mortars can’t harm it.’
‘Well that’s a damn shame,’ the other man muttered. ‘Because cannons and mortars are what we have.’
‘The most sensible course of action,’ the archer said, ‘would be for you to flee.’
The soldier grunted again. He scooped up another handful of sand and then opened his palm, watching as the glassy powder flowed out between his fingers. ‘I’m not paid to run
away,’ he said. ‘Besides, I’m hellish tired of this desert. I could do with seeing a bit of action. What about you?’
The archer half-turned as if to reply, but his attention remained on the distant pounding.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
It seemed to have grown louder. The accompanying sound had become louder,
too. Now it sounded like a cacophony of wails and screams.
‘What
is
that?’ the soldier said.
The archer strung his bow in one smooth movement and removed the cap from the quiver at his belt. A sudden crackling sound came from that black cylinder, and air rushed inwards, drawing tails of
dust and sand into the opening.
The soldier stared at the quiver for a moment, then looked up at the archer. ‘So, I’ve finally remembered where I’ve heard that accent before.’
The archer selected an arrow from his quiver. It had only a threaded metal cap where the arrowhead ought to be.
‘What are you?’ the soldier said. ‘A saboteur?’
‘We need to do something about this storm,’ the archer said. He reached inside his cloak and pulled out a fist-sized object. It looked like a bulb of amber glass, full of miniature
machinery. Among the gears and wires could be glimpsed a phial of liquid. He sealed the quiver again and the torrents of air around him abruptly stopped.
Next, he fixed the glass bulb onto the arrow, screwing it onto the threaded cap. When it was secure, he notched the arrow and raised his bow towards the heavens. The bow string quivered as he
released it and the arrow shot high into the air.
After a moment, the dust clouds above them flashed blue as the strange device detonated. A heartbeat later they heard a concussion. ‘If you have any powder,’ the archer said,
‘best see that it’s covered.’
As he said this, the first drops of rain began to fall.
The soldier understood that he was witnessing Unmer sorcery. The archer’s accent was the same as the accent of the men and women who had owned him.
Lightning ripped across the darkening skies, followed by the boom and rumble of thunder. And suddenly the air filled with the growing rush of water. The rain became a torrent. It drenched the
two men and turned the sand to dark mud and hammered the palisade walls.
And it cleared the air.
The soldier could see his comrades now, crouched by their cannons and mortars. They had covered the barrels and flintlocks with sack cloth or anything else to hand – helmets and shields
and crate lids. Other men squatted behind the defensive wall, their rifles and bows ready, staring out across the dirt plains.
Now the soldier could actually see storm clouds overhead and with the rain they brought they pushed a chill wind down across the cracked earth plains. It howled and gusted and drove sheets of
water through the uncertain light. To the south lay squat red dunes and bars of sand like the veins on the back of an old man’s hand. Striding across the plains towards the soldier’s
compound was a creature from a nightmare.
