Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (8 page)

Tying her hair back, she composed her face. Now she had to be strong. Quiver shouldered, heart thumping so loudly she was sure it could be heard right across the valley, she stepped out of the tent.

The two guards looked around as she emerged. One of them, a stringy-haired fellow with bad skin, eyed the shape of her in the close-fitting trews.

‘Fetch my horse,’ she ordered, amazed that her voice did not quaver.

The guards exchanged a glance. ‘And where would you be going?’ one of them asked.

‘To catch the chief some supper. A brace of widgeon, I think.’

The lecherous one – Harl, she thought his name was – leered at her. ‘Well, he does have a taste for a bird, especially one with a nice plump breast.’ He stared directly at the open neck of her jerkin.

Teia snatched an arrow from her quiver and in a heartbeat had it nocked and aimed at his eye. ‘Careful your eyes don’t fall in,’ she said. ‘I’d hate to see you lose one.’

Harl blinked, startlement replacing his lustful expression. The other guard stifled a snigger.

‘I said, fetch my horse.’ She drew a little harder on the string, enough to make the bow creak, and he backed off a pace. ‘That’s better. Come on, Harl, come on. The afternoon’s a-wasting.’

Harl bobbed his head. ‘Yes, lady.’

When he’d gone she returned the arrow to the quiver, then wrapped her hands around the bow so the other fellow wouldn’t see they were trembling. She needn’t have worried. However amused he’d been by what had happened to Harl, the man was now standing at his post and keeping his eyes to himself.

Harl returned with her grey saddled and ready. Teia thanked him coolly, mounted and rode out of the camp. Only when she was well away from the tents did she let herself relax, her sigh of relief trailing off into a giggle at her own audacity.

Treating Drwyn’s men as if they were her servants! But it had worked. Whether it would work a second time she couldn’t say, but for now it had bought her an hour unobserved. She was determined to make the most of it.

A mile or so north of the Gathering place, a string of smaller lakes nestled like jewels in a silvery web of streamlets. With little solid ground to speak of, she had to leave her horse tethered to a bloodthorn bush and pick her way through the reed beds on foot, but the cover was good and the patter of the bone-white stems in the wind covered any noise she might make.

Within a quarter of an hour Teia had dispatched a pair of widgeon at the largest of the lakes, recovered and cleaned her arrows, and tied the birds by the feet with a bit of twine. Now the rest of the afternoon was hers. She knelt on the shore and scooped water into a dainty bronze bowl she’d filched from Drwyn’s tent, small enough to hide in her belt-pouch. Holding it steady on her knees, she summoned a little of her power.

At first the image was smeary and difficult to hold. Her face again, this time with a ragged gash on her temple that was the source of the blood on her cheek. As she watched it knitted up into a tight pale scar; where it disappeared into her hairline, her dark hair turned snowy white. The dead look in her eyes changed, too, becoming instead haunted, as if she carried a dreadful secret buried deep in her heart, like a worm in a blushberry.

Then the image re-formed, stretching and filling the bowl between her hands until she saw herself, in exquisite detail, robed in snow-fox fur and carrying a Speaker’s staff.

Teia gasped and dropped the bowl. Cold lake water soaked her knees. She was destined to become a Speaker? How was that possible? If Ytha found out about the Talent, she would know she had been deceived and only exile could follow. Teia would have to join the Lost Ones or die alone on the pitiless plains. But if Ytha did not find out, she would have to continue with the life she had.

She closed her eyes and pressed her face into her hands. So the wedding fair would have been her best choice after all. The chance remained that Drwyn would give her up, but it was diminishing. The more she played his willing concubine, the more he tolerated her. In time, he might even make her his next wife, and then Teir would get the bride-price of which Drw’s death had cheated him.

Poor Drw. He had been kind to her; vigorous but gentle enough that sharing his blankets had not been a chore. Sometimes, when he had only wanted her to sing or keep him company in silence, he had told her she reminded him of his daughter. Then the old chief had cried for the children he had lost, gone to join their mother in the next life.

Macha keep you, Drw
.

Wiping her eyes, she retrieved her little bowl and pushed herself to her feet. The afternoon was waning fast, the lake flat and steely under a heavy sky. Dusk would be falling by the time she reached the tents if she didn’t hurry. She shook the bronze dish dry as best she could and stowed it away, then gathered up bow and catch and set off for her horse.

When she reached the camp, the sky had darkened to purple and torches were being lit throughout the hollow. Tall iron braziers flamed on either side of the entrance to Drwyn’s tent where the two guards stood, looking tense and uneasy.

As Teia dismounted, the tent flap was flung back and Ytha strode out, her face hard in the flickering light. ‘Where have you been?’ she demanded.

Heart lurching, Teia held up the brace of fowl. ‘Up at the lakes, hunting.’

‘Did you see anyone else?’

‘No, Speaker. Is something wrong?’

‘I sensed someone working the power outside the valley.’ The words were bitten off as if by a spring trap. Teia flinched; it was all she could do to meet Ytha’s gaze. ‘Was it you? Do you have the Talent? Answer me, girl!’

‘I saw no one, Speaker.’

‘Answer me! Do you have the Talent? You know the penalty for deceit!’

Teia shrugged helplessly. Ytha seized her head between her hands and her awareness swept into Teia’s mind on an icy wind.

She shrank from it, pulling her thoughts deep down inside herself, hiding from the storm beneath the covers of her fear. ‘Speaker,’ she whimpered. ‘Please!’

‘What happens here?’ The deep, rough voice was Drwyn’s. He loomed over Ytha’s shoulder, massive in the shadows. ‘Leave her be. She’s naught but a girl.’

Ytha’s grip on Teia’s skull did not relent. ‘She may have the power!’

‘So?’

‘It is clan law! A girl with the power is surrendered to her Speaker. If she is not, she is exiled. To breach clan law is to be stripped of honour unto the child of the child’s generation. This is the word of the law, Drwyn, and even you are bound by it.’

The chief laid a hand on Ytha’s shoulder and held it there. None but the chief would dare to lay hands on the Speaker and the flash of cold fury in her eyes showed she resented even that.

‘Let her be, Ytha. If you insist that she be tested I will give her to you, but for now, let her be. The rest of the clans will be here tomorrow; I’ve too much to think on without having to come back to a cold hearth and an empty bed every night of the Gathering. Besides,’ he added, ‘my supper is bleeding over your robe.’

Ytha recoiled with an exclamation of disgust at the dark blood beading her furs. She shot Teia a look, as if the fault was all hers, then turned a frigid face to the chief.

‘I await the day, my chief. She should have been sent to me long ago.’

With a stiff inclination of her head, Ytha stalked away.

Drwyn came forward into the firelight and Teia’s knees turned to water. With a sob of relief she slumped into his arms, grateful for his rough embrace though he would never know why.

‘Did she frighten you?’ he asked, in a clumsy attempt at comfort. Teia nodded, scrubbing her hand across her eyes. ‘Well, there’s no need to be afraid. The Speaker means you no harm.’

About as little harm as a crag-cat means a kid
. ‘She was inside my head. It hurt.’

‘She was just testing you for the power,’ Drwyn said. ‘Perhaps you should be glad you do not have it. Now what about that supper?’

So much for comfort.

Resigned to her mundane tasks, Teia plucked and cleaned the fowl then rubbed their skins with honey and salt before setting them to roast. As she worked, she contemplated what she had seen in the water. It had not clarified her earlier scrying at all, simply posed more questions she was incapable of answering.

If only she’d had more time. She was certain further scrying would have given her other images, clues to help her puzzle out her future. Had the visions come to her in dreams she might have gone to the Speaker for an interpretation, except she could not be sure Ytha would not see it as evidence that she had the Talent – and once she learned that, Teia would have no choice but to show her all that she’d seen. The boy with chieftain’s gold around his neck, all of it.

That night, when Drwyn was fed and bedded and sleeping the sleep of the sated, she thought about running away. The idea daunted her: leaving her family, everything she had ever known, for an uncertain fate. She had no idea where she would go or how she would survive the winter on her own, but she was filled with a dreadful certainty that she would not be able to remain where she was for very much longer.

6

THE GATHERING

After a fitful night filled with fractious dreams, Teia woke on the first day of the Gathering feeling stiff as sun-dried elk-meat. Drwyn looked little better; he choked down a mouthful of bread to break his fast and then paced the tent with a cup of ale in his fist whilst she heated water for washing.

Afterwards he dressed with unusual care in his best plaid trews and cloak, which he fastened at his shoulder with a large gold pin. His beard was combed, his hair tied back from his face; even the spear that was his badge of rank was polished and gleaming. He looked almost handsome, were it not for the nervous chewing at his moustaches as he prowled back and forth like a hound on a short leash.

Teia sensed that he would need little provocation to lash out at her, so she picked up an armful of clean clothes and took herself into the curtained-off sleeping quarters to put them away. She was folding them into a chest when she heard someone else enter the tent from outside.

‘Excellent,’ Ytha said. ‘That should impress them. Well done.’

Teia, a folded shirt in her hands, froze where she knelt.

‘Are the others ready?’ Drwyn asked.

‘Almost. Every clan is here. They’ll be assembled in less than an hour. Do you remember what I told you?’

‘Yes, Ytha. Don’t fuss.’

‘I am the Speaker of the Crainnh. It is my job to
fuss
,’ Ytha told him frostily. ‘You must make the right impression on the other chiefs. If they are to take you seriously, you must be your father’s son and more besides.’

Dropping the shirt, Teia hitched her skirts up and shuffled on her knees as quietly as she could across the floor to the curtain. Hardly daring to breathe, she peered through a moth-hole in the fabric. Ytha was wearing a deep-blue woollen gown under her fur mantle, clasped around the waist with a golden belt of interlinked crescent moons. Another crescent kept her mane of hair back from her brow.

‘This is an important day, Drwyn. If you do well today, nothing will stand in your way. You will be Chief of Chiefs inside a year and all of the south will be yours for the taking.’

‘I am looking forward to it.’

Teia recognised the hunger in his voice. It was the same throaty growl she heard in the dark, when he told her how he wanted to be pleasured. His back was to her, but she could imagine his expression. She shuddered.

Chief of Chiefs! It had not been done in over a thousand years, not since before the clans had been driven north. The idea tumbled chaotically in her mind, a leaf in a welter of possibilities. And the south? Did Drwyn mean to challenge the Empire itself? Incredible. No, it was ludicrous; they would be cut to pieces. The iron men would be waiting for them. What could he be thinking?

‘Ah, Drwyn, one step at a time,’ Ytha said. ‘If we rush the hunt, the game will fly and we will not be able to set the same trap twice.’

‘You speak in riddles, Ytha! Say what you mean.’

The Speaker tsked and her tone grew sharper. ‘I mean that our objective is closer now than it has ever been, but we must still be patient. If we try too hard we may ruin everything we have planned for. Now come, the chiefs will be waiting.’

Long after they had left the tent, Teia just sat there, skirts rucked up around her knees. She could scarcely believe what she had heard and yet, whatever else he might be, Drwyn was not insane. He would not contemplate something like this unless he was better than half-sure he could get away with it. She had learned that much in recent weeks. What would the other chiefs say? Drwyn could do nothing without their support, after all. That gave her an idea. Quickly, she finished her chores.