Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (24 page)

‘Wolf?’ she asked.

One of the hunters holding the litter nodded.

Ytha lifted the boy’s hands away from the glistening mess that had been his abdomen and clicked her tongue. Teia couldn’t see the extent of the wound from where she stood, but the change in the Speaker’s expression told her Joren would be lucky to see another hunt.

‘Bring him,’ Ytha said tersely, and strode away, her light bobbing after her. The two men followed with the litter, trailed by an ashen-faced woman with tears on her cheeks.

The clanspeople surged together in the Speaker’s wake, Joren and his weeping mother quickly forgotten as they searched for loved ones amongst the returned hunters, desperate to assure themselves that their own menfolk were unhurt. Teia scanned the sea of faces for Teir but there were too many people moving around, their features rendered strangely unfamiliar by the torchlight.

‘Da?’ she called. A glance or two was flung her way, but none lingered. Panic edged into her voice. ‘Da!’

More commotion, up by the entrance with its long sloping ledge that all but circled the cavern. More torches, more leaping shadows in the tunnel leading up to the air, and voices, but the shouts this time were of jubilation. The rest of the hunting party had returned, and they were shouting Drwyn’s name.

Teia began pushing her way through the crowd towards the noise. ‘Da!’

She had to find him, had to make sure he was all right. It was early in the season for a wolf attack; there was still too much game at hand for hunger to have driven a pack out of the forest. Why now? Why here?

‘
Da!
’

Face after face loomed before her, but none of them belonged to Teir. Too old or too young, she stumbled past them, searching, hoping, snatching sleeves and tugging elbows of returning hunters until she blundered into something so solid she nearly fell.

Looking up, she found herself face to face with a brindled timber wolf, its jaws agape, and squealed with fright. Only then did she realise the beast was dead and slung over a hunter’s shoulder with the broken-off head of a spear protruding from its breast. Not the beast from her dreams, then. Pressing her hand to her chest, she looked up further and saw that the hunter was Drwyn.

His furs were daubed with blood and caked in snow, now starting to melt and drip around his boots. One arm was looped over the carcass of the wolf to steady it; his other sleeve hung empty.

‘Teia,’ he said and grinned, clearly pleased with himself, and that she’d apparently come looking for him. ‘I have brought you a gift.’ He slapped the beast’s shaggy side and his coat gaped, revealing his left arm crudely bound up with sodden red rags.

‘You’re bleeding,’ she said.

He glanced at his arm. ‘A scratch, no more. The beast bit me.’

If the wound became infected, he’d be as sour-tempered with the pain as a bear with a broken tooth. Teia could guess who he’d take it out on.

‘Dog bites are apt to go foul,’ she said carefully, reaching for his injured arm. ‘At least let me clean it.’

He snatched it away. ‘I said it’s naught but a scratch! Hold your fussing, woman.’

Two of his chosen men came up behind him and clapped him on the back. ‘A fine kill, my chief!’ crowed one, tweaking the wolf’s tail and making its head loll.

‘Aye, if you hadn’t grabbed that spear and spitted the beast, Joren would be dead now. You’re a hero – he’ll name his firstborn after you!’

Quite suddenly, Teia’s temper snapped. She had no idea if her father was safe, she was tired and frightened and had no patience left for the posturing of men.

‘When you’re done playing hero, I’ll bind your arm,’ she said tartly and turned on her heel.

‘Hark at that one,’ said one of the men.

‘Not even wearing your mark yet and already styling herself as the chief’s wife!’

The men’s laughter only stoked her temper. Stupid oafs. It would serve them all right if the chief’s arm rotted away to the bones for want of attention.

‘Enough!’ Drwyn snapped, and she heard a meaty thud that could only be the wolf’s carcass hitting the ground. ‘Get that skinned.’

Footsteps came after Teia. She picked up her pace, hurrying through the thinning crowd, but before she’d reached the far side of the cavern a hand closed on her elbow and jerked her around.

Drwyn was scowling like a thunderhead. ‘Don’t walk away from me, wench,’ he growled. His hand came up, open-palmed.

That was simply the last straw.

Grabbing his wounded forearm, she squeezed it hard. Fresh blood welled through the rags and he cursed.

Teia flung his arm away from her. ‘Serves you right! If you won’t heed what a wiser voice tells you, I’ve a good mind to let it blow up with pus and teach you a lesson!’

A shocked silence hung between them, tense and expectant, like the moment between the slap and the sting. Somewhere at the back of her mind it occurred to her that he’d likely not heard a woman speak back to him since his mother died. None except the Speaker and – Macha preserve her – she had not a fraction of Ytha’s authority.

Any moment
, she thought, her heartbeat drumming in her ears.
Any moment now
.

Drwyn glared at her. His jaw worked – in surprise or fury she couldn’t tell – and then he jerked his head towards the curtained doorway to their sleeping quarters. ‘Get inside.’

Tears burning at the back of her eyes but determined not to let them fall, she climbed the rough-hewn steps towards the curtain. Drwyn’s presence loomed behind her all the way, and she was unable to prevent her shoulders rounding in anticipation of a blow. For defying him like that, he’d strap her with his belt for sure – or else ride her raw to remind her of her place, pregnant or not. Either prospect was enough to cleave her tongue to the roof of her mouth with dread.

He snatched the curtain closed after them, plunging the chamber into shadow save for the glowing eyes of the lamps around the walls. Teia waited in the near-dark, listening to the sounds of him fumbling with his clothes, waiting to be shoved to her knees.

‘Get some light in here, woman.’

She shut her eyes, hands bunched in her skirts. ‘Why? So you can see better to hit me?’

Something soft and bulky flew past her towards the bed. His coat, she realised.

‘Can you dress a wound in the dark?’

Macha be praised
. Weak with relief, Teia made her way to the nearest lamp and fumbled for the screws to adjust the three wicks. Her fingers shook so much the flames danced, but she wound all the lamps up one by one until the chamber was filled with golden light.

‘Well? A man could bleed to death waiting,’ he grumbled, and she turned around. Sitting on a stool in the middle of the chamber, he held out his blood-soaked left arm.

‘Just a scratch, eh?’ she said, then bit her lip when he glowered at her.

Without another word she fetched a basin of water and some clean rags, and the leather bag of simples her mother had taught her how to prepare. A generous pinch of bittermint went into the water to cleanse the wounds; whilst it infused she knelt at Drwyn’s feet to untie the rough bandage, but the knot was swollen too tight to unpick. It would have to be cut off him.

She sawed through the knot with her belt-knife, unwrapped the bloody cloth and threw it aside for burning later. The wolf’s teeth had left deep gouges in the meat of Drwyn’s forearm, laced with smaller scratches as if there had been a struggle and its jaws had slipped. Wolves had a fearsome grip; he was lucky not to have a broken arm.

Carefully, she bathed his wounds with the bittermint-infused water. He endured it without flinching, though the herb must surely have stung, and watched her hands as she worked.

His scrutiny made her nervous; Drwyn had never shown much curiosity about what she did before, and for some reason it was more disconcerting than anger. It gave her no clues to predict what might come next.

‘The wolf came while we were sleeping,’ he said suddenly. ‘It took Joren by the head and dragged him out of his blankets. He woke the camp with his yelling and kicking – we thought a whole pack was coming down on us.’

Patting his arm dry with a clean rag, Teia glanced up, wondering if she should say something.

‘It was gone moonset and the fire was out, everyone crashing around in the dark. Joren must have pulled free and then tripped. We found him hung up on a broken branch.’

She flinched. Wood splinters in a deep wound rarely ended well. Corruption was quick to set in, and in the belly . . . Forcing her tone to be optimistic, she said, ‘If anyone can save him, Ytha can.’

He grunted. ‘It was his first season on the hunt. He was no more use than a warped arrow, but still.’

Noticing her bag of simples, Drwyn reached down with his free hand and poked amongst the jars and pouches inside. ‘You know healing,’ he said. It sounded almost like an accusation.

Her hands faltered. ‘Just what my mother taught me, household remedies and such.’

He lifted a pouch stitched with a leaf design and sniffed it cautiously. ‘What’s in this?’

‘White nettle.’

‘What’s that for?’

‘Disorders of the bladder. You brew a tea with it.’ Making conversation with her, showing an interest in her skills beyond the bed and the cook-pot, was unlike him. She began to dread where it was leading.

He returned the pouch to the bag, selected another and peered at the beads she’d worked into the design on the front. ‘And this?’

‘Firethorn bark, for the drawing of boils.’

Back into the bag it went. ‘And what will you use on me?’

‘I’ll not stitch it – dog bites are best left open to drain – so I’ll use that ointment, in the red jar.’ She pointed at the pot of pennywort salve, made to Ana’s grandmother’s recipe.

Silently Drwyn handed it to her and watched her dab the salve onto his wounds, then bind them up with a clean bandage. ‘There’ll be a scar,’ she said, tying off the ends, ‘but it should heal well enough. If it burns hot or starts to stink, tell me.’

He examined the bandage as if looking for fault, though she was confident he’d find none; with the benefit of Ana’s teaching she’d made a neat job of it. Jar sealed again, she tucked it away in her bag and began tidying up.

‘You have some skill,’ he said. She looked up. He’d stripped off his ruined shirt and was pulling on a clean one. ‘But don’t ever think it gives you the right to upbraid me in front of my men.’

Black eyes fixed her, hard as stones. She lowered her gaze.

‘Yes, my chief.’ She hadn’t expected gratitude; it wasn’t in his nature. At least she knew how to react to a scolding. ‘Forgive me, I misspoke. With all the commotion . . . I was worried.’ At the last second, she stopped herself from adding who she’d been worried about.

He grunted, apparently satisfied with her explanation.

Keeping her tone meek, she ventured, ‘My father? He wasn’t hurt?’

‘Teir’s well – he’s bringing the horses in. Now see that you remember your place.’

With that, he left the cave.

Teia watched the curtain settle behind him, the rod chiming gently on its hooks, and blew out a long breath of relief. If she didn’t guard her tongue, she’d not be so lucky a second time. She’d caught the rough side of his temper often enough to know that.

Her gaze fell on the basin in her hands, the bloody water in it nearly the colour of blushberry wine. Wolves preying on men was rare. They were shy creatures for the most part; the hunters usually saw no more of them than a few tracks in the snow, a pair of glowing eyes in the darkness. For one to come right into a camp like that . . .

Winter was the wrong time for her to run. Snows that could bury a tent in a night; wolves in the hills. Or she could stay, and face the rest of her days as the Speaker’s pet, or the chief’s.

Her earlier determination drained away like water from a holed kettle and she quailed. Winter was the wrong time to run, but what else could she do?

‘If you’ve got more bad news, Aradhrim, I’d rather not know. There’s enough trouble in these to last me ’til next Saint Simeon’s.’

Theodegrance thumped a sheaf of papers down onto his desk and himself into an overstuffed leather chair, which groaned in protest. His broad, weather-beaten features were creased with a frown.

The Warlord unfastened his cloak and waited until the Emperor’s steward had closed the doors behind him before he spoke. ‘I’m afraid it’s bad,’ he said.

‘Thought as much,’ grunted Theodegrance. ‘You’ve come a long way in foul weather. Sit down by the fire and get warm – you too, young man. I won’t hold you long.’

Duncan followed his liege lord to one of a pair of couches that flanked a carved marble fireplace and perched nervously on the edge of the seat, very conscious that his snowy boots were dripping onto a thick
qilim
carpet large enough for his entire family to sleep on. Aradhrim appeared to have no such concerns, lounging at his ease with his feet extended towards the hearth.

Of course, as Warlord he was no doubt accustomed to being in the imperial palace, in the Emperor’s private study, whilst the man himself sat at his desk in his shirtsleeves, frowning over his papers. For Duncan, who had never even crossed the borders of Arennor in his life before this trip, it felt unforgivably informal.

He dared a look around. The room, like its occupant, was generously proportioned and ruggedly, unashamedly masculine. Broad-backed, sturdy furniture was thickly cushioned in earthen colours that matched their owner’s ruddy complexion. Every surface bore the scuffs and scars of daily use; it was a working room, not one for diplomatic niceties. A room where the real business of Empire took place.

At the desk, the Emperor leafed through his documents, initialling here, scrawling a comment there. Within a few minutes he was done and tossed down his pen. ‘Very well,’ he declared, hoisting himself to his feet and taking a seat on the opposite couch. ‘Let’s hear it.’

Without preamble, Aradhrim said, ‘I have reason to believe the Nimrothi clans will come down through the mountains before the spring is out.’

If he had expected a great show from the Emperor, Duncan was disappointed. Theodegrance merely pursed his lips and sat back in his seat. ‘Go on,’ he said.