Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (46 page)

Darkness. Soft, silent, suffocating. It enveloped Teia like the blackness of the womb and in it a nightmare waited to be born. She heard its heartbeat, sensed the shape of its dreams. Felt it stretch and grow, and knew its mother’s name. She screamed.

Hands caught her shoulders as she struggled with her blankets.

‘Gently, gently now, Teia,’ said Neve. ‘It’s all right. Everything’s all right.’

‘She’s coming,’ Teia whispered. She drew in a shuddering breath. ‘I felt it. She’s coming!’

Neve frowned. The slaty light seeping into the cave was not kind to her face, hardening it, deepening the lines etched into it by her years of exile. Like water runnels carved into stone.

‘Who’s coming? You’ve had a bad dream, that’s all. It’s over now. Everything will be all right, you’ll see.’

Prescience’s icy hands remained clamped around Teia’s heart and she shivered. Cold. She was so cold, the warmth at her core leaching out of her in the face of what was to come. ‘No, it won’t. Nothing will be all right ever again.’

‘Teia?’

‘She’s almost here, Neve.’

‘Who?’

‘The Raven.’

Oh, Macha keep me safe from the storm
.

‘I’ve never seen a woman so afraid, Baer.’

Neve stood beside him at the lookout, hugging herself against the cold, as the bone-white hills revealed themselves under a paling sky. Her man said nothing, but his eyes never stopped moving, scanning the snow for tracks, for signs of pursuit.

‘She said it over and over, that
She
’s coming, that nothing will be right again.’

One of the Eldest. What the girl claimed she had seen. Was it true that the Raven had been summoned by the Speaker of the Crainnh? The girl had no reason to lie. What Teia was attempting was so reckless, surely only the truth could spur her to try – or what she believed to be the truth, anyway. He had yet to settle his own mind on whether it was or it wasn’t and, once it was settled, he still had to decide what to do. There were two-dozen souls in his care now, with winter upon them; the same stubborn spirit that had got him sent into exile in the first place said he should hunker down in the lands he knew and wait it out, but there was a restless disquiet in the corners of his heart that he couldn’t ignore.

‘Maegern,’ he said quietly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Neve make the sign of protection. ‘Superstitious, Neve? You?’

‘She had a look about her. Faraway, but looking into me at the same time. Fair chilled me, it did.’

‘A foretelling?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. She wouldn’t talk about it no more, just set to gathering up her things.’

‘It wasn’t simply a nightmare?’

‘Powerful dark, if it was.’ Neve shook her head. ‘You should have seen her face, Baer. Then you’d understand.’

He grunted. ‘If only I had some proof.’

‘She’s got the Talent, you’ve seen that, and after the way she looked at me I don’t doubt she’s got the sight, too.’

Now there was a thing, if it were true. Eyes narrowed, he asked, ‘Banfaíth? You’re sure?’

‘I reckon.’ Settling her shawl around her shoulders, Neve gave him that look he had come to know well: the one that said this was women’s business and he had best not argue. ‘Women know sometimes,’ she said. ‘T’ain’t something as can be taught. T’ain’t something as can be put in a box and showed to you. We just know, in our bones.’ Arms folded, she shrugged. ‘It’s why Speakers are always women.’

He searched the horizon again, for the hundredth, the thousandth time since his watch began. Lost Ones could never be too careful.

Banfaíth. Speakers were trouble enough, to men and women both. Useful, no doubt, and powerful, but always trouble. But the Banfaíth were . . . other. They listened to the wind and it told them its secrets. They had the knowing of things hidden from others. How to read dreams. How to read a man’s heart.

His fingers clenched and unclenched restlessly on the bow lying across his shoulders.
She’s just a bit of a girl. Like my own I left behind
. ‘I’ll go to her, soon as my watch is over. I promised I’d talk with her again.’

His woman kissed him quickly, fondly, on the cheek. ‘Best be quick. I think she’s on her way.’

Finn stood quietly, saddle blanket spread across his broad back. Getting the bridle on him had been easy enough, but the saddle was proving more problematic. Hampered by her bulging belly, Teia simply couldn’t stand close enough or hoist it high enough to get it onto Finn’s back.

After the third attempt she dropped it and kneaded her lower back with both hands. Stupid thing. If she had a rock to stand on, even a bale of dung, she could manage, but she didn’t and oh her back ached now from trying. She was getting closer to her time. Carefully she rested one hand on the firm globe of her abdomen. Fifteen weeks to go or thereabouts, if she’d reckoned up correctly, although lately her size had made her begin to wonder whether she’d made a mistake. Then, with some pain, she would be rid of it for good and all.

Guilt spasmed inside her. It wasn’t the child’s fault. An infant had no say in her conception, in her allotted parents. How could Teia blame her? If anyone was to blame it was the unborn’s father.

Thinking of Drwyn fired her with enough anger to heave the saddle to shoulder height and fling it towards Finn. He grunted but stood still. Almost there. One more heave and she could—Macha’s ears, the blanket was slipping. On her tiptoes, Teia strained to steady the saddle against her upper chest whilst tugging the blanket straight again, but the combined weight was too much for her.

Down the saddle crashed. She stepped back smartly and it missed her feet, thumping to the ground with a jingle of buckles. Finn sidestepped away, the blanket slithering from his back to top the saddle in a heap.

‘
Du bagh na freann!
’

Tears of frustration pricked at her eyes. She’d come this far, survived a confrontation with Ytha and Drwyn both, and now she couldn’t even saddle her own horse. She wanted to scream.

‘Now, now,’ said a voice behind her. ‘A pretty wee girl shouldn’t know words like that.’

Teia swung around, face burning. Anger and shame, she couldn’t have said which was the hotter. But Baer winked when he caught her eye and that so flustered her that she bent down for the saddle blanket and took her time spreading it just so in order to hide her confusion.

When she reached for the saddle itself, Baer scooped it up and set it on Finn’s back with practised ease. The dun lunged for him with his teeth and Teia smacked his nose.

‘None of your nonsense,’ she told him firmly. He flicked his ears.

‘Got a temper, that one?’ Baer asked, reaching for the girths.

‘A bit, if he decides he doesn’t like you.’

‘And he doesn’t like many people, eh?’ He shot her a sidelong look and Teia couldn’t help but smile.

‘Not many, no. Thank you, Baer.’

He straightened up and rested one arm on the saddle, watching her curiously. ‘You sure you won’t stay with us?’

‘I’m sure. My way lies on a different road.’

She nodded south, towards the mountains rearing above the foothills that surrounded the cave, and tried not to think about how far she had to go. Out of the lands of her people, into the unknown.

The silver moon was setting as the sun rose, the dawn moon high in the southern sky. As she watched, the first sunlight hit the highest peaks and the forked summit of Tir Malroth stabbed up at the dawn moon’s belly. Premonition crawled along her spine.

That way, Macha keep me. The Haunted Mountain
. She bit her lip.
The one place the clans won’t go
.

Baer was speaking. ‘I’d best bring you those provisions, then,’ he said. Something in his voice told Teia he’d had to say it twice to snag her attention.

‘I’m sorry, I was away with the wind.’

‘You’ve a long journey ahead. I wish you luck.’

She smiled at him and nodded her thanks. He strode away, leaving Teia to watch the moons on their patient journey across the sky. They were approaching trinity. It would occur about the same time as her daughter was born, perhaps a little later. Thoughtful, she rested a hand on her belly. What if she gave birth under the trinity? What would that portend for her daughter, out there, amongst strange kin?

Kael reined up near the edge of the scrubby alder trees that fringed the river. ‘Hold,’ he said tensely.

Duncan and the four scouts riding behind him halted. He scanned the surrounding trees for anything amiss but saw no tracks disturbing the snow underfoot, and the trees grew too densely to allow him to do more than glimpse the thickly snowed plain beyond, and the twisting dark ribbon of the river that cut across it.

‘What is it?’

Kael didn’t answer straight away, casting about him like a questing hound. The scar that gouged his face from temple to jaw shone red against his sallow skin, his newly grown beard not even close to hiding it. ‘Dead men.’

‘Here?’

Without looking, the scarred clansman lifted his arm and pointed out to the plain. ‘There.’

‘You’re sure?’ Duncan asked, and Kael gave him a disgusted look. Of course Kael was sure; he was
always
sure.

Even after all this time, Duncan had no real understanding of how his lieutenant did what he did, how he knew what he knew. On careful consideration, he wasn’t even sure he
wanted
to know. Sometimes the extent of the seeker’s awareness of the dark places in men’s hearts was downright disturbing.

He motioned to the four scouts. ‘Off you go. See what you can see, and be back here in an hour.’ Needing no further instructions, they divided into two pairs and set off, one upstream, one down.

He slid a sideways glance at Kael. The man had always been ill at ease with the world around him, but since they’d tracked Maegern’s Hound across the mountains his discomfort had grown markedly worse. The beast’s stench appeared to linger in his nostrils, leaving his lips permanently twisted with distaste and his disposition more sour than ever. He wouldn’t even look towards the plains and whatever he could sense there.

Leaving his horse with its reins over a branch, Duncan picked his way through the last of the alders in the direction Kael had pointed. As the cover ran out he hunkered down to survey the undulating snows. Even from a distance he could see where they’d been churned up by many feet some time before the last snowfall. Tracks led in and tracks led out, blurred by the fresh snow but still visible. In the middle of the churned area, between the alders and the river’s lazy swoop, were two irregular shapes, roughly man-sized and almost completely covered with snow.

‘I see them,’ he said. He didn’t need to raise his voice; his words would carry well enough on the cold, still air. He looked left and right again to be sure no one was watching – straight ahead the plain was as empty and undisturbed as a fresh-made bed, all the way to the horizon – and then walked out to the bodies.

No attempt had been made to build a cairn or honour them in death; they had simply been left where they fell, limbs all tumbled about. He hunkered down and brushed the snow away from their faces with his sleeve. One corpse lay on his back, and scavengers had already torn into his features – only empty sockets and a lipless grin remained. Duncan tried and failed not to shudder. He’d seen his share of dead men, but never the likes of this.

The other man had fallen across his left arm. The right side of his face had been stripped almost to the bone, but the left, when Duncan managed to heave him up, still held enough ashen-grey skin to show a clan tattoo, high on his cheek. Three lines, one long and swooping suggesting the head, neck and back of a running horse, the others short strokes to make the forelegs. His lips tightened, and he lowered the corpse back onto the ground. Clan Morennadh. His clan.

Quickly he swept aside more snow from the bodies, exposing the bloody and frost-stiffened buckskins each man wore. Their furs and winter gear were gone; boots and weapons, too. Most of their fingers were missing – to animals, he thought at first, then noticed the cleanly-severed edges of the bones on one hand, still visible despite the gnawing of rodents. Hacked off, then, presumably for a ring that couldn’t be removed any other way.