Heirs of the Fallen: Book 02 - Crown of the Setting Sun Page 6

  He is not breathing, Leitos determined, failing to detect the rise and fall of the man’s chest. Still he waited. If the Hunter was merely stunned, he would soon rouse himself, and the race would begin again. If he was dead, then it did not matter.

  I cannot run again, Leitos thought wearily. Knowing that, however, meant he needed to be certain the man was dead, which in turn required that he get closer. And what if he is still alive? That question flew out of the darkness of his mind, as did the ensuing answer, the same answer that had come to him when he first began crawling away from the Hunter. Then I must kill him.

  Just considering that, and the means by which he would dispatch the Hunter, made his insides queasy. Before, there had been fury in his heart, but with the Hunter sprawled on his back, that fury had changed. He tried to find an alternative course, but the Hunter’s earlier boast weighed on his heart. “I can track a lizard … even a soaring bird.”

  Fighting the instinct to flee, Leitos inched nearer, skipping around a tall clump of brush to ensure the Hunter did not move while briefly out of sight. From two paces, the man looked no more alive than he had at ten paces.

  Leitos crept closer … closer … until he stood over the sprawled Hunter. His tumble had pulled back his hood, revealing not a brutish face, as Leitos had envisioned, but one that was handsome, even noble. The Hunter was unkempt, to be sure, his strong jaw and chin furred with several day’s growth of beard, which was nearly as long as his close-cropped black hair. Grime made the swarthy skin of his cheeks and brow all the darker. Leitos could hardly imagine him being a betrayer of his own kind. The only flaw that marred the Hunter’s features was a rough, raised scar stretched across his throat. That, Leitos suspected, accounted for the harshness of the man’s voice.

  A fly lighted on the Hunter’s cheekbone, wandered about, perhaps sipping from the raindrops and sweat that had collected on the man’s skin. Or it has come to feast on dead flesh.

  As he knelt down by the Hunter’s side, it crossed his mind to smash the stone against the man’s temple, just as he had slammed another stone against the adder’s skull. The memory of the mangled mess he had made of the serpent’s head kept him from taking that action. It felt wrong to desecrate a corpse. Nevertheless, he held the stone overhead in one hand, and reached out with the other.

  At the first touch, Leitos recoiled. The Hunter’s clothing was soiled, stiff, and greasy. Moreover, the man’s odor truly hit him for the first time, the stench of old sweat, rancid meat, and other unmentionable filth.

  He had to know if the Hunter had any life left in him. He had to know. The sooner done, the sooner he could continue his westward journey toward the Crown of the Setting Sun, somewhere beyond the Mountains of Fire. For the first time, he was amazed to realize that the thought of that journey did not trouble him, but rather filled him with a glimmer of his grandfather’s hope….

  Admonishing himself for delaying, Leitos pressed his hand firmly on the Hunter’s chest. His mouth fell open at the powerful thud of the man’s beating heart. His gaze flicked to the man’s face even as the Hunter’s dark eyes flared open, gleaming with a mad cruelty that destroyed his comeliness.

  A squawk of terror burst from Leitos’s throat. Too late, he swung his weapon. The Hunter batted his hand aside, and the stone flew free. Then a massive fist clutched around Leitos’s throat, squeezing so tight that he could not breathe, let alone cry out. Leitos clawed at the man’s fingers. The Hunter drew him near, turned his head this way and that, as if seeking something behind his eyes.

  The Hunter grinned, an ugly expression. “You should have broken my skull, boy,” he growled. “Would have been an easy kill—I was gone for a moment—and I deserved to die for misjudging you.”

  He drew Leitos close. “Your third lesson, boy, is that mercy is for the weak,” he whispered, his thick fingers tightening around Leitos’s throat. The Hunter drew back his other fist and rammed it forward. Leitos felt no pain, no anything. In an instant, the day was made night.

  Chapter 10

  Mercy is for the weak.… the words were soft, sinister. Leitos loomed over the Hunter, for some reason sure he had done this before. He shook his head, thinking that strange thought about mercy was fitting and so true. Mercy is for the weak … and I am weak no longer. He swung the stone, cracking it against the Hunter’s skull. The man’s eyes flared wide. He reached up and caught Leitos throat. Leitos tried to jerk back, tried to shout—

  Agonies beyond count assailed Leitos as he started awake. He lay there taking deep, ragged breaths that burned his throat, wondering what had happened, why was he not battering in the Hunter’s skull….

  A dream, he thought in despair, remembering his failed attempt to get away, as well as missing his chance to destroy his enemy. He tried to open his eyes, but the Hunter’s attack had left one swollen shut. The other cracked, just a fraction, and through it he saw a world painted in muddy red hues.

  He lay on a bed of cool sand, deep in shadow. For fear of alerting the Hunter that he was awake, he moved only his eyes, trying to guess where he was. Overhead, aged daylight reflected off a curve of smooth rock. I’m in a cave.

  As his awareness grew, he noticed that tight ropes bound his wrists together before his chest. He cautiously wriggled his legs, and found his ankles tied as well. Silence fell on his ears. No wind, no shuffling of ratty clothing, nothing. He could hope the Hunter had decided to leave him to die, but that was unlikely. The man had risked his life to snatch Leitos from perilous floodwaters, all on the slim chance that Leitos was the slave he hunted. For now, Leitos was sure he was alone.

  By the time he had screwed up his courage enough to test the strength of the bindings, the light of day had fled night’s dark substance. The ropes held tight around his wrists, the same as those securing his ankles. Exasperated, he flopped and strained until he lay on his opposite side, gasping. Recklessness gave way to desperation, and Leitos heaved and pulled against the lashings. Dust rose and sand flew, the ropes tore his skin, but he came no closer to getting loose. Tears of rage coursed over his cheeks, and he spat every oath he knew in an effort to relieve the burning ache in his throat.

  In the end, he went limp, panting, staring into a darkness that had become like a living entity pressing hard against his face. The desolation he had held in check fell on him in cascading waves, extinguishing the rage. Sorrow came after, flooding him.

  Grandfather, he cried silently, is this my path, a life of suffering? No answer came. Spent in mind and body, he eventually slumbered again. Matching his thoughts, all was blackness before his eyes, all was loss….

  Something jabbed against Leitos’s spine, once and again, rudely bringing him awake. Dawn shed its golden light over the land, filled the cave with warmth. A solitary bird trilled in the distance, but Leitos focused on the closer sound of something shuffling about in the sand behind him. The digging pressure went away. He remained still, thinking some desert creature was preparing to make a meal of him.

  “For an escaped slave to sleep so soundly,” the Hunter rasped, “life in the mines must be better than once it was. Or is it that you are a slave of a different sort? Did the Alon’mahk’lar wash and perfume you, boy … did they make a whore of you?” he finished with a nasty chuckle.

  Leitos went rigid upon hearing that unforgettable voice. Doubtless, the man would decide he needed another lesson for keeping silent instead of answering, or for anything else he did, as the Hunter seemed to crave delivering pain and terror on his captives.

  A madness swept through Leitos, and he decided that he did not care what the brute did to him. In truth, the worse, the better. Remembering how the man had beaten him before, Leitos guessed that he could anger him again, drive the Hunter to snuff out his life. If he could not hope to carry out his grandfather’s wishes, then death, he concluded, was better than returning to bondage. But how to provoke the Hunter?

  He had unwittingly learned the answer to that question just after the Hunter dragged h
im from the river. When they first met, he had insulted the man, earning some many of the bruises from which he now suffered. He suspected that had he kept antagonizing the ruffian, the Hunter might well have killed him.

  Steeling himself for what was sure to follow, Leitos said in a cracking voice, “Suffering the pleasure of the Sons of the Fallen … you seem to know a good deal about that.”

  Heavy silence met this. Leitos pressed on, wanting to infuriate the man, goad him to unrelenting violence. “I suppose not,” he said in a scathing tone. “Had you suffered, they would not have allowed you to take up a life of seeking after fleeing slaves. I suspect you enjoyed all they did to you … longed for more. I wonder, when you bring back a slave, is your reward to pleasure them?”

  Instead of setting upon him with curses and blows, the big man strode to the mouth of the cave. Leitos blinked at the Hunter’s back, eyes swollen, gummy, and sore. The puffiness had retreated a little with sleep, and the reddish hue that had clouded the one was gone. The Hunter, his hood pulled well forward, stood wrapped in silence, looking placidly out into the desert, as if he had heard nothing of what Leitos had said—or was considering how best to destroy him.

  “You’ll want to break your fast,” the Hunter said after a time. “We’ve leagues to go this day, and I’ll not tote you like a weanling babe.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Leitos muttered sullenly, unable to guess why the man had failed to react as he had believed he would.

  The Hunter turned and slowly drew off his hood. His dark eyes shone like glass. “You’re a poor liar, boy. I can hear your belly grumbling from here.” He smiled then, a cheerless turn of the lips that showed strong, white teeth. “Come, I’ll cut you free. We can sup together on the sage hares I snared last night. They are scrawny, much like you, but I have a bit of salt and spices to flavor them.”

  After the Hunter deftly used a wide-bladed knife to slice through his bonds, Leitos sat up, rubbing away the numbness in wrists, then worked on his ankles. He offered no word of thanks. The Hunter did not seem to mind, and went about starting a fire of twigs and dried dung. Next, he drove a pair of forked sticks into the sand on either side of the flames. He pulled a pair of mangy hares from a threadbare sack, skinned and spitted them, then set to roasting them.

  “I would gladly die before eating anything from your hand,” Leitos said, wishing his belly agreed.

  “You’re too weak by half, boy, to travel very far without growing faint. You will eat.”

  “I have come this far,” Leitos retorted.

  “And how far is that, do you believe?” the Hunter chuckled grimly. “A few days of hard travel from the mines, boy—that is all you managed. Your masters would have caught you if not for the river, which those iron-boned Alon’mahk’lar will not cross without a sturdy barge. As there are no barges in this part of Geldain, and fewer bridges, they sent word out to all their spies and Hunters to keep an eye out for a fleeing slave boy, and offered a fair reward to anyone who captured you.”

  Leitos receded into himself, considering what the Hunter had said first. On one hand, it was hard to believe he had traveled so little, but on the other, he knew it for the truth. At the start of his journey, he had reasoned that it would be weeks, if not months, to reach the Mountains of Fire. Now, captured by the Hunter, he guessed he might never see those crags. His grandfather had placed his faith in the wrong person, Leitos thought, and had pointlessly thrown his life away. Save getting himself beaten to a pulp, captured and bound, Leitos grudgingly accepted that he had accomplished nothing.

  The smell of roasting meat gradually drew Leitos from the smothering morass of his bleak ponderings. During his lengthy brooding, the Hunter had continually turned the spitted hares, searing them over a small fire. Now the brute rummaged through a handful of tiny leather sacks arranged around an iron pot and a few other cooking implements, all nestled within an old wooden crate sitting open beside his knees. He carefully sprinkled salt over the hares, delved into another sack and brought out some dried green leaves. These he crushed into coarse flakes, letting them drift onto the glistening meat.

  Despite his conviction not to eat, the aroma of the cooking food set Leitos’s mouth to watering. He cursed his weakness. The only way to distract himself was to start talking. If the Hunter wanted to batter him for speaking out of turn, so much the easier to resist thoughts of eating.

  “What is this place?” he asked.

  The Hunter seemed to ignore him, not once looking away from the hares. Leitos had given up any expectation of receiving an answer when the man began to speak.

  “One of my hideaways,” the Hunter said. “I have many. Some are mere hollows; others are deep and winding caverns. All Hunters have their secret dens. Most, like this one, are more than they appear, even up close. Behind a rock at the back of this cave,” he said, tilting his head to a spot hidden in the gloom behind Leitos, “there is a crack. Squeeze through it, and you find a passage that leads to a large chamber with a seep of the sweetest water you have ever tasted.”

  Leitos found that interesting, but there was really only one thing he wanted to know. “Why do you do this?” The Hunter turned a questioning gaze on him. Leitos thought about it, then asked bluntly, “Why do you serve the Alon’mahk’lar. Surely their rewards alone do not make you want to betray your own kind.”

  “My kind?” the Hunter snapped with a bitterness that went far deeper than anger. “By that I suppose you mean humankind, like those who placed me into the hands of the Alon’mahk’lar … much like those who did the same to you?”

  “I was not placed into their hands,” Leitos insisted, then repeated what his grandfather had always told him. “Alon’mahk’lar raided our village and took us captive.”

  “You are a blind fool. I grant that some few of your people still hide and fight from their icy strongholds, but has it never entered your mind to wonder how those places are found in the first place? Do you think Alon’mahk’lar wander about, covering league after endless league in search of future slaves?”

  Leitos blinked. He had never considered that Izutarians might be swayed as easily as other peoples. Broached now, that idea troubled him.

  “The last of your people, and you as well,” the Hunter went on, “fail to understand that the age of men died a generation gone, a doom heralded by the destruction of the Three and the burning heavens. Men do not rule anything anymore, boy, save the lost kingdoms of dwindling memory that the Faceless One allows them to rule. There is no war to fight, no matter that they raise banners and steel against him. The world of men is a corpse consumed by rot.”

  Indifferent to the flames licking his fingers, the Hunter tore a chunk of meat off one hare and popped it into his mouth. He chewed for a moment, then sprinkled more spices on the hares. Again, he remained silent long enough that Leitos began to think he would say no more, but then he did.

  “Some few are taken,” he relented, “but most men are sold into chains by their fellow men. And here is a secret, boy: most often the price needed for men to sell men is nothing of true worth, rather a pat on the head. For a bit of meaningless praise, and maybe a stale loaf for the reluctant, a loving mother will convince herself that her children would be better off in the hands of slavemasters. If not that, then she will tell herself that she would be better off—”

  “You are a liar,” Leitos blurted.

  “Of course I am,” the Hunter growled with a humorless smirk, “as I have learned to be. Lies and smiles, boy—that is how you survive under the rule of the Faceless One. We lie to our masters, bow and scrape, but mostly we deceive ourselves about the reasons and meaning of it all. As to what I said before about men, that was the plain truth.”

  “You are wrong,” Leitos said, outwardly unmoved, but beginning to wonder.

  “Am I? Then tell me, boy, how is it that you are bound and I am not? We are both of us humankind, as you say, yet I am a Hunter, ordained to that station by the very same creatures who enslaved you an
d your kin. The Alon’mahk’lar use me, and those like me, to seek and capture those like you.”

  “You are a betrayer.”

  “That I am,” the Hunter agreed once more, unapologetic in tone and countenance. Neither was there shame in his admission, but something very much like pride. “Unlike most, boy, I take satisfaction that I only became a betrayer after I was betrayed.”

  “Is that another of your lies … what you tell yourself to excuse your treachery?”

  The Hunter’s dark stare glazed over, as if he were no longer looking at Leitos, but something beyond. “That, boy, is one of the few absolute truths I cling to,” he muttered. “Like you, I was a slave. For five years the pain and disgrace heaped upon me was far worse than anything you have ever imagined or felt. I was betrayed not by the Alon’mahk’lar or the Faceless One, but by men … rather, by a woman. From that experience, I learned to accept the truths you still deny.”

  The Hunter held quiet for a time, his whiskered chin trembling with emotion Leitos would never have thought possible from the likes of him. When he spoke again, the tenor of his voice had changed, making Leitos think of a small child, which was at odds with his fierceness and brutality.

  “The Alon’mahk’lar came in broad daylight,” the Hunter said. “As they see their crimes as privileges, they never feel obliged to hide what they do under the darkness of night. But then, they did not have to hide, for it was my own mother, and others like her, who sought them out, invited them into our home as she had done many times before. For a whispered promise—be it for bread or something else, I will never know—she accused my father for a traitor, then willingly cut his beating heart from his chest as a pair of those laughing demons held him down.

  “Before she handed me over, her skin stained by my father’s blood, she laid with the Alon’mahk’lar—and I say again, boy, it was not the first time I had seen such savaging. She screamed and wept at what those monsters did to her … but naked and torn, she and others like her watched with heads held high and smiles on their faces, as the slavemasters chained me and a dozen more from my village. That is betrayal, boy,” the Hunter snarled, “the likes of which you can never understand.”