xxvii. In which Arthur runs afoul of the wild hunt
Arthur’s neck and hand ached. That was the first thing that was wrong.
The second was that morning light spilled through a split in the tree trunks.
The third was that Ira was gone.
Arthur scrambled to his feet. “Ira?”
Silly to call out like that. He could see the entirety of the shelter Ira had grown for them last night, a ring of wood with
a smoke hole overhead—and a thin, splintered gap in one side.
Arthur scooped up the cat, who had been curled into a sleepy ball by the remains of the fire. She grumbled, but he clutched
her to his chest, afraid to be alone with that gap in their shelter. He remembered hearing—dreaming about?—claws scraping,
something trying to get in.
“Ira?” he called, slightly louder.
No response.
Arthur examined the shelter for a groove or any indication of a door. He prodded at the wood around the gap. It opened, leaving
a wider hole through which he stepped out into the forest.
Sunlight stabbed into his eyes as leaves shifted overhead. His foot caught on something; he righted himself against the shelter.
Glancing down, Arthur gasped. A massive arrow was lodged at the base of a tree. Long, ragged claw marks dug into the shelter’s
sides, all around the splintered wood.
Panic welled in his chest. “Ira?”
No one answered, but the surrounding greenery was flattened. Clumps of limp, blackened flora trailed around their campsite
and away.
Arthur buried his face in Freya’s fur, focusing on her weight and warmth. On his own breathing, in for four, hold for four, out for four.
“All right. We can find him. We’ll just follow his trail. Then . . .”
Then, he didn’t know. Ira might have gone anywhere. Even back to the vale, despite his talk last night.
A small part of Arthur hoped he had. If Ira had returned to the vale, Arthur had no choice but to retrieve him. Of course
it would mean restarting their journey, but the vale was safe.
Stop it. They had to replant the tree. For Ira. For Charlotte. Arthur couldn’t give up and go back to the vale, no matter how tempting.
No matter how difficult it was to choose to do something, how much easier it was to go on doing nothing. To tell oneself there was nothing to be done.
Arthur let out a breath, rubbed the rowan cross in his pocket for comfort, and set Freya down. Crawling back into the shelter,
he stuffed the fur they’d slept on into Ira’s pack and shouldered it, hefted his own (significantly lighter) knapsack in his
arms, and said, in a voice meant to be firm and determined but not quite either, “Come on, Freya.”
They set off, following the trail of dying flowers. A horrible, sibilant sound that reminded Arthur uncomfortably of whispers
accompanied them, seeming to come from the trees.
He reached again for the rowan cross. It had become a habit in the last few days, the same way Charlotte so often fiddled with John’s wedding ring.
In the distance, howling.
Arthur stopped in his tracks, heart hammering. Not howling. Baying. Somewhere ahead, a pack of hunting dogs, like the hounds Agnes’s husband used to keep. Arthur had never liked that sound;
to him it meant some innocent rabbit or fox was about to be killed for nothing more than a rich man’s leisure.
This was worse. The baying had strange, ragged edges, laid over with screams and the moaning of a great wind.
Arthur swallowed. That sound raised the hair on his neck, made him want to run as fast as he could in the other direction.
Ira’s trail of dying greenery led straight toward it.
Freya twisted around Arthur’s legs. He picked up the nearest stick and held it like a sword. Just in case.
“Let’s go,” he said in a strangled voice.
The baying grew louder with every step. Arthur’s legs shook, but he pressed on until Freya’s fur stood on end and his ears
rang. His hands itched to cover them, but he didn’t.
Through the trees, by a stream rushing white and loud, a dozen hounds circled. They were sleek and black, the size of cart
horses, with gleaming red eyes. Their strange, ghostly forms melted and reformed each time they lunged toward their prey.
It was a stag. A glorious red deer with a golden mane and autumn leaves twined in his antlers, and a scarred eye and a twisted
leg. A hunting knife was lodged in his right shoulder.
Arthur’s mouth went dry. He flung himself around the back of a tree, trying to quiet his breathing. Freya hunkered down in
the underbrush.
“Easy, boys,” a gruff voice called. Arthur shivered. Like the baying, the voice had an edge to it. “He got me, sure enough, but I’ll live.”
Arthur set the packs down, gripped his stick, and edged around the tree. The speaker was a man, more or less. The way Ira
normally was, both man and not. He was tanned and weatherbeaten, like Seacliff’s fishermen, in fine hunting clothes like old
Mr. Livingston used to wear—but they were the color of storm clouds. So was his hair; so were his eyes, which fixed on Ira
hard and flinty. When he moved, no matter how little, it was sudden and forceful, the way storms appeared out to sea in autumn.
A bow and quiver were slung over his shoulder, or Arthur thought so, but they glimmered. One moment there, the next gone. Arthur couldn’t be sure he wasn’t imagining them.
“Been a long time, lord,” the huntsman said, flinging the title at Ira like an insult, in that same howling voice.
His cheek was scratched. Instead of blood, silvery-white fluid dribbled from it, looking like nothing so much as light. Ira
gazed at him warily, flanks heaving.
“Felt your power waning, so I have. Once you kept my hunt muzzled, but no longer.”
The huntsman reached over his shoulder, and now it was certain: A great black bow was in his hands, with a massive arrow—like
that at the campsite—nocked to the bowstring.
Arthur sucked in a breath. The nearest hound cocked an ear, but Arthur focused on its master. The huntsman raised the bow,
drew the string to the corner of his mouth—
Arthur leaped out from behind the tree with a yell, striking a hound with his stick. It yelped but wrenched the stick from
his hands. Arthur went flying and crashed to the ground at the huntsman’s feet.
The huntsman lowered his bow in surprise. “What’s this, now?”
Arthur got to his feet shakily, grabbed his stick, spent a pathetic moment wrestling the hound for it, and gave up. He stood between stag and huntsman, though one arrow for him and one for Ira would finish them both. The stag snorted, his breath hot at Arthur’s shoulder.
“I’m his friend.” Arthur’s voice trembled. “And I’m not going to let you kill him.”
The huntsman snorted. “Friend? Pet, more like. He’s always had a soft spot for humans, the devil take it. Wouldn’t let the
wild hunt run in these parts for hundreds of years. Now . . .”
He fingered his bow.
Arthur swallowed. “If you kill him, the forest will die. There won’t be any hunting left.”
The huntsman thundered laughter. Arthur shuddered.
“There’s always hunting to be done,” the huntsman said, in a soft voice even worse than that wind-like howl. “There’s always
prey to be found.”
He gripped Arthur by the throat, his hand cold and hard as iron.
“What a fine specimen you’ll make.”
Arthur scrabbled at his fingers, but the huntsman lifted him into the air like it was nothing, until Arthur’s toes barely
scraped the forest floor.
With a screech, Freya darted past the hounds. She sank her claws and teeth into the huntsman’s arm.
Swearing, he dropped Arthur and tried to shake her off. Arthur collapsed on the ground. He massaged his throat, wheezing.
The hounds rushed their master. They yelped and barked and bayed, leaped and snapped at the cat crawling all over the huntsman’s
body.
“Go!” Arthur gasped at Ira, but the stag flinched when Arthur reached for him. His nostrils flared, his ears twitched, so
deerlike that Arthur’s heart sank.
I start to lose myself, he remembered Ira saying. To feel like a real beast, instead of just looking like one.
“Not now,” Arthur moaned.
“Enough!” the huntsman roared.
Freya went flying. The hounds scattered, zigzagging back and forth. The stag’s sides quivered, but he was frozen with fear.
Arthur snatched at the leaf litter for another stick—a stone—anything that might help, however little. His fingers curled
around a rock the size of a gull’s egg.
The huntsman straightened, breathing heavily. He looked less like the fishermen in Seacliff now. The storm cloud color of
his hair and eyes and clothes seemed to have bled into his skin. More silvery-white light seeped through the claw marks Freya
had left.
Arthur threw the rock at him. It missed wildly.
With another thunderclap laugh, the huntsman raised his bow and trained it on Arthur. “What was that supposed to have done?”
He stepped closer, his arrow jabbing the hollow of Arthur’s throat. Arthur whimpered.
The stag gored the huntsman with his antlers.
The laughter died on the huntsman’s face. His mouth fell open, but no sound came out. Light spilled from his stomach.
His hounds yelped, vanishing one after another as if they’d never been. Light spilled faster and faster, blazing until it
enveloped the body in a white sheen. When the light faded, the huntsman was gone. Silvery-white ribbons dripped from the stag’s
antlers, vanishing before they hit the ground.
Arthur’s chest heaved, but he reached for the stag. “Ira?”
The stag gazed at him warily, ears twitching. Arthur withdrew, uncertain. He’d hoped Ira had remembered himself when he’d
killed the huntsman, but if he had it had been short-lived.
“Ira. It’s all right. It’s me.”
Was it the magic? The forest not understanding that the ways it tried to protect him hurt him instead? The hunting knife in his shoulder? Whatever it was, Arthur had to remind Ira of himself and dress his wound.
His stomach turned. Blood. There would be blood. More than what was already smudged into the stag’s mane.
Arthur took a step forward. The stag tensed, and he stopped.
“Ira, please.”
The stag eyed him. Letting out a breath, Arthur sank onto his haunches.
“What now?” he asked Freya.