Four #2
There, collapsed in the corner, is the corpse of a hunter, his body perfectly preserved.
His intestines spill from his gut encased in crimson ice, and his once blue eyes gawk at me in their eternal sleep, but it’s not his shredded gore that draws me close.
It’s the weapon frozen in his grip. For one hundred cycles, this man lay cold and alone, his sword at his side.
My soul sings as I break it free from his icy hold with a few well-placed kicks.
“Thank you,” I say to the dead. I say to The Stranger.
I say to Lovec. The blade is still razor sharp, and I shove my dagger back into my boot.
I’m no swordsman. I was not bound to Valka and his love of war.
I wasn’t raised by Lovec and his demands for bloodshed, but I was baptized in the fire of despair and heartache.
Reborn in torture and anguish. Come, oh ancient evil.
Take my head from my body. I will return the favor.
I say his name twice as I race out into the cold, but a tiger blocks my path. By the growl at my back, a second cuts off my retreat. I say his name a third time, a fourth. I beg his memory to stay with me and give me strength. I say his name a fifth time, and then the monster charges.
I’m too stunned to move as I watch the creature plow through the snow.
He’s as tall as I am, his muscles greater than anything I’ve witnessed.
He’ll kill me in seconds. Snap my bones like twigs, and I shut my eyes to picture my beloved’s face.
Not his beautiful face, complete with the soot markings.
No, I picture his face in the end. The pain.
The torture. The agony. I recall his screams. I visualize how Valka forced him to remain awake until it was over.
That’s what my mind conjures, the destruction of the man I love, not the beauty of his smile and his scarred lip, his flashing eyes and their golden flecks.
Bile rises in my throat. I never replay that moment.
I never let myself remember that day. It haunts my nightmares, but now I force myself to.
I smell his blood and the black magic. I dwell within his fear.
It fills me with an unholy rage, and then my eyes open.
The tiger is upon me, leaping for the kill, but with the grace he taught me over a cycle of stolen midnights, I lunge low and shove the blade high.
The tiger roars, and I split him apart, throat to gut, his innards raining down on me.
When he falls to the snow, everything is stained crimson, but it’s his blood, not mine.
“That,” I say loud and clear for the mountain to hear, “was for Kaid.”
I stand and meet the stare of the second animal, the gore already freezing to my skin.
Revenge is in the beast’s gaze. Revenge is in my entire body, woven through the cells that build my being.
We are not the same. I have a reason to survive, to kill, and steal, and hurt, and rage.
It consumes me. Owns me. Drives me. I need to live more than this creature needs to feed.
It was born of evil. I was born of love. We are not the same.
I scream a war cry as I flee from my new enemy, leaving a trail of carnage in my wake.
The tiger snarls behind me, answered by two other voices, and I veer to my right, leaping onto a toppled wall and climbing up to the roof, just like he taught me.
From this vantage, I can see Lovec’s ancient temple. I’m so close. I’m too far.
I push my legs faster. Two tigers hunt me from below.
Three track me from the roofs, but I don’t stop.
A divide approaches, and I leap, but the snow crumbles beneath me.
I slide off the edge, catching myself before it’s too late, and as my frozen fingers haul me to safety, pain lances through my calf.
I scream in agony, cursing and spitting and raging.
Blood pours from my veins in ugly pulses to freeze in the pure white snow, and I almost laugh.
Once pure, I’m now tainted. My sin has stained my soul, just like my oozing blood stains the earth.
“Eyes up, child.”
I jerk at The Stranger’s voice in time to watch the tiger who savaged my calf leap to the roof.
Mangled leg forgotten, I grip the sword, angling it above me at the monster.
It punctures the beast’s jaw and punches out through his skull, killing him as he lands on my prone body.
His unbearable weight crushes my chest, but after desperate minutes, I escape his corpse.
My ankle gives out as I try to flee, and with a sinking sensation, I realize how badly the beast shredded my calf.
Adrenaline allowed me one final kill, but this evil will win in the end.
“And that,” I spit with angry tears, “was for Lovec’s wife.
” I rip the sword free from the animal’s brain with a sickening crack.
These tigers are here because black magic ripped a wife to shreds.
I’m here because a god ripped a husband to pieces.
At least, I offered both their souls some vengeance before I die.
The snow whips into a frenzy, and my breath stills. Another tiger. I don’t have the strength to fight anymore. I can already feel the blood loss blurring my edges.
“Stranger,” I say. “Goodbye.” He doesn’t answer. His silence hurts.
I grip the sword and twist my aching body toward the commotion. I wish there was an afterlife. I wish Hreinasta hadn’t banished Death. At least then, the end wouldn’t be so cruel. My soul could join his. Eternity would be ours, but nothingness will greet me, just as it did him.
I brace for death, but no tiger appears.
As the snow whirls, a form takes shape, and as if emerging from thin air, a man steps onto the roof.
My gasp catches in my throat. He’s the tallest being I’ve ever seen, even taller than Kaid.
His head reaches at least seven feet, and his build is broad, all strength and grace.
His long, ice-blond hair hangs down his back, half of it tied up by braids and cords.
He’s terrifying and beautiful, his massive body dressed in fur and leather, and I can’t breathe.
I’ve never felt power this intoxicating.
I have never seen beauty this magnificent.
His blue eyes are so light they’re almost white, and for a moment, The Stranger’s eyes flash through my memory, but while his are solid and blinding, this newcomer has faint irises and pupils.
A jagged scar runs down his throat, and a second one consumes his hand.
I stare at them, but all I see is a scar that severed perfect lips.
Lips that worshiped me, praised me, comforted me, and I know who this new stranger is.
Lovec. The God of the Hunt has returned to the realm of men.
I look down at the blood pooling beneath the tiger, and as if Lovec is reminding me, I recall the villager’s words.
He vowed to return only after the evil who took his bride was destroyed.
There are other tigers. I hear their hunting roars, but when I killed this monster, I pledged it to Lovec’s wife.
The first kill to Kaid. The second to her.
This was my sacrifice for both of our lost lovers, and to my shock, I realize it was the godless girl who returned the Great Hunter to our land.
As my blood leaves my veins, stealing my life with it, I smear my fingers through the tiger’s death.
Lovec demands offerings of the flesh, so on unstable legs, I approach the god.
With shaking hands, I mark each of his cheeks.
He’s so tall he has to bend so I can reach, and when I’m done, he surprises me by capturing my hand in his.
I yelp in fear. No deity has ever touched me in their true form, but he merely wipes the excess crimson from my palms. I expect him to keep the blood for himself, but he raises his fingers, and starting at my forehead, he drags three lines down over my nose, lips, and throat.
Painted in blood, I understand. I am his hunter now.
Lovec has bestowed his favor on me. The godless girl, the sinner, the unholy.
The woman who understands his heartache, who gave his pain revenge.
We are the same, and I belong to him. Warmth fills my chest, and my calf stops hurting.
I look down, seeing nothing but new skin.
His blessing made me whole, and suddenly I feel the Stranger’s presence.
I had no one. Now I have The Stranger and the Great Hunter. Soon I’ll have my thief.
Lovec strides past me without a word and seizes the discarded sword.
With grace and strength only a god could possess, he drops from the roof and settles before the gathering tigers.
At least a dozen man-hunters are chasing my scent now, and with an expert swing of the blade, his strong voice roars through the city.
“Run.”
I run with everything I have left in me, and Lovec follows my lead, cutting down beast after beast. I grin at the Stranger’s words. The god isn’t helping me. Not truly. He is simply standing behind me in the blizzard so that the creatures cannot see me.
“You’re not out of the fire yet,” The Stranger’s voice says.
I roll my eyes at his choice of words, but I heed his warning and push through the endless white.
My lungs burn from the icy air, my legs burn from the exertion, and to the song of snarls and death, I explode upon the temple.
I race inside, my heart singing with joy at finding another piece of him, but that excitement dies before it can take root.
I just stumbled into the tiger’s den, the dozen outside merely a taste of what waits in here.