Fate’s Pawn

The others arrived with perfect timing, just as the fire was beginning to light up the street. Unfortunately, they seemed distracted by the distraction.

“That building is on fire!” Miles nearly shouted. Hoeru would never understand why humans felt the need to state the obvious so often.

“Yes, and someone should have burned those stupid worthless clothes a long time ago. Producing heat is about all they were ever good for. Now let’s get moving before too many people show up.”

Stairs led up to the walkway on top of the walls at regular intervals. They were near to one of the dozens of guard stations from which the guards watched the forest. Or, more often, napped. But for the moment, the station was empty, the guard having run to find someone to help with the burning building. Hoeru did feel a pang of regret for having done that. Not setting the clothes on fire. They were an abomination. But the shop itself had never done him any wrong, nor had the owners. And fires could be very dangerous in a place as cramped as Peritura. He hoped nobody would get hurt by the fire. There were teams of magic users stationed in the town whose abilities were specifically geared towards stopping fires, and since at least one guard was already off and running, presumably to fetch them, the damage shouldn’t be extensive. He hoped.

But there was a task at hand. Hoeru led them up to the parapet wall and helped Miles tie a rope to one of the outcroppings so that he, Roland, and Keira could slide down. Once they were safely on the ground outside the wall, he untied the rope, and while Miles stored it in his pack once again, he leapt from the top of the wall carrying Raziel. He landed as softly as he could. The impact still shook Raziel more than he would have liked, but there was nothing for it. They had to keep moving.

They dashed for the forest, Hoeru still carrying Raziel on his back. They were as quick as Hoeru could have hoped, crossing the distance in well under a minute, though to his changeling ears they sounded like a herd of stampeding eggbeasts.

No magical lights blazed up to pinpoint them, and no one raised any alarms that Hoeru’s ears could pick out. They were well into the forest when Hoeru came to a stop and gave the others time to catch their breath. Miles looked especially pale in what moonlight filtered down through the trees. They were all sweating from the exertion, and that concerned Hoeru. It was certainly possible that they’d be found by something that could track them by their scent. But then they were humans, and humans smelled so much more than they ever realized.

“So Hoeru. What’s next?” Keira asked between breaths.

“Thinking maybe a bath.”

She gave him a sidelong look.

“I know you were stuck in that room for a while, but I don’t think we have time for that.”

The wind shifted and Hoeru was treated to a noseful of human. Still. She wasn’t wrong.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Catch your breath. Roland, you’re gonna need to carry Raz. I’ll have to scout ahead of you three, and I can’t be worrying about him while I do it.”

“Okay,” Roland said with a short nod. Hoeru slid Raziel off his back and transferred him to Roland’s. He didn’t seem to weigh any more on Roland than he had to Hoeru, but Hoeru wasn’t terribly worried about Roland just then. Had Raziel’s face gone greyer since they’d left the hospital, or was that the moonlight? Was he dying?

That thought sent a spike of horror through Hoeru’s heart. He couldn’t let that happen. Absolutely not.

“Okay. I need you all to head east as best you can,” he said pointing. “Keep an eye on the moons. Keep the Snow Moon on your left and the Blood Moon on your right and you should keep heading in the right direction. Get moving. I’ll check in on you and make sure you’re going in the right direction as often as I can. Keep quiet and don’t make any light unless something attacks you.”

Once Keira and Roland nodded, Hoeru loped off into the woods. First things first. He needed food. Real food. Not nuts and fruit. Meat. Miles’ rabbit food had kept Hoeru more or less sane for a little while, but he could already feel himself burning through it, feel the wolf inside him rising.

The forest at night was the most wonderful place. It was so mercifully free of the stink of humans and their noises. There was no deception, no one jockeying for an advantage based on stupid nonsense rules or pretending that the truth wasn’t the truth to spare someone’s feelings. There was only one desire, and it ruled every single thing in the forest. Survival.

He needed to be quick; he couldn’t leave his humans to stumble around in the forest for very long or go very far from them. This close to Peritura, there shouldn’t be much that would pose much danger to them, but when there were corrupted in the forest, you could never be sure of anything.

A few quick leaps, and he was among the treetops. His vision couldn’t compete with an owl’s at night, but with the moons out and no clouds, he had no more trouble than he would have had in full daylight. It didn’t take him long to find a few rabbits on their own nightly search for food. Raw rabbit was far from his favorite meal, but this wasn’t the time to be picky.

Hoeru let the wolf rise in him, feeling his teeth sharpen and grow longer. The nails on his fingers went through a similar transformation. His senses of sight, smell and hearing didn’t get stronger so much as their focus changed. The feeling of the wind over the hairs on his arm told him how to stay downwind, his sense of smell told him he needed to hurry before the fox that was also stalking the rabbits took its chance. He fell from the tree limb in perfect silence and took two of the rabbits. He didn’t want them to suffer even fear. The other rabbits were gone in moments, but these two were enough for Hoeru.

With a claw, he disemboweled them and peeled away their skin before setting to the task of consuming the meat. The bones crunched pleasantly, but he found them somewhat bland. He’d been eating too much human food, maybe. Still it was food he had desperately needed, and he sent up a prayer to Beauty thanking her for allowing him to take from her forest and another to Passion asking him to return her rabbits’ spirits to the forest swiftly.

He felt much better once he’d finished the first rabbit, and he knew the fox was still nearby eyeing the pile of offal he’d left. Hoeru could certainly have finished both rabbits easily, but there was no reason to take more from the forest than he needed. He ate about half of the second rabbit and made a show of discarding it before leaping back into the trees. The fox would take the rest.

It was time to find the others again and doing so wasn’t terribly difficult. They’d strayed a little from the direction he wanted them to go but not terribly far. That was good. It meant they’d be more or less okay while he scouted around.

He moved a little ahead of the group and dropped from the trees to the path where they’d be certain to see them. Humans could be really skittish in general and Miles in particular. There was no need to scare them if he didn’t need to. And yet, when they came to him on the path, he could instantly see fear in their eyes.

“You need to be going a little more in that direction. Take that path there,” he said, trying not to be offended by their fear.

“Are you okay?” Keira asked, caution in her voice.

“Yes?” Hoeru answered, unsure why she might think otherwise.

“It’s just… there’s blood on your face.”

Oh. Right. There hadn’t been time to really clean up after the rabbit.

“I was hungry.”

For whatever reason that didn’t set them at ease.

“Ah. Okay. That path?”

“Yes.”

She nodded, and Hoeru slipped into the trees again. Leaving blood on his face was sloppy of him. It would cloud his sense of smell and might draw other creatures to him. It didn’t take very long to find a stream to wash in, but the whole time he couldn’t get the fear he’d seen in their eyes out of his head. Frustrating humans.

After that he stayed fairly close to the group, stopping occasionally to correct their course. They weren’t as openly concerned once the blood was off his face, but he could still see the tension in them, clear as day to his changeling eyes. He tried to tell himself that it was the situation and not him. But they weren’t as tense when they couldn’t see him.

A few hours passed like that: Hoeru scouting ahead and returning, checking on them every few minutes or so. Once they were deeper in the forest, he couldn’t risk being very far from them. A lot could happen in just a few seconds, and if something found them and he wasn’t there, he might return to find nothing but corpses. And eventually, just when they were nearing the fort, something did find them.

Hoeru wasn’t sure exactly what tipped him off. A subtle scent that passed beneath his conscious mind or a faint sound that faded into the background noise of the forest? Maybe it was just that the wolf in him knew when another predator was near. Regardless, as he perched in the trees he knew that he was not the only one watching the little group trudge through the forest.

Roland was at the head of the group, Raziel still on his back. Miles was in the middle, hunched in on himself and trying to look in every direction at once. Keira brought up the rear, the look in her eyes one of determination, though the set of her shoulders and the way she constantly clenched and unclenched her hands gave away her nerves.

Whatever was stalking them was waiting for its moment. Hoeru didn’t know if the thing had sensed him as he’d sensed it. If it hadn’t, he could turn the trap on whatever it was. But first he had to find it.

Fear rose up in him, just for a moment, fear that he wouldn’t be fast enough, strong enough. Fear that whatever this thing was would devour his friends before he could stop it or that he couldn’t stop it even with an ambush.

The fear was useful. Primal emotion like that was something the wolf in him drew on, used to grow stronger, and he would need it. He fed his fear to the wolf and felt his claws and fangs return, his vision and other senses coming to the forefront of his mind while conscious thought retreated.

The wolf’s thoughts mingled with Hoeru and fear turned to outrage. Something was stalking his humans. That was unacceptable. The thing would have to be taught the error of its ways.

Finding it was simple enough. There were dozens of ways a predator could have crept up on the little group, but there was one obviously superior place to wait to ambush them on their current path. An outcropping of stone overlooked the path, the perch obscured by a large bush. The stone spread from the outcrop to the path below their feet, meaning if the predator had even decent ears, it would be able to hear their every footfall, letting it gauge where they were and time its attack with precision.

If the predator was anywhere, it would be there. The only downside to its chosen position was that it would have very little protection from attacks coming from above, only the bush to obscure it. Hoeru guessed how it would be sitting, crouched and waiting to pounce on them when they came out from beneath the outcropping. Hoeru made his own approach from the trees from the direction that he assumed its back would be facing.

And then it was his own turn to wait. The moment to strike would be the instant before the predator leapt. That meant guessing who the predator would attack. It would go for the weakest of them. That was what smart predators did. It was either Raziel or Miles. Raziel might be easier due to his limp condition, but Roland was holding onto him, and Roland was the one the predator would least like to tangle with. It would strike for Miles, hit him fast and hard and be gone with him before Roland or Keira could recover from the shock.

It was all down to waiting then. Waiting and trying to keep calm, to keep the wolf at bay until it was time to unleash it. It was eager for the fight and so was Hoeru, ready to spend some of his righteous anger at the way he and Raziel had been treated on a deserving target. Though the not-wolf part of him whispered that the predator likely didn’t deserve his rage. It was only doing what its nature dictated.

Then the bush rustled ever so slightly and that voice in Hoeru went silent. It could have been a breeze, but nothing else moved in time with its leaves. The predator was getting ready. Hoeru was ready.

A wave of frozen fear hit Hoeru an instant before the sound did, like the flash of silent light before the thunder. The noise didn’t just hit Hoeru’s ears. It was loud enough to hit him like a breeze, ruffling the hairs on his arms. It was a howl that pierced his ears and went straight to his heart, setting it to beat like that of a deer that felt teeth sinking in.

Hoeru froze, choking on the scream of terror that filled his mind. He knew what was coming. They were well outside of its territory, but it was coming nonetheless. An image of a tree whose bark had been torn by massive claws filled his mind.

The predator that had been stalking his friends did not freeze. It did the smart thing and fled. The bush shivered like it was caught in a tornado and folded in on itself, becoming a pair of enormous wings with leaves in place of feathers. Hoeru only caught a glimpse of the thing with its wooden skin and claws before it flung itself into the air and buzzed away like some enormous dragonfly.

The noise it made was cacophonous in the night, and Hoeru knew that whatever had howled would be coming their way to investigate. There was no time to hesitate. And yet his body hesitated. He shook in his perch, desperate not to be seen. And then he saw his friends, instinctively crouched low to the ground, even more terrified than he was by the noise.

They needed him. Raziel needed him. Now more than ever. It was time to move.

He threw himself from the tree and landed near them. Miles screamed, and that would have made Hoeru angry for giving away their position but it was far too late for that. He could feel the malevolent intent of something moving their way, pushing through the magic currents of the forest like a shark cutting through the water.

“We have to move. Now,” he hissed at them. They were all shaken. That was good. They needed fear. They were going to have to run far and fast. He pointed and took off. They followed.

The next few minutes were the worst of Hoeru’s life since his family died. Fear sank its claws deep in him, threatened to bring him down. He had to force himself to seem, at least outwardly, calm. Humans were fragile creatures. If they knew what was coming, how afraid he was, it was entirely possible they could go mad. So he forced himself to set a pace they could keep up with, to stay rational and pick the swiftest paths even while the wolf inside him howled for him to leave them behind, find somewhere safe and hide. He stayed with them, and they didn’t falter.

They ran faster than he could have hoped while the trees seemed to twist away from them in the wind, as though even they didn’t want anything to do with what might happen to them. There had been hardly a cloud in the sky when they started, but darkness crept in around them, reaching for them with inky black claws. They ran on and on through a seemingly endless forest. And all the while, Hoeru felt what he could not see, hear, or smell. The attention of something older and stronger than him.

And then they were at the hollow that lead up to the fort. Safety was within sight. The ancient stonework awash in silvery moonlight was within reach. Hope surged in Hoeru’s heart and for a moment stilled his ragged thoughts. He dared to think he wouldn’t have to lose any of his friends after all.

The thought died as their hunter came over the ridge to one side of the path and calmly came to block their path. The whole path.