Chapter 27 - First kill.
The group moved between the giant trees, whose roots rose in high humps, Arswald at the front, Elen holding the right, and Armund and Ray bringing up the rear.
Aren cleared another ridge of root and looked about him as he went, until Arswald stopped short and the rest spread out to their places in silence.
Ray came up to Arswald carefully, and Arswald spoke without turning his head.
"Do you hear it?"
Ray shut his eyes and listened to the silence, with only the flat hum of the forest barely audible in the distance, and he did not open them again for several moments.
"I do. About three hundred paces. I'll go and check."
He dropped his eyes to his boots and laid a layer of yellowish energy over the soles, then went forward, gathering speed with every stride, and cleared a wide hump of root.
Ray went off through the forest without a single sound, and Aren, with his eyes still on the trunks, turned to Armund.
"How did Ray get so quiet?"
"Besides his marksmanship, Ray has a particular gift for magic. He can control the density of energy so finely that besides a hard shell he can make a soft layer that absorbs vibration and sound. Soil, grass, branches seem to sink into that shell, and the sound of them cracking, or any other noise, dissolves inside it."
"Remarkable..." Aren answered.
The corners of Elen's mouth lifted a little.
"He was made for hunting."
After a couple of minutes of waiting in silence Ray came back and stopped three paces from the group, with wariness plain on his face.
"Cortexes. Three of them. And... you need to see this."
The group went after him, and Ray brought them to a trunk with a deep split at its base and nodded that way.
In a clearing a few dozen paces off, three Cortexes were bent over a body, busy feeding.
The remains lay at the center, pressed down into the earth, the armor crushed into the soil, the metal twisted and the plates sunk into the ground at an angle, and beside them lay a torn cloak with no crest of any kind on it.
The sound of the animals feeding reached the cover, and Arswald frowned.
"So they've grouped up again..." he said.
"And they're feeding together as well... aren't they supposed to fight over a kill?" Armund added.
"They should. They're solitary creatures, and only at an early stage can they go about in pairs, until a cub is born... but this... three grown animals..." Ray said.
The pause stretched while Aren looked in silence at the torn cloak, and then at the broken sword driven halfway into the ground along with the crushed breastplates.
"Sir William..."
They all turned his way, drawn by the words spoken so quietly, while he went on looking at the clearing, his eyes wide.
"That's... that's Sir William."
Askir's brows came down and his eyes went from Aren to the clearing and back.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"You see that broken sword lying with the crushed armor... I remember it... and the cloak with no crest," Aren answered.
Arswald ran his eyes over the remains scattered on the ground without a word.
"But when William was with us he had a crest on his cloak. There was a fish on it, I think."
"But that time he had different armor — a cloak with no crest, and a dent in his helm."
The silence held for several seconds while nobody dared to speak, and then Elen turned to Arswald and waited for his word.
"What do we do?" Elen asked.
Arswald dropped his eyes, then brought them back up to the Cortexes.
"Either way the lad needs the practice. So we deal with them, and while we're at it we find out whether that poor devil really is Sir William."
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Nobody in the group argued, and Arswald looked at Aren.
"Askir, Armund, Elen and I will take two of them, and you take the third. If anything goes wrong, Ray will help you."
Aren nodded, and the group split into pairs without a sound.
The Cortexes went on chewing at the remains until an arrow took one of them in the neck, tipping it over onto its side, and Askir was out of the bushes at once, over a root, his axe taking the hind leg off the second.
A high, sharp shriek rang out across the forest in that same second.
The third Cortex sprang back from the remains at once and dropped into a low stance with its jaws open.
Askir carried the turn into another step and struck the head off it, then began backing away, in no hurry and never losing sight of the third.
The Cortex growled and shifted from paw to paw until footsteps behind it brought it around.
Aren stood out in the open with no trunk to cover him, his right hand closed on the hilt of his sword, his left held out in front and his feet apart, his knees a little bent.
His heart hammered, though his grip on the hilt did not slacken.
A long breath came out between his slightly parted lips when he decided for himself that he could manage it.
The Cortex stared straight at him, motionless, its eyes terrifying, and Aren met the stare without turning away.
Several seconds of stillness hung between the two of them until the animal finally came at him.
Aren shifted to one side and let the attack pass, then drew the blade along its foreleg, the tip opening a glancing cut.
The Cortex overshot by a few paces before both of them turned and stood face to face again.
Askir, in cover behind the bushes beside Arswald, hissed through his teeth.
"Damn it, just a bit more..."
Arswald stood entirely still, without once looking away from the duel.
"He still has no feel for distance..."
The Cortex sprang onto the nearest trunk, sank its claws into the bark and threw itself from tree to tree, keeping Aren at the center of a shifting circle.
Aren turned after it, though the animal moved faster than his eyes could follow.
The Cortex pushed off one of the trunks into an attack from above, and Aren caught the moment and put his free hand out in front of him.
A blue shield formed in the instant of the impact, and the animal slammed into it with all its weight and bounced back.
Aren lost his balance from the animal's leap and fell to the ground. The Cortex pressed the attack at once, but Aren managed to roll aside.
Back on his feet, he turned at once and rushed forward with the sword drawn back, but the Cortex sprang aside and climbed the trunk of the nearest tree again.
Elen, behind the trees beside Ray, pressed his lips together, as Ray shook his head and kept his eyes on the clearing.
"He's rushing it..." Ray said.
Aren stopped in the middle of the clearing and tried to steady his quickened breathing, while his eyes took in every detail of the Cortex, frozen head-down on the trunk.
The next moment the Cortex finally pushed off the trunk and threw itself into a straight attack. Aren put the shield up, dug his back foot into the ground and took the impact.
The force of it went through his arm and shoulder and shifted him half a step back, but the stance held.
The Cortex sprang back once more, which was what Aren had been waiting for, and he went straight forward.
With Aren coming at it the Cortex struck out on instinct with a paw, and Aren brought the blade up from below and cut it off in one movement.
The severed leg hit the ground while Aren let the movement carry him around. One wide swing, and Aren took the Cortex's head off.
Everyone froze without a sound while Aren stood where the blow had left him, his sword up, and the Cortex's head rolled slowly along the ground until it struck a jutting root.
A smile appeared on Elen's face and he was already about to hurry over, but he stopped short when he saw Aren standing where he was with his arm up and his eyes gone still.
The animal's body broke apart, its flesh, hide and bone turning into green energy that trailed out of the severed pieces in threads.
The tattoos across Aren's body shone as the green energy went into the lines of the runes, dissolved in them and traveled up through the patterns.
For a fraction of a second Aren's eyes flared bright blue, and a ringing silence hung over the clearing for several seconds after that.
"What the... hell was that just now..." Askir said slowly.
Arswald stood with his brows drawn and his mouth slightly open and did not take his eyes off Aren, while Askir added quietly at his back.
"The Cortex... dissolved..."
Light filled Aren's mind, and with it he felt his senses sharpen, and his body seemed to grow lighter.
When the light in front of his eyes cleared he straightened slowly, let out a deep breath and pushed the sword back into its sheath.
The others came out to him, and Elen reached him first.
"Aren... you managed it, but... what was that?"
Aren turned and looked from one of them to the next.
"What do you mean?"
Arswald answered from behind him before he could think it through.
"Don't play the fool. You know what he means."
"You've just killed a Cortex, but its body dissolved and... went into you," Ray said.
Aren looked slowly back and ran his eyes over the place where the fight had been, where no body and no blood were left.
Only then did it come to him that he had noticed none of it at the time, because of the flare of light in his eyes.
"I... I don't know."
He dropped his eyes to his own hand and studied it, and Arswald breathed out slowly through his nose.
"I see... damn, now I want to know what the hell is going on with you too."
Meanwhile the guest study in the castle at Ockhaven lay in half-light, in spite of the midday hour.
Heavy curtains covered the windows, letting only a thin band of light fall onto the writing desk, while the distant sounds of the castle yard came faintly through the casements.
Vector Fray sat at the desk, moving his pen across thick paper.
The study door opened, and Morgiana came in and stood to attention in front of his desk.
"Nøn novøvørdar?"
[No news?] he asked without raising his eyes.
"Infeløs, nøn. Ørk ambølired postøtter Månøs, sømen hånir nøn kånne mittøsend edøre epistølørar nuncønå."
[None. I followed the Hand, but he has not received any letters yet.]
Fray put the pen down without a word, folded the paper and stamped it with the embassy seal.
"Ørk mittøsended præmørapørt tøl Marskjåll. Nøsvi vøl stålre prøfor hunøla-is protøregel, øk ørkgo judikvørdå koeftål ambølir postøtter."
[I have sent an opening report to the Marshal. We will wait for her instructions, and then decide what to do next.]
"Rectorrekt."
[Yes, sir.]
Fray's eyes came up and he froze, staring into the shadow-filled far corner of the study, and Morgiana looked the same way.
At a short nod from Fray she pulled the glove off her right hand to bare the mechanical fingers, and a blue crystal rose in one movement out of the opened mechanism in her palm, glowing with the energy feeding into it and flooding the corner with light.
In the last fraction of a second Fray caught the edge of the shadow as it vanished unnaturally.
Morgiana drew her hand back slowly and pulled the glove on again.
Fray narrowed his eyes and kept them on that corner.
"Dørk vidøse nøsvi durøm vigiløvaktet."
[It seems we are being watched.]
At that moment the group, Aren among them, stood around the knight's remains and looked down at them.
The mess that was left of Sir William horrified them least of all, because every one of them was looking at a huge, deep print of a bear's paw, with the knight's remains driven down into it.