The doorframe was simple wood, hand crafted. It did not show any great eye for beauty, but it served its purpose ably enough. Edge to edge, each beam square. Linus did not know why it caught his attention as he debated whether to burn Zebulon to the ground.
The hunter stood on the porch of the tavern and laid an iron hand on the door. He allowed himself to let a little bit of his weight shift and rest against the banal wood. His eyes flicked to the preposterous sign that hung out into the dusty street—some bumpkin’s best attempt at the fierce talon of a dragon. Have I been here before? Leaned in this same place, stared at this same doorframe? Sneered at this same sign? It was possible. Linus had joined the Hunt when he was twelve, mother’s blood still fresh in his hair. Decades of the chase, the weight of his armor, the quiet nothing of the white sword at his side. Sleeping in barns and castles and crude ditches in the earth. Cobblestone roads and chewed goat trails leading nowhere—anywhere and everywhere his prey fled. Linus looked around again.
Zebulon was a cattle town. A few wooden buildings, surrounded by ranches that sprawled across the grasslands. Other than the Three-Toed Claw, the largest building in town was the stockyard where bovine flesh was bought and sold, orders filled and plans laid for transport to the larger metropolises beyond: Pice, Gate City, Corinth. Linus crossed his arms, cold clink of metal on metal as his gauntlets met, and watched two young women ride past on tall black stallions, both laughing as they tossed a garish red hoop back and forth. The wild mage was here, left just after dawn. She sent her boy to do all the talking, waited on the outskirts of town. They bought a pair of horses: a gray quarter horse and a white mare. Simple provisions: food, water, two or three pots of black ink. The old man let a grin spread as he enjoyed his prey’s craft. A fine move, Doma. You understood my lesson quite well, and you are thinking as a hunter would. How will I track you? What words will I put in every ear, in every bard’s cup? Quite wise to dunk your head in ink, Snowlock.
Linus pursed his lips. He wasn’t entirely pleased with the name he’d chosen for his demon of Shiloh. It had done its work, setting the eyes of the people wide and their mouths fluttering. Every traveler coming or going from the tumbledown dock would know of the demon girl with the white hair. The magistrate had nearly begged him to take the entire garrison with him in pursuit and any able-bodied folk the hunter wished to arm. Linus had thanked him and insisted on only taking twenty guards—the youngest and most fit, the best suited to guide him on the trail. And the best suited to feed his hound if the trail went cold again.
Nora stood close at hand, her glass chest glowing cerulean certainty, her muzzle pointed east. A thin cord of white silk was wound around her neck; the other end fashioned into a long lead terminated in the hand of the devilkin Sideways. The assassin was leaning against the outside of the inn’s porch, doing his best to appear nonchalant while keeping a maximum extension on the mage-hound’s leash. Linus stepped forward, rapping the wooden sign absently with his knuckles. Nora’s leash was artifice, as was much of the Hunt’s public face. The leash calmed his new conscripts from Shiloh, even as his false words about the terrors of the demon Snowlock inflamed their valor. Keeping their attention on the demon without prevented them from questioning too closely the methods within—or noticing the “scout” that he had dispatched with a message back to Shiloh had met his end between the mage-hound’s jaws, feeding her torch.
“Okay, I gotta ask.” Sideways scratched his nose.
Linus took the last few steps down to the dusty street and laid an affectionate gauntlet on Nora’s head. “Yes?”
“Why are we stopping here at all? If we can track Skinny Girl anywhere with the vampire pooch, why not just press on?”
The hunter straightened his blue cloak and gave the mage-hound one last fond pat. “One. Information. We know how much food they purchased—enough for three days’ travel. Their final destination is close. Also, the trick of the ink is another scent we can follow. Nora is the ultimate tracker for our prey, but it would be foolish to leave any scent or spoor uncollected or unconsidered. Two . . .”
The devilkin had leaned in as his employer’s pause drew out. “Yes? Two?”
Linus’s faded blue eyes watched a pair of Shiloh guards approach. He saluted them, gave the two some quick instructions about preparing for their departure. The senior, an older woman, requested permission to conscript some additional arrows from the local blacksmith, which he authorized. The hunter made note of her; she seemed more solid than most of her compatriots. Only when the two guards walked well out of earshot did he continue his explanation. “Two. These guards we carry are fuel for Nora, and perhaps a momentary distraction for the wild mage. Our true goal is to assemble a far greater army, an invisible one, made of air and fear.”
The assassin nodded. “You want people to be scared shitless of her. Wherever she’s going, she’ll find no friends, only enemies.”
“Precisely. As fast as we ride, terrible tales have a thousand wings. Nora’s light guides us east; I believe Doma Korvanus makes for Corinth. Why, I know not. But I intend to poison that city for her. She will find no aid, no bastion. It was my intention to burn this town to ashes as another harbinger of her coming.”
Sideways’s mouth dropped, ever so slightly, but then he angled his orange face in a studied manner of indifference. Linus kept his own face blank and continued. “What do you think of this plan, assassin?”
The devilkin scratched his nose again, then began to twirl the end of Nora’s silk leash. “I mean, it won’t really make sense, will it? All the Shiloh folk will know that when we left it was fine, that she wasn’t here when it was burned.”
Linus looked down the dusty streets of Zebulon to where the two young women were looping around on their horses, still playing the game with the ring. Now both were standing up in their stirrups, hooting with glee as each tried to outdo the other for outlandish ways to toss the ring or to catch it. One young woman had long red hair, the other short-cropped blonde. A small crowd had gathered to cheer on the local riders’ game. The hunter spoke quietly. “We ride out of here within the hour. You slip away from the column, unnoticed in the shadows, as is your training. You come back here, just after sunset, with a fistful of torches. You fling them into that hay barn there, into the back of this inn, into every window that you pass. Then you cut the rope on the well and let the bucket fall down far below. I will look back at the sudden flame that will appear on the western horizon, and I will say, ‘By the gods, the demon moves in shadow like the wind itself. She has set fire to Zebulon, to punish them for aiding us.’ And the good folk of Shiloh that ride with us will see the flame in the dark and they will believe. I will dispatch a handful of them as heralds—to ride out to every small town between here and Corinth, bearing the tale of the slaughter in their home, of the razing of Zebulon. You will arrive back, unnoticed in the shadows. We will then ride on, and the night will be alive with our invisible army growing larger and larger by the moment.”
Sideways met the hunter’s eyes. “Are those my orders?”
The cry of the crowd surged; the short-haired rider had fallen from her stallion into a nearby pile of crates. The onlookers were converging, laughing while pulling the groaning and bruised rider free from the shattered wood. Linus felt the weight of his armor. I think I have been here before.
“Not an order. A choice. A boon, if you will,” Linus said. “If you wish it, you can save the all-but-unknown city of Zebulon. If you say so, we will ride away and leave it unmolested. And we will burn the next small city we come upon.”
“Why . . .” The devilkin swallowed, orange skin taut. “Why would you give me the option?”
Linus laid an iron hand on the assassin’s shoulder. “Because this is not my first Hunt, but it is yours. I know there can be comfort found in choices like these. Rider of Zebulon, what is your name?”
The still-mounted rider was trotting past, red circle in her teeth, and long hair like eager fire. She spat it out into her left hand and waved a greeting to the knight and his companion. “Veronica, grandfather!”
The horse’s hooves thudded past. Linus turned his attention back to the assassin. “Veronica of Zebulon. You saved her. If you wish it.”
The leather-clad rogue’s face was empty as a stone’s mercy. Sideways tapped the side of his nose with a long orange finger and turned aside uncomfortably.
“I wish it,” he said.
“Then let us be gone from this place.” The hunter took the leash from his hands.