“A night hunt?” Warner asked. “For what purpose?”
Arthur declined to answer aloud, aware his honorable friend would come to the dishonorable conclusion soon enough. He tied an axe to the saddle of his horse, whose breath rose in puffy clouds towards the dark sky. Arthur draped a blanket over the horse’s rump to shield the gelding from the cold and then double-checked his own overcoat. Winter was jabbing his skin with an icy finger. It took a moment of searching before Arthur located the button he had missed. He promptly sealed the tiny opening.
“Arthur,” Warner said with a sigh.
Hearing the realization in his voice, Arthur gripped his lover’s forearm with his gloved hand. “Justice.”
“You mean vengeance.”
“I would not be my father’s son, if I let a man like Marshall try to kill me without consequences.”
“No. You would be a better man than your father.” Warner pulled his arm away and stepped back, anger in his blue eyes.
Arthur debated trying to soothe his friend’s feelings. Warner was a trained soldier from a good family, low enough in standing not to be a threat to the Hanover’s. He did not always understand how much more difficult it was to retain a position at the top of the social hierarchy. Arthur admired his friend’s unerring sense of honor and fairness, of right and wrong, because he himself was often lost in the political intrigue defining his position as the sole male heir to the Hanover legacy.
“We both know I am not my father, because I have your heart to guide my actions,” Arthur said softly. “And that I must play the part of a true Hanover sometimes. If Marshall had not called me out, I would not have to respond.”
Had Arthur any doubt about his plan, he would have shed it when he considered any danger he was in, his sister faced as well by becoming vulnerable should something happen to him at the hands of Marshall’s family. His father would call the events of this night a lesson, and Marshall’s family would understand it as a warning, no matter how it was covered up.
Any attempt on the life of the Hanover children had to be met with brutal retaliation. There could be no mixed messages, no mercy, if Arthur was to preserve his family name and assume his father’s place one day. What happened then, he had not yet determined, except it would involve becoming the man Warner believed him to be.
“You are so much better than this,” Warner retorted stubbornly.
“I do not expect you to understand why I must do this, Warner.”
“But you will do this?”
“Yes.”
Warner searched his features. “Then let me accompany you. I am your sworn guardian, the greatest warrior the Shield has produced in two generations, since my grandfather last held the distinction.”
“No,” Arthur said with rare firmness. “If anything goes wrong, I need you to protect my sister.”
“Marshall is taking three men with him.”
“And how many times have I defeated him during mock battles? You train with me. I am second only to you in skill. If you truly feared I could not handle him, you would be on your horse, prepared to follow me to battle, not trying to convince me to stay. You know what this is.” It would have been easy to order Warner to stay, but Arthur cared too much for how his lover felt, so he reiterated the truth both of them knew.
Warner stewed silently.
Arthur finished checking the gelding’s girth and turned to face his unhappy friend. “If I do not return by dawn, you know what you are to do.”
“Return to the city and your sister.”
“Good.”
“But I will search for you first.”
“No, Warner.” It was Arthur’s turn to sigh. “You do not understand how vulnerable my sister can be. She knows nothing of the world outside our home. If anything should happen to me, it will only expedite the plans others may have for her demise. Without any heirs, my father’s position will become unstable quickly.”
“You ask me to rebel against my better judgment.”
“If you care for me, you will do this.”
Warner blew out a breath of air. “You know I do. You know I will always do as you ask as much as it displeases me.”
“Thank you, Warner.”
Warner walked away. Arthur did not pursue him. He trusted no one more than Warner to ensure Tiana was safe and to protect her secret, if discovered. As angry as Warner was, he would always do what was just and right.
Unlike me. Arthur had been raised to survive the political world his family inhabited where one’s standing was as fragile as the ice on a pond on a warm spring day. One day, he might be able to escape with Warner somewhere like the Free Lands. But in the meantime, he had to play the role of his father’s heir.
Mounting his horse, Arthur guided it towards the four men waiting for him at the edge of the clearing.
After leaving the city, the hunting party had stuck to the forest as they headed northeast, skirting unfriendly native villages and tracking their game as they rode. The herds of buffalo whose tracks they trailed were less than a day away. The first kill was always granted to the ranking member of the hunting party, accompanied by a select few, and usually occurred at dawn, before the official hunting began. Arthur’s request for a night hunt held special meaning for the man he requested to accompany him, who had reluctantly accepted, with the understanding accompanying Arthur for the first kill was not the honor it was made out to be.
“Evening,” Arthur said and halted his horse. He leaned forward onto its withers and looked over the three guards accompanying the man who tried to assassinate him in his own tent a week and a half before.
“Evening,” Marshall replied. “Where is your lapdog protector?”
“Sleeping, I imagine,” Arthur replied. “If the Hanover heir can ride in these forests without his guard, surely the Cruise heir can do the same, unless your family crest does not represent a lion’s courage but the fact it sleeps all day.”
Marshall stiffened at the quiet, nonchalant dare. “I do not wear the lion crest for myself but to remind others of the Cruise legacy and the glory no other family in Lost Vegas can claim.”
Arthur refrained from rolling his eyes. Marshall’s family boasted often of the meaning behind their lion crest. The courageous founder of Lost Vegas, Charles Cruise, had braved impossible-to-imagine odds to establish the first settlement after the Old World perished. The Cruise line ruled Lost Vegas for a mere fifty years, throughout the Age of Darkness, before Arthur’s forefathers managed to wrench power away from the wealthy family and hold it for four and a half centuries.
“Go and rest,” Marshall told his guards. “I will return by dawn.”
The men obeyed without question.
Close in age to Arthur, Marshall possessed the striking features that ran in his family and the same sense of entitlement fueling his sister’s mistreatment of Tiana. While competitive, Marshall had the disadvantage of a kind father, whereas Arthur was raised with the firsthand knowledge that ruthlessness was the true legacy of the Hanover’s.
“Shall we?” Arthur motioned to the forest.
“After you.”
Stifling a smile, Arthur nudged his horse forward and started into the forest. Marshall followed. Arthur led them away from the encampment, to the north. They passed their scouts and continued onward into the cold, quiet night, riding parallel to the prairie.
Judging by the smell of scat, upturned earth and fur, the buffalo herd was large. Arthur did not see any of its members on the rolling plains, but the scents were strong and the grass flattened where the herds had traveled. He ventured out of the forest, towards the wide swath of beaten down grass and darkened snow.
They rode for half an hour, following the wake the herds had left.
“To what do I owe the honor of accompanying you in place of your lapdog?” Marshall asked at last.
“We were educated by the same tutor. I am confident you can figure it out,” Arthur replied.
Marshall said nothing.
The hair on the back of Arthur’s neck stood on end suddenly.
He pulled his horse to a halt, uncertain what his senses were warning him of. He loosened the ties of his hat in order to hear without the fur and leather blocking his ears. The night was still and quiet, with the exception of snow crunching beneath the hooves of Marshall’s horse.
“Very well. If this is where we are to duel, then let us be on with it,” Marshall stated in a hard tone. He dismounted and yanked two weapons free from the horse, a double-headed axe and long knife.
Arthur glanced at him and then towards the forest. Grass rustled in the stiff, breathtaking wind, and the light gray clouds glowed overhead, illuminating his surroundings without the need for moon or stars. They stood at the bottom of a low, rolling hill, amidst other hills, in grasslands edged on one side by the forest and the other three sides by the sky.
What manner of threat was invisible? Not Ghouls or unfriendly natives, the only known dangers in the prairielands. Arthur dismounted and grabbed a lance and double-headed axe, unable to explain or shake off the cold slithering down his spine. It felt as if someone stood behind him, preparing to strike. When he turned, no one was present. He began to suspect this was an extension of his strange magic, yet it was neither a vision nor his ability to track game, the two unnatural skills he was aware of possessing.
He turned a full revolution, listening to his humming instincts as he did. The magic warning him was similar to the tracking magic he used to find game. It whispered faintly of where the threat was without defining what it was.
Someone, or something, was at the edge of the forest, waiting and watching.
Yet Arthur saw nothing.
Marshall sighed impatiently. “You invite me here for one purpose and stall our inevitable encounter?”
“I am glad your father has three more sons. He will not miss you, and neither will I,” Arthur replied.
“It is not my death we should be discussing.”
“What provoked your attack, Cruise?” he asked roughly. “The timing and place were beneath a man as intelligent as I thought you to be.”
Marshall was quiet, lifting and lowering the axe in nervous agitation.
“Only one of us will live to speak of this night. I wish to know the truth,” Arthur insisted. He focused on his opponent, but his instincts tugged his attention back towards the forest. “Speak, Marshall.”
“Murdering you was not my intent in joining the hunt this year.”
Arthur’s eyebrows shot up. He chuckled. “Your family has resented mine for four centuries, and you did not intend to murder me by placing venomous snakes in my tent?”
“Of course I meant to try to murder you, but that was not my original intent behind joining the hunt.”
“You speak in riddles.”
“Not every heir within our circles wishes you dead and to take your place. Not every member of the outer city plots the demise of the Hanover’s. I came this year so we might have a moment to speak. The snakes were to gain your attention and to test you.”
“I have never heard anything more ridiculous!” Arthur exclaimed, genuinely surprised.
“There is talk you are not like your father. It is said you could lead the city in a way he would never consider.” Marshall’s explanation was spoken slowly, carefully.
“And this drove you to try to murder me? Because I am a different man, and whoever backs you disapproves of this fact?”
Marshall fell quiet. His weapons were lowered to the ground, his head tilted towards the sky.
The sense of being watched or … stalked distracted Arthur once more. He made a show of swinging his axe, as if warming up, and faced the forest. The danger was still one moment, moving the next. It began to shift along the tree line he and Marshall had followed northward.
“It was not a real attempt on your life,” Marshall spoke finally. “I was certain to be seen leaving your tent by your lapdog. The location of the attempt, less than a day’s ride from the city, was planned in case you reacted as your father would and slayed my men. But you didn’t react as your father would, which is why I have been hoping to speak to you in private. You are not like him.”
“I am more patient than my father,” Arthur said. He was unusually grateful for the discussion. A battle would find him too distracted by the strange danger to be effective.
“Some would say more honorable as well. He has alienated many with his corrupt system of justice and unilateral decisions to burn …”
Arthur tuned out. Marshall was agitated to the point he was starting to yell.
The hidden danger passed them, headed south, towards the encampment. Whatever or whomever it was, it remained hidden in the forest. The farther away it went, the more the threat faded from Arthur’s awareness, only to be replaced by inexplicable urgency lighting his blood on fire, as if his instincts understood the intentions of a threat he could not see. Arthur tilted his head, unable to make sense of what he felt.
He thought of Warner at the encampment and planted the butt of his lance in the ground, leaning against it with a frown. This danger could not possibly pose a threat to the contingent of well-armed, experienced Shield soldiers. Ghouls knew to avoid them, and an attack by unfriendly natives was not likely in this location or before the great hunt went underway. Historically, skirmishes with the natives came after the hunt, or in the heat of it, when the chaos was great enough to hide ambushes and attacks. The Shield members killed during the Winter Hunt almost always died during or after the initial attack on the herds. If not for the city’s desperate need for food, Arthur would not be in the wilderness risking his life.
Further confusing him was the knowledge he had never experienced such a feeling when it came to the natives on any of the five hunts he had participated in.
The danger tripping his instincts was picked up by his unusual ability and therefore, could not be fully of this world. The only other time he experienced such a confounding jumble of emotions was …
… the dream.
Arthur pulled his lance loose and strode back to his horse.
Marshall trailed off from his tirade before asking, “What are you doing?”
“Something is amiss. I must return to camp,” Arthur replied. He secured his weapons, alarm shooting through him.
“At this very moment?”
Hearing Marshall’s derisive tone, Arthur paused as he reached up to rest his hands on the saddle. “Stay if you like and await me. I will happily kill you upon my return.”
“Did you listen to anything I said?”
Arthur had not paid attention to most of what Marshall said, though he heard enough.
“What you speak of is treason.” Arthur swung up into the saddle. “You wished me dead then decided, because I did not kill you in return, I was somehow interested in hearing what you consider to be my father’s offenses. If he has offended so many people, they can take the matter to his council of advisors.”
“Your father burns anyone who speaks out against him!”
“Then I suggest you hold your tongue. Your opinion of my father carries no weight with me.” Arthur turned his horse to the south and squeezed his calves. The gelding burst into a canter.
Adrenaline spiked within him, and his ears filled with the sound of his beating heart. Urgency turned to desperation, the same he experienced in the dream where he ran from the skinwalker. Arthur leaned forward and urged his horse to run. The danger was gone, too far ahead of him for him to sense. He raced along the tree line, waiting until he was parallel to the encampment before entering the forest, where he was forced to slow.
The pounding of hooves behind him as his would-be murderer chased him was no match for the blood slamming through his veins and the tiny voice inside screaming at him to hurry.
The first sign something was very wrong came when he reached the position of the scout stationed the farthest from camp. The gelding shied and stopped so suddenly, Arthur was flung forward in the saddle.
He murmured to the uneasy horse and patted its neck, searching the darkness for what had spooked him. Not caring who he tipped off, he pulled a portable torch created by one of his father’s scientists and lit it quickly. The brilliant light blinded him. When his eyes adjusted, he was able to see what had startled his horse.
The scout positioned here had been impaled on a low tree branch. His blank eyes were open, and an expression of terror was frozen on his features. What appeared to be massive claw marks had pierced his winter clothing all the way to his bones, and his insides were exposed. The kill was fresh enough for blood to drip into a pool beneath him.
For a long moment, Arthur was stuck between reality and the vision in his dreams, between trying to understand if he had interpreted the dream incorrectly and whether this was the same creature – Black Leg – or something different. He had clearly seen Tiana’s frame and the moon, as well as felt the warm-cool breeze of spring in his dream. This was not the right place or time for the skinwalker to appear, but his instincts, his sense of knowing, were the same as when he saw the creature in his dream.
“Burn me!” Marshall’s exclamation snapped Arthur out of his confusion. “How big was the bear that did this?”
“It was not a bear,” Arthur replied. He dug his heels into the horse’s belly to keep it from shying and rode past the gruesome sight.
“What do you mean not a bear?” Marshall demanded. “A mountain lion the size of a gorilla?”
Arthur did not care to explain what it was, or how he knew, to anyone, least of all Marshall, who trailed him like a lost puppy. The path through the forest was winding, narrow and overhung with branches. On the way towards the plains, he had the time to maneuver around obstacles. With urgency fueling his actions, Arthur only grew frustrated when smacked by a snow-laden branch or forced to move around a small pond he had barely noticed two hours before.
His doubt a skinwalker – as scary as it was – was any match for a small army began to fizzle when he ran across the next line of scouts. This layer of defense contained five men – all brutally mauled and discarded without any of them appearing to have drawn a single weapon.
Arthur did not stop. Before he reached the final layer of defense, he glimpsed the campfires through the trees. He glanced at the bodies making up the third layer of security around the camp but hurried onward, his eyes trained to his destination. No sounds of fighting came, and no alarms were raised.
His heart skipped a beat then began to race even faster as he thought about Warner.
When Arthur broke through the forest into the meadow where the majority of his men were camped, he halted the horse and stared.
No one stirred. Mauled bodies littered the entire area while campfires continued to burn brightly. The horses were safe in the makeshift corrals at one end of the clearing, and the tents still stood where they had been erected.
Arthur dismounted, once more caught in a surreal state, this one brought on by shock. He walked through the dead, unable to comprehend how one skinwalker had done all this, and how a meadow of trained soldiers were unable to stop the creature. At least these men had been warned; many of them were clutching weapons in death. Blood soaked into the snow, frosting the meadow in red sludge that clung to Arthur’s boots.
His eyes fell to the tent near the center of the encampment that he shared with Warner. Barely able to breathe through his tight chest, Arthur walked towards it, his stomach twisting in anticipation of what he would find.
“Ah, Sayed,” he murmured when he drew nearer. A trusted friend from youth, Sayed lay near Arthur’s tent, as if his friend had thought to come to his defense when the skinwalker attacked. “Ever the good soul.” He had been slashed through and lay with his weapons in hand.
Arthur knelt and closed Sayed’s eyes, thanking him quietly as he did so. He owed the dead man one life debt and might have owed him two, had he been present for the attack. Arthur could not repay him, but would visit his family upon his return and offer up whatever service or payment he could.
Dread and sorrow were heavy in his stomach. He rose and moved on, seeking the one face he was terrified of finding.
No body lay outside his tent. Unlike the other tents, which had not been touched, the skinwalker had slashed through both sides of Arthur’s tent. Arthur peered into it. Warner’s weapons and overcoat were inside, though the man himself was not.
Arthur knelt by the footprints beside his tent, trying to remain calm enough to make out what happened. Judging by the size of the paw prints, the skinwalker had taken the form of a great cat potentially larger than a horse. Warner’s boot prints were beside the skinwalker’s; he had challenged the creature, as Arthur knew he would.
Blood was on the ground, though it was impossible for Arthur to guess whose it was. The paw prints turned into the bare footprints of a man staggering away for several steps before they transformed once more into those of a great cat.
Warner had somehow managed to stun the creature no other man could stop. Proud, concerned, and distressed by the idea he would find Warner’s body nearby, Arthur trailed the paw prints towards the next tent, where the creature attacked other members of the Shield. He turned away and retreated to his tent and this time, followed Warner’s boot tracks. They went in the direction of the corral before becoming jumbled among the prints of others.
What had happened next? Arthur closed his eyes and called upon his tracking skill to determine if Warner survived. He steadied his breathing, which had grown erratic, and focused on finding Warner.
Without a token to convey the direction his target had gone, his tracking magic presented him with an image instead. Warner had continued onward to the corral and then beyond, moving southwest. Arthur’s ability could not tell him if Warner escaped on a horse, but it did tell him the skinwalker eventually left camp and headed southeast.
Warner was alive, or had been, when he left camp, and the skinwalker had not seemed interested in following him, or he would have taken a different course.
Arthur sighed, relieved. If any man could withstand a monster, it was Warner. Wiping his face, Arthur began walking again, searching for survivors among the dead. He circled the camp, checked the forest edging it, then returned to his horse.
From what he could see, only his tent was attacked, and no horses or wagons or supply trunks were disturbed. Why, then, had the creature sought out the army? And why had it spared Arthur and Marshall after stalking them to the plains? Did it seek someone or something here? It did not seem possible for there to have been time for the creature to determine if who or what he sought was present. He had entered camp on a rampage, slaughtered everyone within minutes and left no survivors. Was this carnage indiscriminate?
Marshall stood nearby, features pale and mouth agape, while Arthur wracked his thoughts for an explanation based on what little he knew of the mysterious skinwalker from his dream.
He surveyed the decimated camp once more before taking his horse’s reins. The urgency had faded, though his emotions had not yet processed the savagery around him. He could not stop thinking about what came next, of Warner and Tiana in the hands of the skinwalker.
“What kind of animal did this?” Marshall whispered, stricken.
“The kind we dare not meet,” Arthur replied. He mounted his horse, eyes facing the direction Warner had gone. “Mount up.”
Marshall faced him, astonished. “We cannot leave the bodies without a proper burial. Some of these men were almost our equals.”
“If we wish to survive, then we need to move fast and not stop until we reach the friendly villages near the city or the city itself.”
Marshall stared at him.
“Ghouls, unfriendly natives and whatever did this stands between us and our destination. Do you really wish to alert any or all of them to our presence by remaining or burning a hundred bodies?” Arthur pressed. “We were both trained to lead. Think like a leader.”
“You mean for me to think like a Hanover and leave our contemporaries to be eaten by animals and their belongings stolen by scavengers!”
“Very well. Then think like a Cruise. What is the name of the last man to survive the wilderness alone?”
Marshall flushed. “Charles Cruise.”
Arthur waited for his rival to make a decision. Marshall was not stupid; once his emotional outburst passed, he would understand Arthur’s logic. In any other situation, Arthur would not care to wait for Marshall to decide or bother waiting for him at all. However, in the five hundred year history of Lost Vegas, only one man had escaped the dangers outside the city, and his group had started with fifty refugees. The odds of surviving were better, if Arthur had at least one companion.
While his hands shook from suppressed emotion, he mentally forced himself to look to the future and his own life. His father would not have flinched at the sight of blood and death, let alone paused to wish his fallen friend farewell. Arthur was aware of this, just as he was aware there was no one to judge him, unlike every action he undertook in the city. Marshall was too preoccupied by the massacre, and any other witnesses to Arthur’s failure to act in a manner similar to his father’s were dead.
Aside from their lives being at risk, if he did not return to the city, his sister would be in danger from the same creature that destroyed his camp. He had already seen this in a vision.
Arthur also had a secondary motive for leaving quickly, one he dared not share. Warner was out there somewhere in the forest, alone, and missing the gear he needed to protect him against the elements. If they rode fast, they might encounter him before he froze or worse, ran into one of the dangers standing between them and the safety of the city.
Dazed, Marshall looked around the clearing, his gaze resting on the tent bearing the lion crest. He strode to it and crouched. Rooting through the pockets of a slain soldier, he pulled something from the body, studied it, and pocketed it.
Arthur leaned over and grabbed the reins of Marshall’s horse. He nudged his gelding forward, after Marshall, pulling the second horse with him. If he looked too long at the dead, his sense of honor would compromise his plan. Marshall was right about the men deserving a proper pyre, but Arthur’s focus was on preventing the loss of more life rather than grieving those who were gone.
Arthur kept his eyes trained on either Marshall or the corral to the southwest, tense and waiting for the sense of otherworldly danger to return.
“Come, Marshall. You cannot help the dead now. They are better off where they are, as spirits in the sky.”
Marshall stood and then rubbed his face hard, as if unable to wipe away the sight before him. “We need to warn those friendly to us and the city. A beast this large must be stopped before it hurts more people.”
Arthur neither cared about others being hurt nor objected to Marshall’s reasoning. Traveling alone was a death sentence; if they were together, they stood a greater chance at making it home.
Marshall mounted his horse. Arthur wheeled his towards the southwest and Warner and carefully made his way across the meadow, not wishing to cause further harm to the bodies of those he had known.
Pausing at the corral, each of them harnessed two horses to take with them and then left the gate open, so the others could run free.
Arthur darkened the torch as he moved into the forest. From the direction of the buffalo herds, he heard the familiar shrieks of the Ghouls. They were far enough not to concern him for the moment. But what happened tomorrow night? Or the night after? And if the Ghouls found Warner first?
One day at a time, Arthur, he lectured himself. Above all, he had to maintain a clear head and judgment unimpeded by emotion, if he were to see the two people he loved most again.