SHE HAD FOUGHT for a time as a hound, but she had stepped back for a moment to try to see where she should go next. Then she heard the odd sound of a tent coming down behind her, the cloth flapping in the sparse wind.
She turned and from a distance saw the royal steward, red-faced.
“No! I told you not to do that!” he cried.
“But you said to pack—” the young servant answered.
The royal steward struck him full across the face. “Do what I say or you will regret it.”
“Yes, sir. Yes, sir,” said the servant.
“Now put my things into a single pack that I can set on a horse. I want money and a change of clothes and a weapon. I need no more than that.”
“But now that the battle is nearly won, surely you wish—”
The servant was struck again. “It is not your place to tell me what I wish and do not wish.”
“I only meant—”
“Silence!” the royal steward thundered, far louder than the sound of his tent being struck, though nothing like as loud as the battle.
She remained a hound and watched. It was not much, perhaps, but she did it for Richon. This was a man he hated and would want to punish.
The servant went back into the folds of the tent and brought it back up on one end. He rummaged for a few moments, then came back out with a small pack. “Sir?” he said.
The royal steward opened the pack. “You did not think to add food to this? How long can I journey without food?”
“You did not say to—”
“Get food!” said the royal steward.
In the few moments before the servant returned, the royal steward had mounted a gray horse with a long tail, one the other horses kept away from.
The hound guessed why, but would have to confirm it.
The royal steward started off at a gallop, with no more concern for the horse than a bit of wood.
The hound bounded as fast as she could to keep up with the horse. Now she could see that it was very like the horse she had seen in the market. It, too, had been stripped of its magic. The creature that remained might look like a horse, but it was not a horse. Not in ways that mattered to other horses, or to the animal world at large.
So perhaps the royal steward was right to treat the horse so, and to not care if it was injured or even died from his mistreatment of it. Such a creature was better dead.
It rode on mindlessly, heartlessly. It did not think for itself. It simply was the creature that the royal steward demanded it be.
The hound could kill the royal steward for that alone. She shuddered in horror, and kept as close as she could without revealing herself.
After two hours at this punishing pace, she was exhausted. As a hound she had always considered herself the match of any horse, but the royal steward pressed his horse past its limits. He did not see it as living, and he did not care if it died. He could easily buy another. And if it was not one that had been touched by the unmagic, well, he would treat it as if it were.
Finally, the royal steward stopped at a village for food and water. The hound noticed that he tied his horse so that it could not graze. But it could drink from a dirty trough, at least, and it did so eagerly.
The hound drank from a clean trough and tried to find calm and strength in herself. She did not let herself doze.
Far too soon, the royal steward came out, looking well satisfied with his meal. He untied the horse and leaped back into the saddle, which he had never removed. He looked around once, as if expecting pursuers, then smiled and went on his way.
He had not looked down, only up, as if assuming that any who came after him would have to be mounted, as he was.
It was painful for the hound to run again after so short a stop. She told herself that if the royal steward stopped for the night, she would have a chance to take a kill. She had been far hungrier than this before and survived.
But she had never had to force herself to continue onward for so long at such a pace.
The hound could see the horse begin to miss steps, falter and correct itself. But the royal steward only swore at it and used a stick to urge it faster.
At last the horse fell and it did not get up.
The royal steward could see that he was not far from another village and that it was close to dark. He did not even bother to end the horse’s life in a quick, decent fashion. He left it there to die slowly, in terrible pain.
The hound waited until the royal steward was out of sight.
She would find him again easily enough. It was clear that he would have to go to the village and rest for the night.
She bent next to the dying horse and tried to speak to it in the language of horses.
“I will help you along to the end,” she said softly. If the horse did not understand her meaning, perhaps it would understand her tone.
But she could see no sign of any response in the horse.
The hound sighed, then bent close to the horse’s neck, bared her teeth, and bit into it, severing its jugular vein. The taste of blood filled her mouth, and for the first time in her life she spat it out. She would not make herself stronger on the life of this creature. And she did not like the thought of the unmagic flowing into her. She did not know if that was possible, but she would not take any chances.
She waited until the horse was dead. Then she left its body where it was, and entered the village.
It was full dark now, but she could smell where the royal steward had walked. It was not only her tracking skills at work here, but also her sense of the unmagic. It was too clear a path to ignore. The hound only wondered that all the villagers did not notice it. But perhaps they did and did not care.
The trail of unmagic led to an inn at the other end of the village. It was small and dank, and one end of it seemed to be falling down. It was also very quiet, not at all the sort of place one would expect a man such as the royal steward to stay. Which made it a good hiding place, the hound supposed.
She heard voices within. One was the high-pitched, irritating, scraping voice of the royal steward. The other was lower—and familiar. It made her hackles rise even before she saw the face through the window staring back at the royal steward.
The cat man.
Here, in this time. Indeed, the path of unmagic she had followed to this inn was more likely the cat man’s than it was the royal steward’s.
The hound had to force herself to breathe again. The sight of the cat man in person was enough to make her vomit. But she had eaten nothing that day, so it was only dry retching.
When she was finished, she was trembling.
Truly she could not imagine anything more terrifying than the cat man. He had destroyed her forest home and it must have been he who had dribbled his unmagic throughout Richon’s kingdom, destroying the animal army en masse.
Thinking of it made her feel cold, as if she herself had been touched by the cat man.
She had meant to attack the royal steward alone, to kill him and bring back evidence of his death to Richon, to show him he need worry about the man no more. Now her task had just increased a hundredfold. She did not know if she had any hope of destroying the cat man, but she knew she had to try.
Within the inn, she heard the royal steward and the cat man laugh together, a terrible sound. And then she turned away and went into the woods to hunt.
She dared not go into the inn, as a human woman, and ask for food. She had no coin, and begging would draw attention she could not afford.
But she needed sustenance, and it would not hurt her to remember the violent rush of the chase, and the way that turned away fears.