Chapter 10:
The Last Hunt
I
Almost, the villa had grown to be one with the encroaching forest. Before time had inflicted a stream of minor wounds no one had properly mended, it must have been a handsome country getaway for some minor aristocrat. Now, many of the red roof tiles were cracked. Moss lay thick along others. Leafy vines draped two-thirds of its front, and the plaster upon the exposed stonework had crumbled badly. One of the three outbuildings sagged under rotting timbers.
But despite its fading grandeur the home was not yet abandoned. Horses grazed behind the dilapidated fence, and a half dozen middle-aged slaves worked the field near the wood’s edge in sleeveless tunics, two clearing while the others planted. As Hanuvar left his horse along the narrow dirt track that disappeared into the dark woods, he scanned those slaves, though he was certain none were the ones he had come for.
He advanced up the villa’s stone walkway. Though not free of weeds it had at least been recently swept.
The young house slave who swung the door wide at his knock was of Ceori stock, his hair reddish blond, and he stared in clear surprise, for Hanuvar had dyed his own hair blond, and wore it combed back like a Ceori warrior even though his finger bore the iron band of Dervan citizenship and he himself wore a beige Dervan calf-length tunic and blue traveling cloak. To the young slave he must have appeared a countryman, and he saw the youth’s eyes flick enviously to the ring.
Hanuvar addressed him politely, his Dervan favored with the trace of the Ceori tongue. He had served with so many Ceori that their distinctive rolling pronunciation was simple to mimic. “Good afternoon. Is your master at home?”
“Who shall I say is calling, sir, and on what business?” The boy’s look suggested he was curious to know far more. As Hanuvar opened his mouth to answer, a balding Dervan man in an old gray tunic stepped up behind the boy. From somewhere in the back of the house a weak female voice called:
“Natius, who is it?”
The Dervan turned his head and shouted back. “I don’t know yet, dear.”
“What?”
The man raised his voice and repeated the information then offered an apologetic smile. “Please pardon. How may I help you?”
Natius looked to be in his early fifties and held himself in that stiff way of old soldiers used to standing at attention. His shoulders were wide, and what hair he had was closely cropped, like many a legionary after leaving the service.
Hanuvar bowed his head politely. “I’m seeking the home of Drusus Ontoles. I thought I had the right way, but I’m afraid I’ve turned too soon.”
The man smiled ruefully and he stepped outside past the slave boy. He pointed toward the track Hanuvar had traveled and then with that arm straight, swung it toward the woods. “You’re nearly there. Drusus lives further along the road, down that way.”
Once past the villa, the “road” looked little better than a deer trail, scarcely wide enough even for a small wagon. And the woods that lined it were close and still.
“It’s really nothing more than a hunting lodge,” Natius continued, “but he’s lived there for years. If you mean to visit, you’d best get on with it. He doesn’t like strangers on his property after dark.”
“Not a friendly fellow then?” Hanuvar asked.
“No,” Natius said. “Not anymore,” he added resentfully, then changed the subject. “Served with the legions, have you?”
The stranger had detected the more subtle signs of Hanuvar’s assumed identity. “Is it so obvious?”
“A Ceori with a citizen’s ring? And you hold yourself like a soldier.”
Hanuvar bowed his head formally. “You found me out. I see you served as well.”
Natius drew himself up proudly. “With the Glorius Twelfth. Centurion Natius Braxtus, at your service. I heard a few of the Ceori had sided with us during the war, but I never met any. Tell you what, Drusus isn’t one for company, and it’s more than an hour to a good inn. When you’ve made your visit to him, I’ll put you up for the night and we can swap old lies about the legion.”
“That’s kind of you, Natius,” Hanuvar said. “I’m Katurix, but the lads called me Katius so much I almost had it changed when I signed my citizen papers.”
The old soldier laughed. “Well, make your visit. My cook’s no gourmet but he sets a fair table.”
“Until later, then.”
Hanuvar lifted his hand in farewell and departed. The door shut behind him. He had little interest in returning to talk about Dervan legions, but depending on the conclusion of his business in the woods, he might need to remain in the area for a time.
He climbed into his saddle and reviewed what little he’d learned about the Volani slaves he sought, and their mysterious master. Like his neighbor, Drusus was another soldier who’d mustered out at the rank of centurion. Regional gossip said Drusus had never left his wilderness estate except to purchase these slaves, all members of the same family, whose adult professions had been listed as foresters. He had bought the family’s minor children as well, a kindness not always practiced by Dervan masters. And kindness might well be the stumbling block to their freedom, for one of Carthalo’s agents had reported that Drusus was unwilling to sell at any price, moreover that the slaves seemed not only well-treated, but uninclined to leave.
“As far as I can see,” Carthalo had told Hanuvar, “these aren’t especially valuable men and women. It’s not like forestry is a truly rare skill, so he hasn’t made an unrecompensable investment. And I can’t fathom why the Volani would owe him any allegiance.”
Hanuvar and Carthalo had discussed the matter one evening after dinner in a tavern south of Derva owned by one of Carthalo’s agents. They had been taking stock of their most challenging cases.
“Has he fallen in love with one of them?” Hanuvar asked. Old masters falling for pretty slaves was so common a trope that it turned up again and again in Dervan theatre.
“It’s hard to say, but Farnus visited twice, and the Volani were especially cold toward him the second time, when they seemed to know why he was there. They were a united front, and you wouldn’t expect that if one of them was being abused.”
“So it’s that rarer saw, of someone who’s purchased slaves and come to cherish them,” Hanuvar suggested.
“It happens. The Dervans will drive their galley slaves and their mine slaves and their farm slaves until they drop—although some of the slaves on family farms get treated decently. But household slaves sometimes have cordial and even pleasant relationships with their owners, and many of them are freed when they reach an advanced age.”
Hanuvar nodded his understanding. Carthalo continued: “Sometimes bonds of true affection form on both sides, and it can get a little strange if you have an old Dervan with a household of loyal slaves. The master starts thinking of them as confidants, almost like family. Dervans may think they want good things for their slaves, and might even have manumitted them in their will, but they don’t want to lose their only friends. So they keep them in bondage.”
“And you think that’s what’s happened in this case,” Hanuvar suggested.
“I don’t really know, I just surmise. Farnus is one of my best men, and he couldn’t make headway with this one.”
“It sounds as though one of us needs to see to it.”
“Probably you. We’ve a big influx coming from a farm estate and arranging all that paperwork is going to take days.”
“Say no more,” Hanuvar said.
Scouting out the situation had sent him a few days south, through a sleepy little village and now past a dilapidated villa and onto a narrow dirt road into what felt like a haunted woodland.
Hanuvar’s horse snorted as they passed into the shadows, as if to comment that they were once again journeying into some place they were unwanted.
“Well,” he said softly to him, “we should both be used to it by now.”
The trees further in were tall and stately, mostly silver leafed holm oaks with vast understories, their spaces sprinkled with red-orange barked maritime pines. The track beneath them was a shadowy tunnel flush with the pleasant scent of loam and pine needles, but the atmosphere itself was somehow foreboding.
There would be no bandits hiding on a minor lane, but there might be sentries, and there might be boar, so he eyed the darkness with care. Apart from the songs of distant larks and a few scuttering insects, the forest was silent.
The path wound on across little slopes and down gullies, and after what Hanuvar reckoned was a quarter hour he heard a woman singing. At first her words were more a sensation, scarcely distinguishable over the sound of his horse’s steady tread. Before long, the sound resolved itself into a melody he recognized. This was a song of his people, and more than one voice sang it. Moreover, it was no threnody, but a folk tune about the gathering of berries, and the sweet drinks they would produce, like the kisses of a beautiful youth.
The trail turned and a blaze of light set the track in stark relief beyond the branches ahead. He had almost reached a clearing. Hanuvar slowed, peering through a screen of low hanging branches. A wide cabin of dark wood sat on a rise amongst a cluster of smaller cabins and a sprinkling of outbuildings and fenced fields and orchards. There was even a henhouse. In all there was perhaps three thousand square feet of cleared space. A young woman and a boy sang as they picked berries at the field’s edge. A man sat in the shade of a solitary oak honing arrowheads. Smoke curled from the largest cabin and one of the smaller, and with that smoke came the scent of cooked meat and baking bread. It struck Hanuvar that he had come upon a homey oasis.
The woman’s voice faltered as Hanuvar rode from the woods. The boy sang boisterously for a moment more before noticing the woman had stopped, and then he too fell silent and looked up at her. At the same moment the man set down his work and started down the little rise for Hanuvar, his expression stern.
Hanuvar reined in, his hand raised in greeting. He would have given much to have wished them a good afternoon in Volani, but he kept to his assumed identity. “Hello,” he said in Dervan, accented as though he were Ceori. “I seek the home of Drusus.”
“You have found it,” the man said. He continued his advance, polite but hardly welcoming. He was muscled trimly, no more than thirty summers, a dark-haired, hazel-eyed man with a flattened nose. His garb was Dervan, though his boots were decorated with a spiraling Volani flare, much as his Dervan words were decorated with a Volani accent. Here, before him, was a countryman, like Hanuvar sundered from a land the Dervans had burned and butchered. Though this forester had surely suffered, he did not seem to be suffering now, nor did the woman who watched with her basket of berries. She was fair-featured, no more than twenty years, and there was an honest, happy glow to her cheeks.
“Where’s your master?” Hanuvar asked.
“He is out hunting. Who are you?”
“I am a friend.” Hanuvar climbed down from his horse and scanned the little clearing.
The man took a cautious step forward but remained a good two sword lengths clear. Beyond range of a sudden draw and slice, or the kick of a warhorse.
“The master did not mention a friend was coming.”
“That is because I am a friend to the Volani,” he said in his native tongue.
The man’s eyebrows rose in astonishment.
“I would speak freely,” Hanuvar said. “But not if there are Dervans near.”
The man stared at him. “Who are you? Why are you here?”
“Are there Dervans here, or not?”
The man shook his head no and stepped closer, still awaiting the answer to his own question.
“Call me Katurix. My real name’s not important now.” It would invite a long series of questions.
“You speak my tongue like a native.”
“I am a native,” Hanuvar said.
“I can see it, in your face,” the man said slowly. “Though you could be Ceori. If you are Volani, that cannot be your ring.”
“It is my ring now. I would like to arrange for your freedom. Are you Levemar?”
His expression widened in surprise. “How do you know my name?”
“Because I looked at the sales records.”
“Why?”
“I want all remaining Volani to be free.”
The man looked at him sadly. “Free? And what will we do with freedom? Where would we go, and who would have us? The master is kind and leaves us to our work. We do much as we did outside Volanus—“
“For a master.”
“Yes. But we have food, and shelter, and we know how blessed we are for that.”
“Only one in twenty survived the siege of Volanus,” Hanuvar said. “How did you come here, with the whole of your family?”
The woman had drawn up to the man’s side, and now that she stood close Hanuvar saw a familial resemblance in the shape of the forehead, though the woman’s nose was not so broad, and her hair was dark and curling. It had been cut short and pulled back from her cheekbones with a black cord. He guessed that this, then, was Elava.
Her scrutiny of his own face was intense, and her brow furrowed, as though she saw something familiar in it. It might be that she had seen him, bearded, speaking to a crowd, or witnessed his brother Melgar in one of his own public engagements. She was too young to have seen and remembered Adruvar or Harnil, who had seldom been in Volanus during the second war and died before its conclusion.
“We were the first to fall,” Eleva said, with the quiet of a shy person. “We lived in the wilds of mount Erydus, in the forest of the slope. A Dervan advanced patrol came through, scouting an overland route before the dawn. They had us before we even knew there was a war.”
“We know what they did to some of the prisoners. But these troops were . . . gentle by comparison,” Levemar said, almost as though he were ashamed of his good fortune. “We lost our homes, and our freedom. But we remained together, and they did not harm us. And the master, when he bought us, let us stay together. Where might we find a kinder fate? The gods have guided us here, as though it’s the last safe refuge. Can you think of any other place where my sister might sing in her native tongue? Where my son can run and play in the woods, as I once did?”
Hanuvar had helped build such a place. “I would like to offer you a berth on one of the ships heading for a new Volani homeland.”
The man stared at him.
The woman’s jaw opened slowly. “They say that Hanuvar went to found a new colony.”
Levemar countered her hope. “They also say Hanuvar died in Volanus, and that his ghost walks Dervan lands, killing the leaders and their children.”
“He lives,” Hanuvar said curtly. “And he has no interest in killing children and lacks the incentive to hunt the Dervan leaders. All he cares about is preserving what is left of his people. I’ve been charged with finding them and giving them a way out.”
Levemar was having none of the good news. “This is a trick. Like that man who said he was here to buy up Volani slaves.”
“That man works with me.”
Levemar frowned. “And how do we know who you work for?”
“Why would a Dervan hire someone to speak Volani and pretend he wishes to free us?” Eleva asked her brother.
“Who knows why the Dervans do anything?”
“I think he speaks the truth,” the young woman insisted.
Levemar turned to Hanuvar. “My family will have to talk about this.”
Hanuvar had to confirm he’d understood clearly. “You have to decide whether you wish to be free?”
“No. My brother must be told, and my wife . . . it’s complicated.”
“The master needs our help,” Elava explained, as though that would provide clarity.
“Money is generally helpful to most masters,” Hanuvar observed.
She shook her head. “It’s not about money. He trusts us, but that’s not it, either. He’s close to his final hunt. We shouldn’t leave him until it’s done.”
Levemar agreed with a vigorous shake of his head. “We wouldn’t want to abandon him when he’s so close.”
“So close to what?” Hanuvar asked.
The man and woman exchanged a look, then seemed confused about how to answer. “We should not say,” she managed at last.
It was hard to make sense of them. He tried another approach. “I have some experience solving difficult problems. Can I help?”
The man made a cutting motion with his hand. “It is not for your ears.”
They had begun to irritate him, and he reminded himself how little reason they had to trust him, or to risk anything at all when they had miraculously found an island of safety amongst terrible circumstances. “How long do you need?”
“Only a few days,” the woman said. “A week at most.”
“You wish to live on as slaves for another week?”
Elava responded to his obvious confusion. “We know that we have been blessed,” she said. “And part of that is because of our master. We owe him our thanks.”
There was a twisted truth to what they both said. “I can give you a few days only,” Hanuvar said with reluctance. “Can I stay here?”
The man quickly shook his head. “No. You should come back, in the morning. As a matter of fact, you should leave, now. It will be dusk soon.”
Hanuvar sighed in frustration. He would like to have pushed to learn the truth, but he saw now they were distracted by the oncoming night and whatever strange threat that presented. “Very well. I’ll return in the morning. Talk among yourselves.”
“We will. And to the master.”
Hanuvar froze. “You don’t mean to tell him about your homeland, do you?”
“Should we not?” Elava asked.
He stared at her in disbelief, doubting her intelligence for the first time. “The Dervans know of the colony only as a rumor.” He might have said that the new colony was small, and while hardly defenseless, could not yet endure an invasion from a fully committed Dervan expedition. But he was almost as wary of her good sense as they were of his promises. He finally added: “It needs to remain nothing more than a rumor.”
Elava turned to her brother. “We could invite the master with us, when the hunt is through.”
While Hanuvar was not opposed to men and women of good character joining the colony, he was stunned by her matter-of fact assumption. Elava must truly hold Drusus in high regard. “No,” Hanuvar said, “I would rather you not do that, until I at least take the measure of the man. For now, tell him I represent a free Volani man you once knew who learned that you were still alive.”
“I don’t think we should lie to the master,” Elava said.
Her stubborn insistence astonished him almost as much as her brother’s silent agreement. “Any mention of the new homeland could place all surviving Volani in jeopardy. Do not speak of it. If it is that you do not wish to lie, say whatever you like, so long as you leave out the colony or mention of me as a Volani.”
Elava mulled his information silently.
Levemar looked nervously at the sky, as though he expected the sun to plummet down from it. Hanuvar bade a gruff goodbye, mounted his horse, and turned back to the road.
Levemar hurried to his side. “I should come with you.”
“I can manage.”
“You don’t know these woods.”
Levemar surely understood that all Hanuvar had to do was reverse his course on the single road, which lacked any divergent paths or byways. But it seemed Levemar knew more than he was saying, and Hanuvar wondered if he should be alert for ambush. He supposed it was possible the slaves meant to ensure he would not backtrack to spy upon them, but he sensed some other explanation. He worried that he had risked too much by being open with them and it troubled him that he must fear treachery from his own.
Levemar led the way, walking a few feet in front of Hanuvar’s horse. He neither volunteered information nor invited conversation. Hanuvar did not bother questioning him, for he sensed no more answers would be forthcoming today.
On either hand loomed the vast, primordial woodland. It felt quieter than it should have been in the late afternoon, as if even the trees were poised with expectation. Somewhere out there the peninsula’s red chested warblers exchanged greetings in their distinctive burbling; all else was still, with not even the swish of a squirrel’s tail in evidence.
When Hanuvar recognized they were not far from the forest’s edge he caught a flash of movement on his right. He glanced first left, to see if an attack were being readied, then back right, and a slim female form in a flowing Turian dress disappeared behind a trunk. His heart hammered, for that woman had been his lost Ravella, and that could not be. He had known the way she moved, the shape of her head among the curls, the proud heft of her shoulders.
A trick. A sorcerous trick. Ahead of him, Levemar had not broken stride, and Hanuvar glanced once more in the other cardinal directions. His horse faltered, then kept on with a little huff.
And then he glimpsed a high, silver tower through the woods, as though a thin screen of leaves separated him from vanished Volanus. The westernmost tower gleamed in a shaft of sunlight, and he would have sworn he heard the song of morning prayer rising from the island temples.
This time he stopped, hand to sword, staring. The image had been blotted out by a tree branch. The singing ceased.
Levemar halted and faced him, considered his guarded searching for a moment, and finally spoke. “You’ve seen it. Whatever you saw, don’t go after it. It’s not real.”
“I know it’s not real,” Hanuvar said sharply. “But what is it?”
“That which the master hunts,” Levemar replied grimly.
“You could speak with more precision.”
Levemar answered reluctantly. “It is a spirit of the deep woods, cursed and vengeful. She means to cloud our minds with what we desire most. Were you to dismount and pursue, we’d be unlikely to find you. Or, if we did, you would be maddened, or broken, or a dead husk.”
“And you’re safe from it?”
“So long as I keep to the path.”
“Suppose it presents a path that looks like the one you want.”
“I know the way. And the master has taught me its signs. But you do not know them.” He stepped to Hanuvar’s side, and his voice was considerate. “What did it show you?”
“A woman lost to me. And one of the silver towers.”
Levemar’s face registered a solemn compassion. Quietly, he revealed a trouble of his own. “It shows me my mother.” His eyes were dark with the shared sorrow of loss. “She did not survive the slave pens. If she could have lasted but a few more weeks I’m certain the master would have bought her too.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I think we have both had losses,” Levemar said. And then that brief feeling of fellowship vanished and he grew hard and stern once more. “I tell you this now—stay clear from the woods until the sun is high tomorrow. We can talk then.”
Hanuvar spoke as Levemar started to turn. “I’ve faced and defeated more strange magics than you might believe. I’m no sorcerer, but whatever you mean to do, I can aid you, if it will help win you free.”
The man gravely considered this, then bowed his head. “I believe you. I will talk with the others, and the master. For now, though, we must keep moving.”
In only a few hundred feet the waning light was a welcome amber glow on the road ahead. Levemar raised his hand in farewell and Hanuvar guided his horse for it.
He looked back only once, but his escort was already lost in the darkness beneath the trees.
II
“I expected that you’d be back by nightfall.” Natius repeated himself over the dinner, for he’d said it at the doorstep when Hanuvar presented himself. They ate Dervan style, lying on couches across from each other while an elderly house slave and the boy presented them with food and wine. They were alone, and there was no sign of a third couch; the aging soldier said his wife wasn’t well and preferred to eat in her room. He’d also said he preferred to eat outdoors, and they did so now, on a dilapidated veranda. Two wings enclosed the north and south view, but the west looked out upon a small garden and the dark bank of woods below.
The meal was warm and fresh and simple. It started with hard boiled eggs and sweet dipping sauce that was better than usual garam, although Natius apologized for the flavor being thin. It then moved on to venison.
“Drusus keeps us supplied with deer,” he explained. “I don’t see him very often anymore, but he’s mad for hunting. One of his Volani slaves brings a deer by every now and then; sometimes a boar.”
“He sounds generous.”
“He feels guilty that he won’t let me hunt there. He says it’s dangerous.”
“Do you think it’s dangerous?”
The old warrior looked up from his plate, rubbed some flat bread around in the sauce, then considered his response a moment longer. “You’ve passed through those woods. What do you think?”
Instead of answering, Hanuvar asked, “Have you seen things there?”
Natius smiled in triumph. “Ah! You’ve seen her too, then.”
“I saw something,” Hanuvar admitted.
“The woods have an uncanny feel, don’t they? And in the dusk Drusus says they’re deadly. I used to hunt with him, right after we mustered out.”
“You served together?”
“We did. Best friends, we were. Saved my life more times than I can count, back in the day, and I had his back as well. We bought adjacent plots.”
“But you’re not friends now?”
Natius frowned. “He’s got secrets. There’s magic in those woods. I don’t understand it, but he keeps it for himself. To use himself,” he finished bitterly.
Hanuvar considered telling him something of what the slaves had said, about the master getting ready to destroy the beast, or spirit, once and for all, but held off until he better understood Natius. “You’re saying he’s a sorcerer?”
“He must be in his mid-sixties now, but I swear, apart from a little gray at his temples and a few wrinkles, he doesn’t look much older than when we settled here. You know, I’ve been a poor host. I haven’t asked you much about yourself. What is it you’re doing here?”
Hanuvar masked his frustration, for Natius had seemed ready to divulge the interesting details about his former friend. “You’ve been a perfect host. I hesitate to disclose my employer’s aims. But I suppose there’s no harm in telling you if I don’t mention names. Some of those Volani slaves come highly recommended. They’re supposedly great hunters, and a senator’s son has it in his head he’s going to take them on an expedition.”
“And there aren’t any good Dervan hunters?” Natius asked huffily.
“A fine point,” Hanuvar said, inwardly grinning at his predicament. “Or Ceori ones, for that matter. We know which end of the spear is sharp!” He accentuated the point by waving his finger at him.
Natius was proud of his people but conceded that the Ceori could field worthy hunters as well by means of a polite nod.
“I said all that to my employer,” Hanuvar continued. “But the boy wants to go hunting on old Volani land and wants Volani guides. And so here I am. I get paid either way, but if I can convince Drusus to sell, my employer’s apt to give me a bonus. Sadly, Drusus was out hunting. The slaves said to come back around noon tomorrow.”
“When the sun is highest,” Natius said, as though he had heard the information himself. “I think they know what Drusus is doing.”
“I’m certain they do.”
“Volani are sneaky. You know that. You served against them, didn’t you?”
“I’ve dealt with a lot of them,” Hanuvar admitted.
“Can you believe that Drusus doesn’t even have an overseer? He trusts the Volani more than he trusts a Dervan of ancient stock. I’m no blue blood, but my people have been on Dervan land since the days of the founding.”
Hanuvar nodded sympathetically. “I am a soldier, as was my father, and his father before him. I sense the same in you.”
“It’s true. A man can tell.” Natius gulped his wine, sloshed the dregs in his cup, and seemed to reach a decision. “I hate to tell you this, my new friend, but I don’t think Drusus will sell. He’s mad for hunting. He does it every day, summer, fall, winter, or spring, and he needs those slaves to help him.”
“What is it they’re hunting?”
“He says it’s a special beast. But it’s magic, I know it. He’s never been the same since his nephews died. Kids. They were killed by a bear when they were visiting, out in these woods. He got that bear a long time ago,” Natius added. “But that didn’t change anything. He’s been strange and solemn ever since.”
“You were best friends,” Hanuvar said. “Did he never explain himself?”
“No.”
Hanuvar sipped at his wine. “A while ago you asked if I’d seen her too. Who did you mean?”
Natius opened his mouth and for the first time he didn’t speak right away. “You want to know what I saw?” he asked, and then, before Hanuvar could answer, said, “My wife. When she was young, and fair. But it wasn’t her.”
“No,” Hanuvar agreed.
“It was what used to be her,” Natius went on.
“What do you mean?”
“You know how I think Drusus stays young? I think he keeps hunting down his youth. In the woods. That’s why he’s always there, because he needs to drink it down, all the time. There’s something there. Something keeping Drusus young.”
Something Natius himself wanted, by the look of it, and he was jealous his old friend wouldn’t share.
“What would you do if you could catch it, Natius? Assuming it’s real?”
He spoke without hesitation. “First, I’d give it to my wife. I don’t know how long it lasts, but . . . even if it gave her a few years, how happy she’d be. How nice it would be, to hold her again.”
“And then?”
“Well, if he can catch it again and again,” Natius said, “then so could I. Imagine what it would be like to spin back ten or twenty years? Or even just three. To have three years back? You ever think what that would be like?”
“Not really,” Hanuvar said.
“Of course not. It’s the kind of drivel Herrenes lie around and wonder about instead of getting things done, like a good soldier. Like a legionary.”
“I’m surprised no one has called the revenants on him.”
Natius grimaced. “Don’t be daft. Nobody wants to get their attention, not for anything.”
“Have you ever asked him directly about it?”
“I have.” There was that in Natius’ voice that hinted at deep fury held in check. “He refused to own up. Said that the woods were more treacherous than I would believe. He said that there are some things that legionaries don’t know how to fight, and that this battle was his alone. And he refused to talk about it further. So. I just sit here on the outside, growing fat on his game, and my dear Lavidia wastes away, growing thinner and fainter every day.” His right hand was tightening, as though he gripped the hilt of a gladius.
Hanuvar had learned more than he expected from Natius, and now sensed he’d be hearing few new details, just some that the old soldier would want to circle back to. He complimented him again on his food, and then the two fell to talking about campaigns and battles. Natius had been stationed against the Herrenes during most of his time in service. Hanuvar pretended to speak of some of his own final battles in the peninsula as though from the Dervan perspective. Twice Natius staggered off to check on his wife, drinking with dark resolve after each venture, as if he fought to stem a tide of some onrushing enemy.
Finally, Natius began to slur and grow maudlin. Hanuvar excused himself, and a slave conducted him to a small spare room. It was clean enough, though the walls were cracked and the mediocre frescoes needed touching up, especially where a leak in the ceiling had obscured a pastoral scene.
As Hanuvar settled into bed, he sorted through what he’d been told and what he’d seen but came to no conclusions. Following the sound of the slaves tidying up after supper, he heard the distant sounds of his hosts speaking, Natius drunkenly loud but awkwardly tender, the woman’s voice weak and curious about their guest. Their voices grew too soft to hear, but just before Hanuvar drifted off, he was surprised by the sound of a man weeping, and surprised further by a woman making soft soothing noises: “It’s alright Natius. I’m still here,” she said. “I’m still here.”
III
Hanuvar rose early. A few of the slaves had done so too, although those out in the fields weren’t laboring with any great urgency. The house boy told him the master usually slept late, but that if he wished there was leftover bread and eggs and some berries, which suited Hanuvar fine. After that light meal he went out to care for his horse, then to clean the saddle and bridle and other gear. Garbed in a sleeveless work tunic, he stretched and practiced some martial stances, feeling stiff after so long a ride the day before. It was nothing like what he’d felt as an older man, but very different from the easy way he’d shrugged off physical effort only a few months earlier.
Some of the slaves watched from a distance. As he was pausing to drink from a jug of water, he heard the clop of horse hooves and turned to behold two mounted figures turning up from the woods. The one to the rear was the same flat-nosed Volani he had spoken with yesterday, Levemar. The other could be none other than Drusus. He was muscular and broad through the shoulders, narrow through the hips. His hair was dark and lustrous and worn long, parted in the middle, and graced with touches of gray at the temple and near his ears. His face was clean-shaven, tanned without being weathered, bright-eyed, even and pleasing. As Natius had suggested, his years lay light on him, for he appeared in his late forties at best.
“I bid you greeting, Katurix of the Ceori,” Drusus said. “My slaves speak well of you, and Levemar is a good judge of character.”
“That is kind of you, and of him.”
“He has spoken to me, and I would speak with you.”
“Please, join me. Forgive my appearance.”
“It is I who should apologize for interrupting your training.” Drusus climbed down from the horse. Levemar did as well, and then his master passed off his horse reins to him. On the ground, Drusus proved half a head shorter than Hanuvar. “Levemar told me you witnessed something in the forest yesterday. So you may have an inkling of what I do.”
“I saw something, but I’ve no idea what it is you do.”
“It was something you desired? Yes?”
“Yes.”
Drusus breathed out decisively. “And yet you did not succumb. Levemar told me you said little. Most are compelled to chase it.” He looked toward Natius’ villa.
“I saw things that could not be,” Hanuvar said simply.
“It tempts you with things you desire most.”
“There are things I wish for, but I know the difference between dream and flesh.”
“You sound like a man who’s well rooted.”
“Perhaps I have grown inured to loss. I’d offer refreshments and ask you to sit down with me, but this is not my home. I do have water.”
“Thank you, no. Levemar says you have come to purchase his freedom, and that of his people, where they may live among other survivors.”
Hanuvar did not give Levemar the look he was owed, for saying too much.
“It is a lofty goal,” Drusus said. “If you help me, I will help you.”
Hanuvar did not betray his amazement. “How can I help?”
“Spoken like a man determined to see a goal through. Katurix, here is my challenge. There is a curse upon my land.”
The door to the villa creaked open and Natius himself stepped out. His close-cut, receding hair had been hurriedly brushed, and he’d thrown on a rumpled tunic, which emphasized his protruding gut. He himself appeared hardly ready for an upright stance, nor to have his eyes open, and they were shielded from the light with a hangover grimace and a hand visored at his eyebrows.
Drusus’ handsome features showed brief displeasure before widening in a smile. “Hello, old friend. I’ve come for a short visit, and a minor favor.”
“Drusus,” Natius said, his voice hoarse. He cleared it then started forward, legs stiff but loosening as he drew close. “You’re an early riser, Katurix. Well, you’re younger than me. What’s this favor you need, Drusus? Another hand at the hunt?”
“No, no. If anything were to happen to you, who would look after Lavidia? I need a witness. I’ve prepared a document, but I need someone to see me sign it.”
Natius’ expression had grown sour, though his tone remained cordial. “What are you changing?”
“I am manumitting my slaves this morning.”
Natius’ lips formed a circle of surprise. “All of them? Why? How will you hunt without them? How can you afford to free them all?”
Drusus accepted the assault of questions with weary impatience. “If all works out, this will be my last hunt. I hope to survive it, but if not, well, I want the slaves rewarded for their faithful service. One was injured just last night.”
Hanuvar frowned but read nothing in Levemar’s expression.
“Your last hunt?” Natius asked. He did not wait for a full answer. “So you’re finally going to stop the magic?”
Drusus shook his head. “It’s not like that.”
“What is it like? Why don’t you tell me?”
“I’m sorry. I pledge that if all works as I hope today, tonight I will tell you everything. I swear. It’s not a pretty story, though, Natius. You may not want to hear.”
“If it’s something you need help with, you know you can depend upon me.”
“I do need your help. With the will.”
“Why not ask Katurix?” Natius asked peevishly.
It seemed to Hanuvar that Drusus spoke with great patience. The man possessed a strength of character he could not help but respect, and he was coming to understand why the Volani foresters held the man in such high esteem. “I would ask Katurix, but since he is going to accompany me, it is better that someone who will surely survive bear witness. If I fall this night, I want the Volani to live without legal challenge to their status. Will you help?”
For a long moment Natius stared, and Hanuvar thought to hear him erupt with the rage obvious from his lowered brows. But then, slowly, he nodded.
“Good,” Drusus said. “Thank you.”
After that, Levemar removed a small portable desk strapped to his saddle and held it steady with his forearm while he carefully removed a parchment from a scroll case.
Though curious about what was to happen next in the day, Hanuvar was immensely pleased that the freedom of these Volani had been secured. He watched as Drusus signed the emancipation document, and Natius signed a letter saying he had been present as witness. Drusus handed both papers over to Levemar, who rolled them up, fitted them into the scroll case, and capped it. The Volani bowed his head in gratitude.
Drusus thanked them, then urged Hanuvar to ready himself. Natius quietly wished them good luck and watched as they rode into the forest.
Once they were beneath the tree boughs, Drusus spoke to Hanuvar, riding at his side. “Levemar tells me he trusts you. I want you to trust me.”
“You have acted honorably. I will do the same. But what is it you wish me to do?”
“I have tricked the spirit I hunt into smaller and smaller confines. Through misdirection and lures, and trial and error and study, I have learned the old signs that give it the greatest pain and placed them.”
Levemar, riding behind them, spoke up. “Fencing it is not as simple as building a wall. It has to be tricked to circle against the shadows, not with them.”
“That’s essentially correct,” Drusus said, “though there is more involved even than that. It must be lured to move in the right way, at the right time, while the proper rituals are being performed. While all the wards are maintained. The larger its area, the harder it is to maintain the wards. But now, finally, I have it penned to a very small section of grounds.”
“Your visit yesterday distracted it at just the right moment,” Levemar said. “It backtracked when it detected you and that allowed the master—”
“Drusus,” his former master corrected graciously.
“...that allowed Drusus to close it in. The moon will begin to wax in two more days, and then its power will grow. But right now, it is at its weakest, in its smallest area.”
“The weapons have been ritually purified,” Drusus continued. “It can be brought down at last.”
“But not without some danger?” Hanuvar suggested.
“Yes.” Drusus breathed out, slowly. “It’s my fault it’s here. If I die, that’s the price that must be paid.”
Hanuvar understood his sentiment. Drusus had an objective he had set, and the man suspected he might not live to see it resolved, just as Hanuvar had long suspected he would eventually take one too many risks in furtherance of his goals. “Tell me what it is we’re facing.”
“It’s a dark forest spirit. It prospers upon . . . intense feelings. It will show you what you most want. It will sear your heart, and try to twist you, so you crave what it offers.”
“It can talk,” Levemar said.
“What does it say?”
Drusus’ smile was thin and bleak. “Whatever you most want to hear.”
IV
Drusus spent much of the morning taking a mixture of liquid that was clear spring water and the blood from fresh animal hearts and pouring it across elaborate spirals incised into the tops of boulders scattered through the woods. These, Hanuvar was told, were the rituals that had to be performed at least once every week, no matter oppressive heat or cold so intense it chilled to the bone. If the spiritual magic was not maintained, the creature would escape.
Hanuvar memorized the feel of the half mile space that they walked, where the hills were, where the gullies and creeks ran, the location of a lone dead fall, and other land features.
While Drusus retreated to his cabin for final preparations, Hanuvar sat down with his countryfolk at a wooden table in the shade for a mid-day meal heavy with meat and light on vegetables. He had expected a more celebratory atmosphere, but their manner was oddly somber.
He was introduced to the other two adults of the group, Levemar’s sturdy wife, Sophonia, and tall young Nelcar, who’d sprained his right arm when he’d slipped last night. Beside them were three children, two dark-haired girls of eight and ten, and the curly-haired boy Hanuvar had seen earlier.
All were as curious of him as he was of them. The children eyed him surreptitiously. The looks from the adults were more probing, even after Hanuvar spoke of New Volanus and explained to them that their ocean voyage would be arranged.
“This opportunity seems too good to be true,” Nelcar said, frowning.
Hanuvar might well have pointed out that the opportunity was only available because he himself had survived long months of hazardous trials and had been joined by others now risking their lives to make liberations like theirs possible. But the young man probably wouldn’t be capable of understanding that. While he was still framing an appropriate response, the older of the two girls spoke up.
“Can the master come?”
“Yes,” the younger said. “What will happen to him? Can he come with us?”
“What do you think?” Eleva asked Hanuvar. Her clean-featured face was so bright with hope she looked almost as young as the children. “Once the hunt is over, can we invite Drusus?”
Hanuvar understood how they could come to respect so forthright a man, but the peculiar intensity of this devotion puzzled him.
“You’ve seen he’s a good man,” Lenereva said. “In everything that he does.”
“I’ve seen that,” Hanuvar conceded. He almost spoke to them of the lives put at risk every time someone was told about New Volanus and the efforts to reach it, but their steady scrutiny disturbed him, and he couldn’t know if it was their natural disposition or a byproduct of their current environment. “Tell me more about the spirit you’re hunting.”
They repeated that it was deceptive and very dangerous.
“Has it killed?” Hanuvar asked.
“It killed the master’s . . . Drusus . . . nephews many years ago,” Lenereva said.
That was interesting, for Natius had told him a bear had done that. “Has it hurt any of you?”
Nelcar winced as he lifted his sling-restrained right arm.
Hanuvar wanted to point out to them how strange it was that a dangerous entity that Drusus had been hunting for years hadn’t managed to do anything more than deliver an injury that could have been the result of carelessness. But he decided against disputing the preconceptions of his audience. “What does it try to lure you with?”
The girls said that they had seen and heard other children in the woods.
“It’s a little boy,” the boy corrected. “And he always wants me to chase him. But I never do.”
Elava elaborated. “It wants to lure us deep into the woods. Sometimes, I swear I’ve heard the marketplace, and the laughter of the couple who used to run it.”
“They were upland from the coast,” Sophonia explained. “We passed the market they ran when the Dervans brought us out. The soldiers were hauling all the goods away for themselves.” Her voice grew heavy. “We didn’t see what they’d done with Cerona or her husband, but we never saw them with the other slaves.”
“What do you see when you’re hunting it?” Hanuvar asked.
“The Dervan general,” Sophonia said finally. “Striding around with an arrogant scowl, his head thrust out like a vulture. But alone. Unguarded.”
Hanuvar would have recognized that description anywhere. “You see Caiax?”
“Yes.”
“He’s dead,” Hanuvar said with grim satisfaction. He’d seen the blow that had finished him.
Sophonia’s tight expression eased ever so slightly. “That’s good to know. How did it happen?”
“Violently. One of his own men killed him.”
“Good.”
One by one the others told him what they saw when they hunted the spirit; enemies, friends, potential playmates, even, in Nelcar’s case, a young woman that he’d hoped to love. The spirit, they said, was wily, but they knew better than to pursue, not unless they were with Drusus.
Though the reverence for Drusus and almost obsessive alignment with the hunter’s goals troubled Hanuvar, he could not help but like the foresters, and not simply because they spoke his own language. There were strong, loving bonds between them. They were kind to one another, and generous to him, even if they remained somewhat cautious. After surviving the destruction of Volanus with but a single loss in their immediate family, could he fault them for being suspicious of him, a stranger, when he meant to take them away from not only their zone of safety, but their protector?
It might be that there was nothing wrong with them that couldn’t be explained by the trauma they’d endured. But something still felt off.
Near the meal’s end, Drusus emerged from his cabin. The handsome hunter insisted on serving himself, then sat down at the table’s head and ate prodigious amounts of venison and tubers. When he was finished at last, he asked his former slaves to gather in a half circle, then brushed back his tresses and thanked them for their loyalty and vigilance.
“It’s nearly time to take our stations,” he said, and his eyes flicked to Hanuvar. “If you see the spirit, call to me and get ready to advance. Remember, whatever you do, don’t touch the boulders. You will disrupt the energies collected there.”
Every adult but Nelcar was assigned a post beside a boulder and instructed to patrol to its left and right without crossing the invisible barrier, as though they were sentries. If they perceived the entity, they were to drive it forward and call their position to their fellow hunters. The purified metal on their spear points, Drusus explained, would inflict terrible pain if it even neared the creature.
Hanuvar wasn’t fully pleased with the plan and studied the serious faces of those around him to gauge their reactions. None raised objection.
Before long, they headed to their respective places and sat their glowing lanterns beside their stones. It was dark beneath the trees, and the gleam of the lanterns of their allies was all but obscured by intervening tree boles.
One by one the calls of the forest denizens faded, as though they were candles being snuffed, and an eerie stillness settled over the woods. The light dropped as the sun sank beyond the forest edge. Shadows lengthened and merged until the land beneath the tree boughs was heavy with primordial menace. It had become a land where gods might walk.
Hanuvar had just begun his third back and forth patrol when he spotted someone seated upon his boulder. This startled him, especially when the figure waved. The entity, he’d been told, could not approach the rock, but this person sat upon it.
It wore Hanuvar’s daughter’s shape, not as she would be now, but as Narisia had been when he’d seen her upon his return from the war, a gangly teen with long hair and dark sad eyes.
He had heard how great the creature’s power was but seeing it thus and experiencing the depths of the great longing to be near it he understood its power.
“Harken,” it said, advancing softly along the invisible line that lay between its grounds and that of the greater forest. It pressed against its edge, looking with Narisia’s eyes. “I know his plan. And I know what they have told you. There’s more.”
He stood ready with his spear, his lips parted to call Drusus. And yet he waited and tried to decide whether his hesitation was inspired by his desire to learn more, or the creature’s effect upon him.
“You know I am not your daughter,” it said, though it spoke with her voice. “But I am not a ravening monster luring you unto death.”
“You wear my daughter’s shape.”
“And you do not like that.” Its form blurred and shifted until it was a woman he did not know, a fair lady with creamy skin, with a pretty corona of black hair. She was broad hipped and small breasted, the Dervan ideal. “Here,” she said. Her voice was sweet and light. “Is this better?” She did not wait for an answer. “You are different. You crave a city, a people. You know that I can help you, don’t you?”
“How?”
She laughed, softly, as if sharing some intimate secret. “I know you long to put them on the ships, but that you fear for them. The way is long. There are enemy vessels, and pirates, and terrible storms. You have wished there was some other way.”
What she said felt truer even than he had believed. Her words sank deeply into his perception of the world, and he fought against the weight pulling down his own convictions. “And you have one?” he suggested.
“Do you know how wide these woods are? And how many people they could hold?”
“You think I could put my people here?”
“With room to spare. And the forest would provide. Does it seem to you as though the ones you came for suffer? All their needs are met. And their health is assured. Perhap it’s harder to tell with the new ones, but surely you see Drusus. He used to be more grateful,” she added with a frown.
These points, too, seemed reasonable and oddly attractive. He sought for flaws in her arguments and found the largest. “What do you wish in return?”
“Merely that the game continue.”
“The game?”
“The hunt, silly man. All you would have to do is hunt for me.”
“What if we do not want to hunt?”
Again she laughed. “Everyone hunts for something, don’t they?”
“You would have me lead my people here and keep them separate from their fellows.”
She stared at him and slumped a little as she sighed. At the same moment any appeal of her strange proposal left him.
“Oh, you are not like the others,” she said sadly. “Your longing is just as great, but the kind of wanting is different. Drusus craves forgiveness. And vengeance. Natius desires youth and the intimacy he once had.” With a distinctly feminine gesture she brushed one clothed thigh with her left hand while stroking the left shoulder with her right.
“Why do you do this?” Hanuvar asked.
“It is my nature. Just as it is yours to shepherd.”
“So it is your nature to toy with humans?”
She laughed and shook her head. “No.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Perhaps you have asked the wrong question.”
He had any number of questions, and he still doubted whether any of them would get him truth. And he might not have long before it tried some other ploy. So he turned to a topic that might shine the light in a different direction.
“How did you become the quarry of Drusus?”
“Many seasons ago, he sent his nephews into the forest to gather berries. He had seen bear tracks a few days before, but decided the animal was passing through, for he had found no other sign. He wished to dally with his brother’s wife. The nephews discovered the bear, and it killed them. Drusus found their bodies and begged the gods to tear out the part of him that hungered so that he would know peace again.”
“You are that hunger?” he asked. She simply stared at him. Then he said: “Why do you run from him? Don’t you wish to be rejoined?”
She shook her head. “It is only he, chasing himself in circles.”
“Whatever his mistake, he has paid for it. The circle must be broken.”
“If the circle is unbroken, it is because he refuses to break it.”
“Riddles,” he said disparagingly. “Why do you remain? He would cease to hunt if you were not here.”
“We revolve around one another, he and I, though he cannot see it. The hunt grants him purpose. And he gives me life. Although he means to end it. He does not see how important we are to one another.”
“Lividia!”
It was a choked cry of rage and dismay. Hanuvar stepped apart before he turned to confirm it was Natius who’d shouted; he wished to avoid putting his back to the thing, or to the man charging through the brush.
Spear in hand, the retired centurion raced forward, scattering forest detritus with every stride in his forester’s boots. His face was tense with anger and anticipation. The young Ceori slave trotted on his heels.
The creature with Lividia’s shape changed so that her clothes slid away to mere tatters; her form grew more voluptuous. Her hair streamed behind her in a wind that was not there and she chastely drew her arm across hard nipples as if suddenly embarrassed by them before running fleetly away.
“He lied!” Natius cried. “That’s my wife’s youth!”
“No, Natius,” Hanuvar said. “It takes whatever shape is wanted.”
Natius made a shoving motion at him as he swept past, calling for Lividia, the boy hurrying after. Hanuvar guessed then that it must have sensed Natius approaching for long moments. How much of what it had said been true, and how much merely a ploy to distract him, he could not guess.
The Volani foresters called out questioningly.
Whatever the thing truly was, it played a game, and whatever he was, Drusus at least wished to stop it. “Drusus! It’s here, and Natius chases it! East by southeast!”
“East by southeast,” one of the foresters repeated, and there was the sound of running feet. He went after Natius and the spirit, his own spear ready. He heard others closing in, and then something pale and swift swept back the way they’d come, and Natius panted after. Hanuvar pursued in time to see young Lividia reclined upon a boulder, a young maiden who pretended modesty while staring with coy eyes.
“Hurry, you fool,” she said. Natius rushed to embrace her, his spear point heedlessly endangering the Ceori boy at his side. It was not just Hanuvar who shouted at him to halt, but Drusus as well, for he was running with great bounds, and three of the Volani were behind him.
A foot shy of the woman spirit and the boulder, Natius stumbled and landed gracelessly in the bush, his hands striking the stone’s sharp edge.
To the rear, Drusus cursed him.
Natius rose, staring at the smear of blood on his hand, and his partial handprint across the spiral upon the boulder.
The Lividia-shaped spirit let out a peel of laughter and cast back her head, impossibly beautiful, then she leapt over him, danced past one of the Volani with a spear and hurried free of the broken ward into the deeper woods.
Drusus spun on his heel and hurried after. “Levemar, refix the seal! You two, head east and west! The rest of you, fan out!”
Hanuvar ran with them. Dusk had fallen and the gloom was deep, but from time to time he spotted a pale glowing shape ahead. From somewhere on his left he heard Natius shouting for Lividia, and the little slave boy calling “mistress!”
“It’s not her!” Drusus shouted, apoplectic with rage. “You’ve broken the seal! If we don’t catch her now, years have been wasted! Years!”
As if summoned by his voice, the pale form, somehow retaining the failing light, glided toward Drusus. Natius turned on his heel with surprising speed and sprinted after. The veteran’s breath was labored, but he ran as though a life depended upon it, perhaps his own, heedless of roots and tree trunks and the treacherous ground. Hanuvar came after. He shouted for Natius to slow, then gave up, understanding the creature had the man ensorcelled. He did call to the young Ceori, but the boy was as keen as a hound in following his master.
They plowed headlong into Drusus at the top of a rise. Over the crash of feet through the detritus rose a cry of pain and then silence descended.
By the time Hanuvar arrived, a ring of people looked down a small, steep drop of six feet, where a little ridge looked over a creek bed. A figure lay twisted in the water. Natius stood over it, breathing heavily, his weapon low, and the little boy was near him. Hanuvar carefully worked his way down.
Natius staggered away from the body. His face was pale to the crown of his balding pate, and his spear tip red. Red too was the tunic covering Drusus’ still body. When Hanuvar descended with his lantern and found no pulse, he saw that the hunter’s face was strangely peaceful.
“We both slipped,” Natius said, panting. “I didn’t mean to do it. She tricked us! It looked like there was a path there! I . . . I fell into him—”
“You killed him!” Levemar shouted. He dropped, landed heavily on two feet and drove his weapon toward Natius.
Hanuvar interposed his spear shaft, blocking the blow.
Levemar’s eyes flashed in fury. “He wants the hunt for himself! He’s come hunting her before!”
“It’s tricked him, as it tricked Drusus,” Hanuvar said.
“He’s lying!” Levemar pointed at Natius.
“Leave him be,” Hanuvar growled.
The forester cursed, glaring, but Hanuvar urged him back with the spear haft and the man finally relented and stepped away.
“Come,” Hanuvar said. “We’ll carry Drusus back.”
“But . . . the creature,” Elava said. Her voice was heavy with sorrow. “It will get away.”
“I’ll avenge him,” Natius vowed. “I will carry on his hunt. You can rest assured.”
No one said anything to that, but as they bore the dead man back through the woods, Elava sobbed and young Nelcar openly wept. The little Ceori boy followed, fearfully scanning the wood, as if a legion of spirits hid just out of sight.
“You can show me the spells, can’t you, before you leave?” Natius pleaded. “Teach me how to seek it?”
No one said anything for a long time, but Sophonia said, softly, that the master had many papers and she supposed Natius would be welcome to them. So eager did Natius prove to see them that he headed directly into the main cabin after asking where those papers were.
Hanuvar watched while the Volani dug the grave, at the garden’s edge, wondering if he had chosen the right course. Rightly or wrongly, he had wanted more information before he acted, and it might be that they could have brought the creature down if he had not delayed. But then he sensed that this spirit played an ancient game that had no true finish, and that it would never be caught.
After they had buried Drusus, the Volani sang a traditional song in his honor and laid flowers upon his grave. Hanuvar remained outside as they gathered their belongings from their cabins, watching the lantern shining in the central building and sometimes looking off into the wood. He thought he saw a pale form beside a tall oak, but before he could fasten on it fully, it faded into the woods.
Levemar kept shooting angry glances toward his dead master’s cabin but said nothing. As they started for the road, the cabin door opened and Natius stepped out, a sheaf of papers in his hand. He appeared bright, almost hopeful, more vigorous, as if the struggle were already restoring him. “Take the boy back to the manor with you,” he said. “He can tell my wife I’ll be back in the morning.”
Hanuvar said that they would, and then Natius raised a hand in farewell and closed the door.
“He thinks he will capture it,” Levemar said softly. “You know he killed Drusus. You should have let me kill him.”
“It tricked him,” his sister Elava said. “What we should do is help him, so that we can avenge the master.”
Their step faltered and the children looked back.
“The creature needs someone to hunt it,” Hanuvar said. “Do you want that to be you?”
Apparently that hadn’t occurred to any of them, for his words were followed by a shocked silence.
“Unless you want to be trapped here, forever, we need to go,” Hanuvar said. “Now. If this is its power at its lowest ebb, you will have no better chance.”
They hesitated, then seemed to decide as one, and resumed their forward course.
For a long while there was only the sound of their feet and the clop of hooves from Hanuvar’s horse. The lanterns showed the way along the dark forest road.
“So was it all for nothing?” Elava asked, finally. “All those long years of his struggle? The mast . . . Drusus was trying to do good.”
“A least, he thought he was,” Hanuvar said. “He was kind to you, and for that we can be thankful.”
“He was trying to stop an old evil.”
“Or trying to blot out a mistake he’d made. His obsessions consumed him, and the creature distorts the understanding of all who meet it. In a few years, Natius might not even remember how he became the hunter.”
“Will my master be hunting for years?” the Ceori slave asked.
“For long years,” Hanuvar answered. “One dance has ended, and a new one begins, with a different partner.”
When they arrived at last at the manor house beyond the woods, the sounds of lamentation reached them. Lividia had died. The mournful slaves said she had been calling for her husband.
Hanuvar led his people away from that dark place and on down the long road north.
***
The family of foresters were just one small band adding to the steady stream flowing by multiple routes into our hidden enclave at Selanto. By that time in late spring, nearly four hundred Volani people had been recovered. That so many had been rescued in a half year was the result of Carthalo’s extensive contacts and field agents, many of whom weren’t aware of their employer’s true identity or aims. They were simply skilled individuals well paid by a distant merchant to make purchases and would have been just as happy seeing to the transport of fruits, or carvings, or rare plants.
The vast majority of the former slaves had been restored to freedom without Hanuvar’s intervention, though that is not to say no cleverness had been involved, for Carthalo and his operatives and a small number of skilled smugglers they paid knew just where to apply money and influence to achieve their aims.
When my children were old enough to appreciate the finer details of these stories, they asked why Izivar did not simply ask Enarius to free the rest of the Volani, especially after the emperor himself had expressed his undying gratitude to her.
I wish matters had been that simple. To ask for slaves to be freed from hundreds of households across the empire would have struck the Dervans not just as absurd, but incredibly suspicious. To their way of thinking, the enslaved had been handed their fate by the gods; they had lost their freedom because they were weaker than the Dervans. Some few might eventually prove themselves of so much worth to their owners that they would be manumitted, but they would have to win their freedom with their own merits.
For all that there was goodwill from the throne for the public face of Izivar’s ship building venture, we had to move with the utmost care in the recovery of Volani, for if the emperor were to discover he had inadvertently been aiding a plan of Hanuvar’s, his retribution would have been swift and merciless.
Hanuvar himself did not return to Selanto, in part because three of Carthalo’s best men sought in the Turian hills for Rokana, a sorcerous ally from the war, and he wanted to be close if she were located. But his driving reason was that a series of complicated recovery efforts all came to a head at about the same time in the regions just south of Derva. The old maxim is that bad news travels in threes, and the Volani had run into three separate slave owners who refused to sell in the span of several weeks, within a few day’s travel of one another. I’ve already shared the story of the hunter and the foresters. I myself was with Hanuvar for the second of these problematic situations, and it is not one I shared with my children for some years, for it is among the more distressing of our exploits.
—Sosilos, Book Eleven