despite knowing that if any beast were within range of her skills as a bow-woman, it would be close enough for her to kill it by wishing it were dead.
It proceeded like any other hunt, with a lot of dull waiting and framing of over-elaborate plans that detonated into chaos at the first contact with reality. A big thing with horns—clearly descended from beasts of burden that had been brought here to tow ore carts and since altered form and personality to live wild—was struck by a shot from Lyne, and in its flight chanced to come near Prim. She drew an arrow and took aim. Then, taking pity on it, she did the thing in her mind that cut off its life. A wolf emerged from the undergrowth, having scented blood and given chase to the wounded beast. Prim thought that one to death straightaway as it was sniffing at the downed prey.
It seemed worthy of note, and quite likely a sign of larger trouble, that even a single wolf had turned up right in the middle of what had been drawn up, with sticks in dirt, as an orderly perimeter of alert hunters. Prim tried calling out the others’ names: Mard, Lyne, Burr. Another wolf came in from the same general direction as the first. She made it die. She could do that all day; she was Death afoot; nothing alive could hurt her unless she suffered it to.
Camp she could find, and people might need help there, and so that was where she went, breaking into a run as she became certain she was on the right track.
She was relieved to find that all was well here. Edda was pacing round the campfire in a wide circle. Querc was stoking it to make it blaze up. Pick was limbering up his stick technique to one side and on the other Fern was standing with dagger and cutlass drawn, the dagger in a reversed grip, blade tucked along the bone of the forearm, ready to raise up and stab down. She had not joined the party; to her, hunting was an uncouth procedure carried out in pointless wastelands by half-savage souls whose purpose in the grand scheme of things was to offer meat for sale in waterside markets.
Burr came into view, backing toward camp one carefully measured pace at a time, wielding his spear with both arms, butt high above his head and blade low, whipping round in great brush-cutting arcs but sometimes vaulting across the top to strike downward. He approached a tree, and Prim gasped in a breath to warn him that it was going to block his spear. The warning would have come too late. And it would have been unnecessary, as it turned out. His hands went on turning and the blade of the spear kept moving in its gyre and the column of smoke that was the spear’s shaft passed through the tree trunk, or perhaps it was the other way round. Neither spear nor tree, at any rate, seemed to take any note of the other’s existence. But when the spearhead intercepted the face of a wolf on Burr’s other side, the results were very material. It had to be a trick of her vision, Prim thought; but a moment later it happened again. “Where are the lads?” asked Fern, who was striding past Prim toward where Burr was embroiled.
Prim thought she glimpsed a giant raven wheeling above the crowns of the trees. “Watch my back!” she called to Pick, who shouted back “Good idea!” and took after her in a wading and flailing gait.
Mard and Lyne were not as far off as she had feared. Mard was dragging one leg and wielding the sword of Elshield with one hand. Lyne had a short hunting lance that he used in more of a thrust-and-stab style. They were a bit downslope of Prim. She descended to a clear vantage point, drew an arrow, and shot. She missed, but not by much. Lyne saw the arrow’s fletching and glanced up at her. “This way!” Prim called. Noting another wolf off to one flank, she caused it to stop living, then drew another arrow and managed to shoot one that had chosen to crouch, cringe, and snarl in a location where she could get off a clear shot.
The sub-pack that had taken after Mard and Lyne was dwindling in numbers and faltering in resolve. Lyne stabbed another, which ran off yelping horribly. Two others turned