boots,” scoffed the girl before looking back at Aerax. “What age is Caeb now?”
“Near five and ten.”
“That is as old as I am.” Seri regarded the cat again with new appreciation in her expression. “No wonder, then, that he seems to understand you. I have seen wolves and horses so well trained, but never imagined a cat could be. But he’s been with you a long time.”
“So he has,” Aerax said, and added nothing more.
Because anything more would be a lie. Caeb’s understanding had naught to do with his age. At two years, the cat had understood them just as well.
That was the part she and Aerax would not tell—and it was a memory Lizzan hated to recall, though it had begun as a day full of excitement, as she’d accompanied Aerax on her first hunt. For nearly a year, they’d practiced swords together—and he’d promised her that when the snows melted, he would take her with him into the outlands.
It was not even midday when they’d come across a small band of hunters skinning the carcass of a huge snow cat, which had been unremarkable in itself. Snow cats were rarely hunted except by fools with no care for their own lives—and when they were, it was almost always for their fur, or because they’d developed a taste for human flesh, or had been slaughtering a village’s livestock.
And if she and Aerax had remained undetected, they would have probably continued on without ever thinking of it again. But they were seen.
Lizzan hadn’t feared the hunters at all. Aerax had been wary of the four men, as he was of everyone, yet she didn’t think even he had expected the hunters’ angry reaction to their presence . . . or the shouts not to let them escape.
Completely unreal it had all seemed when the hunters had charged at them with swords drawn, as if a girl and a boy who were barely older than children posed a dangerous threat. Immediately Lizzan had reached for her own sword, though it was short and dull, but Aerax hadn’t brought the weapon they practiced with. He’d only been armed with the short knives he used to clean and dress his prey. So she’d stepped in front of him, prepared to protect them both.
And there she had learned what became of a young boy who’d survived on his own for much of his life, who’d taught himself to hunt by watching the predators in the forest.
Like a beast unleashed, he’d sprung for the nearest hunter, a savage whirlwind made of furs and blades that tore through the man’s neck before he launched himself at the next, feinting past the man’s panicked swing of a sword and slicing through the back of his knee. As the hunter had screamed, Aerax opened him from gut to gullet—and barely a moment had passed before he vaulted over the dying man and slammed full-bodied into the next man’s chest, snarling as he ripped out the hunter’s throat with his teeth. Then he’d spit blood and throatflesh to the ground, looked to the last hunter, and growled.
The man had fled, and Aerax followed—while Lizzan had stood trembling, disbelieving what she’d just seen. Near a full year she’d known him, nearly a full year they’d practiced together. Never had she’d seen him move like that before. She hadn’t known anyone could move like that. He’d not been like a boy at all, but a vicious animal.
A few moments had passed while she stood frozen, then she’d shaken herself and began to follow—until the screams she heard in the distance told her that Aerax had already caught up with the man.
Then she’d discovered why the hunters had reacted as they did.
No true law was there against killing a Hanani beast. Nor would a person usually succeed. With the god Hanan’s blood in their veins, those animals were not only bigger and stronger than others of their species but far more clever. As clever as any human, it was often said. But most kept their distance from humans. And although killing one of the Hanani broke no law, it was because most people would only kill the animal while defending themselves. To hunt one seemed as unimaginable a horror to Lizzan as hunting a child would be.
Yet that was clearly what the four men had done, and then drained the snow cat’s silver blood into casks—as if they intended selling it—which had been horror upon horror to Lizzan.