“Yes,” said Darric.
“And this fight,” she said, “if it takes Mandan or Valsun’s life-or that young whelp following your brother who is only trying to care for his family-if they die in this fight, will you be able to live with that?”
Darric sighed. “Hweilan, the only way to stop evil in this world is to stand against it. If others will stand with you, embrace them. If my brothers die in that fight, then I will do everything in my power to show them that I would do the same for them. The rest … let the gods decide.”
That night, the group camped in a tangled copse of brush and trees on a high hill. Had any fires been burning in Highwatch, they could have seen them, for the fortress lay across the valley. In fact, they were not all that far from the graveyard where Hweilan had first faced Jatara and the Nar thug on the day Highwatch fell.
Both Rhan and Valsun cautioned the others against lighting fires.
“No sense in announcing our presence,” Valsun told them.
“It won’t matter,” said Hweilan. She was sitting on the ground, her back to a tree, her bow and bone mask on her lap, and Uncle beside her. The others lounged around, rubbing sore muscles or running whetstones along their swords. “He knows I’m here. He knows right where I am. Fires or not … it doesn’t matter.”
“Then why has no one tried to stop us,” said Jaden, “or come after us?”
All eyes looked to Hweilan.
“Why bother hunting your prey if it is coming to you?”
“So we’re walking into a trap?” said Valsun. “That’s your plan? Spring the trap?”
“Why?” said Vurgrim.
“Because this prey intends to kill him.”
The hobgoblins’ scowls deepened, but they kept sharpening their swords. The Damarans all exchanged glances, waiting for the other to speak.
“Well,” said Jaden at last. “Fires or not?”
“You cold, little man?” said Flet.
“No,” said Jaden and spat into the brush. “I could walk with snow down my pants, and that root Hweilan gave us would keep me warm. But if any visitors from Highwatch do decide to pay us a visit, I sure as the Hells are hot don’t want to fight them in the dark.”
And so they lit fires. They had no tea, but the Damarans heated water and threw in the strips of dried goat meat to soften them up. The waxing moon climbed high and bright into the sky, dimming the stars. No one could sleep. The Damarans were still running on the effects of the kanishta root, and the thought of a fight had the hobgoblins excited. After the meal, Darric, Mandan, and Valsun looked at each other. An unspoken thought seemed to pass between them, and they stood.
“Where’re you lot going?” said Vurgrim.
“We go to pray,” said Valsun.
The hobgoblins chuckled.
“In the dark?” said Vurgrim. “Your god will keep you safe in this dark?”
The Damarans shrugged off the jibe.
Mandan raised his voice for everyone, but he looked to Urlun when he spoke. “Anyone who wishes may join us.”
Hweilan didn’t think Urlun had enough Damaran to decipher Mandan’s words, but he obviously understood the meaning behind them. He glanced at the other hobgoblin warriors, then avoided Mandan’s gaze.
“As you wish,” said Mandan.
The Damarans walked off into the brush, making a terrible racket as they went.
“Hey, little man,” Vurgrim said to Jaden. “Why don’t you go pray with your friends?”
Jaden was running his own whetstone down his short sword. He stopped long enough to throw more sticks on the fire. “The gods can hear me just fine right here.”
The hobgoblins roared with laughter. All except for Hratt. He was sitting apart from the others, his head resting against a tree, his eyes closed. But Hweilan knew he wasn’t sleeping. She’d seen his eyelids crack open now and then, keeping watch on his fellow hobgoblins.
When the moon rose high enough that its blue light began to bleed through the branches, Hweilan stood and gathered her own weapons.
“Hey,” said Vurgrim, speaking in Goblin. “You going off to pray, too?”
“Everyone stay here,” she replied in kind. “If trouble comes from Highwatch, I’ll know it. If anything else comes at me in the dark, I’ll strike first and ask why afterward. And Vurgrim?”
“Eh?”
“A few prayers wouldn’t hurt you. I don’t think Maaqua would mind.”
His warriors watched him, eager for his reaction, but he only stared daggers at Hweilan.
She looked down at Uncle. “Chulet, Uncle. Keep an eye on them.”
Hweilan donned her bone mask to see better in the dark, then walked away.
“I am no one’s lackey, girl!” Vurgrim called after her. “You hear me?”
Hweilan left by the same way Darric and the others had, but she soon veered off. She really didn’t think the hobgoblins would try anything until after Jagun Ghen had been dealt with, but she wasn’t willing to bet their lives on it. Hobgoblin warriors won status by conquest-treacherous or otherwise-and Hweilan had more faith in the benevolence of scorpions than that of Maaqua.
At the edge of the copse, she stopped, sat cross-legged, and lay her unstrung bow across her lap. Arrows would be useless in such thick brush. She reached into her pack and withdrew the longest of the stakes she had made. Hrayeh ran down its length, and, looking at them through the bone mask’s eyes, she could see the power in them pulsing like a heartbeat. She planted the stake in the ground before her and closed her eyes.
Times like this, with the quiet in the dark and the moon and stars as the only light, she could most strongly feel the presence of Ashiin. There were no words, and she couldn’t hear Ashiin’s voice, but the Fox’s presence was there, as both a comfort and an added strength.
With Ashiin’s mind touching her own, she could hear every leaf and branch rattle and scratch in the breeze. She could hear the voices of the hobgoblins and even the crackle of the fires a hundred yards away. The stench of the hobgoblins and unwashed Damarans was a constant presence, but she could sift through them to find other smells in the air-cold soil, dead underbrush, new summer growth, even the metallic scent of snow carried by the breeze off the high mountains.
Hweilan closed her eyes and recalled the faces of family and friends.
Her grandfather the High Warden. Her mother and father. She had not seen her father in many years, but tonight his proud, smiling face came to her very clearly. She saw Scith, who had been a second father to Hweilan. Every skill and value Hweilan’s parents had planted in her, Scith had nourished and cherished. Her Uncle Soran, the strongest, most unyielding man she had ever known. But his unbending sense of justice had never blinded him to compassion and mercy. Jagun Ghen had murdered him and used his body as a mask to come after her. Remembering that, remembering the hungry fire in Soran’s eyes, Hweilan felt no fear. Just fury and hot rage. Her heartbeat quickened, her breath came faster, and she felt blood rushing under her skin. She saw Lendri and Menduarthis, who both had helped her, fought to protect her, and who were both now twisted versions of their former selves. And Ashiin herself, slain by Nendawen so that she could be free of her body to hunt Jagun Ghen across the worlds.
She held all their images in her mind, remembering Gleed’s words-The true warrior fights not because she hates what, is in front of her, but because she loves what she’s left behind.
Hweilan felt them all around her. The Ebun Nakweth, the Witness Cloud-those who had left this world but still watched with their gods, giving strength to those who stayed behind to continue the fight.
And through it all, Hweilan could sense that other presence. The gaze of green fire and the antlered hunter, watching, waiting.