The Phaerie whooped with excitement and howled with bloodlust as they hunted their victims down one by one with the huge grey dogs, closing on the helpless humans who darted this way and that between the trees in a futile attempt to escape. Great teeth seized and tore, scattering bloody chunks of flesh. Blades glittered in the starlight, whining as they clove the air, shearing through muscle and sinew, crunching into bone. The frosty leaves that coated the forest floor were darkened with spreading pools of gore, and the screams of the dying rent the night.
Her palms slippery with sweat, Tiolani took a tighter grip on the reins and swallowed hard, forcing back the nausea that was rising in her throat. She was Hellorin’s daughter - she was damned if she’d disgrace herself in front of the entire court. ‘Get hold of yourself,’ she muttered. It helped to remember what her father always said about these particular mortals. Feral humans were vermin, no better than rats. They bred like rats too, and if left unchecked would outnumber Phaerie and Magefolk in no time. Their extermination did the world a favour.
Tiolani felt better at the thought, and ashamed of her squeamishness. Never mind, she told herself. Many people feel that way on their first Hunt. Just concentrate on getting one of these humans. Then the worst will be over, and your honour will be satisfied.
The Hunt had drifted away from her through the forest. It wasn’t far - she only had to follow the sound of the Phaerie crying out to one another, and the screams of the mortals. Coming upon a knot of hunters and hunted in a clearing, she singled out a victim, a short stocky male with greying hair. He was clad, like the others, in nothing but dirt and a tatter of rags and animal skins that made him look bestial indeed: a far cry from the clean and neatly turned-out slaves in her father’s palace. Somehow, that made it easier for Tiolani to see him as prey. He darted to one side, and the experienced Maiglan turned to follow the fleeing figure as it dodged between the trees. Looping her reins around the pommel of the saddle, Tiolani reached for her bow and, within an instant, had an arrow in place. She had been hitting moving targets from horseback since she was ten, so this should present no great challenge. She sighted, fired - and in that very instant another rider darted out from between the trees and took the quarry’s head off with a single swiping sword-blow. Tiolani’s arrow flew over the top of the victim and embedded itself in a tree. The body stumbled on for a step or two, then fell to the ground, twitching and spraying blood, while the head bounced and rolled right under the feet of Maiglan, who snorted and sidestepped, causing her rider to lurch in the saddle.
‘Hey,’ Tiolani yelled. ‘How dare you take my--’ She faltered into silence as the other rider turned, and she recognised Varna - but a Varna she had never seen before. In place of the amusing, deferential lady-in-waiting she had always known, there was a wild-haired demon whose eyes blazed with a savage light in a blood-spattered face. ‘My quarry,’ Varna snarled. ‘Find your own.’ She wheeled her horse and was gone.
Shocked, Tiolani hesitated for a moment - then she realised that the Hunt was leaving her behind once more. Muttering a curse, she swung Maiglan around and set off in pursuit. By all Creation, this was more difficult than it looked.
Dael would have given anything to be able to change places with one of his hunters. He was an outcast among outcasts, and death surrounded him on all sides. He ran through the forest, praying he could keep one step ahead of the Phaerie; hoping he would not run into one of his fellow human escapees, who would think nothing of betraying his whereabouts to save their own hides. If he should be caught, he could expect little quarter from either race. His father, Lamus, had been the leader of the outcasts until, sick of his evil temper, brutality and violence, the others had banded together and clubbed him to death only a few days ago. Though Dael had been just as much a victim of his father’s bullying as the others, and bore the scars and bruises to prove it, his blood had been tainted in their eyes. They had spared his life, but banished him from their little community and driven him away into the forest, where he had been facing the prospect of slow death by cold and starvation, before the Forest Lord’s hunters had arrived to alter his fate.
Somehow, he had never expected the sight of the Wild Hunt to be so terrifying. Throughout his life, Dael had heard all the tales. ‘Be a good child, or the Phaerie will come for you,’ was a ploy used frequently by human mothers. But no matter how bloodcurdling the stories had been, nothing could have prepared him for the real thing. His only warning had been the distant belling of hounds, then the flame-eyed pack came streaming through the skies, with the Phaerie following in their wake like a shower of shooting stars: a heart-stopping sight in their glowing robes. Dael gave a moan of terror. It was just his luck that it had to happen now, when he was frozen, half-starved and all alone in the world without a soul to care whether he lived or died.
There had been little time to act. The best he could manage was to push himself into some bushes, in the hope that he would not be seen, and the fellhounds would find other victims. But one of the hunters, a girl about his own age, had spotted him and fired at him with her bow. Luckily for him, she had turned out to be an awful shot and the arrow had thudded into the ground just beside him. Dael hadn’t given her time for a second attempt. Springing to his feet, he ran blindly through the trees, finding strength and speed from sheer desperation, even in his cold and starving state. But it had all been pointless. Behind him he heard the crack of breaking twigs and the crunch of fallen leaves being crushed under heavy hooves. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him that another group of Phaerie were after him.
As hard as Dael could run, his pursuers could close the distance faster. A blast of magic hit him, knocking him off his feet. Even as he stumbled and rolled, he felt the spell penetrating deeper into his body to freeze his nerves and liquefy his muscles. He hit the ground hard, stark-eyed, terrified and gasping for breath. There was a blur of movement at the edge of his vision, then a shadow engulfed him and a horrible, clinging weight fell on him, wrapping itself around his body. For an instant, blinded by sheer panic, he did not understand what had happened - then he realised that he was buried beneath the silvery meshes of a net, and could only lie there, helpless, and wait for them to come.
Would the cold-eyed hunters finish him with an arrow or a sword? Or would he be torn to pieces in the jaws of the ravening hounds? It flashed through his mind that twenty years of slavery wasn’t much to call a life, and for an instant his fear was lost in anger at the sheer unfairness of it all. Then the Phaerie were upon him, and his fear returned tenfold as he waited for the blow to fall. Instead he heard laughter. ‘Call that a cast, Ferimon?’ a female voice said. ‘You’re supposed to net them then bespell them, you fool.’