Ashlen rested comfortably in his saddle holding a long dazzling spear, huffing steam.
His son rode beside him and the barons of Bogswallow and Glantingmire with their sons added up to an even eight. With the simultaneous arrival of Caliph and Sena, Prince Mortiman, King Lewis and his personal guard, the final tally rose to thirteen.
Chatter focused on Prince Mortiman and the war front while servants led hunting dogs from heated kennels into the chilly court. Mortiman winced at every question and Caliph thought he looked happy that the dogs were barking too loudly to continue the conversation.
“The High King has the right idea,” Marsden said whimsically. He was already lit from several early brandies and his words were injudicious. “Bring a mistress and if the hunt is slow—”
“The hunt will not be slow,” said Sheridan. He was the oldest son of the baron of Bogswallow and a member of some obscure cabinet. “I can smell the fetch of the kill.”
You smell your flask, thought Caliph.
“Let’s ride,” King Ashlen shouted, raising his spear. “To hunt the minds of the peasants for this fearsome beast.” The fact that they were after a monster made the outing less of a diversion in the eyes of the press. If they had been going out strictly for sport, the papers would have had a heyday.
The hunting party roared. They followed Ashlen out of the Hold, onto West Wall Road and away from the city, up into the hills.
The hounds seemed to glide before the horses.
Caliph supposed that none of them (himself included) really believed a creature haunted the foothills, but he was glad to get out, to escape for even a few hours. Horse claws provoked the marshy spice of fallen leaves and trampled turf. Clammy, fenny odors soaked the pungent air above the hills.
“Is that the old Howl estate?” Caliph heard Marsden shout. Caliph answered that it was.
The hunt meandered far above the old keep, twisting into ravines choked with bracken.
They crossed numerous gullies carved by seasonal runoff, taking occasional switchbacks to avoid rampant undergrowth. Invariably they turned uphill again.
At ten o’clock the party lunched in a clearing at the north end of Summit Wood. Afterward, they followed a beast track south. It felt unsettlingly primitive to be surrounded by horses and soughing woodland things after so much time in the city. Caliph checked his pocket watch as if to make sure the gears were still spinning.
An hour later Baron Marsden’s sons, Meredith and Garrett, downed two boars. The dogs cornered them and a concentration of spears finished them off.
The hunt was about to turn home with its kill when Vaughan, Kendall’s youngest son, discovered strange tracks in a nearby meadow. Everyone rode up to have a look.
The grassy patch where the tracks were located overlooked Stonehold. Far below, Isca sprawled in a halitus of gray and brown mist beside the sea.
“Come see these,” Vaughan called to his brother.
Sheridan dismounted and stood with his hands braced on his knees.
“Odd,” was all he had to say.
King Ashlen and his son Newl stood at the far end of the meadow. They had followed the tracks from one end to the other and were holding the dogs on leashes, allowing them to sniff and whimper.
“The thing runs with a wide limping gait.” Vaughan pointed through the grass. “Mother of Mizraim! Look at that! It’s like it runs on two feet and uses a hand to help push itself along!”
Prince Mortiman jumped from the stirrups and paced between the marks. “Three strides to its one,” he declared.
Sheridan shrugged.
“It stands to reason not all the farmers are crazy. They’ve seen something up here and we’ve found the proof.” He made a bit of a ridiculous show with his arms.
Caliph looked at the footprint closely. King Lewis crouched beside him and touched it as though skeptical.
The indentation was narrow and long and deep. The heel and the balls of the foot were hardly wider than a man’s, but their length nearly doubled any boot among them. The toe impressions were also thin and long. Occasionally a tiny hole poked the ground a finger’s breadth from the tip, as though a nail curved sharply down at the end of each digit.
The handprints followed the right side of the tracks nearly six feet from the footprints. They were different with every stride. Sometimes the thing had supported itself on the backs of its knuckles, sometimes on the side of the palm. One clear handprint was found in a spot of mud between patches of grass. Fingers two and a half times the length of Vaughan’s and a palm that was surprisingly small, spread out under the men’s eyes like the mark of a giant spider someone had mashed into the clay.
The hunting party divided and agreed that half would follow the tracks one way and half the other.
King Ashlen and his son along with Baron Marsden and his two boys went with King Lewis and his guard. Caliph, Sena, Baron Kendall, Sheridan, Vaughan and the prince took the rest of the dogs across the meadow, traveling in the same direction as the creature.
The sun had already drifted into late afternoon and the autumn day was quickly losing heat. Sena rode closer to Caliph now. She held her spear across her hips.
Despite the altitude, the underbrush remained oppressively thick. The horses had to wade through it and the ground was invisible.
They weren’t following tracks anymore. But the dogs had traveled ahead. Their yelping tinkled off the mountains like broken glass.
“They’re following something,” Kendall said. He added emphasis to “something.” “If the creature came this way though it’s damned uncanny. Foliage is undisturbed.”
Sena looked at the crushed trail behind them and then ahead at the quiet, untrod bracken.
“With strides like those, I doubt we’ll catch it even horsed,” Vaughan said. “We’ll be lucky if the hounds don’t fall down a fissure.” He looked over his shoulder.
Caliph read his thoughts. If we turn back now, it will still be dark by the time we reach Isca.
He drew up on the reins and began to call in the dogs. They were trained from pups to ignore food even when they were starving should their master call.
It was quiet out in the mountains. Hundreds of leagues of unexplored valleys and ridges crumpled the land of the Healean Range. There must have been thousands of square miles for any kind of creature to hide.
Caliph called again.
He noticed Prince Mortiman looking at him in a kind of charmed way and felt suddenly uneasy.
Sena was looking at him too. Looking at the prince looking at Caliph. The bizarre momentary triangle made Caliph shift in his saddle as a gust of wind ruffled his hair. Mortiman cleared his throat musically and gazed off into the distance.
Caliph made one last attempt to call the dogs in.
The mountain air had turned cold. The tip of his nose was growing numb. He looked back at Sena; saw her face tense and pale. Jealousy? Or was she as nervous as he was?
A shuffling stirred the undergrowth.
“Ahh, here they come.” Sheridan clapped his gloved hands.
But the sticks and dying leaves parted for only one hound.
Caliph jumped down, his voice a whisper. “By the trade wind!”
Blood matted the animal’s coat and a great chunk of hide had been torn from the top of its head. One ear was missing altogether. It stood panting steam, whimpering softly.
“We need to go,” said Sena.
Caliph tore a strip of cloth from a roll in his saddlebag. “I’ll have to carry him.”
Sena sounded desperate. “We need to go now!” She turned her giddy horse around and began walking it the other way. Her terror was contagious. Vaughan, a trained woodsman, sat looking anxiously into the trees. He cocked his head slightly as though listening to something no one else could hear.