Season of the Wild Hunt(Book 1 of The Seventh Gate series)

The Ways

Music: Blackmore's Night - Where are we Going from Here

"Nya!" Ashira hissed, nudging her friend with her foot.

Nyani threw off the connection to Baruti along with her sleeping fur. Her knife was already in hand as she sat up. "What is it?"

"Usonái. Over there, just to the right below that split rock." Ashira pointed at the opposite hill. "Do you see it?"

Nyani crab-walked to where Ashira knelt behind a large boulder, and looked out. "I see it. Ayá wola!"

Usonái. The beasts Runihura had unleashed on their homeland, and that had hunted them to the borders of the Wadinare.

The morning sun hung low behind them, blinking in and out between bloated clouds lumbering across the sky. The storm and accompanying down-pour of the night had passed, but the dense bracken dripped moisture in the chill air. They huddled in their damp cloaks and watched the beast. Nyani couldn't have been asleep more than half an hour before Ashira had woken her. They had walked through the night and only made a cold camp at first light.

The hillside on which the hound was moving was bathed in wan light, but where they lay hidden remained in shadow. The breeze was towards them, giving them a small advantage.

"Wola!" Nyani whispered the curse again, eyes scanning the other slope. "How many?"

The hunch-shouldered form was criss-crossing its way down the hill, nose to the ground. At this distance it was small, dog sized. Up close it would stand near shoulder height on Nyani - as tall as Ashira. Its movements were not those of a hound on a scent. It was quartering the hillside, but there was a chance that it might happen across some accidental clue that would alert it to their presence.

"One so far. I've been watching a few minutes. I think it's alone," Ashira replied. "Never seen a lone one before. I thought they were always in pairs or a pack?" She, too, searched the surrounding heather for any other movement.

"Different behaviour on home territory, maybe?"

"Now what? Wait for it to come this way and kill it, or do we try sneaking away?"

Nyani thought for a moment. "Killing it could make a racket. There might be others. The last thing we need is a full-blown chase to run. We still haven't seen anything that looks like An Tor Mór, so there's no telling how long we'd have to keep it up. No," she decided, "if we can get round the back of this hill without it spotting us, we can still move fast. Let's go."

Keeping low to the ground, they crept up the slope behind their camp, each movement slow and painstaking so as not to brush against the heather and leave tell-tale scent traces, or attract the hound's eye as they moved from cover to cover. A back-cramping half hour later they were over the shoulder of the hill and out of sightline of the creature. They straightened up and paused to check the landscape ahead. Nothing moved.

"North?" Ashira asked, tipping her chin at the horizon as she hitched her pack into more comfortable position.

 "Mm - but let's head a little east of north. It'll keep us on an angle away from that thing back there, and..." Nyani hesitated, closing her eyes. "There's something...I don't know. It's odd."

"Odd how?" They were conditioned by years of hunting and roaming on the prairies, attuned to all that lived and breathed there, to the subtle moods of the earth, the whispered stories of winds and sky.

"It's almost like a drum, or...when the Gapha-cows are calling each other. That deep rumble that you can't hear but it vibrates in your chest. Can't you feel it?"