The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1385: A Rapid Charge
For a moment, Erling wondered if the knights across the creek would defy him even now. He could see the young squires staring at the elk with long faces as their frustration at the elk’s escape mounted.
"Turn south," Sir Franc ordered, though the expression on his face was sour. "It’s too dangerous to cross the rapids here."
"But..." Riwall started to protest until Sir Franc cut him off.
"We have no choice, my lord," Sir Franc said, swallowing his frustration down in order to placate the grandson of Baron Preden Saliou. "Right now, we’re out of the hunt. Our best chance of getting back into the hunt is to turn north or south and cross somewhere other than the rapids. South puts us closer to Lord Owain. So long as Baron Fayle doesn’t try to claim the kill for himself, he’ll drive the elk right to us."
"The Coward Baron?" Riwall scoffed. "He wouldn’t dare!"
"Then south it is," Sir Franc said, turning to the handlers who had rescued the hounds from the turbulent water. "Lead them south and find us a crossing!" Sir Franc shouted as he turned his horse to ride south.
Erling couldn’t hear their conversation over the sound of rushing water, but it didn’t matter. His attention was on the bull elk that had nearly finished crossing the creek. His fingers drifted down to the quiver at his hip, sorting once again through the different arrows there, feeling the markings on the shafts that told him which was which without even needing to see the different colors of fletching.
A few heartbeats later, the bull elk surged out of the deeper water and into the boulder-strewn shallows of the rapids, its hooves finding purchase on the submerged rocks with an agility that few beasts of its enormous size possessed.
Water surged around its legs, frothing white over the boulders, but the animal’s height gave it an advantage that no hound or horse could match. Where the water was waist-deep on a man and treacherous with hidden currents, the elk waded through it with the steady confidence of a creature that had used this crossing before.
The elk didn’t seem to be in any hurry. It seemed to have realized that it was safe in the water, and every moment it spent navigating the hidden depths of the rapids was another moment to catch its breath and recover its energy for the next charge.
It paused in the middle of the rapids, chest heaving, and its great head swung north.
Toward Tulori and Serge. There was a long chain of large boulders between where it stood and the muddy bank, and at least three of the stones were large enough for the animal to hide behind.
Erling doubted that it was knowledgeable enough to use the boulders as cover from his bow. More likely, it wanted the option to change direction, to double or triple back as it advanced, but it still made it difficult to know for sure which way the Elk would break when it reached the shore. North? South? Or east along the game trail that Reynold guarded?
For a single frozen moment, nothing moved as the archer and the elk stared at each other from a distance of less than fifty paces. Then, he saw the decision forming in the animal’s posture before it moved.
He saw the subtle bunching of the hindquarters and the slight lowering of the massive rack until the tines pointed forward like a crown of bone spears, followed by the explosive breath that sent twin plumes of steam shooting from its flared nostrils.
The bull had been driven south, harried by hounds and horns, and it had come to the rapids to escape. Now, with the pursuit falling away behind it, it was looking for the path of least resistance to open ground.
North. Up the trail. Past the two young men on horseback who had never faced anything more dangerous than a sharp-tongued tutor.
"Serge! Tulori! Hold your ground!" Erling shouted, but even as the words left his mouth, the elk charged.
It came out of the rapids like a charging warhorse, water cascading from its flanks, hooves striking the rocky shallows with a sound like a blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil. The creek bank was steep but short, and the bull lunged up it in a single explosive stride, its antlers sweeping forward as it drove toward the trail where the two young lords waited.
Tulori, to his credit, held his position. The Leufroy heir went pale, and his horse sidled nervously beneath him, but he kept his seat and raised the hunting horn to his lips, ready to sound a warning even if his hands were shaking badly enough that the first note came out as a strangled bleat rather than a proper call.
Serge Otker was not so fortunate.
The Otker heir had been swaying in his saddle for most of the day. His balance was compromised by wine, and his reflexes were dulled by hours of drinking in the cold. When the elk exploded from the creek bank and charged up the trail toward him, his horse made the decision that its rider was too slow to make for himself.
The animal reared, twisting sideways with the desperate haste of a creature that wanted nothing to do with the antlered monster bearing down on it, and Serge, who had been gripping the reins with one hand and his empty wineskin with the other, had no chance at all.
He went over the side of his horse with a yelp that was equal parts surprise and indignation, his arms windmilling as he tumbled from the saddle. For one almost graceful moment, he hung in the air, his heavy winter cloak spreading around him like the wings of an enormously ungainly bird.
Then gravity reasserted itself and Serge Otker, heir to the wealthiest barony in Lothian March, landed flat on his back in the frigid shallows of Coldwater Creek with a splash that sent a plume of muddy water six feet into the air.
His horse, now relieved of its burden, bolted up the trail toward the hunting lodge without so much as a backward glance.
Serge sat in the creek, sputtering and gasping as the ice-cold water soaked through his clothes and filled his boots. His wineskin floated gently downstream, betraying him just as the horse had and making its own escape. The mud of the creek bank had painted one side of his face brown, and his fine hunting cloak was already heavy with water, dragging at his shoulders as he struggled to find his footing on the slippery rocks.
Thankfully, the elk barely noticed him.
The bull’s charge had carried it past the place where Serge had fallen, and it was already driving north up the trail, its hooves tearing divots in the damp earth as it raced toward open ground.
In three more strides, it would be past Tulori’s position and free of the arc entirely, running north through the forest where there were no hunters, no hounds, and no one to stop it from disappearing into the thick winter mists.
The world seemed to slow around him as Erling pulled an arrow from his quiver and drew his bow.
The motion was smooth and unhurried, a single fluid pull that brought the heavy horn bow to full draw in the space of a heartbeat. His anchor point was the corner of his jaw, the string pressing into the leather tab on his fingers with a familiar tension that he could have found blindfolded in a storm.
His breathing was smooth and steady, and his vision narrowed to just three things. The elk, Tulori Leufroy, and the shrinking space between them. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞
The arrow he’d chosen was different from the broadheads that filled most of his quiver. It was a blunt-tipped shaft with a hollow wooden bulb behind the point, perforated with small holes that would catch the air in flight and produce a sound that no animal could ignore.
He aimed ahead of the elk, not at it, leading the animal’s charge by two full body lengths, and released.
The arrow shrieked as it flew.
It cut through the damp air with a sound like nothing else in the forest, a piercing, oscillating wail that rose and fell as the perforated bulb spun through the fog, slicing across the elk’s path less than a pace in front of its nose.
The elk flinched. Its head snapped away from the sound, the great rack of antlers swinging east, and its stride broke as its hindquarters bunched and its hooves skidded on the damp trail. For a single, frozen moment, the bull stood broadside on the trail, steam pouring from its nostrils, its dark eyes wide and rolling as it searched for the source of the terrible sound.
For the first time since the hunt began, it looked bewildered and uncertain, but it knew it was in danger. Danger that was faster than a diving hawk.
Then it bolted east, straight toward the game trail where Reynold Aleese was waiting and the danger it thought it understood.
