The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1386: A Clash of Steel and Bone (Part One)
The elk’s eyes narrowed as it wheeled away from Tulori Leufroy and the fallen Serge Otker to dash east, toward the trail that would lead into tangled, dense underbrush that was certain to slow the men on horses who pursued it so relentlessly.
It just had to make it past one of those men, and then, just as the rapids had stripped the hounds from its flanks, the forest itself would become the snare that restrained these last few hunters.
When the elk turned toward the narrow trail, there was no hesitation in its eyes. It lowered its head once again, aiming fourteen spears of bone at the last obstacle in its path and charged.
Reynold was ready.
The Aleese heir had watched the elk’s charge from his position in the trees with the coiled stillness of a man who had spent years in terrain far more dangerous than a Lothian hunting preserve. When the bull broke east and drove for the game trail, Reynold didn’t retreat. He advanced.
His horse surged forward, responding to the pressure of his knees, and Reynold brought his long spear up in both hands, not in a killing grip with the point aimed at the animal’s chest, but crosswise, like a staff with the iron-shod butt extending to his left and the broad leaf-shaped head extending to his right.
The elk saw him, but it refused to stop. Steem poured from its nostrils as it charged the gap between the trees, sweeping its antlers forward in a motion that could disembowel a horse or crush a man’s ribcage like dry kindling.
"Trample!"
Reynold met the charge with a shout that could be heard on the far side of Coldwater Creek. It was the same battle cry that passed his lips when he led a charge of Aleese cavalrymen, and the emotions behind that one word were no less intense than they were when he led his men.
This was battle. This was life.
The spear shaft cracked against the elk’s antlers with a sound like a tree trunk snapping in a gale. The impact drove Reynold back in his saddle, and his horse staggered sideways under the force of the collision.
For one terrible instant, the Aleese heir and the imperial bull were locked together, the spear jammed between the tines of the massive rack while the elk shook its head with a fury that would have unhorsed a lesser rider.
But Reynold had fought the Horse Lord’s demons on the open steppe, and they were faster, smarter, and more deliberately lethal than even the most clever elk. He rolled with the impact, letting the force of the elk’s head-shake knock the but of the spear over his head as he twisted in his saddle rather than fighting it.
The next instant, he brought the shaft back around in a sweeping arc that cracked against the base of the bull’s antlers with enough force to make the animal stagger, its nostrils flaring wide and its sides heaving as it chuffed in irritation and pain.
It wasn’t a killing blow. It wasn’t meant to be. Reynold was doing exactly what Erling had asked of him, using the spear as a barrier, a source of noise and pain and confusion that made this direction as unappealing as the whistling arrow had made the trail leading north.
-HHHHEEEEEETTT!-
The elk bellowed, letting loose a sound that was more rage than pain, and twisted away from the spear, its massive body pivoting on its hindquarters as it searched for a direction that wasn’t blocked by screaming humans and stinging blows.
From behind it, Wes Iriso’s horn erupted.
The sound was enormous, magnified by the walls of the creek bed and bouncing off the boulders that surrounded the rapids. Wes blew three sharp blasts followed by a long, sustained note. It was the signal that the quarry had been engaged, and the echo rolled south through the forest like a thunderclap, carrying the news to every hunter within a half a league or more.
Wes didn’t stop at the horn. He drove his horse forward, closing the gap on the elk’s eastern flank, his longsword held low and ready. He had no intention of using the blade if he could avoid it, but his presence added another body and another source of threat, becoming just one more reason for the elk to reject this direction and look for an easier path.
The bull’s head swung south.
Erling was already moving, his horse carrying him along the trail at a restrained walk while his hands worked with practised speed. This wasn’t the time for haste or instability from the back of a charging horse. He didn’t need to move far in order to line up his shot, but now that Reynold had engaged the elk with his spear, he absolutely couldn’t afford to miss.
The whistling arrow had done its job, but he only carried one of them in the quiver he brought for the hunt. This time, the shaft he drew from his quiver was entirely different. A broadhead, its wide cutting blade designed to slice through flesh and pass between bones to reach the vital organs beneath.
The kind of arrow that a hunter used when he intended to kill.
He didn’t want to use it. The elk was Owain’s quarry, and everyone knew it. Killing it would be an insult that the incoming Marquis would not forgive or forget. But if the bull turned on Reynold or Wes, if it refused to break south...
If it fought instead of fled, then Erling would put an arrow through its heart without hesitation and deal with the consequences afterwards. The dead were gone forever, no matter what the priests said about the Heavenly Shores, and he knew very well what it was like to live with a hole in your life where a loved one was supposed to be.
Reynold might not have children of his own the way Wes did, but that didn’t matter. He had a father, a mother and a brother, all of whom would never be the same again if Reynold died in a stupid, avoidable hunting accident.
Erling knew the pain of growing up without a father, and he’d be cursed as a heretic before he let Wes’s son grow up the way he had...
