Hunted Read online

  If only they’d had a way to formulate a plan before all of this, Conor thought.

  Just then, a guard dragged Conor to a stop by his cloak. Conor jerked and tugged, but the guard kept pulling him closer. Conor’s boots skidded across the dirt courtyard. He was much smaller than his assailant.

  “Rollan! Meilin!” he shouted. But the commotion drowned out his voice. The others hadn’t even noticed that he’d been apprehended.

  The guard flipped out a stubby, sharp sword. The look on his face was branded in Conor’s mind.

  This was not a training exercise.

  This man was about to kill him.

  But I’m just a boy, Conor thought.

  There was no trace of mercy in the guard’s eyes.

  “Briggan!” Conor cried out desperately.

  The wolf pivoted. But he was too far away —

  A woman struck the guard with a soaked piece of wood. For a bare moment, his expression didn’t change. His sword was still poised over Conor. But then the guard’s eyes went blank and he slumped to his knees.

  All of the breath escaped from Conor’s lungs.

  The woman with the piece of wood threw her arms around Conor and dragged him to her in a hug.

  “Conor!” she said. Her voice was so familiar. As Briggan bounded breathlessly to Conor’s side, Conor got a good look at his savior’s face. His mother!

  Like all the prisoners, she was tattered and careworn, but her appearance couldn’t get in the way of Conor’s relief. She was alive.

  “Mother!” He hugged her tightly. His head was a clutter of images: that man’s face as he prepared to kill Conor, the Greencloak supporter being attacked by the mastiffs, and even Finn’s hands trembling as he tried to open the lock. His mother was so skinny too. “I —”

  “I know,” she replied. “But there’s no time. You need to go! It isn’t safe here for Greencloaks anymore. They even . . . even Isilla is gone.”

  “But th-this is wrong,” Conor finally stammered, shocked to hear of the gentle Greencloak who had presided over his Nectar Ceremony. She’d been a revered figure in Trunswick for as long as he could remember. “I don’t want to leave you behind. Come with us.”

  “I can’t,” his mother said. “Your father and brothers still need me.”

  The others had finally noticed Conor’s detainment, and they struggled to fight their way back to him. Nearby, Abeke and Uraza fought with two of the mastiffs. Overhead, a seagull, someone’s spirit animal, circled and screamed.

  Madness, Conor thought again. Their odds were technically better than in that forest battle, but in this chaos, the Greencloaks were doomed.

  “How can I help?” he asked desperately.

  “Did you get my letter? You’ve made us all so proud, Conor! You called Briggan, and surely there was a reason. Briggan was a great leader. You’re good and wise. Do what you feel is right. You always do what’s right.”

  “But I don’t know what is right!”

  His mother hugged him again. “Do what is right in your heart, Conor.”

  Conor hesitated. He was certain that if they left, all these Greencloak supporters would give their lives to shield them. Maybe they were okay with that. But he wasn’t. He couldn’t be. He just couldn’t. Like Lady Evelyn had pointed out, he was a guardian. He couldn’t just stay, though, either. Then they would all die. What was right in his heart?

  He didn’t know.

  “Briggan,” Conor said. He buried his hand in the wolf’s ruff. “Can we help them? They need us.”

  What this group needed was a leader, he knew. He just didn’t know if he and Briggan were ready to be leaders yet. Well, he knew Briggan was ready. He just didn’t know if he was.

  The wolf’s ears pricked. He surveyed the chaos. Conor did too, and as he did, he saw that even worse was in store for them. The Earl of Trunswick’s white horse was making its way jauntily down the streets toward the courtyard. The earl sat high on its back, his powerful lynx spirit animal lumbering beside him. He was riding in a leisurely fashion, as if he had come to the same conclusion Conor had: The Greencloak supporters had no chance.

  This was the Fallens’ last chance to run.

  Conor and Briggan met each other’s eyes. This time, neither of them looked away.

  Cupping his hands around his mouth, Conor shouted, “Meilin! Rollan! Abeke!”

  When he was sure he’d caught their attention, he gestured wildly for them to join him.

  Meilin reached him first. “Come on! Let’s go.”

  “We’re helping,” Conor said. “It’s what we’re meant to do.”

  Conor’s mother nodded. She stepped back, tightening her hands on the piece of wood she’d used to hit the guard.

  “What did you have in mind?” Rollan asked.

  “Training room, like we practiced. Find weapons where we can and fight as a team.”

  He didn’t have to say it twice. Rollan brandished his knife, Meilin put up her fists, and Abeke crouched low beside Uraza. Briggan tipped back his head and let out a long, cool howl. The sound pierced the fighting. It raised the hair on the back of Conor’s neck and on his arms. Every spirit animal there turned all attention to the wolf.

  In that brief silence, Conor shouted, “Greencloaks! Attack!”

  They moved forward as one creature. Uraza slunk low before them, Briggan charged beside them, and Essix swept by overhead. They threw themselves into the battle. But not as four people fighting four separate targets. As a single entity dispatching one enemy at a time and then moving on to the next.

  Rollan fought with his dagger. Abeke brandished a torch. Conor swept up a shovel from a cart near the blacksmith’s. Meilin still preferred to fight bare-handed.

  It didn’t take long for their efforts to catch the eyes of the other Greencloak supporters. The first to catch on had been fighting with only the help of her spirit animal, a goat. But when she saw the four of them battling as a team, she leaped in behind them. Then a man with an owl. Then a young man with no visible spirit animal. When they saw how the Fallen had found weapons and worked together, they began doing the same.

  It was working. The cacophony was dimming. The guards were falling back. The mastiffs were finished.

  We’re doing it, Briggan! Conor thought fiercely. He could feel the wolf’s power surging through him, giving him strength. It was like he was a wolf himself. He was faster, stronger, sharper. This was what the bond could be.

  They were winning.

  Then the Earl of Trunswick’s voice rang over the courtyard.

  “If you want this man to live, I suggest you lay down your weapons!”

  In the uneven torchlight, the Earl of Trunswick stood on an auction block at the other side of the courtyard. Finn stood in his grasp. The earl’s sword was pressed against his throat, and his lynx prowled the block, as if daring anyone to intervene.

  The fighting stopped. The only sound was that of several people trying to catch their breath.

  Finn’s voice was softer than the earl’s, but in that ragged quiet, it was just as audible. “Go. Don’t listen to him! Just go!”

  Conor’s heart ached. His mother nodded at him. Just go!

  All the other Greencloak supporters were watching Conor, Rollan, Abeke, and Meilin to see what their next move was. There were few enough guards that the supporters would have been able to take them on easily if the earl hadn’t had Finn hostage.

  “If you go,” the earl warned with the familiar Trunswick jeer in his voice, “I won’t just kill him now. I’ll put him back where he belongs. In the Howling House! Don’t worry, Finn Cooley! We’ll burn that troubled bond out of you yet!”

  Finn’s hands shook, just as they had inside the Howling House. But when he spoke it was with a steady voice. “Go. This is bigger than me!”

  Meilin hissed, “We can’t leave him.”

  The earl traced the edge of his sword against Finn’s skin. A shallow wound appeared, a few beads of blood drawing a line across his n
eck.

  Finn pressed his lips together. He looked straight at Conor. “Take the rest of them out of here.”

  Conor needed a plan, but there was no plan. Meilin’s agonized face meant that she didn’t have one either. Rollan and Abeke shook their heads. His mother’s eyebrows pulled together. She was in over her head.

  Was this how it had to end? Handing Finn over to their enemy?

  Suddenly a wall of flame appeared. It roared and spat and devoured as it hurtled across the cobblestones. Straight in the direction of the earl and Finn. It was so out of place that it took Conor a long second to realize what it was. A cart, piled high with burning straw. Smoke rolled off it in great, choking clouds.

  Conor searched the courtyard’s edge to see who had set the cart in motion. A small figure caught his eye. Dawson Trunswick, Devin’s younger brother. When he saw that Conor had spotted him, he nodded in a nervous way and vanished into the blackness.

  The cart blasted toward the auction block. The earl and his lynx leaped off the side to save their skins. Finn leaped the other way. He plunged through the blinding smoke toward the kids while the earl cursed on the other side of the cloud.

  “Run!” Conor’s mother shouted as Finn reached them. She touched Conor’s face. “Now’s the time to run, my son! We’ll cover you. Take Finn and go!”

  Blaring through the smoke, the earl roared furiously. There were words in it, but they were lost in his rage.

  “Thank you . . .” Conor whispered to his mother. “Thank you!” he called louder, turning to the Greencloak supporters.

  “Long live the true Great Beasts!” someone shouted.

  The rest of the supporters echoed it. His mother’s smile was a proud thing indeed.

  Conor’s heart swelled.

  Then the supporters turned back to the smoke, weapons out, ready for the remaining guards.

  The kids ran for it. In the back of Conor’s head was the thought that it was lucky, or strange, that Zerif and the other children hadn’t made an appearance to help the Trunswick guards, but he was too relieved to be making a getaway to think long on it. If they got out of Trunswick alive, he could devote more time to wondering if their absence was due to cowardice or strategy.

  But for now: They ran.

  The sounds of battle rose again in the courtyard, but no one emerged to follow them. Their allies were holding back the guards.

  Soon there was no sound except for the noise of their footfalls slapping on the stones. Then the scuff of their boots on the bare ground beside the Trunswick wall. And then, as they ran into the surrounding pastures, there was no sound at all.

  Finn made a wordless gesture, and they all followed him into the blackest of nights.

  10: Glengavin

  FINN CONTINUED TO SAVE THEIR LIVES. ROLLAN, HAVING considerable experience being chased, was fairly certain that the group’s escape from Trunswick was thrilling but temporary. After all, he’d seen the smug Earl of Trunswick. More important, he’d seen the Earl of Trunswick’s horse. Despite Rollan’s testy relationship with his former mount, he was well aware that most people were faster on horseback than on foot.

  But the Trunswick guards didn’t catch up with them.

  This was because Finn led them on an untraceable path. Close to Trunswick, he walked them through rivers to keep from leaving scent trails for hounds to track. After they’d put some distance between Trunswick and themselves, he led them into a strange, boulder-filled forest that no horse could enter. Tree branches hung as low as Rollan’s waist. The rocks were covered with perpetually damp moss that ripped free if he wasn’t careful as he climbed.

  They walked and walked, over stranger and stranger trails. The more foreign the surroundings grew, the more comfortable Finn seemed to become. After he seemed satisfied that their path had been obscured enough, he scratched maps in the dirt with a stick and constructed shortcuts, mumbling to himself as he thought.

  Which was how Rollan found himself hiking through deceptively friendly-looking green mountains, a rope around his waist connecting him to the next person in line, who also had a rope around their waist to the next person in line, and so on. The idea was that if Rollan fell, he’d have a safety catch. Rollan thought it was more likely that if he went down, they were all going down. But he guessed there was some comfort in the promise of company on the way down the mountainside.

  As they traveled, Finn taught them an ancient Northern Euran method of sending coded messages.

  “This is how you spell Abeke,” Finn explained. He’d tied a mysterious number of knots into a ribbon. It didn’t make much sense to Rollan, nor, Rollan noticed with some satisfaction, to Conor (who had been moping about since they left Trunswick anyway). Abeke and Meilin looked on very keenly, however. Finn continued, “You would just tie this ribbon onto the legs of a gilded pigeon from Trunswick and let it go. It will fly back to its home with your message.”

  Rollan couldn’t think of anyone at the moment that he would send a message to. Possibly he could just write Dear Mother, thanks for nothing, and send that bird in the general direction of Amaya.

  They also talked about what Zerif had said about the Bile. At the news that the spirit animal bond could be forced, Conor’s face became pensive, but Rollan wondered if it would really be such a bad thing if people could choose what sort of animal they had to live with for the rest of their lives. He didn’t say it out loud, though. He could tell by the others’ faces that it wouldn’t be a popular opinion.

  They hiked for what felt like weeks, although it was really just days. Rollan ate all the interesting food in his pack, and then all the boring food, and had finally started in on the unappealing food. Meanwhile, the landscape grew harsher and more unforgiving. The mountains became more gray and less green, with savage rocks biting up through the grass. The fields that stretched below turned dry gold and purple, beautiful but unsatisfying for any livestock. They passed no towns, no farms, no houses, no people.

  As the food ran low and the landscape became more bleak, Finn became straighter and stronger. His chin was up and his white hair seemed to mark him as different and special instead of defeated and war-torn. This part of Eura seemed to feed him.

  It wasn’t feeding Rollan, though. He reckoned it was probably time to make peace with the probability of starving to death.

  Then, on the day Rollan ate his last piece of jerky, they came to Glengavin.

  Like Trunswick, it was surrounded by a stone wall, which they could see over from their high vantage point. But that was where the similarities between the cities ended.

  For all its old-fashioned details, Trunswick had reminded Rollan a lot of the cities in Amaya. Those cities were all skinny streets and crowded buildings, and people using the roads to relieve themselves, and flies collected on top of things that used to be food. Merchants and thieves and drunkards. And bundles of filthy orphans like himself, of course. Cities were full of opportunities, most of them opportunities for bad things to happen to you. And they all sort of looked the same to Rollan. No matter how different a city’s architectural flesh was, he could see the bones of desperation underneath.

  But not Glengavin. In the center was a massive stone building. A fortress, or castle. Or perhaps palace was the best word for it. An older central bit had clearly been built with defense in mind. But the extensive stone wings on either side had clearly been constructed for beauty and luxury. They were studded with stained-glass windows like jewels. Gargoyles and carvings hung from every stone overhang. Deep blue flags flapped from poles and hung beside doors.

  It was shockingly different from the rugged landscape outside the wall.

  “Am I really awake?” Conor asked. “It looks like a dream.”

  Rumfuss, Rollan just thought. This looked like a place a Great Beast would be.

  Abeke, the small black cat perched on her shoulders and Uraza standing by her side, just shook her head wordlessly.

  Meilin and the panda regarded Glengavin pensively. “Th
e gardens remind me of home,” she said with uncharacteristic wistfulness.

  The stone manor was surrounded by acres of manicured plants and crushed gravel paths. Every bush was trimmed into a geometric shape. Every rose was pleasingly groomed. Lavender plants cut into squares led the way to the front entry.

  The entire thing made Rollan feel a little strange inside. Since he’d become a full-time orphan, he had worked pretty hard to never be impressed by anything — hard to get disappointed that way — but he thought, maybe, he was impressed. Or excited even. Or possibly he was just hungry.

  “Lady Evelyn said the Lord of Glengavin would welcome us,” Conor said dubiously.

  “Yeah, we saw how well that went back in Trunswick,” Rollan replied.

  “Maybe you could send Essix ahead,” Finn suggested. “She might be able to let us know if she thinks something is amiss.”

  Rollan tipped his head back. Essix was sailing around overhead as usual. Within earshot. Not that that guaranteed she’d comply.

  Meilin had crossed her arms and turned to stare at him expectantly.

  Great, he thought. An audience always makes this easier.

  Really casually, he said, “Hey. Essix.”

  The falcon kept circling. Her head was turned a little bit toward his voice, though. She heard him. But she wasn’t going to do anything about it.

  A little louder, Rollan called, “Essix.”

  Still more circling.

  Now they were all looking at him.

  “Problems?” Meilin asked, sweetly sarcastic.

  “No,” Rollan replied. He twirled his hand as if this is how he had meant it to go. “I don’t tell her what to do. She doesn’t tell me what to do. We have a great bond. Awesome. You know what? I’m going to go check out Glengavin myself.”

  Hiding his annoyance, he ripped loose the knotted rope around his waist and began to slip down the slope toward the wall. He only made it a few feet before Essix cried out and flapped off ahead of him.

  Finn laughed — a rare sound from him. “Well, you two contrary animals are well matched, aren’t you?”