The Dread Night Hunter

Arethu, the weirwoman, knew the forest lay under an accursed power, and when she touched the soil she felt the tremble beneath, like a beast hunted to earth awaiting the knife. She smelled blood in the haze of the summer heat, and she heard the wolves howl in the night, cries from the deep places at the edge of the world.

She hunted birds, as she always had, and she dwelled in her small hovel made from logs and roofed over with roots and moss, as she always had. But the woods were not the same. A thing had come with the winter, and now it remained and marked the ways of the forest with the track of printless foot and the sear of hunger. Something walked among the trees, and hunted, and hated, and fed.

So she sought wisdom in the moonlight. She poured clean water into the hollowed stone bowl where she ground berries and herbs, and she held it under the light of the moon so that the bone-white crescent shimmered there in reflection. She rattled bones and burned dried leaves and breathed in the smoke, and she sought the knowledge that had always come to her. Men called her a witch, and perhaps she was.

She saw the moon made into a skull, and the trees draped with bones. She saw wolf eyes glowing in the dark, and she saw the beasts of glade and glen slaughtered and hung to rot. She saw a shape like a man, but towering over any tree or hall, and his head was crowned with antlers sharp as knives. He bore a great spear and he limped on a crippled foot. Things like wolves haunted his trail, went forth to harry his prey, and Arethu knew that her home had been taken beneath the shadow of the Huntsman. The shadow out of old times come again.

By day it was weak, and so by day she went forth and hunted her meat and gathered her herbs, but by night she remained within the walls of her home and listened, sure she would hear the tread of prowling darkness. Even under the hazy sun the forest lay still, the birds and deer subdued, as though they did not wish to be seen. As though they feared what might come for them.

Arethu took up her old knife and by firelight she keened it on a flat stone until the edge gleamed like water. She had slain one thing of darkness with the good steel, but this was a greater enemy, something far stronger than some remnant long hidden in a grave-bog. In the forest by night there were only hunters, and prey. She swore she would not be prey, and so she must be ready.

She gathered things she would need. She took her bow and her sharp arrows, and she took her pouch of herbs and roots and the small powers she wielded as a witch who knew the ways of the wood. She brought an ember from her fire nursed in soft moss, and she cut herself a staff from a lightning-riven oak. By dawn she left her home and went away through the dark hills where shadows clung to one another, and she went down to the hall where men had dwelled.

It was destroyed. Where there had stood a great hall of men, built of stout beams and laid down upon ancient stones, now there was only the foundation, broken and washed with mud. A few beams thrust upward from the ruin, but otherwise there was nothing save a few broken stones and scattered swords. She saw here and there some half-devoured corpses upthrust from the wreckage, hands stripped of flesh by scavengers, clawing for an unseen sky.

Down to the sea, and she looked over the edge of the bluff to where the sea pounded against the shore, and there she saw the dead heaped like wood for the fire, covered over by screaming carrion crows. A hundred or more lay in the shallows, washed to and fro by the ways of the water, pushed up on the land by a sea that did not wish them returned. Arethu looked down on the marks of ruin, and she scratched a sign upon the earth with her oak staff to keep the dark powers of the sea apart from the land.

Here had been a contest of blood and bone, earth and sea, and the sea had prevailed, but now was washed away, drawn back to where it slumbered. But it had left its enemy behind, unhindered. The Undergods might contest with one another, but they did not slay one another; they always let men do the bleeding and the dying. Gods themselves were not so easily slain. A god is like a thought or a legend. It can be wounded, marked, changed, but not easily destroyed. She would seek a way to do all of it, and more.

Arethu built a great fire from the remnants of the hall, heaping up the salt-stained boards and the decaying flesh, the broken swords and splintered shields. She piled them within the ruins of the hall, and she scattered holly leaves and mistletoe across the pyre and lit it as the twilight descended, and the fire blazed up and coiled into the sky. She thumped her staff upon the cracked stones and called out to the winds and the sky to cleans away the stain of evil. The moon rose like a sickle blade, and she heard howling up in the ancient hills, and she was afraid.

o0o

It came down with a limping tread, and she saw it move among the trees. The antlers of its crown jutted upward in the moonlight, and the flash of its spear caught like a flame. She saw its eyes, and she saw it lift its head and give voice to a call like a horn. Below, among the dark tree-boles, she saw the gleam of the eyes of the pack, and she heard them give cry as they came closer. She was enclosed by the circle of her fire, surrounded by the smell of smoke and death, and she held up her staff as in invocation.

They prowled closer, hungry and lean, athirst with the want of blood. She thrust her staff into the fire and held it there until it flamed, and then she brandished it against the dark. “Come to the fire!” she called to the sons of the dark. “Come and warm yourselves, come and dance with me by the glow of the flame!”

She whirled in place, dancing upon the broken stone, whirling the staff around her, and as the light of it cut through the dark she saw the Huntsman’s wolves, tall as ponies and their eyes afire with an inner light, teeth wide and white, tongues lolling red like meat between them. They gathered in, hunkered at the edges of the firelight, and they kept back from the reach of her staff.

“Come and dance with me!” she cried, looking up to the looming dark shape in the trees, and she thrust her hand out toward his shadowed face and the lanterns of his eyes. Then she swung the staff and thrust it into the fire, gave a great cry, and the fire burst apart, showering the gathered beasts with burning brands. They howled and shook themselves, twisted to avoid the falling embers, and then Arethu turned and ran from them.

She burst through the encircling black forms and snatched up her bow as she leaped into the night. She heard howls of fury, and then they were swift upon her heels as she ran for the forest behind her. The sound of their breath was like the heaving of a storm, and she thought she could almost feel the heat of their breath upon her as they ran her down.

Arethu leaped a broken fence and set an arrow to her string, turned, and shot into a yawning fanged jaw just behind her. She heard it strike home and then there was a wail of fury and pain. Tipped with venom, her arrows bit deeper than mere flesh and bone.

When she reached the trees she shot again, sending a shaft lancing into the mass of dark forms and flaming eyes just behind her. Bred in the wilderness she was swift as any deer, and she dodged between the tree-trunks and left her larger, heavier pursuers behind. She loosed again and again, leaving a trail of twitching, dying beasts in her wake. Their snarls bit at her heels as they tore through the brush behind her, ripping wood apart with tooth and claw.

She leaped over stones and fallen logs, and she heard the sound of the stream ahead of her. The banks were steep, and she was ready for her moment. The moment she left the cover of the trees she gathered herself and vaulted over the water without slowing. She fell hard on the far bank and came up with her bow drawn to her eye, and as the sons of the Huntsman emerged into the moonlight, she loosed her arrows into them.

Three of them screamed and fell, slashing at the arrows with their teeth, trying to pull them free but unable to control the sudden convulsions that seized them. She shot her last arrow just as three of the great wolves leaped over the stream and landed close to her, jaws wide and dripping with hunger. Arethu flung her bow in their faces and leaped for the water below.

The current was swift, the stream coursing downhill among rocks and narrow, steep embankments, and she knifed into the water cleanly, let the water carry her away, down the white rapids and out of their reach. Howling followed her and she laughed, swimming easily. The Huntsman thought she was prey, but she was not.

Twisting in the water, she shed her clothes and cast them up on the bank a piece at a time, knowing the scent would slow the hunting hounds as they pursued her, following the stream to see where she emerged so they could pick up her trail. Soon she was all but naked and climbed from the water with her knife strapped to her side and the golden spearhead amulet gleaming around her neck.

Arethu painted her white skin with mud and vanished into the forest, leaving the water behind, climbing through the hills quick and surefooted. She had lived in this forest her entire life, and she knew these parts of it as well as she knew her own skin. Even in the darkness she moved with grace and assurance. She had drawn out the hunter, and now she would lay her trap for him.

o0o

The moon set, and the forest breathed with tenebrous power. A dark wind stirred the still branches, and the roots clutched the black earth where the monstrous wolven hounds stalked among them. They breathed the night, seeking the keen scent of blood and flesh, and they sought some mark of their quarry.

Behind them came their master, the Huntsman out of dark legend, and he walked with one foot dragging furrows in the earth, legacy of the wound a brave man gave him as he was torn apart. He used his long spear like a staff, pressing it down into the soil as he walked. His crown was dagger antlers, and his eyes blazed forth like hungering fire. He opened his dark mouth and let forth his voice to echo over the hills, and he lifted his horn and blew a great call to goad his beasts on their hunt.

Arethu watched him pass by, so close she smelled the bestial reek of his flesh and recoiled from it, though she did not allow herself to move. She was pressed close to the trunk of a great tree, clinging to the stout branches high above the earth. Her skin was so painted with mud and earth that she could not be seen, and she seemed a part of the bark and moss that covered the ancient wood.

She drew her keen knife, once steeped in the blood of a thing of darkness, and she cut a sprig of mistletoe from the body of the tree and held it in her left hand. Even here, even against such a creature, it had power she could call upon.

The Huntsman passed her by, and she climbed down and crouched behind him. There were no wolves here; they all ranged ahead, seeking her. She crept in his wake, following the dragged furrow his wounded foot made upon the earth. He came to the crest of the hill and stood for a moment, breathing like a storm, gaze seeking through the darkness, and in that darkness Arethu struck.

She came upon his unwounded leg, and before he could realize where she was, her knife cut savagely across the skein at the back of his ankle, and blood black as hate rushed out upon the earth. She leaped back from the gout of ichor, and the smell of it assailed her like poison.

The Huntsman howled, and his leg failed him and crumpled beneath his weight. Like a felled tree he collapsed upon the earth, the strength of his hand upon the spear-haft too little to hold him. His knees struck the ground and shook it, and then he let his spear fall and put down his hands to catch himself, lay gasping in agony with his hands planted hard in the soil. His spear fell and snared in the branches of a tree, jutting up into the moonless dark.

He bellowed and turned, fingers digging furrows in the ground, and she saw the blazing lanterns of his eyes in his featureless, dark face, antlers rearing above. She heard the wolves howling as they closed in on her, coming to the sound of their master’s pain. Wind lashed across the sky and called the trees to flail and scrape and claw at one another.

Naked, and with bloody knife in hand, Arethu thrust out the mistletoe branch, and it flamed with a silver, shifting fire. The light threw the darkness back, and she saw the wolves shy away at the edge of it, denied the power to cross into the circle. She turned and held the branch toward the Huntsman, and she saw him cower and hide his face from her light. She saw the tattoos on his vast arms, and the dirt grimed into his fingers, and she knew his secret then, when she had only suspected.

This was not a thing born in darkness, a creature of the elder world. This was a man, lured away from the firelight and made into a creature, a distortion of a true hunter. The dark shadow in the forest, the master of wild hunts and savage killings. The horn-crowned king of the summer’s killing, and now it was past midsummer, and he was waning, and she could make an end of him here.

“This is the bough that commands you,” she said, stepping closer with the branch of soft leaves and silver berries afire in her hand. “You have hunted through a dark season, and now you must go to the earth. Your path is over, and you are awaited.”

She approached him and he pressed his face to the ground so she could not see it, and when she struck his antlers with the mistletoe he flinched away. She heard a great cracking like splitting wood, and then the antlers shed from his brow and dropped to the ground, driving their deadly points into the soil. They shimmered with borrowed light, and she saw the dirt of an age and the dried blood of countless hunts strip away and fall like ash.

“Lay aside your crown,” she said, breathing hard, feeling her blood rushing through her body. The circle of wolves pressed close like a hand enclosing her, ready to crush inward and break her. “Your long night has passed.”

The Huntsman shuddered, and he tried to push himself upward, to regain his strength, but it was ebbing away. The wound on his ankle bled savagely, a torrent upon the earth, the smell of it like burnt iron. He grasped his fallen spear and planted the point into the earth, tried to push up and stand, but his arms could not raise him.

Arethu reached up and touched his side with the mistletoe, and he gave a groan as the white blaze brushed against his skin. “For each year, there must be a sacrifice. Life for life. Your life for the earth. For the bursting seed and the blossoming branch.” She touched the point of her knife to his flesh, watched the muscles twitch beneath the dirt and the dried blood. “Rain pours upon the soil, and brings life.”

She plunged her blade in, and he gave a great shudder and a groan, as though the wound were a relief, and then she ripped the blade across and opened him along the line of his ribs. His blood rushed out, falling on the soil, and she stepped back with her bough held high, casting the silver glow all around. It seemed like it was fading, and she wondered if she would die when it did. If the wolves would come in and have their way.

The Huntsman gave a long, low sound of pain, or perhaps it was a moan of release, and the freedom from long agony. He drew his iron-bladed spear from the soil, dripping with earth and roots, and then planted it again, plunging it into the pool of blood that gathered beneath him. His black blood watered it, and Arethu watched as the soaked ground began to coil with the faint green of new growth.

She stepped back, and green erupted from his blood, coiling around the spear, climbing up into the trees. The Huntsman shuddered as vines burst from his flesh and grew over his skin, tangling his beard and engulfing him. Arethu watched as he was subsumed by the green, and then erased by it. Roots lashed from his legs and his hands, dug deep into the soil, and captured his fallen crown. His spear vanished as his body was devoured, and all of him became a tree where the haft had been, an immense trunk climbing up to stand above the others.

The sky paled to gray, and she realized it was almost dawn. The mistletoe bough in her hand began to burn, and she cast it down to the earth, breathed in the bitter smoke. She looked at the wolves gathered around her, and she saw the unnatural fire die behind their eyes, saw their fixed aspect of blood hunger soften, until they were no more than beasts, bereft of dark power, and seeking only to understand what they found around them. They looked at one another, and some of them turned and bounded away, vanishing into the woods.

One of them came close to Arethu as the sky came alive with coming day. It sniffed at her, closer, and then she held out her hand to it, and felt the delicate touch of its breath. It came closer and placed its head against her, and she ran her fingers through the heavy fur, feeling its warmth and weight.

“Come with me,” she said. “My house is not far, and there you will have warmth, and food. Come.” She placed her hand on the broad back, nearly as high as her shoulder, and she walked away, weary to her bones, but feeling all around her the clean breath of the forest coming alive again. She glanced back once at the tree that had been a god, and as she looked upon the topmost branches the leaves and flowers blazed with the first touch of the sun.