Chương 65: The Ashes’ Hounds

The hunter spoke before noon. Not because he was brave. Because he had a son. And in the Marches, a man who hides a demonic scent near a road rarely grows old. He reached the stone relay with his boy behind him, hands visible, face closed off, pack lighter than it had been that morning. The relay guard recognized him, and above all recognized his expression. Men who had seen a monster often tried to look calm. Men who had seen a human and no longer knew whether to call it that had a different face. Less simple.

The hunter asked to speak to whoever was in charge. An hour later, three gray riders were leaving the relay. Two hours later, the signal reached an Ashes patrol. By sunset, Ash-Breach knew. Not everything. Never everything. But enough. A gaunt, wounded human, covered in Rhel-Fosse dust and smelling of demon flesh, had been seen near a road marker. He limped. He wore a makeshift brace. He had not attacked the hunter. He had taken water from him. Then he had gone southwest. Toward Lorvain.

In a low chamber of Ash-Breach, a woman with short-bound gray hair read the report without changing expression. Several metal plaques were already lined up on the table in front of her. Interception cell lost. Taren: death confirmed. Ruld: death confirmed. Darek: missing, presumed dead. Subject Z. V.: alive. State: probable alteration. Direction: southwest. The woman set the report down. Her name was Ivrane Solcendre. A minor house of the Circle of Ashes. Not high enough to command the Marches.

Old enough to know the orders that were never written in the clean ledgers. A younger man stood waiting across from her.

"He didn't go back to Halbrèche," he said. Ivrane looked at him.

"I read it."

"He's avoiding the roads."

"I read that too." The younger man stiffened.

"Then he understands." Ivrane lowered her eyes to Zayn's plaque. Subject Z. V. Fifth Invoked. She disliked that kind of notation. Too cold for the Clergy. Too clean for the Marches. Too close to the College. But useful. Names made decisions slower.

"No," she said.

"He's learning. That's not the same thing." She took a stylus and slowly crossed out a line. Recovery priority. In its place, she wrote: Observation impossible. Then another: Risk of political spread. The younger man paled slightly.

"You're requesting elimination?" Ivrane stayed silent for a moment. Through the narrow window, the eastern lands stretched beneath a dirty red sky. Halbrèche farther away. Rhel-Fosse behind its seals. And somewhere between the roads, a boy who should have died in a hole. Sixteen days. She had seen Marches soldiers die in three. Miners lose their minds in two. Priests hang themselves after one night of voices. He had come out. Gaunt, broken, contaminated, but out. It almost deserved respect. Almost.

"No," she answered at last.

"Not elimination. Not yet." The younger man frowned.

"But if he reaches Lorvain—""He must not reach Lorvain with his name."

"His name?" Ivrane turned the plaque toward him.

"To the heroes, he is Zayn. To the Crown, an Invoked. To the College, an anomaly. To the Clergy, perhaps a heresy. To us, he was a recoverable risk." She tapped the metal with one finger.

"If civilians begin speaking of a survivor from Rhel-Fosse walking west with the smell of the demon on him, he becomes something else." The younger man understood. A rumor. A rumor sometimes survived better than a man. Ivrane wrote one last line. Deploy two hounds. No visible seals. No engagement near civilians. If contact occurs: remove the tongue before public exposure. The younger man swallowed.

"The tongue?" Ivrane finally looked at him with weariness.

"Men who come back from Rhel-Fosse tell what they saw. Things that come back from Rhel-Fosse tell what they became. I want neither on a marketplace square." She folded the order.

"Go." The younger man saluted and left. Ivrane remained alone before the table. Then she added, more quietly, for herself:"And if he bites, kill him." Zayn found the first sign of pursuit in the morning. Not footprints. Not a sound. An absence. The crows had left the road. He was crouched at the edge of a small rocky shelf, cleaning a wound with a few drops of water, when he noticed that the birds were no longer descending on the charognard remains he had abandoned farther down.

Crows were cowardly, noisy, filthy, opportunistic. Acceptable neighbors. When they all disappeared at once, it was worth asking what had given them a better reason to live somewhere else. Stolen novel; please report. Zayn closed the waterskin. Listened. Wind. Stone. Nothing. Exactly. He packed his things away, erased his traces as best he could with a dry branch, then climbed toward a low ridge. He saw no one. But he caught the smell. Very faint. Oil. Damp leather. Maintained metal.

And something more animal, heavier, more muscular than the tracking beast from the day before. An Ashes hound. Not a civilian beast. Zayn pulled back at once. Too late to be comfortable. Not too late to stay alive. He descended the other side of the plateau without running. His leg would not have accepted it. His brace, reinforced with charognard tendons, held better now, but every fast step turned his ankle into an argument against survival. The ground ahead gave him three options. A dry gorge to the south.

An old patrol road to the west. A grove of dead pines to the southwest. The road was impossible. The gorge could become a cage. The grove smelled bad, which made it probably interesting. He took the grove. The trees were thin, gray, half dead. The ground was covered with dry needles and flat stones. Bad for walking silently. Good for hearing those who walked behind. Zayn stepped on stone when he could, on dust when he had to.

Twice, he stopped to rub a piece of tainted flesh against a low branch before abruptly changing direction. Not enough to fool a real tracker for long. Enough to annoy it. Sometimes annoying a pursuer meant making it carry part of your mistakes. After twenty minutes, a deep bark rose behind him. Closer. Zayn smiled in spite of himself.

"Ah. So you don't like mixed scents. Sensitive." He kept moving. His breathing was getting too loud. Bad. He had to choose the ground before his body did it for him. He found the place in the middle of the grove: an old charcoal pit, half collapsed, covered with branches. The sort of hole travelers avoided, children explored out of stupidity, and heavy beasts sometimes noticed too late. Zayn checked it quickly. Depth: two meters. Bottom: stone and old ash. Edges: friable. Usable.

He pulled branches, rearranged them halfway, then backed away. Not a perfect trap. But he did not need perfect. He needed one second. Behind him, values finally appeared. 41 The beast. Then: 28 31 Two men. Not ordinary patrolmen. Too calm. Too well spaced. No conversation. Ashes hounds. Zayn felt his stomach tighten. Two men and a beast at 41. Impossible head-on. Possible if the world had the politeness to become stupid. The world rarely did.

He crouched, scooped up a handful of old ash from the bottom of a ring of stones, then spread it over his coat, his arms, his bag. The dry smell covered the blood a little. Not enough. But enough to add noise. Then he took out the charognard meat. The real one. Not the flesh from Rhel-Fosse. He cut off one piece and rubbed it against a stone at the edge of the pit. Then a second piece, which he tossed farther away, behind the branches. The hound would come. He just could not be in its line.

Zayn climbed into a leaning dead tree. Not high. Too weak for more. He wedged himself between two branches, short blade in his left hand, the fingers of his right hand clenched on the bark. The mark on his tongue pulsed. He thought of claws. No. Not yet. The pursuers approached. The hound came first. Not a dog. A low mastiff, nearly hairless, ashen skin, long muzzle split with scars, massive shoulders, four pale eyes lined in two pairs. Its mouth was bound with a reinforced leather muzzle, not to protect others.

To keep the beast from eating the evidence before the men could. The 41 stopped a few meters from the pit. Too intelligent. Behind it, one man murmured:"He mixed them." The other replied:"He knows we're following." Zayn did not move. The first tracker entered the ring of trees. Value 28. Gray coat without visible insignia. Short crossbow. Saber at his side. Face covered to the nose. He was looking at the ground, not the branches. The second, 31, stayed farther back, bow ready. That one was the problem.

The beast growled. It still did not advance. It was looking at the pit. Then at the tree. Zayn held his breath. One of the four pale eyes lifted toward him. Found. The beast leaped. Not toward the pit. Toward the trunk. Damn. Zayn dropped from the branch at once and threw himself to the ground on the other side before the beast reached the tree. The pain of the fall shot through his leg. He rolled, got up badly, and the 28's crossbow snapped. The bolt grazed his shoulder. Too close. Zayn ran three steps. No more.

The hound caught him. He pivoted at the last instant and threw the handful of ash directly at its eyes. The beast recoiled for a breath. One second. Flesh Assimilation. Plate over the forearm. The bite came. Even with the muzzle on, the impact was brutal. The closed jaws smashed into his arm like a hammer. The organic plate cracked at once, but absorbed enough that the bone did not break. Zayn screamed between his teeth, drove the short blade into the gap beneath the leather collar and pulled. Not deep enough.

The beast shook him. He nearly lost the blade. The 28 was coming. Saber drawn. Zayn let himself drop under the hound's weight and yanked the cord tied at his belt. The cord was connected to the branches over the pit. They slipped. The ground gave way under the mastiff's rear leg. Not the whole body. Just enough. The hound tipped halfway into the pit, dragging Zayn with it. The 28 jumped to avoid the hole. Mistake. Zayn let go of the beast, grabbed the man's leg on the way past, and activated claws on two fingers.

Immediate pain. The black nails sank through the boot, then through flesh. The tracker cried out. Zayn pulled. The man lost his balance and fell across the crumbling edge of the pit. The hound was still struggling, half in, half out. The 31 shouted:"Get back!" Too late. Zayn drove the blade into the 28's inner thigh, where the soft armor opened. The man smashed the pommel of his saber into Zayn's face. Zayn's vision burst white. He kept going anyway. Another strike. The 28 tumbled into the pit with the beast.

The hound howled, crushed against him, furious and wounded. Zayn crawled backward on all fours. The 31 fired. The arrow punched through his coat and buried itself in the earth beside his ribs. Zayn rolled behind a trunk. Breathing impossible. The beast was thrashing in the pit. The man too. Their values overlapped. 41 35 28 20 Not dead. The 31 was advancing carefully, bow drawn.

"Come out." Zayn was braced against the trunk, his left arm almost unusable, his face bloody, his leg screaming. He laughed. Too low for the other man to truly hear.

"Original proposal." The 31 continued:"We can bring you back alive." Zayn closed his eyes. Again. Always. Alive. As if that word still belonged to those holding the rope. He picked up a stone. Threw it to the right. The 31 did not fire. Competent. Zayn smiled less. He did not have many tricks left. In the pit, the hound managed to get one paw up. Bad. Very bad.

Zayn pulled out the small metal plate stolen from the road marker, the one still covered in scored wax, and threw it into the pit straight at the hound's head. Not to injure it. To distract it. The hound bit on reflex. The plate jammed against its muzzle. Half a second of confusion. The 28, pinned beneath it, screamed:"Shoot!" The 31 looked toward the pit. A fraction. Zayn came out from behind the trunk and threw his short blade. Not at the chest. At the hand holding the bow. The blade spun badly. But it hit.

The 31 let go too early. The arrow flew crooked and vanished into the branches. Zayn charged. Not fast. Not cleanly. A broken body falling toward someone with enough will to make the fall aggressive. The 31 drew a knife. Zayn got inside his guard, took a cut to the shoulder, and smashed his forehead into the man's mask. They went down together. The tracker was stronger. Much fresher. He turned Zayn onto his back and raised the knife.

Zayn activated Flesh Assimilation in his throat without even understanding exactly what he was doing. Not a useful transformation. An error. His skin hardened for an instant beneath his chin, irregular, painful. The knife slid enough to miss the carotid and only opened a bloody line along the side of his neck. Zayn shoved his wounded hand against the tracker's mouth. Claws. Two fingers changed. He drove the black points into the man's cheek. The 31 screamed.

Zayn grabbed the knife with his other hand and forced it downward. The man resisted. Stronger. So Zayn did the simplest thing. He bit. Not with a transformation. Not with any noble savagery. He bit the man's wrist until he drew blood. The tracker recoiled for one second, more psychological than physical. One second. Zayn took the knife and buried it in his throat. Once. The 31 tried to rise. Twice. The value dropped. 31 19 8 Third time. [Soul Force absorbed: +2] Current Soul Force: 46 The warmth entered.

Zayn stayed over the man, trembling, his mouth full of blood that was not his own. He spat at once. Not from moral disgust. From caution. Human. Do not mix. Not that. In the pit, the hound howled again. The 28 was still alive. 12 Zayn rose with difficulty. The world was spinning. He picked up the dead man's knife, recovered his bow, then moved to the edge. The hound at 35 was still trying to climb out, wounded but furious. The 28 was pinned beneath it, leg opened, face white with pain.

He lifted his eyes toward Zayn.

"Help me." Zayn stayed silent. The man understood too quickly.

"No… wait… we can—" Zayn loosed an arrow. Badly. It struck the hound in the shoulder. Not enough. The beast howled and turned toward him, giving exactly the opening he wanted. The trapped tracker was crushed harder. His value dropped. 12 7 Zayn shot a second arrow. This time into the hound's throat. The beast thrashed. The edge of the pit collapsed a little more. The 28 screamed. Then his value went out beneath the weight and panic. No message. Not a direct kill by his hand. The hound still lived.

24 Zayn did not have the strength to finish it cleanly. He took oil from the 31's satchel, poured it over the dry branches along the pit's edge, then used a fire striker found in the same place. One spark. Then a flame. The hound understood before the fire truly caught. It thrashed harder, tearing earth loose, but the pit was too narrow, its body too heavy, its wounds too many. Zayn stepped back. He did not stay for the show. Not from pity.

Because flames and screams attract people, and he was tired of being the center of loud events. He stripped the 31's body quickly. A folded map. A full waterskin. Two compact rations. A gray cloak. A small antiseptic vial. Three arrows. A sealed order. He took everything. Then hesitated. The tracker's mask. He took that too. Farther off, the hound was still howling in the smoke. Zayn left the grove limping, covered in blood, with a cloak too wide over his shoulders and an Ashes map against his chest.

He stopped only half an hour later, in a dry ravine. There, he opened the order. Discreet unit. Subject Z. V. to be intercepted before Lorvain. No engagement in civilian zones. Tongue to be removed if public exposure is likely. Elimination authorized in case of visible alteration. Zayn read the line. Then read it again. Tongue to be removed. He passed his tongue very slowly over his teeth. The mark burned. This time, the motion did not stop at once.

He stayed there, crouched in the dust, throat freshly cut, left arm bleeding, mouth still marked by the taste of the tracker he had bitten. Then he folded the order with almost gentle care. No phrase. No named tic. Just a smile too calm. The Ashes wanted his tongue. Very well. He had just taken their map. Their water. Their cloak. Their hound. Two of their men. And a road toward Lorvain. For once, the exchange was not so bad.