The Huntress Trilogy

Thunder grumbles, restless as a shark. I sit cross-legged on my bed, breathing the storm-stink that’s trickling in through the stones of Hackles. Thaw-Wielder breathes it with me, her eyes shining with added wildness.

The stink of a storm is the only thing that makes me feel free, these days. It kindles the flame in my blood. Stormlight flutters against the walls and I feel like I’m underwater with electric eels.

Crow sits in a chair, greasing his boots. ‘Could you give it a rest with all the sniffing?’

I tut. He don’t get it, Thaw.

She shuffles her feathers and spits in his direction. Soft-shell two-leg notknownotknowthings! Not REAL winged one.

‘And stop talking about me to Thaw! It ain’t fair.’

I stick out my lower lip. The poor bab don’t think it’s fair!

Thaw chortles.

Crow gifts me his danger-face.

I raise my brows. ‘Alright, don’t scorch your lugholes over it!’

The thunder cracks the sky apart, loud as huge iron drums being thrown around. Crow gasps, but I grin. ‘You should try hearing that when you’re out at sea.’

He scowls. In the attic rooms above, claws begin to scrabble. The rats are spooked.

Boots clank past my chamber door. I leap off my bed and rush to look – riders march along the passageway, heading to the caves to prepare their draggles to fly to the Tribe-Meet. Other preparations have been happening, too – spear-sharpening and armour-mending and gathering together of things to trade, like pots of squidge ink and stinking draggle furs and wooden snow-goggles and eggs scooped from the bogs. I’ve been shut out of all of it.

I slam my door and jump back onto my bed. ‘I am proper blubber-bored! They’re leaving for the Tribe-Meet at the morning bell. How can Da force me to stay here?’

‘At least someone cares if you live or die!’ interrupts Crow, loudly. His tone makes Thaw flap herself into outrage, rasping and spitting, eyes bright.

‘Calm your feathers, you stupid bird,’ snaps Crow.

Trymakeme, hisses my hawk.

Crow stands up, eyes on his boots. ‘Mouse, I mean – can you blame your da, really? How addled would he have to be to let you roam the place now that the Withering’s set in and there’s a hunt for your skin?’

I pull at the loose threads in my blankets. ‘But no one gets how bad my bones are itching – itching! – to move, to rove, to do something!’

‘But maybe you can’t do anything, this time,’ he says more gently. ‘And maybe your da’s right – maybe, for once, you don’t have to. It ain’t your job.’

I shine my fierceness through the grime coating my skin. ‘I can’t do nothing – that’s never been what I do.’ And it never will be!

‘None of this is about you, though, is it?’ He picks up the pot of grease he used for his boots and turns away. ‘What would you do if you could leave Hackles, anyway?’

‘Um, let me ponder.’ I chew my cheek, pretending to think. ‘Go to the Tribe-Meet, then find the Opal, and save the world ?’

He sighs. ‘How about you start by coming to supper?’

‘Aye,’ I tell him, trying to keep my voice steady. ‘See you in the hall.’

Thaw oozes a low hiss at his turned back.

‘I heard that, Thaw-Wielder!’ he snaps, before leaving the room.

Thaw, I gabble quickly, my mind wheeling. I HAVE to go to that Tribe-Meet. Cos if I don’t prove myself to Da, how’s he ever gonna let me do anything, ever again? I’ve got to remind him what I can do. I’ll be back before he can blink, anyway! Thrills explode in my belly.

Thaw’s eyes glow, but her pipes spew tiny doubts. Two-leg girl danger times . . . hunthunthunt?

Aye, Thaw. But how’s any of them stupid lumberers gonna hunt me if I swap places with a Spearsister – like Pang? She’ll swap with me, I know it! And if the riders do a count they won’t find anyone extra. I block out a thought about what might happen if anyone needs me to throw a spear. Anything’s better than sitting here, ent it? And I might get to scratch around for snippets of news – or even CLUES – at the Meet.

She takes to the wing, soaring in circles around me until my hair’s stirred into a black cloud. Wild girl show them all!

Thaw wakes me before the morning bell. My limbs are stiff and cold-clumsy as I force myself out of bed. I tiptoe through the gloom to the draggle caves, pulling on the eelskin gloves Marshman Pike once gifted me to keep my fingers warm enough to wield weaponry. If I’m to be a Spearsister, I’ll have to be able to grip a spear, as well as draggle reins. I wait amongst tangled ropes of orangey draggle fur, huddled in a white goatskin cloak that Pangolin hung with iron storm-weights. Underneath clings the rune-spelled breastplate she loaned me, charged runes flickering across it like worms.

I watched the giant shaggy beasts shuffle their wings in their sleep. When the first riders clamour into the cave, heading to the tack room to don armour and fill saddle bags with supplies, I drift from my hiding place and begin sharpening Pangolin’s spear.

Once the whole stronghold is awake, Wilderwitches line the rocks outside. I edge as close as I can to the mouth of the cave and watch them standing, palms held up in front of them, trying to clear a sky-path through the storm. Their weather-magyk battles winds that thrash around like maddened beasts.

A rich smell catches in my nose and I turn to see a cook with greasy white hair passing cups of bone-broth among the riders. A mug finds its way into my hands, glowing with heat that I am more than heart-glad for. I stare down at myself in the gleaming surface of the broth. My eyes are painted from brows through to cheekbones with the black stripes of a Spearsister, an eagle-feather hood is pulled over my head and a raindrop cowl is moulded to my face.

‘Sup your broth and prepare to fly,’ commands Leopard. She wears a long black cloak of eelskin, gifted to her by Pike. I drop my eyes while she’s talking, in case she knows my stormy greys.

I listen to the bubbling of the broth and the crackling of the flames and the nerve-tense chattering of the draggles.

Huntnohuntnohunt? WhywhywhyHUNGRYwherefoodfly?

I’m half asleep with my chin propped in my hands when the storm dies, gaping breathlessness in its wake, sudden as the thunk of a dropped longbow. My chin slips out of my hands and my neck bends painfully as my head lolls. The Wilderwitches’ weather-magyk must have finally pushed the storm away from us. Now there’s just a deadened stillness.

Leopard pulls a small bronze spyglass from her pocket and presses it to her eye. ‘The chief storm has raged west,’ she announces. She sighs, tucks away her spyglass and nods to the draggle warden. ‘We fly.’

I blow out my held breath and we mount our draggles, Leo taking the lead. I copy the others; holding a spear in one hand and the reins in the other. When Leo raises her hand, the draggles swoop from the mountain.

Rough air bruises my eyeballs. My belly plunges, sloshing the broth I glugged. But hidden inside my armour, my lips riot into a grin. Finally, I’m roving.

Below, a group of song-weavers has gathered on the rocks to gift us music as we fly. A little clutch of Sea-Tribe kids – I spot the white shock of Ermine’s hair and Squirrel’s red braid – bang drums they’ve painted to look like whale-eyes. Eyes like portals, or knots in wood. I spot Da and Sparrow, singing together, and duck lower in the saddle. A flush of guilt steals across my skin, itching under all my layers.

We pull away from the mountain, dodging the silvery ghostway tubes that cobweb the stronghold so the Sky-Tribes can pulse messages to each other. The tubes quiver with voices.

Across the valley, tangles of lightning sprout like trees, and the sky flickers as though it’s blinking. When the lightning branches fade, their ashen ghosts hang in the air. My draggle fights the wind, despair mixing with the ice in her fur. I lean down and mutter heart-strengths to her.

We fly over Hearthstone, where almost all the dwellings have been rebuilt, with Leo’s help. But when we reach the Icy Marshes, fury flares in my gut. Terrodyls swirl through the sky, patrolling to make certain the Marsh-folk never dare to return. All that’s left of Pike’s home is a field of blackened wooden stumps capped with bulbs of ice.

Refugees wade through the reeds and ford the rivers on their way towards the mountains, seeking higher ground. We hover while a few riders drop to land and tell them how to reach Hearthstone or Hackles.

As we pass into wilder territory that could be more hostile, Leo calls for us to douse our lamps. I lie along my draggle’s back and stretch to reach the metal lantern hanging on its pole. The hinges squeak as I fumble the door open, making my draggle flick her ears irritably.

Sorry! That needs oiling, I chatter.

I wet my fingertips and squeeze the life from the flame. As the other lamps blink out, heavy gloomlight thickens around us. We race deeper into the murk. I keep to the rear. We soar over leagues of ice-ridges carved by the storm winds; great blue-white dunes that gift the land the look of the wrinkled skin of a whale. Maybe that’s all we are. Whale lice crawling over some giant sea-god.

When Leopard drops back to check we’re all well enough to keep going, I dodge but she draws alongside me and leans across to grip my chin, guiding my eyes to meet hers. My heart skitters.

‘You really thought I would not realise?’ she asks, letting go of me with a sigh. A few Riders twist in their saddles, staring at me with narrowed eyes.

I shrug, cheeks burning. ‘Reckoned it were worth a stab.’

To my startlement, Leo’s face dimples into a grin. ‘I promised your father I would keep you safe – I will deal with this disobedience when we return,’ she swears. ‘But I do admire your determination.’

I don’t dare return her grin, but I let my eyes sing out my wildness.

We reach the sea, where storm-waves have frozen solid, into ice-mountains that rise like great dark fins. Between them, the sea that ent yet frozen bubbles weak as a dying Tribesperson’s spit.

Ice-bound ships litter the sea, wounds agape in their flanks. Tears well in my eyes as I think of my ship. Bear. Frog. Pipistrelle. Vole. I breathe the names of my Tribe into white ghosts on the air. Where are you? Where?

In the distance, a steady drum begins to throb, shattering my thoughts.

The drum beats louder, closer. It rattles my ribs. Riders stare around them, and I feel their nerves tense.

The rider nearest me draws a breath. But then there’s a choking sound as the air catches in her throat.

Movement catches my eye from the left. I twist in the saddle. My skin jumps. Smoke puffs in time with the drumbeat I heard. As I stare I realise that it’s vapour, that it’s something’s breath. Something big, to make that much steam. Something with a footstep even bigger, to make a drumbeat that loud.

A dark shape is looming. My heart clangs and hammers.

Through the bleak light stamps a chalk-white giant with a skull bubbled all over in milky sores.

Yellowy fluid seeps from sores and trickles down the giant’s body. He leans down, opens his cavernous mouth and smashes his tombstone-teeth around a frozen wave. He chews the ice, then bends for another bite.

The giant’s blistered flesh sucks any last warmth from the half-frozen clouds and the sluggish sea, which throws up a new tower of ice as he passes.

A long, low groan knocks from the giant’s mouth, echoing around the sea of crystal waves. I remember seeing giants like this one in the stories etched in bone that Grandma and Da used to read to us. They were called stogs – the biggest of the Tribe of giants, and the most miserable. They made the seas by weeping, and liked to pluck ships from the waves, crushing them with their bare hands. But the stories said the giants were all sleeping . . .

Not any more.

The stog’s face is craggy-glum and his legs are as long as masts. His hot breath knocks the draggles up and down in the air like toy ships. He snaps a hateful glare onto us and roars, a sound that booms through my chest and makes my teeth chatter. Then his fist swipes through the air.

The draggles scatter. Leo calls orders lost as the storm winds begin to whip again. The stog groans, and kicks out against a wave, making icy rubble fall.

I’ve ended up alone on one side of the giant’s flailing arm, the others all watching me from the other side. As I struggle to control the draggle, I lose my grip on Pangolin’s spear and it falls, clanging onto the ice below. A Spearsister jerks her face towards me. Wisps of white hair have escaped her hood – Lunda. ‘Is that who I think it is?’ she spits. ‘She’s not even meant to be on this patrol!’

I grit my teeth. The stog’s breath reeks, even through my raindrop cowl. I guide my draggle lower, trying to dodge underneath the huge arm.

‘Mouse!’ warns Leo.

The arm sweeps towards the ground but I swoop low and fly past the dank hollow of the armpit, gulping a lungful of a sharp tang that makes my head woozy. The stog snatches me from my draggle. My chest is squeezed until black spots dance in my eyes. There’s no air left in my lungs for screaming. My legs swing wildly in the air, and my belly pitches into my mouth . . . and dimly I’m aware of riders yelling before I’m shut inside a huge, clammy fist.

I gulp for breath, heart skittering. I slip on the thick yellow sweat pooled in the stog’s palm, clawing at the ridges of his skin. ‘Leo!’ I yell, but my voice bounces back into my own ears, stabbing painfully into my head.

I’m running out of air. My eyes scan the roof of flesh above my head – there are thin gaps between the fingers. The stog’s grip tightens so I push through one of the gaps, kicking, clawing, scratching, wriggling . . .

Finally I squeeze through and leap out of his hand, grabbing hold of a thick brown vine sprouting from his ear – but the vine is slippery, and I can’t hold on.

Lunda zooms towards me, one foot planted on her draggle’s back, the other on mine. Two sets of reins are bunched in her hands. She hovers as near to me as she can get. ‘Jump, fool child!’

The giant roars, thrashing his head around.

I swing myself across the space, miss my own draggle and land with a thump behind Lunda. I grab her waist as I regain my balance. ‘Bleeding blood cockles,’ I whisper, eyes watering with shame. My palms are coated in stinking, gloopy ear wax.

‘Fly on!’ calls Leo, and we wing away from the giant.

I wipe my hands on my breeches as we tear away through the sky.

Jealousy nags me. Wish I could be as skilful riding one of these beasts as Lunda is. ‘You should stay behind with the other youngsters from now on!’ she hisses, holding the reins while I scramble back onto my own draggle. Her hard blue eyes graze my face.

I glare at her while my lungs suck shallow breaths. The stog’s distant howls of fury rattle through my chest and make my teeth throb.

In spite of everything, excitement bubbles in my belly when I think about the Tribe-Meet, where my Tribe traded jet and amber for songs, stories for furs and fish. Sometimes Da and Bear traded sailcloth or silver for songs alone, and even though magyk could be spun from them, Grandma weren’t never too impressed. The last Meet I went to – for Dread’s Eve – feels so long ago. And it weren’t exactly a normal meet, with Da missing and me almost getting swallowed by a gulper. It’s where I lost Sparrow, too, when Stag had him snaffled by wreckers.

The Tribe-Meet for Wakening’s Dawn is all about drumming Spring up from her grave. There’ll be market stalls and music-makers and acrobats with flaming torches, bakers whose spices dance in the air, traders with bundles of brightly dyed cloth and sword-sharpeners, tanners and tricksters.

‘I can’t wait to show you your old Sky-Tribe path and gateway stones!’ I call to Leo, to gift her good cheer.

She nods. ‘I am keen to see these things,’ she says. ‘But nervous, also. Many suns and moons have risen since any Sky-Tribe attended. How do we know the etiquette, here?’

Lunda’s draggle drops closer as the Spearsister tries to listen. Maybe her nerves are tightening, too.

‘You approach the circle along your Great-Tribe’s path – that’s the Sky Path, which you get to through the gateway stones shaped like eagle heads. There’s no weapons allowed, so we’ll have to leave our spears outside.’

The old rider called Coati, who angered Pike in the long-hall, laughs, face fury-flayed. ‘Leave our weapons and we are sitting targets, mark my breath.’ He twirls his spear.

Leo rolls her eyes at me, the tension melting off her face. But when we can see the tips of the circle of stones piercing the drifting fog, I sense my draggle wants to bolt.

‘This place is eerie,’ hisses a rider, a man with two long black braids hanging over his shoulders.

I struggle to steady my draggle, stroking her head, but she hisses.

‘They’re spooking!’ I call. My hands are sweaty on the reins as I jostle to get my balance. The draggles’ voices rise in panic.

Suddenly, a young terrodyl flickers up and out of the fog, wings lashing inches from our flock. Black blood drips, fizzing, from a wound in its flank.

‘Pull back!’ shouts Leo, and the draggles bare their teeth at the terrodyl.

Gold gleams like shattering stars as the riders level their spears as one. But Leo warns them not to shoot. ‘You’ll burn whoever’s down there with black rain!’

Black rain – the weapon wielded by Stag, extracted from the veins of terrodyls, that burns warped, bubbled pits in the flesh. My belly writhes at the thought that he’s twisted a beast’s own life-blood into a weapon.

The riders hold fire, their spears shining in the depths of the terrodyl’s eyes.

Dead things! Ice! the beast screams, wheeling away. Sad-hearts rotted!

What’s down there, beast? I chatter. What’re you fleeing?

The terrodyl’s panic mingles with the draggles’ fright-pangs, gifting me a sore, woozy head. TroubletroubletroubleHIDEflyflyhideinnest!

What trouble? I ask, but she’s pulling further away and thudding out of sight. Wait, you’re hurt!

‘What is that child doing?’ Coati asks Leo, watching me with hard eyes.

What trouble? I call again, threading my beast-chatter through the air to touch the creature’s hair-prickled hide.

The terrodyl jerks in the air and her wings carve the sky as she twists around and soars towards me.

‘She’s brought it back upon us,’ gasps Lunda.

‘Spears!’ declares Leo, flashing me a frighted look.

‘No, just trust me for a beat!’ I beg.

Lung-stink! snaps the terrodyl, fixing me with her great lantern eyes. Blood-stink! Spine-shudder bad-taste bled. Life fled, bled, BLED!

My breath comes quick and tattered. Life fled? Bloodshed? That can’t be what she’s saying . . .

Uuuuuughhhhh tongue-tang rot-shadow-HOME! She bolts.

My head fizzes with her fading beast-chatter. No, you must be wrong! I chatter after her desperately. There’s never bloodshed at the Stone Circle! It’s forbidden!

The draggles pop up and down in the air. Mine bucks underneath me, half crazed from fright.

Gods. Blood at the Tribe-Meet ? Grandma must be writhing in her sea-grave!

Leo watches the terrodyl vanish from sight before guiding the flock closer to the Stone Circle.

‘Wait!’ I shout.

‘What is it now, Mouse?’ calls Leo, impatience sharpening her tone.

‘We can’t land,’ I plead. ‘A proper bad thing’s happened.’

Coati gruffs a laugh of steam and bitterness. ‘Why does a child ride among us? Someone get her back to the mountain!’

Leo turns away from me, leading the draggles lower.

‘Protector!’ My urgent use of her title makes Leopard jerk around in her saddle to look at me. I force my voice steady. ‘There’s bloodshed.’ I wipe my palms on my cloak and stare around at the riders. ‘At the Stone Circle.’ Shock guts my words even as I spill them. Gods swim close.

Our flock pauses, beating the air. Leopard’s eyes are large and fixed on my face.

Then everything erupts into a tumble of loud babblemaking.

‘That’s impossible!’

‘It’s the Fangtooths, isn’t it? They’re terrorising again!’

‘What if there is? Bloodshed does not faze warriors!’

‘Mouse, are you certain?’ asks Leo. As the words steam from her mouth, a great black talon of smoke stabs the sky in the distant west.

‘I’m heart-certain,’ I pant, thumping my fist to my chest.

A tide of disappointment floods Leo’s face. ‘We’ve come all this way,’ she says, through clenched teeth.

‘How do you know?’ challenges a narrow-eyed Spearbrother.

‘The terrodyl told me.’

Coati watches me darkly. ‘You are sheltering a chatterer ?’ He flicks his eyes to Leo.

‘Enough, Coati,’ warns Leo.

The old man snorts rudely. Heat creeps up my neck to sting my cheeks. I remember the Wilder-King’s letter. Surrender any chatterers dwelling amongst you. ‘If it wasn’t for me you’d have landed unawares!’ I spit, hurling the old man’s gift of shame back to him.

Coati’s face darkens. But then the draggles begin to scream, borrowing the words of the terrodyl. Life-stink! Lung-stink! Troubletroubletroubleflee!