The Blood Mirror

It took him a month of living on bugs and berries, but he’d slain it with one stroke of his knife. He’d dragged the body—intact, not gutted—all the leagues back to his village so that none could deny he’d taken the white stag with only a knife.

For anyone else, taking a white stag at all would have been a tale to tell for the rest of his life.

When Web had arrived at his village, he’d found it burnt to cinders by the advancing Blood Robe army. Nearly everyone was dead.

The famed hunters could have fled, but none had been content to leave the old and the young and the infirm to die.

They’d stayed, they’d fought, and they’d been massacred by the Blood Robes. Only a few cowards had fled.

Web hunted the cowards first, including the man who had called him a liar.

Now he stalked the Blood Robes in the deep woods of western Blood Forest. In military terms, his killings didn’t make much of a strategic difference. He killed only one man or one wight at a time, and always used only his knife or his bare hands. He spent days setting up a strike, and his target would simply disappear.

But not disappear forever. A camp of the White King’s men had woken one morning to find their kidnapped leader in the middle of their own camp. He was skinned, gutted, his throat cut, and hanging upside down from a tree limb as meat is hung to cure by a butcher.

The men in that camp weren’t simple foreign soldiers with lax discipline; they were locals who knew the land here; they were the White King’s best scouts.

Daimhin Web had murdered their leader simply to embarrass them.

From time to time, he would show up in friendly villages or towns laden with gems or gold or coin sticks he’d taken from his kills. He would give these to the town’s conn. He wanted nothing in return, not even the steel fishhooks or sugar or salt or whisky that other long-term trappers or hunters would have traded for. He simply gave them the valuables because he knew they would need money to rebuild their lives. And he would tell them the disposition of the White King’s forces and the direction in which they were heading—usually toward that village.

He asked for nothing, and seemed not to care if they heeded his advice. He spoke with a gentle voice and then disappeared. He became like a forest creature, and his eyes were soft and skittish, not what you would expect of a predator who skinned and gutted men.

He was content to live alone, and he had become a beast.

And now Kip was doing his best to emulate him, though it was more and more obvious that he’d had too much confidence that he could ape such perfection, moving through the dusky woods searching for the red wight Baoth.

This wight was so far into his transformation that Kip suddenly smelled him—the tobacco-and-tea-leaves scent of his red luxin and the slight whiff of smoke. Kip veered off his assigned line in the darkness, so intent on the hunt and the thousand thousand skills needed to track silently that he didn’t even tell Cruxer.

A pocket valley opened off to one side, far from the hunting ground the Ghosts had suggested, and as night settled on the Deep Forest, Kip’s options were being shut down. He’d packed blue luxin before the evening light faded, setting all the blue lines in the Turtle-Bear tattoo aglow, but it was uncomfortable to hold packed luxin for long, and it slowly leaked away regardless, like sand through cupped hands. His Turtle-Bear now looked faded as a fifty-year-old tattoo.

Kip did have a bow, but he wasn’t much of a shot. He couldn’t have lived an archer’s card, could he?

Nah, that would have been far too helpful.

Of course, at least one of the people in the cards must have been an amazing archer. More than one, surely, with so many warriors represented. In fact, Web himself had to be more than competent with a bow, but did Kip really want to sift Daimhin Web’s memories further? The first thing that came to mind when he pulled those memories farther off the shelf was the sight of the charred bodies of Web’s favorite little cousins. No thanks.

The next great warrior Kip could easily recall was Tremblefist, and though Kip had nothing but compassion for the man who’d lived and died a hero, fair or not, the memory that leapt out was of the Butcher of Aghbalu. Double no thanks.

Kip came over a rise and knew that something was wrong. You can’t let your mind wander while you’re tracking. He’d defaulted to being his overthinking self—and now the wight was gone, and Kip was alone.

In his reverie, Kip hadn’t even realized how he’d picked up the trail. Maybe Daimhin Web had sunk in deeper than he’d realized.

That didn’t matter now. Too much thinking!

In cresting of the rise, he’d skylined himself—putting his darker silhouette against the lighter forest behind him. He dropped to his face, lightly, landing on fingertips and toes so he wouldn’t make any more noise than necessary.

A whoosh ripped through the jungle as a fireball streaked over his head.

Kip rolled to the side to get behind a tree, trying to find the wight.

The creature that had once been Baoth was smart enough not to stand out in the open with a flaming hand. It was a monochrome red, so it needed an open flame to have lit the fireball. It might have a flint and steel to scratch sparks onto each flammable missile, but that was like a musketeer going into battle with musket unloaded. Few warriors were daring enough to trade strength for stealth, especially not passionate reds.

As he moved back to the crest of the hill, Kip guessed at the fireball’s trajectory from where he had been standing and where the fireball had hit the trees behind him. In the gloaming, the spotty light the trees allowed through their swaying branches made it near impossible.

Then he saw a constant, low light illuminating the leaves dimly from below. It was somewhat off to the side from the origin he’d guessed.

The wight was moving, trying to circle Kip.

Kip got behind the crest of the hill and ran to the side, flanking the entire hill. That much light cast upward? That meant the red wight was keeping a flame smaller than his palm—and probably in his palm. Kip’s studies had told him exactly how much sizzling and popping a flame of that size would make, and thus how loud it would be. Over this distance, in this jungle that he knew so intimately? Kip could guess exactly how much noise his own passage through the undergrowth could make without the wight’s hearing him.

Within half a minute, he’d flanked the wight, who was now moving stealthily toward where Kip had been. Baoth had further banked the flame he carried, making his right hand an inverted bowl like a hooded lantern.