Watcher of the Dead Read Free Page B

Blackhail’s
account of the time his father, Burdo Blackhail, had parleyed with
the new-minted Dog Lord at Bludd. No Hail chief had ever set foot in
the Bluddhouse and Burdo had camped to the north with a company of
twelve men. Right from the start the horses were spooked and Burdo
ordered the corral to be raised to a height of eight feet. Afterward,
he realized it made no difference. The moon snake slid under the
barricade and tore off a stallion’s leg. Within seconds the
screams of the horses brought clansmen from their tents. When torches
were lit, a bloody trail leading east into the forest was clearly
visible. Burdo gave the order: Do not follow. As Dagro told the
story, it was the only time his father’s jaw failed him. It was
the marks the thing left behind, Dagro had whispered, like whip
cracks in the snow.
    Back in the cage, Raif’s body
shivered. In the forest, at ground level, he cast off the memories
like snakeskin.
    The night was a revelation, a wholly
new world of taste and heat. Animals were silver forms against the
black. The owl overhead, the fox, the dead but still warm mouse, the
elk: the moon snake saw them all, knew them all. Feared none. Licking
the taste of their exhaled breath from the air, she tracked and
calculated, applying the sure mathematics of death. Distance,
direction, size, state of health: they were her parameters. Her heart
beat smoothly as she muscled across the snow, choosing her prey.
    In all the years he had entered hearts,
Raif had never experienced anything like it. Snagcats, bears, wolves:
predators, but they lived with fear. The moon snake was beyond
emotion. She tracked the possibilities, figured the odds. Killed.
    Raif settled into her primitive heart
and moved with her as she tracked the elk yearling east. Later, he
would understand that his connection with the moon snake was stronger
than the ones he’d formed with other creatures. He traveled
farther with her, far beyond the point where he’d lost contact
in the past.
    The night was at its coldest and the
snow began to steam as the moon snake closed distance on the elk.
Reading the exhaustion in its breath, she moved downwind and picked
up speed. Back in the cage, a blow dart pierced Raif’s neck.
The impact did not register. Within seconds his body was limp. Raif
felt the familiar pull to return to the cage as his mind dimmed along
with his breaths. He fought it, holding fast to the moon snake’s
heart. She flicked her consciousness toward Raif, touched him, and
then returned to the hunt.
    Raif felt it as an act of kinship. He
had been allowed to maintain his hold.
    As the Sull lowered the cage containing
Raif’s unconscious body, Raif’s mind ran with the snake.
Moving on a tangent to intercept the trotting elk, she accelerated
like a bolt shot from a crossbow. Ice mist dampened the sound of her
belly whipping against the snow. The elk’s form brightened and
clarified, its details rendered in silver and white. The moon snake
observed the motion of its forelegs and hindlegs, calculated the
pattern, switched a valve in her heart like a trap so only fresh red
blood pumped through her arteries, and then struck.
    There was an instant when the elk
understood everything. Veins in its eyes ruptured. Its bladder failed
and the musk of fear seeded the air. Quarter of a second later, the
moonsnake closed her jaws around her front hoof. With perfect
violence, she wrenched off the leg at the shoulder. Blood jetted onto
the snow. The elk moaned, a terrible low wail that Raif would
remember for the rest of his life. Briefly, he had a glimpse of its
heart: the rhythm he had become familiar with earlier that night was
gone. In its place was a fluttering, fading pulse.
    Raif discarded the elk and refocused on
the moon snake. Flinging aside the severed limb, she set upon the
fallen elk. No heart-kills for the moonsnake, she tore her live prey
into parts. Raif felt a cool flicker