Soulvine 03 A Bright and Terrible Sword by Anna Kendall Page B

crouch between its banks, and waddle along until I reached the cover of a wooded bank about a quarter mile upstream.
    The water, icy from the mountains, came to my waist. Gasping with cold, I held my pack above the stream, cursing each time it was splashed by water breaking on a rock. By hugging the closer bank, I made it to the woods. The whole way, the wails and shouts of the villagers followed me, grief become heart-piercing sound.
    I hoped they found the bound hisaf before he revived enough to cross over.
    I shivered in my wet clothes. It would be at least an hour before the sun shone warmly enough to dry me, and I dared not risk a fire. The best I could do was shed my sodden tunic, breeches, and small clothes, pour the water out of my boots, and wrap myself, naked, in my dry cloak from my pack. I wasn’t as far from either the village or from Leo Tollers as I wanted to be, but cold kept me from going any farther.
    It turned out not to matter. Something thrashed through the underbrush to the east. Moments later Hunter ran up to me. He licked my hand, leaping and frisking like a demented thing, and shortly after Leo followed him.
    ‘Roger, you moron – you cannot rest here! Don’t you hear them? The villagers? If they find us—’
    I looked up at him from where I sat huddled in my cloak. Slowly I said, ‘How did you know something had happened in that village?’
    ‘I came that way! Hurry, get up!’
    ‘You did not come that way.’
    ‘Yes, I did – I circled back to avoid the town. Get up!’
    His fear seemed real. Perhaps he had circled the village to reach me when Hunter finally sniffed out my trail. And perhaps his fear was what it seemed: terror of having to cross over to escape a band of furious men hunting whoever had tranced their children. But even though singing seemed the last thing on Leo’s mind at the moment, I nonetheless seemed to hear the words of his song in my mind:
    Never, never will I cease
    To follow where you go,
    And ever, ever will I be—
    Hound . I looked more closely at Hunter, studying himeven as Leo dug frantically in his pack for something I could wear. The dog looked like all the others sent to save me over the last months: grey coat, big snout, short tail, green eyes brimming with doggy devotion. But no two living things can ever be completely identical. I had memorized the small white patch on Hunter’s left hind leg, the scratch on his haunch where he had tangled with a thorn bush, the way one toe grew slightly over another on one paw. This was not Hunter.
    And ever, ever will I be
    The hound upon your doe .

6
    We walked away from the village as fast as I could travel. Exhaustion kept me from talking, even from thinking. There was only the road, dusty and too bright on my tired eyes. When we halted at mid-morning, I fell asleep so swiftly that I didn’t even remember lying down.
    I dreamed. Not of crossing over, but of … I wasn’t even sure what. Vague shapes, vague animal smells, a greyness that was not fog but wasn’t anything else, either. The dream felt disturbing enough to wake me.
    ‘Good morrow, sleeping lad,’ Leo said mockingly. ‘You left me to do all the work, you know.’
    I sat up, my heart still thudding from the dream. It was twilight, still warm, and Leo had made a fire. The good smell of roasting meat banished the scents of my dream. Hunter, who was not Hunter, had caught a brace of rabbits. Leo had even gathered wild strawberries, which astonished me until I realized I was lying on a bed of them. All he had to do was reach out his hand. The fire burned in a little clearing ringed by birch and oak.
    ‘Thank you, Leo,’ I said. ‘Are you sure you’re not tired from such extensive labour?’
    He laughed, and for the first time I almost liked him.
    ‘Don’t burn your fingers. Here, Hunter, have some rabbit. You earned it.’
    Did he really not know this wasn’t Hunter? I ate greedily but my mind was not on the food. When we finished and were