Harbinger: Fate's Forsaken: Book One (3 page)

It was his last
one, his final shot at freedom. The other four had been dashed against rocks or
buried in the flow of savage rivers. He couldn’t hunt like the rest of his
peers, with their sure feet and explosive speed. He could run for miles without
having to stop for breath, but he couldn’t chase a deer and shoot an arrow at
the same time.

So he’d had come
up with a way to lure the beasts in and face them when he was at his greatest
advantage. It was an elaborate trap: he chose this particular grove for the
abundance of acorns, this particular tree for its thick cover of foliage, and
this particular branch for the angle of his shot. All he had to do was loose
the arrow, and the force of the earth would do the rest.

There was
absolutely no way he could botch it up. This deer was
his
.

He knocked the
arrow and leaned forward, squinting to see through the tangle of leaves. The
buck was giving him his flank: the largest target Kael could’ve hoped for. He
drew the arrow back and his heart pounded furiously against his ribs.

In the thrill of
the moment, he forgot about the
Atlas
.
As he pulled the string towards his chin, the book
slipped out of his lap. It clattered through the branches, its
pages flapping loudly as it struck what must have been every single limb on its
way down. When it finally tumbled to earth in a heap of twigs and leaves, Kael
looked at the deer.

It was too much
to hope that the beast hadn’t heard.

He stared at the
tree, his meal forgotten. His white tipped ears stood like sentries, his wet
nostrils flared. His head spun away and Kael knew his body would follow. He’d
melt into the trees, taking all hope with him.

He’d searched
for weeks and not seen a deer — what if this was the last one he ever
saw? If he didn’t fire now, he might never get a second chance. This was it.

He leaned
forward and fired blindly. He tried to watch his arrow as it left the string
and whistled after the deer, but then leaves sprung up in front of him and
blocked his view.

That’s when he
realized that he was falling.

He followed the
Atlas
’s path, striking branch after
unforgiving branch and flailing helplessly as the earth pulled him downward.
When the leaves finally gave way, there was nothing but the ground left to fall
through. The world went black.

*******

The first time
he blinked, everything was a fuzzy mass of brown. A few blinks later, he could
tell what was a tree and what was a bush. Slowly, all the feeling returned to
his limbs. He half-wished it hadn’t.

His elbows and
knees stung. He could feel bruises rising up on his back. His head pounded in
protest. He felt like he’d been tied in a sack with an angry mountain lion.

Above him, the
shattered branches hung on by thin strips of white sinew. If he could hear them
speak, he imagined they’d be swearing. He reached out and found the
Atlas
lying next to him
.
Remarkably, it was still intact. A
little crumpled maybe, but readable. When he tried to roll over, something dug
sharply into his rump and the small of his back. He reached under him and
tugged it free.

The ache in his
skull made it difficult for him to focus on what he held. Three outlines danced
around, crossing over one another until his eyes managed to lock them down.

Oh no.

He brought it
closer to his face and his mouth dropped open when he realized he wasn’t
imagining it. He forgot about the deer, he forgot about his arrow, he forgot
about how much pain he was in because none of it mattered anymore.

For there,
cradled in his hands, was his bow. Only it wasn’t a bow anymore: it was two
pieces of broken wood held together by a string.

No amount of
mercy could save him now.

This was worse
than being an outcast, worse than being teased about his skinny arms and mixed
hair — worse, even, than failing the Trial. No man in the history of
Tinnark had ever broken his bow. It was unheard of, un-thought of. Fate herself
couldn’t have devised a more wicked thing to happen to someone.

And yet, it’d
happened.

He was no
craftsman, but he knew it couldn’t be fixed. The weapon was snapped at its grip
and large splinters of it littered the ground around him. At that moment he
wasn’t thinking about how vulnerable he was, sitting in the middle of the
forest with naught but the hunting dagger at his belt. He was worried about
what he would tell Amos.

A starving
mountain lion could rip him to shreds, but Amos could do worse. What he didn’t
have in claws and teeth he more than made up for in words. He’d never raised a
hand to Kael, and yet a tongue-lashing from Amos still made him sore.

Then there was
Roland, who wouldn’t say a word and still somehow manage to flog him. He’d just
let his mouth sag, let his shoulders go slack and let Kael boil alive under the
disappointment in his eyes.

Between the
three of them, he thought he’d rather tell the mountain lion first.

He turned the
bow over in his hands and let his mind whir on through the protests of his
aching body. There was only one thing he could do if he wanted to keep his bow
a secret: he’d have to go before the elders tonight, tell them that he’d failed
the Trial, and then take whatever trade they gave him.

Whatever would
happen, it would be better than the truth. At least a healer was still a man.

When his mind
was made up, he jumped to his feet. A likely looking patch of briars grew next
to where he’d landed. He leaned over them and dropped his poor bow directly
down the center, where the thorns were thickest. He circled the patch once,
just to be sure, but he was certain that no one could wander by and see it.

No sooner was he
finished than a loud voice bellowed from behind him:

“Well, if it
isn’t the Twiglet.”

Two men
materialized out of the forest. One was exceptionally tall, the other was
exceptionally short. They were both undeniably ugly.

The tall one’s
name was Marc. His smile looked like a wolf’s snarl, and lately he’d been
sporting a patch of hair on his chin. He had a deer carcass draped across his massive
shoulders, fresh blood caked the wound over its heart. He smirked as Kael’s
eyes wandered up to it.

“Recognize him?
He’s the latest deer you shot at and missed. Good thing we happened to be
around, or Tinnark might have gone hungry.” Marc shook his head and his face
became a mask of pity. “What’s it like to be a failure, Twiglet? Must be hard,
I imagine.”

The short one,
Laemoth, wore his hair in a long braid down his back. He crossed his stocky
arms and jerked his head at Kael. “Eh, he’s used to it by now. If he ever did
something right, it’d probably kill him.”

Kael had grown
calloused to their bullying. Marc and Laemoth were only a season older than him
and turned twelve the same year he did. But by the time they were thirteen,
both had killed deer and joined the hunters — something they never let
him forget.

He wasn’t
surprised to find them in the grove. No matter how he tried to cover his
tracks, they always followed him and killed the deer he missed. To them, it was
a game. What
did
surprise him was the
fact that they weren’t already sprinting back to Tinnark, yelling from the tops
of their lungs that he’d broken his bow.

Perhaps they
hadn’t noticed.

He was suddenly
aware of the empty quiver on his back and the bare feeling across his shoulders.
If he didn’t keep them distracted, they might sprout a brain and figure out
that his weapon was missing. “Yeah, and I’m sure the elders would be thrilled
to hear that you wasted the whole morning tracking me down,” he said, as
casually as he could with his stomach twisting the way it was. “I wonder what
happens to hunters who don’t feed the village?”

Marc let the
deer drop to the ground. He crossed the space between them in two long strides
and grabbed a fistful of Kael’s shirt. “Go on and tell them, Twig — and
I’ll snap you.”

Though he
thought he could have gone blind from the stench of Marc’s breath, Kael
stubbornly met his glare.

Marc was
seriously considering knocking his teeth out — he could read it in the
flint of his eyes. But though he was a stupid oaf, Marc was no fool. After a
tense moment of glaring, his lip curled and he shoved Kael away with a growl.

“You know we
wouldn’t forget our chores, especially with winter so close,” Laemoth said. He
walked among the debris of Kael’s fall, picking through the shattered branches,
looking for something. When he found it, he grunted in triumph. “What have we
here?” And he held the rucksack full of game high in the air.

Marc snarled in
delight. “Well, would you look at that? We’ve done good today. I’m sure the
elders will be pleased.”

Kael knew he
shouldn’t pick a fight he couldn’t win, but anger boiled up to the top of his
head and blocked out all reasonable thought. He stomped over and grabbed a
fistful of the rucksack. “Hand it over.”

Laemoth laughed
in his face. “Or what, Twiglet? What are you going to — ompf!”

Kael’s fist
struck his mouth, cutting his sentence short. Laemoth stumbled backwards and
pressed his hand to his lips. When he saw the bright red blood staining his
fingers, he let out a roar. He dropped his half of the rucksack, drew the
hunting knife from his belt, and charged.

It was a good
thing Kael thought to hold the pack to his chest: Laemoth’s knife went through
the surface, wounding rabbit and goose but getting nowhere close to his skin.
Marc shoved him aside before he could strike a second time.

“You can’t kill
him.”

“Sure I can! I
can rip his heart out and blame it on the wolves! No one’ll ever find out
—”

“The old man
will,” Marc said, keeping his voice low. “He’ll know we’ve done it. And he’ll
get us for it.”

The anger in
Laemoth’s eyes vanished, replaced immediately by fear.

Mountain people
were notoriously superstitious. Roland wouldn’t step outside if it rained while
the sun was shining, because he believed it meant the spirits of the dead were
passing through the village. He also wouldn’t leave his bow strung overnight
and cringed every time he heard an owl screech.

The Tinnarkians
also believed that healers could pass through death’s door and trade for souls.
Everyone went out of their way to respect Amos because if they slighted him,
they were afraid he might retrieve their souls when they died and plant them
back in their dead bodies.

And while that
wasn’t entirely true, Kael didn’t see the harm in letting Marc and Laemoth
believe it.

He made to run
off when Marc grabbed him by the shirt and pinned his arms behind his back.
“Keep it in the stomach. We don’t want anyone to see the bruises.”

Laemoth cocked
his fist back and Kael knew what was coming. If he’d had any muscles in his stomach,
he would have tightened them. But as it was, Laemoth’s punch sailed through his
feeble defenses and knocked the wind out of him.

“Next time we’ll
break one of your legs. Now get out of my woods, half-breed.” With a hard shove
in the back, Marc sent him into the trees.

Every breath
felt like a knife between his ribs and the world swam in front of him, but he
managed to keep his footing long enough to get away. He knew full well that an
unconscious man might as well be a dead one, in the mountains. So he put every
ounce of his strength into a run.

His head pounded
against his ears, keeping time with the jostling motion of his legs. A strong
gust of wind whipped over him, followed by a loud
crack
. The sudden flip of his stomach told him what was coming.

He forced every
muscle and sinew into a dive. Not a second after his chest hit the ground, a
wave of dirt and pebbles rained down on him, slung by the force of a colossal
oak branch as it struck the path. His speed was the only thing that saved him
from being crushed beneath it.

There was a
reason the mountains were called
unforgivable
:
they only allowed one mistake. One trip, one fall, one run-in with an angry
bear — that was all a man could expect to get. So great were the dangers
that even the King stopped trying to conquer them. The people of Tinnark hadn’t
been taxed in centuries.

It was several
minutes before Kael’s heart stopped racing, and his legs shook as he pulled
himself from the ground. But for all he’d failed that day, it gave him some
satisfaction to know that he thwarted the mountain’s gruesome plans once again.

He imagined the
trees snapped their twigs and glared as he jogged away.

*******

When he broke
from the cover of the trees, he slowed to a trot. A large boulder rose out of
the ground to the left of the path, and he climbed it expertly.

It was his
favorite view of the village. From where he stood, he could see a smatter of
tiny wooden houses perched on the slope beneath him. They had the triangular
shape of tents, with their roofs falling from a point to touch the rocky
ground. People moved between them, scurrying along the roughly cut path like
beetles through wood. They carried bundles of sticks across their backs or
strings of fish in either hand. Even the smallest villagers walked behind their
parents, toting a portion of the work.

Two of the
houses were larger than the rest. The hospital sat at the edge of the village,
close to the woods. It was the same width as an average house but roughly
thrice as long. The largest building was the Hall. It stood directly in the
center of Tinnark, and its roof was wide enough to hold the entire village
under it for three meals a day.