The Hunter of Hawk and Wolf-Chapter 21 : Chapter 21

A Small Cave in the Frost Mountains
Teresse and Legra could only describe their location as “somewhere in the mountains.”
Sevha, their guide, hadn’t opened his eyes in two days.
Teresse gazed at Sevha, lying motionless in a corner of the cave, and assessed their situation.
This is bad.
After they had escaped the underground, Legra had tried to take Sevha’s place as guide. The result was that they had only gone in circles.
It isn’t Sevha’s Anse blood that lets him guide us through these mountains. It’s just because he’s Sevha.
In the end, Teresse and Legra had decided to wait in a cave they were lucky enough to find, hoping Sevha would awaken.
But we’re at our limit. We have no food. Yuska is still chasing us. We have to move now.
The blizzard outside was a clear warning: to leave without a guide was to get lost and freeze to death. Teresse frowned, weighing her options.
Seeing her expression, Legra grew anxious and broke the long silence.
“Witch? What did you mean when you said the grudge worms ‘weren’t named that for nothing’?”
“The more the worms breed inside a corpse, the more perfectly it restores its living form. The grudge worms, you could say, are insects that enact the grudges of the dead.”
“You mean Grandfather’s grudge was to hunt? Did he… regret running away from the hunt?”
It was a poignant guess, but Teresse had no interest in the thoughts of a dead man.
She changed the subject. “Yuska will be near. We have to move.”
“What about Lord Sevha?”
“We’ll have to drag him.”
Legra agreed. He took off his coat and spread it on the ground, then pushed Sevha onto it.
“Legra. Taking off your coat in this blizzard is a fool’s act.”
“Is there another way to drag him?”
There wasn’t. Teresse immediately pulled Legra into her own coat.
Legra’s face flushed, embarrassed at being pressed so close to a woman, and he sulked.
“You don’t have to do this…”
“Is there another way for you not to freeze to death?”
There wasn’t, so Legra stopped grumbling. Together, they grabbed the sleeves of the coat Sevha lay on and dragged him out of the cave.
The blizzard immediately lashed their skin and stole their vision.
“Witch… Are you sure about this? I can’t find the way.”
“We just keep going uphill. It’s the best we can do.”
The two of them began to walk, dragging Sevha, heading for any upward slope they could find.
It was physically draining to haul him while being battered by the blizzard.
It was mentally draining to struggle up a small rise only to find a downward slope on the other side.
It was a battle of stamina and spirit against the Frost Mountains.
Teresse was the first to tire.
Noticing her ragged breathing, Legra asked with concern, “Should we rest?”
“I’m fine. I’m not panting from exhaustion. It’s because we’ve climbed so high. The ambient magic is thin up here.”
“Whatever the reason, someone panting like that shouldn’t walk any further.”
“Legra, if you’re worried, just talk to me. Distract me instead of telling me to rest. I have to… get my breathing under control.”
Seeing Teresse’s resolve, the boy asked the first question that came to mind.
“Are you really a witch?”
“Not a witch. A magus.”
“Witch, magus, what’s the difference?”
“Why? Do I not look like one?”
Legra glanced at Teresse’s face and said the first thing he thought of: “You just look like a noble’s daughter.”
A bitter expression crossed Teresse’s face. “Yes… Perhaps no matter how I struggle, that’s all I’ll ever be.”
Legra didn’t understand her ambiguous reply, only that he was sorry for causing her pain.
He quickly asked another question. “Is your family alive?”
“So the Anse Tribe always asks about family first,” Teresse said with a faint, sarcastic laugh. “Unfortunately for them, my father, older brother, and younger brother are all still alive.”
“Wouldn’t they be worried, knowing you’re out here like this?”
“Of course they’d be worried.”
For a moment, Teresse’s expression was so stern it suited the name ‘witch.’ She continued in a voice to match.
“They have no idea what I might do to them.”
Realizing she had been too honest, Teresse quickly masked her expression and turned the question on him.
“What about you? Wouldn’t your dead family be worried, seeing you out here like this?”
“What are you talking about? They’d be proud that I found my grandfather.”
“Truly, the Anse Tribe is…”
“But Witch? My grandfather… he
is
dead, isn’t he?”
“His mind may have rotted away, but his soul might still linger in that corpse.”
After a moment’s thought, Legra replied, “Soul or not, I have to defeat it. That’s the only way to restore my family’s honor.”
“For honor… Foolish. A very foolish answer.”
“That’s an insult…!”
“Can you even defeat him?”
Legra, knowing his own limits, grew despondent.
Sensing his dejection, Teresse tried to encourage him. “There is a way for you to win.”
“What is it?”
“We still have one vial of the frost hag’s poison. You saw what happened when it struck Yuska, didn’t you?”
Legra recalled how Yuska had frozen the moment the poisoned arrow hit him.
“Why would poison work on a corpse?” he asked.
“The poison worked on the grudge worms inside him, not the corpse itself.”
“He was hit in the foot, but all the grudge worms in his body were poisoned? How is that possible?”
Teresse closed her eyes in thought for a moment before answering.
“Perhaps the grudge worms are all connected. That would explain why killing the one that acts as the king causes the entire undead to collapse.”
The moment she voiced her theory…
Uwoooooh…!
The cry of a beast—or perhaps a monster—echoed through the air.
“Witch. Grandfather’s corpse is nearby.”
As Legra tried to hurry, Teresse grabbed him.
“Why are you stopping me? We need to run.”
“We can’t outrun him, not while dragging Sevha. He’d catch us eventually.”
“Then what do we do?”
“We hide.”
“Hide? Do you have any idea how hard it is to hide from the First Hunter?”
“He’s not the First Hunter anymore. He’s the
corpse
of the First Hunter. His senses can’t be what they were.”
As Teresse spoke, Legra frantically scanned their surroundings. Some distance away, at the base of a cliff, were large, snow-covered boulders.
“There. That’s the only place,” the boy pointed out.
They hurried, dragging Sevha, and took cover among the rocks. They placed Sevha between a boulder and the cliff face, then crouched down beside him.
For several minutes, they listened to the howl of the blizzard. When their faces were caked with frost, the sound of footsteps mingled with the wind.
Crunch…
Teresse and Legra peeked from behind the boulder.
In the spot they had just left stood Yuska, cleaver in hand. His head dropped, his gaze fixed on the ground. Grudge worms spilled from his mouth, writhing this way and that.
Then Yuska raised his head and began to wander slowly through the area.
He’s found our tracks.
The blizzard had nearly erased their footprints, the drag marks from Sevha all but gone. And yet, Yuska had found what little remained and was now walking toward them.
Yuska came to a stop just before the rocks.
Crunch…
Grudge worms emerged from all over his body. Teresse knew Yuska was using all of his senses and predicted what would happen next.
But the prediction was meaningless. Pinned down, their only option was to hold their breath and wait.
Crunch…
Yuska began to search between the boulders.
Crunch, crunch…
The worms protruding from his body swayed like reeds in the wind, tasting the air.
Crunch, crunch, crunch…
Yuska’s footsteps drew closer and closer.
We’re going to be found.
Teresse and Legra swallowed hard. They met each other’s eyes, resolving to launch a surprise attack.
Just then, someone clapped their hands over their mouths and pulled them back.
Startled, they turned to see Sevha, his eyes wide open. He glanced at Yuska beyond the rocks and mouthed two words.
Hold on.
As Teresse and Legra grabbed hold of him, Sevha clung to the cliff face. He began to climb, timing his movements to the sound of Yuska’s footsteps.
Crunch, crunch, crunch… crunch.
The moment Yuska’s footsteps stopped, Sevha froze. He turned his head to look down and went still.
Through the veil of the blizzard, he saw Yuska. The worms on his body, having found where they had been hiding, turned their heads in every direction.
Sevha watched, not moving a muscle.
Hwoooosh!
After a fierce gust of wind, the grudge worms all turned their heads at once toward Sevha’s position, stretching their necks out long. Teresse and Legra held their breath, certain they had been discovered.
But Sevha did not look away, even as every worm pointed directly at him.
For one minute, then two, then three, the standoff held through the swirling snow.
The worms, seeing that the blurry shape remained motionless, must have dismissed it as a rock. They retracted.
And then…
Keeeeee!
A hawk cried out nearby.
Yuska immediately drew his bow and loosed a bone arrow. A hawk’s death shriek echoed, and something fell with a thud out in the white.
The undead walked off in that direction to check on his prey.
After Yuska had moved further and further away, finally disappearing into the storm…
So he reacts to any living thing, no matter what.
Sevha climbed back down. The moment his feet touched the ground, he collapsed, letting out the pained groan he’d been holding back.
He muttered, “Explain to me why that was the first thing I had to deal with the moment I woke up.”
Legra and Teresse told him what had happened.
“Reckless… If I hadn’t woken up, or if that thing’s senses were any sharper, you’d both be dead.”
“But we lived.”
“You were lucky, Magus,” Sevha grumbled.
Looking around, he observed, “I think the exit from the underground was high up on the mountain. We’re not far from the summit.”
He handed the coat on the ground back to Legra and started walking.
“Yuska will be after us again. We need to reach the summit and prepare before he returns.”
“Prepare for what?” Teresse asked.
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
Sevha took the lead, walking without hesitation. Some time passed, and the blizzard finally began to die down.
“Finally…”
“This is…”
Teresse, Legra, and even Sevha smiled in relief.
A night sky embroidered with countless stars.
A peak that touched the heavens.
And on that peak, a temple.
“This… this is the summit of the Frost Mountains, isn’t it?” Legra asked.
“That’s right.”
“Hunter? That temple is…?”
Sevha looked at the stone temple, which seemed to carry the weight of millennia, and the galaxy hanging above it.
“That is the holy site of the Anse Tribe,” he answered. “The throne of the Goddess Diaka.”