The Hunter of Hawk and Wolf

Passersby chattered. Patrons in a restaurant roared with laughter, praising the delicious food. A drunkard stumbled out of a tavern, his bottle smashing on the cobblestones.

Rasseu, its festival imminent, surged with every kind of sound.

But another sound slipped into the din: the call of a bird not native to the city.

Pii…

As the faint call echoed, Sevha landed silently on a roof above the street.

A soft tap.

Sevha looked toward the source of the sound. Below, a Hunter in the guise of a hawk, like Sevha himself, walked the street. The Hunter’s hawk-beak hood was pointed at a man walking ahead.

That’s him.

Sevha drew his bow and fired. Swift as a blur, the arrow flew over the heads of the passersby and buried itself in the man’s neck.

The Hunter on the street caught the man, wrapping an arm around his neck to hide the fletching.

“Dammit! I told you not to drink so much!”

As the Hunter dragged the corpse away, acting as if he were helping a drunken friend, the bird call sounded again.

Pii...

Sevha ran across the rooftops, following the call. The pedestrians below, lost in the festival’s early revelry, did not look up. He ran on until he reached a temple spire.

Pii...

The bird call came from beyond it. Without hesitation, Sevha grabbed the sills of the spire’s tiered windows and hauled himself upward. The moment he set foot on the roof at the spire’s peak, the call came again.

Pii...

Looking toward the sound, he saw a Hunter in a hawk costume standing near the temple. The Hunter’s beak pointed toward two women sitting on a bench. Sevha immediately drew his nocked bowstring and made the bird call.

Pii...

Hearing the signal, the Hunter on the ground walked forward. When he neared the bench, Sevha released the string.

The arrow struck one of the women between the eyes, swift as lightning. The other woman opened her mouth to scream, but the Hunter was already there, slitting her throat with a dagger.

He then sat between the two corpses and embraced them as their heads slumped forward.

“The festival really is great! I’ve never been this popular before!”

As the Hunter pretended to dally with the two women, Sevha, judging the work here finished, secured a rope to the spire’s flagpole.

Pii...

As soon as he heard the bird call, Sevha gripped the rope and slid down the wall. He landed lightly, and as he walked forward, Baren came to meet him.

“You’ll leave nothing for us to hunt. Why not take your time?”

Sevha snorted in acknowledgment and tossed his bow and quiver to Baren, who snatched them as he passed. Baren then climbed the rope to the top of the spire, pulled it up, and hid it.

Sevha paid the scene no mind and melted into the crowd.

Pii...

Following the bird call for a moment, his face hidden by his hood, Sevha found the next Hunter. His beak pointed to the front of a restaurant where a man stood with his back to the outer wall, eating a slice of pie from a plate.

But then...

“This is delicious. Isn’t it, Teresse?”

“Try it again. This is just typical festival fare, loaded with sugar.”

Right next to the man was Teresse. And next to Teresse was Leytia, both eating slices of pie with forks.

A nuisance, Sevha thought, as he stepped between the man and Teresse.

“When did you two get so close?”

As Sevha spoke, his face hidden, Leytia startled.

“Marq—!”

Teresse quickly shoved a piece of her own pie into Leytia’s mouth before she could reveal Sevha’s identity. Leytia choked for a moment, sputtering, then looked at Teresse with an injured gaze.

“What? You said the pie was delicious,” Teresse said, feigning innocence. She turned to Sevha. “What’s the count?”

“About thirty percent.”

Teresse knew that Sevha was secretly hunting assassins who had infiltrated Rasseu.

“If I had my way, I’d finish them off openly…” she muttered.

Sevha agreed. But if they handled it openly, The Lion, who had sent the assassins, could use it to frame them for treason.

Sevha changed the subject. “Anyway, since when were you two so close?”

Leytia beamed. “Just now!”

“We’re not,” Teresse said.

“But we’re close enough to share pie.”

Teresse immediately broke off a piece of pie with her fork and offered the entire thing to Sevha. He took it and ate the piece.

“He and I just shared pie, too. Do we look close? We don’t, right?”

“You do look close,” Leytia said.

“I’ll get you some eyedrops when we get back to the castle,” Teresse replied.

Sevha swallowed the pie as he watched their little play. “Sweet.”

He swung the fork sideways, piercing the neck of the man beside him. The man couldn’t make a sound, the fork embedded deep in his throat. He stared to his left, his eyes webbed with broken veins.

“Do you like sweet things?” Teresse asked Sevha.

“In moderation.”

“She loves sweet things.”

“In moderation!” Leytia protested.

Sevha continued conversing as if nothing had happened, keeping a firm grip on the fork.

Leytia remarked, “You’re surprisingly childish, Marquis. Liking sweets, not being able to swim.”

“What? You can’t swim?” Teresse asked.

“I can if my feet touch the bottom…”

Teresse, even while watching the man impaled on the fork, conversed as casually as Sevha. “Is it really swimming if your feet can touch the bottom?”

Leytia continued the conversation, oblivious to what was happening beside them. “Marquis? Shall I teach you how to swim?”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”

When the man stopped moving, Sevha pulled out the fork. A Hunter who had appeared from nowhere caught the corpse as it fell and hoisted it onto his back.

“Gods, man! How much did you drink?”

The Hunter ran off with the body, pretending to take care of a drunken friend. Sevha, feigning ignorance, returned the bloody fork to Teresse.

Her eyes widened as if to ask if he wanted to die. She grabbed a piece of pie with her hand and shoved it into Sevha’s mouth. Then, watching him choke, she asked, “Is Legra with the Hunters?”

Sevha barely managed to swallow the pie before answering. “No.”

“What? He said he was going to help you.”

Just as Sevha realized Legra had lied and disappeared, the bird call came again.

Pii...

He figured he should finish the task at hand and turned to follow the call, but Teresse grabbed him.

“I’m going with you. For some reason, Legra’s lying and disappearing bothers me.”

“What does that have to do with my work right now?”

Teresse recalled the sight of Legra greeting the Demonkin girl, but she kept it to herself. “My magic is reacting.”

“What kind of bullsh—!”

Just as Sevha was about to tell her not to interfere, Leytia chimed in. “I’ll go with you, too. Legra… he’s your squire, isn’t he, Marquis? I’ll help you find him.”

“Uh…” Since Leytia was oblivious to the hunt, Sevha had no ready excuse to refuse her.

Just then, the bird call sounded again. Deciding it was better to move than to waste time arguing, he answered. “Fine! Let’s go!”

And so, Sevha walked the streets with Teresse and Leytia.

“By the way, what about Duce and Charlotte?” Teresse asked.

“My father and mother are at the castle,” Leytia answered. “They seem to be worried about something.”

Pretending to look for Legra, Sevha followed the bird call and brushed past the person the Hunter had marked. “Worried, huh? I suppose… Oh, sorry.”

Pretending to bump into him, he secretly stabbed his target in the gut with a dagger.

“The festival hasn’t even started yet, and there are so many drunks,” Leytia said.

The Hunter watching the scene caught the corpse before it could fall and dragged it away.

“There are. A lot of them,” Sevha said.

He repeated the process: conversing nonchalantly with Teresse and Leytia, brushing past the one marked by the Hunter, and secretly slitting, gouging, and stabbing with his dagger.

Sevha’s routine stopped when they arrived near the traveling troupe’s stage and the bird calls ceased.

The assassins other than the troupe have all been dealt with. The Hunters will begin preparing for the final hunt.

Just as Sevha was thinking he should part with Teresse and Leytia and go to the troupe, Leytia said, “Oh, there’s a traveling troupe over there! Maybe your squire went to see the show?”

She trotted toward the stage.

“Wait! Dammit! She’s fast! Teresse! What now? She’s walking right into the hunting ground!”

“Not my fault.”

“When that’s the first thing you say, it means it is your fault!”

Sevha and Teresse chased after Leytia.

Just after they passed a shop near the troupe, a cart driven by a Hunter suddenly overturned, blocking the road. Just after they crossed a bridge near the stage, fruit spilled from a box a Hunter was carrying, covering the path.

By the time Sevha’s group arrived in front of the troupe’s stage, the members were preparing for a performance.

“He’s not here…” Leytia said.

“That’s not what’s important right now!” Sevha snapped.

Leytia tilted her head, confused.

“Dammit. You’re going to regret this.” Sevha pushed Leytia behind him, approached the stage, and shouted, “Where is the troupe leader?”

At his call, the leader emerged from backstage, tapping the ground with a cane. “Ah, it is you, My Lord. Have you come to see the show?”

Sevha snorted. “Aren’t you blind? Try using your ears.”

The leader followed Sevha’s words and listened intently.

“...Why?”

There was no sound. It was silent.

No cries from merchants, no ramblings of drunkards, no footsteps of passersby.

The troupe leader and his members realized what that silence meant.

“...Why have you blockaded this area?”

Sevha laughed. “Can’t have the festival-goers seeing a bunch of corpses, now can we?”

His expression turned cold, the Hunter emerging.

Baren and the other Hunters appeared on the roofs of the surrounding houses.

The troupe leader’s eyes snapped open, and he spoke in a voice like grinding metal. “I don’t know what methods you used to track us… but it must have been something monstrous.”

It was then that Sevha recognized the troupe leader as the assassin he had encountered in the underground waterway.

“Open all the cages!” the leader shouted, drawing two daggers.

Immediately, armed assassins and all manner of beasts poured out from behind the stage, growling at the Hunters on the rooftops.

But their snarls were soon swallowed by another sound.

A paralyzing roar echoed as the stage backdrop shattered and something burst forth. A sharp snout and a snakelike tail. Two wings larger than its body and two legs with sharp talons.

It was a wyvern, slightly larger than a bear, its wings riddled with stakes.

Seeing it, Leytia’s mouth twitched, her mind struggling to process the scene. “Is that… a dragon?”

Teresse snorted. “A wyvern is not a dragon. It’s a distant relative at best.”

The wyvern, unable to fly, roared as it walked toward Sevha. But even as the sound washed over him, the Hunter’s expression did not falter.

He waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t be scared. It’s just a seriously large lizard.”

Immediately, the Hunters on the rooftops fired their arrows in unison—at the assassins, at the beasts, and at the wyvern.