The Hunt

[Jay Carpenter]

She picked the right time to share her morbid mindset. A smile finally cracked. It was monstrous and wrong, but Nythadri’s unexpected sarcasm was rather entertaining.

“They didn’t exactly fall.”
If there had been a breeze, he would wager bits of flesh would still be riding it.

Reflections of those soft blossoms floated distinctly across his memory like individual drops in a fine rain. The pink always caught his eye. It always looked the same no matter the source, no matter how many. A few orbs falling on the wind or a wall of it mounded high. The insides of a beast large enough to swallow a man whole or the man strapped to its saddle. Both indistinguishable in the mound after an Asha’man was done with them. He glanced a question at Nythadri, contained chaos at disturbing odds with the strangely peaceful thoughts. This wasn't normal, was it? Whatever the answer, he shrugged it away and found the view stretching beyond Nythadri. Set in its foreground, the light shone on her slick hair and framed her with its radiant glare. The sun itself would blush to disturb such a portrait with something so ordinary as setting. Yet it was on the descent. Dusk would approach soon. The deer begin to run. He trailed further. Only to return when her hand brushed his sleeve.

He watched the gesture fascinated like it wasn't his own arm. It wasn’t gentle as he expected of a musician’s stroke, but effective. The ballooning cloud of dirt grew with every brush. It trailed peacefully behind as War Cry bore him onward. It was nice. Normal. He imagined turning so she could do the same for his shoulders. Down his back. Then the red ripped her away and War Cry shook in amusement. Jai might have slaughtered him until better judgement buried the idea. That was Nisele’s slap on the wrist. She chose Nythadri’s horse. The reins twisted at the friendly wave from Nisele when he sought her out instead. Whatever news there was from Imaad, she was far too pleased with it than she ought. Women like her do not take lightly to blatantly displaying that they were unwanted in lieu of another.

Brandishing Nisele’s deceit from sight, he sought out Nythadri again. For a moment, the darkness made way for reason and purpose. “You’ll make it.”
She joked. He didn’t. She was the only stable thing in sight. He remembered the look in her eye after the shield. Beckoning him back from the edge. Calling him to abandon what stirred within. It was a call Jai would not soon forget. He wouldn’t allow anything to happen to that precious island of honesty in their Game.

“..Or none of us will.”
The accompanying laugh was half-hearted. Who knew when the next spark would ignite and consume their tentative group.

He went quiet for a long while after, seeming to watch the leaders, but listening also to the pounding of hooves. The multiples of their beat lost to a more dormant layer inside. He chose his side. Daryen chose his. How far would their war carry before one of them regretted it? He remembered the touch of apprehension holding back Nythadri's beckoning; but Daryen's was purer, fearless. Of course, there was little to fear from a brother he could render helpless as soon as think it. Not that Jai’s would be an easy breach of defenses. At some point, strength and experience would always win out.

Another noble joined Antony and Daryen by then. Another name Jai avoided learning. They swapped stories by the dramatic flair sweeping Daryen’s arms when he spoke. An orator even in the most ordinary of times. The man reaped the rewards of drama. The noble played to putty in his palms. Beyond them, the huntmaster’s gallop began to form shape.

Still, at their most vulnerable, Jai witnessed no shadows loom behind his friend’s compelling blues. There was something sadistic, though. Something of saidin itself. Flickers of a far off storm, hinting at the need to wrench its hidden power and make the world bend knee before it. Temptation though it was, they enjoyed the fight. It was only in aftermath, choking on the ash from that destroyed city or walking fields softened by the red of war that regret ever played its hand. Daryen heard it’s guilty whisper as did all their brothers. Only then did the sadism swirl behind those princely blues like dancing candlelight. Reveling, in love with the morbid. Uncaring of the consequences.

Jai checked Nythadri. She had gone quiet for some time as well. She might understand something of being morbid; darkness drawing darkness. He wondered what memories consumed her mind these past few minutes; if anything. Could her steadfast chill or Daryen’s constant control ever do anything to make him cross that line? The one separating him from Tamal at this very moment. The one he considered crossing still. How did the woman handle her ghost? Or did it lurch in and out of her control as defiantly as the red.

“What is saidar like?”
He hoped her answer would provide some insight to another soul wrestling with the Power as fiercely as with their own demons. Comparisons to Daryen proved unsettling in the past. He’d only now thought to ask a woman.

The clear sound of laughter ahead, pure as Domani crystal, awakened every muscle. The huntsman’s vague shape coalesced as though he emerged from the diffusion of foggy thoughts. Jai stood in the stirrups to see above the three riders at the head of the column. And pure amusement drenched his face in sadistic expression as though summoned by previous thoughts. The hunter, middle aged, clean-cut, but as lithe a rider on horseback as his prey in their valleys, was drenched in pink. His sleek quarterhorse was painted a new stripe across the top. Its mane thick and tangled with a sludge that apparently flicked droplets into the rider’s face with every stride or so.

Daryen roared with good-natured laughter. Then kicked his glorious white forward, handed the man some sort of kerchief for his face and called back over his shoulder.

“Jai, brother! What aim! I could not have done better myself."
An equally as pleased grin from Jai smirked back.

The pounding of hooves sped past him and Nythadri. Others riding forward to investigate. Uneasy laughter joined Daryen, but one woman looked physically sick. Jai spurred War Cry once they were all passed. As he had exiting the stables, the crowd made way. He noted a few uneasy swallows when they realized the glittering amusement from the man responsible for drenching their hunter in tiny corpuscles of previously living flesh.

“Were you in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
He greeted the hunter with an unapologetic nod, whom by his scowl had deduced Jai as the one responsible for the unexpected, albeit unique-smelling shower from above. A few wipes cleaned off most of his face. The man’s sleeves had been useless on the way back apparently.

“Yeah?”
His eyes narrowed examining the muddled Asha’man. Shirt straighter but untucked, pant leg ripped and matted with dry blood, and of course the haze of dirt clinging to nearly every visible facet. Hair and temples included. “I think you need this more than me.”
He chucked the rag heavy with sweat and gore at Jai’s chest, who only passed it on playfully to Nythadri, then looked to the king for some answers. “What the hell happened?!”


Jai watched him try to salvage what he could and wondered how long any of the channelers would wait before offering to clean him off. As the man shook out his jacket, scrubbed his hair, and stomped out boots, more amusement circled in Jai when most of the nobles veered their horses away from the considerable spray. He did not. War Cry seemed oblivious to the new decorations anyway. But reconciliation only came when the warder stepped forward with an offer of fresh bow string and an extra hand to change it out.