The Hunter’s Bait
The travel from The Old Kestrel Lodge to The Mud-Ravine of the Greywash River consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The smoke rose in three pillars, thin and dark against the pale sky. Ethan counted them automatically—north, east, and slightly west of the river bend. The pattern was deliberate. A shepherd’s fire signal, pushing livestock in one direction only.
Away from the Covington estate.
Ethan knelt beside Milo, who had woken at the first touch of dawn and now watched the smoke with the too-quiet attention of a child who had learned that survival meant watching. The boy’s hand found Ethan’s sleeve and held it.
“Are they coming?” Milo’s voice was small but steady.
“Yes.” Ethan didn’t soften it. “But they’re herding us. That means they don’t know exactly where we are. They’re guessing.”
He checked the knife at his belt, then the terrain below. The Greywash River had carved a ravine over centuries, leaving a channel of mud and exposed rock that wound through the valley like a scar. The banks were steep but unstable—six feet of loose shale and clay leading to a floor of packed silt. A man with good footing could move fast along the bottom. A man with poor footing would break an ankle.
Ethan judged the distance to the Covington manor. Two miles through open grassland. Three miles following the ravine. But the ravine curved south, toward the estate’s eastern wall. Closer to the Iron Vault.
“We’re not running,” Ethan said.
Milo looked up at him. The question hung unspoken.
“They want us to move fast and careless. So we don’t.” Ethan took the boy’s shoulders, turning him to face the ravine. “I need you to listen, little wolf. Your job is the most important one. You see that bend where the river cuts sharp?”
Milo nodded, his eyes tracking to the indicated curve.
“You go there. You wait. If you hear me whistle twice—long, like a bird—you stay hidden. If you hear three short whistles, you come running. But only three short ones. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Milo’s voice wavered, then firmed. “Three short. I run.”
“And if you don’t hear anything for a long time?”
The boy’s face paled, but he didn’t look away. “I find Victor. I tell him everything.”
Ethan pulled him into a brief, hard embrace. He could feel the boy’s heart hammering, could smell the fear-sweat on his skin. But Milo didn’t cry. He held on for one second, two, then let go and scrambled down the bank, his small feet finding purchase in the shale. He reached the bottom, looked back once, and then jogged toward the bend, disappearing behind a jutting slab of limestone.
Ethan watched him go. The smoke pillars had grown thicker. The Hunter was moving.
He turned and climbed the opposite bank, heading toward the higher ground.
—
The man called Corvus was not a specter or a legend. He was a former military tracker with a bad knee and a pension that didn’t cover his debts. He worked for the Covingtons because they paid in gold and asked no questions. He was fifty-three years old, with gray-shot stubble and eyes that had lost their mercy somewhere in a forest on the other side of the continent.
He found the camp where Ethan and Milo had slept. He found the cold ashes, the flattened grass, the single footprint pressed deep where Ethan had knelt to wake the boy. Corvus read the ground like a letter.
*Father. Son. Moving before dawn. Tired but not desperate. Going south.*
He followed the tracks to the ravine’s edge and paused. The sign was clear—they had descended. But something prickled at the back of his neck. A good tracker never ignored that feeling.
He crouched and studied the descent. A child’s prints, light and careful. A man’s prints, heavier. But the man’s prints were set wider apart than they should be, as if he had paused at the top to survey the ground before climbing down.
*Too careful,* Corvus thought. *A man running doesn’t stop to admire the view.*
He straightened, scanning the opposite bank. Nothing but grass and scattered brush. He waited, listening. The river gurgled below. A bird called overhead.
*They’re down there. One of them, at least. The other is waiting.*
Corvus smiled, a thin expression that did not reach his eyes. He appreciated a man who fought back. It made the hunt more satisfying.
He chose his path carefully, staying low as he moved along the ravine’s edge, keeping the wind in his face. He carried a long knife and a coil of wire. He didn’t need a gun for a man with a wife to save and a child to protect. Those men made mistakes. They loved too much to be patient.
He descended into the ravine at a point where the bank was less steep, using the wire to steady himself. The mud sucked at his boots, but he moved with practiced economy, his bad knee protesting only slightly. At the bottom, he paused to read the ground again.
*The boy went this way. The man—*
A sound. Footsteps. Behind him.
Corvus turned, his knife coming up—
Ethan was already in motion. He had circled back, climbed down fifty yards south, and now came through the shallow water, a broken wagon axle clutched in both hands. The wood was dark with moisture, splintered at one end into sharp points.
He swung for Corvus’s head.
Corvus ducked, but the axle caught his shoulder, spinning him sideways. He recovered, slashing with the knife, the blade catching Ethan’s forearm. Blood welled, dark against the gray morning.
Ethan didn’t stop. He used the momentum of the miss to drive the splintered end into Corvus’s side, just below the ribs. The tracker grunted, staggering back into the mud. His knife hand came up again, but Ethan dropped the axle and grabbed the man’s wrist, pushing the blade away.
They fell together, thrashing in the muck, boots sliding in the wet clay. Corvus was stronger, his muscles fueled by years of hard survival, but Ethan had the desperation of a man who had already lost everything once. He would not lose again.
He drove his knee into Corvus’s injured side. The tracker gasped, his grip loosening. Ethan twisted the knife hand until something in the wrist popped, and Corvus cried out, the blade falling into the mud.
Ethan didn’t hesitate. He pinned the man’s throat with his forearm, pressing down until the tracker’s eyes bulged.
“Where is she?” Ethan’s voice was raw, scraping out of a throat tight with rage.
Corvus’s lips peeled back from yellowed teeth. “The Vault,” he choked. “They put her in the Iron Vault. Beneath the manor.”
“Is she alive?”
“For now. Jasper wants to…” He coughed, spittle flying. “He wants to save her for the reveal. The big finale. You’re the guest of honor.”
Ethan pressed harder. “How many guards?”
“At the house? A dozen. Inside the Vault? Two. The door is steel. You’ll need a torch or a miracle.” Corvus’s gaze flickered to something over Ethan’s shoulder. “You brought the boy. I see his tracks. Smart and stupid at the same time.”
Ethan’s hand moved to the knife in the mud. He didn’t want to do this in front of Milo. But Corvus had seen him. That made him a liability.
He drove the blade home.
The tracker’s body went rigid, then slack. Ethan stayed there a moment, breathing hard, the mud cold against his knees. The sound of running footsteps pulled him back.
Milo appeared at the bend, his face white, his eyes fixed on the body. He had heard the struggle, or the silence that followed. He stood frozen, small hands clenched at his sides.
Ethan pushed himself up, his shoulder screaming where the knife had caught him. The wound was deep but not arterial. He had minutes before the blood loss slowed him further.
He looked down at Corvus. The tracker’s eyes were open, staring at nothing. Another man who had sold his skills to the wrong master.
*I’m no different,* Ethan thought. *Except I’m still breathing.*
He turned to Milo. The boy hadn’t moved. Tears tracked through the dirt on his cheeks, but he didn’t make a sound. His gaze stayed on the body, cataloging, learning, hardening.
Ethan crossed the distance between them, his boots squelching in the mud. He knelt, wincing at the fire in his shoulder. He didn’t try to block Milo’s view. The boy had already seen it. Pretending wouldn’t help.
“Milo. Look at me.”
The boy’s eyes lifted slowly. They were his mother’s eyes—gray-green, serious, holding more than a child should have to hold.
“I’m going to get your mother back. But I need you to be brave. Can you be brave for me, Milo?”
Milo’s chin trembled. He looked at the body again, at the blood seeping into the mud, at the knife still gripped in Ethan’s hand. He took a breath, slow and shaky, then wiped his nose with his sleeve.
His hand found Ethan’s. Small fingers wrapped around blood-stained knuckles.
“Yes. I’m not a baby.”