IX.

Qui Venatur

The earliest morning summons Kouga into wakefulness before the dawn has even stretched over the horizon. In his arms, Kagome doesn't stir; he looks down at her with surprise, as if he has forgotten she was there, but really he had expected her to move sometime during the night. Her wounded side is still pressed against his body, and it is with careful movements that he unwinds his cramped arms from around her sleeping shape and lays her on an empty futon beside the fire.

She mutters and murmurs her discontent to the air in front of her, and he smiles to hear it; on the other side of the fire, the old woman sleeps still, unmoving but for the rise and fall of her breath, and Kouga contemplates whether or not he should wake her. He decides against it; it is not yet dawn, and she has been cooperative so far. Better to make sure that she continues to cooperate than gain an extra hour for his run.

Instead, he walks soundless across the hut and out the door; there are quiet noises from some of the houses, the families of farmers who work the most distant fields already up and readying themselves for the day, but mostly there is silence.

The forest summons him, its wide presence, the promise that hides beneath the reaching trees and their branches. He scents the air and feels the wild nature within him churning; the hunting instinct that comes for him every autumn is beginning to touch him now, the urge to kill and feed, to gorge before the winter comes with snow. It occurs to him that Kagome will be hungry when she wakes, and that he himself hasn't eaten since the morning before he found her. Kouga makes up his mind in a moment and runs out of the village, leaving a whirlwind of dust behind.

His speed surprises him; he is fast, has always been fast, but this is something new – a greater intensity to his old movements. The shikon no tama, he thinks, and grins, and then turns aside from the road that leads out of the village and darts in among the tall swaying of the trees. Scents accost him; the mulchy odors of the undergrowth, green smells...he seeks for the scent of prey. Deer do not interest him; he wants richer meat than venison now – but there! An enticing aroma reaches out to him.

Kouga encounters a pair of idle serow as he follows the more promising trail; for a moment he considers the strange little deer-goats and then moves on. His nose is hot on the track of a sounder of wild boar, and now that he is salivating over that smell nothing else will do.

They aren't hard to find; the whole sounder is on the move, streaming through the undergrowth away from the scent of wolf that accompanies Kouga into the forest. It does them no good, of course; he is too fast, too intent, for mere beasts to have a chance of escaping from him. His eye is on a fat sow near the back of the group, and the moment he has a clear path he leaps forward and lashes out with a handful of deadly claws.

They connect; the sow falls squealing at the back of the sounder and the racing of the others becomes more panicked still. Kouga is distracted from them by the sow at his feet; the slash of his claws did far more than he intended. The sow bears a deep, gaping wound, not the narrow slash and puncture wound she should. Her head is attached to her body by only a few inches of smoking flesh and beyond her, a large male lays squealing with a scorched, crescent shaped gash across his shoulder and spurting throat.

Kouga takes a step forward and silences the beast with the claws of his left hand before he turns his attention back to his right. His eyes narrow; his right hand is the hand that bears the shard of the shikon no tama. Kouga turns and slashes at the air with those claws, as if a foe was before him. Blue energy pulses from his palm, his fingertips, his claws, and speeds into the trees. It is the zaffre shade of his eyes, without the edge of ice; it bears a hint of electricity, but it is all his own power, pure youki channeled through a shard of gem. A half dozen trees are cut through by it and crash to the forest floor; beyond them, the energy burns itself out and shatters ten or twelve others as it disperses.

Kouga flexes his fingers, and then throws his head back and laughs. The sound streaks out into the forest and sends everything that had resisted fleeing into burrows or into flight, but he only stands there, pleased and amused, and then bends to the secondary task of tending his kill. The sow has bled out into the dirt from the gaping wound that was once her neck; he slits the throat of the male more deeply and then pulls the innards from both of them. A succulent bonus hides in the sow: a sextet of piglets, nearly full term and certainly out of season.

He dresses them all and then packs them into the mother's carcass. Kouga washes his hands in a stream and then takes up his kill, one wild boar on each shoulder. He runs slower with his burden, not because of the weight but because his kills ride precariously balanced while he moves. More villagers are up and about as he returns, and they eye him warily and some with envy as he passes them by. It is with a feeling of great pride that he enters the old miko's hut, and something within him crows when he sees that Kagome is awake, and being tended by Kaede.

It pleases him immensely that his shikon woman can see his prowess so admirably displayed, and he drops the two beasts with an audible thud beside the fire. Kaede eyes him, and Kagome too, but the old woman only looks on suspiciously, while Kagome's face is awed. Kouga preens, but only for a moment.

"Old woman, I'll need meat for myself and the girl, but only enough for a day or so. The rest you can keep; compensation, for what you've done for Kagome and for the stuff I need to take care of her until she's healed."

Kaede nods, her eyes wide, and then thinks of better of her manners and turns to bow in Kouga's direction.

"I thank you; this is far more than is required for compensation. I would have healed Kagome regardless, it is my duty."

Kouga shrugs and sits back against the wall.

"As you like; but you'll keep it all the same, I can't carry those and her – now, tell me what you're doing and what you've already done so I can take care of it myself later."

"Of course; please, come nearer. Observe, and I will explain."

A/N: Today's chapter as promised; the title is pretty self explanatory as "Qui Venatur" is "he who hunts". Kaede gets a bit of payment for her trouble...Kagome gets a view on youkai strength and Kouga's hunting prowess, and Kouga learns that the influence of the shikon no tama is multifaceted, and how to take care of Kagome's wound! More tomorrow, my dears!

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