The masked figure advanced on her, armoured in tough fabrics under a dark cloak. That mask, the snarling visage of some animal, hooked down over their eyes. Claws on one hand, jutting out and gleaming. No. Impossible.

The hunter didn’t care that they were impossible and lunged forward, claws whistling through the air.

Orfeus rolled sideways in the dirt with the taste of panic in her mouth, and the claws sliced down inches from her. She got her hands beneath her and shoved herself finally to her feet, diving forward just in time to avoid another slash.

She staggered back, panting. It had been a slow movement, like the hunter was barely trying. They were bulky and enigmatic as a nightmare, her doom come walking, but she couldn’t think of what she might have done to deserve it.

“Give your speech again,” Orfeus blurted. She gripped tight to what little of the stories she knew, as though folklore was fact. “You have to.”

The hunter stood still, more out of confusion than compliance. She couldn’t make out their eyes under the helm, but Orfeus knew when someone was frowning at her. The hunter said, “I already did,” in a low exasperated growl. Everyone this evening was exasperated at her, from old flames right up to hired killers.

Perhaps Bellan was the client? But Bellan didn’t have the nerve to commission the Order, and adultery wasn’t enough of an offence, not like energy crimes. “But you have to make sure I understand it,” Orfeus said. “Right? Maybe – maybe Common isn’t my first language. Maybe I’m fluent mostly in French or English or Arabic. Maybe I only speak sign.”

The hunter just sneered at that, like Orfeus wasn’t worth wasting words on.

Orfeus signed, I don’t understand, in the French dialect, then flipped them off defiantly.

So her mother Basma’s sign lessons had some use, despite Orfeus’s protests as a child. The hunter clenched their fist, claws gleaming, visibly frustrated. But they stood still and straight and spoke.

“I am a representative of the Order of the Vengeful Wild,” they said. “We are the fangs and claws of justice. We go where we are needed. We are the shadows cast by the world. I will bring my prey down or die in the attempt.” She got a glimpse of their eyes, then, a gleam deep in the shadows of the snarling mask. “I will bring my prey down.”

That did seem more likely. Orfeus didn’t even have her pruning knife. “And who are you?” she said. “Who are you, who call yourself representative as though you have no name of your own?”

The hunter said matter-of-factly, “I am the Wolf.”

Orfeus staggered back a step. “Who next,” she said wildly, “the boogeyman?”