Chapter two of The Red Winter Queen is up, and now we get to what is one of my favorite chapters and my least-favorite illustration.  I drew these in order, and so this was the second one I did.  The design is ok, but I feel like the execution is lacking, and I should have gone for a more stylized take on it.  I think I will definitely redo this one for the ebook.  (Assuming I can actually figure out how to add images to one.)

Snow parted like the splitting of a wave upon a dark prow and the Huntsman appeared, his shadow looming behind him like the echo of a dark land.  His fang-toothed steed reared and clawed the sky, screaming the fury of the lost age in which it was spawned.  Upon its back the Huntsman rose tall.  Faceless behind his slitted helm adorned with black horns, spear uplifted.  Witch-fire gloomed on spearpoint and antler's keen, caught deep in the werelights of his eyes.

The hounds drew aside, bending knee to their killing lord, and now Ygraine new fear.  He swung down from his beast and waded through the snow to reach her, spear held ready for the final stroke.  Doom blazed on the tip of that fell weapon, and she did not doubt that if it struck sure, it would cut and bleed her.

She looked side to side, but the hounds knew their work and there was no path through them.  She looked behind her at the deep plunge of the cliff below, reaching down to sea-blue depths.  In another shape she could fly away and leave them all behind, but such a shape she did not have, she had this one, and her own.

And truth of truths, she did not want to flee or fall.  This was the end she always envisaged, always longed for when she lay restless and heated, alone in her winter bed.  The Hunt, and the Huntsman, now the spear-thrust, and the burst of white pleasure behind her belly.

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