Chapter Nine
Morning mist shrouds the cliffs, dampening the search brigade’s visibility, and they put much reliance on the olfactories of the wolfmongrels. The silvery beasts pull their handlers along, zigzagging through the brush, seeming to run them in circles. The wind has not been kind and they lost the scent trail in a cluttered valley less than a day’s ride from the Temple.
They split ways at the crest, two riding tight along the edge of the cliff and scouring the breakers for any traces of movement or washed up remains, the others galloping on and surveying the long distance ahead. On the adjacent ridge Feiyan jerks the bridle and halts, then removes a compact scope and peers into the haze through warped glass.
Back in the valley, they follow the stream past the dilapidated neighborhoods and push into the deep woods. Halis holds to the rear and keeps his horse at a leisurely trot. A scar like a jagged wire cuts across the rutted surface of his jaw, and his lunatic half-grin shows all the teeth on the left side of his mouth gone.
The wolfmongrels coalesce and howl wildly, and Halis’s baleful rictus spreads deeper. They have found something.
When Lia rises, Jack is already stowing their things and fitting himself out for another long hike south. She sits up and rubs her aching feet, ruddy blisters blooming along her heels. Jack has two rabbits bound together with dry roots and he shoves them into the pack and slings his bow over his shoulder.
“How long have you been up?”
“A little while. I got food.”
She smiles sweetly and tries to stand up. “Ouch. Oh, I hurt everywhere. How come you’re okay and I’m not.”
“Practice.” He grins and jogs off, shimmying up a nearby tree and returning with the meat left from their cookout the night before. He tears her off a piece and stuffs the rest in his mouth. “You ready?”
“No, but let’s go.”
Lia winces at the first few steps but slowly finds her gait. She digs in the sack for her kitchen knife and carries it tightly at her side as they walk. Jack raises an eyebrow.
“You know how to use that thing?”
“Yes,” she says confidently. “If we get attacked by potatoes.”
“The woods are crawling with them.”
“I’ll protect you.”
“Here,” says Jack, holding her wrist and repositioning the blade in her hand. “Hold it like this. If something comes at you, swing up and forward. Aim for the soft parts.” He guides her arm slowly, letting her get a feel for it.
“I’m not going to ask how you know all this.” She waves the knife daintily up through the air and Jack chuckles. “Stop laughing.”
“I think, if anything happens, you should probably just hide behind me.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’m good at hiding.”
They ramble on gently for a time, hopping streams and treading up and down the rolling terrain, talking casually and letting the morning sun warm their tired skin as the dense forest recedes behind them. He doesn’t know where they fit on the scale of the little map they carry, but he’s sure they’ve a very long ways to go yet, and he feels vulnerable and exposed without the thick canopy to shield them. His paranoia deepens as they progress farther into the open territory, and he keeps constant vigil over his right shoulder and slides the knife out of its sheath.
“Did you see something?”
“No,” he says, “nothing. Just keep an eye out.”
The day cycles on—high midday sun burns off the fogbank and brightens the landscape with deep vibrant greens and a sky of cerulean blue. They traipse across a vast rolling field, surrounded by waist high grass billowing in the breeze, polkadotted with spright yellow butter cups and golden violets. The whole world looks to be in bloom and they gawk around, breathing it all in.
A plump brown snake whips through the grass at Lia’s feet and she clutches onto Jack and squeals.
“Snake.”
Jack tilts his head back and laughs.
“It’s not funny,” she says, crossing her eyes at him.
“It’s kind of funny.”
“It’s not.”
“He’s not the kind with poison. He can’t hurt you.”
“Well, I didn’t know that.” She lets go of his arm and purses her lips.
“You don’t like being laughed at, do you?” She says nothing, but gives him a look that clearly says no. “Oh, I see. Of course, you have no trouble laughing at me, though.”
“When did I laugh at you?”
“You used laughed at me all the time.”
“And your feelings are still hurt after all these years?” She gives him a smug little grin.
“Sorry,” he says. “If you see another snake, just kill it with your knife moves.”
“I’m not talking to you anymore.”
“There’s no one else to talk to.”
She shoots him a sideways glare, the softness underneath betraying her, then she looks off to the west, catching thin glimpses of the faraway ocean from time to time.
“Are we going the right way?”
“I think so,” says Jack. “Still mad?”
She laughs, her gold-flecked brown eyes twinkling in the sun. “Of course. I’m furious.”
Speckled monarchs flutter capriciously across the field, wobbling from one wildflower to another like drunken fairies. A slick little waterway rushes through the cleft below and Jack sets his sights on it.
“We should hike up a ways and cross over, like before,” says Jack. “When we get to the stream lets—”
His heel catches a loose rock and he flails backwards, landing with a hard thud, and slides down the gravelly slope on his rear, bouncing over boulders and ricocheting off the dry shrubs. Pulling his bow around front of him, he reaches out with a free hand and tries to gain purchase and fails. He skitters all the way to the bottom and finally scrapes to a stop.
He stands up and dusts off, then grabs his aching rear end and stiff-legs around in a circle. She’s still halfway up the incline but he can already hear her laughing. He looks up and sees her doubling over, barely able to climb down herself as the hilarity has nearly crippled her.
“Okay,” she calls, “that was pretty good.”
She leans back and sort of crab walks the rest of the way down, snatching up the blade that he dropped in his fall, laughing the entire way. Jack stands sober-faced and watches her antics. When she reaches the bottom, she stumbles around and ogles at him.
“Are you okay?” she asks finally.
“I’ll get by… Are you?”
“Mmm. Better now. Okay, so what were you saying before you—” She loses it all over again before she can even get the words out.
Jack eyes a little bent stick nestled in the grass and he steps coyly toward it. He raises it up a bit with his foot and hooks the end of the bow around it. “I said, I think we should walk down this stream a ways and—Snake! Snake!” he cries, and flings the curvy stick out of the grass toward Lia. She squeals again and falls backwards onto her rump.
“Don’t do that,” she scolds, pulling herself to her feet and marching straight up to him. “That was mean.” She slaps his shoulder as hard as she can. He just smiles at her and she hits him again, realizing awkwardly that he is not the slight little boy she used to pick on so mercilessly. She pokes around on his chest and stomach with a funny, quizzical expression, then lifts her face to meet his gaze and they stand toe-to-toe and admire each other in warm silence.
“Don’t panic.”
“What?” she giggles.
“Turn around slowly and don’t run.”
She does so, and her smile drops clean away. A lean and rangy mountain lion springs down from a rock ledge and stalks toward them, honing on them with desperate eyes. The lion’s shoulders are hunched up and the fine hairs on its neck and back bristle straight up as it sets one paw deliberately in front of the other, advancing steadily.
Lia shrinks back and clings to Jack.
“Give me the pack,” he whispers.
She hands it around from behind and he fetches out the two rabbits he stowed and throws them out as an offering. The lion yawns its mouth wide and hisses, shiny fangs glistening. It shirks back, then clips forward at an angle and hisses again, shunning the dead rabbits for a larger feeding of live prey.
Jack shouts and hollers, trying to startle it into retreating, but it continues to advance, hunting them with feline grace. He sneaks a hand up and grabs an arrow and aligns it across his bowstring and takes aim. Lia’s trembling hands clutch onto the back of his shirt and she whimpers as the lion circles around, fixating on her specifically. Jack counters and the lion pounces.
He lets his arrow off and it sticks lamely in the left haunch, doing little to slow its headlong charge toward Lia. Its powerful forepaw slashes across his chest, tearing open three fresh red stripes, and he tumbles to the ground. Lia screams and swivels to run and the immense cat crashes into her and sinks its fangs into the soft meat of her shoulder and drags her roughly to the ground. She shrieks in terror. It sets its full weight on her thin body and stretches its jaws wide and fierce and rears back to tear into the back of her neck and dislodge her vertebrae.
Jack scrambles forward, pulling his knife, and lunges onto the back of the attacking lion, sliding his arm around, underneath its foreleg, and plunges the blade in all the way to the hilt and twists sharply. The lion jerks violently and belts out a high warbly yelp and rolls off of Lia. Its paws twitch in the air and its jaw hinges open and shut, slower and slower each time until it is still and dead.
Lia lies curled in ball, struggling to breathe through her hitching, ragged sobs, and Jack crawls to her.
“It’s over,” he says. “It’s all over. Let me see your shoulder.”
She sits up and hugs him tightly. “Jack, your chest.”
“I know. Let me see your shoulder.”
She leans away and pulls back her torn nightgown. Her shoulder is so covered with blood that Jack can’t make anything out of it. He fishes the waterskin out of their pack and douses it with cool water. There are two nasty puncture wounds on her upper back, streaming blood, and a third on the front of her dainty shoulder, and as soon as he rinses them out, the little divots fill back up with thick warm crimson.
“Can you move it?” he asks. She rotates her arm around in a circle and nods meekly. “Okay. You’re going to be okay.”
They sit for a moment, catching their breath in a quiet daze, then Jack stands and starts to pull everything back together. He dusts off the discarded rabbits and packs them away then takes up his bow and tests it a couple times. Before long, Lia is on her feet helping him drag the dead lion to a rocky niche and cover it.
“So much for my knife moves,” she says, plucking the weapon from the grass.
They shamble down to the edge of the water and plunge in, letting the shallow current pull them downstream. It winds them back toward the coast. They float along the deeper parts and slog through the rest on foot. They exit the water before it curls around toward a steep cascading drop-off, then lie on the bank wringing out their drenched clothing. Lia tears some strips off the bottom of her gown and does her best to patch Jack and herself, and the rags soak through immediately. They pull themselves up, looking bloody and torn, and continue moving south.
The looming tree line looks like salvation and Jack is happy to leave this little parcel of open country behind. The rest of the day is long and tense. There are no more jokes—only quiet determination to find a place to hold up for the night before they both collapse.
The trail they’ve hunted since morning dissipates, and toward evening the search brigade loses track over the windblown hills.
At dawn they separate and branch out in a widening arc from the last known traces. Cirune and his men ride along the ridgeline and sniff out old mountain trails, while Feiyan and the rest head south in the general direction of their travels, hoping to catch up to them or cut them off.
The sun has barely crested the mountaintops before Feiyan’s team comes upon tumbled down rocks and bloody ground. The wolfmongrels at their side bay hysterically.
“Over here,” he calls.
He rides east and lets the horse clop its way down into the gulch and they follow the scent around in loops. The riders dismount and search the area on foot, and soon they strike upon a stiffening lion carcass tucked away beneath a cool ledge.
Jarrik lifts the dead creature’s paw and holds it up for the others to see.
“Blood,” he says, nodding at the dried crimson coating the lion’s sharp claws, with more smeared on its snout and whiskers. “They’re injured.”
They mount up and cross the gushing waterway, diverging on the opposite bank to search upstream and down. In due course the mongrels fix on their scent again. The track is clear and strong and when they reach the ridge bordering the gulch they spark a quick fire, tossing on fistfuls of green grass and fanning out the thick white smoke to call back the other horsemen and hasten their pursuit.
Jack consults the map. Never in his life has he seen one so precise, just the Temple’s crudely drawn maps showing only rough approximations, and the farther they press into the south country the more he realizes that every single crooked line and angle represents something in the natural terrain. He surveys a hooked fissure extending into the ocean and the range of mountains way off to the east.
“I think we’re here,” he says finally.
“How do you know?” Lia asks, nibbling on a scrap of tough rabbit meat.
“I think this mountain is that mountain,” he says, pointing to the corresponding subjects. “And look up ahead… it looks like this spot right here.”
Lia nods and her face darkens. It looks like they’ve barely moved at all, the little star at the bottom is so hopelessly far away. She takes stock of their situation and starts to feel uneasy—as rended as they are thus far she can’t imagine what will be left of them if they ever reach their destination.
They plod along, Lia in her ragged nightgown, shredded at the shoulder, high leather boots too big for her dainty feet, and Jack in his thin shirt with the front ripped away and a coarsely assembled bandage strapped across his chest, dappled with blood.
The wind whips around them, seeming to come from all directions at once, blowing strands of Lia’s hair in her face and fluttering their tattered clothing. They work their way up the side of a low, grassy berg and Jack checks over his shoulder, scanning the northern horizon. Puffs of white smoke rise skyward and disperse in the gathering tumult.
“They’re coming,” he says, “and they’re close.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I’m not sure, yet. For now, let’s keep moving.”
“I’m not going back there,” she says, giving him a hard look that seeks to convey a deeper meaning.
“I know.”
Jack decided before they even set out that he would not be taken alive. He looks in her eyes, and without a solitary word spoken the makings of a clear pact are established.
They force their worn bodies ahead, traversing the highland with a limping trot, each step sending jolts of pain up their sore legs. Jack counts out his arrows and starts to figure on which place to make their stand. Nothing around looks to give them even the remotest of advantages. All he can think to do is run, and they run with all their might.
As they near the edge of the high prominence, a wisp of smoke rises before them and Jack’s heart clenches, fearful at once that they’ve been boxed in from all sides.
Lia sees it too and grabs onto him. “We’re trapped.”
He walks forward cautiously. “Let’s sneak up and take a look.”
They sink to the ground and shimmy through the weeds, then sit with their backs propped flat against a boulder that hangs above the drop-off. Broad lowland stretches out below, bordered all around by steepening foothills. Settled in the midst of another decayed villa is the bonfire of a roaming tribe.
“Who are they?”
Jack shakes his head. The dale is checkered with rectangles of twisted wreckage and cracked, slumping buildings. On the coastal side the tribe has erected a makeshift settlement, using one of the last fully standing walls as a rampart for their lean-to. Jack spots several dozen at first glance, some sheltering themselves under the long thatched canopy they’ve constructed, while others shift around the fire and shout inaudible calls to one another. They wear furs and skins of Neolithic disposition, their hair shaggy and dirt-coated, and a few of their children rollick naked and grubby around the unkempt boulevards.
Jack draws out their map and looks for any writings that denote the colony’s existence. Assuming they’re situated where he thinks they are, he sees no mention whatsoever.
“Wanderers, I think.”
“Maybe they can help us…”
He ponders this, watching their movements sharply. “I don’t know if they can help us, but we ought to at least warn them what’s coming.”
He takes an appraisal of the rocky outcropping they’re perched upon and calculates the gentlest way to reach the bottom. They run inland a stretch and trudge obliquely along the stone face of the descent, approaching the encampment from behind. Cowering behind spiny shrubs, they pick their way forward one station at a time, not wanting to reveal themselves.
The sight at close range gives them second thoughts. A row of spears with heads of chipped stone stands up against their lean-to, surrounded by a bevy of other sharpened objects. Pieces of honed metal lay scattered about, not the sort that have been fired and hammered, but looking more like wayward objects stropped against rocks or whatever else might thin their edges to a razor’s breadth. Several of the men have bows over their shoulders, with arrow tips coated in black pitch.
“Maybe we shouldn’t do this… maybe I was wrong.”
“We’re stuck,” he says matter-of-factly, “we don’t have a choice.” He hands her his bow, holding back only one small knife, so as to not seem a threat when he approaches. “Okay, wait here, and if anything happens, you run, understand? Run.”
Lia nods, her eyes wide.
Jack hops down the last few boulders and takes slow steps toward the tribe. He avoids the shadows and walks right out in the open with his hands at his sides, trying to look as unthreatening as possible. A concrete hulk rises out of the ground slantways with warped metal bars protruding like rusted weeds. He climbs up and treads the concourse, glancing back one last time at Lia, who watches him anxiously from the bushes. A couple of the tribesmen have already noticed him approach and they narrow on him skeptically as if they’re not quite sure he’s real.
“Hello,” he calls. “You’re in danger.” All heads swivel toward him. Jack holds his empty palms out flat, then points up to the ridge he and Lia just descended. They are murmuring quietly to each other with looks of confusion and Jack can’t make out their words. “Do you understand? Danger. You have to run,” he says, pointing emphatically toward the ridge.
The women set about corralling the children and hustling them under the lean-to, while the men continue to stare pensively and whisper to one another. One of them points at Jack and makes furtive comments to his mates and their expressions darken.
“Kine tah denok,” shouts an old woman.
Jack hitches back a step.
They draw their crude bows on him and pace forward brazenly. He holds his ground and tries to keep calm.
“Kine ton d’e’stranna sahl lah cherreth,” calls a stout man by the fire. He rises and takes up a hardwood pole with a curved metal blade strapped to the end, like some archaic sickle, and sweeps it through the air is if it needs priming. He wears fur around his waist and a necklace of bones drapes across his red-painted chest.
Jack figures him to be their leader. He stumbles backwards and tries to work out some sign to explain himself, pointing urgently to the ridge and waving his arms.
Lia cries out from the brambles, pitching back as two tribesmen rush toward her from the cover of a shelled-out building.
“Run!” Jack screams, and he launches himself off the concrete outcropping just as an arrow whizzes by his head. He lands with a thud, pumping his legs frantically, and the tribesmen take up their arsenal of spears and blades and give chase. Lia clambers down and manages only a couple long strides before they latch onto her. She kicks out, growling at them, and they seize her flailing legs and pull her to the ground. Jack barrels straight ahead with his knife drawn, sorely missing his bow and arrow. The men pin Lia down and hold a curved metal disk to her throat, scalloped with razor-sharp teeth.
“Nadannak,” they shout. “Nadannak!”
Jack skids to a halt and drops his knife, shrieking for them to stop. The men of the tribe engulf him and he feels many hands clasp onto his body and drag him back toward the lean-to.
“Liiaaa!” he yells, and his brain electrifies with panic when she does not respond.
The tribesmen stop suddenly and look curiously toward the ridge. The wind ripples around them, snapping their hides and rags about, and when it swoops in at just the right angle they can hear the nearby baying of wolfmongrels and the increasing rumble of pounding hooves.
Feiyan and his two searchers thunder across the highland with the mongrels sprinting lithely alongside them. They sent the call and rode ahead, allowing for the other detachments to find the trail and catch up on their own, after Feiyan and his crew have cinched the hunt.
The wolfmongrels dart straightaway for an angled shelf and the horsemen follow suit, clicking briskly down into the valley. They see the smoke and reckon it belongs to the runaways—there is no one else in sight. Tight smiles play at their lips as they close in on their target. They ride single file, with Feiyan in the lead, and as they reach the halfway point of their descent a flaming arrow screams out of the ruins and lodges into the left haunch of the forward steed. It bucks wildly and throws Feiyan to the ground, then slams into the wall of the escarpment as the flames scorch its hide. In a mad frenzy it loses its footing and plunges down the rocky drop-off and breaks itself to pieces.
The rearward horses stomp crazily down the ledge as more arrows fly and the riders fight to hang on. Feiyan draws his bow, searching for the source of the attacks, and sees only grown-over storefronts and piles of rubbish. He hunkers down behind a bank of foliage and waits for another flurry to come, and soon it does. A fiery arrow flies into the bristly shrub he hides behind and it lights up quick and furious, drawing him into the open. He doubles over and makes a crouching sprint for the cover of the ruins.
Jarrik struggles to regain control. He snaps the reins and his horse rears back on its hind legs then blasts forward, riding toward the source of the flaming volleys.
Cullen, the last member of their team, bolts down the ramp and gallops toward the commotion. A slick shot pierces his horse through the side of the head and they both keel to the ground, the rider’s leg pinned under the threshing hulk of his mount. He works himself free and scrambles along the ground, seeking refuge behind a nearby structure with his machete drawn. Two tribesmen emerge from the shallow hidden nooks and try to collar him. He swipes out with the blade, slicing one of them across the torso just as the other spears him through. He gurgles blood and cants over, dead before he touches the ground. One of the mongrels dives forward and clamps down on the spear-carrier’s leg, gnawing and thrashing its head. They plunge the spear into its neck and cast it away.
Jarrik guides his horse through a cluttered alleyway and comes up behind the tribe’s nest. Several archers slink behind the stone wall, with another holding a torch around to light up the pitch before they fire. Jarrik shoots one of them at distance then canters back for cover. The tribesmen surge forward in a rush, levying a hail of arrowfire at Jarrik and his mount. He lobs off a couple more shots but they overtake him in an instant, skewering him through the neck. Melted tar runs down his chest and the flames encase his head. He slumps over and his horse sets off, bucking and threshing as its hide lights up with bright, demonic fire. Horse and rider go caterwauling across the ruins, smoldering and screaming, both spiked through with a dozen burning quills, looking like some bleak harbinger of doomsday come to warn of the apocalypse several centuries too late.
Feiyan wanders through the side streets, holding fast to the rubble, and when he reaches a forked intersection he realizes despairingly that he is surrounded. A menagerie of filthy tribesmen with ropy, knotted hair marches toward him from all directions, their spears thrust out, their eyes steeped in icy hatred and their sadistic grins reeking of utter and profound bloodlust.
Jack and Lia fight nasty flashbacks as they huddle in the crawlspace with their ankles and wrists bound up, spears leveled on them starkly. The women and children of the tribe sit across the dim space, holding on to each other, regarding the young trespassers with suspicion. The riot outside ceases. Footsteps and scraping sounds approach the holdout. Jack doesn’t know whether to feel relief or terror when it is the tribe’s leader that appears at the misshapen doorway, and not the Nezra.
“E’stranna maan,” he says.
Jack is lifted to his feet and carried into the alleyway. The tribesmen stand in a semicircle around Feiyan, several others keep him pinned to the ground with his arms and legs drawn out. They march Jack straight to his prone, struggling form.
“Jack…” he moans. “What’s happening?”
Jack says nothing.
“Tah eh kine tondessa?” the leader asks, his voice a throaty growl. “Kine?” he repeats, and gestures back and forth between Jack and Feiyan.
The tribesmen watch Jack expectantly. He is not certain what they want from him, but he gets the notion that he’d better do something quick. He lowers his head and works his jaw around for a moment, then lifts his face and spits on Feiyan. This elicits a reaction and the men chatter vigorously in their unknown tongue.
“Enah kine? Mah sikelern des maan, des e’stranna?” The leader hovers the spear over Feiyan’s head then nods to Jack’s captors and they release him. “Tah sikelern e’stranna…”
“Jack? Jack, what is this?” Feiyan croaks.
“Sikelern.” The leader places the spear in Jack’s hands.
“I think he wants me to kill you, Feiyan.”
“He’s crazy, Jack. Don’t do this.”
Feiyan pleads with such pathetic helplessness that Jack ruminates briefly on the nobility of killing an unarmed man held to the ground—and then he thinks on Lia, and his lost family, and the home that he will never see again, and he raises the spear above his head and plunges it down into the center of Feiyan’s chest. Everyone steps back and watches the warrior quake on the ground, the spear shaft trembling in the air as he spasms. When he is still and dead they rush forward and kick his corpse and run him through with a broad assortment of sharp instruments.
“Tonaa. D’estranna sahl lah cherreth.” He walks to the crawlspace and takes the hand of a little boy and leads him to Jack. “Lah cherreth.”
His words are unknown but the meaning comes clear in an instant—Men like these stole children from us. He bows his head and raises his palms, and without thinking Jack returns the gesture. Two men come forward and present him with his bow and knife, and soon they all crowd around him, chattering and touching him.
“Sajiress,” the leader says, gesturing to himself.
“Sajiress?”
“Eyah.”
Lia rushes from the underground hideout and bursts through the circled tribe and throws her arms around Jack’s neck. “What happened?”
“I’m not really sure, but I don’t think they want to kill us anymore.”
Droplets of cool mist speckle Cirune’s face, precursors of a more wicked storm rambling across the horizon. The others have ridden ahead, Halis figures, and he bristles at the loss of finding the boy himself. Still, if all goes without a hitch, they should have the dead boy and the live girl back at the Temple by nightfall.
The damp air sharpens the scent and the mongrels run in a tight, undeviating line toward a tendril of rising smoke. Cirune gives his horse a swift heel kick and spurs it to a full gallop across the high ground, then jerks the reins and they trot along the ridge toward the sloping concourse angling into the valley.
It smells of burnt meat.
They click down the uneven ramp past the scorched shrubbery, still hissing and steaming in the light drizzle. The horses neigh and become hesitant and their riders urge them forward. Cirune glances uneasily at the remains of the old coastal town and the eerie stillness therein. Through jagged doorways and broken windows they scour for any sign of movement, and the only activity they see is the circling of gulls on the far side of the confined valley, diving and squawking, devouring something.
Cirune grasps his blade and steers his horse around standing piles of old junk and concrete, heading toward the bonfire hidden around the next wall. Their formation tightens and they clip forward steadily, the horses chuffing and dipping their heads as they approach. Cirune rounds the corner and draws up on the reins.
Three men hang upside-down from the eave of the lean-to, lashed at their ankles, swaying gently in the pulsing wind, and their limp, dangling fingertips trace curvatures on the ground as they rock back and forth. One is burned to a husk and his melted skin sloughs off onto the ground, and the others are so coated with gore they cannot tell one from another. Only their scant remaining attire shows them to be members of the brigade. The hungry mongrels swarm them and begin tearing chunks of meat off their forearms and faces.
Cirune turns to his back and is met with cold, trance-like eyes as the rider behind him slumps over and falls off his horse, an arrow sticking pertly out of the base of his skull, black liquid boiling down the nape of his neck.
“Get out of the valley!” he shouts, and he charges for the inclination that will lead him back to high ground. Halis and Gallat scatter wild, bearing down on their fitful steeds and galloping past the ruins at breakneck speed.
The first slew of arrows flies quick and silent from the darkened interiors and Gallat is struck and thrown to the ground. His horse lights off in a hurry, racing headlong back toward its native pastures. Gallat rolls on the ground to tamp out the burning arrows, then snaps off the molten shafts and flings them aside and shambles down a deserted side street for cover.
Halis rears back and reverses direction, following Cirune as he cuts across the center of the valley. Up ahead, a small pack of tribesmen crosses the thoroughfare and disappears into the ruins.
Halis angles away, taking a circuitous route in an attempt to come around behind the tribe, and Cirune sets off to regain the straying brood of wolfmongrels.
Jack watches in despair as Gallat’s horse sprints toward the foothills. He had warned them away from shooting the horses because he had hoped to collar one and ride it out of this place. He crouches with the tribe’s archers on the second story of a ragged heap. The ceiling caved in long ago, taking most of the floor with it, and they cling to a thin ledge that runs the inside perimeter, with a twisted mess of scrap metal spiking up from below.
Jack and a few others make a slow, heedful climb to ground level and steal out onto the mulched-over street. The way is clear, but the barking of the mongrels fast approaches. Their little unit disperses, fanning out through the narrow channels that run between the dilapidated buildings. Jack partners with a wily-looking troglodyte with matted, filthy hair and they proceed down a slender alleyway with their bows grazing from side to side.
Halis rides around a corner just ahead and Jack lets off a shot. The arrow sticks into a tangle of ivy and Halis spurs forward and disappears.
“En’ota carissa,” the primitive whispers, and motions Jack to follow him through a jangled, rusty framework that leads to the next side street. One of the mongrels fixes on Jack’s scent and scrambles in after him, bolting under the collapsed beams and zeroing in. He wheels around and raises his bow just as the creature is diving for him. It locks onto his arm and sends his bow clattering to the ground, then commences shaking its mangy head and rending the flesh on his forearm. His partner tries to set his aim, but can’t get a clean shot without the risk of hitting Jack. He smashes his fist down on the mongrel’s head and it releases Jack and goes for him instead, snapping at his hands with dripping canines. Jack slides out his knife and stabs it in the throat and finally it relents.
“You okay?”
“Eyah. Oh-kay,” he replies, just before an arrow thunks into his eye socket. Halis.
Jack nosedives under the metal beams and shimmies back the way he came, dragging his bow behind him, and when he reaches the alleyway he speeds away as fast as his legs will carry him and cuts left at the next corner. Cirune sits atop his horse and looks off down the length of the avenue. Jack creeps along the rutted contours of an old shopfront and trains his bow and fires. The arrow chocks into the meat of Cirune’s thigh and he startles on his lead, sending his horse skittering off to the side.
Jack ducks back and takes cover. Cries and screams burst from the opposite side of the valley and he breaks for them, his arm dripping a crimson trail. He meets up with several tribesmen and they race around the bend just as the remaining mongrels finish rousting the women and children from their hiding place under the wreckage. They lunge for Lia, and the boys and women crowd around her protectively and strike out at the mongrels with bloody fists. The rain quickens its pace and turns the scene into muddy, writhing confusion. Jack pushes his way through the horde and jabs at the mongrels with his knife blade. Two others creep around behind and spear them through and they yowl and shudder and die in the crimson mud.
The tribesmen usher the women and children into their hideout, then form a circle with their backs to one another, facing out. All around them nothing moves, only the steady patter of rainfall. The circle expands as they trod outward, searching.
Away past a distant intersection Halis and Cirune ride by in a flash, pierced and bloodied, but alive and on the move. Jack and the others pursue them but they recede too quickly to ever catch up on foot. After a vigorous sprint they simply stop and watch them go.
The rain washes away the blood from his forearm and Jack inspects the cluster of frayed punctures left by the wolfmongrels. He tightens his hand to a fist several times then holds the arm up against his chest.
They turn and start to limp back. Gallat, wounded and left to fend for himself, jumps from a rock wall and tears off after Halis and Cirune. This last one seems more an annoyance than a threat and they grudgingly round him off and dispatch him coldly, then drag his carcass back to be strung up with the rest.