His shout became a pained grunt when Lakaan caught hold of his wrist, arresting his plummet. Lakaan heaved back, flinging him toward the center of the bridge. The big man gathered himself, hauled Leitos to his feet, dragged him along to the far end of the bridge, and then pushed Leitos forward with a warning that iced Leitos’s blood. “They’re coming!”
His near-plummet forgotten in the face of greater danger, Leitos sprinted away. Lakaan came after, bellowing, “Run faster!”
Past the bridge, the trail fell in a steep decline, a wide ledge cut into the face of a vertical cliff. Leitos spun back when Lakaan’s cries changed.
The big man had stopped and held a crude dagger, half as long as Zera’s sword, angled across his chest. His opposite arm was outstretched, his hand raised like a shield. A creature stalked down the trail, while another clung to the cliff above Lakaan. Leitos had never seen such beasts, but he knew them for what they were by stories his grandfather had told. Wolves.
Not wolves, Leitos told himself, but Alon’mahk’lar. His next thought was for Zera. Had they gotten past her, or had they-
“No,” he prayed aloud. “Please, not that.”
The wolves’ eyes reflected back the moonlight in malignant, shifting hues-first a murky yellow, then muddy crimson, then a swirling dull silver. Leitos had never seen an Alon’mahk’lar with eyes that changed color, but that did not mean they were not Sons of the Fallen.
They closed in, muscles bunching. Dark sable bristles covered the smaller of the two creatures, which crawled spiderlike along the cliff face. It held to the rock using not paws but long-fingered hands tipped with wicked talons. The larger wolf, standing chest-high to Lakaan, wore a tawny pelt. It bared its glimmering white teeth, each matching the size of the knife Leitos clutched in his hand.
“Give over the boy,” the tawny beast said, its voice a guttural rasp. Leitos nearly screamed upon hearing it speak. All that stopped him was the terrible knowledge that he knew that voice.
“Take him!” Lakaan yelled, abruptly spinning on his heel and running headlong at Leitos. The trail was too narrow to avoid getting trampled. Leitos backpedaled, shouting for Lakaan to stop, but the big man gained speed with every step.
The wolves sprang. In their greed for the kill, they slammed into each other and fell to the trail in a snarling tangle. The darker one yelped and bounded away. Holding up one bloodied leg, it flattened its ears, growling low in its throat. The second wolf darted after Lakaan.
Leitos fled before a screeching Lakaan and the Alon’mahk’lar wolf. The short chase ended when the beast crashed into Lakaan. He screamed, thrashing the dagger over his shoulder. The wolf avoided the blade, and drove Lakaan to his knees.
Leitos ran back. As the gap narrowed between him and the struggling foes, the wolf reared its head back and howled. Froth flew from its mouth, slathering Lakaan’s face. Driven into a frenzy, Lakaan fought to get free, but the wolf’s freakishly human fingers clenched, sinking talons deep into his back and shoulders.
Leitos raised his knife, loosing his own cry. The wolf’s howl cut off and, staring at Leitos, it grinned. In that moment, its shifting eyes burned with red glee. Powerful jaws closed on Lakaan’s neck, stilling his fearful wails. Wrenching its head to the side, the wolf ripped the life from Lakaan, just as Leitos came close enough to use his knife. Hot blood sprayed over his cheeks and brow. Leitos swung the blade, raking sharp steel across the wolf’s muzzle. Reversing his swing, Leitos slashed again, and the wolf released Lakaan’s corpse to scramble backward. The tip of the blade just skimmed one of its eyes, stealing away that dread crimson light.
With no thought to skill, Leitos waded in, hacking and slashing. His feet slid in Lakaan’s blood, and he threw out a hand to catch himself. The needlelike spines of the wolf’s pelt punctured his palm, and Leitos jerked back. In a last, wild strike, he buried his blade in the creature’s neck. The wolf flung itself away in a twisting leap, taking Leitos’s weapon with it, and ran back the way it had come. Its darker companion had already vanished.
Gasping, Leitos searched the darkness for any sign of Zera, but found none. He called her name, but the only answer was the rumble of water deep in the gorge. A heartbeat later, the wolves howled in the distance. He waited a moment more, indecisive, then turned and ran. He feared for Zera’s safety, but if anything, it was the wolves that should be afraid. Whether she got to them before they came after him, was another matter. His flying feet barely touched the ground as he sprinted away. All became a blur. He fell many times, but the tumbles meant nothing, only getting away did.
He did not halt until his booted feet splashed into icy water. That cold bath cleared his head. Gulping air, he gazed about at the lightening day, unable to believe that the wolves had not given chase. I escaped, he thought, relieved, if not a little bewildered.
The land had changed during his flight. The ankle-deep stream flowed broad and clear through a canyon braced on either side by low hills carpeted in tall, summer-yellowed grass. A few trees dotted the hills. Not scrubby thorn bushes, but real trees. Most towered two and three times his height, and some taller still. The air, which had burned his lungs for so long, smelled fresh and was free of the sulfurous haze. Hills waited ahead, no telltale veins of molten rock marring their flanks.
He faced east and scanned the Mountains of Fire, standing between him and the rising sun. They ascended stark and black, close enough to be imposing, but far enough to give him a sense of relief at having escaped them. For the moment, he avoided thinking on Lakaan’s death and Zera’s absence, and focused instead on taking advantage of the stream, and the apparent tranquility of the moment. After that, he had to get farther from the mountains, and all that hunted within them.
After drinking his fill of the sweetest water he had ever tasted, he made his way to the far side of the stream, filled his waterskin, and reorganized his pack into a firmer bundle. While he worked, the bushes along the stream’s bank came alive with songbirds harvesting a wealth of dark, purple-black berries.
If those are good enough for birds, they are good enough for me. He plucked one, squeezed a drop of juice onto the tip of his tongue. Sweetness flooded his mouth. Then he was dumping the berries into his mouth by the handful, indifferent to the small thorns that guarded the precious fruit. The sticky purple juice stained his hands, lips, and chin.
Full to bursting, he went back to the stream and washed away most of the stains, then drank again. After another search of the eastern bank, it was with great reluctance that Leitos adjusted the straps of his pack, and set out in the opposite direction. He did not know how far he had to go, but he was beyond the Mountains of Fire, and that meant he was closer to the Crown of the Setting Sun and the Brothers of the Crimson Shield. Zera was somewhere behind him. In the deepest reaches of his heart and soul he knew she would be coming. She had told him to stay on the trail and she would find him, and he believed her.
Between one step and the next, the sun edged above the mountains, casting shafts of golden radiance upon the world. Leitos stopped in his tracks. Without question, the land through which he now trod was arid, but nothing like the waterless desert wastelands he knew. Birds sang as if in praise to the coming day, insects whirred in dense thickets, and there, just at the edge of a field, he saw a pair of antlered animals he knew as deer from his grandfather. They saw him and bounded away in graceful leaps, their short bushy tails waving. He felt awake and truly alive for the first time in his life, like all he had experienced before was just a nightmare.