By mid-afternoon, Kyrtian knew his men were looking for a place to stop and make camp for the night. Already there was a change in the quality of light under these trees, and his nerves were just a trifle on edge. He didn't know why, just that there was something ... odd....
Noet held up a hand, and the entire cavalcade stopped. Now Kyrtian knew what had him on edge—the absolute absence of any sound other than the dripping of water. Even the crows were gone.
"I don't like this," Noet said, in a low voice, but one that carried easily in the silence. "The horses and mules haven't noticed anything, but—"
"But maybe that's the point, if this is a hunter," Resso replied. "If it works by ambush and stealth."
"Should we turn back?" Kyrtian asked.
"Yes—but slowly and carefully. Just turn your horses and mules in place, people. Shalvan and I will become rear-guard.
We'll stop back at that stream we crossed, and try following it for a while."
"With any luck, it'll lead us to the caves anyway," Hobie opined.
One by one, they turned their horses and drew the mules behind them, the rearmost first. Shalvan and Noet already had their heavy bows out with arrows nocked to the strings. And as for Kyrtian—
His fingers tingled with power. At any moment, he could, and would, launch a levin-bolt into whatever might emerge.
"It's out there, all right," Shalvan said grimly, as Noet turned his horse and mule. "It's up the trail—off to one side, in the bushes. Every so often the bush shakes, and from the movement, I'd say that it's about the size of a haywain. It's not moving much, though. I don't know if that's because it's not certain of us, or if it's territorial."
He turned his horse as Noet stood guard and they moved at the same leisurely pace they'd maintained all along, back up the way they had come. The back of Kyrtian's neck prickled. What would—whatever it was—think of its prey moving away from it?
"Uh-oh—" That was Resso, now in the lead, and the hair on Kyrtian's head literally stood straight up. Pacing deliberately towards them was—not one—an entire herd of alicorns. Their red eyes flashed, and the black stallion in the lead tossed his head with its wicked, slightly curved, spiral horn.
"Don't move," Halean said in a strangled voice.
Kyrtian had no intention of moving. One alicorn was dangerous; what was a herd? They were trapped, between a very visible menace an invisible one.
The alicorn stallion snorted and moved towards them. Kyrtian wondered what was going on in those narrow heads. Should he fling a levin-bolt at them? But if he did, what would the thing behind them do? And wouldn't their horses spook if he did? None of them were war-trained—
None of them are war-trained. Mules will run until there's no pursuit. The mules are tethered to the horses—and vice versa.
"Give your horses free rein, and hang on," Kyrtian ordered, feeling that sense of presence and danger at his back increasing, just a little. "And duck your heads on the count of three." The alicorn-stallion pawed the ground and bared its fangs. "One. Two. Three!"
On the count of three, Kyrtian fired a kind of levin-bolt— straight up over their heads. It exploded in a blinding flash and a violent boom that actually shattered the nearby limbs of trees. The horses, as Kyrtian had hoped, bolted—and so did the alicorns.
The horses shot forward in the direction they had been facing, along the game trail. The alicorns, foe and prey forgotten, scattered in all directions, some off into the woods to either side of the trail, some turning and fleeing, and three, following the stallion, charging head-down towards them. At the last moment, the alicorns veered a little to the left, and the hysterical horses to the right.
Kyrtian hung onto his mount with every bit of strength that arms and legs possessed, ducking low along its neck to keep from being knocked out of his saddle by low-hanging boughs. Hooves thundered all around him; even if the horses weren't sticking to the game-trail, they were at least staying together. Behind him he heard a roar, and the battle-scream of an al-icorn, but whatever was going on would have to remain a mystery.
His heart raced, his hands and legs ached, and he clenched his teeth; he couldn't see what was happening or where they were going. His mount's mane lashed his face until his eyes watered.
Then, sooner than he'd thought, he felt the horse beginning to slow, felt a weight tugging at the lead-rein fastened to the saddle. The horse didn't like it; he tried to surge forward. The mule wasn't having any.
Gradually, the mule won. The headlong gallop slowed to a canter, a trot, and finally, the horse's sides heaving and sweat pouring from his neck and shoulders, a walk. Kyrtian took up the slack in the reins and brought his mount to a stop, and looked around.
The rain had slackened again, and through the mizzle, he counted his men scattered among the trees and quickly came up with the right number of riders and pack mules.
"Ancestors!" he breathed, in profoundest relief. The men said nothing; they simply guided their weary beasts back towards him until once again they formed a coherent group.
"Everyone all right?" he asked, as their horses stood with heads hanging, and flanks a-foam with sweat. Only the mules looked unperturbed.
"I've been worse," replied Noet laconically. "Gonna kill whoever designed this saddle with a pommel right where it don't belong, though."
Noet did look a little pale, and in a certain amount of pain. Kyrtian winced, and hastily changed the subject. "Does anyone know where we are?"
"We bolted in the general direction of where we wanted to go," reported Shalvan. "So the stream should still be that way—" he pointed with his chin, rather than his hand. "We might as well get on with it, the horses aren't going to be the better for standing in the cold and rain, and they're going to need water after this."
Once again they formed up, but this time not in single file since they weren't following a trail; Halean rode on the right flank and Resso on the left. And, not too much later, they came to the stream, much to everyone's relief.
There wasn't much time before nightfall, and with the overcast skies and the forest all around, darkness would come soon. They quickly made camp, with Kyrtian tending to the fire-making chores. They pitched their three tents in a triangle, with the fire in the center. Once the tents were pitched and Resso took up the cooking, the rest gathered more firewood while Kyrtian ran a circle of mage-lights around the tents to stand between them and whatever was in the woods or across the stream. As firewood was brought in, he stacked it near enough to the fire that it stood a decent chance of drying out some before it was used.
The last thing he did was to run a string hung with small bells around the trunks of trees beyond the glow of the magelight at about ankle-height. Anything that brushed against that string would set the bells jingling.
"Do you think we need to worry about something coming in from above?" he asked Noet, with a frown of concern.
Noet glanced up. "Not through branches that thick," he replied. "I wouldn't think, anyway."
Darkness, as Kyrtian had anticipated, came quickly. They tethered the horses—and tethered the mules to the horses— within the circle of magelight. The rain actually stopped once darkness fell, and as they gathered around their fire, Kyrtian felt their mutual fear of what lurked outside that magic circle drawing them all together despite rank and race.