No, he instructed. Not in the village. Not yet. Your time for that will come. There will be enough to sate even you in the future. But not yet.
But though the creature heard and responded, still it stirred restlessly. Rannick felt his restraint tested, though in anxiety rather than defiance.
He had a fleeting image of fleeing prey.
Fleeing!
He jolted into wakefulness. As he had felt Farnor’s puny challenge, so Farnor had felt the weight of his awesome response.
And he was running!
Rannick and the creature became as one.
Go! Rannick hissed into the lusting hunter. Go, hunt him down. He is yours. Let the whole valley be awak-ened to the ringing of his screams echoing from the peaks!
Chapter 37
Blind fear filled Farnor. The power pervading the eerie presence of both Rannick and the creature was formi-dable. There were strange stirrings in him, but nothing, he knew, could oppose what was now levied against him. He was a sapling in the path of an avalanche that could sweep away an entire forest.
Just as Nilsson’s cruel fighting expertise had casu-ally destroyed his shield of anger and hatred to leave him exposed, shivering and helpless against the icy blasts of reality, so now did Rannick’s power.
All his intentions of watching the castle and pa-tiently waiting for the time when he would come upon Rannick alone vanished before the weight of the ancient malevolence that was turning towards him.
He was dimly aware of the voices again, urgent this time, and fear-laden.
‘Flee, mover, flee!’
But he needed no such urging. Almost without real-izing what he was doing, he was mounting his horse and kicking it forward. Instinctively it turned towards the village.
‘No’ said the voices inside him.
They coincided with his own raucous shout, ‘No!’ The valley was Rannick’s now; he could not go that way. He yanked the reins violently. Unused to such treat-ment, the horse reared and nearly unseated him, but desperation kept him in the saddle. Then the horse leapt forward. Farnor grabbed at its mane to keep his balance, then, as a low branch skimmed through his hair, he ducked and wrapped his arms about the horse’s neck. As the horse gathered speed, he remained in this position.
All around him – indeed, almost part of him – the presence of Rannick and the creature swung to and fro, searching. It seemed to Farnor that there was nothing in the entire world except these two malevolent wills seeking him out: Rannick taunting, vicious and triumphant; the creature primordial and savage, and focused utterly on its ordained prey.
‘Run, horse, run!’ Farnor whispered, over and over, as if to cry out would be somehow to draw the attention of the searching creature.
And the horse ran, Farnor clinging to it like a terri-fied child to its mother, his bruised body begging for relief from the merciless pounding but his fear allowing it no voice. Dark-shadowed trunks flitted by, leafy branches reached down and brushed over him mock-ingly. Occasionally he became aware of the moon peering through the canopy above, as if it were gallop-ing after him, marking his demented progress for the creature to follow.
And still the presence of the creature was about him, hunting, scenting.
Yet fragments of coherent thought broke through the relentless rhythm of Farnor’s flight.
The creature could feel his presence, his naked fear, and it knew that he was fleeing. But it did not know where he was. Briefly he found that his vision was not his own. It was steadier, and closer to the ground; and the sky was different. And, too, strange scents pervaded him, feeding a swirling mass of ancient hatreds that some part of him shied away from, so once again he was himself, pain-racked and frantic, hanging on desper-ately to his galloping horse.
Whatever else the creature might be, he discovered, it was still an animal and, in seeking him out, it was constrained by the limitations of its body.
The creature’s frustration and anger washed over him even as the thought came to him.
‘Run, horse. Run!’
So much pain!
‘Find him. Find him. He is yours,’ Rannick encour-aged.
Distance. Surely nothing could outrun this charging animal that he was clinging to? The creature had the woods to roam to find his scent before it could begin to pursue him.
Yet Rannick was gloating. He had no doubts about the success of this hunt.
Even before Farnor could ponder the reasons for this, a sudden breeze struck him from one side. The horse veered under the impact, but did not slow down appreciably. To Farnor’s horror, the breeze was redolent with the presence of Rannick.
He had searchers of his own.
Farnor’s stomach tightened agonizingly. He was found!
‘Run, horse. Run!’
The breeze gathered strength and began to tear at him. Farnor wanted to scream his terrifying urgency to the horse, but he knew it would be futile. Besides, the sudden tormenting wind had, in itself, put more fear into the horse. All Farnor could do now was hold on, tighter and tighter.
He caught another fleeting glimpse of the sky. A pattern of stars struck him. They pointed to a solitary star.
North. He was heading north. For an instant, fears mingled. The fear of Rannick and creature, and the fear of what lay ahead in the mysterious land to the north. The Great Forest, whose existence had hovered with an uneasy menace in the background of his childhood years. But that fear was distant, and hedged about by as many years of homely security, and it was as nothing compared to the horror gathering behind him.
The buffeting breeze stopped as abruptly as it had started. Farnor felt Rannick’s will luring it back; he knew that it would be carrying its precious perfume back to the creature.
‘Run, horse. Run!’
And then the hatred about him changed. It changed from being vague and dispersed to being sharp and focused. Farnor could feel the creature pausing to test the scent that it had been given, and then gathering its terrible resources to commit them to the simple, single-minded pursuit of its prey.
The moon still dashed relentlessly overhead, mark-ing his passage.
And the creature was coming!
Even the horse seemed to sense the change in their common danger. Its neck bent low and its pounding speed increased. It occurred to Farnor that the horse was quite likely to run itself to death, but his own terror swamped any compassion. All that mattered was that it outran this dreadful pursuer and gave him a chance to reach some kind of safety.
‘Run, horse. Run!’
Farnor was the creature again. Moving faster now by far than when it had been hunting back and forth seeking his scent. Briefly he tried to use this strange possession to redirect it, to make it stumble, to run it into a tree, a bush… anything. But to no avail. He was himself again on the instant, brushed aside effortlessly by a greater will.
There was no hope for him except speed.
And he was moving downhill now, he realized. They must have passed the head of the valley and be heading down into the land to the north.
He wondered where he would find himself if he survived this chase, but the thought was gone almost before he noted it. He could feel the creature closing the distance between them relentlessly, yet as its presence about him grew stronger, he felt Rannick’s growing weaker. A faint spark of hope began to glimmer in the darkness.
But it fanned into no great blaze. The creature’s presence was as massive as it was baleful. Indeed, as Rannick’s influence seemed to wane so the creature’s savagery grew.
And then he could hear it. Penetrating even into the thunderous tumult of his flight came an intermittent baying, partly a frantic, frustrated screaming, partly a demented roaring.
And the horse heard it too. It missed its footing as its fear began to turn into outright panic. Belatedly Farnor’s concern turned towards his mount. If the horse stumbled at this speed then, if the fall did not kill him, the creature certainly would. With an effort he changed his goading litany to a more soothing one.