In the forest behind them, three bright blooms of fire ignited. Kaiku turned back to Doja, her eyes hard. Now that they had shown their intentions beyond all doubt, she would not be merciful to these creatures any longer.
The five remaining emyrynn attacked all at once. The soldiers had a few seconds to prepare at Kaiku's cry, and then the enemy were among them in a blur of white and a flurry of teeth. Asara, faster than most, ducked under the leap of one of them and divided it neatly in half along its midriff; Kaiku incinerated another. Between them, the soldiers took down a third, but as the remaining two disappeared they left behind one man dead and another with a stump for an arm, spewing blood. There was a scramble to get a tourniquet on the wound, during which the group's onward motion collapsed: they would not leave one of their wounded behind when there was still a chance of saving them.
'More! All around us!' Kaiku barely had time to shout before the emyrynn were among them. They had seemed to appear out of nowhere, even to her Weave-sight, a dozen of the creatures flitting suddenly into existence. She saw Tsata slashing with his gutting-hooks, darting between the emyrynn's antlers, protecting Heth and his burden Peithre. She saw Asara dodging and slashing, her movements fluid, honed by ninety years of practice and a perfect metabolism. And she saw the soldiers fighting, and Doja being savaged, and Lucia fallen to the ground where another of the creatures was about to pounce on her…
Kaiku was about to obliterate the threat to Lucia when she was knocked aside, crashing into a tree trunk with the weight of an emyrynn, its teeth fastened in her shoulder at the collar. Too many of them; she hadn't seen it coming. She screamed with the pain. Blood pumped between her attacker's teeth as it bit deeper into her flesh. Then her kana reacted, seizing the creature and flinging it away from her with enough force to break its back against a thick bough. She clutched her torn shoulder, blood pulsing through her fingers. Her body was already repairing itself, but it was sapping vital resources she needed to protect others, and she was already looking to Lucia, a terrible fear gripping her heart. She would be too late, too late to save her from the emyrynn now.
But then a new sensation bore down on her, a terrible, crushing presence that drove her to her knees with its fury. She looked up, and blanched as she saw it.
The beast. The vast shadow that she had met a few nights ago was back, its colossal bulk swelling up to the treetops. Its bellow, midway between a roar and a screech, shook the earth and blasted a hurricane through the forest, sending men and women and emyrynn alike tumbling and scrambling. The trees hissed and rattled as the wind wailed through their branches. Kaiku was blown back into the base of a tree, the breath squeezed from her lungs, her hair whipping around her face. She gritted her teeth against the agony from her shoulder, eyes shut tight, fighting down the urge to shriek. The creature was a black wall of rage in the Weave, a power that Kaiku could not hope to match. Her kana recoiled from it, retreating, curling up inside her.
Silence. The hurricane died all at once, faint skirling gusts chasing away through the trees to nothingness. Leaves drifted slowly earthward, spiralling clumsily.
Kaiku opened her eyes. The site of the ambush was strewn with bodies, men and emyrynn alike. Bloody swatches of white fur lay alongside torn corpses. She saw Asara getting to her feet, her blade hanging loose in her hand. Tsata and Heth crouched protectively together over the prone Peithre. A few soldiers were stirring, but not many. The emyrynn were gone.
At the edge of the carnage stood Lucia, staring up into the face of the beast. Its shape was hidden from sight by the trees, and by the darkness that it exuded like smoke, but it was still possible to make out its size. Small, glittering eyes regarded her. She was a tiny morsel to it, minute and insignificant; yet she stood there alone, and it glared down on her, the heavy soughing of its breath faintly audible, as slow and massive as waves on a beach.
Gradually, the survivors of the massacre rose, their gazes pinned to the monster. All except the Tkiurathi. Kaiku stumbled over towards Lucia, her hand clutching her shoulder where her wound was sealing itself, but as she neared Tsata he looked up at her, and his eyes were wet. The shock of that stopped her for a moment. She had never seen him weep before. Then she glanced down at Peithre, and saw that she was dead. They had protected her from the emyrynn, but in her weakened state the exertion of being carried so violently had proved too much. Heth was bent over her, his shoulders shaking. Kaiku met Tsata's gaze once again, but her eyes were bleak and she had nothing to give him; then she staggered away, towards Lucia.
Lucia was swaying slightly as Kaiku came to stand near her. She did not dare get too close, afraid of breaking whatever spell held the beast in check. Lucia's eyes were rolled up in her head and flickering with movement.
'Gods, what has happened here?' she whispered, though she said it more to herself than to anyone else, and expected no response.
Lucia surprised her. 'It is an emissary,' she said, the words barely formed as if she spoke them in a dream.
Kaiku thought for a moment. 'Of the Xhiang Xhi?' she asked.
'Leave our dead,' Lucia murmured, 'and follow.'
Kaiku closed her eyes. She had been sure to memorise the names of each and every man and woman in the party before they set off into the forest, for she had believed that many would not live to leave it and they would need to be commended to Noctu after their deaths. As long as she had their names, the place where their bodies lay meant little.
She raised her head and met the expectant faces of the survivors, Doja was among the fallen, and those who believed in leaders looked to her now.
'We leave our dead,' she said, her voice almost breaking as she spoke. 'We leave our dead and follow.' It was several hours later that they came across the entrance to the Xhiang Xhi's lair.
Kaiku remembered little of the intervening time. She trudged dazedly through the forest with the rest of them, in something like a state of shock. The beast led them, always ahead, a colossal shadow that was never quite seen, a fraction too distant to make out in detail.
She wept as she went, mainly for Phaeca but also for the other men who lay behind them and Peithre, whose body Heth carried and refused to leave. She had kept herself at a distance from the soldiers, out of habit – she was a Sister, and she could no longer easily mix as she had in the past – but the suddenness of their deaths, the frightening savagery of the emyrynn, had shaken her badly. She knew enough of war and killing, but she was not inured to it entirely.
Other thoughts had briefly intruded on her misery. Thoughts of the beast that they followed, and how it had not been attacking her that day but that it had for some reason been protecting her from the spirit that had taken Lucia's shape. It had prevented her from being lured away; her, and her only, for the other soldiers had been left to their fate. Why was that? Why had she been treated differently?
Then there were the memories of the moment she had shared with Tsata, and her argument with Asara. Both were decisions she had to face, matters of huge importance to her; and yet for now she could not bring herself to care about them. All she wanted to do was to get away from this gods-cursed forest and never look back.
But there was one more challenge yet, and it was Lucia who had to face it.
They would have known when they came to the boundary of the Xhiang Xhi's domain even if Lucia had not told them. The air was thick with the presence of the great spirit, a charge in the air that made the fine hairs on their bodies stand on end. It came from a tunnel mouth sunk into a hillock, on either side of which stood twisted old trees like pillars. The beast crouched atop the hillock, obscured by undergrowth, sapping the day's light from the air.