Soran didn't slow. Didn't even seem to notice the arrows sprouting from his body. Only a few paces away now.
Hweilan couldn't get her knife free. The thick glove over the bandages robbed her fingers of all nimbleness. She stumbled backward, her heel struck a rock or root, and she fell.
Soran stood over her. This close, she got her first good look at his eyes. Black eyes. Dark as polished stones. Not a fleck of white or color remained. And they seemed too wide, as if something mean and hungry were trapped in his skull, trying to press its way out. When those eyes looked down on her, it woke something deep inside Hweilan, like a spark catching in dry tinder. Her anger flared, and she had to push down a sudden urge to snarl.
The Soran-thing lunged. Hweilan scrambled backward, but the uneven ground was slick, and pain shot up her injured arm. The creature's iron-hard fist locked round her ankle.
Hweilain's uninjured hand found a rock and closed around it. She smashed it into the side of his face. He didn't even flinch. She hit him again. And again. On the fourth strike, she gouged off a long strip of skin and heard bone crack.
He released his hold on his sword and caught her next strike. Hweilan screamed and tried to pull free. She felt the cloth of her coat and shirt slipping under his grip, but then the fist tightened.
"Let me go!" She planted her free leg and pulled with all her strength. The fabric between her arm and his hand slipped again, and for an instant, they touched, skin to skin.
Something passed between them, sizzling, like cold water tossed on hot steel. The thing's black eyes locked on her, and she could feel them penetrating skin, flesh, and bone, gazing upon something she had only felt in her dreams.
Soran's face twisted into a scowl. Pure malice.
"I can smell him on you, girl." It was a hollow voice. Nothing like Soran's. All malice and hunger. His mouth opened wide, and he took in a deep breath, as if tasting the air. Dead lips pulled back over his teeth in mockery of a smile. "You reek of-"
A black cloud washed over him. Hundreds of ravens hit the Soran-thing, cawing and screaming, burying him beneath flapping wings as their sharp beaks pecked at him. The wind of their wings buffeted Hweilan, and she felt their feathers brush her cheeks, but they passed over her to attack the Soran-thing. Soran released Hweilan and swiped at the birds with both hands, but for every one he hit, ten or more descended on him.
Soran stood, his sword in one hand, his other continuing to swipe at the birds. But his eyes locked on Hweilan as he shambled toward her.
A huge, shaggy shape hit the ground between Hweilan and her pursuers. Kadrigul's horse screamed and reared, and then the roars filled the valley, one after another, pounding through the air like thunder off the mountains. The trees shook with the sound. Hweilan felt their force like a punch in the gut, and the marrow in her bones trembled.
Tundra tigers. One swiped at Kadrigul's horse, and two more ran among the Nar.
Soran, still covered in ravens and hampered by his shattered leg, lurched toward her. Just beyond him, Kadrigul, upon his horse, was bearing down upon her. Beyond them, two tigers were pressing the attack against the Nar. Only the long spears of the Nar warriors held them at bay.
Hweilan's eyes widened, and she scrambled to her feet. One of those tigers carried a rider. Small as a ten-year-old child, clothed in furs and a snug blue material. She had no idea who or what it could be. Even as she watched, she saw more of the little people emerging from the trees, spears in their hands.
Where was Lendri? Where-?
Run, girl…
Hweilan wasn't sure where the voice came from. It seemed to pass her ears entirely and speak in her mind.
Run! Run! Run!
Hweilan ran.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Broken branches snagged Hweilan's cloak and scraped her face, roots beneath the carpet of snow tripping her. Again and again she fell, but each time she pushed herself up and kept going. Before long she could discern little but the lingering blue glow in the snow set amid the deeper black of the surrounding brush and heavy sky.
The sound of the fighting grew fainter with each step, and bit by bit, reason began to return to Hweilan. She knew she was making an awful racket, blundering through the timber, her feet crunching through new snow and old frost. But she didn't care. Every beat of her heart screamed at her to get away from the thing that wore Soran's face. And the ravens…
She pushed through a thick patch of darkness-some thick bush or scrub that kept its thick, waxy leaves throughout the winter-and the ground fell away beneath her feet.
She tumbled, striking hard ground beneath the snow and sliding down a steep enough slope that her stomach seemed to jump up her throat.
She hit level ground. It drove what little air she had left from her body, and for a long moment, all she could do was lie there, half her face in the snow, trying to draw breath back into her chest as bright orbs of light danced in her vision. With each breath, the lights winked and faded a little more.
She'd managed to keep a grip on her father's bow during the fall. She still held it, her right fist locked around it. Something else was poking her in the chest, just below the soft part of her neck. Something under her shirt. The kishkoman.
Hweilan pushed herself up to her knees and pulled the bone whistle from her shirt. She put it to her lips, took in a deep breath, and blew a shrill note, as loud and as long as she could. The sound cut through the night, hurting her ears.
She sat, holding her breath, straining to hear an answering call. Nothing. Only a breeze rattling winter-brittle branches. She tried again, holding the note as long as she could. Still nothing.
Now that she was no longer running, her body began to shiver, and she could feel her own breath beginning to freeze against her face.
A thick darkness loomed before her. It was one of the great pines, but fallen ages ago. Most of the trunk had probably gone to rot, but the thicker wood of the roots had gone iron hard, and the years of brush that grew up and around them formed a sort of woody cleft. It would do. She dared not risk a fire, not with that Soran-thing maybe still out there, but she had to keep the wind off her and find someplace close to keep in her own body heat.
Hweilan threw herself into the cleft, branches and nettles and thorns ripping her clothes and skin. There was no wide way through, but her body found the path of least resistance, and she pushed and pushed, turning herself sideways to squeeze through the crack. She hit a wall of tangled brush, rotted wood, and soil, all frozen hard as stone. Exhausted, terrified, and cold, Hweilan wept.
She had no idea how much time passed, wedged between old roots and frozen soil. Her body shivered so badly that the roots and frost around her were rattling. She could no longer feel her fingers, toes, or face.
One clear thought rose in her mind: You have to move, or you're going to die.
Hweilan moved, the roots digging into her clothes again. She thought they were most likely scraping her face, as well, but she could no longer feel her exposed skin. The farther she went, the easier it became.
She was nearly out when she heard it: something coming through the brush.
Hweilan held her breath and kept her body perfectly still.
The sounds came closer, and besides the crunching of branches and snow, she heard something sniffing.
Hweilan took a chance. With fingers she could no longer feel, she brought the kishkoman to her numb lips and blew one note-very softly, scarcely above a whisper.
A plaintive whine came from the darkness.
"Hechin?" she called out.
But whatever it had been was running away.