She was about to risk movement again when her ears picked up something else—another creature emerging from the river, following in the wake of the horses. Not a man, for it went on four feet, but too small for a horse.
Then a shuddering, flopping noise, enveloped in a hiss of spray.
She crouched and froze. It was a dog. It had entered the ford at the same time as the four riders, but had fallen behind as its paws floated free of the river bottom, forcing it to paddle across the main stream, fighting the current the whole way. Finally it had trotted up onto the shore and shaken itself. It let out a suggestion of a whine, seeing how far behind it had fallen, then sprang forward, running to make up for lost time. Then, just before entering the tunnel that the horses had trampled through the reeds, the dog stopped.
Stopped and sniffed the air.
It happened to be straight downwind of her.
Dogs had poor eyesight. She rose just high enough to see it. She did not recognize it at first because she had been imagining something in the way of a hound, small and lithe. But what she saw, casting about for her scent, looked more like a bear. She’d seen them before. She’d even been chased by them. And she had watched others, not as skillful at evading pursuit or climbing trees, being torn apart by them. This was a bankhar—one of the heavy-boned mastiffs that the Mongols kept roped outside their tents as watchdogs.
They must have been using it to track Istvan.
And it knew she was here. That was obvious from its posture: it stood on its stout, corded legs as still as she was. Other than a slight quiver of its flanks, the only thing it moved was its nostrils. It would hold this stillness for as long as it took to catch a definite scent or hear some movement. Then every muscle in its body would go into action. If it was like the others she had seen, it had twice her weight and could run at double her speed.
Again a faint whine. The great head lifted and turned. The massive jaws opened in a slow pant. The bankhar was trying to make sense of the new spoor. Watching it, she found herself wondering what it could guess about her. The scent it had found was human, but not the one it had been tracking for the last couple of days. Her scent would betray her sex, obviously, but could it tell if she was frightened? She wasn’t. Not yet. But she would be soon.
She couldn’t run. To trigger the chase instinct of a bankhar was death—about the worst kind of death imaginable. Better to stand and face it.
It gave out a low, gruff bark, declining to a suspicious growl, and began trotting toward her, lowering its head and casting its heavy muzzle back and forth.
Cnán backtracked along the trail of parted reeds she had made in her own wake. Putting more distance between herself and the dog couldn’t hurt, as long as she did it quietly—and she could move very quietly. There were no trees to climb. She couldn’t outrun a bankhar on open ground. She could probably outswim it, though. But first she would have to get to water that was deep enough for swimming and too deep for the dog’s paws to get purchase on the bottom. She remembered a backwater, about a stone’s throw behind her, where she had suddenly slipped knee-deep into a stagnant pool. A lateral sprint out of the reeds, across the intervening sandbar and straight for the water might work. But it was her last resort; it would betray her position, not only to the bankhar, which would come right at her, but to the four Mongol riders now picking their path up a rocky stretch of riverbank, still oblivious to the fact that their dog was on the trail of new and unexpected prey.
He—for she could see now that it was a non-gelded male—let out a little woof and broke into a trot, confident now that she was worth chasing. She began retreating with greater speed and more noise, fighting what the Shield-Brothers referred to as the fobo, the irrational fear that would, if you let it rise out of its hole, seize control of your body and make you do things that would assuredly lead to your death. In this case, the fobo was telling her to turn on her heel and run for it.
The ground grew muckier under her feet. She risked a quick look, saw the dark backwater growing closer and closer, but it was shallow enough that the bankhar could wade it, and it was separated from the main channel by a sandbar, which she would have to cross before the creature plunged its fangs into her leg.
She prepared to slip off her tunic. She could trail it behind herself as she ran. The dog would snap at it, rip it out of her grasp, waste a few moments shaking it like a squirrel while she dove naked into the water and swam away…
Or was that the fobo trying to bubble up?
A whine from the bankhar quickly rose to a shrill bark. It was very close now.
Her feet felt the backwater’s slimy edge. This was foolish.
She stood tall and faced the dog. Startled, it plowed to a stop. Then it barked loudly and steadily, alerting its masters. She glanced over its head and saw the four Mongols. One had reached the top of the bank and was looking in her direction. The other three abandoned their climb, turned, and began picking their way down the bank to see what was happening. They first spotted the bankhar, then her, and pointed, exclaimed, stood high in their stirrups to get a clearer view—and reached for their bows.
Keeping the bankhar in sight but not staring it in the eye, Cnán slowly sidestepped, going knee-deep into the stagnant water, a loop of current only a couple of arm spans across. The bankhar started after her, stopped, growled, barked again. A bluff charge, trying to make her panic and break for it.
She did not like dogs, but she understood them in the same way as she understood men: they needed a leader. A boss. And if you weren’t the boss, the dog would appoint himself to the position. It had nothing to do with size. She had seen a rat chaser dominate a lumbering wolfhound with the sheer force of its personality.
She locked her eyes on the bankhar and willed it to submit.
A rumbling growl emerged from its huge chest.
She backed up out of the water and onto the sandbar.
One of the Mongols was riding straight for her. She could feel the terror rising in her chest, her heart hammering at the underside of her breastbone, booming in her ears.
The Mongol called out a word of command. The bankhar looked back at him, remembered who was boss, bounded into the water, and came up on the sandbar, close enough that he could have reached Cnán’s throat with a single lunge. Only some cautious instinct, a concern that Cnán was more than she seemed, prevented him from killing her then and there.
Her fear took charge. She knew she was about to die—if not ripped apart by the bankhar, then shot through and through by the Mongol following after or the two behind him. Her heart slammed with such force that she could feel it in the soles of her feet.
Her feet?
The dog looked beyond her suddenly, then crouched and quailed. A word of astonishment escaped from the Mongol’s lips.
Cnán swiveled in the water and mud just in time to see a colossus thundering up out of the river’s channel, over the crest of the little sandbar, then springing nearly over her head, hooves plowing the air. She fell to the ground more from vertigo than anything else and lost sight of it for a moment. Twisting about again, she saw the bankhar somersault backward, a red missile hurtling from its shoulders to tumble along the sandbar.