His comrades laughed and catcalled. Glad to have something break the tension, Anton chuckled. Then, off to the left, brush rustled.
Anton whirled to see a male lion with a black mane and amber eyes springing from a low place in the ground. It charged past a zombie, whose shambling, swaying effort to intercept it was too slow, and at one of the living Thayans.
Arrows flew at the beast. One pierced its haunch, and the lion stumbled but then kept charging. Shouting words that rang like metal striking metal, Umara struck the animal with darts of blue light, but that didn’t stop it, either. Anton ran at it even though he was unlikely to reach it in time for it to make a difference to the threatened man.
The lion sprang and carried its prey down beneath swiping talons and clamping, tearing jaws, reducing the Thayan’s body to wet red ruin in a heartbeat. Then it abandoned its victim and raced back into the trees. Arrows and quarrels whizzed after it, but no more found their mark before the animal vanished.
Halting, Anton looked at the body on the ground, considered the unbloodied blades in his hands, and felt a frustrated urge to cut something. Looking just as angry, Umara said, “The cat wasn’t put off by the zombie, it risked making a run at the whole pack of us, and then it didn’t even carry away its kill to eat.”
“Moreover,” Anton said, “it’s generally female lions that do the hunting, or so I understand. All of which suggests this wasn’t a natural occurrence. Someone or something else is controlling the beast to extract Stedd from our midst. Possibly by slaughtering the rest of us until there no longer is a midst.”
“One lion couldn’t do that,” Ehmed said.
“Which may be why we’ve already seen two,” Anton replied.
“And the Black Lord only knows how many more are slinking just a stone’s throw away,” Umara said. “There could be a dozen, and we still might not spot them for all the brush and tree trunks.”
“I wish I thought you were wrong.” Anton turned and waved to Stedd. “Stick close to me.”
Stedd obeyed, which unfortunately resulted in Anton leading him over to the mangled corpse so he could appropriate the dead man’s crossbow and quiver of quarrels. With the head torn and crushed and viscera hanging out of the belly, the remains were a grisly sight.
“Sorry,” the Turmishan muttered.
Stedd sighed. “It’s all right. I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies.”
That made Anton feel worse, although he wasn’t sure why. He gripped the boy’s shoulder.
As the travelers trekked on, Anton repeatedly shouldered the crossbow, getting the feel of the weapon as best he could without actually shooting it or even taking it out of its sack. Until another beast, this one a lioness, broke cover and charged.
This time, everyone was expecting such an attack. Still, a couple Thayans froze at the sight of the onrushing predator with its long white fangs and claws. Most, however, shot, and Anton yanked his own new crossbow out of its bag, sighted down its length, exhaled, and pulled the trigger.
As the quarrel streaked from the end of the weapon, the lioness pivoted to retreat from the barrage it had encountered. As a result, the crossbow bolt caught it in the neck. The felid staggered three more strides then fell over on its side.
The Thayans cheered, and for a moment, Anton felt similarly inclined to enjoy the moment. Then the conviction seized him that if some wily intelligence was manipulating the lions like pawns on a lanceboard, then it had just sacrificed one minion in a gambit to achieve some hidden purpose.
He turned. With everyone else, even the zombies, looking at the lioness that had just perished, a second one was creeping in from the opposite direction. It was stalking straight at Umara and was nearly close enough for a final rush and spring.
There was no time to cock and reload the crossbow. Anton dropped that weapon, snatched out his saber and cutlass, and bellowed, “Watch out!” Then he charged.
Not that it felt like a particularly speedy charge when he had to heave his boots out of clinging mud, rip free of twigs and brambles, duck low-hanging branches, and dodge around mossy and vine-encrusted tree trunks. But fortunately, either his initial shout or his subsequent thumping, rustling approach diverted the lioness’s attention. It whirled and bounded at him.
The beast covered ground faster than he had. He barely had time to shift to a spot where he had room to swing his blades, and then his foe was on him.
As he cut with the saber, the lioness leaped and spoiled his aim. Strewing rainwater as it traveled, the curved blade still sliced the cat’s shoulder, but the result wasn’t the lethal stroke he’d intended.
And the lioness was in the air! He dodged and cut again at the animal as it plunged down in the space he’d just vacated. The beast whirled and swiped at the saber, essentially parrying the stroke and nearly batting the weapon out of his grip.
At once, the lioness lunged at him, and he gave ground before it. Until a springy, many-pointed barrier-brush, by the feel of it-pressed against his back, and trees hemmed him in on either side. Despite his resolve to avoid it, the forest had boxed him in.
Well, he thought, if I can’t use my feet to proper advantage anymore, my hands will simply have to do all the work.
As the lioness clawed, he met the attacks with stop cuts.
At first, the tactic worked. The saber cut deep, and the punishment kept the cat from striking home. He even slashed out one of its amber eyes. But he didn’t kill it or make it relent, and after a breath or two, it caught the saber with another swipe and knocked it out of line.
It reared, exposing its chest and belly, and Anton thrust with the cutlass in the desperate hope of piercing its heart.
He at least felt the blade slide into muscle and scrape a rib. But then the lioness crashed into him and bore him down beneath it. The brush crunched as it gave way beneath their weight.
The cat’s weight crushed him against the ground. Its remaining eye glared down at him, and the blood from its gashed countenance spattered down into his. More gore drooled from its mouth.
Pinned, helpless, Anton could only will the lioness to die. The ploy worked no better than he expected. The beast spread its jaws wide enough to engulf his head.
Then a spike or blade seemingly made of shadow popped out of the back of the lioness’s mouth like a second tongue, stopping just a finger length before it would have pierced Anton’s head as well. The vague shape gave off a perceptible chill during the moment of its existence, then withered away to nothing.
Fortunately, though, it had endured long enough to accomplish its purpose. The lion collapsed on top of its erstwhile adversary.
Anton struggled to shift the carcass and squirm out from underneath. Then, grunting, two of the Thayans rolled the body off him.
As he rose, the reaver looked around. Stedd was close at hand, and Ehmed Sepandem had evidently appointed himself the boy’s temporary bodyguard in Anton’s absence. Good.
And for the moment, no more lions were making a run at the travelers. That too was good.
Breathing hard, Anton gave Umara a grin. “I’m glad you didn’t feel obliged to hurry.”
The wizard snorted. “Whiner. I cast the spell in time to save you, didn’t I?”
“What now?” Ehmed asked, an edge of impatience in his tone.
“That makes two dead lions and only one dead human,” Anton replied. “And we wounded the only other beast we’ve seen. Maybe it, and any others like it, will give up.”
“Do you really believe that?” the Thayan captain asked.
“No,” Anton admitted. “Not if some lurking puppet master is driving the animals to hunt us. The best we can reasonably hope for is that there’s only one lion left, but there’s little reason to assume even that.”