Daughter of Regals (19 page)

— This task consumes him, Sill said. He
urges the mission to go without him.

— He will be slain, Korik snapped.

— Not while I live.

— You will not live long.

— That is the way with him, Sill shrugged
silently.

Korik had no time to debate whether or
not he should desert one Lord for the sake of the mission. He did not intend to
make that choice.

Summon or succour. Swiftly, he threw
himself from Brabha, stepped in front of Hyrim. He would not allow the son of
Hoole to commit suicide. Almost wincing at the way he was forced to violate his
Vowed service to any Lord, he shouted into Hyrim’s concentration, ‘Will you
sacrifice the Giants for one tree?’

The Lord did not stop. His eyes reflected
the fire with a ferocity Korik had never seen in him before. He seemed to be
sweating passion as he panted, ‘The choice is not so simple!’

Korik reached out a hand to wrest Hyrim
away from his mad purpose. But at that instant Shetra barked, ‘Korik, you
forget yourself!’ and cast her power like a shout to Hyrim’s support. The sheer
force of their combined exertion made Korik recoil a step.

The wolves were almost upon them: the
bristling growl filled the air with the sound of fangs.

Briskly, Korik marshalled his comrades
around him on their mounts. The Ranyhyn champed and snorted tensely, but held
their positions against the stow advance of the wolves.

Together, the Lords gave a wild cry; and
the light of Gilden-fire fell suddenly out of the night.

As darkness rushed back into the valley,
Hyrim stumbled against Korik, nearly fell. Korik half threw the Lord to Sill,
who boosted Hyrim up onto his mount.

Shouting the company into motion, Korik
leaped for Brabha’s back. The next moment, the leading wolves attacked. But
with a heave of their mighty muscles, the Ranyhyn started together toward the
east. In close formation, they struck the springing wall of the wolves — and
the wall broke like a wave on a jutting fist of rock. The Ranyhyn surged
through the pack, shedding wolves like water, striving to gain speed. At first
their head-on charge threw the pack into confusion. But then the wolves chasing
them came close enough to leap onto their backs. Pren and four other Bloodguard
in the rear of the company were about to be engulfed.

Lord Shetra slowed her mount. Reacting
instinctively, the Bloodguard parted behind her, let her drop back beside Pren.
As the flood of wolves came toward her, she swung her staff at them. The blow
knocked down the first beasts and set flame to them, so that they flared up
like tinder. The following pack jumped aside from the sudden fire: the rush was
momentarily broken.

In that respite, the Ranyhyn reached full
stride. Plunging to keep away from the fangs, they laboured up the slope. The
pack raged at their heels; but they were Ranyhyn, swifter even than the yellow
kresh
.
By the time they topped the valley’s rim and thundered back into the closed
woods, they were three strides ahead of the pack.

Then through the depths of Grimmerdhore
the Ranyhyn raced the wolves. Korik could no longer see as well as the horses,
so he abandoned to them all concern for the direction and safety of the run.
Unchecked, they dodged deftly through the night as if they were riding the
wind. But still the
Forest
hampered them, interfered with their running, prevented
them from their best speed. And the wolves were not hampered. They swept along
the ground easily, passed through the woods like a black tide, When they gave
tongue to the chase, they did not break stride.

The gap between the pack and the company
shrank and grew as Grimmerdhore thickened and thinned. Through one tight copse
Pren and his clan-kin had to fend off wolves on both sides. But fortunately the
terrain beyond was relatively open; and the Ranyhyn were able to restore the
gap.

During it all — the dodging, the surging
pace, the unevenness of the ground — Lord Hyrim clung to his seat. He was kept
there by the proud skill of his mount. And the other Ranyhyn aided him by
choosing their ways so that his horse had the straightest path through the
trees. When he observed this, Korik applauded silently, and his chest grew
tight with admiration, in spite of the other demands on his attention.

Still the race went on. The Ranyhyn
pounded through the
Forest
with growing abandon, discounting the safety of
the company more and more for the sake of speed. As a result the riders had to
hold their seats when they were lashed by branches, wrenched from side to side
while the horses evaded looming trunks. But the savage pursuit of the wolves
did not abate. Clearly, the will which drove them was strong and compelling;
and Korik guessed that a powerful band of ur-viles remained in Grimmerdhore — a
force which used the wolves just as it had used the Gilden and the other
ur-viles. But such thoughts were of no value now. The wolves were the immediate
danger. Hundreds of ravenous throats howled: hundreds of jaws gaped and bit
furiously, as if they were too eager to wait for the raw flesh of the company.
The Ranyhyn gave their best speed — and the pack did not fall behind.

Korik was revolving desperate solutions
in his mind when the company broke out into a broad open glade. Under the
stars, he saw the ravine which cut through the centre of the glade across the
company’s path. It was an old dry watercourse, deeply eroded before its source
turned elsewhere. And it was far too wide for the wolves: they could not leap
it. If the Ranyhyn could manage the jump, the company would gain precious time.

But when the wolves burst out of the
woods, they broke into hard howls of triumph. In a few strides, Korik saw his
danger: the ravine appeared to be too wide even for the Ranyhyn. For an
instant, he hesitated. In his long years, he had heard the shrieking of horses
far too often. He knew how the Ranyhyn would scream if they shattered their
bones against the opposite wall of the ravine. But their night-sight was better
than his: he could not make this decision for them. He silenced his fears,
shouted to his comrades:

— Let the Ranyhyn choose! They will not
err! But ward Lord Hyrim!

Then Runnik reached the ravine. His mount
gathered itself, seemed for an instant to shrink, to coil in on its strength —
and sprang. Already it was too late for the rest of the riders to stop; but
Korik kept his eyes on Runnik, watched the leading Ranyhyn so that he would
have an instant’s warning of his fate — an instant in which to try to save
himself for the sake of the mission. For the first time since the night when he
had assumed his Vow, he left the Lords to their own fortunes. He expected Hyrim
to fall. As old Brabha started into his own jump, the Lord wailed as if he were
plunging from a precipice.

Then the Ranyhyn carrying Runnik touched
down safely on the far side of the ravine. Beside him, Tull and another
Blood-guard also landed with ground to spare, followed by Cerrin, Shetra,
Korik, Hyrim, and Sill in a line together. Lord Hyrim flopped forward and back
as if his mount were bucking: his wail was broken off. But he did not lose his
seat. Amid the wild yowling frustration of the wolves, the rest of the
Bloodguard jumped the ravine. The Ranyhyn sprinted across the glade with clear
ground at their heels.

Behind them, the wolves rushed on, caught
in the grip of a dementing passion. They piled into the dry watercourse,
careless of what happened to them, and scrambled furiously up the far side. But
Korik was confident of escape now. The company had almost reached the edge of
the glade when the first wolf clawed its way out of the ravine. Korik leaned
forward to say a word of praise in Brabha’s back-bent ears.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Lord
Hyrim tumble like a lifeless sack to the ground.

Korik shouted to the company.
Immediately, the leaders peeled around to return to Hyrim as fast as possible.
But Pren, the rearmost Bloodguard, saw Hyrim’s fall in time to leap down from
his own mount. In a few steps, he reached the motionless Lord. While Korik and
the others were turning, Pren reported that Hyrim was unconscious — stunned
either by his fall or by the jolt of the jump over the ravine.

Wheeling Brabha, Korik gauged the
distances. The wolves surged out of the ravine in great numbers now: they
howled rabidly toward the men on the ground. The company would barely have time
to snatch up Hyrim and take defensive positions around him before the pack
struck.

But as Korik pulled his comrades into
formation, Lord Shetra ordered him back. She had a plan of her own. Driving her
mount straight for Hyrim, she called to Pren, ‘His staff! Hold it upright!’

Pren obeyed swiftly. He caught up Hyrim’s
staff from the grass, gripped it with one metal-shod end planted on the ground
between him and the charging wolves.

As he did this, Shetra swung her Ranyhyn
until she was running parallel to the line of the charge. When she flashed
behind Pren, she cried, ‘
Melenkurion abatha!
’ and dealt Hyrim’s staff a
hammering blow with her own.

A silent concussion shook the air: the
ground seemed to heave momentarily under the hooves of the Ranyhyn. From Hyrim’s
staff a plane of power spread out on both sides, came like a wall between the
wolves and the company across the whole eastern face of the glade. Seen through
this barrier, the scrambling wolves appeared distorted, mad, wronged.

Then they smashed into the wall. In that
instant, the area of impact flared like a sheet of blue lightning; and the
wolves were thrown back. They charged it again as more of them reached it,
hurled themselves against the rippling plane — howled and raved, assaulted the
air. But wherever they hit the wall, it flared blue and cast them back. Soon
they were crashing into it in such numbers that the whole plane across the
length of the glade caught fire. Where the greatest weight of the pack pressed
and fought against it, it scaled upward into dazzling brightness. Carefully,
Shetra withdrew Hyrim’s staff from the plane. It wavered as if it were about to
break; but she sang to it softly, and it steadied, stood up firmly under the
strain.

It was too much for the wolves. In a wild
excess of passion and frustration, they began to attack each other — venting
their driven rage on the nearest flesh until the whole place was consumed in a
boiling melee.

Lord Shetra turned away as if the sight
hurt her. She appeared suddenly weary: the exertion of commanding two staffs
had drained her. Dully, she said to Korik, ‘We must go. If it is assailed
again, my Word will not endure. And if there are ur-viles nearby, they will
know how to counter it. I am too worn to speak another.’ Then she knelt to
examine Hyrim.

In a moment, she ascertained that he had
no broken bones, no internal bleeding, no concussion. She left him to Korik and
Sill. Working rapidly, they placed Hyrim on the back of his Ranyhyn and lashed
him there with
clingor
thongs. When he was secured, the Bloodguard
sprang to their own mounts, and the company hurried away into the covered
darkness of Grimmerdhore.

The Ranyhyn moved at a near gallop. Soon
the intervening
Forest
quenched the tumult of the wolves, and the
company was surrounded by a welcome silence. But still they ran: they did not
stop or slow, even when Lord Hyrim returned to groaning consciousness. They
left him alone until he was alert enough to free himself from the
clingor
.  Then Lord Shetra explained to him shortly, in a tired voice, what had
happened.

He took the news dumbly, nodded his
comprehension of her words. Then he lay down on the Ranyhyn’s neck as if he
were hiding his head and clung there through the rest of the night.

At dawn, Korik called a halt beside a
stream to water the horses and allow the Lords to eat a few treasure-berries.
But after that they moved on again at a fast canter. Korik did not want to
spend another night in Grimmerdhore; and he could feel Brabha’s eagerness to
break out of the dark woods.

The fatigue, the lack of rest, the
unrelieved haste of their journey showed in both Lords: Hyrim’s eyes, formerly
so gay, had a grey angle of pain; and Shetra’s lean face was lined and
sharpened, as if some erosion had cut away the last softness of her features.
But they endured. As time passed; they found deeper springs of strength to
sustain them.

Korik should have been reassured. But he
was not. The Lords had proven themselves equal to wolves and Grimmerdhore. But
he had reason to know that what lay ahead would be worse.