From Across the Clouded Range (88 page)

She made it two steps. A hand as big
as her head darted out from the other side of the tent, wrapped
around the back of her neck, and stopped her cold. “Vo larägh tu,
te-adeate? Tu gurlüobt.” A mountainous guard followed the hand,
stepping from behind a small shelter. He held Teth in a crushing
grip and screamed his accusations.

Teth buried her knife in the big man’s
arm just as Dasen hit him with a shoulder in the side. Dasen
bounced off the giant as if he had just hit a tree but Teth’s knife
had the desired effect. The guard screamed and loosened his grip
just enough for Teth to escape. Abandoning her knife in the man’s
forearm, she wrenched her head away, grabbed his hand, and twisted
his arm up over her head in one breathtaking motion. The sentry let
out another muffled cry of shock and fell to his knees as Teth
pushed his fingers back with all her strength. But it was not
enough. Surprise had been her only advantage over the guard who was
twice her size and built like a mountain. The shock on his face was
soon replaced with determination. There was a pop as one of his
fingers broke, but it was Teth who grunted as he fought his way
back to his feet. If he made it up, Teth’s leverage would be gone,
and they would be finished.

Sitting in the mud where he had landed
after his ill-advised attempt at unbalancing the guard, Dasen
searched for a way to help. He considered the knife still sticking
from the man’s forearm but wasn’t sure what he’d do with it even if
he was able to claim it. There was another flash of lightning. His
eyes latched on to a flat stone the size of a platter sitting in
the mud next to his elbow – the Order had shown him the way, no
matter how harrowing it might be. Using every ounce of fear induced
strength he could muster, he lifted the heavy stone above his head,
carried it the few steps to where the guard was pulling his hand
away from Teth, and dropped it squarely onto the man’s down-turned
head.

A hair-raising crunch was the only
sound that marked the warrior’s death. His head plummeted into the
mud-soaked ground with the rock jutting from his skull. He twitched
but did not otherwise move again.

Teth released his hand and looked at
Dasen. He was frozen in horror, overcome with revulsion at what he
had done. He felt ill. His arms were shaking so hard that he could
not move them. His knees trembled. He was frozen, could only look
at the rock rising from the man’s head and relive the horrible
thing he had just done.

Teth reached down, retrieved her
knife, then came to his side and supported him with an arm around
his waist. “You saved me,” she assured as she forced him forward
away from the corpse. “He would have killed us. That was our only
chance. You did what you had to. You didn’t have any other choice.
The Order showed you the way, and you followed it.” She continued
talking, leading him slowly away from the scene toward the fields
below.

Dasen was in shock. He knew Teth was
right but couldn’t get the image from his mind, could not believe
what he had done. There was a yell, a powerful voice speaking a
foreign tongue. It was close. Both their heads turned toward it.
Shadows moved through the tents behind them. The guards cries had
been heard, help was on its way.

“
We have to get out of
here,” Teth begged. “Now. Dasen, you have to run. We have to
go.”

There was another yell, closer this
time. Dasen looked back for the man he had killed but he was lost
in the shadows. He took a deep breath, shook his head, and looked
to Teth. He clasped her hand, squeezed it hard. “Let’s go!” he
declared and started running down the slight slope before them to
the fields beyond.

The wet ground ruined the moment. On
his second step, Dasen slipped and slid down the hill on his back.
He was jarred by the fall but unhurt until Teth crashed into him
from behind. Their bodies tangled together as they tumbled another
few paces. When they finally stopped, Teth was on him in a
decidedly compromised position. “Don’t get any ideas,” she joked as
she lifted herself from him. She reached down a second later and
helped him to his feet. They both looked back up from where they
came. A half-dozen shadows were illuminated by the sparse light of
the camp. They searched the darkness before them but seemed
hesitant to journey into the field.

Not wanting to risk the warriors
changing their minds, Dasen and Teth ran, hand-in-hand across the
field toward the distant lights of the city.

They had made it only a
short distance before something caught Dasen’s eye. In the sky to
the north and west, a ball of fire bloomed. Following the fire,
pushing through its light was the slender body of a winged
creature. It dipped beneath its fire to the field, skimming the
ground, then rose to the sky and unleashing another ball of flame.
Dasen stopped and stared.
It’s
searching
, he realized,
searching for us.

His grip on Teth hand broke when he
stopped. She looked back at him with concern. Dasen gestured to the
sky. She turned just in time to see another fireball bloom. It was
followed by others as more creatures joined the hunt, spreading out
across the fields. Teth’s eyes bulged. “How far is it to the city?”
she demanded.

“
I don’t know,” he
responded. “Three . . . maybe five miles across the common lands to
the outskirts of the city. They’re just pastures. There will be
nowhere to hide. What should we do?”

A bolt of lightning was followed by
another array of fireballs. The rain was slowing, the storm moving
on to the east. The night was still decidedly dark, but the
visibility was only going to improve. But they certainly couldn’t
go back. The answer was obvious, and Teth voiced it with a yell,
“Run!”

#

Dasen and Teth ran as hard as they
could over the slick ground with rain blurring their vision and
wind buffeting them from four directions at once. The rain slowed
but remained a downpour. The ground beneath their feet was slicks
of mud and puddles of water. It grabbed at their shoes and slid
beneath their steps. Running across it, they looked like deer
caught on a frozen pond, slipping falling, rising, sliding, and
falling again.

No pursuit came from the invaders’
camp, and though they continued to see bursts of flame in the sky,
they were concentrated to the north. Yet their progress was slow,
and it was only a matter of time before the creatures found
them.

Lightning flashed behind them. Dasen
used it to judge the distance to Thoren. They were halfway at best.
He looked for the creatures and did a quick calculation. They would
never make it. They had another half-mile, at the most, before the
creatures were on them. His foot slipped on a patch of mud. He
splayed to the ground, sliding face first through the
muck.

Teth’s hand slipped from his, and she
reached back for him, nearly falling herself as she came to a stop.
She looked desperately tired. Her chest heaved, her arms shook, and
her head hung in exhaustion. She held out a quivering hand. Dasen
tried to stand, but there was no power left in his legs. Teth's
footing was no better. Her feet slid away. She landed in the puddle
next to him and slapped the ground in frustration.

“
We have keep going,” she
panted as she came to her knees. “We have to get to the city before
those things find us. We have to keep running.”

Dasen shook his head, speaking through
gasps. “It doesn’t matter, Teth. The only way we'll make it to the
city is with wings. We're both exhausted, and even you can barely
run over this.” He considered for a second. “Our only chance is to
hide.”

Teth looked at him as if he were
crazy. “Where do you suggest we hide? It is perfectly flat. There
is no cover anywhere.”

“
But I don’t think the
creatures can see much better than we can. That’s why they keep
releasing those fireballs.” Dasen stopped and looked down at his
hand. It had disappeared under a rip in the sod, had slid right
under the grass. “We can cover ourselves with grass,” he exclaimed.
“Look it comes up in clumps.” He pulled out a great tuft to
emphasize his point. “Those things will never see through it, not
in all this rain.”

Teth eyed him skeptically, looked up
at bursts of fire, then nodded. “It’s worth a try. Let’s get
started.”

They found a thick clump of tall
prairie grass and hunched down beside it to give themselves some
cover. Dasen was correct about the grass coming up in chunks, and
where it resisted, Teth used her knife to cut through it. In only a
few minutes, they created a hole large enough for both of them.
They lay in the hole, covered their feet with the wet sod they had
piled to the sides, and patted it in place to ensure that nothing
was exposed. When they were covered to their chests, they tucked
their arms to their sides, and Dasen used his free hand to cover
Teth’s face. He folded the sod back to leave space for his own
head, lay back in the hole, and pulled the grass over his face
before wriggling his arm in beside him.

The dirt covered him. It cut off
access to light, sound, and, to Dasen’s surprise, air. He had cut a
hole for his mouth and nose, but he could not find it. Panic stuck
him.

He squirmed until he found the hole,
but mud poured into his mouth where air should have been. He
sputtered and coughed. Teth grabbed his hand and squeezed hard. He
spit to clear his mouth, but water just filled the gap. He coughed
again. He could not do it. He was suffocating. Teth crushed his
hand. He could not hold back any longer. He was going to sit up and
ruin it all, but he had to breathe.

Air came. It was wet. He could taste
the soil in his mouth, the minerals and grit, but it was air. The
next breath came easier. With it, he settled in. His breathing
slowed. Panic fled. He tried to stay calm, to keep his needs to a
minimum because the air did not come easy. He felt Teth lying
beside him, felt her chest rising and falling. He concentrated on
matching her until his breathing came into line, and he began to
feel comfortable in his bed of earth.

A flash of light appeared above them,
filtering through the gaps in the sod, bright enough to play orange
before their closed eyes. He felt the heat of it warming him even
through the sod. He could imagine the gaps in the sod, the places
where the rain had washed it away, exposing shoes, pants, hands,
chests. He could imagine the creature looking down at those
anomalies, could almost see it putting the pieces together,
assembling them into its goal. He waited for the thing to dive down
and claim them from the earth, to feel it teeth ripping through his
flesh. His breath caught at the thought, and he held it. Teth
squeezed his hand – it felt like she was going to break it. The
heat dissipated. Teth whispered a familiar prayer, but he could not
draw the breath to join her. He strained his senses for some
indication of the creature. Nothing. Pounding hearts. Burning
lungs. Clenched hands.

Another burst of light flashed through
the sod. This one was fainter. The air warmed again, but it was
less and concentrated to the left. The creature had
passed.

Dasen’s diaphragm loosened. He brought
in a long breath. Beside him, Teth’s prayer ended, but she did not
release his hand. He squeezed hers in return and felt the mud
squishing between their fingers. He laid there for some time
holding her hand, feeling her breathing. Eventually, his own
breaths became measured and regular. He felt the rain coming in
lighter drops, farther apart, and allowed them to wash him off to
sleep.

Chapter 38

Jaret lay huddled in the corner of his
cell contemplating ways to kill himself though he lacked the energy
to perform the act even if he could think of a way to do
it.

Another convulsion hit his quivering
body, and he shook for a long moment. Spasms raced through him from
Thagas'kiula’s most recent visit. He could not be certain how long
the session had lasted, but it had felt like hours. Even with the
creature now gone, the pain was still with him and would be until
the next visit. The pain was always with him.

Thagas'kiula had been visiting him at
least three times a day for what felt like weeks. It delighted in
nothing more than torturing him and seemed to do so only for the
sick pleasure it derived from the act. Most torture masters that
Jaret had known did not relish their jobs. The best wanted their
victim’s pain to end almost as badly as the victim and would,
thereby, work quickly to break their subjects. That was not the
case with Thagas'kiula. Jaret was long past the place where he
would tell the thing anything it wanted to know, but it did not
ask, and begging only intensified the torture, so he did not plead,
he simply cowered against the wall and screamed. He could not help
but scream.

Occasionally, Thagas'kiula brought
various devices to complement the torment of its bite, but that was
the exception. It reveled in using its terrible teeth and the
poison they held. That poison set Jaret’s blood on fire and made
him think of pain in a whole new way, but it also seemed to heal
any physical damage the creature did. It was that paradoxical gift
that made the thing so brutally perfect at what it did. It could
torture him continuously in the most terrifying ways without any
fear of its victim’s death. It had no need for subtlety or skill,
was perfectly adapted to its favorite activity.