Winds of Change (14 page)

Except that she had saved his life at the risk of her own. She’d attacked her
own father,
a creature that had held absolute control over her all of her life, and for Skif’s sake.

She’d gone after Falconsbane with nothing; nothing but her bare hands -

 
- or rather, claws -

And thoughts like that made him realize all over again just how alien she was, yet that realization didn’t change how he felt in the least. Whatever it was, it was very strong and very real.

What’s going to make a difference is what’s happened to her - and what happens to
us.
If she‘s handling the things her father did to her. And if we can find someplace where people will accept her - and maybe even us.

That place might not be Valdemar; that was something he was going to have to admit. They might not be able to deal with someone who had tufted, pointed ears, catlike eyes, and a satiny-smooth pelt of very, very short fur. It wasn’t obvious, but a close examination would show it. The Heralds were open-minded, but were they open-minded enough for
that?
To accept someone who looked half animal?

And he was going to have to go home eventually. . . .

That question kept him thinking until Wintermoon shook his shoulder. After that, he was too busy breaking camp and following the scout through the darkness to worry about anything else. And when they finally made camp again, he was too
tired
to think at all.

The two hunters began using a different pattern than a follower might expect; they were on the move from about mid-afternoon to after midnight. With the owls helping him, Wintermoon was completely happy doing most of his scouting after darkness fell, and even Skif’s night-vision gradually improved with practice. He would never be Wintermoon’s equal, but he grew comfortable with searching the forest in the darkness. There were advantages to this ploy that outweighed the disadvantages; the strongest advantage being that with K’Tathi and Corwith scouting for them, there was nothing that was going to surprise them - and nothing that would be able to follow them easily. Few creatures hunted the night by preference, and those few, though formidable, could be watched for. So for several days, they hunted and camped, and remained unmolested even by insects. But Skif knew that the situation could not last. Sooner or later, they were going to run into one of the kinds of creatures that had driven the Tayledras borders back in the first place. Sooner or later, something was going to come hunting them.

That, in fact, was what he was thinking when they paused along a deer trail, and Wintermoon sent the owls up to quarter the immediate vicinity, looking for disturbed areas or other signs of someone who was not especially woodswise. Cymry began acting a little nervous, casting occasional glances back over her shoulder. But Wintermoon, who was sitting quietly on Elivan, didn’t seem to sense anything out of order.

His first real warning that something really was wrong and that Cymry just wasn’t being fidgety was when Wintermoon suddenly tensed and flung up his hand, and Corwith came winging in as fast as slung shot, landing on his outstretched arm, and hissing with fear and anger. Skif held out his hand as Wintermoon had asked him to do if one of the owls ever came in fast and showing distress. K’Tathi arrived a moment later, and K’Tathi hit his gauntleted wrist as if striking prey.
It
was the first time that the owl had landed on Skif, and nothing in his limited experience in hawking with merlins and kestrels prepared him for the power and the weight of the bird as it caught his wrist and landed. Those thumb-length talons closing - even with restraint - on his wrist could easily have pierced the heavy leather of the gauntlet. They did not although the claws exerted such powerful pressure that Skif could not possibly have rid himself of the bird short of killing it. K’Tathi hissed angrily, and swiveled his head away from Skif, pointing back the way he had come.

Before Skif could ask what was wrong, Wintermoon cursed under his breath and the
dyheli
stag he rode tossed its antlers and reared, its eyes shining in the moonlight, wide with fear. Wintermoon kept his seat easily, but Corwith flapped his wings wildly to keep his balance.

Tilredan, the second stag, the one laden with their provisions and extra gear, bolted; it was Skif’s turn to swear, and not under his breath. But he had reacted too soon; in the next breath, Wintermoon’s mount followed the other stag, and Skif only had Cymry’s warning Mindcall of
:Hold on!:
before she was hot on his heels.

Hold on? With an owl on one arm?

He dropped the reins - useless in a situation like this one - and grabbed for the pommel of the saddle with his free hand, deeply grateful that he had
not
given in to Wintermoon and exchanged Cymry’s old saddle for a Shin’a’in model. Shin’a’in saddles had no pommel to speak of. ...

K’Tathi continued to cling to his wrist, mercifully refraining from using his wings to keep his balance. One strong buffet to the head from those powerful wings would lay Skif out over Cymry’s rump before he knew what had hit him.

Instead, the owl hunched down on the wrist, making himself as small as possible, leaning into the wind of their passing. Skif tried to bring him in close to his body, but he wasn’t sure how much K’Tathi would tolerate.

:What in
-
:
Skif began.

:A pack of something, that scented us and is hunting up our backtrail,:
Cymry answered shortly.
:Not something we‘ve seen before, but something Wintermoon and the others know. Worse than wolves, worse than Changewolves. And smart
-
we‘re running for a place where we can defend ourselves. K’Tathi found it just before Corwith sighted the pack.:

He could only hope that an owl’s idea of what was defensible and theirs was the same; sheer cliffs were fine if you could scale them, and a hole in a tree would be all right if the tree was the size of a house, but otherwise they’d be better off making a back-to-back stand.

And he hoped his idea of “nearby” and the owl’s was the same, too.

For behind him, he heard an uncanny keening sound; not baying, not howling, not wailing - something like all three together. The noise gave him chills and made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and it sounded as if it was coming from at least eight or nine throats. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw nothing, but his imagination populated the darkness. If he heard eight, how many were really in the pack? Twelve? Twenty?
Fifty?

K’Tathi clutched his wrist a little harder, and the deadly talons pricked him through the leather. This was not a good way to carry the bird, but there was no way to turn K’Tathi loose to fly. The
dyheli
were nearly a match for a Companion in speed, and they were going flat-out; neither owl could have hoped to keep up with them by flying through the canopy, which was why both birds were clinging desperately to their perches on his wrist and Wintermoon’s. But K’Tathi, at least, was having a lot of trouble holding on. If the owl exerted a little more pressure -

:Cymry! Can you talk to K’Tathi?:
he asked Cymry, frantically.

Her mind-voice was colored with surprise and annoyance at what probably seemed like a supremely inappropriate question.
:Yes, but this is no time
-
:

He interrupted her.
:Tell him not to move, I’m going to try something with him, before he goes through my wrist.:

He pulled his arm to his chest, and brought the bird in close to his body, sheltered against his body. This left the owl unbalanced, with its face shoved against his tunic, but K’Tathi displayed his agility and intelligence; somehow he managed to get himself reversed, so that his head faced forward and his tail and wings were tucked down between Skif’s wrist and his chest. Now the bird wasn’t having to fight the wind by himself, he was braced against Skif. The painful pressure on Skif’s wrist relaxed.

That takes care of one problem.

Cymry’s muscles bunched and flexed under his legs, the sound of hooves drowning out anything else except the chilling cries behind them. The wailing behind them seemed closer. Skif didn’t ask Cymry if it was; it wouldn’t make any difference. They’d either reach safety in time, or not.

He just wished he knew how far it was to that promise of “safety.” If he knew, he might be able to guess whether they had any chance of making it, or whether it might be better to turn and make a stand.

And he wished that he had Wintermoon’s night-sight, far superior to his own. To him, the moon-filled night was full of shadows his eyes couldn’t penetrate. There could be nothing in those patches of darkness, or an enemy, or a hiding place. Though the moon was bright, there were still enough leaves on the trees to keep most of the light from reaching the ground.

The pack behind them cried again; this time there was no doubt in his mind about the peril of their situation. They were closer; if he looked back, he might be able to see them. The brush obscuring the path behind them didn’t seem to be slowing the pack at all. In fact, they were probably breaking a trail for the pursuers to follow along. He’d learned long ago that being the pursued in a chase was more difficult than being the pursuer.

He crouched a little lower over Cymry’s neck; as low as he could without flattening the owl. K’Tathi seemed to realize what he was doing, and didn’t object or straggle, only giving him a warning stab with his talons when he crouched too low for the owl’s comfort. Soft feathers pressed against his chin, and K’Tathi hunched down on his wrist so that the bird’s chest-feathers warmed his hand.

He glanced up; saw the gray bulk of a rock formation looming ahead of them through the trees. In this light, it looked very like the one in which he and Elspeth had sheltered when they first arrived in Tayledras territory. A moment later, he saw that this one was bisected by a good-sized crack. Just like the one he and Elspeth had used.

He seemed to spend a lot of time hiding in rock crevices lately. Whatever had happened to hiding in rooms, behind drapes, or under furniture?

He had a moment to think -
Oh, no, not again
- and then Cymry braced all four legs for a sudden stop, skidding to a halt beside the
dyheli.
At least the owls did seem to have some idea of what constituted a good shelter for the rest of the party. The crevice would be a little crowded for three plus the two humans, but it was better than facing what howled on their backtrail with nothing to protect their backs!

All three of them crowded into the narrow crevice between two halves of a huge boulder; the rock was easily two stories tall, and the crevice ended in the stone face of a second stone that was even taller. There was barely enough room for Cymry to turn around, but that was fine; less room for them meant less room for those things out there to try to get past them.

A strangled hoot and the booting of K’Tathi’s head against his chest reminded him to turn the poor owl loose. He raised his arm and launched it clumsily into the air, thrown off by the confined quarters and the fact that the owl was considerably heavier than a merlin. It wasn’t much of a launch, or much help to the owl in gaining the air; K’Tathi hit him in the side of the head with a wing, recovered, and got free of the crevice, just as the pack reached them.

Skif looked up when a note of triumph entered the wailing. A strange, yellowish flood burst through the bushes and into the area around the rocks.
Dear gods
-

He needn’t wish for night-sight after all. The damned things glowed. Now that he saw them, he wished, perversely, he didn’t have quite such a good view.

They looked - superficially - like dogs; they had the lean, long-legged bodies of greyhounds, the close-cropped ears, the long, snaky tails and pointed muzzles. But their faintly-glowing, pale yellow hides were covered with scales, each scale outlined by a darker yellow. Their heads, shaped like an unholy cross between dog and viper, held eyes that burned a sulfurous yellow much brighter than the bodies, and rows of sharply pointed fangs.

They flowed, they didn’t run; they drifted to a halt outside the entrance to the crevice and wound around each other in a vicious, impatient, ever-moving tangle. A snarl of ropes, with teeth at one end. A ball of vipers. They confused the eye and baffled the senses with their hypnotic restlessness. Wintermoon slid off the back of his mount; Skif followed his example a moment later.

They couldn’t get in; the sharp hooves of Cymry and the
dyheli
bucks awaited them if they tried, not to mention the bows that Skif and Wintermoon unlimbered from the sheathes at each saddle. But those who had taken refuge here couldn’t get out, either.

Stalemate.

Skif strung his bow and nocked an arrow to the string, Wintermoon shadowing every movement.
All right, here we are. Now what?

“What are those things?” Skif asked quietly, as the creatures continued to mill about in front of the crevice. He blinked his vision clear as they blurred for a moment. Was that just his tired eyes acting up, or were they doing it?

“Wyrsa,”
Wintermoon replied, frowning as he sighted along his arrow. He loosed it in the next moment, but the
wyrsa
that was his target writhed aside literally as the point touched its hide, evading the deadly metal hunting point in a way that Skif would have said was impossible if he hadn’t seen it himself. He’d never seen anything move so fast in his entire life.