Covenant's End - Ari Marmell Page 0,10

though bleeding profusely, sporting a skull sadly lacking the hoped-for gaping hole—the thing bolted upright and charged.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!” Shins observed.

Rough bark chewed at her fingers as she scrambled madly up the nearest tree, empty pistol tumbling with a flat thump to the soil. She felt Olgun's strength supporting her own, tightening her grip, boosting her jump as she pushed off the trunk in a lunge for the next branch over. Slender boughs scraped at her face and arms, enough to sting, not remotely enough to stop her. From behind, the rending and tearing and splintering and howling rather efficiently announced her pursuer's approach where the darkness might otherwise have concealed it.

And about that darkness…“Olgun?”

Another tingle of the god's power and the world brightened, though it lost some of its sharpness and color. One more leap, so she could haul herself up onto a higher branch, and then Shins took the time to turn and look.

Although slowed by the need to circumnavigate or squeeze between the largest boles, the creature wasn't far behind. Most of the intervening branches, and even a few small trees, simply snapped and fell away as it thundered through them. The protruding horn occasionally snagged in the canopy, forcing the thing to twist and crouch, impeding it further still, but most of the time it, like the rest of the beast, just tore through whatever blocked its path.

Every few steps it thrust that massive spear up and out, stabbing into the darkness. It was a veritable battering ram, thicker than the scattered saplings; with Olgun's enhancement to her vision, Shins could still see dried blood—she chose to assume it was the horse's—clinging to the sword-sized tip.

A bough thicker than the one on which she crouched splintered and fell with the spear's impact, hanging loosely by a few thin fibers. With a sound something akin to “Eep!”—only less articulate—Shins leapt. Over the monstrous head and horn, though not as high above as she might prefer, she soared across the gap to the next tree over. There she swung clear around the trunk and began again to climb, seeking a perch too high for even this enemy to reach.

Olgun's doubt was a sheen of sweat, clinging not to her body but her soul. Shins couldn't honestly blame him; with a foe nearly twelve feet in stature, wielding a spear even longer than that, “too high to reach” was—so to speak—a tall order.

Every stretch, every heave brought an extra foot of height and a bit of swearing—well, “swearing”—to match. “Figs…figs…hens…figs…”

Beneath her, something growled. Shins froze, leaned left, and glanced downward.

It stood at the base of the tree, its one narrowed eye meeting hers. She could see it studying the length of trunk between them, deciding she was out of reach, if only just. It hefted the spear a time or two, perhaps debating whether to throw.

Then, grinning until the flesh around its horn rumpled like an unmade bed, it reared back, lifted a foot, and kicked.

The entire tree shuddered and jumped. Branches waved like drowning sailors, and Shins could only cling for dear life as bark bit into skin and her teeth clacked hard enough to grind cornmeal. She might have considered drawing her rapier and letting herself drop, hoping both to kill the thing and break her own fall by landing atop it, but the wicked horn made that a rather unenticing proposition.

A second inhuman kick. Shins slipped a few feet down the trunk with a brief squawk. A trickle of blood wormed its way out from beneath her left palm.

“O-o-o-lgun-n?” she asked as the shuddering faded.

She caught the first stirrings of whatever idea he meant to convey, a brief flash of imagery that had something to do with the branches around her, but whatever else he intended was lost in a silent shriek of panic. The tree shook yet again, but this time was different. The impact seemed somehow less solid, yet the vibration was just as violent. Once more, Shins could only clutch tight to the trunk and twist about to look down.

“Oh, figs.”

The thing had turned the edge of its spear against the trunk. The massive tip was more than heavy enough to function as an axe, and while the surrounding trees provided limited room, the creature's strength was such that it didn't need much of a swing to build momentum. With that first strike, it had already gouged a larger gap into the tree than any human lumberjack could have managed in a half dozen blows.

Again