every step was a trial. He felt constantly nauseous and faint and he was waiting for his body to give out and for Tual to offer him up to the rainforest. Him and Mercuun.
He pushed himself away from the tree and plodded deliberately on, seeking vegetation he could force through without a blade as he had done all day. It added to the distance but there was no way he could do otherwise. Once he put Mercuun down, he didn’t think he’d have the strength to lift him again.
He ducked under a stand of broad leaves, his vision swimming again, the colours he could usually pick out so cleanly in the dark all washed out and running together. Again he was forced to stop while his head cleared, each time taking longer than the last, and it was then that he heard what he had most feared. The quiet padding of feet. The almost imperceptible movement of vegetation at odds with the ambient breeze. The careful placement and sinuous movement that spoke of the consummate hunter. Tual had spoken her wishes.
Rebraal was being stalked.
Shivering, his body wracked with the fever pumped around his bloodstream by his exertions, he forced himself on. Mercuun, unconscious for much of the time and incoherent the rest, was a draining weight in his arms. Rebraal knew he hadn’t the strength to fight the jaguar, if such it was, and his only hope was to carry on, hoping and praying the animal was diverted from its hunt.
He upped his pace, his body screaming at him to stop, his mind fogging and new blood seeping from the wound in his shoulder. He tripped across a root, dropped to his haunches under a low branch and drove himself upright, gasping. He broke into a trot, imagining the jaguar’s footsteps increasing, the shoulders moving under the sleek fur, the eyes piercing the night and the nostrils twitching as they caught the scent of blood.
Behind him, he heard the crack of a twig and the rustle of leaves. He ran, praying for respite or a hiding place. Mercuun bounced in his arms and moaned in his unconsciousness, the pain of his broken limbs finding him even there. Liana and vine slapped Rebraal’s face as he went; he twisted this way and that, jumped more roots, slid down a slight slope and forced himself up its other side. He dared not look behind him.
The sounds of the rainforest filled his ears, their volume increasing tenfold, twentyfold, as he ran. The croaking of frogs, the rasping of lizards, the scurrying of ants and spiders. He could hear it all so loud, mingled with his ragged breath as he fought for air. He heaved them over the lip of another incline, not stopping, rushing onwards, splashing through a stream, his skull echoing painfully to the awful noise that built and built.
He felt his legs half give but drove himself for another pace. And another. He ignored the shuddering of his arms and the lancing stabs through his back every time his foot went down. He had to escape the jaguar, he had to get to the village and warn them. The temple. By Yniss, the temple had to be retaken. He couldn’t fail or the harmony would be lost.
He raised his head to look for his route, his vision clouded again and a branch caught him squarely across the forehead.
Rebraal felt himself go as if in slow time. Even as his head rocked back from the impact, his legs carried on forward a pace. Impossibly unbalanced, his grip on Mercuun was lost and his broken friend tumbled out of his hands and away. He circled his arms desperately but still he fell back, landing in a tumble on the soft muddy forest floor, his head a mass of sparks, his senses all but gone.
He heard the sound of those feet running towards him, could feel their vibration through his tortured body.
‘I am sorry, Meru,’ he managed as he waited for the end. ‘I have failed you.’
The hot breath of the cat fired into his face. He looked up into the eyes of Tual’s creature to see the wonder of creation even as it tore his life from him but it was no jaguar. It was a panther, black as night with the light of sentience in its eyes. Its head darted in and licked at his cheeks and forehead, an impossibly comforting feeling as the rough tongue dragged at his skin.