neck had all the markings of a hasty and large harvest.”
Rubaloth nodded. He’d been right. These cursed Clansmen. Another scion from a vanquished line no doubt wielding old magics. Was he the one who had wrested Lumen from the Glory? If so, this could be tricky. But Rubaloth savored the challenge.
“When we’re a few miles from shore,” he said, “you will quietly search all his belongings.”
Uram bowed. “I shall, Great One.”
Yes, he’d have to be careful. But this Captain Argoth would soon find he was not the only one prepared for battle.
PURSUIT
S
ugar ran out of the cave into the light. She considered running back downhill to escape whatever it was coming at her in the inky dark of the cave, but because that was her first choice, she rejected it. It would expect her to run downhill; it would expect her to hide somewhere away from the cave, perhaps in the waters of the swamp. There was no way she could get far by trying to steal away quietly. Her very footfalls would make her an easy mark.
No, she wouldn’t run. She looked around for a place to hide close by and spotted one above the mouth of the cave behind an outcropping of rock. She didn’t know if it was big enough to hide her, but it would have to do.
Quickly, carefully, she moved away from the mouth and climbed up the small ridge that ran along the brow of the cave.
Something splashed through water just inside the mouth of the cave.
She pulled herself up the last few feet and slid behind the rock. But she didn’t have time to lie down, for the beast burst into view below her. It took a number of steps then stopped, surveying the slope below.
The creature stood like a man of freakish proportions. Heavy-limbed, wide, maybe seven feet tall, with a small, odd-shaped head. It was immense. She thought she saw an ear on the side of its head, but it was too ragged to tell exactly what it was. Shaggy grass grew unevenly over the whole of its body. Along its shoulder and back clung a large swath of blackened, ashy tufts and blades. Yet below the burned part, about where a man’s ribs would end, grew a patch of what appeared to be green grass mixed with the small white flowers of creeping wood sorrel.
If it turned around and looked up, it would see her. But she didn’t dare crouch, didn’t dare make adjustments for fear of making even the smallest of sounds.
The creature moved slightly and made a hideous sound that froze her spine.
It moved again. Again, the awful sound, and Sugar realized it was the intake of breath. A horrid gasp. Loud, like a man suffering from the black lung.
Was it trying to scent her?
The air about her was still, no morning updrafts or crosswinds. No downdrafts. The breeze in the cave blew outward, and so the thing would not have smelled her in there. But that also meant the breeze might, at this very moment, be carrying the scent that pooled about her.
A crack sounded from the woods below.
The creature turned to it.
Heartbeats pounded in her ears.
Then the thing moved, loping downhill in the direction of the sound, the grass about its body jolting with every stride.
Sugar realized she’d been holding her breath and gasped for air.
The creature leapt into the air, clearing a large tangle, and landed heavily on the other side. Two more strides, and then it was nothing but a flash through the trunks of the trees.
She gauged the distance it had covered in the few breaths since it had first moved. Never in her life could she have outrun it.
The rustling of a tree sounded from below, and she knew when it found nothing below, when it smelled her trail growing stale, it would come back.
Her legs shouted out for her to run, but she fought it. Sugar turned and carefully, oh, so carefully began to ascend the hill. She would find her escape on the other side, or not at all.
Hunger backtracked for about a quarter of a mile along the trail he’d taken earlier and then stopped under a cluster of tall pines. He had seen nothing. Heard nothing but a bunch of noisy grayfans. He would find nothing along this trail. The scent had been stronger back at the cave. He turned and began to walk back, looking, listening for anything at all.