The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1) - Mark Lawrence Page 0,48

them. They had all been thrown away the day before and discarding Maya to her fate wasn’t something any of them could swallow, whatever common sense might dictate.

“Can you do that thing with the roof like Tarko did with the hunter?” Yaz asked Thurin.

“No. Well . . . I don’t think so.” Doubt creased his pale brow. “And if I could, how would I stop it from crushing Maya? We don’t know where she’s hiding.”

It was true, and staring ahead Yaz could see very few places Maya could have concealed herself, unless she was just circling to keep the outcrops of rock between Hetta and herself.

“Kao will have to grapple her legs then, get her on the floor, and the rest of us can pound her while Petrick cuts her throat.”

“Hells . . .” Kao, behind her. Hetta had stopped her hunt and now slowly turned her head in the direction of their approaching group. “She’s . . . huge!”

Hetta reached behind her and drew from her belt an iron blade, a stolen sword as big as any Yaz had seen but seeming a mere dagger in the woman’s fist. Between the wrist and elbow of her other arm the gerant had bound a great thickness of hides secured by an iron bar twisted into a spiral, a shield of some kind to ward off blows. With a scream of rage Hetta came charging and sudden terror turned Yaz’s muscles to water.

Hetta came roaring, a band of scarlet across her eyes filling both with blood, and a jet-black stain reaching out like fingers in all directions around her impossibly wide mouth.

The two hunskas, Petrick and Quina, leapt to either side, Petrick, who hardly reached the woman’s hip, lashing out with his knife. Thurin and Yaz were knocked aside as Hetta seized her largest opponent. She caught Kao around the neck and slammed him down on the rocky floor, water spraying up from the impact. In the next moment she was turning to follow Petrick, her sword swinging low. Swift as the hunska was he couldn’t outrace the leading edge of her sword. Instead, he jumped, clearing the blow by fractions of an inch.

Yaz sat, shaking away the strange lights that filled her vision after Hetta’s rancid bulk had hammered into her. She saw immediately that her plan had been suicide. If Kao had managed to get her down they might have had a chance, but Hetta stood head and shoulders above him.

As the hunskas danced out of reach Hetta turned back toward those on the ground. Thurin had almost got to his feet. Hetta could split him in two with that cleaver of hers but she seemed reluctant to grant a quick death. She reached for him instead, and as she did so Thurin threw out both hands in a gesture of rejection. Somehow Hetta’s lunge slowed to a crawl. Both of them stood as if locked in a contest of strength, though with neither touching the other. Hetta howled and started to advance while Thurin’s legs buckled, losing traction on the small ridge he’d braced them against. She drove him back, still not making contact, as though a thickness of glass were interposed between them.

Quina, seeing her moment, rushed in to pummel Hetta’s exposed side, her fists a blur. Petrick charged in too, launching himself at the gerant’s back, driving his knife in as high as he could and trying to heave himself up with it, or to draw it down, carving a great wound. It seemed though that the blade had lodged tight and he lacked the strength for either.

Ignoring both attacks Hetta drove Thurin toward the edge of the cavern. Thurin seemed to be weakening but as the wall loomed behind him he drew back one arm and thrust again, this time sending forward jets of fractured ice from the wall. The ice blasted around Hetta’s face, blinding her and allowing Thurin to twist away.

“Run! Run, Maya!” Thurin took off back the way they had come, Petrick and Quina at his heels.

Yaz, on her feet now, made to run too. There was still no sign of Maya but the girl had had time to make her escape.

It wasn’t until she passed by