was clenched, as mine had been when I dispatched the one upon the ledge. With one hand steadying yourself on my shoulder you threw wild punches left and right, face contorted, grunting. I looked down at my right hand, where new skin was still forming over its burned and ragged flesh. If one of your blows found its target, your hand would be vaporised.
Reaching back, I pulled you against me, constraining your movements. You cried out in protest and squirmed in my grip, heart furiously set upon destroying our pursuers and utterly convinced of your ability to do so. I did not know whether to wail or grin.
The lanterns closed in. One screeched a short binary report I decoded as a command to stop and state our business.
And I had a thought. Benedikt’s screech—perhaps it was a code?
You had already seen me lift a horse that day so one more example of unusual behaviour was not going to tip the balance of your already precarious belief systems. Besides, who does not scream into a snowstorm when they are galloping from hurtling photon arrays?
I screeched what Benedikt had whispered into my ear.
It had no effect. So that was that.
We had to lose them somehow. I knew that we were moving near the limit of their speed, but Boron was fading with every step. We banked right, following the edge of an outcrop that led into a narrow gulley littered with rocks. There was no possible way he could negotiate the obstacles without losing even more pace, and the only other route available to us was a path leading up a sharp incline to the left.
Another loud screech from the lantern, repeated by its partner. Both had their eyes turned upon me, waiting for a response. They would already have been signalling our location back to Ertanea.
‘Reed, hold onto me very tightly. Around my neck.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Just do it.’
I waited until your wrists had tightened beneath my chin.
‘Now don’t let go, do you hear me?’
I felt your head nod against mine, stroked Boron’s neck and whispered in his ear. Then I released his reins, braced myself against the stirrups and leaped.
We flew for a little longer than I had expected, and Boron stumbled safely to a trot and then stood at peace, panting in the mouth of the gulley, as the two lanterns looked up in apparent surprise. We landed heavily, but my legs were ready for the impact and I sprang up the bank with my hands behind me, keeping you close.
The lanterns pursued. In the sudden change of course and new terrain, one smashed into a pointed crag and wheeled away, flickering, before extinguishing itself entirely in the snow, but the second swerved and corrected its course, locking on and buzzing behind me.
I sprinted up the hill, faster than Boron, faster than I had ever run before, with strides so long I felt my tendons might snap, and impacts so hard I thought my bones would shatter. But they did not, and I flew up the hill with no plan, no plan at all, just to outrun the lantern and keep you safe upon my back, to travel onwards and never give up, not while you were still with me.
Every muscle screamed. My heart hammered, my veins bulged, my lungs threatened to explode. The machine of my body was reaching the limit of its endurance, and so too, I sensed, was the lantern. It stuttered and strained behind me as we reached the lip of the slope. This was not terrain I had seen before, but the blizzard was thinner this high up and I could see the ground across which I thundered. It was flat now, easier for me to cover, and I pushed ahead as the lantern struggled to keep up.
I thought we would make it. I thought we would lose the lantern and break through, do whatever it was that we would do next. I felt a thrill at this, not just at the possibility of success but at the unknown beyond. I had never realised, until that moment, how much freedom there was in uncertainty.
I smiled at this, and the sounds of the dwindling lantern. But the smile soon fell as I saw what was ahead: the path ran out, ending in a ravine. I scanned left and right. There was no way up, no way down, just a wide, empty space between the lip and the other side of the gulley. We