A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,68

a moment I thought, why not? Why not die with the rest of my family? Since I had been the one to distract them from the danger and take their eyes off the boil, should I not pay the same price in blood?

But then I supposed I didn’t want this sedge of pumas to be the end of all the Khose. They are not bright creatures, only savage and unafraid of anything. I have had more than one jump at me in the past and die on my spear. I missed my spear now.

I pulled out my hunting knife and shifted my field bag to the front, holding it up just below my chin with my left hand and gripping the knife with my right. The grass puma leapt at me, mouth open, going for my throat, and I raised the bag and fed it to him as he came, going down to the ground so that he would land on top of me. That was what he wanted and what I wanted, too. He tore into the bag instead of my throat, his teeth bursting through a water skin instead of my skin, and I stabbed him repeatedly with my knife as he got a mouthful of water and nothing else. I wasn’t trying to kill him, just make him decide to eat something else. After five or six stabs I must have hit something that really hurt. It jumped up and back from me, ripping the knife out of my hand and bounding away with it still lodged between its ribs. It left me alive but deeply scratched, weaponless and with a lot less water to drink when I was days away from home.

There was no going after it because it staggered back to the other grass pumas, making a noise between a wail and a roar. I was making similar sounds, but more from grief than from physical pain. The other pumas had enough to occupy them, so they ignored both me and my attacker. Still, I needed to get out of there; more predators and scavengers would be coming this way, following the scent of blood. I didn’t have a goal in mind except to live long enough to mourn them properly, to release them to the sky, and then, perhaps, Kalaad would take me or show me what to do next. The pumas wouldn’t go into the island of nughobes—even the kherns wouldn’t go in there. They were already swerving around to the west to avoid them.

The canopy held its own dangers for me but nothing as immediate as the pumas; soon there would be packs of scavenging wheat dogs and then a cloud of blackwings descending to pick over the bones. And once they had all gone, maybe then I could return and pay them the honor they deserved and beg their spirits for forgiveness.

I ran in an awkward crouch away from the pumas, half in staggering grief and half in hope that my back didn’t crest above the grass and give me away to any other predators nearby. My breath heaved raggedly out of my lungs and my eyes streamed and my nose, too, if I am honest, and I felt trickles of blood down my arms and sides from where the puma scratched me.

Nothing chased me into the canopy, and the temperature cooled noticeably as soon as I entered the shade. The broad trunks spread out with long, heavy branches that drooped all the way to the ground, allowing almost any creature to climb up into the trees with ease. The branches of the nughobes always hid more dangers than the ground, which was carpeted with the leaves of many seasons, which smothered almost all undergrowth aside from a few low-light ferns.

I didn’t stop once I made the border of the island but kept going inside; the truly dangerous creatures inhabited the periphery so that they could hunt in the plains or the interior. The fact that none of them had attacked our wagon didn’t mean they weren’t there; it simply meant they were more likely nocturnal.

I ran until I could run no more, when all I could hear was the rasp of my breath and the plodding of my tired feet, heavy with loss. I stopped in the middle of a triangle of trees, scanning the branches quickly to make sure I was not about to rest in the middle of a howler colony. I should have taken more care, but