Chane picked one direction and tried to run in a straight line. He had to reach the cover of the trees. He stretched out both swords ahead of himself in the hope that one might hit something to warn him before he did so.
The wind turned to a roar in his ears.
His face and hands began to burn as pelting hail turned to bits of ice. Hunger rose to eat the pain, and the beast within him began wailing in fear as well as in fury ... until Chane thought he heard that sound with his own ears.
The wind suddenly died. Though his ears still rang with its roar, he heard branches and leaves rattle under a sudden rain of hail and ice chips falling to the ground. Then came a familiar wail—no, a howl—all around him.
And then a scream ... and then a snarl ... and the tearing of cloth.
Chane spun toward those sounds as wild hunger made the night too bright in his eyes.
A huge black dog—wolf—tumbled toward the clearing’s center. It righted onto all fours and charged back toward a man dressed in black who was scrambling up to his feet.
Chane barely recognized Shade. Amid hunger fueled by panic and rage, he knew only that she went at his target, his enemy ... his prey in the moment. His lips curled back from extended fangs, and he charged.
Sau’ilahk called upon his reserves, bolstering his flesh. The sensation was like nothing he had felt before, as if his sinews heated within and his bones grew dense. He willed the lives he had consumed to spread through the duke’s body ... his new body.
The dog had taken him by surprise. Gouges atop his right shoulder from her teeth still burned, and Shade came again, leaping for his face as her jaws widened.
Sau’ilahk lashed out with his deformed hand.
His talons struck along her neck as her jaws snapped closed on his forearm. The pain was nothing to him as he slashed, tossing her aside as if she weighed a fraction of what truly she did. She hit the clearing’s earth to his right and yelped as she rolled. On instinct he grabbed the hilt of the sheathed sword on his hip.
There was no pain anymore in his arrow-wounded hand.
Sau’ilahk had been the highest of Beloved’s priests, not a warrior. But he did not need to be so to sever the head of a beaten dog. He drew the blade and took one step, and then he saw Chane Andraso coming. He barely raised his sword up at the first strike of Chane’s longsword.
At the impact of the steel, he wrenched his own sword aside and let his bolstered strength add extra force.
To his shock, Chane whipped a shorter sword across and down on both of their longer, entangled blades.
Sau’ilahk’s sword was torn from his hand.
In the same instant teeth clamped hard around his right calf.
He struck down as he closed his empty sword hand, and his fist connected with an audible crack against the dog’s head. He kicked her away, and she made no sound as she tumbled off.
Sau’ilahk saw Chane’s gaze flick toward the dog as his broken voice rasped something. He used the instant of distraction and grabbed both of Chane’s wrists. Squeezing his grips tight, he summoned the last reserves he had left.
Chane’s eyes widened as his face wrinkled in pain. Even his lips spread wide around a mouth full of fangs and teeth ... like the dog’s. Both swords dropped from his hands, and Sau’ilahk twisted, trying to snap Chane’s wrists.
Chane’s hands closed on Sau’ilahk’s own forearms and locked their holds together.
Sau’ilahk was sick of dealing with Wynn Hygeorht’s minions. He would make one of them falter.
“I will take back all that is mine,” he whispered at Chane, “and then take your little sage from you—finally!”
Some small part of Chane quieted inside. He stalled for an instant as his mind cleared.
Those words meant something ... that brought memories and fear.
Fire had raced in a controlled line into the forest toward Osha. Chane had seen that before in the underworld of the Stonewalkers, when he, Wynn, and Shade had sought out clues to any remaining orbs’ locations.
An orb had been found in a lost dwarven seatt of ancient times. And again he and Wynn, along with Shade and Ore-Locks, had been seeking it out. But the key to that orb was missing when he and Ore-Locks had gone for it.
Both times Sau’ilahk had been there.
Chane’s gaze locked on the thôrhk—the handle, the orb key—around the duke’s neck....And take your little sage from you ...
Karl Beáumie knew Chane only as a hired guard, but those words implied something else. Shade had sensed an undead, as Chane had, but like no other that either of them had faced.
The only one he faced here and now was the duke.
Chane looked into Karl Beáumie’s manic eyes, and what he thought then was impossible.
The duke suddenly wrenched and pulled down on his right linked grip as he shoved hard on the left one.
Chane spun around the duke and lost his footing.
The force was too immense for a living man, and Chane did not regain his stance quickly enough. The duke drove him backward toward the trees at the clearing’s edge.
Wynn laid her staff aside to cut free the one living horse harnessed to the wagon. As it thrashed up, she grabbed her staff and quickly backed away. All four of its legs appeared sound, though its left shoulder had a deep slash, among other cuts and mud smears, and blood from its dead companion was spattered across its body. It would have to fend for itself and, she hoped, find its way back to the keep.
Wynn turned back. Wind pulled at the hood of her robe as she faced into it.
There was Osha, with his bow in hand and an arrow held fitted to its string, standing halfway between her and the orb’s trunk. For one moment she had thought to kill the last Suman guard for secrecy’s sake. Osha had somehow known and stopped her.
He had changed much because of what had been done to him. In the time Wynn had spent in his world, he had seemed kinder and more moral—even for an anmaglâhk—than anyone she had ever known. That hadn’t changed, not completely, and, knowing that the wounded Suman was still watching, she glanced toward the orb’s chest.
She wondered if Osha’s choice had been wise. Perhaps it would cause a problem in what might come, though she didn’t question it now.
Osha suddenly spun the other way and drew the arrow back as he aimed toward ...
Air swirled with dust, or maybe grains like sand, and the wounded Suman choked and covered his face with an arm as it passed.
Wynn dropped Osha’s dagger and gripped her staff with both hands as a figure formed out of dust in the night.
“Do not move!” Osha ordered.
Aupsha stood there, cloaked and masked, and glanced once toward the freed horse. She then looked at only Wynn and ignored Osha entirely.
“The artifact belongs with my people,” she said.
Wynn hesitated—not at those words but rather at what she had just seen. Aupsha appeared to come and go at will, and yet she hadn’t gone straight after the orb. Was she here to explain herself, to try to take it through reason?
“No,” Wynn answered. “I know as much about the ... artifacts ... as you and yours, perhaps more. I, and those with me, have successfully found and hidden three of them. Your people cannot safeguard even one anymore. It would be found—again.”
Perhaps she said too much, though the woman had already heard about the orb of Earth, another “artifact.” Wynn simply needed to make an impression and avoid more bloodshed. Aupsha might be an opponent in the moment, but she and hers were not enemies as yet.
“You think you know more?” Aupsha asked with spite. “Then you know the artifact must not—cannot—be destroyed. And it must not be used again.”