Cullossax hoped that perhaps one of the small folk might be hiding in the village still.
Flesh is flesh.
They ransacked the hamlet, tearing the roofs off of cottages, searching through barns. Kirissa found a few human weapons-carving knives and a small half-sword. Cullossax would have preferred some heavy war darts, or a great ax.
Some type of fowl scampered about the village green. "Chickens," Kirissa called them, but they darted away from Cullossax s grasp.
At last, he realized that there was nothing to eat, at least nothing in easy range.
"I will show you a secret," Cullossax said at last, and he took Kirissa to a garden. There he found a wide variety of plants. He sniffed at a round leafy thing, then hurled it away. But he picked some pods and pulled up a few red tubers.
"Eat these," Cullossax said. "Some will deny this, but a wyrmling can survive on plants, at least for a short time."
"I know," Kirissa said, surprising him. "On the old world, I ate plants all of the time. These green things are called beans. The tubers are beets. I like to boil them with a little olive, but they can be eaten raw."
So they squatted in a darkened stable, and Cullossax bit into his first beet, and laughed. "Look!" he said. "It bleeds! I have gutted fat soldiers that bled less."
The vegetables tasted terrible, of course. They tasted of dirt.
But they filled his belly, and the two rested in the barn, slathering themselves with water from a trough in order to cool their blistering skin.
An hour later Cullossax felt sick and bloated, until he emptied his bowels. The strange food did not suit him well. Afterward the barn stank so badly, he decided to leave. The two of them found human blankets and threw them over their heads and backs, to keep the sun at bay.
The rest of the day, they continued their run. The sun was a blinding demon, and as it began to settle to the west, once again Cullossax had to turn from his track. He headed south for a bit, then due east. They passed more towns and villages. In each one, the humans and livestock had all disappeared. Obviously, Rugassa s hunters were in a frenzy. Game had been scarce the past few years. Suddenly it was plentiful again.
Kirissa dogged along at his side, growing ever slower with each step.
This pace is killing her, Cullossax realized.
Worse, she is slowing me down. If I left her, the hunters on our trail would find her, and perhaps they would stop for a bit to amuse themselves with her.
That slight diversion might mean the difference between my death and escape.
He decided to leave her behind. Yet he did not act upon that impulse, not yet at any rate.
Kirissa grew light-headed and at last she swooned. He picked her up and carried her for an hour while she slept.
I am going to need a miracle, he thought.
And at last he found it. He entered a town that rested upon the banks of a clear, cold river. To the due east he could see a human castle with pennants waving in the breeze, not four miles off. Sentries of the small folk were marching upon the ramparts.
Off to the west, Cullossax heard a bark, the sound a wyrmling guard makes to let others know that he is awake.
Apparently, Cullossax s kin had not been able to take the castle yet. But an army was near, hiding in the shade of the woods.
I will need to keep away from the trees, he thought.
Cullossax spotted a large skiff on the banks of the river, large enough to hold a wyrmling tormentor and a girl. He checked the boat quickly, laid Kirissa inside, and then shoved the craft out into the cool water.
The current was not the rampaging torrent that he might have wished. The river was almost too shallow for such a heavily laden boat. The crystal stream rolled over mossy rocks, and glinted in the afternoon sun. Water striders danced on its surface, and trout rose to take the mosquitoes that dared rest on the surface. A few swallows darted along the river, taking drinks.
But otherwise the lush willows growing along the bank provided a screen from any prying eyes.
The boat carried them along, making sure that Cullossax left no scent, letting him and the girl escape even as they took their rest.
Cullossax startled awake well past dark.
Kirissa had risen, and now she worked the oars, streaming along. The boat scudded against some submerged rocks, which scraped the hull. That was what had wakened him. The river was growing shallow.
The landscape had changed dramatically. They were away from the lush hills and the pleasant towns, with their groves of trees.
Now, along both banks, a thin screen of grass gave way to sandstone rocks, almost white under the starlight. There were no shade trees, no hills.
"I ve heard of this desert," Cullossax said. "It is called Oblivion. There is nothing to eat here but lizards, along with a few rabbits. This must be the Sometimes River. It winds through the wastes for many leagues in the wet season, but the water sinks into the sand out in the wastes, and only rises again occasionally. To the east of here is the hunting grounds-the land of the shaggy elephants."
He thought for a long moment. The hunters on his trail would find it hard to survive in this waste. So would he and Kirissa.
The blazing sun shining off the rocks would blind them by day, and the few lizards would offer no food. The lizards would hide under rocks during the night, when the wyrmlings were accustomed to hunt.
Away from the river, water might be scarce-or even impossible to find.
"Give me the oars," Cullossax said.
He steered the boat toward shore. When he found a place where rock met water, he landed the boat and had Kirissa step out.
He considered setting the boat adrift, but knew that it might only travel a hundred yards before it beached. He didn t want it to be found, and did not know what attributes his pursuers might possess. Would they have noses strong enough to track a man by scent?
Many scouts had that skill, and the Bloody Fist recruited only from among the best.
But he knew that the rocky slopes would not hold his scent for long. If he was to escape, this was the place to do it.
So he took his iron javelin and punctured the hull of the boat. He threw in a few heavy stones, then waded out into the deepest part of the river, and made sure that the boat sank.
Then he climbed up out of the water, and the two set off once again, racing over the sandstone.
The valley here had once been a land of great dunes ages ago. The sand had compacted into stone, leaving a gentle slope that looked sculpted, as if waves of water had lapped away at it. It was an easy trail to climb, and even a heavy wyrmling left no tracks.
They ran through the night, heading south. The rocks still carried the heat of the day, and it radiated up from the ground, keeping the temperature warm.
It was a comfortable run.
Dawn found them staring down into a great canyon where sandstone towers rose up, strange and twisted hoodoos, creating the illusion of mystical castles along the canyon walls, while other pillars seemed to be grotesque wyrmlings, standing guard.
In the valley below, amid the tall grass alongside a great lake, a herd of shaggy elephants could be seen grazing-creatures twenty-five feet tall at the back, their pale fur hanging in locks, their enormous white tusks sweeping over the grass like great scythes.
Nearby, herds of hunting cats lazed in the shade of twisted oak trees, waiting to take the young and unwary from the herd of shaggy elephants.
"Will those cats attack?" Kirissa asked.
"We d make an easier meal than an elephant," Cullossax replied. "But I d worry more about the elephants. They fear us, fear our hunters, and the bulls will attack if they see us two alone."
Cullossax felt nearly dead. The sun had burned his pale skin, causing boils and chills; the lack of meat combined with their monumental run had left him famished and weak.