Lark Rising (Guardians of Tarnec) (8 page)

Death. Rancid, rotting death.

A Troth.

HE CROUCHED AGAINST the green background, chewing at something—mouth smeared red, and glazed eyes turning to look. I gasped, jerked backward, stumbled. He pulled back too, but only for the tiniest instant. Then he sprang at me with a violent gnash of those hideous teeth, snapping at the air where I’d been poised a moment before. But I fell and the Troth leaped at nothing, landing in a hard tumble on his side. Breathless, I scrambled back on the grass, horribly aware that I held no weapon, had no cover, nothing to prevent the next assault. The beast grunted, righted himself, and made to spring; I threw up my arms in futile defense.

There was no attack. In a rush of brown snarls, two foxes were on the Troth, teeth and claws and guttural, nasty yelps forcing him to spin away from me. But the beast was powerful; the foxes were no match.

“No!” I shrieked at them. “No, don’t!” I would have thrown myself into the frenzy, but one of the foxes turned and looked at me so fiercely that I paused in midmotion, stunned. I understood him exactly:

Go. Run. Head north
.

Words could not have been spoken more clearly. I hesitated, but the fox stayed turned to me, teeth bared, blocking me from the fight.
Go now!
Then he lunged for the Troth—who had the other fox by the throat—with such ferocity that the beast fell back.

I burst into tears at their sacrifice but did as I was bidden, tearing down to the bottom of the clearing and curving to head north. Across the pretty green, crushing the white snowdrops, up another crest that cupped the edge of the valley, and then I was into the hills of Tarnec. My task was abandoned—I’d left the path that Sir Farrin warned me to stay on, breached the territory he warned me against, and was running blindly up the hills. Moments later the Troth crashed into the forest behind me.

There was no tangle of brush here as in Dark Wood. It was open beneath the evergreen canopy, easy to run through despite the deepening dusk. The fir and eucalyptus were a pungent mix, tickling my nose and clearing my sobs. But I think the scent distressed the Troth; for a time I could hear rapid snorts through those slits of nostrils until they faded in the trees. And then I knew why the fox had said north. If the powerful scent hampered the Troth, I had half a chance to outrun it.

I clambered up and slid down the great hill, then crossed
a short space to confront another towering rise, scrabbling with both hands and feet up that next pitch, until night swallowed the remaining light and I was stumbling blind. The trees hummed low and soft, but there were too many to single out, energy too diffuse to give me fair warning. Starlight, moonlight, lamplight—there were none of these. I bumped hard into many trunks before using them to pull myself forward.

I’d nearly crested the second hill when the Troth shrieked hideously close by. My knees went soft. Of course:
his eyes
. Never mind stilted breath; if Troths lived within the Myr Mountains, they would easily see in the dark … easily find me. Those filmy disks were made for night.

My little knife was somewhere in my pack, but it was a choice I never had. Three chilling snorts I heard, each one nearer than the first, and then the beast was behind me. I lunged forward as he scraped at my cloak, but was tugged right back to those gruesome claws.

I cried out, hands flinging wide blindly. My palm hit the Troth’s arm as it came slashing down, and I felt the skin, moist and spongy like a slug, and the iron rod of bone beneath. The blow took my breath, as did the awful knowledge that I had no defense against such force. But it was the Troth who shrieked and leaped away, yelping and squealing like a bow pig, slithering back the way he came until the labored squeals grew fainter.

I didn’t stop to think what had happened. I rolled over and scrambled upward, crashing into trees, falling, but ever upward. That the Troth could have easily killed me was clear. I could only imagine that it was too easy; what was wanted was
the chase and torture that had killed Ruber Minwl. The Troth had gone to round up its mates, came the horrific realization. The blood sport had just begun.

I bit back fear. There was no time for panic. I should return to Bren Clearing, now, before they banded together. I had to at least try. With any luck, maybe I could get to the rowan tree and spread the banner before the slaughter.

And even as I made up my mind to go back, I reached the top of the hill and stopped dead still.

The trees ended. As abruptly as they’d begun, they ended. The sky was visible there, beyond the last boughs, and I stepped gingerly onto a split of rock that jutted over a valley and into the light of infinite stars. Silent, achingly clear, almost cold. The hills of Tarnec continued beyond, dark-sketched, daunted only by the massive shadows of the Myr Mountains. Below me, the valley was bare of trees, gleaming instead with slashes of silvery gray rock—huge boulders and ridges, nooks and crevices and promontories all punctuating the hill’s slope. Grass lay like blankets over the tops and spaces between, and the whole of the valley floor was carpeted in green.

The moon was rising full, an enormous sphere of silver already paling the sky and sweeping back the shadows. I watched the light spread and took a relieved breath of the cool air. I could find a hiding place in these rocks. Troths might not see so well under the moon’s bright beams; this close to the trees they might not smell me. At dawn, when my eyes would be as sharp as theirs and I still had the advantage of the forest’s scent, I’d begin my trek back to Bren Clearing and to the rowan.

“Thank you, foxes,” I whispered. A faint breeze bore the grateful words away.

I walked a little farther, keeping close to the trees, and climbed to a grassy ridge that dropped in a dizzyingly straight fall. There was a lip of rock near its edge I could use for cover as I waited for the sun. Troths were no more than the size of a man, but neither would fit easily there. I dropped to hands and knees and crawled to the hollow, then stopped—hair hanging over the edge and gaze riveted to the valley floor—at the sound of a distant rumble.

Ponies. The wild gallopers came streaking out of the valley shadows into the brilliance of moonlight. I was high, and the silver light played tricks; they seemed long of leg and spine. I squinted to see better, wriggling belly-flat to hang farther over the edge, then froze once more, prone and vulnerable, for I heard a new sound.

Something was moving up the ridge, something large. A ringing step against stone, a thudding upon the grass, and the little gusts of air through nostrils. I went to spring for the overhang, then froze again, too late, for he was up over the ridge already. I clenched for the strike, barely breathing.… But nothing. My head turned stiffly to look.

“Oh!” was all that came out.

The stuff of make-believe was glowing there against the night sky, with the sparkle of stars like little bursts of celebration surrounding him. A horse. A white horse.

My gaze whipped back to the valley. Not ponies. Horses. All of them. I, who had never seen a horse, was suspended now
above a hundred or more—was confronted by this singular, stunning one. I turned back slowly, blinking, to see if this horse would disappear like some apparition, but he stood solidly before me, watching as I pushed to my knees, mouth still open, and choked out inanely, “Oh, but you’re beautiful!”

He did not reply, of course, but I thought he shook his head for my benefit. A tiny shake, just to fluff the forelock from his eyes. The light of his coat flashed. I had to crane my neck to meet his stare; his eye was solemn, deep and dark, utterly passive and yet totally alive. He waited. I stood up slowly, transfixed, coming barely to the top of his shoulder, tentatively offered my hand just beneath his velvet nose. He blustered into my palm. I stepped closer, brushed my fingers along his powerful neck and smooth swath of cheek, and he turned and brought his soft muzzle to touch my own cheek, just at the edge of my jaw. Then my arms went around his neck and I leaned into him, breathing the wonderful smell of hide and mane, feeling his calming energy run through me—feeling, for a blessed time, safe.

The horse let me stand there for I don’t know how long. We both faced the valley, witnessed the herd running freely, all colors of hide and hair made silver-dark under the moon. A toss of mane, a whisk of tail to catch the light; a prance, a buck, a gallop across the open grass. Muscle and bone melted into a singular grace of motion. I was utterly still, hardly breathing, drinking my fill of beauty. An enchanted place. No wonder the Riders protected these hills.

Finally and almost ruefully, I lifted my face and released my arms.

I suppose that I expected him to turn away then, and leave as he had come. But the white horse touched his muzzle to my cheek again and blew through his nostrils right against my hair. Then he turned, exquisitely graceful despite his size, and started down the ridge.

A signal to move if I’d ever understood one.

He nimbly picked his way among the rocks and I scrambled behind, but when we turned to what was a sliver of path precariously winding down toward the valley, I stopped, disappointed.

“I cannot follow you.” I had to return to Bren Clearing. Back through the forest. Back to the Troths.

The horse’s ears twitched.

I reached once more to touch his bristled coat. “Go on, then.” I was speaking softly; even so, my voice vibrated against the rock surrounding us. “Thank you for this. I won’t forget.” The horse shook his mane and watched me with those deep eyes.

“Rune,” I said suddenly with a grin. “I would call you Rune.”

The horse shook his head again as if he accepted, and then he stepped away, leaving my hand open against nothing.

I watched Rune disappear through a tight crevice, a last gleam of his milk-white coat under the moon. No dark fears from the past days could have any hold in this place. I turned my face up and smiled at the sky, and then climbed awkwardly back up the rock.

The hair on my neck pricked.

Two things happened at once. I heard the harsh snort of the
Troth somewhere above my head, higher up on the ridge, and then I heard a step that was much closer—a soft, leather-shod step that I was not meant to hear, as if the foot was versed in creeping quietly to the attack. I felt my shoulders hunch protectively in surprise, and as I started to turn toward the noise, a voice roared in fury so loud that it echoed through the whole valley.

“Trespasser!”

I knew who it was. I knew it was my final breath. Even so, I could not help that my body pulled back, and my head whipped around in shock and fright, so that I caught his eyes with my own. And there was the timeless moment of my dream hanging suspended between us, eyes locked. Half a breath was all it was, yet it lasted an eternity. His beautiful, beautiful face was contorted by rage melting into some sort of frigid horror. My own expression, I know, was the shock of recognition. I was unbalanced. I fell hard back onto the ground, and over me he seemed impossibly huge.

“Trespasser!” The voice was hoarse this time, and I saw him close his eyes.

Yet he lifted his enormous sword in a graceful arc, and there was no hesitation as it struck down.

I WAS NOT dead. I could not be dead. I heard my struggle to take a gasping breath and my heart thudding wildly against my ribs. I heard roaring in my ears and the strangest sensation that I was underwater, or at the very least under a tremendous weight pressing me heavily into the earth.

And, I felt pain.

Yet all of that was insignificant against the shock that it was not over. My mind ran frenzied: the dream was not wrong—the sword had come down; my mind dissolved into that blissful white—but I was not dead.

He was swearing, I think. Harsh, sharp words were falling from above as the roar in my ears resolved into sound. “She is to die! She is supposed to die!” he shouted into the clear sky. And he cursed for this, I supposed, error.

Time is fickle. Moments we wish to hold are gone in an
eyeblink; things to be agonizingly endured seem to last forever. And sometimes, the space between breaths yawns open into a cavern—a great suspense of nothingness and everything at once. There is clarity in the tiniest detail. Mine was in my hearing. My ears were so attuned in that space, I swear I heard the stars burning. The curses falling from those beautiful lips, the echoing clang of sword against rock, the soft brush of the leathered step and creasing of woven tunic and braided belt. Then powerful snorting surrounded me, above, behind. They merged, split. Rune was whickering; beyond that was the Troth’s harsh slurp of air. I heard a grunt from the dream man as he sprang from the ridge and ran lightly across the boulder, a sharp squeal from the Troth, a thud.… And all I could think was how could the Troth die before I did?