From Across the Clouded Range (43 page)

The patter of an insect’s wings
reverberated over his head a second later. He looked up to see the
thing that was making his breath catch despite his panting need for
air but caught no more than a glimpse of the creature. Still, he
could tell that it was not like any of the other things he had seen
to this point, looking most like a huge dragonfly without a tail.
From what he could tell, none of the creatures was alike. They
varied from the size of a house to no larger than a dog in as my
adaptations as he could ever imagine. The only thing that unified
them was how universally terrifying they were.

“
How are you doing?” and a
hand on his arm nearly sent Dasen from his skin. He gasped and held
his racing heart. Teth just looked at him, waiting for a
reply.

It took him a long second to give it.
“I’m tired, but I can keep going. Are we close to the
bridge?”

“
Not close enough.” Teth’s
tone held surprisingly little scorn. She moved her hand to his face
then down to his chest. Her eyes scanned him. “I know you want to
abandon that pack, but we're going to need it, so keep it as long
as you can, alright?”

Dasen could only nod.

“
The things above are
becoming more frequent,” Teth continued, “but they obviously can’t
see through the trees, and they seem reluctant to leave the air.
That said, I climbed a hill over there and saw movement in the
trees behind us. They're still a ways off, but they’re gaining
fast. You really need to push, okay?”

Dasen nodded again. Teth's words were
making him anxious. He was ready to go. Adding to that, she was
looking at him in a way that made his stomach flip. It only doubled
his desire to run.

“
Here, I got this from a
plant up the trail.” Teth handed him a small bundle of leaves.
“Chew on it. It will give you energy, and it tastes pretty good
too.” Dasen took the bundle of leaves and rolled it between his
fingers. Before he could put to leaves in his mouth, Teth grabbed
him behind the head, rose to her toes, and kissed him. It was a
small kiss but intense, and it left him gawking.

“
Encouragement,” she said
with a sly smile as she stepped back to the trail.

Dasen could not even hope to reply,
but somehow he managed to put the leaves in his mouth and run after
her. His thoughts were so absorbed with the shock of that kiss that
he did not even notice how much it hurt.

#

The cramp in his side finally drove
Dasen to stop. He bent over with his hand clenched on his ribs
while he recovered his breath. The distraction of Teth’s kiss and
the leaves she had given him had kept him going longer than he had
previously managed, but the debilitating cramp was eventually too
much.

He chomped the sweet leaves between
breaths and felt their juice calming him. The leaves tasted fresh
and minty with just enough sourness to make his mouth water and
expel his overpowering thirst. His whole mouth tingled, and he felt
as if everything were amplified, as if the leaves had unlocked
strength he never knew he had. The leaves made his mind jumpy as
well, but mostly it landed on Teth. Try as he might, he could not
figure her. One minute she acted like she hated him, the next she
was kissing him. He certainly did not mind the change, but it was
utterly confounding.

"Dasen, come on!” brought him from his
crouch. “You can’t stop now. We're almost there, but they’re
getting close!” Teth was barely visible, but the urgency in her
voice did not need to be seen. Dasen signaled her to go, pulled
himself up, and, with one more deep breath, resumed his
trot.

He cursed himself for his
timing. This was the first time he had seen her since the kiss, and
he had been running every second until then.
At least we’re close
, he told
himself, but it was little consolation as the first sounds of
snapping branches, rustling leaves, and hammering feet echoed
through the trees behind him. Initially, he thought the sounds were
his imagination, but they built until they reverberated through the
forest, each sound a cold wave crashing through him. Howls,
screams, and murmuring voices soon added to that cacophony to
create a maddening murmur of evil intent more dreadful than
anything Dasen had ever imagined.

He was running for all he was worth,
imagining the creatures inches behind, when Teth appeared. She
looked back. He tried to yell a warning but could not find the
breath required. Teth nodded. "I know.” She was calm but unusually
breathless. “Trust me. We can make it if you keep running, but
don’t look back, and do exactly as I say.” She did not wait for
acknowledgement as she darted out of sight.

The sounds grew after that, like the
roar of the ocean closing on him with the same inevitability of the
tide. Dasen's imagination played a thousand horrible images of what
he would see behind him, and it took all the will he could muster
to keep his eyes from confirming them. He could only guess at the
demonic shapes boiling out of the forest behind him, could only
guess at how long it would be until they claimed him.

"Dasen, drop now!"

He did not even think as he flopped
onto his belly in the middle of the path. There was a whoosh above
him. The air snapped where his head had been a second before.
Something had just missed him, but he did not dwell on it. As soon
as the sound was past, he jumped to his feet.

The creature was not so lucky. It
shook then, failing to rise, careened into one of the trees along
the path nearly uprooting the spruce with the force of the impact.
Its body sprawled across the path, its spiked tail still thrashing.
Dasen was overawed by the creature’s violent death – it was the
first one they had seen – but he did not allow it to slow him. He
did not even pause to avoid the expanse of its tail. He hurdled the
wriggling thing, glancing back just long enough to notice the shaft
of an arrow planted to the fletching in its huge right
eye.

He ran with all his might after that
but did not know how much longer he would last. His body was pumped
with fear – the roar of the creatures had grown so close that he
expected something to reach out and grab him – but it was not
enough. His legs felt like noodles that had been cooked too long,
his breath was coming in pained gasps, and his hand was permanently
clamped at his side to keep the stitch there from overpowering him.
He was sure that he would collapse at any second and not rise
again.

That was until he heard the voices.
They started as the soft hiss of a single voice, but it rang in his
ears over the deafening clamor behind him. "We are almost there,
little one. A few more strides and my claws will reach your throat.
A few more strides and my teeth will taste your blood. You cannot
outrun us. Only a few more strides.”

That first voice was joined by others
each describing the way that he would die when the chase was over.
“Pain . . . ripping your flesh . . . break your bones . . . misery
. . . blood! Death! BLOOD! DEATH!” The threats grew in number until
they all chanted together for his death in a unanimous
roar.

The taunts, Dasen knew,
were meant to break him, but he allowed them to push him
instead.
Words can only hurt you as much
as you let them
, his father had always
said, and Dasen did not let these touch him. He would not give
these creatures the satisfaction of seeing him crumble, so he
forgot his miseries and ran, ran for all he was worth.

The voices were building to another
hideous crescendo when the first arrow hummed past his face, over
his shoulder and ended in a scream just behind – too close behind.
Other bolts followed in a steady progression as Teth covered him,
but she was only delaying the inevitable. His run was stumbling at
best; it was only a matter of time before his legs gave out
completely. The creatures were on top of him. It was only a matter
of time before not even Teth could keep them at bay.

Then it happened. The arrows stopped.
Dasen could hear the footsteps of the creature that would take him.
He could hear it whispering in his ear, could almost feel its
breath on his neck, smell the rankness of it. It was on top of him.
Nothing could save him.

He did not bother to pray. He mustered
what little energy remained, gathered it from every corner of his
body, and unleashed it in a cry of desperation. It echoed through
the forest, drowning out the pounding feet and whispered threats.
It pulsed through his legs, giving them just enough power for a
final lunge. He exploded through the last line of trees as the
scream died and stumbled toward a chasm.

Dasen could only stare at the line a
few feet in front of him where the earth ended and plunged fifty
feet into seething rocks and white-capped water. That line drew in
on him. He begged his legs to stop. They could not hope to respond,
but it hardly mattered. His body was hopelessly in front of his
legs. Even if they stopped, the rest of him would never manage it.
He was destined for the rocks.

The earth spun around him. He was no
longer looking at the chasm. He was turning away from it, back
toward the forest. Someone, something had a hold of his arm, was
swinging him away from the drop. He spun until he was parallel to
the ledge and the hand released him like a rock from a sling. He
stumbled for two steps before his legs could no longer keep up with
his momentum. His hands came up just in time to keep his face from
taking the brunt of the fall, and he slid for several feet across
the soft ground on his palms and belly.

A scream pierced the night, falling in
timbre as it faded down the gorge. The thing that had been
following him, Dasen thought. The scream was followed by others but
not enough. Not all of the creatures would find their way to the
chasm. Eventually, they would stop. Eventually, they would find him
lying only a few feet away.

The pack on his back might as well
have been a boulder, but Dasen somehow brought his knees under him
– he had not come all this way to die on his belly. From there,
strong hands grasped the pack and pulled him up. He helped them
little, but they managed. He was on his feet, but he was not sure
for how long. He wobbled precariously as Teth led him to a rope
bridge two impossible steps away.

The bridge was nothing more than four
stout ropes. Two of them were held off the ground at waist level by
crude supports to act as handles while the other two were lined
with weathered boards held in place by simple lashings. Teth
bounded across those boards like it was a forest path. She barely
touched the upper ropes and did not seem to notice the way the
bridge swung as each step landed on its shaking surface.

Dasen followed. He was not sure how,
but he followed. He was past the point of fear, and that was the
only thing that saved him. He ran across the boards not knowing how
his feet managed to land on the swinging walkway, expecting that
each step would be the one that buckled his knees and sent him to
the gorge. A few more shapes were silhouetted as they plunged to
the river. They were distorted, unimaginable shapes that the kind
moon transformed into things that were almost believable. Screams
and curses faded to oblivion as they disappeared and were lost to
the rocks.

A second later, the shaking of other
feet hitting the bridge pulsed through Dasen’s legs. His knee gave
out as his foot reached the bridge before he had expected. He
pitched forward on the swinging walkway and saw only rocks before
him. His heart caught at the same moment his hand found a
miraculous guideline and his other foot found the path. They
compensated for the lost step and allowed him to bring his eyes
back to the swinging planks. The other side was steps away, but the
path would not stay still; there were too many feet affecting its
swing. His quivering legs would not recover from another miss, but
he struggled on, one foot in front of the other, until he heard the
material of his pack ripping under the assault of clawed hands. It
was all the encouragement he needed. He leapt the final boards not
caring if his feet hit them or not. The claws swiped again at the
place where his throat had been a moment before. He dove away from
them and felt his hands dig into welcome mud.

He wanted to pass out, but Teth's
curse-laden battle cry kept him conscious. He rolled out from under
the weight of the pack and looked at the bridge. Teth’s back
dominated his vision. She was standing at the end of the ropes
fighting to keep a short lizard-like creature on the bridge. She
held a long knife in one hand, her bow in the other, and stood so
that nothing could get off the bridge without going through her.
Her shirt and pants were already torn and marked with blood. A
glance to the sides revealed deep gouges in three of the ropes that
held the bridge, but Teth had been waiting until he was across to
finish them. Those ropes strained under the weight of a solid row
of creatures stretching across their expanse but held, waiting for
those and countless of their brethren to cross.

Dasen had to help, had to do
something. He unbuckled the belt that held him to the pack and
squirmed from of the straps. Released from the burden, he nearly
jumped to his feet. He did not know what he could do, but he
grabbed the first thing he saw and turned to the bridge.

The lizard creature was thrashing in
the air as another fiend lifted it above its head and threw it over
the side. The act of betrayal earned the seven-foot creature, with
a hairless but perfectly muscled body and three eyes, a dagger in
the stomach. Teth was about to slash the blade across its stomach
when another hand inexplicably sprouted from the thing’s chest and
grabbed her wrist in a powerful grip. Teth gasped and released her
knife. The creature smiled as it reached to her throat with one of
its original hands and toward the huge sword on its back with the
other.