Spider Wars: Book Three of the Black Bead Chronicles (12 page)

Cheobawn’s boots found
unbroken ice crust on the edge of the bank. She ran. Somehow her
bladed stick had come free in her hands. She slid her palms up its
hilt in preparation for an assault as she skirted the softer, broken
parts of the drift and reached its apex. Star was running full out,
now, Sigrid bent low over her neck. Connor yelled at her but she
could not hear what he said over the incoherent screams coming out of
Erin.

Their worst fears took form.
Something raced across the snow in the fading light, a smudge of
shadow, improbably fast, impossibly big, chasing Sigrid and Star.
Cheobawn tumbled down the other side of the drift and rolled to her
feet. Sigrid glanced once over his shoulder and then turned to urge
Star on. His bladed stick was in his hands now.

“
Jump,” Cheobawn
bellowed as she raced to meet him. “Jump clear.”

Star was fast but the thing
was faster. The shadow launched itself into the air. It was an
impossible distance for something that big. Sigrid, whether he had
heard her or whether his instincts were guiding him, was already
kicking himself clear of the stirrups when Star tumbled head over
heels from the impact, the shadow hanging from her throat. Cheobawn
ran after them, the cold air burning like fire in her lungs, vaguely
aware that someone behind her was screaming for her to stop. Star
squealed in pain but the sound cut off in mid breath, as Sigrid was
spun high into the air before falling back to earth with a sickening
thud.

Fortune was on their side.
The impact had knocked Sigrid well clear of the carnage.

Cheobawn ran up and took a
stance between the predator and Sigrid, glancing down at him as she
tried to catch her breath around the pain in her lungs.

Sigrid’s eyes were open
but he looked stunned. The ice had shredded the skin on his cheek,
blood soaking his face mask. That was all she saw before she looked
back towards the sounds of death. An enormous smokey-gray cat had
Star’s throat in its jaws. Star kicked, struggling as she
suffocated and died. Cheobawn backed away until her boot found
Sigrid’s body.

“
Get up,” Cheobawn said
softly, kicking Sigrid in the thigh. Sigrid groaned, rolled over and
began to crawl. She eased slowly backwards, following his progress
out of the corner of her eye.

“
Get up, Sigrid,” she
begged. “By all that is holy, get on your feet.”

Sigrid found his bladed
stick. Planting the end in the ground, he pulled himself to his feet,
swaying like a tree in a storm. Connor was there suddenly, holding
him up on the other side and dragging him backwards. Cheobawn
followed, never taking her eyes from the big cat.

Erin was still screaming and
so were the bennelk. Cheobawn wished fervently that they would stop,
as the cat did not seem to like the noise very much. It lifted its
nose and yowled angrily at them, which seemed to give the bennelk
pause. An uneasy silence descended on the animals.

Sigrid shook himself free of
Connor, managed a passable defensive hold on his stick, and began
moving a little faster. The cat returned to its meal with an
intensity that proclaimed its hunger.

“
Cheobawn, get behind me,”
Connor snapped, his voice strained and harsh.

“
We stick together,
Connor. Keep him on his feet. I will guard your back,” she said
firmly. “Keep your blades up and think fierce thoughts. Sigrid, can
you climb on a bennelk?” Erin, goddess be praised, had finally
stopped screaming.

“
Yeah, I think so,” he
wheezed.

“
More importantly, can you
run?” Connor asked.

“
No running. Slow and
easy. No sudden motions,” Cheobawn said, knowing intuitively that
she was right. She turned her mind towards the cat and tested the
ambient.

“
What is that thing?”
Connor asked softly.

“
A smoke leopard, I
think,” Sigrid groaned. He tried to cough, but his breath caught in
his throat. He continued talking, but his voice was thin and full of
pain. “They hunt the highest elevations of the Waste.”

“
What is it doing here?”
Connor muttered.

“
I don’t know. I have
never heard of them coming this far south,” Sigrid said.

They reached the hedgerow.
Connor began pulling Sigrid up the more stable verge of the drift. A
grunt and a curse from Connor warned of more misfortune. She risked a
glance over her shoulder. The fractured crust had broken under
Sigrid’s weight. One leg had sunk up to mid thigh. Connor heaved at
his arm, trying to break him free. Sigrid’s groan of pain was
almost a sob. The cat looked up, its muzzle scarlet, sniffing the air
as it took a step towards them and then another.

Cheobawn froze; her eyes
locked with a pair of green eyes the color of the first shoots of
spring while she listened to Connor as he got Sigrid back on his feet
and moving once more. The cat’s fur was long and dense, the color
of winter storm clouds with a mottling of white and black to break up
its shape, a perfect camouflage for hunting snowfields in the low
light of dusk or the perpetual night of the northern ice fields.
Sigrid would not have seen it until he was on top of it and even then
it would have looked like stone and shadow until it moved. Its beauty
was undeniable but its power in the ambient was something else
entirely. She puzzled over its presence in her mind. It was a curious
thing, the way it flitted in and out of the ambient, one moment
there, hungry and desperate, the next moment, nothing. It would have
to be an adept to surprise a bennelk, of course. Her admiration
surprised her, warring as it did with the terror and grief at the
loss of Star. She lifted her lip and snarled at it, daring it to test
her fanged stick as she took one careful step backwards. The cat,
content in knowing they were not going to contest him for ownership
of the kill, yawned an enormous yawn that showed every tooth in its
head before turning back to its meal. Released from its thrall,
Cheobawn turned and scrambled over the fenceline as fast as she could
go.

Connor had gotten Sigrid
over the top and was guiding him carefully down the other side.
Cheobawn slowed to help them but, spotting the remaining bennelk,
changed her mind. Erin had dismounted and now stood with all three
lead ropes in her fists, trying desperately to keep the animals from
clambering over the drift to save their sister. Cheobawn leaped down
the face of the snowbank, tossed her stick aside, and grabbed at
Cloud Eye’s lead.

Stand, sisters
, she
insisted.
Star is gone. We cannot save her
.

Slashing tusks and claws
filled the ambient of the bennelk.
Kill it
, was the communal
thought. Cheobawn threw out her other hand and grabbed Kite Wing’s
lead as she half reared. Neither she nor Erin let go and between the
weight of the two of them, they managed to hold the bennelk in check.

I have no tusks
,
Cheobawn reasoned,
and Sigrid is hurt and must go home.
She
put all her longing into the last word.

Star cannot go home,
Kite
Wing grumbled, settling.

Star will stay and guard
our retreat
, Cheobawn said.
Settle, Mother. Sigrid cannot
mount you if you stand.

Kite Wing hissed angrily but
settled onto her knees all the same. The other two tried to pull away
from Erin, alarmed at their sister’s vulnerable stance.

“
Let them go. They will
guard us,” Cheobawn instructed Erin. “Go get Sigrid.”

Erin hesitated for only a
moment before she nodded and let go, leaping out from under the
nervous hooves.

Kite Wing settled until her
belly touched the snow as Erin and Connor brought the Alpha close to
her side. Sigrid could not reach above his head with one arm.
Something was broken or torn there. Between Erin and Connor, they
managed to shove him up onto the saddle.

Sigrid clung to the saddle
horn, his head pressed to the bennelk’s mane, his eyes momentarily
closed. Cheobawn tugged his good hand free and pressed his bladed
stick into it.

“
Sigrid,” she insisted.
The tall Alpha opened his eyes, his fingers convulsing instinctively
around his weapon.

“
I'm fine,” he said
though it was obvious he was not fine at all.

Scrambling up behind him,
Connor grabbed the reins from Erin as she passed them around Sigrid's
body. The Alpha Ear gazed at Sigrid, perhaps doubting that he could
make it back to the dome.

“
Erin. We have to move,”
Cheobawn said. Erin gave her one agonized glance and then turned and
leaped up onto Red Leaf, gaining the saddle in the next moment.

When she thought they could
move without triggering one more calamity, Cheobawn released the
bennelk with a thought and Kite Wing rose hastily. Sigrid did not
make a sound even though she could tell the jarring hurt him badly.
Broken ribs would cause that kind of pain. If that were so, they
could not jounce him around too much for fear of shifting bones
around vital organs.

Sigrid caught her watching
him. He smiled It was a ghastly smile but it told her what she needed
toknow. Scooping up her weapon, she slapped it into the saddle clips
on Cloud Eye’s saddle and climbed up the bennelk’s side. Cloud
Eye was moving even before Cheobawn reached her shoulder.

Home
, Cheobawn
thought as she threw her leg over the saddle and slipped her toes
into the stirrups.

Herd then home
, Cloud
Eye corrected her as she followed Kite Wing, who, - knowing a thing
or two about carrying fragile humans - set a pace that slowly built
in speed until they were striding smoothly away, heading south and
west towards Orchard Trail and the promise of safety in numbers.

Cheobawn tried to listen to
the smoke leopard but Cloud Eye found it unsettling to have a
predator’s thoughts riding upon her back. Cheobawn thought it very
unobliging of her but Cloud Eye could not be persuaded otherwise.
They would have to trust Erin’s psi to give them any warning they
might need.

The pace was brutal for
Cloud Eye, who had already raced across more than half a click of
pasture. After fifteen minutes of the long-legged lope, Cheobawn’s
mount began to wheeze ominously. Cheobawn let her lag behind the
others. Kite Wing slowed to match Cloud Eye’s pace.

Erin looked back the way
they had come, a little wild-eyed with fear but she slowed her mount
to match the others all the same. Cheobawn took that as a good sign
and slowed Cloud Eye to a long-legged walk. The others settled in
next to her, matching her pace.

“
Do you think that thing
ate the cattle, too?” Erin asked, looking ill. Was her ambient
still full of the grisly carnage behind them, Cheobawn wondered?

“
It was too hungry,”
Cheobawn said. “Maybe it was stalking them when it spotted Sigrid
and thought Star a better meal.”

“
Two Ears,” fumed Connor
as he settled Kite Wing next to Cloud Eye and glared at her and Erin.
“Two Ears could not keep us from walking into its trap. What kind
of Luck is that?”

Erin hissed in shock, not as
used to being called Bad Luck as Cheobawn was.

“
Connor,” Sigrid said, a
warning in his voice despite his pain.

“
Erin said
no
.
Quite a lot, as I recall. It was the rest of us who refused to hear
her warning,” Cheobawn said calmly, giving Connor a pointed glare
that he might mind his tongue.

“
Sorry about that, Erin,”
Sigrid said, his voice full of regret. Erin cast him a quick look,
her eyes full of pain. Ramhorn Pack’s quarters would be an
interesting place this evening, Cheobawn thought. She did not envy
Sigrid’s job of setting things right with his Alpha Ear.

“
What about you?” Connor
asked, glaring at her. “Running straight at that thing like it was
nothing but a fawn. Have you no sense of self-preservation?”

“
We are all alive,”
Cheobawn said pointedly. “Can’t you be glad about that?”

“
I know how far you see,
Ch’che,” Connor said heatedly. “You would have never let us
come out here if you had even bothered checking the ambient for one
second.”

“
Connor, you need to show
more respect for …” Sigrid protested.

“
You will do me a great
favor, Ramhorn,” Connor said sharply, cutting off Sigrid, “by not
interfering in Blackwind business.”

“
That is enough!”
Cheobawn shouted, pulling Cloud Eye to a stop. “Be still, Connor. I
have half the known universe pressing down on my head right now. I do
not need your cruel comments or your unfair judgments. Excuse me if
one solitary goddess cursed leopard slipped past my guard and ate a
bennelk. I am sorry. OK? Bloody sorry. Consider it collateral damage.
Now shut up about it!”