Still, Darya took herself and Amris off it, into the shrubs and trees a few feet away where the hills began to rise. The going was a little slower, but not much with her gift, and Amris’s point about scouts returning stuck in her mind. The tracks had led back along the old road. Thus, she knew what might be there. Thus, she avoided it.
Although he had no gift for finding safe routes, was considerably larger than Darya, and was wearing far heavier armor, Amris didn’t complain about the decision or even question it. He walked when she walked, far enough behind to let her mark the trail but close enough to be at hand in case trouble did strike, stopped to eat or drink when she did, and kept the same silence. He made more noise when walking, but that wasn’t to be helped.
Darya picked up a stone shortly after they started walking—round and dark, it fit neatly into her palm, and had a pleasant weight to it. She carried it for two or three hours, until movement out of the corner of her eye revealed a rabbit sitting up between two of the trees. Then she glanced, cocked back an arm, and threw.
It was a good hit. “Hold here a moment,” she said to Amris—speaking softly, as whispers carried farther—and went to grab the body before another creature could.
You’ve impressed him,said Gerant.
“I’ve gotten us dinner,” Darya muttered, “which will keep us in better form to fight if we need to.” Nonetheless, hearing it made her smile.
It was a good thing she usually worked alone, she thought. When she had a partner, especially a handsome one, even a handsome and off-limits one, she was far too apt to show off.
Bending to pick their future dinner up, she suddenly stopped. Her smile vanished. A few feet beyond where the rabbit had fallen, a path of blackened ferns and gray brambles slashed through the green and brown underbrush.
Shit,she thought.
She said nothing aloud, but straightened up, drew Gerant, and started backing away toward Amris.
Beyond her, like echoes in the forest, many legs skittered closer.
* * *
Stasis had largely left his body unaffected, so his muscles still worked as they had ever done, but a trek through a forest was a different matter from street-to-street fighting—or from the cavalry charges or infantry stands where Amris had spent his youth.
He was proud of himself for managing to keep up with Darya, who practically danced over the undergrowth and through the trees. She was purposeful about it, but there was a lithe ease about her—an impression that vanished completely when she started backing away from the spot where the rabbit lay.
She’d been alert before she’d fought the cockatrice and as they’d prepared to advance against the undead, ready for a fight, but this was different. Sword drawn, she retreated with taut-strung muscles, keeping her gaze fixed forward, clearly not wanting to look away from the forest. Alarm filled her and, through the spell, spilled over into him.
Dalhan,said Gerant in his mind.One of the many wonderful new creations of the storms.
Amris didn’t recognize the name, but Gerant’s voice and Darya’s stance were as good as a warning shout. He had his blade out before the first set of blanched-white legs appeared from the shadows.
They had been human once, maybe, though almost skeletally thin. Some force had given them two or three extra joints in the middle and taloned, spiderlike hands at the end, then joined four of them together and plopped a headless human torso in the center. A ring of pinkish-red eyes glared out of the chest, with a snarling, fanged mouth below it, and above that the shoulders rose high, making a sort of distorted heart shape. Its arms were stunted, but one held a bone whip, more than long enough to make up any lack of reach.
Two others like it followed, all moving with insectile speed toward Darya. Amris rushed toward her side.
Chapter 13
Darya saw the stub that passed for the dalhan’s whip-arm flex, and was in the air the next second. The whip snapped through the empty space where one of her ankles had been. Its bones, the knobby remnants of something’s—or somebody’s—spine, rattled against each other. Darya had heard the sound half a dozen times, and it still turned her stomach.
She kicked forward and caught the dalhan right above the mouth. The sole of her boot slammed into two of its eyes. It staggered back. Darya retreated, too, pushing herself off the monster into a backwards somersault, then bringing Gerant down in a slash as she landed, one leg out low behind her.
The dalhan that had been coming up on her side swayed backward, and Gerant’s edge missed the center of its torso by a hair. The stroke that would’ve cut through to its mouth fell, useless.
Darya let the momentum pull her downward. The whip that had been going to slash her across the face met empty air instead. She struck out low and hit one of the dalhan’s legs, which split in the middle. Black blood spurted from the wound, filling the air with the smell of ashes. The plants it fell on vanished. A few drops hit rocks, hissed, and sent up acrid gray clouds.
Four legs meant the monster had some spares. It sagged, though, taken off-balance for a few seconds, and Darya drew her leg forward, her body up, putting all of that motion behind her next stroke. Dead flesh parted under Gerant’s edge, giving way smoothly up into the dalhan’s torso, before a bone turned the angle of Darya’s stroke. The sword came up and out through its side, the wound bad but not fatal.
Blood soaked the ground. Green light flickered around Darya as Gerant shielded her from the places where it would’ve splashed, spraying from the dalhan’s wound. The creature reared up, chest gaping, a leg clawing at the air. Its missing leg unbalanced it, and it was falling as Darya spun away from its blood.
She lashed sideways with one leg as she did, and the whip of another dalhan coiled briefly around the tip of her boot rather than doing serious damage to her kidneys. The force of the spin let Darya shake that off neatly enough, and then she was coming around, slicing backhand at the monster that had been there when she’d started spinning. Kicking the whip away had cost her a few precious seconds, though. Gerant hit the thing, but only a glancing blow to the shoulder, giving it barely a moment of pause.
* * *
Always, battle took concentration, and with an unknown enemy most of all. Amris bent his focus on one of the dalhan and closed the distance between them quickly, but not before he’d seen Darya whirl in midair and land in a deadly version of a court bow. She’d slain one of them in a breath, and turned on the others in a whirlwind of steel before Amris reached the scene, but those two had flanked her, clearly with an eye—or many—to closing in.
The one closest to Amris did hear him coming. It whirled on its many legs, twice or three times as fast as any normal man, and lashed out.
