Just as he gives the order at a shout, the ogre goes airborne. I have a brief impression of skin flaps puffing out, the way a flyingsquirrelle’s might—and then everything becomes a blur. Lavante is not going to stand still as that thing tries to eat us. The stallion bolts and Merc’s horse follows suit, right behind us. As the wind streaks back my hair and I hear only a roar in my ears, I have to look over my shoulder.
I can’t see much of anything behind Merc, just the pale sandy dirt and the black-and-brown cliffs. Fates, if the ogre can camouflage itself, it’s nearly impossible to tell whether it’s on the ground chasing us or still on the vertical.
At thunderous speed, we jog left into a turn, flash to the right, then dodgestraight through a smaller clearing. After that, it’s a blur of more curves and sharp corners. I lean into Lavante’s neck and do my best to follow his tilts, especially as the trail gets narrower and narrower—
A strange call, like nothing I’ve ever heard before, echoes around.
It’s like the howl of a wolf crossed with the cry of a bird of prey. As the sound ripples out—
“They’re closing in!” Merc yells over the din.
“‘They’re’?” So that wasn’t just an echo. There’s more than one chasing us. “Go, Lavante!Go!”
I give my heel, not that it matters. The stallion is flying as fast as he can in the increasingly cramped chute, given the number of directional changes and rerouting. But at last we finally hit a straightaway with a decent amount of width—
Lavante turns his head to the side and whinnies in fear, his great long legs suddenly surging. Taking his cue, I look up at the cliff wall.
One of the ogres is not only right by me, but getting ahead of the stallion.
“I thought you said they were slow!” I holler to Merc.
“Keep going!”
“Like I’m going to stop—”
Flames.
All at once the cliffs are gone as we thunder out of a turn and break into a red landscape that’s unlike anything I’ve seen before. Bursts of blood-colored flame flare up out of fissures in the red dirt, the fires like burps from deep under Anathos’s surface. Red, leafless trees with tangled branches and twisted trunks dot the flat plain, and immediately, Lavante surges around one. Dodges a second. Leaps to the side to avoid getting burned as a blast of fire explodes.
I do what I can to stay in the saddle—
It happens so fast, I couldn’t have done anything, even if I’d known what was coming: An ogre lands in a crouch right in our path.
Lavante lets out a scream through his nostrils, his hindquarters digging in and kicking up the loose red dirt so that it splashes all around us. His lunge to the left is so violent, I feel myself go airborne, and as I tumble into a hard landing, I try to keep an eye on the ogre.
Its bark-like skin turns the exact red of the ground, only its beady red eyes showing.
And all those black teeth.
My breath gets sucked out of me, and I swallow dust that tastes like sulfur as I roll. During one of the rotations, I catch a brief glimpse of Merc and his horse blasting out of the cliffs at a dead run, a rippling overhead as more ogres leap free of their rocky roads and sustain flight with their wings of flesh.
And then I hear the grunting call.
Scrambling onto all fours, I square off against the ogre that is lowering into a crouch in front of me. Its tail rises like a scorpion’s over its back, and the way the beast quivers just before it jumps tells me that I’m going to lose this ground fight.
Crescent moon, there isn’t even going to be a fight.
As the sound of pounding hooves is still too far away for Merc to help me, I brace myself for the attack while the ogre leaps into the air, front claws ready to finish what the skystalker’s talons started. The image of it silhouetted against the sky is right out of nightmares, and I bring my arms up to cover my—
Flames. Everywhere.
Sure as if I conducted them to do so, two columns of fire explode up from the ground, and the pair of them cross, just as my arms did, at the exact moment the ogre’s trajectory carries it forward.
The creature lets out a shriek, and I smell burning meat. The next thing I know, the thing lands on top of me, one of its feet digging into my hip, another crashing into my shoulder. I hold on to my head and curl into a tight ball, expecting to be bitten.
But the beast has other problems.
Half of it is on fire, the red flames spitting and hissing as it paddles with its squat legs and changes colors randomly, black, brown, red, yellow—abruptly, it stumbles off me. Drops to its side. Shrieks again. As the stench of burning flesh mixes with that sulfuric odor, I, too, have other things to worry about.
