“What is it?”
“An animal of some kind,” the captain said softly, his voice calm. “We wouldn’t hear a familiar coming.”
A low growl raised all the hair on her body. It didn’t sound like any animal she’d ever encountered. It sounded like a monster.
“Get your bow.”
16
Rowan secured the horses, grabbed her bow and quiver, and returned to the witch hunter’s side. He didn’t look at her, his attention fixed on whatever was moving toward them through the brush.
“Be ready to shoot. Give me room.”
Don’t crowd him. Right.
She backed away to give him space. Nocking an arrow, she raised the bow and waited for a target. There were footsteps. Twigs snapping. Leaves crunching. She tracked the sound, keeping her arrow pointed toward the ground so as not to accidentally hit the witch hunter.
She needed him alive, and he would never believe it was an accident if she put an arrow in his back.
She stretched her senses. The trees were quiet. No. Not quiet. There was an odd discordant hum coming from the trees to the south. Whispers too soft for her to make out, slippery and strange. Like a distant conversation in another language. She instinctively pulled away from it just as a growl rose from the dense brush.
“Stay near the horses,” Casrian said in a low, even voice. “If I tell you to run, mount Copper and ride as fast as you can back the way we came. I’ll find you.”
His calm steadied her. He knew what he was doing. You could see it in the way he held his sword, in his stance. She was the guide. He was the soldier. It was his job to keep her safe.
Still…
He was one man, and the gashes on his chest had barely healed.
Her heart thudded. Her hands grew damp on the smooth wood of her bow.
A great lumbering shape burst from the brush and barreled toward them. Hulking shoulders. Brown fur. An enormous head full of sharp teeth. Eyes aglow with an amber light.
She drew, aimed, and fired, muscle memory taking over before her mind started working again. The arrow sank into the beast’s chest but didn’t slow it. She reached for another arrow.
The witch hunter moved forward, unhurried, meeting the thing head on. She cursed under her breath, moving to the side for a better shot. She loosed her next arrow. A hit to the muscle above the shoulder. This one was deeper. It sank in and stuck. She grabbed another arrow.
It was a bear. She thought it was a bear. It was bear-shaped—huge and heavy and strong—but there was clearly something wrong with it. Its hair was matted all along its left side, bare in spots, where the skin was covered in weeping sores. There was an open gash on its face where skin hung loose and rotting. She could see teeth through the hole, many of them broken. She’d seen crow-picked corpses that looked better.
Casrian cut at its neck and stepped aside, allowing the bear’s momentum to carry it past him. Blood gushed from the wound. When the beast faltered, struggling to turn, he moved in again and delivered another slashing cut.
Every movement was spare and controlled. His expression was coldly brutal as his arm came down again and again.
The bear swung away with a broken cry of pain.
“Out of its path,” Casrian shouted in a crisp order.
Blood matted the fur on the bear’s neck. The shafts of two of her arrows stuck from its flank. It was close enough for her to take its eye. She took the shot.
The arrow hit bone and bounced free, only enraging the beast. Its great, toothy maw opened in a howl, and it charged.
She dove to the side, barely escaping the curved claws that raked the air above her.
She hit the ground hard, her hip taking the brunt of the impact. Pain lanced down her leg, but she rolled, scrambling to get away. The bear skidded to a stop and turned to her with a bellow of outrage. Its front paws, big as her head, lifted off the ground.
She reached for another arrow.
It was going to be too late. She recognized it in an instant of terrible clarity. The bear rising up. Her on her back. She wouldn’t even get the arrow nocked before she was buried under the thing’s weight.
