More bells—as the City he had left reckoned time—passed as they fled, and as they continued to climb, Kellen was able to look back and see the hills spread out behind them; thousands of acres of land that seemed to be completely uninhabited—at least by humans.
Yet Shalkan said it was all City lands, and undoubtedly the unicorn was right.
Why did the City claim so much territory? The two of them must have covered hundreds of leagues in their escape, or at least it seemed that way. They were heading almost directly west, and they still weren't out of reach of the Outlaw Hunt.
"Why?" Kellen said aloud.
"Why what?" Shalkan responded, dropping back to a trot. The unicorn was looking from side to side, as it had been since midmorning, as if it were searching for something specific. A landmark?
"Why does the City claim so much land?" Kellen asked, repeating his thoughts aloud. "The farmlands, okay, I can see that—we need the farmlands for the crops, but this isn't farmland—"
"Because they're greedy idiots," the unicorn said bluntly.
Kellen flinched. He knew he shouldn't care. The City had condemned him to death, after all. He was an Outlaw. But at this time yesterday he'd been heading down to the docks, with no real idea any of this was going to happen. And somehow he could not help but feel obscurely guilty that his former home was so cordially disliked as to evoke that sort of response from the unicorn. Fine, it wasn't Kellen's fault, but he still felt guilty, tainted by association.
Shalkan sighed. "Kellen, I'm sorry. You deserve a better answer, and I don't have one. Ask me something else."
"How long until we reach the border?" Kellen asked.
There was a long silence, and from it, Kellen could already read the answer that Shalkan didn't want to give.
"The Hounds will reach us first, won't they?" he said quietly.
Shalkan stopped and looked back at him. "They're about an hour— four chimes—behind us. The border is… farther than that. We need to find a place to make a stand. That's what I've been looking for. I'm sorry, Kellen, but it's going to come to a fight after all."
Shalkan turned back to the trail and put on a burst of speed then that surprised even Kellen, who dropped his makeshift rein and went back to clinging tightly to the unicorn's neck with both arms in order to hold on.
At last the unicorn stopped again, so suddenly that Kellen's whole body was flung forward against his neck.
"Here."
Kellen raised his head and looked around, blinking at the brightness that confronted him.
He was facing a sheer wall of white granite. It reflected the midday sun with a bright eye-hurting intensity. A gentle slope of gravel and granite chips led up to a shallow opening in the rock, as if two blocks of granite had been eased a few feet apart by some master hand. The trail they'd been following led on around the edge of the cliff, and the path Shalkan stood on was only a few feet wide. The ground dropped off into a steep, brush-filled gully on the far side of the path, and beyond, the ground sloped sharply away in a tangle of granite outcroppings and barren sloping hills, all bathed in harsh, cloudless spring sunlight.
"We're running out of time, and this is the best we've got. They can't get behind us there, and we'll have room to fight. But you'll need a weapon." The unicorn raised his head and sniffed the air, and added, "Quickly. We probably won't hear them coming until it's too late."
Kellen slid from Shalkan's back, his hand automatically going to his belt. But his penknife was a tiny thing, suitable for sharpening quills and cutting paper, not to doing battle with monstrous stone dogs.
He cast a frantic look around. At the end of the path was a conifer tree, its trunk gnarled and twisted by years of exposure to the elements in this hostile place. The branches should have been covered with green needles, but instead, they were bare and stark. Dead. Maybe dry enough to break off a piece, but not so brittle the piece would be useless. Kellen ran toward it.
When he reached it, he saw that it had been struck by lightning, shearing away most of the trunk and burning the core to charcoal. One thick smooth branch, solid and heavy as iron, the bark long polished away by the wind, came away easily in his hands. He returned, panting, with his makeshift club.
"Good," Shalkan said brusquely. The unicorn turned and lunged up the slope. Kellen scrambled after him, slipping and sliding on the loose rock that covered the ground. The uncertain footing would be another advantage for them when the Hounds came for them.
Once Kellen had armed himself, the two of them climbed to the cleft in the granite wall. It was shallow and narrow—only four feet deep, narrowing to a point at the back, and a bit over a yard wide at the opening. No room for a Hound to get around them and come at them from behind. Though the mountain air had a cool bite to it, the pale walls of the pocket canyon radiated heat, as warm as living flesh to the touch.
Kellen clutched at his wooden club tightly, aware in the sudden stillness that he could hear a scrabbling sound, like rats in a rockfall, disturbing pebbles as they ran, only much louder.
It was the sound of rock on rock. The Hounds.
The next thing he saw was the bright flash of sun as it struck a polished surface, and then Kellen saw his first Hound, surging up over the edge of the gully.
It charged up the gravel slope at a dead run, as unnervingly silent as Shalkan had warned. It looked exactly like the ones outside his front door, aside from being carved from a different color of granite, and that somehow added an element of horror to the whole situation, as if this were a strange waking nightmare. It made him feel as if he and Shalkan were being attacked by the City itself.
The Hound was the shape and size of a regular mastiff, carved all out of mirror-polished red granite, lovingly detailed by its maker-Mage down to the studded collar about its neck. Its red, blank eyes, like featureless marbles, glared unseeing in their direction; its red tongue lolled between its red teeth; its red lips were drawn back in a red snarl; and it lunged up the treacherous slope with those polished granite eyes fixed unblinkingly on Kellen's face.
Behind it came more—a dozen, twenty, too many to count. All identical to the first save for the color of the granite from which they'd been carved: red, white, black, grey. All silent, save for the thud of their stone feet against the ground, the clatter of stone paws on more stone, the clicking of dislodged gravel rolling downslope, or the smack of their granite flanks against each other as they jostled for position. How many were there? Two dozen? More?
Kellen had a moment for one pang of terror—when Shalkan had first described the Hunt, he'd thought there'd be only a few Hounds, six, perhaps, or eight—before the first one reached him. Then there was no more time for thought at all, as the Hounds surged up the graveled slope, the red one in the lead, fangs bared for his throat.
He swung his club, aiming low at the first Hound's brittle and vulnerable legs. Once, when he was a child, he'd seen a stone golem slip and break. He knew that even though they were enchanted, the Hound golems were still as fragile as the carved stone they really were, and for all its bulk, a Hound's legs were comparatively slender in proportion to its size.
His club connected with a dull impact of wood against stone. With a pang of savage delight, Kellen saw the Hound's foreleg break off with a crack, and the three-legged Hound lost its balance and rolled backward down the slope, bowling over several of the Hounds behind it with dull tombstone thuds. They milled and snapped at each other just as if they were dogs of flesh, making a sound like boulders tumbling together.
But a moment later, they seemed to recall their task, and surged in a body up the hill—and they just kept coming.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flicker of magick. One of the Hounds had reached Shalkan. The unicorn had reached out and touched it with his horn, and the Hound had stiffened, becoming a nonmagickal stone statue once more. It tumbled down, just like any other boulder, away from the canyon opening. Bits of it cracked off and went flying in all directions as it fell
.
A flash of memory told Kellen what had happened. A unicorn's horn could purify anything it touched, and break all magick, Kellen remembered from his studies, and felt a sudden flash of hope. Because of that, at least they had a chance.
But as fast as Shalkan was, the Hounds were faster. If one of them got its jaws around Shalkan's throat, the unicorn would be dead.
Shalkan's hooves were all-but-useless here; only his horn was going to be at all effective.
Another Hound leaped at Kellen. This time Kellen was too slow. He missed when he swung at it, and Shalkan had too many problems of his own to come to Kellen's rescue. Kellen found himself with his arms full of writhing, silently snarling stone Hound, heavy as granite yet horribly alive.
Its jaws snapped inches from his throat as its clawed paws scrabbled at his arms and stomach. He dropped his club. A second Hound had darted in beneath it; he felt its jaws closing on his leg. One good snap—and his leg would be useless, broken, and it would all be over.
With a shout of fear and pain, Kellen kicked at the stone face of the second Hound, keeping it from getting a good bite in, and shoved the first Hound away from his face. Somehow, he grabbed it by its hind legs; it tried to escape him, but this was a smaller Hound, about the size of a greyhound, and a lot lighter than its fellows. He used the Hound itself as a club, swinging it at the head of the second Hound golem until its jaws shattered and the legs in his hands snapped off. He flung and kicked them both away, screaming wordlessly. He snatched up his club and hammered at the next one as it rushed him, sweeping low with his club, then turned to protect Shalkan.
Out of his line of sight, Kellen heard the dull impact of stone on stone as the Hounds now tried to rush them in a pack, and those that missed slammed against the granite walls to either side of the canyon opening. Some slid back to the bottom of the slope. Others tried to rush in from the side. Their jaws clattered as they snapped at Kellen and missed, and when he looked, he could see them barking, or at least their jaws working as if they were barking, but there was no sound other than the impact of stone on stone, and wood on stone, and the faint sizzle as Shalkan managed to disenchant another of the Hound golems.
If the Outlaw Hunt had been smarter than the mastiffs they resembled, Kellen and Shalkan would have been dead in the first few instants of the attack. But the stone Hounds were only stronger, and faster, and tireless, and nearly invulnerable.
Nearly, that was the key thing. Mastiffs weren't the brightest dogs in the world, and these stone versions seemed even dimmer. They didn't even try to protect themselves, and they didn't learn from the mistakes of the ones that were eliminated. That was what gave him and Shalkan a chance. A slim chance, but a real one, and a far, far better one than any of the Mages would have believed, back in the City. Quickly their strategy evolved—Kellen stood in front, beating the Hounds back, breaking their legs off when he could, protecting Shalkan so that the unicorn could dart out and destroy each one permanently. Even if Kellen managed to break off two legs, or a lower jaw, the maimed-but-still-enchanted Hound would just keep on coming, crawling up the slope as long as it could still move in order to get at its prey.
He could not kill the creatures, but he could cripple them—Shalkan couldn't hurt them, but he could destroy them. The Hunt climbed over its weaker members, trying to get at him and Shalkan indiscriminately, not realizing that of the two of them, Shalkan was the most dangerous. The two of them took advantage of that.
And slowly, slowly, Kellen and Shalkan winnowed the pack, until the Hounds coming against them were few enough to count, and all of them were chipped and battered by previous attacks.
As their numbers diminished, the Hounds seemed to sense the fact— their leaps grew more frantic, their assaults more desperate. Once Kellen was bitten: the Hound's jaws closed over his forearm, its teeth just about to break the skin before Shalkan turned the Hound into lifeless stone. But even so, Kellen had to batter the stone body against the wall of the pocket canyon to loosen its unliving grip from his flesh.
And in that moment of distraction, two more attacked.
"Kellen!"
One was missing one of its forelegs. The other had lost its lower jaw and half its head. Kellen managed to knock the three-legged one sideways, away from Shalkan, before the other leaped into the air and bore Kellen down.
His head hit the ground with an impact that jarred his teeth, and then the Hound, shaking its head like a terrier with a rat, hit him across the side of the head with the ragged remains of its muzzle.
It could not bite. But it did not have to bite to kill him. All it had to do was batter him to death with blows from its flailing stone head—or hold him, helpless, while others of its pack arrived to finish him.
"Hold it still!" Shalkan shouted, and Kellen, grimly, struggled to obey.
There was a jarring impact, and the Hound flew off his chest as the unicorn pivoted and kicked. Kellen heard the sound of breaking stone.
"Up!" Shalkan cried desperately.
Kellen dragged himself to his feet, scrabbling for his club. He staggered, dazed and unable to see as dark spots filled his vision. His nose was bleeding, and he snorted, spraying blood. He swung wildly, and felt the blow connect, felt the jarring hardness of wood against stone as he knocked one of the golems flying.
They fought on. If there was a Hell, this was surely it…
Finally—silence.
No thudding of stone-on-stone, no dark bodies rushing at him, no more Hounds were coming up the slope. Exhausted and drenched in sweat, his clothing in rags, Kellen looked around. The ground was littered with broken stone statues that had once been the Hounds of the Outlaw Hunt. Not one of them was whole.
Horribly, there were lots of bits that were still moving, still writhing, still trying to get at their quarry. But nothing that could do him or Shalkan any harm.
"We did it—" Kellen said in dull and weary disbelief. He wanted to feel relief, but—well, perhaps there was a spark of it. He hadn't the strength to sustain more than that little spark, though. Every muscle hurt. He would have given up long since except for the need to protect Shalkan. "We—"
"No," Shalkan said bleakly, interrupting him. "Listen."
There was the sound of scrabbling stone feet over rock.
"No…" Kellen said in angry disbelief. More Hounds. "No. That's not fair!"
A second pack of Hounds swarmed into view, a pack even larger than the first.
Kellen stared, watching them come, frozen in shock.
The City had sent a second Outlaw Hunt. Against all Law and Custom, they'd sent a second pack of Hounds, a second Hunt, to kill him— to kill them. They'd hated him enough to do that—his father hated him enough to do that—and not only was he, Kellen, going to die here because of that, Shalkan was going to die, too, because of the spell Kellen had cast and the vow Shalkan had sworn, to take Kellen over the border of City lands. Shalkan would not leave him, and the Hounds would kill Shalkan too.
His fault. Because the Council cheated. His fault. Because the Council lied. His fault. Because Lycaelon Tavadon had cheated and lied. His father, the noble, the honorable, the respected Arch-Mage of Armethalieh. The trusted leader of the High Council.
Someplace in the back of his mind, Kellen had still believed in Lycaelon, believed at least that the Arch-Mage would keep his word. Perhaps even believed that, no matter what had passed between them, there was still something binding them together, and that his father would, in all decency, allot him some sort of fair chance, no matter how tiny. But Lycaelon could not bear to be contradicted, could not bear to be defeated, and clearly would do anything to revenge himself on the person who had done both.
A vast fury filled Kellen—if there'd still been love there between the two of them, father and son, that love had been betrayed and defiled so utterly and completely that it left a terrible vacuum; and this rage rushed in to take its place. It swept away Kellen's pain and exhaustion. In his rage, he felt nothing but the need to
destroy this terrible thing, this thing that should not be. He stepped forward and struck at the first of the Hounds, tears of grief and fury streaming unnoticed down his face. In his blind, berserker anger, he felt nothing but the need to destroy.
The Outstretched Shadow ou(tom-1 Page 24