his cloak caught on something, threatening to strangle him or drag him from the unicorn's back. He clung to its neck with all his strength as the unicorn strained, until at last the cheap cloth of the Felon's Cloak gave, tearing free to be left behind.
And still it ran, tireless, faster than the fastest horse Kellen could imagine. He knew from the burning along every exposed part of him, the outsides of arms and legs, and to a lesser extent his shoulders and back, that he was bleeding from a thousand scrapes and scratches all along his arms and legs—if he had not shed enough blood to seal the pact between them before, he was certainly shedding it now.
His chest was bruised, he was battered from neck to toes by collisions with branches, and he was having trouble breathing as his arms and chest muscles began to ache from the sheer effort of holding on. Battered and breathless with sheer speed, Kellen wondered if he'd specified anything in his spell about reaching the boundaries of City lands alive—this almost seemed worse than anything the Outlaw Hunt could do to him.
When the unicorn seemed to have settled into a straightforward bounding motion—and Kellen hadn't been hit by anything for a while— he decided to risk a glimpse at his surroundings. Raising his head cautiously, he looked around.
They were out in the open, and up ahead, Kellen could see the flicker of moonlight on water. There was a stream ahead, its flat surface glistening in the moonlight, a stretch of water perhaps a hundred yards wide. He loosened his stranglehold on the unicorn's neck, assuming he was going to dismount and wade across.
'Don't do that,' the unicorn said briefly.
It didn't slow down.
Kellen watched in horror as the unicorn approached the river at top speed and launched itself from the bank with an enormous leap. It hit the water with a splash that drenched both of them, but the river was only a few feet deep and it forged quickly across through the chest-high water while Kellen clung on for dear life. It lunged up the other bank and was running again before Kellen had even managed to catch his breath from the icy shock of his dousing.
Fortunately, that was the widest of the streams they had to cross that night, because, as Kellen quickly discovered, the unicorn did not mean to stop for anything. It jumped ditches and logs and rivulets; what it could not jump it climbed. What it could neither jump nor climb it went through, leaving Kellen to cling to its back like a tick, and fend for himself as best he could. He was chilled to the bone, with every scratch tracing a separate line of fire along his skin, and every bruise aching with every jolt.
They soon found themselves back among trees again. Kellen had long since buried his face against the unicorn's neck once more, risking only occasional quick glimpses of his surroundings. Even so, he got the impression that the ground was rising, and that their path was becoming even more difficult. Once or twice the unicorn actually had to slow down, as if it had to pick its way carefully, and a couple of times it came to a complete stop before launching itself vigorously into space. At those times, Kellen was just as glad he couldn't see where they were going. He certainly wasn't eager to look down at any point.
He could tell that it was getting colder, though, even if his stream-soaked clothes had long since been air- dried to no more than a faint clamminess by the speed of their flight and the heat of the unicorn's body. There was a sharp different smell in the air; the scent of pine trees.
Nothing had hit him for the past chime or so, so he raised his head cautiously again and looked around. It seemed they had been fleeing forever.
Once again, as his arms complained that he had been holding on for far too long, he noted that they seemed to be moving through a more open area, one where it might be safe to risk a look around. Cautiously— very cautiously—he raised his head again.
By now Kellen had lost all real sense of time, but he knew they'd been going for a long time—bells, and not just a few chimes. Every muscle he possessed cried out with cold and stiffness as it flexed; he was utterly spent, but if he was exhausted from nothing more than clinging to the unicorn's back all night, how much more weary must the magical creature itself be? It had never slowed its hectic pace for more than a tenth-chime; even now it moved forward as fast as a galloping horse, its footfalls eerily muffled by the bed of fallen pine needles. The trees on either side were little more than a dark blur as they passed.
The forest through which they now rode was mostly evergreen, with little in the way of treacherous underbrush to attack Kellen. He sat up as far as he could while still holding tightly on to the unicorn's neck and realized that when he looked back through a gap in the trees he could see down into the valley behind. He could see for leagues.
Surely they'd reached the edge of the City lands by now?
He looked up, into the sky overhead, and could no longer see the moon, only the bright unfamiliar stars of the darkest part of the night. He looked ahead, and when he could not see the moon through the trees, Kellen realized it must be low in the western sky. It was setting. The night must be nearly over. In a bell—less—dawn would come.
And with dawn, the Outlaw Hunt would be released.
The horror of the thought made him flinch. He would certainly have lost his grip on the unicorn's neck then except for the fact that by now his clenched hands seemed frozen in place.
