A low'hanging branch brushed his cheek, and Kellen quickly ducked his head again.
AFTER that, if possible, the terrain over which they rode got even rougher. They seemed to spend as much time going down as up, over territory that would have made a mountain goat think twice. Half the time, Kellen was hanging over the unicorn's shoulder, the other half, trying to keep from sliding off the unicorn's rump. He'd have offered to walk, but there was no way he, a City-bred boy whose only experience in climbing was in climbing stairs and the occasional wall or tree, could have kept up with the unicorn. Their path led them down into deep ravines, into which the unicorn slid as much as galloped, and up the other side, with Kellen dangling from its neck, his whole weight hanging from his aching arms. He tried to wrap his legs around the unicorn's narrow torso, but the slick fur didn't give him much to grip on to.
The unicorn pushed its way through thickets that reopened the crusted scratches on his arms and legs and gouged new ones, and once, leaping some obstacle Kellen couldn't see in the dark, it landed badly, slipping and falling and rolling over and over down a slope covered with the rotting remains of last year's leaves, Kellen tangled up with it and desperately trying to avoid its razor-sharp horn and thrashing hooves.
He thought he'd been in pain before; he realized in that moment that he'd had no idea of how much pain a single person could be in. It felt as if every bone in his body was being systematically broken; he yelped with every impact until the moment when a boulder hit him square in the stomach. He finally rolled free and landed against a rock—hard—gasping in protest as the breath was knocked out of him.
He sat up, blinking and shaking his head, trying to see where they were. He was liberally smeared with mud and last year's rotting leaves; they had a sour smell, like the dregs of cold tea left too long. This was much worse than falling out of the tree back in the garden.
'Come on. Get up,' the unicorn said remorselessly. It was standing a few feet away. Kellen could see it, faintly glowing in the darkness exactly as if it were the ghost of a unicorn, but he could see nothing else. If it had been injured at all in the fall, it certainly didn't sound like it.
Kellen shook his head. Stars danced in his vision, and pain lanced through his head and ribs when he moved. In that moment he hated the unicorn, hated magic, hated everyone and everything that had brought him to this place—bruised, aching, and essentially alone in the freezing dark. He didn't know where he was, or what he was doing here, he didn't know how any of this would end—he was cut off from both the future and the past, and he had no way to predict what might happen next.
'Don't tell me you can't,' the unicorn said nastily. 'If you're still alive, you can.'
With a snarl, Kellen used the rock to push himself to his feet. He staggered through the slippery stinking mush of last autumn's leaves toward the unicorn, certain that when he reached it he would use the last of his strength to throttle the life out of the maddening creature. But when he reached it, he was too tired—
So there was nothing to do but drag himself onto its back once more, gasping hollowly with the dull, bone- deep ache of hot new bruises that screamed in agony when he moved and throbbed with pain when he didn't. His muscles shook as he forced his arms around the unicorn's neck once more.
And they were off again.
At that point, in the midst of the pain and the dark and cold, Kellen felt tears prickle at the back of his eyes —not because of the fall, or the pain, but because he knew that somehow he was going to get through all this. Thanks to the unicorn, he was going to live to see the border and beyond. And then he'd be out of City lands, in a whole new world, and—
And then what?
He had no idea. Where would he go? What would he do?
This was all just too much. He couldn't do this, whatever it was. He didn't know what he'd meant to do when he'd faced down his father and the High Council, but it hadn't been this.
The unicorn, paying about as much attention to Kellen's internal turmoil as Lycaelon ever had, kept running.
Kellen's world narrowed to one of utter physical misery, and his mind centered on one thought only: Don't fall off.
Don't fall off, because he knew he couldn't find the strength to mount the unicorn one more time.
Don't fall off, because falling off the unicorn again would hurt more than he could bear.
Don't fall off, because the Outlaw Hunt was somewhere back behind him, and if he fell off, he'd never get to the border.
Everything hurt. And he very much feared that what didn't hurt, didn't work anymore. He closed his eyes and clung on, grinding his teeth with every jolt and leap. Then, finally, there were no jolts and leaps…
After a very long time, Kellen opened his eyes, feeling dull and stupid with pain, and realized two things.
