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.
There was not even room in his mind for thoughts, only a focused and diamond-hard rage, white-hot, searing away everything else. He stepped forward and struck at the first of the Hounds with a strength he didn't even recognize as his own. His eyes blurred and cleared; there was wetness on his cheeks. His tears were irrelevant. All that mattered was the enemy before him and the weapon in his hand.
He'd ridden all night and fought off one pack of Hounds already. Kellen didn't care. He was beyond thinking. It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Rage filled him but did not overmaster him. He was beyond thinking, but that only freed him to act. As if he, too, were made of stone, he fought, drawing on reserves he did not know he had and did not question the source of. He could not lose this fight—whatever the cost, whatever the price he must pay later, he could not lose. His whole world narrowed to the few feet of space just before the mouth of the canyon. Whatever entered that space he hit.
Afterward Kellen retained only a blurred and confused body-memory of disjointed moments of the fight, as though once the picture of what had happened had been whole, then someone had smashed it and left Kellen with nothing more than a handful of jagged pieces.
He remembered doing things that were impossible, and doing them because he had to.
He remembered batting a Hound out of the air, feeling as if he had all the time in the world to strike the blow because the creature just seemed to hang there, as if Time itself had stopped.
He remembered the feel of stone jaws closing on his flesh. No pain, just a crushing coldness, as if the cold of the stone had somehow transferred itself to his body.
He remembered forcing his fingers once again around the shaft of the club, seeing that one of them wouldn't move, seeing that it was broken, closing his other hand over it and forcing the broken finger into place. He did not
