mountain and engage the enemy. That had a nice ring to it.
That felt good.
Max had cut the stone out of his trainer’s heel, and within minutes it was confirmed that this was indeed the vital, final part of Zabala’s secret.
“And those numbers etched into the crystal?” Tishenko had demanded.
Max could only shake his head. “I’ve no idea. Part of some code. But I don’t know what.”
The truth of Max’s ignorance convinced Tishenko. Numbers meant nothing now-the time was what mattered.
He gestured to his men and Sharkface was pulled to his feet. “I shall give one of you the opportunity to die quickly-the other will be torn apart by wolves.”
A gaping hole led out onto a snowfield. Churning clouds muscled each other aside as they rolled across crevasses and peaks. The cold air bit into Max’s face, but it wasn’t the chill wind that made him shudder.
Max and Sharkface stood on a steel grid. A pack of about twenty wolves yelped and snarled five meters below their feet. These animals had been deliberately starved.
“You two seem destined to fight each other,” Tishenko said.
He gestured to his men, who grabbed Max and Sharkface. They attached a stainless-steel clamp to Max’s left wrist and another to Sharkface’s right. Two meters of chain joined them. Max had been chained to Aladfar, but this boy was a far more dangerous beast.
“You have ten minutes to run before my wolves and I give chase. Two kilometers away, on the edge of this escarpment, you will find two ice axes. If you live that long, I expect one of you to kill the other, and then I, or my wolves, will kill the survivor.” Tishenko checked his watch. “I suggest you start running.”
Max leapt forward, Sharkface half a second behind him.
They ran through hardened snow covered by a few centimeters of powder. The two boys were dependent on each other at least until they found those ice axes-after that, Max didn’t even want to think about.
Despite the darkness there was enough light to see the sweeping valley and the mountain’s jagged claws of bare rock reaching down into the ghostly white. Max took a handful of the swaying chain, tightening it, making it easier to run. After a moment Sharkface did the same. Max glanced at him. Spittle flecked away from the boy’s jagged mouth. Was Sharkface fit and strong enough to keep this pace going for a couple of kilometers?
It was almost as though Sharkface had heard Max’s thoughts.
“I’ll kill you, Max. I’m not ending up as wolf bait. You’d better keep up.”
“You worry about yourself!” Max said, breathing hard, the sweat already clammy under his clothes.
“He’ll come out of the sky. It’s how he hunts. We have to keep watch,” Sharkface grunted.
Max looked over his shoulder. Clouds obscured just about everything except the lower thousand meters or so of the Citadel. A dull light flickered from the cavelike hole they had left, but a couple of hundred meters higher a broad tongue of shiny dark rock stuck out, from where another light glowed within the mountain. Max saw a giant bat flutter, drop momentarily, then rise and level out. It was a black-winged paraglider.
Max stumbled and fell. Sharkface went down with him. The snow felt like sandpaper as he piled in. Sharkface was on his feet in an instant, grabbing Max by the front of his jacket, shaking him angrily as he hauled him to his feet.
“Get up, you fool! Every second counts!”
Max shoved his opponent’s arm away. “Keep your hands to yourself!”
They glared at each other, tightened the chain again and ran on-desperation powering them forwards. A lone wolf cry called the pack to the hunt-then others took up the call, their voices changing as they answered. They were loose.
The sickening realization that the wolves could soon be on them gave added strength to their legs, but now Max also knew that Sharkface was strong. He had lifted Max out of the snow with little effort. How could he beat such a strong opponent?
Their labored breathing was steady; their footfalls crunched the snow almost in unison. Tears from the cold air blurred the distant ground, yet Max’s instincts were operating at maximum. Blood pounded in his ears, but he was attuned to any shift in the wind, any unseen rocky outcrop illuminated by the lightning breaking free of the clouds.
He heard the flutter of wind against fabric and dared another glance over his shoulder. Max barely believed what he saw. The winged hunter was less than fifty meters behind and above them. Tishenko wore a wolf-skin mask. A lightning flash threw a harsh glow across him and glinted off the arrow shaft that he now held full back into his shoulder.
Max dug his heels in, yanked the chain with both hands and twisted Sharkface down into the snow. The boy grunted, surprised and shocked, a savage look on his face ready to curse Max.
The arrow thudded into the ground with a terrifying
Sharkface knew it too. He nodded. Both boys were back on their feet, running full tilt-zigzagging, making themselves a difficult target. Tishenko would need to steady the paraglider, get himself into position before loosing another shaft. But the longer the boys weaved and dodged, the more ground they had to cover. And the closer the silently hunting wolves would get.
Max concentrated on their running pattern, but he could hear the ruffle of air entering the wing’s vents each time Tishenko changed course. The paraglider fluttered dully in the night air, the canopy resisting the wind. Tishenko was giving away his location. They were on a level stretch of snow, and lightning shattered the low clouds, showing them the broken landscape about half a kilometer away. Pockmarked globules of snow and ice, cracks and jagged shapes-the edge of the glacier-dangerous, unstable ground. Two hundred meters to the right of that a marker flag fluttered. The ice axes had to be there.
The mountain raked down, obscuring the valley to the left, where there was a lot of lightning activity. It danced and shuddered in a confined area, and Max could see the tops of what looked to be two towers, which attracted the creased lightning. But there was no time to consider what they might be, as Tishenko had altered course dramatically, curving the paraglider, finding a position to steady himself for the next attack.
There was no flash of lightning this time, and Max strained to hear anything that might alert him to the arrival of the next arrow. There was no warning. It came out of the darkness, a rushing, lethal whisper that lanced downwards across his face. A couple of centimeters less and it would have pierced Max through the neck and into his chest.
Sharkface’s terror was as vividly evident as Max’s. The arrow had embedded itself between them. All very well that Max had nearly died, but had he gone down, the fast-approaching wolves would have had Sharkface at their mercy. To hell with Max Gordon getting killed by Tishenko; he didn’t want to be torn apart chained to bloodied dead bait.
The ice axes were fifty meters away. If Tishenko got another shot off, it was likely to be third time lucky. For him.
Max and Sharkface saw the ice axes at the same time. Their curved, serrated picks wedged into compacted snow, the adze-the flat rear blade-protruded, catching slivers of light from the diffused lightning in the clouds. The axes were the same length, each long enough to stand from ankle to thigh, with a pointed end at the base of the rubber grip. Max and Sharkface yanked them free.
The wolves were eighty meters away, splitting into smaller packs. These highly intelligent and courageous hunters would not be frightened by two teenage boys carrying ice axes.
“Go left!” Max yelled, tugging the chain so that they veered sharply towards the rising ground.
Tishenko needed a headwind to keep his momentum going. There were no thermals to catch; this was a cold night in turbulent conditions. No sane man would be up there in the sky now, but Tishenko must have extremely good equipment to manage it, perhaps even specially designed military gear. Whatever it was, Max thought he knew how to stop him.
The thunderstorm buffeted the far mountains, but the wind was fairly constant in this valley-that was how Tishenko could fly so accurately-but where the ridge’s gnarled rock formations obscured the distance, the air would
