Return to Canifis

similar condition, yet she refused to look.

“We will rest here, for an hour or so,” she told him. “Let the horse get her breath back.”

“And then we start south?” Jack asked. His voice was low. “We can’t be more than two miles from the river now.” Her brother spoke in a hushed whisper, as if afraid to offend some dreadful observer. He peered around them, into the mist. But there was no movement, no sound.

Pia nodded.

“Then we start south and cross back over the river a few miles downstream.” She gave her brother her most roguish smile. “We did it, Jack. We did it again. We survived.”

I haven’t the heart to tell him that I’m hopelessly lost. Nor that I lost the dagger that kept Jerrod so afraid.

The thought of the werewolf caused her to glance around, but the fog seemed impenetrable. They seemed so vulnerable here, intruders in a place that would never forgive their trespass. Pia shivered.

“Perhaps we should start for the south now,” she muttered. “I don’t like it here.” The horse fidgeted, as if sharing her anxiousness.

“Do you think they followed us across the river?” Jack’s face was doubtful.

“Maybe,” she replied. But she really didn’t think so.

It is not them I fear.

She ran her hand across her face and looked down. It came away with a bloody smear. She remembered the thorn that had cut her cheek in their rush to the river bank. Still it hadn’t dried.

The iron smell seemed to hang in the stale air, impossibly strong.

“Pia. Look.”

She looked to where he pointed across the swamp. In the hazy distance she thought she saw something. It looked like a cloaked figure, but as quickly as she spotted it, the fog rose up from the black waters that separated them, and obscured it. She strained to find it again, but the green mist hid the horizon from view.

She felt her stomach tighten.

“Pia… Pia I’m frightened.” Jack turned to look at her. “I want to go back. I want to go back to Kara and I want to tell her I’m sorry. Please, Pia. Please. Can we go back?”

We made a mistake coming here. A dreadful mistake.

“Get on the horse, Jack. Now.”

Suddenly she shivered. She breathed out as her brother did as she had instructed, and she placed her hand on the hilt of Kara’s sword.

What would she do here?

Pia was cold now-unnaturally so. Her hand shook on the sword hilt, her grip weak.

“Come on, Pia. Get up.” Muted though it was, Jack’s voice cut through her fear. Quickly she clambered into the saddle behind him. The horse snorted once, its body steaming from her exertion. Clearly the creature was exhausted.

From her vantage point, Pia looked back to the swamp. The green mist faded slightly, and she could see the place where the figure had stood. There was no sign of it now.

Jack was looking, too.

“Did you see him?” he asked.

“I thought I did,” Pia said, “but only for a second. I think it was a man. It doesn’t matter though. We’re going now.”

She turned the horse, and guided it forward, not sure of the direction she was going. Her route followed the firmer land that lay at the swamp’s edge.

Time seemed meaningless in that fog, and she didn’t know how long it had been before they heard a sound- like a man coughing-as it echoed across the dim expanse. Pia froze and she felt Jack stiffen. Her skin crawled uncontrollably.

There across the mire stood a diminutive figure, his arms draped around the gnarled form of a dead tree, his face hidden behind the decaying bark. As Pia stared she saw that saw it was an old man, with skin as white as milk. His clothes were torn rags through which she could see his ribs, and arms that were devoid of any muscle. She had seen people like that before, beggars who starved in the winter.

“Don’t let him see us, Pia,” Jack hissed. “Please. There’s something not right about him.”

The man coughed again, and as he did so he moved, his head sliding out from behind the bark.

“Gods.” Jack breathed. “Ride, Pia. Please. Ride!”

But she couldn’t move. She told her legs to do so, to dig her heels into the horse’s side, but they refused. She was frozen, the burning red eyes of the man looking into hers.

The horse neighed.

“Pia!” Jack cried, louder now,

The hair on the man’s head was torn out in great clumps. When he coughed and opened his mouth she saw that half his tongue was missing. He coughed again, and this time his jaw hung open, wider than nature had designed. Or it might have been a laugh, and Pia saw him give what she thought could be a leering smile.

His arms uncoiled from the tree and he moved toward them. His speed was unnatural.

“Pia!”

She had never seen anything so perverse, so wrong. The old man with a skeletal body leapt the first pool that separated them, a jump that even a young man in peak condition could never have accomplished.

Impossible. Still she remained transfixed.

The man opened his mouth wider as he charged toward them. He was as fast as a horse, she realised suddenly.

“Pia,” Jack cried, wriggling in her lap and turning to peer up at her. “Do something!”

Finally Jack’s voice broke her fear, and she kicked the horse into action. The horse bolted forward suddenly, as if it had been similarly frozen in fear. She looked behind, and on it came-for now she knew it wasn’t human-and it was gaining, its arms outstretched. She looked forward again, panic rising inside her.

When she looked back again, the skeleton creature was so close. She faced forward again and closed her eyes. But the tears came, and she couldn’t stop them.

No, no, no no no nononono…

She felt something hard grab her thigh and out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of white as the thing’s hand slipped off her body. Her skin felt frozen where it had been touched.

Jack cried out in terror.

Pia leaned forward, ignoring the sound.

The horse reared suddenly and kicked backward. Pia heard a sound like a breaking twig, and she dared to turn to look.

The thing was there. Right behind her, its hand gripped around the horse’s rear leg. It pressed its face forward, into the horse, its mouth biting…

The horse bucked again as a torrent of blood gushed into the thing’s face. This time Pia lost her balance.

She fell from the horse.

Jack screamed as the horse bucked again. As she fell, Pia saw its hoof smash against the attacker’s temple. It was a blow that would surely have felled a giant. And it was enough to send the creature sprawling back, into the mire.

Pia gasped as her heart pounded. She watched in a daze as the thing vanished beneath the surface of the swamp, and the horse bolted with Jack holding on desperately, his arms wrapped around the frantic animal’s neck. And then he was lost from sight in the swirling green mists.

She tried to rise, but again her limbs refused to obey her commands. Minutes passed-or were they hours? Somewhere far away she heard Jack scream again and the horse whinny loudly. Then both sounds were cut short.

No! But still she remained frozen.

There was the sound of movement-of something being dragged. A form was thrust down to the earth at her side, so that she could see it without needing to turn her head. It was Jack, his face ash grey, his eyes