Rakon didn't answer, the driver whipped the reins and the exhausted, wounded draft horses whinnied and picked up their pace. The men followed suit, almost running. There was no way they could keep it up for long.
Nix's eyes darted right and left, following motion, trying to discern the details of the creatures. A small stone fell from atop a megalith, disturbed by the motion of something. He saw more movement on the other side, a lot of it, a mass of forms. Over the sound of his own labored breathing, he heard growls, snarls, a growing chorus of them.
'We should find a defensible spot, Baras!' Egil said, rattling his dice in one hand, holding a hammer in the other. 'We're going to get caught in the open!'
'No,' Rakon countered from the carriage. 'Faster. We must make the ruins.'
'My lord has spoken,' Baras said, breathing heavily, his mail jingling as he ran. 'Move it!'
The sun shot its last, hopeless rays into a sky being overrun by night. As darkness stretched over the land, the Vwynn emerged from the shadows, hundreds of them.
'Here they come!' Nix said.
'Onto the carriage!' Egil ordered. 'Now, now!'
'Wait,' Baras said. 'We should-'
'Go!' Egil said. 'Now, Baras, or we're all dead.'
The Vwynn charged out of the ruins, seething from all sides, the stonescape vomiting up their muscular, clawed forms.
'Onto the carriage,' Baras said, echoing Egil. He bounded onto the driver's bench and took station beside the driver, already cocking his crossbow.
Egil, Nix, Jyme, and the rest of the guards leaped onto the step rail of the carriage and grabbed hold where they could. Rakon leaned halfway out the open window of the carriage and shouted at the driver.
'Go, man! Go!'
The driver shouted at the already straining horses, snapped the reins. The animals laid back their ears, snorted, and ran as best they could. They weren't chargers, and with the weight of the additional men to pull, they moved alarmingly slow.
'Faster!' Baras called, and the driver snapped the reins again and again. The draft horses snorted, lowered their heads, whinnied, pulled.
Behind them, before them, and to their left and right, Vwynn poured out of the night, loping over the ruined terrain on their long legs. They moved with an odd jerky stride, more leap than run, and their clawed feet threw up clods of earth behind them at every stride. Muscles rippled in their thin, scaled frames as they moved. Their claws flexed open and closed as they ran, as if in anticipation of rending flesh.
The carriage wasn't going fast enough. The driver beat at the horses mercilessly and the beasts picked up speed.
'Crossbows!' Baras shouted. 'Clear the road!'
'Do not stop for anything!' Rakon ordered the driver.
Baras took aim and fired. His quarrel slammed into the chest of a Vwynn ahead and to the right, sent the creature tumbling head over heels to the earth. The Vwynn's fellows ran over and past him without slowing.
The horses picked up more speed, but not enough. Guards cursed as they tried to load, the bumpy ride making it difficult to lay quarrels into cocked crossbows. Nix held his falchion in one hand and held onto a rail on the top of the carriage with the other. Beside him, Egil held a hammer in one hand and held on with the other. His dice had vanished back into his pocket.
The guards got their ammunition set and crossbows sang, the bolts sizzling into the moonlit darkness before the wagon. Two Vwynn fell, a third, all of them screaming as they tumbled into the rockscape. The rest closed from all sides, fangs bared, claws flexed, their muscular bodies lurid against the stone.
The road behind them closed like a drawn curtain as the Vwynn coming from either side met up in a churning mass and ran frenziedly after the carriage, which was now careening wildly over the road.
'Don't overturn us!' Nix shouted at the driver, and the older man nodded.
'Don't let them get the horses!' Baras shouted over his shoulder. 'Crossbows! Crossbows!'
Jyme, loading his weapon, lost his balance and would have fallen if Nix hadn't grabbed him by the collar and steadied him. He didn't bother with thanks, just loaded his crossbow as fast as the situation allowed.
Vwynn poured forth from the sides, before them, a mob of claws, teeth, and violence. One of them leaped onto the driver's bench, its claws scrabbling on the wood. Baras stabbed it through the midsection with his blade.
'Keep driving!' he shouted to the driver. 'Keep driving!'
Blood spurted from the Vwynn's gut and it screamed. Baras kicked it off the carriage, wary of its slashing claws and snapping teeth. Another Vwynn leaped onto the bench from the other side, wrapped arms and legs around the old driver. The guards on the side near the driver cursed, swung their blades at the Vwynn, but it did little good. Baras spun on his seat, reached for the driver, but too late.
A chaotic swirl of limbs, claws, screams, shrieks, and blood ended with the Vwynn toppling over the side and into the road with the driver still in hand. The wagon continued on, the horses whinnying in terror. Baras grabbed the reins and whipped the creatures onward.
Behind them, half a dozen Vwynn fell upon the writhing, screaming driver, devouring him in the road.
Meanwhile another Vwynn closed from the side and leaped at Jyme, Egil, and Nix. Nix impaled it through the chest on his blade and a backhand from Egil's hammer crushed its skull and sprayed gore.
'Shite!' Baras cursed, and Nix saw why.
Perhaps a dozen Vwynn had reached the road ahead of them and now charged directly toward the wagons.
Emotions churned around her, a lightning storm of fear, anger, and dread. Rusilla perceived them only thickly, the drugs her brother had given her attenuating her perception. She fought through the fog, swam up through the roiling emotional ocean, seeking acuity.
She could not focus.
She could discern nothing but the inchoate mass of feeling, a mash of indistinct emotions. No individuation. Her mind drifted and she sank, falling back into somnolent quiescence.
A voice sounded in her mind, roused her from lassitude. Merelda's voice.
Rose!
Mere's mental call was unfocused, a blind flailing in the midst of the emotional churn. Rusilla felt the terror in it.
Rose, where are you? I'm alone.
Mere's fear, the desperate hopelessness of it, brought Rusilla renewed focus. She waded through feelings, seeking the thread of her sister's thoughts, but could not pinpoint them. Instead, she projected soothing thoughts with as much power as she could muster.
I'm here and all is well, Mere. Go back to sleep. All is well.
In truth Rusilla had no idea if all was well, if her plan was working. She was blind, trapped by her brother's drugs in the cage of her own mind. The world outside her mental space was blurry, sensed as if through thick glass.
Her frustration spiked and she felt her body, felt a moment's control over her flesh, just a flash of feeling. She might have clenched her fist, or perhaps just lifted a finger.
She was bouncing, moving fast. There were sounds all around her, shouts, the rattle of carriage wheels.
Feeling her body allowed her renewed mental focus. She snatched at the emotions around her, taking the measure of each until she perceived a familiar thread, an emotional resonance she'd felt before her brother had increased her dosage and drowned her in drugs — Nix Fall.
She held on to Nix's emotional thread, climbed up it and settled into his consciousness.
'Run them down!' Rakon shouted, leaning out the window to see ahead. He sat back and Nix peeked into the carriage through the window.
Rakon had his thin blade drawn, fingers white around the hilt, his expression tense and nervous. The implacable eunuch sat beside him, knife in hand, an empty smile on his slack face. Across from them sat the sisters,
