flourished, transforming the sores into oozing pits ful of wriggling maggots.
As if they needed yet another reason to be permanently pissed.
Fights broke out at the brushing of a flank. Horns clashed almost constantly, fil ing the air with echoes of bone smashing against bone. At least once a day a durgoyle fel to its knees, where it was promptly trampled by the rest of the herd, which didn’t moo like cows. The sound they made, and they did it with the frequency of New York car horns, squeaked through the air like dolphin cal s, making me suspect my ears would also be bleeding before this episode had ended.
“I think I wanna kil them al ,” I said. “Is that a bad thing?”
“Just pick the one you want,” Vayl told me.
“Wait,” said Zel . “We need them to crash the gate first.”
“And how are we supposed to do that?” I asked. “They’re on the wrong side of the Moat.” Zel said, “Four of the geysers are over here. Half of them wil cross just to drink this water.” He nodded at Astral as a series of yips made us look beyond the herd. We stil couldn’t see the spiderhounds at its edge, but their cal s were clearer than ever. “The durgoyles wil think your cat is one of their predators. Not a spiderhound, of course, but perhaps a zenqual, who hunt in herds of sometimes twenty or more. I noted she can talk. Can she make special sounds too?”
“When she’s in the right mood.”
His eyebrows quirked. “Wel , the zenqual often hunt silently, but many of them squeal like a hog at feeding time too. If you can get her to make that sound while you help herd them toward the gate, panic should do the rest.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the huge metal edifice leering behind me. Even with the entire herd butting their heads against it at once, I doubted they could round up enough force to break open an entry that the devil himself had ordered closed until further notice. But it was worth a try. So I nodded as Raoul and Lotus went to the other side of the gate to make sure they’d be somewhat on the opposite edge of the herd once they moved into range.
The yips got louder and more frequent, assuring us that the spiderhounds had stayed on the durgoyles’ tails. We became even more positive when the pace of the herd increased. When their heads came up, their ears swiveled, and they began to squeak at each other more often, we knew we’d be seeing predators sooner rather than later.
The first of the durgoyles hit the Moat without even hesitating, swimming strongly toward the geysers we’d danced out of the earth despite the depth of the river at this point. Luckily the current was slow enough that it didn’t carry the creature far downstream at al . Within minutes half of the fifty head had joined it.
I pul ed the cat, who’d been perching on my shoulder, into my arms. Somehow it felt important to maintain eye contact as I said, “You need to squeal like a pig as soon as the durgoyles hit shore so they’l run toward the gate. Make it seem like you’re fifty cats, not just one. Can you do that?” I asked.
Her reply was a soft grunt that sounded an awful lot like contented pig. But I wasn’t real y sure until she headed toward the water and jumped in. As if I hadn’t been impressed with Bergman’s invention or the fact that he’d deigned to give it to me rather than sel it to some mega-rich country for enough dough to retire on, now I felt real affection for Astral as she emerged from beneath the water, swimming strongly against the current, and making pig squeals so authentic I could almost see the wal er from here.
Unbelievably, every time she made noise, the durgoyles lunged forward as if they’d been tased.
It began to be entertaining. Until we got a whiff of them.
“Whew!” exclaimed Lotus as she pinched her nostrils together. “They’re in the frigging water!
How come they stil smel like rotting meat?”
“Because, in a way, they are,” Raoul explained. “Now herd them toward the gate. Raise your arms. Yel a little. You should know a lot about that, thril seeker.” She actual y looked hurt, which amazed me. I glanced at Vayl and caught him smiling. Then the expression changed to one of intense concentration as he looked first toward Astral and then to me.
“Be ready,” he said. “Let us get this right the first time so you do not have to suffer any longer.” Which was why I so loved the guy. I’d tried not to complain anymore, but it had begun to feel as if my head might literal y explode. Also, the rest of my body was now unaccountably sore, as if the nosebleed had reversed itself and spread, and now every organ had sprung a leak.
Astral cleared the water and ran to my side, where she paused long enough to shake al the water she hadn’t yet shed onto my jeans. Vayl pointed to the nearest field and said, “There. Beside that torso wearing the Raiders sweatshirt. Do you see it?”
I did. Spiderhounds are easy to spot, mainly because their heads are covered with eyes. Thirty-two of them to be exact. Not al of them work at the same time or in the same way, which is what makes them such a dangerous enemy. But then, they are a vulnerable area on the animal, and one it pays to target. Because the hounds are also big, fanged, clawed, and vicious. If you can even partial y blind them you radical y increase your odds of survival.
This one, a pure white giant that made Jack look like a dachshund, was wagging its spiked tail up and down like it was about to play fetch with one of the feet that stuck out of the ground at paw level. I was about to signal the hound’s location to Raoul when I realized one set of its eyes was the same shade of yel ow as those I’d seen in Vayl’s memories of Roldan. But in those visions his fur had also been covered with patches of black, proving this was just another coincidence. Like Zel finding Helena. I factored in the knowledge that Kyphas’s eyes turned yel ow when she was pissed off too, and decided that hel just preferred that color. So I shrugged it off and let Raoul know where the spiderhound was located. He quickly showed Lotus.
I leaned in to Vayl. “Do you see any other spiderhounds?” I asked.
He nodded. “The second is trotting at the back. I have only been able to see his eyes twice. They are glowing.” Raoul signaled that he’d heard. And wasn’t happy about it. Because it meant the alpha had come along for this hunt. Not unusual, but bad for us. Alpha spiderhounds, besides the obvious attribute of larger size, also carried sacs of poisonous spiders underneath their jowls. Not a threat from a distance, but if the alpha could put the bite on you, so could his little friends. By the tens of thousands. It was not a pretty way to die. I’d seen a couple of the corpses that had made it topside before succumbing. They’d al gone screaming.
