“Did you tell Gamarron? Isn’t he on watch?” She felt panic rising in her breast.
“He’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone? Where did he go?” She couldn’t make sense of the words. Gamarron was the one that held this whole thing together. His absence was incomprehensible.
“I came back when I saw the hunters approaching, and he wasn’t here.”
“How did you see them? It’s dark! Did they see you?” She knew she was babbling, but she couldn’t seem to stop.
“I saw them from far off. No, not saw... sensed.” He shook his head in the darkness. “I could see their heat.”
“Sensed?” she asked hesitantly. “With your...?” She wasn’t quite sure what word to use.
“Yes,” he said softly, and turned his face fully toward her for the first time. The night was too dark to see anything of his face at first, but then a glowfly flashed just over his head. She gasped and drew back, covering her mouth.
The cavity of his eye was overfilled with a fleshy plug that bulged out in a gentle curve from eyebrow to cheekbone. The mismatched flesh met against his own with a puckered, scar-like line that ran in a rough oval from nose ridge to cheekbone, over to the ear, and up to his brow.
The pallor and the scarring were not why she gasped. It was the eyes. A dozen black insectile eyes were unevenly embedded within the pale flesh, each a different size and shape. In the dark they looked like holes in his face. Stray hairs pocked the spaces between eyes like abortive eyelashes. She had never seen anything so wrong in all her life, not even when Fi’s head had collapsed in on itself and split in two. That was just death, and while death could be ugly, everyone died. But this… she’d seen life pulsing in those insect eyes, and it was a perversion. She shuddered and clutched the blanket to herself.
“Oh, Kest. Oh, Kest.” She knew she should give him some word of comfort, but she found none.
He stood abruptly. “I know.” His voice was rough and raw. “We don’t have much time. They were stopped when I saw them, but there was no fire. They may be pushing through the night, using the koira to track us. Wake Renna and tell her to be quiet. I’ll get the chaos wielder tied in. Hurry.”
She stood in haste, throwing down her blanket. She took three steps toward Renna before the thought occurred to her. Turning back, she called out softly, “What about Gamarron?”
“Either he’s dead or he’ll find us,” came the terse reply. So harsh. But then, he had reason.
She knelt by the sleeping Hand and shook her. The incessant snoring cut off, bringing instant relief. True to form, the woman began slapping her hands away before she was even really awake. Cracking an eye, she grated out, “Leave me be, you backwater slut. It’s not my watch.”
Nira had several good responses to that, but there was no time. “Kest is back.”
That did it; Renna shot bolt upright in her blankets. “Where—”
Nira rode right over the other woman’s words. “Gamarron’s missing, and there are men on our trail with hunting animals. We have to leave.”
The older woman nodded crisply. “Concise. See? You don’t have to be a brainless whore all the time.” With that, she was up and moving, leaving Nira grinding her teeth at a pile of empty blankets.
I should have let her sleep until the koira found her. She’d be less of a bitch with fangs in her throat.
They stowed their gear breathlessly and mounted one by one. Kest kept the surly beasts distracted by giving each one a stick to snap at as its rider climbed on. “Should we leave one for Gamarron?” Nira asked.
Kest kept his head down in the dark. “No, we’ll take it. He wouldn’t be able to mount safely without me.” He urged his six-legged beast forward, heading for the stream. “Don’t try to guide the zephyrs,” he called softly over his shoulder. “They’ll follow my lead, and they can see better in the dark than we can.” He hunched his shoulders. “Than you can.”
Nira thought he would take them across the stream, but once he reached the middle of the five-meter-wide rill he turned upstream and forged eastward up the center of the creek. The water came nearly to the zephyrs’ bellies, and they were lucky it was no deeper – with Guyrin tied down as he was, another half a meter of depth would have put his head underwater.
They splashed upstream, letting their mounts carry them at a leisurely pace. Nira would have liked to go faster, but she recognized that running the beasts through the stream would have made a terrible racket, while their meandering splashes sounded hardly any louder than the natural course of the stream. It was a good plan. This is exactly the sort of thing Gamarron wanted him for, she realized. She tried to imagine the rugged Beast Rider hunting through the mega-sized flora of Pacari and wished she had asked him more about his home.
Whether they spent fifteen minutes or an hour in the water she couldn’t have said, but eventually Kest led them out of the far side of the waterway and up the mossy bank. There was a thick copse of trees standing proud on a rise over the riverbank, and Kest dismounted, shepherding them into its midst. They were drooping frond trees of some kind, and their hanging branches screened them almost completely from the stream. “We hide here,” whispered Kest. “Stay quiet – they’re not far behind now.”
Renna and Nira stayed astride their zephyrs and jammed themselves into the center of the copse. There was just enough room
