and feeling the broad-bladed hunting knife rip through his leather armour to score along his ribs-Karsa batted aside the other’s attack and, still laughing, crushed the lowlander’s skull with his sword. A back slash connected with the other scout, sent him flying to strike the stone wall.
The four robed figures awaited Karsa, evincing little fear, joined in a low chant.
The air sparkled strangely before them, then coruscating fire suddenly unfolded, swept forward to engulf Karsa.
It raged against him, a thousand clawed hands, tearing, raking, battering his body, his face and his eyes.
Karsa, shoulders hunching, walked through it.
The fire burst apart, flames fleeing into the night air. Shrugging the effects off with a soft growl, Karsa approached the four lowlanders.
Their expressions, calm and serene and confident a moment ago, now revealed disbelief that swiftly shifted to horror as Karsa’s sword ripped into them.
They died as easily as had the others, and moments later the Teblor stood amidst twitching bodies, blood gleaming dark on his sword’s blade. Torches lay on the stone floor here and there, fitfully throwing smoky light to dance against the cul de sac’s walls.
Bairoth Gild strode into view. ‘The second guard escaped up the trail, Warleader,’ he said. ‘The dogs now hunt.’
Karsa grunted.
‘Karsa Orlong, you have slain the first group of children. The trophies are yours.’
Reaching down, Karsa closed the fingers of one hand in the robes of one of the bodies at his feet. He straightened, lifting the corpse into the air, and studied its puny limbs, its small head with its peculiar braids. A face lined, as would be a Teblor’s after centuries upon centuries of life, yet the visage he stared down upon was scaled to that of a Teblor newborn.
‘They squealed like babes,’ Bairoth Gild said. ‘The tales are true, then. These lowlanders are like children indeed.’
‘Yet not,’ Karsa said, studying the aged face now slack in death.
‘They died easily.’
‘Aye, they did.’ Karsa flung the body away. ‘Bairoth Gild, these are our enemies. Do you follow your warleader?’
‘For this war, I shall,’ Bairoth replied. ‘Karsa Orlong, we shall speak no more of our… village. What lies between us must await our eventual return.’
‘Agreed.’
Two of the pack’s dogs did not return, and there was nothing of strutting victory in the gaits of Gnaw and the others as they padded back into the camp at dawn. Surprisingly, the lone guard had somehow escaped. Delum Thord, his arms wrapped about Gnaw’s mate-as they had been throughout the night-whimpered upon the pack’s return.
Bairoth shifted the supplies from his and Karsa’s destriers to Delum’s warhorse, for it was clear that Delum had lost all knowledge of riding. He would run with the dogs.
As they readied to depart, Bairoth said, ‘It may be that the guard came from Silver Lake. That he will bring to them warning words of our approach.’
‘We shall find him,’ Karsa growled from where he crouched, threading the last of his trophies onto the leather cord. ‘He could only have eluded the dogs by climbing, so there will be no swiftness to his flight. We shall seek sign of him. If he has continued on through the night, he will be tired. If not, he will be close.’ Straightening, Karsa held the string of severed ears and tongues out before him, studied the small, mangled objects for a moment longer, then looped his collection of trophies round his neck.
He swung himself onto Havok’s back, collected the lone rein.
Gnaw’s pack moved ahead to scout the trail, Delum among them, the three-legged dog cradled in his arms.
They set off.
Shortly before midday, they came upon signs of the last lowlander, thirty paces beyond the corpses of the two missing dogs-a crossbow quarrel buried in each one. A scattering of iron armour, straps and fittings. The guard had shed weight.
‘This child is a clever one,’ Bairoth Gild observed. ‘He will hear us before we see him, and will prepare an ambush.’ The warrior’s hooded gaze flicked to Delum. ‘More dogs will be slain.’
Karsa shook his head at Bairoth’s words. ‘He will not ambush us, for that will see him killed, and he knows it. Should we catch up with him, he will seek to hide. Evasion is his only hope, up the cliffside, and then we will have passed him, and so he will not succeed in reaching Silver Lake before us.’
‘We do not hunt him down?’ Bairoth asked in surprise.
‘No. We ride for Bone Pass.’
‘Then he shall trail us. Warleader, an enemy loose at our backs-’
‘A child. Those quarrels might well kill a dog, but they are as twigs to us Teblor. Our armour alone will take much of those small barbs-’
‘He has a sharp eye, Karsa Orlong, to slay two dogs in the dark. He will aim for where our armour does not cover us.’
Karsa shrugged. ‘Then we must outpace him beyond the pass.’
They continued on. The trail widened as it climbed, the entire escarpment pushing upward in its northward reach. Riding at a fast trot, they covered league after league until, by late afternoon, they found themselves entering clouds of mist, a deep roaring sound directly ahead.
The path dropped away suddenly.
Reining in amidst the milling dogs, Karsa dismounted.
The edge was sheer. Beyond it and on his left, a river had cut a notch a thousand paces or more deep into the cliffside, down to what must have been a ledge of some sort, over which it then plunged another thousand paces to a mist-shrouded valley floor. A dozen or more thread-thin waterfalls drifted out from both sides of the notch, issuing from fissures in the bedrock. The scene, Karsa realized after a moment, was all wrong. They had reached the highest part of the escarpment’s ridge. A river, cutting a natural route through to the lowlands, did not belong in this place. Stranger still, the flanking waterfalls poured out from riven cracks, not one level with another, as if the mountains on both sides were filled with water.
‘Karsa Orlong,’ Bairoth had to shout to be heard over the roar rising from far below, ‘someone-an ancient god, perhaps-has broken a mountain in half. That notch, it was not carved by water. No, it has the look of having been cut by a giant axe. And the wound… bleeds.’
Not replying to Bairoth’s words, Karsa turned about. Directly on his right, a winding, rocky path descended on their side of the cliff, a steep path of shale and scree, gleaming wet.
‘This is our way down?’ Bairoth stepped past Karsa, then swung an incredulous look upon the warleader. ‘We cannot! It will vanish beneath our feet! Beneath the hoofs of the horses! We shall descend indeed, like stones down a cliff side!’
Karsa crouched and pried a rock loose from the ground. He tossed it down the trail. Where it first struck, the shale shifted, trembled, then slid in a growing wave that quickly followed the bouncing rock, vanishing into the mists.
Revealing rough, broad steps.
Made entirely of bones.
‘It is as Pahlk said, ‘Karsa murmured, before turning to Bairoth. ‘Come, our path awaits.’
Bairoth’s eyes were hooded. ‘It does indeed, Karsa Orlong. Beneath our feet there shall be a truth.’
Karsa scowled. ‘This is our trail down from the mountains. Nothing more, Bairoth Gild.’
The warrior shrugged. ‘As you say, Warleader.’
Karsa in the lead, they began the descent.
The bones were lowlander in scale, yet heavier and thicker, hardened into stone. Here and there, antlers and tusks were visible, as well as artfully carved bone helms from larger beasts. An army had been slain, their bones
