can be… friendsss.’ She paused, her head weaving back and forth like a cobra, as though trying to see him from many different angles at once. Her look became furtive. ‘Whaat havve you taught the Woolfen? Did you also bring them… gifts?’
Her hand went to her robe and pulled it open revealing a pair of sagging, leathery breasts and the magnificent diamond, now chained and clasped in silver. The blood red stone swung forward and she stroked it lovingly.
Mogahr’s eyes seemed to stare right through to the marrow of his bones. Arn gulped and shook his head. A sound like a wet cough was hacked at him, and given the curve of her lips, Arn guessed she had just laughed.
‘Wordsss doo not need to comme from the tongue, ssstupid ape. You wiiill tell usss… or your waarm innardsss wiiill.’ She motioned with an arm, and two of the guards moved quickly to take hold of him.
‘I liiike yourrr eyesss — daaark liiike the niiight. I thiiink I wiiill keeeep them.’
Arn’s guts were churning. Suddenly, he doubled over, dragging the guards with him and almost throwing them to the floor. Embarrassed, one of them wrenched him upright by his hair, and the other buried his fist hard into Arn’s stomach—
With a breaking of wind, a tearing of fabric, the beetle burst from Arn’s pants and flew around the inside of the tent.
‘Fleeet beeetle — he’sss beeeing trackeddd.’
One of the guards ran to the entrance of the tent, and pushed up the flap, opening his mouth to yell an alarm. But no sound came. Instead, he fell backwards like a plank of wood, an arrow protruding from his neck.
At the rear of the tent, a volcano of earth, teeth and fur erupted.
Strom landed lightly on his feet, and shook the soil from his head. He raised his sword. In no more than a single breath, Sorenson sprang up out of the hole beside him.
The Panterran guards were frozen. The Wolfen brothers charged forward, slashing and hacking anything that moved. The queen hissed a single command that had half of the guards crawling on top of her to create a living shield of flesh, their swords pointed outwards, so that they resembled some sort of spiked sea creature. It suited the Wolfen, as this took them out of the fight.
Sorenson caught sight of Arn, hands bound behind his back, leashed by his throat to a bench in a corner of the tent. He fought his way towards him, slicing through the thick tether easily. Strom was now in the centre of a Panterran storm of swords and claws, and his own blade rose and fell, filling the tent with blood and shrieks of hatred from the furious Panterran.
Arn called for a blade, but instead Sorenson dragged him to where Grimson crouched, rattling the door of his cage impatiently. In another moment, Sorenson had freed the young Wolfen as well, and was herding both of his charges towards the yawning hole in the ground. Just before he was pushed into the pit, Arn shouldered over one of the fire-filled braziers; its coals landed in the folds of the tent, which exploded into flames.
The Panterran shrieked and fled the tent, dragging their grub-like queen with them.
‘The one thing Panterran dread more than drowning,’ Sorenson shouted over his shoulder as they hurried along the tunnel, ‘is a good fire!’
As Arn dragged Grimson along with him, he looked down to see the female fleet beetle scurrying past them. Clinging to her back was the male.
So far so good, he thought.
Eilif held up her bow with the last arrow nocked, but immediately lowered it. The tent was a magnificent inferno, and the entire camp were running about like ants. The queen was dragged from the tent, and if not for the crowd of supplicants surrounding her, the temptation to shoot an arrow into her ugly bloated hide would have been irresistible.
She could hear the others coming along the tunnel, and prayed that they were all unharmed. She took one last look back into the camp. The light was beginning to fade to a deep purple, and she saw that a group of the giant Lygon had thundered into the clearing, and began to push, shove and fight with each other, their roars outstripping the sounds of the panicked Panterran.
Eilif pulled her bowstring back as far as it would go, aimed high into the sky and fired her arrow. The silent and poisonous projectile was too dangerous to take with her now that it had the vipod venom coating it… She hoped that it would land among the Lygon, seeming to have dropped from the sky itself.
‘A gift from Odin,’ she whispered, laughing softly as waited, crouched beside the tunnel exit.
Chapter 31
A Life Saved Is a Life Owned
They ran through the forest in single file — Sorenson, Grimson, then Eilif, Arn, and finally Strom. They kept close together, with no more than an arm’s length between them.
Strom had told them he estimated they had about thirty minutes before the fire in the tent died, and it was cool enough for the Panterran to enter… to find that there were no charred Wolfen bodies. The tunnel would also be found, and followed, and then all hell would be on their trail.
It was dark now, and thankfully the moon had risen enough for Arn to see clearly. As before, the rising moon filled him with energy, which he needed after the ordeal of the previous night and day.
Eilif had given him some water and dried beef. But there could be no stopping to enjoy his meal; they all knew that the night belonged to the Panterran, and until they were safe within the castle walls, they would run until they dropped.
In front of him, Eilif glanced over her shoulder, checking for signs of pursuit. Arn caught her eye; she smiled, slowing her pace a fraction so that they were running side by side. She nudged him with her elbow.
‘Someone must be looking out for you, Arnoddr. Rarely does one escape from the Slinkers. But you have managed it twice.’
Arn laughed. ‘You came to rescue me this time. That makes you my guardian angel.’
‘Really, that makes us even,’ she said softly. ‘But a life saved is a life owned. Now I have a claim on yours as well.’ She looked away quickly, and Arn bet that if there was a little more light, he’d see that the inside of her ears had turned pink.
Sorenson raced through the darkness, trying his best to retrace their path back to the castle. He knew that soon he’d have to carry Grimson, whose panting was growing ever louder. Sorenson knew why — the young Wolfen had to run twice as hard as his long-legged companions.
Just a few moments earlier, Strom had passed word up to him that he could now hear the sounds of pursuit — the Panterran travelled fast in the dark, and their eyes were better suited to night hunting.
Sorenson counted trees and familiar landmarks, trying to ignore the creeping fatigue in his limbs, and was comforted at least to know that they were following the right path. If they could just make it back into the open fields of Valkeryn, they would be safe.
He slowed slightly, and stared into the darkness. There was a strange whirring sound up ahead — not something he had ever heard before, or could identify as a natural noise of the forest. As he rounded a tree into a small moonlit clearing, a horrifying beast reared up in front of him.
Like a giant cobra, with a flattened body and a single, burning red eye, the thing gave off an insect-like hum as it hovered in the centre of their path.
As Sorenson ground to a halt, a blinding light like a thousand candles flared from the beast’s eye. Grimson screamed, and Strom shouldered Arn and Eilif aside as he rushed forward to drag the young Wolfen out of harm’s way. The thing whined again, and rose up as though to strike. Strom snarled and raised his broadsword.
There was another bright flash.
Sorenson stared down at the broken beast. In one mighty swing, Strom had buried his blade deep into its head, the light of life fading from its eye as it fell heavily to the ground.
