Even puny human hearing could distinguish hooves, squealing axle, and cracking whip, all coming fast. Someone was driving a team brutally up the hill. That made no sense. The survivor could not have reached the town yet. Even if he had, the response would be Werists in force, not a chariot. The fugitive might have missed a driver in the mist and failed to pass a warning, but who would be driving a chariot up a moorland road the way this one was moving? If he was only some extrinsic attending to his own business, he might go past the battlefield without noticing. If he saw the bodies and tried to go back to Tryfors, he would have to be stopped before he could raise the alarm.
Perhaps his team might be persuaded to bolt in the wrong direction? No, the chariot was already too close for Orlad to position men behind it. He realized with a shameful, un-Heroic dismay that he might have to order a murder in a couple of minutes.
A faint shadow of onagers and car congealed out of the gray murk, going by on the left, probably not close enough to see the watchers. But the sole occupant was tall as no man was tall. Therek Hragson had not wanted to be cheated out of his entertainment, an entertainment that had already cost the lives of Ranthr, Charnarth, Vargin, Caedaw, Leorth, and ten others.
'Kill him!' Orlad screamed, and battleformed.
¦
He ought to have died on the spot. Every one of his companions had sworn his oath to Therek Hragson as the light of Weru, so the satrap had claim on their loyalty before all mortals on Dodec. Orlad had not worked that out ahead of time and his warbeast couldn't. He knew nothing then but hate. Unaware even of the healing gashes in his back, he streaked.
Therek saw the black cat coming like the hand of death and knew who it must be. No doubt he congratulated himself on his good judgment in foreseeing the faithlessness of Florengians. He turned his car on one wheel and laid into the onagers without mercy, steering them down the steepest grade he could find. Having scented the pursuing carnivore, they needed no encouragement, and for a few frantic minutes they managed to stay ahead of the warbeast.
The hillside was steep. Given a clear stretch of turf, the terrified onagers might even have held on to their lead long enough to reach the town, where Therek could have found aid. But there were rocks. The little ones he ignored. The boulders he had to dodge, whereas Orlad simply hurdled them, black death inexorably gaining on its prey.
He was closing the gap, but a middle-size rock ended the chase. Chariots were not meant to be driven like that. A wheel shattered into a cloud of fragments. The car spun full circle around its long axis, hurling the satrap out like a shot from a sling, while snapping shaft and yoke and hopelessly entangling the onagers in the traces. The axle splintered into tinder, sending the other wheel careering off down the hill. Rig and team crumpled together on the grass.
Having the choice of hitting the ground as an elderly man of fragile build or of battleforming in midair, Therek naturally chose to battleform. His pall flew free. His appearance changed little—his talons grew larger, his mouth expanded into a true hooked beak—but from that moment he was a dead man, for he could never go back. No matter; as the greatest fighter of his generation, he would acquit himself gloriously, sending his foes ahead to proclaim his arrival in the halls of Weru. This he prepared to do.
He landed nimbly enough on needle-tipped toes while Orlad ripped turf in a mad effort to change direction, find footing, and launch himself in attack. As he left the ground Therek swung on one foot and lashed out with the murderous spur on his heel. Driven by the full power of his five-foot leg, that scythe could slice a man open like a soft fruit. Alas, time takes its toll. A third his age, Orlad twisted in midair and caught the leg in his teeth as it went by him. Bones crackled like bacon rinds.
Orlad hit the ground full-length and bounced upright, spinning to face his foe. Therek fell headlong on the turf and was buried under a screaming heap of warbeasts.
¦
'I wanted him,' Orlad said petulantly, scowling at the remains—which covered an impressive expanse of ground.
'Greedy!' Bloodmouth muttered. 'Must learn to share.'
'There's a piece for everyone,' Hrothgat countered, grinning. 'Er, what's the rest of the host going to say, lord?'
'My lord is hungry?'
Orlad recoiled as Snerfrik thrust a steaming mass of gory meat at him. Then he saw it had hide on one side and must be onager, not satrap, so he snatched it and began tearing it with runty human teeth, every lump sliding down his throat as purest joy. Soon all the naked, soaked men around him were doing the same, laughing and growling, rubbing gore on one another's faces in childish joy at being winners, being blooded Werists, just being alive. Their wounds were already healed to old white scars.
Their leader could not laugh. The score was twelve for four now, but the monster they had unleashed would not stop feeding soon. Even if Stralg tried to appoint a new hostleader, his decision could not arrive until spring and the matter would not wait that long. There were currently only three huntleaders in Therek's Host—Heth, Karrthin, and Fellard—and the vote would tie at one apiece. That was the Heroes' way. There would be war.
The danger was extreme. Extrinsic outlaws could be arrested, imprisoned, tried, and executed, but not Werists—what jail would hold them? Anxious to demonstrate loyalty, the three hunts would compete for the honor of running down the renegades and dismembering them.
Meanwhile seven men were waiting for their new lord to issue orders. Beyond sending them back up the hill for their palls and sandals, Orlad had not a useful idea in his head.
He had several useless ones. If Fellard and Karrthin suspected that Heth was behind the assassination and his whole hunt was lurking in ambush ... so leave the dead men's Nardalborg palls as a clue? ... perhaps so obvious a clue that the Tryfors men would suspect a trap ... the only thing that could throw warbeasts off the scent was running water...
Where to run, where to hide? Before Stralg unified the Face, dozens of cities would have been happy to hire a
