Princeps’ Fury

The thing that ripped its way from the earth beneath the feet of Tonnar’s mount was like nothing Kestus had ever seen.

It was huge, the size of a wagon, and covered in a gleaming, slick-looking green-black shell or armor of some kind. It had legs, a lot of them, almost like a crab’s, and great, grasping pincers like the claws of a lobster, and glittering eyes recessed into deep divots in that strange shell.

And it was strong.

It ripped a leg from Tonnar’s horse before Kestus could so much as cry out a warning.

The animal went down, screaming, blood flowing everywhere. Kestus heard Tonnar’s bones breaking as the horse landed on him. Tonnar began to scream in agony-and kept screaming as, with the other claw, the monster, whatever it was, ripped his belly open, right through his mail, and spilled his entrails into the cool air.

A half-hysterical thought flashed through Kestus’s stunned mind: The man couldn’t even die quietly.

The creature began to methodically rip the horse apart, its motions as swift and sure as a butcher hard at work.

Kestus felt his eyes drawn to Julius. His commander turned his head slowly to face them and opened his mouth in a slow, wide gape.

Julius screamed. But the deafening sound that came out was nothing even remotely human. There was something metallic to it, something dissonant, an odd, warbling tone that set Kestus’s teeth on edge and set the horses to dancing and tossing their heads, their eyes rolling whitely in sudden fear.

The sound died away

And an instant later, the forest came alive with rustling.

Ivarus lifted his hands and drew back his hood, the better to hear the sound. It came from all around them, cracklings of crushed fallen leaves, rasping of pine needles against something brushing through them, snapping of twigs, pinecones, fallen branches. No one sound was more than a bare murmur. But there were thousands of them.

The forest sounded as if it had become one enormous bonfire.

“Oh, great furies,” breathed Ivarus. “Oh bloody crows.” He shot a wide-eyed glance at Kestus as he whirled his horse, his face pale with terror. “No questions!” he snarled. “Just run! Run!”

Ivarus suited action to his words, kicking his mount into a run.

Kestus tore his eyes away from the empty-eyed thing that had been his commander, and sent his horse leaping after Ivarus’s.

As he did, he became aware of…

Things.

Things, in the forest. Things moving, keeping pace with them, shadows that remained only half-seen in the deepening darkness. None of them looked human. None of them looked like anything Kestus had ever seen. His heart pounded with raw, instinctive terror, and he called to his mount, demanding more speed.

It was madness to ride like this-through the forest, in the deepening dark. A tree trunk, a low branch, a protruding root, or any of a thousand other common things could kill a man or his horse if they collided with them in the night.

But the things were drawing closer, behind and on either side of them, and Kestus realized what it meant: They were being hunted, like fleeing deer, with the pack in full pursuit, working together to bring down the game. Terror of those hunters overrode his judgment. He only wished his horse could run faster.

Ivarus splashed across a creek and abruptly altered his course, sending his mount plowing through a thorny thicket, and Kestus was hot on his heels. As they tore through the thicket, ripping their hides and the hides of their mounts, Ivarus reached into his belt pouch and drew forth a small globe made of what looked like black glass. He said something to it, then spun in his saddle, shouted, “Down!” and threw it at Kestus’s face.

Kestus ducked. The globe zipped over his hunched shoulders, and into the dark behind them.

There was a sudden flash of light and a roar of flame. Kestus shot a glance over his shoulder, to see fire spreading over the thicket with such manic intensity that it could only have been the result of some kind of furycraft. It washed out like a wave, spreading in all directions, burning the dried material of the thickets in eager conflagration-and it was moving fast. Faster than their horses were running.

They burst free of the thicket barely a panicked heartbeat ahead of the roaring flame-but not before two creatures the size of large cats came flying out of the blaze, burning like a flock of comets. Kestus got a glimpse of a too-large, spiderlike creature-and then one of them landed on the back of Ivarus’s horse, still blazing.

The horse screamed, and its hoof struck a fallen log or a depression in the forest floor. It went down in a bone-breaking tumble, taking Ivarus with it.