“Go,” Sol said more firmly this time. “It knows we’ve felt it.”
He drew his sword just as she heard the creature begin to move more quickly through the brush. The fog concealed whatever it was. The only thing she could see in that direction was the briar that choked the edge of the bog.
It comes. It comes.
She ran, hearing Sol urge Copper forward at the same time.
Copper was so close on her heels, she thought the horse might run her down, but Sol had enough strength left to control the pace. Her lungs burned. Strands of fog stretched across the ground like seeking fingers. The forest trail narrowed to a tunnel of gold and shadow.
They were almost there. The alders ahead felt alive and clean.
A keening wail rose from behind, the sound piercing her ears like a spike.
She picked up her pace, scrambling over a fallen log and skirting the edge of a black puddle. Her foot hit a slick patch of leaves, and she stumbled.
She glanced over her shoulder to find that Sol was no longer behind her. He’d turned Copper around. The horse’s flanks were heaving from the run.
The wail cut off abruptly, and there was silence.
“Sol?”
“Go on ahead,” he said in a bare whisper. “I’ll find you.”
He would not.
He’d stopped to give her a chance to run. It was the same stupid kind of heroic thing Casrian would do. She hoped he could fight like Casrian, but she doubted he was up to it, sick as he was.
The smell of rot grew deeper and more cloying.
Something was coming. She couldn’t see it or hear it, but she felt it, down deep in her bones. She felt like a mouse cowering before the shredding claws of an owl.
Her hands trembled on the bow. Sol was still as a statue, waiting, a soothing hand on Copper’s neck.
And then there was movement.
At first it was only a slow-moving shadow, a dark stain against the fog. As it moved closer, the shape slowly came into focus. The slope of a hulking shoulder. The thick, round skull. This one had horns like a bull. The witch was getting creative. Her knife wasn’t going to be able to pierce the thick black hide.
Fuck.
It was a familiar. She’d really been hoping for a bear.
She loosed her arrow and hit its flank, but the thing didn’t slow. The great black shape lurched toward them through the fog, picking up speed as it went. Copper panicked, and Sol slid off the horse, letting him go. When she moved to help him, he pushed her back.
The familiar lunged.
Sol slashed at its arm, and she dropped her bow, reaching for her knife.
There were noises all around them. Voices calling out. They might have been illusions, or maybe the echoes of their own shouts.
Sol struck again, driving the familiar back with heavy, brutal swings of his sword. Though he was less graceful than Casrian, he was equally effective. The familiar pulled back to circle them. Recognizing her as the weaker target, it adjusted its attack. She dove to the side, the boggy ground breaking her fall. When she rolled, the familiar stood above her. It turned to bat an angry hand at Sol’s sword. She drove her knife into the back of its knee and it shrieked, spinning to face her.
She fell.
The impact knocked the knife from her hand. The nightmare creature leaned down, its gaping maw revealing row after row of needle-like teeth.
They hadn’t made it to the good patch of woods, and that seemed a shame, that she would die here on this foul ground. She’d rather her corpse feed the healthy trees than this monster.
She reached out for the alders from that quiet place inside where the magic lived.
