Death for the boy was instant, or so Nok hoped. He would never know. He and the princess were already gone—scrambling up the westward ridge on hands and feet, away from the baying of the dogs.
It was a shame, a boy that young dying alone in the forest. But he would’ve done no better by them had the situation been reversed.
The hounds were louder now. The princess had strapped her bow to her back in order to run unimpeded—a wise move, but one that left them unprotected. The uphill slope was hampering their speed, too; amid the dogs’ incessant barking Nok could now hear hooves drumming the earth.
He could save them, he realized. If only—if only he could caul. Would the wolf come to him again?
He sucked in as deep a breath as he could muster and imagined the beast in his mind’s eye: long legs, great shaggy head, fine white teeth long as a man’s finger, the deep swell of its chest, robust like the hull of a ship.
Come to me. Come to me now.
It fell upon him suddenly, like a warm wind. He stumbled at the sensation, then pitched forward violently. But before he could hit the ground a pair of lean muscular legs reached forth and cushioned the fall. His hands crumpled inward before his eyes and unfurled again as enormous paws. All at once he was enshrouded in coarse blue-gray fur, each of his senses heightened—especially smell. It was as though humans experienced smell only in the pale, washed-out grays of ink and water, and the wolf smelled in shrieking, vivid color. There was no time to be bowled over by it, though.
Too slow, he called to the princess. All that came from the wolf’s mouth was a twisted snarl. He cursed himself internally. Stupid! Wolves can’t talk!
But the girl turned to him, eyes widening, and he realized she had heard him, after all. He tried calling to her again: Get on!
To her credit, she didn’t stop to question the unlikeliness of his voice in her head. With a running leap, she was on his back, clinging on by two fistfuls of fur.
Here goes nothing, Nok thought as the wolf surged forward through the brush.
Her thighs cinched instinctively around his middle and she bent over him until her chest was nearly flat against his back. She was a talented rider—while his gait surely differed from that of a war elk, it took her only a heartbeat to conform to his rhythm.
The shouts of dogs and men—true men this time, no callow boys—came after them, followed by a brief burst of crossbow bolts and arrows. These were the soldiers they had lost up at the ridge, and their aim was true—Nok and Lu were spared only by the distance between them, which seemed to shrink with each bound he took.
“I’m going to shoot back,” the girl announced, and reached for the bow on her back.
Not worth it! he shouted to her. They’re gaining.
“The more I kill, the fewer are left to gain.”
Won’t make a difference. Too many, he insisted, his own voice taking on the heavy panting of the running wolf.
“All the more reason to—” Her voice broke off in a scream of pain and she jerked hard against him, nearly falling.
Are you hit? Fear lanced through him when she did not answer immediately. But he felt her fists clench tightly through his fur and knew she lived.
“I’m fine,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “An arrow—didn’t stick, just a scrape.”
Ssss. Another crossbow bolt sailed overhead and landed with a thunk in the dry ground by Nok’s thundering feet. Sss. Another bolt—this one taking a chunk out of the wolf’s ear. The animal registered the pain with scarcely more mind than it would pay a horsefly, but Nok saw that the men were closing in.
“It’s no good!” the princess shouted. “They’re nearly on us!”
They were so close Nok could hear the shouting of individual men.
“Stop. Let me get off,” the princess said in his ear, her voice thick with pain.
What?
“Once they have me they won’t follow you. No sense in us both dying.”
Don’t be an idiot!
She cradled her head with both arms as she threw herself from his back, hitting the dirt hard and rolling before rising to her feet.
Nok slammed the wolf’s paws down hard, the great beast’s claws spearing the earth. He pivoted in time to see the princess rise from her crouch and nock an arrow into place. Her arm shook oddly as she drew back—the wolf smelled the wound before he saw it, her red blood hidden amid the torn scarlet silk of her tunic. The arrow had grazed her . . . but it had taken a chunk of her flesh with it. Nok could see red muscle clench and strain as she lifted her arm and took aim.
But it was too little, too late. A shower of black arrows had been launched by the men pursuing her, and he watched with the wolf’s keen eyes as they fell upon her from the sky like diving birds.
The air moved.
Nok did not understand at first, thinking perhaps it was some effect of the sun, or perhaps the way the wolf perceived the wind. But then the air vibrated, like the surface of a lake that had just been hit with a boulder. The arrows that should have pierced the princess through half a hundred times were swept away by the air. One moment they were there, and the next . . .
The soldiers were shouting in confusion . . . and then they were gone, swallowed by a gray haze pouring down from the ridge overhead. It was as though all the fog from the mountain-tops had come to flood the forest.
“What is this? What’s happened?” The princess still had her bow nocked, but she was whirling around, uncertain of the direction in which she should loose it. Their eyes met, hers demanding an explanation, but Nok just shook his head.
His head . . . He looked down and saw he had regained his human form. The wolf had fled once more. Nok stood nervously and went to stand beside her. He was defenseless in his boy’s body, and she had a weapon at least.
Without warning, the ground surged and rippled beneath their feet. Nok went tumbling and found himself caught in her arms. The two of them hurtled and pitched forward as the ground gave another mighty tremor.
An earthquake? But he had never felt an earthquake like this before.
All at once the air and earth about them went still, and a bright pinprick of light appeared deep in the forest ahead of them. As though there were a narrow tunnel that went straight through all the trees and bramble from the forest’s edge to the clearing where they stood.
The pinprick of light became a shaft, and then a tunnel wide enough to fit a mule.
“Do you see—”
They were moving, pulled toward the light, as though the earth beneath them was nothing more than a rug being yanked across the floor by some churlish giant.
Nok threw his hands up over his eyes, expecting to crash through thornbushes and broken underbrush, but the feeling never hit. He opened his eyes and squinted at the shock of sunlight, oddly bright, no longer inhibited by a canopy of trees.
Through his slitted eyes he saw mugwort swaying lazily beneath the open summer sky.
A familiar brown face peered anxiously over him, blocking out the sun.
“We have much to talk about,” Omair said.