Engines & Demons - The Undestined

Chapter 32ii

Tahlia heard a shout of surprise from Vlambra, and another of outrage from the man with the deep voice. Half a stale pastry and a few grime covered sweets tumbled to the floor as she pulled her mother's hunting knife out of her pouch. When she reached the skin of the tent, she made a quick slash with it; up to down. The knife was of incredible sharpness; made for cutting karabok throats, and the resistance to the blade as she cut was so slight that at first she thought she had misjudged the distance in her hazy state. Then a breeze caught, and a white line of brightness showed in the darkness of the tent wall.

Tahlia threw herself towards it, stumbled through into bright daylight, and fell heavily into sweetly fragrant grass. Her head swam with all the colour that surrounded her, and for a second she could not find her bearings. Surrounding her were walls and walls of tents, with hardly a gap between them. She sprang to her feet and tried to run, but something had ensnared her feet and she tumbled back down into the grass. Rolling onto her back, she saw an evil looking tentacle poking through the slit she had cut in the tent wall. It was wrapped tightly around both her legs, its surface starting to turn from grey to flesh coloured where it touched her skin.

The surface of the tent on either side of the cut bulged outwards, and two grey skinned hands drew the material back to reveal a face that Tahlia had seen once before, on the heads of two creatures, dead and hanging from chains above the pemtagrin door of Klinberg's keep.

The creature's bony ridged mouth opened, and somewhere from the creature's insides, came the dry clicking noise of its voice. Its twin rows of eyes blinked rapidly in the brightness of the sun, their vertical lids flashing open and closed over the red globes. She felt the tentacle tighten around her ankles as she was pulled towards the darkness of the tent, her dress dragging over the grass behind her. A second pair of grey hands emerged from the tent, ready to grab hold of her and drag her inside.

Fear rose up inside her, building in her chest to a scream, but she held the sound inside herself.

She still had her mother's hunting knife in her hand, and she slashed at the tentacle that entwined her legs. The knife's sharpness did not fail her, and the flesh of the tentacle parted in thick threads of muscle. A dark blood sprayed across her legs, and over her hand. The creature's beak-like mouth opened, and a noise came out that was of such a pitch, she was forced to use all of her will to stop herself from forcing her hands over her ears. Instead, she thrust the heels of both feet into the earth and pushed herself backwards, away from the tent. The foul thing still wrapped around her ankles slipped off as she kicked herself away, while the tentacle it had been severed from flicked towards her, trying to ensnare her again. Its wounded end flopped across the ground, spraying more dark blood over the grass.

A second tentacle emerged from the slit tent and whipped towards her legs, and she turned and stumbled to her feet, running for a gap between the opposite tents. She felt something brush her heel, but she kept running, down through the narrow passage between the tents. Her mind still spun and she tripped over a tent rope and fell sideways, rebounded heavily from a tent's taut side, and then staggered onwards, not daring to look behind to see if anything pursued her. The narrow passage ended in the side of a larger tent, and she forced her way through the gap that speared off at a right angle to the one she had been following. She clambered through more thick ropes, at one point becoming so entangled, she fell to the ground, the walls of the tents spinning around her. She took the knife that she still gripped and slashed around her at the ropes. They parted easily, and the wall of one of the tents started flapping and snapping in the breeze blowing over the plains.

She ran on, out into sudden openness. She expected to stumble into a wide avenue crowded with people, but there was nothing in the small open area except for piles of tenting canvas and a few opened and broken crates. She looked around, but the tents were so closely packed together, she could see no way out of the space. She spun round, the knife raised in her hand, expecting to see thenadidge crawling towards her with malicious ease, down the gap between thetents, but the narrow space was empty. Her heart slowed its frantic beating a little, and she took a deep shuddering breath to calm herself.