Stranger Skies (The Borderlands Saga #1)

10. Fight or Flight

Salia immediately gave the order to retreat; half the pack were already leaping away, heading further into the forest. Thalaea remained transfixed by the oncoming torchlights for another few seconds, until Laeanai bounded up to her and gave her shoulder a tug.

Come on!

She shook herself and got up, following clumsily after the pack. Her leg had fallen asleep.

A few feet later, she stopped, horrified.

My rucksack!

She couldn't leave without it. So long as she was trapped in humanoid form, she needed the things within it. And she felt oddly attached to her material goods now she was mortal.

She was already back into the cave and searching for her sack in the dark, leaving philosophizing for later. The torches were closer now and she could smell the hunters and their dogs much more strongly. Finding her bag, she swung it onto her back and was running out of the cave and east again, when a sound stopped her. A whimper.

There was an older wolf just behind her, a few feet from the edge of the amphitheatre. She thought it was the Lorekeeper, by his scent. An arrow protruded from his back leg. She hadn't even noticed the hunters shooting arrows; how could they see enough to hit anything? The wolf was dragging himself as fast as he could but it was obvious he was in too much pain to hobble out of there.

Thalaea didn't give herself time to think. She crouched down and picked the older wolf up, settling him on her shoulders as gently as she could without losing speed. He yelped once, then settled down; Thalaea was already running through the bush, searching for the rest of the wolves with her nose.

She almost tripped over Laeanai. Her friend had stopped to wait for her and his grey-and-brown coloring made him hard to see. Luckily, his tail had a white tuft and Thalaea could see this just well enough to follow him the rest of the way through the woods.

She didn't know how long they ran. Her only reality was her legs pumping up and down; fervent prayers murmured that she wouldn't trip over anything; her rucksack bouncing on her back; the white end of Laeanai's tail moving up and down, up and down, guiding her through the woods like a spirit; the weight of the Lorekeeper on her shoulders; the beat of six hearts running through her body: hers, strong and fast and keeping her going; his older, weaker, tired. She lost all sense of time. She wasn't even tired. It was as if her body had reached a zone where it would just keep going, into infinity; where mortal limitations had no meaning, and adrenalin would grant her godlike powers again.

Eventually she came to be aware of the lack of sound: she could no longer hear the hunters. The next thing she noticed was that Laeanai was slowing down, though when she noticed this she couldn't be sure: it could have been five minutes after she noticed the lack of sound, or five hours. Thalaea slowed her pace accordingly and soon she and Laeanai stopped.

A clearing, she thought. She was panting, breathing heavily, but she could smell the rest of the pack here. They were the last to arrive.

She looked up. The stars glinted in the sky; they were so rich, so vast, they gave her enough light to make out the shapes of the wolves in the clearing. She found an empty space and set the Lorekeeper down as easy as possible. He may have fainted with pain, or blood loss; he was still breathing, and his hearts were still strong enough.

Salia came over, sniffing him. Her concern rolled off in palpable waves. She sniffed around the arrow in the other wolf's leg; the Pack Leader looked up at Thalaea.

You've trained with the witch. Can you fix this?

I can try, Thalaea said, though she didn't feel terribly confident. She hadn't trained with Enendoa for very long. I need some bloodwort, though.