She turned her head, slowly.
The dark behind her was not empty.
Two red points hung in it.
Small, at first. The way a candle is small at the far end of a long hall. They did not move. They did not blink. They simply hung in the dark.
Alina did not breathe.
The points began to grow.
Not because they were getting brighter.
Because they were getting closer.
Behind her — somewhere on the other side of a sound that had stopped fitting through her ears — Vyom's voice came out.
"Yo — Your Highness — "
"Your Highness, please — *back into the cart — *"
"*Eshani, the barrier — Eshani, get up — *"
The points were the size of plums now.
Of fists.
Of a man's two hands held close to one another.
The lightning came.
For one full second — for one heartbeat that the forest held without breathing —
The dark in front of Alina was lit white.
The thing the eyes belonged to filled the space between two trunks twenty paces ahead.
It was the size of a house. Long-bodied. Low to the ground. Its shoulders sat higher than its skull, and the skull was wide and flat — the kind a thing grew when its main use for its head was to put a hole in whatever was in front of it. Its mouth was open. Down both sides of its jaw, slow and thick, the colour of water but heavier, something ran in long strings and dripped from the points of its teeth into the leaves. Where the strings hit the ground, the leaves blackened.
It had not yet noticed the cart was a cart.
It was looking at her.
The lightning passed.
The dark came back.
The eyes were the only thing left.
Then it moved.
—
The four soldiers were between her and the dark before the creature had taken its third step.
Their shields came up at the same beat. The blue along the rims flared — clean, hard, the inherited light of a caste whose entire trained existence was this one moment — and the four shields pressed together into one wall.
The creature hit the wall at full speed.
The wall held.
For one long heartbeat, four pairs of boots ground backwards through the leaves. Four sets of arms shook. The shield-light flared brighter. Brighter. The wall shuddered. The lead soldier's teeth were locked. His feet were sliding. The creature's bulk pressed the four of them backwards through the dirt — slowly, the way a cart pushes a man who has decided he is going to stop a cart.
Vyom had finally remembered who he was supposed to be. He came down off his horse in one motion, sword already out, running.
"Your Highness — *behind me — *"
His sword came up. The other three hunters were already moving. Hardik flanked him on the left. Ranjan on the right. Eshani stayed where she was — on her knees, both hands on the dirt, trying to put the barrier back up and finding her body would not let her.
"It is one creature, Your Highness. The soldiers will hold it. We will kill — "
He stopped.
Because three more had come out of the trees.
One from the left of the path.
One from the right. Smaller. The way a younger animal is smaller than its father.
One from the road they had just come down. Standing in the path. Not charging. The rope of dripping liquid swaying from its mouth as it breathed.
The shield wall buckled.
The first creature broke through.
It did not bite. It did not claw.
It hit the lead soldier with the flat of its skull at full speed.
The man folded around the impact. His ribs went one way. His spine went the other. He was on the ground before the sound of him hitting the ground reached the rest of the column.
The second soldier had time to lift his shield.
The creature's jaws opened around the shield, the man holding the shield, and a length of his arm in one motion. The shield-light flared once, hard — and went out. The man did not scream. He had not had time to.
The third soldier was already turning.
He did not finish the turn.
The fourth was on his knees. His shield had fallen. Both of his hands had come up in front of his face — not the trained motion of a soldier, but the small, instinctive motion of a man who had remembered, in the last second, that he was a person before he was a soldier.
The creature came down on him with its full weight.
The sound that arrived a moment later was the sound of a body becoming a thing that was no longer a body.
Four men.
Four heartbeats.
Then the cart broke.
The second creature had reached it. Its shoulder went into the side of the carriage and the carriage came apart — silk, frame, the blue paint of the Bluemoon Kingdom — into pieces that scattered across the dirt. The horses pulled free of the harness. They were gone into the trees in the next instant, screaming, and the screaming went on for a long time before it stopped.
The four hunters had pulled Alina back.
They were standing in a tight half-circle around her, swords up, backs to the eastern edge of the path. Behind them — twenty feet of vertical rock, an old slope where the road cut through a low ridge.
In front of them, three creatures.
Behind them, two more — the ones from down the road, walking up the path.
Five creatures.
Four hunters.
One princess.
A wall of stone.
No way out.
—
The five creatures were not charging.
They had stopped charging.
They were walking now. Slow. Heavy. The not-water kept dripping from their jaws into the leaves. Their breaths were long and even. The lead one's tongue had come out and run once across the side of its mouth, the way an animal's tongue ran when the animal was tasting the air for what was already in it.
Vyom's voice had gone thin in his throat.
"How can —"
Hardik's hand was shaking. He had clamped it tighter around the hilt of his sword to make it stop. It had not stopped.
Ranjan was no longer making any sound at all. His mouth was open. His eyes were the only part of him that was moving.
Eshani had come up off her knees. She was pressed against the rock at Alina's back. Both her hands were flat against the stone behind her, fingers spread.
Alina was looking at the creatures.
Her hair was across one of her eyes. The other eye was the same quiet blue it had always been.
Hardik's jaw locked. Ranjan's eyes closed for one full heartbeat. Eshani's hands came off the rock. She stepped forward. She put herself at Alina's left shoulder, sword up.
The creatures took another step.
Then another.
The lead one's mouth opened wider. The smell that came off it was the grave-smell — only worse. Fresher.
Alina's hands rose at her sides — slowly. The first thread of a Voidthread weave began to lift between her fingers, dark and thin. She knew it would not be enough. She raised it anyway. The only other thing she could do at that moment was nothing, and she had decided that nothing was no longer something she was willing to do.
The creatures took the next step.
And then —
They stopped.
Not slowed. Stopped.
All five of them. At the same beat. Their wide flat heads coming up at the same instant — slowly, like dogs coming to attention at a sound the human ear had not yet caught — and the long heavy bodies behind those heads going very, very still.
The lead one's jaws closed around the not-water in its mouth.
Its head turned. Slowly. Toward the dark beyond the path.
Its lips pulled back from its teeth. Not at the hunters. At the dark. A low sound came out of its chest — a half-snarl, the kind a dog made when it had caught the smell of something larger than itself.
It took one step backward.
Then another.
The string of not-water that had been hanging from its jaw shook loose and fell into the leaves with a small, wet sound.
The other four were already moving.
The two behind them — the ones blocking the road — had turned. Not running. Backing. Their long bodies low, ears flat, the heavy heads still pointed forward at the thing they were retreating from, the way an animal did when it had decided the thing in front of it was to be left to itself but was still not going to turn its back on it.
The smaller one snarled once.
Took two steps backward.
Snarled again.
Then they were gone — slipping into the trees the way water slips back into a dark mouth, the wet sound of their bodies passing through the brush going quieter, quieter, until the forest had unmade them and there was only the path again and the dark.
The four hunters did not lower their swords.
They could not.
Eshani's voice came out, very small.
"What — what is happening — "
"It's like — " Vyom's mouth had gone dry. "It's like — "
"It's like they were afraid of something."
Alina's voice. Quiet. The Voidthread between her fingers was still up. She had not lowered her hands.
The five of them, very slowly, turned.
Behind them — past where the cart had been, past the broken silk in the dirt, past the four bodies that had been four soldiers — the path stretched into dark. Nothing. No movement. No shape. Only the patient, unhurried dark of a Third Layer Road that had not, a moment ago, contained anything large enough to send five of those things running.
Vyom's whisper came out small.
"…what is there?"
The lightning struck.
For one full second, the dark was lit white.
There was a stone in the path. A large old stone, half-buried, the kind of stone the road had grown around because it had not been able to move it. It rose perhaps four feet out of the dirt.
Someone was standing on it.
Not large. Not armoured. Plain dark traveller's clothes, dust on the boots, a single short blade at the hip. Hair the colour of bone, falling forward over one side of the face. The line of the jaw was sharp. The body was the body of a young man who had finished growing into himself.
He was looking at the place where the creatures had gone.
His head was very slightly tilted.
The kind of tilt a hunter's head made when he had not finished with something.
The lightning held for one more heartbeat.
The dark blue of his eyes did not move from the trees.
Then the lightning passed.
The dark came back.
The forest was completely silent.
And from somewhere on top of the stone — not loud, not hurried, the quiet unhurried weight of a hunter who had decided what he was going to do next —
A boot stepped down into the leaves.
To be continued…