I swallow, dare a step backward. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Only if you return here. Now go!” The last word comes out so loudly, I jump a good foot in the air. Then I’m backtracking, keeping my eyes on the god.
Movement comes out of the corner of my eye, and Peruxolo and I both turn our heads.
Rocks cascade down from the mountain, rolling, tumbling, hurtling toward the ground. I watch for a moment, confused by the scene, until I realize this is the perfect distraction I need.
I take quick steps backward, watching the god, watching the danger in front of me.
After a time, he turns away from the rockslide. The rocks reach the ground, perhaps a hundred yards away from his home—no damage done there. Of course not. Perhaps he concentrated so carefully on the slide to use his power to control it.
And I wasted some of that time by watching it, too.
But now his attention is back on me.
“Is that as fast as your mortal legs will go?” he questions cruelly.
Peruxolo runs for me. He gains momentum quickly, while I stumble over my own feet trying to retreat. Just before I turn around, to put all my efforts into sprinting away from him, I watch him thrust his arms out in my direction. And that invisible force that I felt earlier—the god’s power—
It strikes me, forcing me off my feet, flinging me backward onto the hard ground. I breathe out once, deeply.
Then I’m scrambling—running—fleeing for my life.
When at last I find the road, I dare a glance back over my shoulder.
Peruxolo sweeps his cape behind him before disappearing into the mountain.
CHAPTER
8
After a time, I think my lungs will burst if I do not stop running. I collapse onto the ground, my body quivering with exertion and fear.
I manage to skid off to the side a ways, burying myself into the thickness of the wild, out of the obvious sight of the road. Just in case Peruxolo followed.
Not that it matters. If he wanted me dead, I’d be dead.
I don’t know how long I sit there, catching my breath, imagining all the ways I could have died, but it doesn’t feel terribly long before I hear something.
Steps in the wild. Approaching from the god’s direction.
I have the ax off my back in an instant.
I crouch behind a tree close to the road, watching, waiting.
When a figure comes into view, I pause, trying to make sense of it.
As it comes closer, I ready my ax, preparing to strike. And at just the right moment, I thrust the shaft toward the road, causing Soren to trip right over it.
He’d been running, and the fall sends him flying, crashing and skidding across the broken-up ground.
He curses as he stands, wiping rocks and mud and dried leaves from his scratched-up palms, his skinned knees.
I’m fuming.
“Did you follow me?”
“Did you trip me?”
What. The. Hell.
I hold my hands in front of me. They’re shaking. I can’t decide if I want to wrap them around Soren’s neck or cover my face with them.
I almost died. And Soren is here. Why is he here?
I growl. “What’s the matter with you? I told you to stay away from me! You promised you would! What are you doing here?” I’m a pot of water that’s just set to boiling, and I’ll burn anything that gets too close.
Soren, realizing this, takes a step away from me, brushing carefully at his bleeding palms. “I promised no such thing. I said I’d leave your camp, and I did. What are you doing here? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
Of course I wasn’t, but I say, “That is the purpose of our mattugrs, is it not?”
That brings him up short. “Your mattugr…”
“I’ve been sent to kill Peruxolo.”
There it is. I said the words out loud. Now I realize just how hopeless they are.
“Which is, once again, none of your business,” I add.
“Your life is my only business now. Do I need to remind you? I owe you a life debt.”
“And just how do you think you’re—” I cut off as I realize something. “The rockslide. That was you?”
“I tried to divert the god’s attention so you could flee. Thank the goddess, he didn’t think to climb the mountain and see what caused the slide.”
“They’re probably a regular occurrence near the mountain,” I say, thinking aloud. “I doubt he thought anything of it.”
“That’s good for us.”
“There is no us!” I shout. “I neither need nor want your help.”
He doesn’t want to help me. Getting close to me only serves his own ends, whatever they are. I know this. I know that people are only capable of thinking about themselves. I don’t have any desire to find out what it is Soren wants. I don’t care.
I will not make myself vulnerable like that ever again.
“It’s not up to you,” Soren says. “The goddess wills it. I will not disobey her laws. Will you?”
“You—”
A sound fills my ears. Something loud, like a rock falling to the ground. It comes again. And again. And again.
“What is that?” I whisper.
At first, I think I see one of the trees moving. Moving. But then I realize it’s no tree. Its skin is the same color as the deep brown bark of the innas, a perfect camouflage. It’s so very tall and large, over four heads taller than Soren and me. Four black eyes stare down at us, unblinking. They dilate simultaneously once they take in the two of us. I realize now that the loud, crashing sound is each of its steps across the ground, but I can’t make sense at all of what I’m looking at.
But Soren must make something of it, because he says, “Run.”
* * *
I TAKE OFF AFTER him down the road, Soren barely one leg stride ahead of me. And whatever that thing is, it races after us, bounding on two legs.
“What the hell is that?” I shout.
“The gunda,” Soren says.
“The gunda isn’t real.”
Soren flings an arm behind him in the direction of the creature, an emphatic gesture.
Yes, I see his point.
I dare a glance back over my shoulder. Despite its large girth, the beast is fast, those legs taking longer, quicker strides than our own. What I had mistaken as the texture of bark, I now realize are actually tendons connecting to powerful muscles. The gunda doesn’t have any arms, just toned legs to carry it. The beast doesn’t have a neck, either. The main body thins toward the top, where all four eyes rest in a row. A tail snakes out behind it, balancing the gunda as it runs.
It doesn’t make a sound, no cackles like the ziken, and somehow, that silence is even more terrifying. Where is its mouth?
“It’s gaining on us!” I shout.
“We can’t outrun it. Watch your feet,” Soren says. Then he turns quickly, heading right into the thickness of wild.
Now I’m leaping over rocks and brambles and thick tree roots, running into low-hanging boughs and ferns. Snaketraps snap closed as we pass by them, our momentum enough to stimulate the plants’ natural response, even though we haven’t stepped into the leafy, teeth-clad mouths.
The gunda plunges in after us, but it has a harder time with its body. It can’t fit into places we can, and it must take a less direct path in order to continue following us.
“Can it climb?” I ask.
“No, but that won’t stop it from reaching us.”
I rack my brain for all the stories I’ve heard about the gunda, trying to fathom how a beast with no mouth could be dangerous. But in the stories told to me as a child, the sheer size and many eyes of the beast were enough to frighten me. It was a creature said to consume men whole. Hunters and warriors would disappear, never to be seen again. But no one from my village has seen the creature in a hundred years. It’s become only a myth.
And now it’s chasing me.
The muscles in my legs are screaming at me to stop. I’ve already exhausted them once today by fleeing the god. My arms don’t want to pump any longer. I’m not in good condition for the fight ahead.
Soren is spent, too. He slows considerably and barely catches himself when he falters on a loose rock.
“We need to stop,” I say to him.
“We stop and we die,” he says.