Shadow Weaver (Back on Wattpad 2020!)

Chapter 33

Impatience gnaws at me as the girls fuss with my dress and hair. Outside, the unit packs and prepares for the final leg of our journey, languid after a night of drinking and joviality.

We ride away from Lindy with the sun on our backs, the valley narrowing, the hills growing steeper. The river deepens and its swampy banks push us up into the sloping forest.

The forest air is close and hot, sweet with the perfume of exotic flowers. Leaves the size of plates and fans, shaped like stars, eyes, and hands, block the sun. Brightly colored birds caw and trill.

The flora is so thick we are forced into a single line, snaking our way through a barely cut path. Tug rides behind me. Jakut is somewhere ahead with the Duke and Commander Fror.

The tangled vegetation and myriad variety of trees is so different to the pine and birch forests of the north. I can almost feel the wet soil breathing beneath me. Thousands of animals scatter and scamper at our noisy approach.

I am taking off my cloak, warm with the riding and the mid-morning heat when my attention prickles, snagging on the creatures flying overhead. I watch them in the mind-world. Their numbers are growing and their random flights back and forth seem less and less random. Almost as though they crisscross a wide circle overhead. Almost as though they are hunting in a pack.

They move too fast for me to prod their minds without falling from my horse. And I cannot see them through the thick green dome. But the shapes and textures of their minds seem too large for raptors. Some feel almost human.

I bend over my mare to retrieve the bone knife in my boot. Behind me, Tug notes the gesture and immediately unhooks his bow from the sling on his back. He squeezes his stallion alongside, pulling out an arrow.

"You've been busy," he says, gaze roaming the dense flora, searching for what he has missed.

"If someone had returned my knives, I could have saved myself the effort."

I roll my eyes to the treetops, showing him where I sense the danger. A memory tingles at the edge of my thoughts. I smell the stale, spicy arena of the Pit, and hear the piercing shriek of the captured velaraptor. I remember the flashes of rage when it tried to escape, thrusting itself over and over at the roof of its prison. And beneath the madness, a smoky white world of cold beauty. A winter's dream of emptiness and space.

Several of the minds circling the treetops echo that bleak arctic serenity like an answering melody.

"Do velaraptors hunt in packs?" I ask. My question dints his infamous poise.

"Velaraptors don't come this far south," he says. He raises the cloth hanging beneath his saddle, revealing my bow and quiver looped onto the flank of his horse. He has kept them close! Happiness sparks in me at the familiar sight. He unhooks them and hands them over.

"What are you doing?" Brin demands, pushing up behind us. As Tug opens his mouth to answer, the sky fills with screaming. Not human screams, but the wild, harsh, spine chilling call of the velaraptor.

Commander Fror shouts an order. It is drowned by the deafening squalls. Chaos erupts. Panicked voices rebound up the line. Horses rear and whinny. Soldiers grasp swords and try to keep their stallions from breaking formation.

Then a crashing sound quakes the treetops, causing a second eruption of screeching forest beasts and birds. A rainbow of color shoots into the sky, a hundred birds, accompanied by the flapping of two hundred wings deafens us.

"They're coming down the trees!" I shout.

My mare snorts, ears and legs twitching. Brin's stallion whinnies and tries to break away.