Previously: Mira and her new companions follow The Wounded Man into the night to discover his secret. Hunched hidden in the darkness, they watch as the forest near them shakes as something vast and powerful approaches...
I stared, transfixed at the scene developing in the clearing. The ground shook and rumbled beneath us like an unsettled stomach and the trees groaned and cracked as they swayed beyond their natural bounds. The air had gone silent, still with the oppressive weight of doom, and filled with the earthy stench of grimy bodies--a smell so pervasive I was relatively sure that Seymuhr could not be the sole source of it.
Then came the sound of hoarse breathing, like a wounded bear winded at the end of a long hunt ready to circle round and make a final stand against the hounds that pursued it. Wet with determined menace, it grew louder and louder as the trees across the clearing snapped and wiggled like wheat torn free from a field.
I bit down on Malak's hand, which was still over my mouth. "Did you just call me stupid?" I hissed. "At least I take the time to get all of my facts straight--no matter how little their apparent worth." He and I were Falcuhn, storytellers and historians dispatched by order of Queen Phedera to record the ways of the land and its people in order to preserve them in advance of the growing darkness in the world. We were both Falcuhn--named for the majestic birds that soared high over the land and, swift of wing and sharp of mind, were sometimes used as messengers among the kingdoms--but of varying skill. I took the charge seriously. Malak used the quill mainly to score coins, gain free meals and warm the sheets of easily impressed tavern wenches.
"Not a word, now," he whispered into my ear. Somehow, his breath smelled of mint. Mine tasted like a rusted sword. I trembled with fear and indignation at his rebuke, while he was as steady as a Samorgian fishing board on a glassy sea. "Be still, or we will all perish before the sun rises."
I wrenched free of his grasp and crept closer to the tree line. The wounded man fidgeted, his fingers tickling the hilt of his sword. His gaze was leveled not at the place where the approaching behemoths were likely to appear, but all around him--as if he expected danger from any and all direction. I could see nothing of my other companions, although a short wide shape about 30 yards to my right could have been Seymuhr. Or a rock.
Then the trees on the other side of the clearing bent away from each other, levered by fingers as wide as branches and the first of the Hustyn stepped forth. I inhaled sharply, at once fascinated and repelled by the sight of the thing, and pushed aside my shock and fear and forced myself to focus on it, to memorize every detail so that my depiction of it would be accurate. I could not trust my fingers to even hold a quill right then, let alone write anything that could be read afterward.
Unless it was a small specimen, their size had been greatly exaggerated. In some tales, Hustyn were as tall as mountains, wading through old growth forests and trampling trees under their heels like grass on a prairie. Others had them taller than trees. This one was might have been twice the size of a man, but only just. Leather sandals wrapped its feet and climbed up its shaggy calves, but left its taloned toes open to the air. A garment woven from stinking pelts hung from its shoulder, cinched by a wide strip of some kind of black material that strained against its round belly. Patches of hair stood out in random spots on its bare arms and shoulders. Its face, pinched and squinting in the gloom, was nearly concealed in bristling hair the color of mud. What looked like a twisted, knotted branch hung from its belt.
There was more movement behind it. Another appeared, about the same size as the first, with darker hair and a porcine nose and a flat, yellow tooth jutting up from a lip that was cracked with oozing sores. It pulled some form of wagon behind it, a plain cart that limped along on wobbling wheels, topped with thin wooden spires bound together and capped with a flat roof.
A rolling cage.
