7 – 4

A wooden cart, on loan of kindness from a friend of the road, rattles madly as it races through the ruts. The horse that pulls it is lathered in exhausted sweat. Its flanks heave, hooves a-thundering, and eyes rolling wide. Leather reins slap against broad hindquarters, the driver exhorting it to greater and greater speed. Filmy, white foam drips from its mouth, stained pink with blood. With every red fleck, my guilt grows sharper. With every strike of leather, my shame burns hotter. I am running this brave and beautiful animal to its death, and I do so because I am more terrified than any other feeling.

We are hunted.

In the shadows of the looming trees, made deeper by the advance of night, there is a monster. It is only by the pale rays of the setting sun that I am able to catch sight of what hunts us: a fell and foul thing, a moonlit curse given life. Its head is crown in curling horns, like a ram, and has a man of dead, thorning brambles. A long and narrow face leads to a lipless mouth, filled with jagged-sharp teeth. Its too-long arms end in eight-fingered hands, eight talons gleaming blackly in the dying light. Its legs are short, and bely the speed with which it moves; enough to match a horse at full gallop with ease. It has kept pace with us since the chase began, and for whatever reason, has chosen not to end it. There's no point to wondering why. It doesn't matter.

What does is the hole in the road some ten feet ahead. It is a deep and narrow gouge in the hard-packed earth that spans the road's width, the kind that spells death to cart wheels and axles alike. I didn't see it in time, and so the only thing to be done is brace. I put an arm around Clarke's waist and pull her tight to my side. The other, I loop through the handrail on the side of the driver's bench. The horse clears it without issue. The front wheels don't. The force that throws us forward and up makes it clear that the only thing tethering us to the bench is my grip on the handrail. My shoulder pops and floods with pain as we land in the footwell of the driver's bench, a pile of tangled limbs and cold vomit. Then the rear wheels hit.

The impact is tremendous. Wood splinters, metal shrieks, and I hit the splintered footwell with the edge of my cheekbone. The world swims before my eyes in a vague, misshapen blur. Through it I see only parts of things; Clarke's blue eyes, clear of the fog she'd been lost in. Her mouth, bloody from a bitten tongue. The long, thin shard of wood, held between her fingertips as they pull away from my face. The sky above is ink-dark, like her hair. A fallen star shines, caught between her and I. She catches its light in her hand and presses it to my face.

Soothing cold sinks into bruised, heated skin. Wounds close, bruises fade, and the dazed fog that obscured my mind is blown away in a chill, clear wind. All that remains is my shoulder, and the dull pulse of pain that has taken root there. “Thira?” Clarke asks, forcing a swollen and bloody tongue to shape my name. It hurts to see, in my heart where no injury lies. I make to reach out to her, to show her the injury she ignores, but my arm fails to obey my intent. That, I should think, is not good. Then I feel the wobble in the cart's wheels.

That, I should think, is not good. With my functioning arm I claw my way back to the seat of the driver' bench. I groan behind a sealed mouth as my shoulder protests, breathing heavily through my nose. Clarks slurs my name again. I hold out my hand and shake my head, and say without words, I need a moment. There's blood on my face and bile on my tongue as I lean out over the side of the cart and look down at the rear wheels. “Fuck!” I snarl, and that's when a hand grabs hold of the back of my dress and hauls me back in.

Clarke has blood on her fingers and a healed tongue. With it, she demands, “Are you still hurt?” I shake my head, and it's a lie. It doesn't matter that I've a dead arm hanging limply from an aching shoulder. We're going to die. The horned beast will have its prize.

Why? “The axle's cracked,” I say, “Wheel's are coming off.”

She understands immediately. I see it in her eyes, shining in the light of her icy star. There's blood on her teeth and lips, old vomit crusting the corners of her mouth. She shakes her head and denies our doom. “Move,” she orders, pulling me towards her.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

She doesn't answer, saying again, “Move!” So I do, and she takes my place on that side of the driver's bench. She leans over the side, eyes narrowed and frost curling from the hollow of her throat. It flows down her shoulder, curling around her arms, and pools in the palms of her hands. I reach out with my good arm and make an anchor of myself, grabbing the back of her belt and holding tight. I see defiance in every filth-stained, battered line of her. She thrusts her hands forward, palms out, and the gathered power within them is thrown down at an angle. The wobble smooths out, and triumph lights in Clarke's blue eyes.

I've never seen someone more beautiful. For a moment, there is hope. Then I see the strain, the toll of holding a breaking axle together with nothing but the strength of her will. All she's managed is to delay the moment of our doom, and I, even less than that. A high, joyous scream pierces the air, movement in the trees drawing my eye. In a flash of horn and talon, the monster charges out onto the road. It reaches with its too-long arm and closes its eight-fingered hand around the head of our horse. The poor beast hasn't time for fear before its head is torn off in a single, vicious twist.

- - -

It's all I can do to look.

Look, at the pale, wet length of spine and how it glints sickly in the light of a magi's star. At the blood erupting from the jagged hole that ends a once proud and magnificent neck. At how the strong and tireless legs that carried us so far simply collapse. The body of our brave and nameless horse falls like a cut-string puppet. A quarter-ton of dead weight pushes already-strained traces past the point of breaking, and the body goes under the wheels. The cart bucks in horrible parody as it halfway rolls over the very animal that gave it this speed. In the moment that Clarke's magic fails, that the fragile axle shatters, the monster's eyes find my own. It's all I can do to look.

Behind those darkened and remorseless pits of shadow, there is a mind. Old when the Damnation of Elves began, it has long prowled the trackless wood in pursuit of one purpose: to hunt. There's no counting the lives that ended at its wicked talons and jagged teeth before, nor how many more it will end after. I look into its eyes and see its pitiless joy. The axle breaks, the wheels fall off, and the back of the cart drops into the road.

Clarke sees it then, alongside us with its grisly prize in eight-fingered hand. It's shock that hits her first, at how quickly it seems to have all gone wrong. Then, fear, throwing herself away from it without heed to where. She collides with me and crushes my good arm between us. Even if I had any notion of how to survive, I can't do it now. We are trapped, the both of us, on a broken cart that slides to a halt on a dark and lonesome road. Behind us, the pitiful corpse of a brave and nameless horse lies.

Beside it, the monster that killed it. Standing still while blood pools around wide feet at the end of short, stubby legs. For just a moment, there is a shift in the canopies above, enough to let a blade of moonlight slice through the dark of night. The point of the blade falls on the grim scene, painting it in pale, weakened gray. The full, hulking form of the monster seems to drink in the light and make itself darker. It doesn't move, instead content with watching us while it lifts the head of our horse to its mouth and, with a hideous, snapping crunch that crawls gooseflesh across my skin, bites deeply into the exposed bone.

Clarke flinches as the sound echoes in the still, stifling air. Then she freezes, eyes fixed on our moonlit curse. A long, serpentine tongue slides from behind jagged teeth and laps at the blood dripping from its eight-fingered hand. She shudders. Horror and nausea swirl in my belly, bile burning in my throat. I swallow it, and hiss out shaking breaths through my nose. “Why is it just standing there?” she whispers. Another snap of bone flinches us both.

I remember its eyes, those darkened pits of ruthless shadow, and the pitiless joy I found in their depths. My lips move, but not a word spills out. I have to swallow the bilious knot to speak, and when I do it is in a coarse, painful rasp. “It wants to take its time,” I answer, “it's...enjoying this.” She shudders again, a shivering breath sighing past her bloodied mouth. My terrible burden is shared. I don't feel any better. My shoulder throbs will a dull, heart's-beat rhythm. There's bile in my mouth and drying blood on my face.

“What do we do?” Fearful realization pushes her voice above a whisper. Die, I don't answer, slowly, painfully. No fool is she, to hear what I don't say in the silence that follows. She shakes her head, beautiful in her battered refusal. “No,” she hisses, “No! We won't, we're not–!” She curls her hand around the back of my head, sliding fingers through blood-matted hair, and presses our brows together. “Not here,” she promises me, “not now!”

I feel her sour breath wash over me, the strength of her belief through the promise of our touch. Her eyes are blue and fierce, and so very, very close. Why have I lost hope, and she has not? Where is the strength within me that turned me away from my family, from the traditions of my people?

What has happened to me, that I am so numb in the face of death? From the corner of my eye, I see the horned beast drop our poor horse's head. It takes a step in our direction, then another. Slow, purposeful strides, much shorter than what it's capable of. I hear my own voice echo in my mind; it wants to take its time. It will draw this pantomime of a hunt out as far as it can. Its cruelty will allow no less.

Maybe, at the end of this, we'll die. From this moment until that, we are alive. In that time, anything is possible. The monster takes another step. It lifts its dripping hand, inviting us to take action. I look back to Clarke. “Make for the trees,” I hiss. “Stop for nothing.”

“I'm not leaving you!” she protests.

“No,” I agree, gathering my feet beneath myself, rising into a crouch. I tuck my limply disobedient arm against my chest. “I'm right behind you. Go. Go!”

Then, like the deer and the hunted horse, we dash for the dark, crowded line of trees. From behind us comes a high, piercing scream of joy. And so, the hunt continues.