"Kellen!"
One was missing one of its forelegs. The other had lost its lower jaw and half its head. Kellen managed to knock the three-legged one sideways, away from Shalkan, before the other leaped into the air and bore Kellen down.
His head hit the ground with an impact that jarred his teeth, and then the Hound, shaking its head like a terrier with a rat, hit him across the side of the head with the ragged remains of its muzzle.
It could not bite. But it did not have to bite to kill him. All it had to do was batter him to death with blows from its flailing stone head—or hold him, helpless, while others of its pack arrived to finish him.
"Hold it still!" Shalkan shouted, and Kellen, grimly, struggled to obey.
There was a jarring impact, and the Hound flew off his chest as the unicorn pivoted and kicked. Kellen heard the sound of breaking stone.
"Up!" Shalkan cried desperately.
Kellen dragged himself to his feet, scrabbling for his club. He staggered, dazed and unable to see as dark spots filled his vision. His nose was bleeding, and he snorted, spraying blood. He swung wildly, and felt the blow connect, felt the jarring hardness of wood against stone as he knocked one of the golems flying.
They fought on. If there was a Hell, this was surely it…
Finally—silence.
No thudding of stone-on-stone, no dark bodies rushing at him, no more Hounds were coming up the slope. Exhausted and drenched in sweat, his clothing in rags, Kellen looked around. The ground was littered with broken stone statues that had once been the Hounds of the Outlaw Hunt. Not one of them was whole.
Horribly, there were lots of bits that were still moving, still writhing, still trying to get at their quarry. But nothing that could do him or Shalkan any harm.
"We did it—" Kellen said in dull and weary disbelief. He wanted to feel relief, but—well, perhaps there was a spark of it. He hadn't the strength to sustain more than that little spark, though. Every muscle hurt. He would have given up long since except for the need to protect Shalkan. "We—"
"No," Shalkan said bleakly, interrupting him. "Listen."
There was the sound of scrabbling stone feet over rock.
"No…" Kellen said in angry disbelief. More Hounds. "No. That's not fair!"
A second pack of Hounds swarmed into view, a pack even larger than the first.
Kellen stared, watching them come, frozen in shock.
The City had sent a second Outlaw Hunt. Against all Law and Custom, they'd sent a second pack of Hounds, a second Hunt, to kill him— to kill them. They'd hated him enough to do that—his father hated him enough to do that—and not only was he, Kellen, going to die here because of that, Shalkan was going to die, too, because of the spell Kellen had cast and the vow Shalkan had sworn, to take Kellen over the border of City lands. Shalkan would not leave him, and the Hounds would kill Shalkan too.
His fault. Because the Council cheated. His fault. Because the Council lied. His fault. Because Lycaelon Tavadon had cheated and lied. His father, the noble, the honorable, the respected Arch-Mage of Armethalieh. The trusted leader of the High Council.
Someplace in the back of his mind, Kellen had still believed in Lycaelon, believed at least that the Arch-Mage would keep his word. Perhaps even believed that, no matter what had passed between them, there was still something binding them together, and that his father would, in all decency, allot him some sort of fair chance, no matter how tiny. But Lycaelon could not bear to be contradicted, could not bear to be defeated, and clearly would do anything to revenge himself on the person who had done both.
A vast fury filled Kellen—if there'd still been love there between the two of them, father and son, that love had been betrayed and defiled so utterly and completely that it left a terrible vacuum; and this rage rushed in to take its place. It swept away Kellen's pain and exhaustion. In his rage, he felt nothing but the need to destroy this terrible thing, this thing that should not be. He stepped forward and struck at the first of the Hounds, tears of grief and fury streaming unnoticed down his face. In his blind, berserker anger, he felt nothing but the need to destroy.
There was not even room in his mind for thoughts, only a focused and diamond-hard rage, white-hot, searing away everything else. He stepped forward and struck at the first of the Hounds with a strength he didn't even recognize as his own. His eyes blurred and cleared; there was wetness on his cheeks. His tears were irrelevant. All that mattered was the enemy before him and the weapon in his hand.
He'd ridden all night and fought off one pack of Hounds already. Kellen didn't care. He was beyond thinking. It didn't matter. None of it mattered. Rage filled him but did not overmaster him. He was beyond thinking, but that only freed him to act. As if he, too, were made of stone, he fought, drawing on reserves he did not know he had and did not question the source of. He could not lose this fight—whatever the cost, whatever the price he must pay later, he could not lose. His whole world narrowed to the few feet of space just before the mouth of the canyon. Whatever entered that space he hit.
Afterward Kellen retained only a blurred and confused body-memory of disjointed moments of the fight, as though once the picture of what had happened had been whole, then someone had smashed it and left Kellen with nothing more than a handful of jagged pieces.
He remembered doing things that were impossible, and doing them because he had to.
He remembered batting a Hound out of the air, feeling as if he had all the time in the world to strike the blow because the creature just seemed to hang there, as if Time itself had stopped.
He remembered the feel of stone jaws closing on his flesh. No pain, just a crushing coldness, as if the cold of the stone had somehow transferred itself to his body.
He remembered forcing his fingers once again around the shaft of the club, seeing that one of them wouldn't move, seeing that it was broken, closing his other hand over it and forcing the broken finger into place. He did not feel the pain.
He remembered how quietly the Hounds' legs sheared away, how the place where the stone broke glittered like fresh-spilled salt in the afternoon sun. He remembered how the light flashed off their polished skins, making the moving pack flicker like the surface of the harbor on a bright day when the wind was blowing over the water, and in the back of his mind, Kellen could almost hear the faint scream of gulls. He did not remember his own screams, how as the battle wore on, his voice cracked and broke, and became only a whisper of unyielding fury.
And still the Hounds came. And still Kellen fought.
"KELLEN. Kellen."
Someone was calling his name.
"Kellen. KELLEN!"
Dazedly, Kellen tried to raise his club once more, and realized that at last he had no strength left. His muscles shook; a slow constant tremor as if he were wracked by fever-chill, but he felt almost as if he were floating, somehow distant from his body, as if everything he had done, he had done almost in his sleep.
He was staring at the ground. He couldn't raise the club, because he wasn't holding the club. The world around him was silent, without the clack and rattle of living stone moving to attack. Somehow there was a wrongness to that, and Kellen felt a faint pang of alarm. Where was his club? Where were the Hounds?
He raised his head, slowly. The effort made him nauseous and lightheaded. He blinked. It took a conscious effort, and his eyes felt gritty and dry. He knew, obscurely, that he should be in pain, but he wasn't yet. Just—numb. Exhausted, and numb.
Shalkan was standing beside him, gazing at him with a worried expression. The unicorn looked rumpled, his head hanging with exhaustion, but there was no blood on his silver fur.
Kellen raised his hand to touch that fur, and gasped as shooting pain lanced through his body, shocking him back to himself. He looked down. Swollen and bloody against his forearm was the deep print of mastiff jaws.
"We have to go now," Shalkan said gently, raising his head with an effort. The unicorn's voice was hoarse, and Kellen felt a dim flare of alarm for his companion.
"But the Hounds," Kellen said. His voice sounded clumsy and strained, as if he'd forgotten how to speak. He looked around, blinking at the brightness of sun on stone.
"They're all dead," Shalkan said flatly. "Or if they aren't, they're no danger to us."
The ground around the pocket canyon was littered with the lifeless broken statues and scattered limbs that had been the Outlaw Hunt—and worst of all, here and there, the limbless bodies of still-animate Hounds, helpless but still attempting to reach their prey, squirming like hideous caterpillars of stone.
"Get on," Shalkan said again, taking another step closer to him. "They'll have figured out by now that we've managed to get rid of the first packs. They'll be creating more. Fortunately, it will take them some time, and the new packs won't get here until morning. But we're only safe over the Border. Get on. You have to get on; we have to get out of here."
"I can't do that again," Kellen said in a ragged whisper. "I can't."
"Kellen," Shalkan said harshly. "Are you listening to me? Get on. We have to go now. We have to get over the border before they send another pack."
Kellen finally turned toward Shalkan, but when he moved, his knees buckled and he fell. The unicorn moved forward quickly, so that Kellen fell half across his back, stomach down.
Shalkan stood steadily beneath his weight. Kellen sprawled there for a long moment, his body suddenly aware of how much it hurt, and wondered how he would ever find the strength to lift his leg across the unicorn's haunches.
But he had to..Because if they stayed here, another Hunt would come. And this time, they'd both die.