Troy Denning - The Sentinel

Then the goat lowered his nose, and the image vanished from Arietta’s mind so quickly she was not even sure she had seen it. The goat drank until the skull was empty, then nosed the makeshift bowl from Arietta’s hands and turned his gaze on Kleef. A moment later, the iron collar finally snapped open, and the goat bleated in what may well have been gratitude.

Kleef pointed in the direction opposite the approaching horde. “You’d better hurry,” he said. “You don’t want those orcs catching sight of you.”

The goat looked from him to Arietta, and a tree of lightning snaked across the red sky. A heartbeat later, a peal of thunder crashed over the Underchasm, so sudden and loud that Arietta found herself curled into a ball on the still-shuddering ground, with dust billowing up around her and no clear memory of how she had gotten there. Kleef was next to her, and Malik and Joelle were close by, also on the ground and looking frightened and confused.

Only the goat remained standing, his eerie eyes watching them with an expression that seemed both expectant and mocking. He shook the dust from his coat and trotted over to stand between the stone pylons that served as the gateway onto the bridge.

Kleef looked over at Arietta, his brow raised in bewilderment. “What do you make of that?”

“I have no idea.” Arietta returned to her feet. “But did you notice that his eyes-”

“Look like Helm’s Eye?” Kleef stood and retrieved Watcher, then turned the agate on the crossguard upward and spent a moment examining it. “How could I miss it?”

“Then perhaps we should take that as a sign and keep moving,” Joelle said, joining them. “We aren’t all that far ahead of the orcs.”

Malik also joined them, and they stepped between the pylons with the goat. For a moment, they all stood waiting, looking down at the beast and half-expecting it to lead the way.

Finally, Malik let out an exasperated snort. “It is just a stupid animal that does not have the sense to run from its own destiny.”

The goat looked up at him and bleated.

“Sadrach’s servants are going to eat you alive,” Malik said. “That is your destiny.”

The goat lowered his horns as though he were going to butt Malik, then simply backed away and looked at Kleef.

Kleef laughed. “I’d like to kill Malik, too,” he said. “But Joelle keeps saying we need him.”

He led the way onto the bridge itself, with the goat close behind. Malik followed, and Arietta and Joelle brought up the rear, walking side by side on a thin metal deck barely wide enough to hold a donkey cart. As they moved away from the anchoring pylons on the rim of the Underchasm, the deck began to shudder and bounce beneath their footfalls. But the translucent suspension cables, which looked more like twisted glass than any sort of metal, remained taut and unmoving. Arietta thought about the weight of the orc horde pursuing them and wondered if the structure was as indestructible as Malik had implied. She tried to take comfort from the goat, which seemed completely at home on the bridge, trotting along close on Kleef’s heels and nonchalantly peering between the support lines into the abyss below.

When Arietta finally gathered the courage to look for herself, her heart sank. Hundreds of feet below lay a gray blanket of shadowstuff, its surface an indistinct zone of slowly expanding murk. She looked back at the rim of the Underchasm and saw a dark stain creeping up the wall, just a little above the shadowstuff itself.

“It’s started,” Joelle said, also peering over the side of the bridge. “Time is against us.”

Arietta looked toward the center of the Underchasm and found herself inclined to agree. Though she could see a second bridge curving out from behind the mountaintop ahead, it quickly narrowed into imperceptibility, and she could not tell which of the distant crags it led to-or how many more such bridges there might be between them and Sadrach’s Spire. But they clearly had a long walk ahead-and plenty of trouble to face along the way.

They continued along the bridge at a steady but unhurried pace, deliberately giving the orcs time to close the gap behind them. Given the rising sea of shadowstuff and the uncertain distance to their destination, it was a nerve-racking way to travel-but far better than running headlong into a Shadovar trap.

Soon enough, a line of distant figures appeared on the bridge and rapidly began to swell into the stooped shapes of running orcs. As the column grew longer and more distinct, the decking began to tremble and thrum beneath the pounding of hundreds of hobnailed boots. Arietta looked back to check on the ever-growing column and was surprised to find the orcs running down a slight incline. It didn’t make sense, but that was definitely the way it appeared.

Whether the bridge had always run at a slight downward angle or had simply begun to sag beneath the weight of the horde, she could not say. But after a while, the suspension cables began to hum and shimmer, and when she looked over her shoulder again, she found that the orc column extended a full league behind her, all the way back to the chasm rim.

And the front of the column was only three arrow flights away-close enough to make out the gray-yellow ovals of individual faces. Arietta turned forward again, where a jagged wall of stone-the first of the stony crags they had seen from the plain-now loomed over the far end of the bridge. They weren’t close enough yet to tell how the suspension cables were attached to the mountainside, but it looked as though the bridge simply entered a tunnel that had been cut into the sheer face of a cliff.

Kleef and the goat were now traveling side by side, with Malik three paces behind them and Arietta and Joelle bringing up the rear. Joelle’s brow was furrowed in concentration, and she was glancing back and forth between the orcs behind them and the crag ahead. No doubt, she was wondering the same thing as Arietta-whether the tunnel was where the Shadovar were waiting to ambush them.

Joelle caught Arietta’s eye. “Is it time?”

Arietta nodded. “I think it is.” She looked forward again, then yelled, “Kleef, let’s move along!”

Kleef glanced back at the long line of orcs, then drew Watcher from its scabbard and set off at a brisk trot. The goat continued to keep pace, loping alongside him with an oddly wolflike gait. Malik lasted perhaps a quarter of a league before he began to fall behind, and Arietta and Joelle soon found themselves half-dragging him along by the arms.

The decking growled and shuddered as the orc vanguard broke into a full sprint. Arietta glanced back and felt her heart rise into her throat. The leading orcs were less than two arrow-flights away and coming fast.

“Why the big eyes?” Joelle asked, looking over at Arietta. “This is the plan … right?”

Arietta nodded. “Right,” she said. “As long as we don’t let them catch us before we reach the Shadovar ambush.”

“And there is the weakness in … your mad plan,” Malik said, huffing for breath. “They are going to catch us whether we let them or not.”

Arietta looked forward, toward the end of the bridge. They were so close to the crag that all she could see was the square maw of a tunnel entrance surrounded by a jagged wall of dun-colored cliff. To her surprise, the bridge’s suspension cables were not anchored to the stone by any sort of device. Instead, they emerged from the crag as a cluster of huge, limpid crystals that came together in a twisting mass of glasslike cable, then kinked sharply upward.

Arietta stopped and leaned over the side of the bridge, peering down toward the foot of the cliff. With the Shadowfell emerging out of the depths of the Underchasm, it was impossible to see the bottom of the crag. But she could see enough to tell that its base was narrowing instead of expanding, and she did not like what the shape seemed to suggest.