Stephen Donaldson - The Power That Preserves

They followed this pattern for two more days-down out of the foothills at dusk, long, dark night-trek, back toward higher ground at dawn for one hot meal and sleep-and during these three days, they saw no sign of any life, human or animal, friend or foe, anywhere; they were alone in the cold grey world and the forlorn wind. Trudging as if they were half crippled by the snow, they pressed themselves through the chapped solitude toward Doom’s Retreat. Aside from the unpredictably crisp or muffled noises of their own movement, they heard nothing but the over-stressed cracklings of the ice and the scrapings of the wind, fractured in their ears by the rumpled hills.

But in the dawn of the fourth day, while they watched the wind slowly filling the footmarks of their train, they saw a dull, ugly, yellow movement cross one rib of the hills below them and come hunting upward in their direction. Triock counted ten in the pack.

“ Kresh !” Yeurquin spat under his breath.

Quirrel nodded. “And hunting us. It must be that they passed downwind of us during the night.”

Triock shivered. The fearsome yellow wolves were not familiar to the people of the South Plains; until the last few years, the kresh had lived primarily in the regions north of Ra, foraging into the North Plains when they could not get Ranyhyn-flesh. And many thousands of them had been slain in the great battle of Doom’s Retreat. Yet they soon replenished their numbers, and now scavenged in every part of the Land where the hand of the Lords no longer held sway. Triock had never had to fight kresh , but he had seen what they could do. A year ago, one huge pack had annihilated the whole population of Gleam Stonedown, in the crystal hills near the joining of the Black and Mithil rivers; and when Triock had walked through the deserted village, he had found nothing but rent clothes and splinters of bone.

“ Melenkurion !” he breathed as he gauged the speed of the yellow wolves. “We must climb swiftly.”

As his companions slung their packs, he searched the terrain ahead for an escape or refuge. But despite their roughness, the hills and slopes showed nothing which the wolves might find impassable; and Triock knew of no defensible caves or valleys this far from Mithil Stonedown.

He turned upward. With Quirrel and Yeurquin behind him, he started along a ridge of foothills toward the mountains.

In the lee of the ridge, the snow was not thick. They made good speed as they climbed and scrambled toward the nearest mountain flank. But it rose sheerly out of the hillslope ahead, preventing escape in that direction. When the western valley beside the ridge rose up toward the mountain, Triock swung to the right and ran downward, traversed the valley, lunged through the piled snow toward the higher ground on the far side.

Before he and his companions reached the top, the leading kresh crested the ridge behind them and gave out a ferocious howl. The sound hit Triock between his shoulder blades like the flick of a flail. He stopped, whirled to see the wolves rushing like yellow death along the ridge hardly five hundred yards from him.

The sight made the skin of his scalp crawl, and his cold-stiff cheeks twitched as if he were trying to bare his teeth in fear. Without a word, he turned and attacked the climb again, threw himself through the snow until his pulse pounded and he seemed to be surrounded by his own gasping.

When he gained the ridge top, he paused long enough to steady his gaze, then scanned the terrain ahead. Beyond this rib of the foothills, all the ground in a wide half-circle reaching to the very edge of the mountains fell steeply away into a deep valley. The valley was roughly conical in shape, open to the plains only through a sheer ravine on its north side. It offered no hope to Triock’s searching eyes. But clinging to the mountain edge beyond a narrow ledge along the lip of the valley was a broken pile of boulders, the remains of an old rockfall. Triock’s attention leaped to see if the boulders could be reached along the ledge.

“Go!” Quirrel muttered urgently. “I will hold them here.”

“Two javelins and one sword,” Triock panted in response. “Then they will outweigh us seven to two. I prefer you alive.” Pointing, he said, “We must cross that ledge to the rocks. There we can strike at the kresh from above. Come.”

He started forward again, driving his tired legs as fast as he could, and Quirrel and Yeurquin followed on his heels. When they reached the rough ground where the ridge blended into the cliff, they clambered through it toward the ledge.

At the ledge, Triock hesitated. The lip of the valley was packed in snow, and he could not tell how much solid rock was hidden under it. But the kresh were howling up the hill behind him; he had no time to scrape the snow clear. Gritting his teeth, he pressed himself against the cliff and started outward.

His feet felt the slickness of the ledge. Ice covered the rock under the snow. But he had become accustomed to ice in the course of this preternatural winter. He moved with small, unabrupt steps, did not let himself slip. In moments, Quirrel and Yeurquin were on the ledge as well, and he was half-way to his destination.

Suddenly, a muffled boom like the snapping of old bones echoed off the cliff. The ledge jerked. Triock scrambled for handholds in the rock, and found none. He and his comrades were too far from safety at either end of the ledge.

An instant later, it fell under their weight. Plunging like stones in an avalanche, they tumbled helplessly down the steep side of the valley.

Triock tucked his head and knees together and rolled as best he could. The snow protected him from the impacts of the fall, but it also gave way under him, prevented him from stopping or slowing himself. He could do nothing but hug himself and fall. Dislodged by the collapse of the ledge, more snow slid into the valley with him, adding its weight to his momentum as if it were hurling him at the bottom. In wild vertigo, he lost all sense of how far he had fallen or how far he was from the bottom. When he hit level ground, the force of the jolt slammed his breath away, left him stunned while snow piled over him.

For a time, he lay smothered under the snow, but as the dizziness relaxed in his head, he began to recover. He thrust himself to his hands and knees. Gasping, he fought the darkness which swarmed his sight like clouds of bats rushing at his face. “Quirrel!” he croaked. “Yeurquin!”

With an effort, he made out Quirrel’s legs protruding from the snow a short distance away. Beyond her, Yeurquin lay on his back. A bloody gash on his temple marred the blank pallor of his face. Neither of them moved.

Abruptly, Triock heard the scrabbling of claws. A savage howl like an anthem of victory snatched his gaze away from Quirrel and Yeurquin, made him look up toward the slope of the valley.

The kresh were charging furiously down toward him. They had chosen a shallower and less snowbound part of the ridge side, and were racing with rapacious abandon toward their fallen prey. Their leader was hardly a dozen yards from Triock.

He moved instantly. His fighting experience took over, and he reacted without thought or hesitation. Snatching at his sword, he heaved erect, presented himself as a standing target to the first wolf. Fangs bared, red eyes blazing, it leaped for his throat. He ducked under it, twisted, and wrenched his sword into its belly.

It sailed past him and crashed into the snow, lay still as if it were impaled on the red trail of its blood. But its momentum had torn his sword from his cold hand.

He had no chance to retrieve his weapon. Already the next wolf was gathering to spring at him.

He dove out from under its leap, rolled heels over head, snapped to his feet holding his lomillialor rod in his hands.