Stephen Donaldson - The Power That Preserves

The rod was not made to be a weapon; its shapers in the Loresraat had wrought that piece of High Wood for other purposes. But its power could be made to burn, and Triock had no other defence. Crying the invocation in a curious tongue understood only by the lillianrill , he swung the High Wood over his head and chopped it down on the skull of the nearest wolf.

At the impact, the rod burst into flame like a pitch-soaked brand, and all the wolf’s fur caught fire as swiftly as tinder.

The flame of the rod lapsed immediately, but Triock shouted to it and hacked at a kresh bounding at his chest. Again the power flared. The wolf fell dead in screaming flames.

Another and another Triock slew. But each blast, each unwonted exertion of the High Wood’s might, drained his strength. With four kresh sizzling in the snow around him, his breath came in ragged heaves, gaps of exhaustion veered across his sight, and fatigue clogged his limbs like iron fetters.

The five remaining wolves circled him viciously.

He could not face them all at once. Their yellow fur bristled in violent smears across his sight; their red and horrid eyes flashed at him above their wet chops and imminent fangs. For an instant, his fighting instincts faltered.

Then a weight of compact fury struck him from behind, slammed him face down in the trampled snow. The force of the blow stunned him, and the weight on his back pinned him. He could do nothing but hunch his shoulders against the rending poised over the back of his neck. But the weight did not move. It lay as inert as death across his shoulder blades.

His fingers still clutched the lomillialor .

With a convulsive heave, he rolled to one side, tipped the heavy fur off him. It smeared him with blood-blood that ran, still pulsing, from the javelin which pierced it just behind its foreleg.

Another javelined kresh lay a few paces away.

The last three wolves dodged and feinted around Quirrel. She stood over Yeurquin, whirling her sword and cursing.

Triock lurched to his feet.

At the same time, Yeurquin moved, struggled to get his legs under him. Despite the wound on his temple, his hands pulled instinctively at his sword.

The sight of him made the wolves hesitate.

In that instant, Triock snatched a javelin from the nearest corpse and hurled it with the strength of triumph into the ribs of another kresh .

Yeurquin was unsteady on his feet; but with one lumbering hack of his sword, he managed to disable a wolf. It lurched away from him on three legs, but he caught up with it and cleft its skull.

The last kresh was already in full flight. It did not run yipping, with its tail between its legs, like a thrashed cur; it shot straight toward the narrow outlet of the valley as if it knew where allies were and intended to summon them.

“Quirrel!” Triock gasped.

She moved instantly. Ripping her javelin free of the nearest wolf, she balanced the short shaft across her palm, took three quick steps, and lofted it after the running kresh . The javelin arched so high that Triock feared it would fall short, then plunged sharply downward and caught the wolf in the back. The beast collapsed in a rolling heap, flopped several times across the snow, throwing blood in all directions, quivered, and lay still.

Triock realized dimly that he was breathing in rough sobs. He was so spent that he could hardly retain his grip on the lomillialor . When Quirrel came over to him, he put his arms around her, as much to gain strength from her as to express his gratitude and comradeship. She returned the clasp briefly, as if his gesture embarrassed her. Then they moved toward Yeurquin.

Mutely, they inspected and tended Yeurquin’s wound. Under other circumstances, Triock would not have considered the hurt dangerous; it was clean and shallow, and the bone was unharmed. But Yeurquin still needed time to rest and heal-and Triock had no time. The plight of his message was now more urgent than ever.

He said nothing about this. While Quirrel cooked a meal, he retrieved their weapons, then buried all the kresh and the blood of battle under mounds of grey snow. This would not disguise what had happened from any close inspection, but Triock hoped that a chance enemy passing along the rim of the valley would not be attracted to look closer.

When he was done, he ate slowly, gathering his strength, and his eyes jumped around the valley as if he expected ur-viles or worse to rise up suddenly from the ground against him. But then his mouth locked into its habitual dour lines. He made no concessions to Yeurquin’s injury; he told his companions flatly that he had decided to leave the foothills and risk cutting straight west toward the mountains where he hoped to find the Unfettered One. For such a risk, the only possibility of success lay in speed.

With their supplies repacked and their weapons cleaned, they left the valley through its narrow northward outlet at a lope.

They travelled during the day now for the sake of speed. Half dragging Yeurquin behind them, Triock and Quirrel trotted doggedly due west, across the cold-blasted flatland toward the eastmost outcropping of the mountains. As they moved, Triock prayed for snow to cover their trail.

By the end of the next day, they caught their first glimpses of the great storm which brooded for more than a score of leagues in every direction over the approaches to Doom’s Retreat.

North of that defile through the mountains, the parched ancient heat of the Southron Wastes met the Grey Slayer’s winter, and the result was an immense storm, rotating against the mountain walls which blocked it on the south and west. Its outer edges concealed the forces which raged within, but even from the distance of a day’s hard travelling, Triock caught hints of hurricane conditions: cycling winds that ripped along the ground as if they meant to lay bare the bones of the earth; snow as thick as night; gelid air cold enough to freeze blood in the warmest places of the heart.

It lay directly across his path.

Yet he led Quirrel and Yeurquin toward it for another day, hurried in the direction of the storm’s core until its outer winds were tugging at his garments, and its first snows were packing wetly against his windward side. Yeurquin was in grim condition-blood oozed like exhaustion through the overstrained scabs of his wound, and the tough fiber of his stamina was frayed and loosened like a breaking rope. But Triock did not turn aside. He could not attempt to skirt the storm, could not swing north toward the middle of the South Plains to go around. During the first night after the battle with the kresh , he had seen watch fires northeast of him. They were following him. He had studied them the next night, and had perceived that they were moving straight toward him, gaining ground at an alarming rate.

Some enemy had felt his exertion of the lomillialor . Some enemy knew his scent now and pursued him like mounting furore.

“We cannot outrun them,” Quirrel observed grimly as they huddled together under the lip of the storm to rest and eat.

Triock said nothing. He could hear Covenant rasping, If we don’t start doing the impossible. Doing the impossible .

A moment later, she sniffed the wind. “And I do not like the taste of this weather. There is a blizzard here-a blast raw enough to strike the flesh from our limbs.”

The impossible , Triock repeated to himself. He should have said to the Unbeliever, “I was born to tend cattle. I am not a man who does impossible things.” He was tired and old and unwise. He should have taken Lena and led his people toward safety deep in the Southron Range, should have chosen to renew the ancient exile rather than allow one extravagant stranger to bend all Mithil Stonedown to the shape of his terrible purpose.