Danie Ware - Ecko Rising

But in her own blunt way, she was worried about the boy.

Feren was getting worse. He called aloud to the empty sky, nonsense words and phrases, jagged fragments that tore at her memories and shredded her heart. He clung to his life only by the determination that had walked him, critically wounded, to tumble and fall at the edges of the Banned’s awareness.

She knew that determination: only two returns ago, she had known it personally. How it felt to be young and alone, how it felt to fight through desperation and pain.

She needed to help him. As if reaching to her younger self, she listened to his fevered voice as it called out, a cascade of the broken pieces of his life and memory. Perhaps, if she helped him, she could purge herself of her own dark figments.

Yet she had no idea what to do.

As they prepared to move out, she watched Ress’s calm logic, his gentleness – and his growing sense of despair – and she rode her big, bay gelding in another tight, angry circle round them. Daring everything.

Let them come – bweao, horse monsters! She wanted – needed – something to fight. She was burning beneath her skin with the rage of her own frustration.

Yes, you! Come finish what you started!

But they’d seen no predators, almost no wildlife other than winged.

Even the hunting had been scarce – while both Ress and Jayr knew the basics of tracking and ambush in the open grasses, they’d found themselves reliant upon Triqueta’s instincts and her lethal ranging eye.

With a tang of bitterness, Jayr nudged her animal with her heels.

The Infamous , Syke called her, jesting. Bare-knuckled, she could down a Range Patrol champion in under a minute and she’d won the Banned commander a great deal of wealth and favours. She was bloody infamous all right: she could do one thing well and, right now, she was infamously useless. As Triqueta raced her little mare out to the eastern horizon, Jayr rode to pick up the downed esphen from the long grass.

Behind her, Feren cried wordless anguish and hope.

Jayr swung down from the gelding’s huge back, saw that their dinner was still alive. It quivered in fright, bright black eyes wide, blood matting its brown fur where the arrow had punctured its hindquarters. As she came close, it froze.

Neatly, she broke its neck.

Oddly, it made her feel better – a tiny taste of the adrenal rush she’d once been all too familiar with. Carefully removing the arrowhead from the pelvic bone, she drew a blade across the creature’s throat and held it up to drain it.

Her horse flicked his ears at the flies, uninterested. He lowered his muzzle to graze at the full grass-heads.

“Jayr! Come on!” Ress sat in the front of the cart, spears by his side.

When the creature was at last bloodless, she shook it and slung it over her horse’s withers, put a foot in the stirrup and settled herself on his back.

Almost there.

Feren cried out again as the cart began moving, rolling clumsily towards Roviarath and the advancing shadows of the Kartiah.

Jayr touched the gelding’s flanks and he moved into an easy walk, the grasses swishing at his knees.

* * *

As the mare crested a long, rolling rise, Triqueta sat back, bringing the animal to an uneasy halt, her forehoof tamping restlessly at the soil. For a moment, Triqueta couldn’t see where the specks had gone – then her gaze was drawn to a circle of birds, high and black against the afternoon sky.

Aperios. Carrion birds. Tracking something?

The mare shook her mane nervously.

She unslung the bow, strung it without thinking and checked her saddle-side quiver. She didn’t nock, she had no target, but the birds moved lazily westwards, as if drawn by the Kartiah’s darkness.

Seeking death.

She’d been showing off her horsewoman’s skills before – now she stood up in earnest, swiftly, balancing easily, to look down over the long rise to the massive roll of empty plain beyond. Whatever those two black specks had been, she’d lay a bet the birds were following them.

Craning from the tips of her toes, she saw something strange.

Down there in the rippling grass sea, still a serious distance away, two young men, riders, long haired and bare chested, pushing their way forwards with an odd, deliberate gait. They walked in single file, leaving a long scar behind them. For a moment, she was puzzled. They were either closer than she thought, or they were bigger than Jayr in a lousy mood... Then the front one started at something by his feet.

Oh, you have to be jesting!

As Triqueta stared, bow forgotten, the young man spun sideways, lurched backwards – and grew suddenly, massively taller, high above the grass tops. His movements were wrong, incomprehensible... until she saw his dark smudge of hair was rooted all down his spine – and his spine ended in a back.

A horse back.

Monsters.

Dumbfounded, her mind refused to grasp what she was seeing. They were riders, surely...?

By the Gods – Feren’s loco tale. It was all true.

Like any skittish Banned mount, the creature had spooked and reared – the familiarity of the motion was wrong, disturbing. His forehooves – claws? – danced in the sunlight before he plunged back down to the soil, tail twitching with agitation.

Then, like any Banned rider, he calmly turned to warn his companion.

Triqueta stared. Her returns had let her see some pretty unlikely stuff – even out here. But, half horse, half man – behaviour and body, action and reaction – it was loco. Crazed. As crazed as Roderick’s doomsaying. As crazed as Feren’s rantings.

For a second, she stood motionless, her hand white knuckled on her lop-ended bow, then she saw the second creature change angle, as if he was pointing right at her.

Alchemical impossibility.

Like a fireblasted novice, she’d sky-lined herself flawlessly against the afternoon sun, her shadow stretched way down the rise. She saw the two great creatures acquire their target, and then make straight for her, charging from a standstill to a flat-out gallop.

The birds set up a distant, gleeful cawing and the circle began to move more swiftly.

By the rhez...

Thinking fast now, tension in every muscle, she dropped back into the saddle, prepped arrows with swift fingers.

Feeling her urgency, the little mare needed no command – she, too, ran.

The rise defended them instantly. Bereft of a target, Triqueta lay her chest flat against the creature’s neck and just let her race. She was fast, nimble – but whether she could outdistance those things...

She had to reach the cart. Feren. The horrors of what they’d do to the helpless wagon hit her like the pollen-headed flowers that exploded against the mare’s chest and forelegs. Her heart hammered against the mare’s hot skin...

...and they ran.

* * *

“Jayr!”

Alarm, command and sudden terror, Ress’s bark made her jump.

She turned in the saddle – and swore in a hot rush of adrenaline.

Arrowing towards them, fast as the slender, racing arqueus of the southern plainland, Triqueta’s little mare bolted flat-out loco, froth covering her muzzle and chest. On her back, Triqueta was low over the front of the saddle, her expression grim and her hair a crazed yellow cloud.

Blood hammering in her temples, Jayr slammed her heels into the gelding’s ribs and he leapt forwards, neck arching. Raising his muzzle, he snorted snot and laid his ears straight back, baring his teeth like a stallion.

He charged forwards willingly and Jayr wondered what wrong reek he smelled.

Then she saw them – creatures that came out of the grasses, shimmering like a dream in the afternoon haze. These were the monsters that had shot poor Feren, the things Ress had refused to believe existed.