Jeremiah almost fell backward out of the saddle. His horse reared, its front hard hooves striking at the menacing satyrs lunging in and out. It was something that would never have happened to him under other circumstances. Jeremiah’s legs were still very much in shock from the rapid slip-fall from the tree and climbing harness. While that alone would not necessarily injure an experienced climber, when he’d began his descent, he had not counted on the added effect of bearing the weight of a full-grown man on his back. A grunt of pain escaped his clenched jaw as he leaned forward against the angled saddle horn, his feet wobbling in the stirrups, rather than hooking back and standing in them. His center of balance was off, and the jolt of the horse coming back down hard and kicking out nearly took his breath away. It wasn’t enough to merely maintain a grip on the reins or pommel of the saddle. Holding on to a horse in startled or even deliberate motion required more leg and thigh strength, than arm-and-upper-body power. He flailed almost losing the crossbow that he’d used fend off an earlier assault, leaving himself open and completely vulnerable.
Off to the left front, Lorgray held two nasty-looking satyrs at bay, their dark eyes staring both at the waving point of his unsheathed blade, as they shifted from side to side.
He knew they were trying to get him to believe another threat was descending upon him from his peripheral blindside. They were distracting him so that they could feint in and lunge at him with their short-jagged stone knives. But he’d seen that tactic before.
Dark-winged forms swooped overhead in the smoky firelight, creating shadow wraiths in the roiling smoke below, making it difficult to tell what forms were solid, ground-level threats from within the soot and swirling ash and what forms might strike from above at any moment. They may be right about the danger in the periphery, but he vowed he would make sure to take these two out before responding to another. They were too few against so many and uncoordinated in their mutual defense strategy. He had to rally them.
“To me!” he yelled to the others, signifying that we all should form a tightened back-to-back circle to stave off the onslaught of the crowding half-goat devils.
Will rushed forward, grabbing the side of the reins of the horse that Jeremiah was still struggling to maintain his seat upon. The horse spun in response, nearly trampling him. Its mouth champing at the leather bit, that Will held onto, almost cutting it in half.
“Let go of the rein, son!” Jeremiah commanded him, “You’re hurting its mouth and you’re only going to panic this horse more.”
“I was trying to help!” he shouted back, but the horse jerked its neck around smacking the boy and shoving him off to the smoldering roadside.
Flung to the ground in burning embers, he screamed and rolled, his clothes briefly catching fire. Ash and smoke swirled around him, as he twisted frantically trying to snuff out the small licking flames. The fires had scorched him, but cursing he managed to smother them in the folds of his cloak.
He turned his head back around, soot smeared on his cheek and brow, the smuggled dagger he’d palmed from the golem now flashing in his hand. Eyes every bit as full of the flames that had scorched his clothing now glared with burning hatred at the terrified horse that had pushed him and its rider who had failed to control the animal and recognize his prior well-meaning intention.
“You could’ve killed me, you stupid brute!” he growled, brandishing the knife, “I ought to cut your heart out!”
“Will!” Lorgray commanded, “There’s no time for that! Come into the center. Form a circle. These satyrs will kill us all if we don’t join together.”
I had backed into the center of the road, the Honor Sword still held before me, a shimmering electric light igniting the old runes engraved down the blade of the metal. I kept my eyes fixed forward, but Torlah was laughing as the satyrs crowded in around her, blocking her from my view.
“You’ll never leave this wood alive!” she screamed in venomous hatred as she receded further down the road ahead of us, borne along in the company of what looked like large angular branches and twisted, sinuous vines, somehow made ambulatory within the magic of the forest. These had hung back from the group, avoiding the smoldering fires as much as possible, but it was now clear to me what they were.
Dryads.
Eight or nine of them.
High above their elongated branch limbs, the wood and leaf exterior gave way to a smooth, emerald-skinned, feminine form. Beautiful faces stood in oddly sinister contrast upon stretched necks.
One of them looked down longingly at me and the other men and then spoke sharply to the crouching satyrs closing in on us.
“Remember, Gollack! The Pan promised us we could have their heads when you’ve finished with their bodies. Our nursery must be replenished. We shall settle the score soon enough with those treacherous Harpies.”
The satyrs laughed but came on, their stone knives raised, their eyes gleaming with savagery.
“We remember the master’s words, Briar,” a gray-bearded satyr answered her, “You’ll get your heads. Now run along before these fires scorch your precious skirts. We’ll see you again real soon, Sweetness. The Pan awaits you all at the ancient place, where the rest have fled. This golem owes him an exchange.”
They bore Torlah aloft and away into the forest ahead. She was smiling gleefully, relishing our growing terror, and angry that she was going to miss the cruelty of the ensuing bloodsport.
***
“How much longer should we wait here?” Christie asked, looking out upon the back forest. The trail up to the hill where the Faerie Fade was carved into, began to brighten with a smoky luminescence. The fires would catch up to them soon and she felt foolish waiting under the flammable canopy no matter what it represented. For her, marriage had been a dream she had once held high hopes for, but the reality of it had fallen so far from the mark. The thought of it was like a punch in the gut. God may have intended it for better, but for her, it had been a nightmare. Her jaw had set and clenched hearing Begglar and Nell go on and on about it. She envied them and that made her angry. Not so much angry at them, but at herself and her ex. Where had they gone wrong? Why had something seemingly so romantic to dreamy-eyed young girls, a hinted promise in almost every love song of at last finding that one who would cherish them not play out. At the end of their sparkling rainbow was a pit of rocks, hard and unyielding, the shattered, crushed and broken pieces of dreams, bathed in tears. If this canopy was a gateway, it might very well be a gateway into a realm of nightmares.
“Be patient,” Maeven said scanning the deeper forest, “They’ll come. Give them a little more time.”
She had been watching furtive movements among the brush for the last thirty minutes. She feared that whatever was back there would impede Jeremiah and O’Brian’s chances of making it through to them.
“It’s been over an hour already,” Tiernan asked, “Didn’t that Jeremiah fella say that we were supposed to go ahead and get out of the forest if he didn’t come back in that time?”
“We can’t just leave them!” Lindsey said.
“No one’s leaving anyone, dear,” Nell patted her, putting an arm around her reassuringly. She looked to Begglar and he nodded.
“We’re staying right here till they get here,” Begglar said, brooking no argument and glancing meaningfully at the young men.
“What if they’re…?” Matthew began, but thought better of it, realizing Miray was following the conversation closely, her brow knitted with concern and worry.
Mason put protective hands on Miray’s shoulders and slightly shook his head at Matthew, indicating that she did not need to hear such speculation just yet.
Laura had drifted over to the woven casements in the back of the Faerie Fade and lightly ran soft fingers over the woven strips of bark and joined saplings that comprised the structures singular wall. How, she wondered, could something so delicate and small possible protect them against the rumored enemies in the forest? Her fingers trembled in fear struggling with the doubts that any of this could keep her safe no matter what she’d been told about it. She’d lived with fear so long, she had a hard time believing in anything else, much less some supernatural hope.
She wanted to see it.
Needed to see it.
Begglar, Nell, and Maeven all had said this was a safe place, and the woodman, Jeremiah, had not contradicted them. But the strange structure, those curiously designed, did not inspire the confidence in her that a solid stone wall and a tall iron gate would. She was so conflicted. She wanted to run, but she did not want to be alone in doing so. Matthew and Tiernan seemed inclined to try it, but she did not want to leave others. They were some semblance of family. The kind that was in the old black and white movies back in the Surface World. The kind she had often longed to have been born into. No matter how foolish it seemed, she would stay with them. Even if…it came down to the worst.
A tear fell thinking about it. Mister O’Brian was not perfect, but she could tell he was sincere. The discussion they’d had back at Begglar’s Inn that evening came back to her. His words of comfort that she could not fully accept about being loved and wanted. She so wanted to believe in that. As a little girl, she had once believed that there was a ‘Daddy’ out there who wanted her. Loved her.
When Mister O’Brian has talked with her, he made no demands of her. He’d listened to her without judgment. Wept with her when, in a moment of uncharacteristic vulnerability, she’d laid bare her painful and humiliating experience with her own father leaving because he did not want her or her mother anymore.
When O’Brian had asked her for her name, he did not press her for it when she was reluctant to give it. He gave her the time and freedom to work through what she was going through, but with the kind offer that he and the others would be here for her when she was ready. No one had ever done that for her. Given her the respect of her own space and her own time to come back freely.
What had he said to her before she and Christie left to head back to the coast?
That the things the Troll used against you with their strange influence were only the lies planted in you. Told to you by those deceiving themselves as well. That the trolls could not use the truth to harm you. But only the lies. Lies that you had empowered to rule over you by giving your beliefs to them.
Her lips trembled as fresh tears fell from her eyes and she averted her gaze from the others, seeming to concentrate on the wall, her hands now trembling as she fingered the posts that framed the casements.
“It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” a voice spoke quietly to her observing the tracery of woven vines and symbols in the wall.
Laura cleared her throat and hastily wiped her eyes with her fingers, hoping the girl did not notice her quiet tears.
“Uh, yeah,” she sniffed, “Yes, it is.”
“My name is Lindsey,” she whispered and after a pause added, “In case you forgot.”
“Laura,” she smiled slightly, hoping her cheeks weren’t noticeably reddened, “I’m just getting used to all this.”
“Yeah, me too,” Lindsey answered, “I’m still fascinated by this place but scared of it too. Not sure what to do about it. And I’m worried about Mister O’Brian. It’s been way too long.”
“What do you think about this place. What they said about it?” Laura whispered, keeping her voice low and quiet so that the others wouldn’t overhear.
“I don’t exactly know what to think. It is certainly odd and unique. Something I might imagine some druids might have conjured up. Y’know if it had been in some forest in Ireland or something. But here. This place, this Mid-World is just…different and alike in so many ways.”
“Yeah. Just when I think it’s going to be like the Surface World, there is an otherness that just makes me uncertain. A Troll. Who would have ever thought those fairy tale creatures could be real here?”
“You should’ve seen those creatures we saw coming out on the lake. Bizarre. Ugly and gross. Creepy. There’s enough strangeness, without those things, but they gave me the heebie-jeebies.”
“What were they? I did not see them.”
“Be glad. I may have nightmares later.”
“Are you scared?”
“I am, but, strangely, not about the things you might expect me to be scared of.”
“How do you mean?”
“I am scared of what harm might come to those I am coming to care about.”
“Mister O’Brian?”
“Not just him and the others. You too.”
Laura took in a long shuddering breath, her tears clouding her vision, as she tried to stifle a sob.
Lindsey put an arm around her and held her quietly while the young girl cried. The tears spent were some she had needed to cry for a long time. Tears of healing, knowing she had at last found a friend.
***
Grum-Blud could smell them. Smell the salty scent of their fear. Like birds in a cage, they huddled under the strange woodland canopy. Nervous, but not moving away to a more secure location. Well, there were ways he could help with that. A very particular way indeed, and within the canopy, he’d spotted one very particular weak link in the bunch. He needed only to catch her eye. If he could get her to run the others might follow, and then The Pan might just forget how he had lost those Manticores.
And if not.
Well, there were others waiting in the forest too. His second line of defense—provided he could survive under The Pan’s temporary distractions for a bit longer.
***
The Cerberi were vicious black beasts with a thick mane of black fur that bristled behind their thick flat heads. Their eyes held a fierce wildness in them, and they stared at the caged prisoners hungrily and intently. Panting and licking their yellowed teeth, with dangling saliva running beneath their slackened jaws. Each of the muscled creatures bore two heads, joined together under a wide cranial bone, sharing one central grey eye. Dog-like in form but only peripherally similar in nature without the innate empathy one might associate with canines.
Four of these thickly-built, grizzled mongrels paced around the outside perimeter of a hastily built cage situated in the midst of the Xarmnian camp, raised within a clearing within the thinning edge of Kilrane Forest. The very camp O’Brian had spotted from the tall tree he’d been trapped in until his rescue.
Within the cage, the thirteen Surface Worlders huddled close together, trying to stay away from the thin cut saplings that comprised the bars of their cage. They were under no illusion that these were the only things separating them from being ravaged by the pacing dog-beasts that circled their prison, like a pack of hungry sharks scenting blood.
“How is your arm?” the one called Crystal asked the tall woman named Cheryl, who clutched her wound to her stomach. She was flushed and swooning. Her arm throbbed and it had taken a while to staunch the blood flow.
“It burns, but I’ll be okay,” she assured the questioner, though she had no such confidence in her words.
“You need to get that looked after,” one called Marcus said.
“You know of any hospitals nearby, I’ll be glad to go to one,” Cheryl answered, more bitterly than she has intended to.
“Do you think Zeela and Hughland sold us out?” Ramesh asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” DeeAnn answered, “but the wagon and horses were missing when these Xarmnians came and that is just about as bad as anything they could have done to us.”
“If I ever catch up to them, I am gonna kick their butts!” Teagan said, grinding a fist into her palm in frustration.
“What do you think these Xarmnians are gonna do to us?” Emma asked, clearing her throat nervously, steeling herself against the answer she dreaded.
Cheryl had closed her eyes, trying to will the pain in her mauled forearm away, but was unsuccessful.
No one wanted to answer the question Emma had raised. Knowing what they had been told, they were too afraid to speculate.
The one who had identified himself as Shihor was hard, cruel and cold as frosted steel. He’d watched as the dogs attacked Cheryl, waiting for her to stop struggling and surrender to the idea that she was going to be eaten and savaged before he’d called the creatures off her. The beast had to be commanded twice before it broke off the attack. Its handler had raised a whip to it, but the creature backed grudgingly away before a blow was ever landed. It knew better than to disobey, and the handler seemed also to know that same kind of fear to his person, should the creature under his charge not heed the barked order he’d given it.
“Bind them and bring them!” the despotic leader growled and then turned his horse and up mounting the slope to lead them onward down the dark road into Kilrane away from the river’s edge.
They’d been manacled to a joiner ring and shoved into a rough walking line, towed together by the central ring bearing variant lengths of chains. There were four dog-beast wranglers who had come up on either side of the group, keeping the other creatures heeled, with leather-strapped leads, that the creatures could have easily broken free of had they not been trained to do otherwise.
The Xarmnian soldiers had ignored Cheryl’s bloodied lacerations and were as rough with her as they were with the others who had escaped injuries by the hell-dogs. Ramesh eased up alongside her, and quickly pulled a colorful sash from around his waist and bound her bleeding arm quickly. “It is not much but should hold until we can get a chance to clean it later,” he whispered rapidly, “Hold that manacle away from the wound and try not to lag behind.”
The handler turned, threatening him to release the monstrous dog beast, and Ramesh shrank back again into the line of his fellow prisoners.
“What if she dies?” Emma asked the guard, roughly ensuring that they were all securely bound to the central towing ring.
“Then she will be dragged the rest of the way and given to these dogs for meat when we get where we’re going,” he snarled and then cuffed her on the side of the head and said, “Now shut up!”
They had not gone far when they all heard the roar and the collapse of the falls and the sickening crunch-sound of breaking ice. It was at that moment when they all realized that little Miray was no longer in their company.
“Where is Miray?!” Crystal asked, her breathing coming in rapid shallow breaths as she turned this way and that, searching frantically for her?
“I think she got away when the dog-thing attacked Cheryl.”
Cheryl winced and turned, “Where did she go?!”
“I think she went out on the lake,” Samuel answered, the realization of his words hitting him even as he spoke them.
Just then a wall of water roared up from between the trees pouring muddy, frothy water over the roadway, though shallowing out as it ran down between their legs and feet.
“Oh, God!” Cheryl cried out, “Oh God, no!”
In the silence and stifled weeping that followed, they at last wilted under their situation and the horror of it. This Mid-World, at once mysterious and magical to them, was as dark and as cruel as anything lurking in the Surface World from which they all had come. O’Brian had been right all along. They were off the edge of the map. And here there be monsters.
***
The Pan loomed large in the swirling smoke leading up the barely visible path to the mysterious gate in the woods. His large antlers rising like shadowy spikes, backlit by the roaring flames that burned within the trees. He waited quietly for what was promised him. The scents of beast and man, now buried within the scorched air, blurred beyond perception. He could feel wave after wave of warmth thermals washing over his dark comingled flesh bearing both human and animal origins. Nothing of which could have been produced by the ancient natural world he’d foolishly and unwittingly abandoned so long ago, pursuing his patriarch into the wilderness to find…what?
He had long forgotten why he and the others had followed the man through the mysterious horizon Oculus. He only knew that there was a reason that he and the others had carried their sacrifices of living blood. Something on the other side of time and space demanded it. Something that withheld their birthright. Something that needed to be appeased to lift the curse placed upon their progenitor and by extension their entire family for generations to come. He had pursued the passage of justice and had received only scorn. A wrenching and tearing of his mortal body in half only to awaken in gouts of his own blood and find himself remade into…this.
With cruel, rough hands he fingered the long-jagged horns that arose from the crown of his grizzled mane of unkempt hair, and his quiet seething hatred deepened once again.
If he was to be reduced to being part animal, he had vowed that he would embrace that wildness and forever let it rule him according to the lot he’d been given. But one thing he had not accounted for in his own self-determination. There was a deeper, darker wildness that came not from the animal side of his newly fused body, but from the ancient part of him, that was still irrevocably human. A need for vengeance. A need to punish anything and everything in all of creation that left him consigned to this creature-man body, without hope and a future. And that was when he’d first discovered the Dragon Pool glimmering darkly under the moonlight deep in the heart of a place the men of these lands called “The Holy Wood”. And the beautiful shimmering creature beneath those darkling waves called and spoke to him in his misery and offered him a way to do just that.
***
What she was doing was sheer madness. Dellitch worried over and over again, that she had made a foolish decision in taking the golem any further into the woods. But she knew that if she just left it there in the swampy slough, even if the fire engulfed the area, the wind spirit inside it would survive, escape and word would ultimately get back to The Pan and her life and that of her kind would be forfeit. The Pan indeed had a long reach. The Harpies would find no tree or ground upon which they could land and ever hope to be safe from the humiliation and vengeance that pursued them.
Their secret alliance with the Xarmnian humans, for all their brute strength in proliferating numbers, and their slashing skills with bladed weapons could never protect them from the beings that crawled, swam and flew upon these inter-lands from horizon to horizon. She was flying a tight line between death and appeasement bringing the golem back to The Pan. But she knew The Pan was expecting to meet with one, and it was one of the primary reasons why he had roused himself from his lands in the eastern territories and had come to the Forests of Kilrane. The Queen Horde living within him had promised him that a vessel he had released into the world would come back to him and restore to him his sight. And that, with sight restored, he would at last witness the crushing of his enemies within the Forests of Kilrane.
She adjusted her clutching talons around the outstretched arms of the golem, being extra careful not to crush him or lose her grip on him. She was exhausted, taking long moments to soar rather than flap, as she flew higher above the burning forest below, skirting the billowing columns of tumbling dark smoke, yet trying not to fly too far out of them for fear of being seen. No human could have survived the heat washes they had flown through, so she knew there was no torturing of this thing that could be done to get more information out of it. She would deliver it as requested and then be off to join the others. The Xarmnians would be expecting a report soon, and her absence would arouse suspicion.
With long broad wings, she glided in a turning gyre scanning the forest below. The fires had picked up in earnest as gusts of driving wind came down from the high plains and spilled over the edge of the escarpment leading down into Kilrane. A haze covered everything below and even with an enhanced bird’s vision she had trouble discerning the movement of the fire and the possible movement of warm-blooded bodies below.
And then she spotted him. He sat in a clearing, not too far from another open area occupied by a camp of Xarmnian soldiers. It was going to be tricky not being noticed by the Xarmnians as she attempted to fly in with her package to The Pan, but she had to risk it. She would fly further west, following the drift of the towering smoke and then skirt the treetops and out of the sight-line of the Xarmnians. If the Xarmnians suspected her of dual loyalties, that may also be her and her kind’s undoing.
Further movement caught her eye as somethings tall and angular bearing what appeared to be a small figure moved into the clearing where The Pan waited.
“Dryads!” she cursed. And the small figure they bore aloft was, in fact, also a golem.
***
Metal clanged against stone and wood.
Satyrs with long scythes joined the fight on the road, brandishing their weapons with long slashing arcs. Others brutally swung clubs and short hatchet-like tools attempting to cut us down where we stood.
We fought desperately, but their numbers kept coming at us, leaping out of the smoke, faces pulled back in a rictus grin of menace and evil. We beat, swung, punched and slashed at every hybrid creature that thwarted our forward movement. Fighting on all sides, we kept close together, knowing we were reaching exhaustion and our enemies knew it too.
A fiery tree fell across the road barely missing us but taking out five of the goat-men in its burning crash.
The air was thick, full of the stench of burning hair and sweating bodies, pressing in and outward.
Jeremiah hooked a swinging scythe with the metal lath of the crossbow, jerking the wielder forward into my impaling jab. The satyr roared and spat at me even as he died upon my sword. Another satyr took advantage of the occupancy of my blade and rained down pummeling blows on my shoulder and sword arm now heavy with the body of its kind. Jeremiah managed to pivot the scythe out from under the crossbow and gathered the snath post in the other hand and swung it with a powerful forearm, catching the satyr assaulting me by the blade slicing through the back of its neck. Its jerk backward causing further trauma pulling the beast out of the fight.
Will had retained his kukri blade and was slashing away at a crouching satyr that had spidered in under his swings and had slashed his tunic shirt with its stone blade.
“Does it bleed, pretty boy?!” it taunted him, hissing in its grunting bark, “Does it hurt? Tell us!”
Another waved a flaming firebrand at Lorgray, which Lorgray parried with his sword in a shower of sparkling embers.
Satyrs leaped into the fray, bounding out of the smoke, sneering and champing their sharp pointed teeth angrily like a flock of demons.
Lorgray was trying his best to calm his stallion, and ward off the attacks but it was getting harder and harder to do so.
We breathed heavily, and the heated air around us was making that more difficult. Smoke stung our eyes, as the lunging satyrs shook soot and ash from their hairy heads and reached for us with grimy hands stained black with all the filth they had been into. Lorgray felt his stallion’s flanks tightening and knew it was about to bolt and attempt to break through the ranks crowding in around us.
“Grab the saddle and hang on!” he shouted, and before we knew it, the stallion lurched and then sprang forward. I grabbed the pommel of the saddle, Will stepped into the stirrup, standing on Jeremiah’s foot, and swung into the saddle behind him. Lorgray leaped up and hung his knee into the open sheath saddle hook that had carried his crossbow, and we were dragged forward, barely hanging on to the frightened stallion as it galloped forward and drove bodily into the satyrs crowding into us for each to extract their pound of flesh.
The satyrs broke ranks, driven to part before the lunging horse, and both Lorgray and I raked through the more reluctant of them with our bared blades.
Terrified as it might be, the horse could not bear all of our weight for much longer, and I knew that I could not outrun these satyrs even on my best day.
In the confusion, however, we gain about two hundred feet more, before the satyrs turned en masse and began pursuit.
“Well, have to make our stand here!” Jeremiah shouted, putting a brace of crossbow bolts into the feeder line and winching the spring lock back into a killing tension. Much as he dreaded it, he knew he would have to dismount the fatiguing horse soon or the animal would crumble to its knees and quite possibly be unable to rise again.
The grunting, growling, barking mob of satyrs came on, their wild eyes gleaming in the firelight, their savagery evident and swift.
At last, the horse slowed, its fatigue overcoming its fear.
Lorgray twisted out of the saddle hook and scramble-fell down upon the dead leaves masking the trail through the woods leading up to the Faerie Fade. He had managed to snatch a long torch from one of the scattering satyrs which he held aloft in one hand and swept the air with the sword in his other.
“Get behind me!” he shouted.
It was clear to me and Jeremiah what he was about to do, and I only hoped the leaves on the path before us were as dead and dry as they appeared to be.
Jeremiah swung down from the saddle and almost crumpled to the ground. The stallion had slowed but it had not stopped, and Jeremiah was in danger of being dragged by a stirrup if the dismount was not done cleanly. I had hung my arm over the pommel and had drawn my feet up, bobbing along the right side of the horse’s belly, so detachment was not an issue for me. Will, however, refused to dismount and instead slid further into the saddle that Jeremiah had managed to vacate.
Lorgray passed the flaming torch into the dried leaves and ran along the length of the trail starting a firebreak. The leaves ignited quickly, and the mob was almost upon us.
Flames leaped up into the air, creating a temporary wall of fire that may or may not give us another hundred or so yards to retreat before we would have to turn and engage the onslaught.
We turned and ran, both Lorgray and I helping Jeremiah to hobble forward as far as we could from the temporary barrier behind us.
Will still had not dismounted the horse and to our shock and dismay, he leaned forward, gripped the reins and kicked into the flanks of the beast. The horse reared and then bolted, not used to such cruelty, but unable to resist the one in the saddle driving it forward.
Gouts of earth and mud kicked up from the horse’s shod hooves were flung at us as the steed pressed forward into the brush of the forest.
We shouted after him, but it was all we could do to breathe let alone raise our voices to command the stubborn and impulsive kid.
The boy was terrified, we knew, but this was beyond the pale, and I could not help but rage in frustration.
Excavatia 