“Like pork.” The black litah lifted its head suddenly, ears pricked, listening intently. Seeing this, Simna immediately scrambled to his knees and turned to scan the dense woods through which they were racing.
“What is it? More of them in the trees? They can’t hope to run us down. As long as we have wind at our backs and clear road ahead they’ll never catch us.”
“Footsteps.” The litah sat still as a sculpture in obsidian, listening. On the other side of the wagon, an intent Hunkapa Aub was likewise scrutinizing the forest. “Not human. Not human skeletons, that is. Something else.”
“Something else, how?” Standing tall in the rear of the wagon, Ehomba steered them expertly down the track and past the most egregious ruts and potholes.
“Heavier,” the litah explained bluntly.
They came tearing out of the trees off to the left, the cavalry riding not to the rescue but intent on total destruction. There were too many to count as the windwagon, with full canvas up and traveling at top speed, negotiated one dip and curve after another in the increasingly uneven track.
Baying like a hundred xylophones all playing in concert, skeletal warriors came pounding out of the forest on skeleton mounts, waving their weapons over their bleached skulls as they sought to ride down the fleeing wagon. Naked pelvises sat astride the ivory-colored spines of horses and mules, zebras and okapis, kudu and pronghorn. It was a charge the likes of which even an experienced horseman like Simna ibn Sind had never hoped to see, a charge from Hell.