Twice in five minutes the ground around trembled as a lightning strike brought down one of the giant trees that surrounded them. Every now and again the rain would ease for a moment, enabling the couple to see the alarming rise in the level of the river. It had turned into a frothing, muddy maelstrom that was already lapping at its banks.
“Gonna have to move!”
Krysty could just feel Ryan’s words, rather than hear them. She squeezed his hand to show that she had understood him. “To the village?”
“Unless river bursts and we get flash flood. Close to it now.” A rumble of thunder surrounded them, so intense that Krysty put her hands to her ears, expecting to find them bleeding. Ryan tried again. “If rain eases again, we’ll run for it.”
THE RAIN DIDN’T EASE again. If anything it pounded down with renewed vigor. Ryan checked his wrist chron by the constant silver glow of the lightning, finding that the storm had been raging for only twenty-five minutes, a time that seemed an eternity.
Once the river went, it would be highly dangerous to remain where they were, but to have moved from cover earlier during such a cataclysmic tempest would have been suicidal.
Krysty tugged at his hand. “Look!”
The rain swirled around in an impenetrable blanket, but it parted for a moment, showing that the inevitable had happened. The river was no longer confined between the banks and was spreading steadily across the clearing toward them.
It seemed that the heart of the darkness had passed, and the lightning was no longer a constant. There were gaps between the flash and the rumble, showing that the storm was moving away from them.
“Let’s go!” Ryan yelled. Still holding on to Krysty’s hand, he led the way through the rain, moving quickly in a stooped run, away from the flooding river.
Away from the village.
A NARROW HUNTING TRAIL doglegged up the side of the valley. It was more like a muddy river than a track, and climbing it was slippery and difficult. Orange water streamed down from higher up the hill, filling the deep ruts. Half the time Krysty and Ryan were on hands and knees, battling their way toward the top.
A large fir tree had been struck by lightning and lay across the trail, its bark smoldering.
As Ryan started to climb over, the earth shifted below it and the tree began to slide toward the edge of the trail and a sheer drop to the flooded river.
With an effort he pushed off, his boots slipping on the sodden bark of the tree, managing to roll free before it toppled over the brink and vanished into the veil of rain.
He lay flat on his back in the slimy mud, water pouring over him. Wiping dirt from his eye, he blinked up at Krysty. “You all right, lover?”
He grinned, his teeth white through the mask of yellowish mud. “If this is all right, then I guess I am.”
EVERY TWIST AND TURN of the track seemed to take them farther from the village.
The lightning was now two or three miles away, the thunder subsided to a sullen background roar. But the rain continued to fall with remorseless intent.
Both Ryan and Krysty had a highly developed sense of direction, but the winding, bending track and the overpowering presence of the storm were so distracting that within less than an hour they found themselves lost.
“We’re not really lost,” Ryan insisted. “I’m fairly sure that I know which way the village is. Just that I’m not at all sure that I know how to get back there.”
“I think it’s in that direction,” Krysty said, pointing a finger into the ceaseless rain, a little to their left and behind them.
“Yeah. About what I figure, also. But there’s been no side trail off to the left at all, and we still seem to be climbing higher and higher.”
“I reckon we’re moving away, lover.”
Ryan nodded, water dripping from his dark, curly hair, now matted to his skull. “Best we stop until this stops. Then we should mebbe backtrack. Hope the river’s gone down. Get across it and then straight home again.”