Sara Douglass – The Axis Trilogy 2 – Enchanter

“Where does this tunnel go?” Azhure asked, slipping the Wolven off her shoulders and putting it carefully down. “How long will it take us to walk through?”

“It travels completely underneath the Fortress Ranges,” Ogden said, rummaging around in one of his donkey’s packs. He pulled out a platter of raisin cookies with a flourish. “How long to walk through? Well, if we manage to keep moving with only brief rests, we should emerge into daylight in two days’ time.”

“Well,” Rivkah said, helping Veremund ease the packs from the donkeys’ backs, “I suppose I can put up with it if it gets us to Sigholt quicker.”

Azhure sat down and accepted a cookie from Ogden. She could tolerate the stifling atmosphere of the tunnel if it kept her from having to travel close to Smyrton.

Veremund sat down cross-legged and looked hopefully at his brother. “Ogden, did you happen to find any apples in your pack?”

The Sentinels were right. After only two or three hours both women were tossing and turning, their hips, elbows and shoulders sore and cold from the hard, metalled surface beneath them. They rose gratefully when Ogden called them. Even walking half asleep would be better than another minute spent prone on this floor.

Over the next two days and nights they walked five or six hours until feet started to shuffle and tempers snap, then they’d rest three, perhaps four, hours until no-one could stand the cold hard roadway any longer. Nothing about the tunnel changed. It was an eerie feeling, trapped in a small bubble of light in what seemed to be an eternity of darkness. All hungered for open spaces and fresh air so badly they could physically taste their need.

On the morning of the third day the roadway rose gently, and everyone’s spirits lifted with it. Even the tired donkeys pricked their ears and brayed as they leaned into the rise.

They emerged, every muscle in their bodies sore and weary after an eight-hour climb into a dark and cold afternoon. They scrambled over rocks and down a steep and treacherous ravine before they stepped onto flat ground, all shivering in the biting wind that blew down from the north. At Talon Spike and in the Avarinheim they had been largely protected from Gorgrael’s malicious weather, but here, at the edge of the Fortress Ranges and the WildDog Plains, the northerly wind screamed down on the little group as they huddled among a tumble of boulders.

Rivkah looked at the bleak landscape ahead. “Should we rest the night here, Ogden, before we attempt to move south? These boulders might give us the only degree of shelter we’re going to get for a long time.”

Ogden shook his head. “No, lovely lady. We will move south some hours before camping for the night. We need to move as soon as we can.” He paused. “I do not like the bite in this wind and I fear that it will sap our energies if we stay in one place too long. Best we keep moving. But, look, see what I have here.”

Ogden pulled two cloaks from his donkey’s packs and handed them to the women, who wasted no time wrapping themselves as close as they could. Veremund had similarly unpacked two cloaks from his donkey’s packs and the two Sentinels rugged up as well. Then, to the surprise of both Azhure and Rivkah, the Sentinels insisted that they each ride a donkey.

Comfortable and relatively warm atop the donkeys, neither woman complained any further.

The wind had died a little by the time they made camp for the night in the inadequate shelter afforded by a small, dry creek bed. The remains of a few dead skeleton bushes made a tiny, cheerless fire. Ogden produced some hot soup and crusty bread from one of the packs and, after they had eaten, Veremund persuaded the donkeys to lie down close to the fire. Between the donkeys and the fire, the four spent a passable night, the dry creek bed feeling like the finest feather bed to muscles still aching from the tunnel floor.

Thus they travelled for three days, slowly wending their way southwards against whatever protection the sharp clifls of the Fortress Ranges could give them. To the women, spring seemed to have hardly touched this land yet, but to the Sentinels who had survived the siege of Gorkenfort and who knew to what extremes Gorgrael could drive winter, the lack of snow gave them some hope that spring had broken through more strongly in the lands south of the Nordra. Nevertheless, the frigid wind at their backs reminded them all that Gorgrael sat to the north, rallying his forces, waiting to build his army of Ghostmen to invasion force again.

Wrapped in lonely silence atop her donkey, Rivkah wondered what her son could do to counter Gorgrael’s powerful enchantments. What could he do against a half-brother who could manipulate the very weather itself?

The AlauntOn the third day after the group left the Fortress Ranges tunnel, fluid white shapes started to nose about the rocks where the women and the Sentinels had briefly sheltered.

Suddenly one halted, and buried his nose in the remains of a scuff mark. An instant later his head lifted into the sky and an eerie howl washed over the rest of his pack. Soon all were baying, low and clear, as the pack shuffled around the remaining traces of scent. Then they moved as one past the boulders and took the faint trail south. Occasionally one or two of them lifted their snouts long enough to send another low bay winding plaintively across the empty plain before them.

The small, yellow native wild dogs after whom the plains were named, and who lived out their lives hunting mice and small birds, huddled deep into their burrows, terrified beyond reason.

They knew the Alaunt ran.

It was late in the afternoon of the fourth day when the Sentinels heard the sound of the pack baying to the north. Neither woman saw the look of deep alarm that passed between Ogden and Veremund as they urged the donkeys on a little bit faster.

Both Sentinels knew they had no hope of outrunning the Alaunt. Yet if they could delay the inevitable confrontation an hour or more they might find a more defensible position.

Azhure was the first to become aware of the tension between the two Sentinels. “What is it?” she asked, raising her voice against the wind. “Why are you worried?”

Ogden glanced atVeremund, and the two came to a swift decision. Azhure and Rivkah would hear the hounds soon enough, anyway. They were closing rapidly.

“We are being followed,” Veremund said, his voice strained.

“Followed? Who by?” Azhure reached automatically for the Wolven. “Skraelings?”

Veremund shook his head. “No. Creatures far older, fardeadlier.”

” What?” Azhure hissed. Her blood ran hot with desire for action and her hand gripped an arrow. The Wolven quivered in her hand. ” What!”

“Alaunt hounds,” Ogden said shortly, casting his eyes about the terrain before them.

Azhure swung her leg over the donkey’s wither and slid to the ground. “What are Alaunt hounds?”

It was Rivkah who answered, her eyes wide with fear. “I heard tales of them when I was small. My nurse said the Alaunt were a pack of enchanted hounds who hunted down humans. She said they neither breathed nor ate, but could run for weeks only on the scent of blood. She said,” Rivkah’s voice quavered, “that once they caught the scent of their prey they would never let go.”

“The Alaunt have not run for many thousands of years, not since WolfStar died,” Ogden said tightly, hurrying the group along, “and I do not know why they run now.”

“Can they die, Veremund? Can they be killed?” Azhure asked.

Veremund shrugged. “Who knows?”

“Well,” Azhure said, “either they will die or we will. Ogden, is that a stand of rocks ahead?”

By the time they reached the pitifully inadequate tumble of boulders near the foot of a sheer cliff face they could a ‘ hear the low, clear cries of the hounds. As the other scrambled for shelter, Azhure slapped the donkeys’ rumps hoping that they would gallop off and perhaps draw the Alaunt away.

Suddenly the cries of the hounds changed, doubling their efforts so that their howls rilled the night.

“We are lost!” Veremund cried. “Hear, they clamour!”

Azhure, an arrow already notched in the Wolven, turned and slapped the Sentinel across the face. “Be quiet, Veremund,” she hissed, her eyes hard and angry. “Get as far behind the rocks as you can.”

Rivkah huddled with the two Sentinels behind the rocks. She desperately wished that she had not left StarDrifter, that she was huddled in his arms rather than cold and terrified behind these rocks where she would surely die. StarDrifter’s casual infidelities seemed laughably inconsequential in the face of imminent death. How would it feel to die with your throat hanging open?