Chapter 56: A Rough Patch

Chapter 56: A Rough Patch

Ice touched Eli's skin. "There's another one of those things?"

"That's why they fled. And it looks like ... it looks like it chased them."

"As long as it chased them far away from here. The bandits we're following, though? They came through before the fighting, right?"The source of this content nov(el)bi((n))

She nodded. "And headed north."

"So we keep on--"

In a rush of sound, the birds took flight and a horse screamed behind them.

One of their horses, which'd they'd tied on the far side of the crossroad. Eli whipped his sparks behind them, catching glimpse of the other horse, having torn free, galloping away.

The screaming horse fell suddenly quiet.

Lara nocked an arrow and hissed, "What is it? Where?"

"I can't see--" he started, before it hunched into view.

A bear.

Dead.

Bloated.

Ten, fifteen feet tall, he couldn't tell because it was so twisted and malformed--and because he couldn't think straight through the horror.

The bear's rotting pelt was stiff with blood. The haft of a broken spear impaled its neck. White eyes, a fleshless jaw. The worst thing was the lumps beneath its skin. Each was the size of Eli's head, four or five horrible bulges shifting and squirming under that putrefying fur. Moving from the blood-bear's shoulder to its back, from its foreleg to its neck.

Well, no, that wasn't the worst thing.

The worst thing was, it roared and started loping through the mounds of ston toward them. Fast. Too blessed fast, considering it must've weight a full ton.

"Coming this way," Eli said grabbing Lara's arm.

She shook him off, focusing on her bow.

"Arrows won't do anything." He watched the bear with one spark while the other spun in wide circles around them, looking for anything that might help. "Did you see any spears, halberd?"

"No," she said.

The bear roared again.

"Move, move--this way!" He pulled her toward one of the higher mounds of stone. "Climb up. I'll draw it away."

"That's not--"

"Do as I say!" he snarled.

He dropped his sword and interwove his fingers and she put her boot in his hands and he threw her upwards. She landed unsteady on the sloped side of the stone dome. She caught herself and scrambled higher and he grabbed the sword and sprinted.

When the dead bear reached the ... the other dead bear, the dismembered bear, it roared again. Then it sniffed and started prowling toward Lara.

"Here!" Eli yelled, shoving through the underbrush between domes. "Hey!"

One spark darted ahead, looking for a defensible location or a hiding spot. Of a blessdamned miracle. The other lofted above, watching the bear charge toward him, fast as a racing dog despite its heft. And the blighted thing tracked him too well, veering around the stone walls that he'd swerved behind moments earlier.

Massive paws slapped the ground.

He clawed at the smooth stone wall, desperate for purchase. One of his nails tore off and one of his sparks watched Lara throw a bunch of leaves at him. What the halo was she thinking?

He didn't wonder for long, because the bear rose to its full height, roared in fury, swatted him so hard that he felt his hip shatter.

The pain tinted the world red.

The sky spun as the blow slammed him upward. He saw the ground, the sky, the bear, the ground, the sky--

He landed with a grunt of agony on the roof, and rolled toward the edge, so fast that he couldn't stop himself. He dug his sparks into cracks in the roof and spread his arms wide for purchase. His hip screamed in pain and Lara dropped another armful of leaves and flung herself at him, grabbing his ankle the moment that his head flopped over the edge of the roof.

The ankle of his injured leg.

He howled in pain and balanced there precariously for a terrible, agonized moment, then managed to flop onto the roof.

While he gritted his teeth, waiting for the numbness to kick in, Lara watched the blood-bear roaring and spitting at the base of the mound. Trying to climb, but unable to digs its claws into the smooth, near-vertical wall.

He panted and gasped, and realized when she'd been throwing. Not leaves, vines. A thick length of the ivy that grew on half the mounds.

"You threw ... me ... a vine?" he asked, catching his breath.

"And if you'd gotten here five seconds faster instead of playing in that bramble bush, you could've climbed it easy as a rope."

"A vine. You are such a dryad."

"You hush." She knelt beside him. "You're healing okay?"

"Yeah. I'll be good as new in ten minutes." He glanced at his numb hip, then winced at the extent of the damage. "Or, um, thirty."

The bear roared at the base of the building, then started pacing and pawing and grunting.

"How did you get up here?" he asked her. "Without someone throwing you a rope-vine?"

"I climbed the ivy."

"Oh. It supported you?"

"I'm half your weight. Plus, I am such a dryad."

He half-smiled, then winced as he skooched farther from the edge.

"That was too close," she said. "You're tough, but that thing could bite your head clean off."

"Yeah." He watched with his sparks. "Where did it come from?"

She shrugged. "A den inside one of the buildings? Or the Bloodwitch commanded it to patrol."

"How'm I supposed to kill her when I can't even handle her pet?"

"The bad news is, we might need to actually think of something."

"Funny."

"And plan ahead, which I know isn't your--"

He frowned at a sight one of the sparks sent him.

"What?" she asked.

"The bear found a rough patch." He nodded toward the other side of the building. "It's climbing the wall."