Stormrider (28 page)

“Bear Dreamer?” Raptor repeated. He spotted Stormrider where she walked and waddled close to the ground in lock step with One Eye. “Bear Dreamer followed us through the caves—and is still following us? What can he hope to gain?”

Perhaps The Amulet—and Stormrider
. Starwalker suggested.

“Starwalker seems to think Bear Dreamer would like you and The Amulet all to himself,” Raptor spoke in the direction of Stormrider’s amorphous shadow.

“He’s the one who tried in the beginning; the shaman-warrior I told you I defeated in combat. He believes his power is strong enough to overcome mine. No doubt he’s been concentrating on that end. I have not explored his real power, that below the prowess of battle. He is a mystic, able to manipulate some of the powers of Nashira. It would be logical he would desire The Amulet as well.”

Stormrider felt the tug of Strongheart’s mind-touch pulling them in a new direction. The contact of the pack bond was enough to give her sure direction, but still she kept one hand wrapped in One Eye’s pelt. Her hand clenched with the anxiety of virtual sightlessness. The mists thinned and thickened first revealing, then hiding. Mortal danger could be only a moment away.

“Not possible it’s him they’re after.” Raptor put forth the statement. “They couldn’t have known he was near any more than they could have known about our presence. And why the search? What good could he—or we—do them? They’re coming toward us. Isn’t it more likely whoever or whatever it is they’re chasing is in front of us?”

That observation brought Stormrider up short like a slap of cold mountain water. Logic in a moment of near panic usually did.

The question did not go long unanswered. A juggernaut of a body flew into Raptor toppling his unsteady crouch, throwing him into Stormrider who oofed and clutched One Eye even closer for support while the wolf of considerable bulk snarled and snapped at what he deduced, for an instant, to be an attack.

They rolled together in an unidentifiable tangle of bodies, groping and clutching in the pale, translucent light of the mists. Their struggles kicked rents in the ground, releasing in full body the rich smell of the forest floor. Redolent with humus and the smell of growing green things it enveloped them even as the pale peachy orange of the Dinh Dinh’s beam touched them, sliding with the kiss of warm silk across them all.

Mimicking the touch of the sun it was warm, not hot. Perversely it felt to Stormrider like the chilly finger of death.

“Split up and run!” Stormrider called, not knowing if her command would even be understood by the all but invisible intruder, much less obeyed. “Scatter!”

She didn’t think. Instead she took a chance, grabbing whatever bit of the intruder was within reach and dragged him after her. Whoever it was did not protest, but got feet beneath him and moving, and blindly ran with her.

One Eye hugged close beside them.

Stormrider did not look back, did not try to make out the features of the one she dragged behind her. There was no time. Unless they lost the Dinh Dinh search and pursuit it wouldn’t matter anyway. Up ahead she heard Starwalker skittering off to the west, and knew Raptor would not be far away.

Raptor was moving fast, staying low and well aware of Starwalker touching his thoughts.

Bear Dreamer must be as powerful as Stormrider claims—he still follows.
Starwalker thumped and clattered over soft ground and hard rocks.

“To Hela with Bear Dreamer!” Raptor yelled back despite the fact he could have just as well communicated with his herd mate in silence. “He’s on his own!”

As are we all.
Starwalker remarked.

Raptor fixed his gaze on the pale shadow that was Stormrider and her new, less than hazy companion and started after her causing Starwalker to double-back. The wolves could try to draw the Dinh Dinh off ñ Raptor was determined to go after her. Song Dog ran hard to keep up as the peach rays shimmered and probed behind, swinging in criss-cross patterns guaranteed to catch everything in their net.

Voices ripped the quiet of the mists before them proving Strongheart’s suppositions to be true. Angry voices. Determined voices.The ships above were no doubt in contact with, and directing those below, based on what their beams swept over and identified.

Raptor knew the Dinh Dinh and their abilities. A bounty hunter who didn’t wouldn’t last very long. But, sometimes even a bounty hunter who did know didn’t last very long. And an Antarin Janissary, especially one named Tanith Aesir, well known to them and those who led the grab for power in Antaris, would be dispatched at their earliest convenience.

The light webs of the Dinh Dinh were capable of detecting quarry with great accuracy if details of the quarry’s make-up were fed into the Dinh Dinh computer shipboard. Without detail they were much less accurate. More of a broad spectrum shotgun effect. The wolves—even the pony Starwalker—would appear much the same as the people: living, breathing, moving creatures. Warm-blooded. Still, it could be enough. The Dinh Dinh were known for their relentlessness. And that was second only to their ruthlessness.

Loud voices, husky, rippling with hostility, came again. Closer now, they were directly ahead. Raptor broke a sweat that soaked his shirt.

Again the companions veered off. They didn’t scatter widely, but kept enough distance each from the other to protect each other should one be caught. Uneven ground under foot. Rocks and roots. Trip and stumble. Recover. Press on. Again and again the repetition. The mists held them captive, stealing their sight but blessedly doing the same to their pursuers.

Raptor lost track of the wolves, focusing only on keeping Stormrider’s vague, extended outline in sight. Eyes strained and teared. His neck ached. Muscles burned as legs pumped with the effort to keep pace with the woman Janissary.

Stormrider didn’t lose track of her pack mates.

Strongheart and Littlefoot, returned frequently to her side, reached her through the bond with consistent touch. She kept her hand in One Eye’s fur except when they separated and regrouped at her command, the wolves conceding her superior experience in this matter. In that way they created a distraction for the probing, slender threads of light.

The wolves guided her away from the source of the voices. Strongheart splintered off frequently, leading the Dinh Dinh astray. Littlefoot took one of the pursuers down on one of her forays though Stormrider never saw it. But then, she didn’t have to actually witness the act. The wrenching, brutal, feel of the kill telegraphed through the pack bond and Stormrider shuddered, tasting bile, blocking mind-touch momentarily to regain her equilibrium.

Nonetheless, Littlefoot’s choice was the only way. It could only help ensure their safety if the powerful wolves removed another of the Dinh Dinh’s forces; if she herself could take one out.

The mists thinned very slightly. Stormrider slowed her headlong dash slightly, looked back at the person she’d grabbed, still locked in her grip, still stumbling along behind her. It was a young female of The People, round-eyed and terrified. Quickly she pressed the frightened girl aside, into a dip revealed by the momentary thinning of the fog, and left her with an admonition to stay.

One Eye swept close to Stormrider, lending her his support again. She felt the silky warmth of his fur and smelled the dank closeness of his breath. More importantly she was cosseted in the protectiveness of his mind-touch.

He is yours, Stormrider—
One Eye’s pronouncement came

only a moment before she glimpsed a shadow approaching, angling in from the original direction the fliers had used on approach.

There was little enough to see, but for Stormrider it was enough. Her fighting blood sang. She crouched near the thick, dark bole of a tree praying to the Goddess that her legs would not cramp after so long a crouch, and waited.

Seconds. No more. He had come incredibly close undetected. Through a thinning swirl in the marmoreal brume she glimpsed a square, gauzy face as if seen through delicate netting, frowning, hard and angular, then an arm. Old reflexes took over for Stormrider. One Eye provided distraction.

As the Dinh Dinh recoiled at the sudden nearness of the slavering wolf, Stormrider, moved in with smooth precision. His eyes, for the barest instant in time, locked with hers across the gossamer mist. But by then it was much too late. Teeth bared in unconscious imitation of her wolf companions, she felt none of the earlier momentary squeamishness of another’s kill. Leverage was her strongest ally and she used it. He went over her bent shoulder with a snap and she didn’t let go. A brutal crack, strangely muffled, rent the air. He slammed to the ground and did not move again. Another Dinh Dinh was out of this match. Stormrider felt such a battle rush that she had to fight the urge to initiate the pack howl.

But the loss of one here and there would not make much difference to their number. It merely punched holes in their net. Stormrider hesitated, feeling as close as she’d ever come to hopelessness. She had to think, to find an idea. To catch a hook. Her mind accepted her feeling of impossibility, of helplessness, examined it, and cast it aside. She reached out into the bond for One Eye, testing his nearness, finding him very close and asked him to find the girl.
 

Strongheart ripped across the bond with another blood-curdling kill, then was circling again.

With One Eye’s help sniffing out the girl of The People where she’d concealed her, collected her, then dove once again headlong into the embrace of the mists dragging the budding young woman along with her.

* * *

Raptor heard more than saw Stormrider’s kill and flight. He followed, skirting the prone form upon the ground before pulling himself up short. Losing the searching Dinh Dinh was swiftly proving impossible. Their probing light rays were everywhere and the fact that they were losing men would do nothing to cause them to stop searching. It was quickly becoming evident to Raptor that there was no way for any of them to get clear of this unless someone found an advantage, and the dead Dinh Dinh might provide it.

Hastily Raptor frisked the prone body, peering closely at what he came up with through the moon-blessed fog. A utility belt pouch. Inside was a small radio, a canister of something he could not recognize, and a weapon Raptor had always thought of as a death-dealer. Small and silver, it was shaped somewhat like an elongated bullet, but spat from its smaller, glass-like end a laser powerful enough to—bring down a Dinh Dinh flier.

Raptor stared upward. From here he might be forced to continue on alone. There was no telling the damage he could do ñ or the cost to himself or others of their band, but this was their only chance. He could not see the fliers clearly enough to get a clean burst off, but he could see the peachy beams knifing through the swirling and eddying mists, piercing to the ground like probing needles.

“Why do you stop?” Song Dog protested harshly. “They are too near! We must follow Stormrider!”

Raptor was aware of her shadowy presence moving further ahead, but he shook his head. “She must not know the equipment of the Dinh Dinh or she would have stopped herself.” Raptor worked frantically on the radio as he spoke, the thing held before him, bare inches from his nose, to allow him to see through the dense fog.

His ability came from the sort of on-the-job training he doubted a Janissary ever saw. Using his slim-bladed, sharp-pointed knife, Raptor finished his modifications in record time.

“Take this,” Raptor snapped the back on the radio and pressed it into Song Dog’s slender hands. “See that?” He showed the youth a slightly protruding button on the side, black and shiny.

 
Song Dog nodded, the gesture a blurred bob in the moving haze, his hands unsteady. “It is their technology, perhaps it will draw them to us as the
Jaiqi
counters did! I do not wish to hold it!” There was a note of near-panic in his high, youthful voice. A definite loss of warrior aplomb.
 

“Well hang on to it anyway, it’s nothing that can lead anybody anywhere,” Raptor growled. “When I tell you to, push that button I showed you and we’ll teach the Dinh Dinh a new trick or two. Better yet, we hope they don’t live to learn them.”

At that remark Song Dog overcame his apprehension, grinning, the flashing white of his teeth even brighter than the softly iridescent mists surrounding them.

Raptor snatched up the laser weapon, turned it to full power and cast a small prayer to the winds and whatever god or goddess might care to answer that he remembered the peculiarities of Dinh Dinh equipment as clearly as he believed he did.

He hesitated an extra instant to no particular advantage other than to cast a entreaty meant for the Goddess’s ears, then cut loose with the small, powerful weapon. In utter silence the brilliant, silver beam knifed unerringly through the fog to strike the vulnerable underbelly of the Dinh Dinh craft just behind the pilot’s port.

For a moment nothing happened. Then the laser burned through the hull and the results were spectacular. First a small explosion inside. An instant later a larger one, like a dull hiccup, sent a rolling shudder throughout the craft just before it blasted outward in a deafening, thunderous roar, bits and pieces, like superheated shrapnel, whizzing in all directions. The heated chunks sizzled through moist air and flying debris sketched an erratic pattern, muted and subdued, through dense fog.

“Get down!” Raptor yelled at Song Dog. “Hit that button and get down!”