Rook Fenwall's Arc

Chapter 5 of 11

The serpent lay dead at Rook's feet. Beyond its coils, the narrow gap breathed cold air. Then the air changed. It stopped breathing out and began to pull. Something below was climbing, and it was climbing fast. The little dragons scattered from the branches and fled up into the dark. Their light went with them. Rook heard the first sounds. Claws scraped stone inside the gap. Not one set. Many. A low whine rose from the hole, thin and wrong, like wind through a broken reed. Shapes spilled out over the dead serpent's body. Lean things, long as hounds but stretched like worms, their ribbed sides working as they crawled. They had no eyes. Their muzzles swung side to side, tasting the air for him. Rook set his back to the ironwood trees and raised his shield. The blind pack fanned out across the stone. He counted six, then more behind them. They were not the horror. They ran ahead of it, the way rats flee a rising flood. Whatever drove them up was worse, and it was still below. The first hound lunged. Rook swung his sword flat and knocked it into the tree trunk. Bone cracked. A second latched onto his greave. He drove his heel down and felt it break. But they kept coming, faster than he could strike, drawn to the ring of his armor. He could not hold this ground. He could not go back up the ridge. The only door was the one they'd crawled out of. An arrow took the nearest hound through the neck. Then another. A gray wolf shot past Rook's leg and seized a hound by the spine, shaking it dead. Rook turned. At the edge of the failing light stood the retired ranger, hood back, drawing his long bow again. The old man had guided Rook only to the ridge. He had no cause to be down here in the dark. "You're a slow learner, iron man," the ranger said. He loosed. "I marked the paths for you. Didn't say I'd stop watching." His wolf tore into another hound. "That gap's a throat. You want the thing that killed your people, it's down that throat. But not through this many teeth." Rook understood. He could not fight them all here. He drove forward instead, straight at the gap, shield first. He crushed two hounds against the rock and jammed his body into the mouth of the tunnel. Behind him the pack could come only one at a time. He wedged there, sword ready, and killed each blind head as it pushed through, until the whine faded and the last hound lay still. Blood slicked the stone. Rook stood alone in the tunnel's mouth. The ranger's wolf licked its jaws above. Below, the pull of cold air went on, steady and patient. The pack had been a warning. The thing that sent them still waited in the dark, and now the road down was open.