Only three Hounds remained. Shan and Gear had set off, taking divergent paths. Where they were now and what was happening to them Fiddler had no idea, but Baran, Blind and Rood did not seem perturbed at their absence. The sightless female padded at Icarium's side as if she was nothing more than a well-trained companion to the Jhag. Baran held back as rearguard, while Rood — pale, mottled, a solid mass of muscle — waited not five paces from Fiddler's position, motionless. Its eyes, a dark liquid brown, seemed fixed on the sapper.
He shivered, his gaze flicking once again to Blind.
Mappo stood on the Jhag's other side, the burnished long-bone club raised before him. A surge of compassion flooded Fiddler. The Trell was being torn apart from within. He had more than just shapeshifters to guard against — there was, after all, the companion he loved as a brother.
Crokus and Apsalar, the former with his fighting knives out and held in admirably relaxed grips, flanked Servant. Pust slunk along a step behind them.
And this
He had paused before the bend in response to an instinctive hesitation that seemed to wrap an implacable grip around his spine. Go
His eyes, still wandering over the group behind him, caught on something, focused.
Rood's hackles had begun a slow rise.
'Hood!''
Movement exploded all around him, a massive shape barrelling into view directly ahead with a roar that turned Fiddler's marrow into spikes of ice. And above, a thudding flapping of leathery wings, huge talons darting down.
The charging Soletaken was a brown bear, as big as a noble-born's carriage, both flanks brushing the root walls of the maze, where arms were pulled, stretched, hands closed on thick fur. The sapper saw one unhuman limb torn from the trio of joints that formed its shoulder, spurting old, black blood. Ignoring these desperate efforts as if they were no more than burrs and thorns, the bear lunged forward.
Fiddler dropped to the root-bound floor — the bark hot and greasy with some kind of sweat — sparing no breath to shout even a warning. Not that it was needed.
The bear's underside swept over him in a blur, the fur pale and smeared in blood, then it was past, even as the sapper rolled to follow its attack.
The bear's attention was fixed exclusively on the blood-red enkar'al hovering before it — another Soletaken, shrieking with rage. The bear's paws lashed out, closing on empty air as the winged reptile darted backward — and into the reach of Mappo's club.
Fiddler could not fathom the strength behind the Trell's two-handed, full-shouldered swing. The weapon's tusked head struck the enkar'al's ridged chest and plunged inward with a snapping of bones. The enkar'al, itself the size of an ox, seemed literally to crumple and fold around that blow. Wing bones broke, neck and head were thrown forward, eyes and nostrils spraying blood.
The reptilian Soletaken was dead before it struck the root wall. Talons and hands received and held it.
'No!' Mappo roared.
Fiddler's gaze darted to Icarium — but the Jhag was not the cause of the Trell's cry, for the Hound Rood had attacked the massive bear, striking it from the side.
With a scream the Soletaken lurched sideways, up against the root wall. Few were the reaching limbs that could hold fast such a beast, yet one awaited it, one wrapped its green-skinned length around the bear's thick neck, and that one possessed a strength beyond even the Soletaken's.
Rood clamped a flailing paw in its jaws, crushing bones, then tore the appendage away with savage shakes of its head.
'Messremb!' the Trell bellowed, struggling in Icarium's restraining grip. 'An ally!'
'A Soletaken!' Iskaral Pust shrieked, dancing around.
Mappo sagged suddenly. 'A friend,' he whispered.
And Fiddler understood.
