Chapter Five - The Hunt
Branches tore at her face, her arms, her legs. Her patched wool stockings shredded, one shoe gone. The gasping, mewing cry at her shoulder had quieted to a series of grunts as Clay clung around her neck. His grubby little fingers had scraped her shoulders raw and she could scarcsely breathe from his little arms around her throat.
"Iris," Flint gasped, trotting along beside her. His hands were spotted with blood from Lily's split knees and his own scratches and abrasions. "Iris, I can't..."
She stopped, her heart throbbing so hard in her throat she couldn't breathe. Distantly, she could hear the baying of hounds and the jeers of the small band of horsemen who were in hot pursuit. Panic turned her blood to ice and exhaustion made lead weights of her legs.
Flint had done his best to first lead and then carry Lily, but he had not had the years to fill-out that Jasper had, and his legs and arms buckled beneath him once they stopped running. The pair tumbled to the underbrush, silent tears drawing webs through dirty cheeks.
We're breathin' so loud, they'll hear us for sure! Iris lamented, doubled over. Her hands gripped her knees as she racked her brain for any hidden copse or cave or hollow log - any place they could hide.
"We-" she gaspsed, "Know this land inside out, Flint. We spent our whole lives here, playin' and workin'... where can we hide?"
Her brother shook his head, "Don't know, 'Ris, but... gotta find a place fast. They're getting close. "
...iiiiiirrriiiissss....
"What?"
...iiiiiiirrrrriiiiissss....
Clay was looking up at her, terror and trust in equal parts on his face. Lily too, peering up from the wet foliage like a lost fawn trapped in a briar.
"You don't hear it?"
"Jes the dogs and the riders," Flint hissed, "Quiet, 'Rissy, you'll bring 'em down on us!"
Iris tilted her head, listening again for the urgent whisper.
"There! I see them!" A strangely sultry voice cracked across the clearing. Iris whirled to face their pursuers, clutching Clay and Daisy to her protectively. An etherial silvery apparition pointed a graceful arm at them, her stallion's nostril's flaring as it pawed the ground. It seemed to Iris that it was more lion than horse, hungry for blood - her blood.
Suddenly they were all there, forming a half-circle around the small clearing where she and her siblings clustered in fear. Riders in mail and horses barded in steel and silk. The silvery woman, so beautiful and grotesquely alien. A lordly man all in leather, bearing a vast golden torque at his throat and a thin silver circlet about his brow.
Thump... thump... thump... Her heart was striving to burst free from her chest, she could feel it.
The horsemen moved closer, spreading out to close the circle, trapping them. Dogs barked and howled, nipping at Flint's feet as he scrambled like a crab, closer to his big sister.
....nad'uum vaekliamor akan! she heard the cold voice in her brain.
"Nad'uum vaeklimaor" she heard her own voice screaming, as if of its own volition. Desperately, clinging to her siblings, Iris opened her throat and howled. "AKAAAN!"
Bathsheba cursed and clenched her delicate fist so hard her nails drew blood from her palm. Karack gaped like a fish out of water. To a man, his companions were silent and stunned.
"Who has taught them this?"
Horace glanced at the man who called himself Lord and rolled his eyes.
The dogs sniffed around helplessly, giving little confused yelps.
"I seen it with me own eyes, an' I don't hardly believe it." Horace muttered, stepping closer to the tree the children had found shelter beneath.
Though the wet leaves showed each of their little footsteps and the air was still warmer where their bodies had been, the clearing was now utterly empty.
"What are they doing?" Flint asked, peering down at the party.
They were fifty feet in the air, at least, but they hadn't climbed and the trees here were too old and dead to support their weight anyway. He was suspended in the air, and cloaked from sight, it seemed, but how he wondered.
"What did you do, 'Rissy?"
Astounded, Iris could only shake her head and give silent thanks to whatever stone gods had awakened in time to save their lives.
"I don't know," she chewed on her lower lip, holding back angry tears. Only now was she able to wonder who they were, why they had come, and what exactly they wanted with her family.
Posted by Pheenie @ 8/28/2008 10:07:00 AM