Darkwell - Douglas Niles [45]
After his heart ceased its pounding, once again Daryth turned to climb. He began to wonder if he might not avoid the creature by scaling this granite face to the top, where the four-footed predator would be unable to pursue. He felt with his fingers to find a handhold above his head while he stood on the wide ledge. At last he found a grip, and he quickly pulled himself upward. Once again he held the scimitar away from the rock, ready to strike in the event of any surprise attack.
Now came another growl from the darkness, this time deep and heavy. It rumbled off the rock and echoed through the silence with a sinister resonance. Daryth could see nothing below, but he sensed the thing slinking toward the bottom of the cliff. With a detached sense of wonder, he thought it uncanny that the creature always seemed to move in perfect stealth, never giving even a whisper of sound at its passage.
Turning back to his task, Daryth pulled himself up the rock wall with practiced skill. He concentrated less on silence than on speed, for he sensed safety in the unseen heights above him. Pulling on tiny cracks in the rock, forcing his boots into impossibly narrow wedges, he made steady progress up the wall.
And then the awful approach came from behind him, and his heart failed for a moment. With a soft moan of terror, he clung to the rock as he felt the presence, immediately below him, of death. The creature sprang to the ledge the Calishite had just left, landing soundlessly on the narrow shelf of rock. Daryth couldn't hear or see the leap, but he knew that the thing once again crouched very near.
He forced himself free from the paralysis of his terror and stared below, holding Cat's-Claw out from the rock so that the blade shed as much light as possible. Those great yellow eyes, slanted up at the corners in oriental fashion, gazed hungrily at him from just a few feet below the level of his boot.
The light from the scimitar spilled over the ledge where the creature perched, but though the Calishite could see the rock and patches of fungus and the huge eyes of the thing, he could see nothing else. A black shadow blocked his view of some of the rock, and from this he discerned a long, feline shape. He had to guess the creature's shape more from what he couldn't see than what he could.
Heavy lids drooped over those terrible eyes in a slow blink, and immediately Daryth hurtled himself up the face. Perhaps, with luck, the ledge below would prove too narrow for the monster to gain footing to spring.
His left hand forced into a wedge, while his right still held the blade. Daryth kicked and scraped at the rock with his boots, looking for a foothold. One boot caught on a rough spur, and he hoisted himself up with growing desperation. In a frenzy, he probed with his other foot, seeking any support that would hold his weight.
A hot wound slashed through the leather heel of his boot, into the sole of his right foot. He cried out in pain as he felt a tug. Instinctively Daryth slashed downward with Cat's-Claw into the black space below his foot. His other hand began to slip from its hold, but then the keen blade bit into something that twisted angrily beneath the impact and the tugging ceased.
Gasping, he pulled himself up another few feet and wedged himself into a narrow, chimneylike crack that stretched vertically above him. Turning his back to the cliff, he held the blade across his lap and stared, wide-eyed, into the blackness.
Even as he struck the thing, he realized, the creature had made no sound. Where was it now? Had it fallen back to the ground or to the ledge below? Or was it even now creeping up the cliff toward his tiny shelter? Was this where he was destined to die?
Cursing silently, Daryth attempted to cast off these morbid thoughts. He realized that his hands – his whole body, really – were shaking from the close call. Oddly, the first biting pain in his foot