Extinction - Lisa Smedman [21]
Be still, he signed. Then, do you hear that?
They had walked for the rest of the night through the forest without hearing anything but the pattering of the rain that was melting the slush underfoot, but from somewhere ahead came the sound of an animal's howl. It was answered a few moments later by a second howl, somewhere to the right, that ended in a series of brief, excited yips. The yips had a pattern, almost like that of speech.
There're at least two of them, Halisstra signed back.
Ryld nodded. He peered into the forest but the light of the rising sun, slanting in through a crack in the heavy cloud cover, was ruining his darkvision.
Halisstra reached for her sword as she signaled, They're coming our way.
Yes. And they're moving fast, but… He listened for a moment and heard a high-pitched yelp of alarm. They're not hunting. They're fleeing from something.
A grim look on her face, wet hair dripping onto the shoulders of her armor, Halisstra drew her sword. Curiously, she did not ready it but instead reversed the blade and held the hilt to her lips.
Levitate, she said with her free hand. Hide.
She pressed her lips to the hilt and blew, and a haunting music filled the air. An instant later she disappeared. The only way Ryld could tell she was still there was by looking at the ground. The spot where no rain was falling marked where she stood.
As the howls and yips drew closer, Ryld touched his brooch. He rose silently into the air through sodden tree branches, then paused at a height of about ten paces and readied his crossbow. A moment or two later, he heard a rustling in the underbrush. An enormous gray-furred animal that walked on four spindly legs burst into sight, running full out with its tongue lolling and eyes wide. It glanced from side to side as it ran-not with the terror of a wild creature but with a keen intelligence as if seeking somewhere to hide. It yipped once, was answered by a companion still some distance away in the woods, then was gone.
Ryld could have shot his crossbow but had not. He wanted to save the magical bolt for whatever was chasing the carnivore. He didn't have long to wait. A few moments later, he heard something big crashing through the forest with stumbling steps. From its gait, it sounded like a human, but by the snap of branches and the huffing grunts Ryld guessed that it was much larger. When it crashed into sight, smashing a slender tree in half with one careless swipe of its hand, Ryld saw that he'd been right.
It was a troll.
Twice the height of a drow and nearly five times as heavy, the troll had a mottled, gray-green hide covered in splotchy gray lumps. It loped along on misshapen, three-toed feet, its rubbery arms so long that its knuckles made drag marks through the slush on the ground. Greenish-black hair grew from its sloping forehead down its back in a tangled, dirty mane, and even in the steady rain its body emitted a foul smell somewhere between human sweat and the stench or rothe manure.
Ryld stared down at the troll as it paused, streams of drool sliding from the corners of a panting mouth filled with broken teeth. Once again, he refrained from shooting his crossbow. The bolt would do no more than annoy the troll and alert it to the fact that someone was there.
After a moment, having caught its breath, the troll got ready to run again. Then its head suddenly whipped to the side, and its nostrils flared.
"Halisstra! Watch out!" Ryld shouted-more to draw the troll's attention than to warn Halisstra, who was almost certainly watching the troll herself.
In that same instant, Ryld fired. The bolt whizzed toward its target but glanced off a branch just before striking the troll. Instead of burying itself in the monster's eye, as Ryld had intended, the bolt sliced a furrow across the top of the troll's head. A heartbeat later, the graze mended itself.
The troll, having scented Halisstra, raked the air in front of it with long sweeps of its clawed hands. It must have come uncomfortably close, for an instant later Halisstra