The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [68]
But the utin struck Winna with the back of its hand, and as she staggered, it grabbed her with the other. Aspar hurled the ax, but it bounced harmlessly from the monster’s head. In the next instant it leapt straight up, taking Winna with it. It caught a low-hanging branch, swung, clenched another branch with its handlike feet. It moved off through the trees faster than a man could run.
“No!” Aspar repeated. He pushed to his feet, retrieved his bow, and chased after the rapidly receding monster. A sort of shivering was in him, a feeling he had never known before.
He pushed the emotion down and ran, reached to his belt for the arrow case the praifec had given him, and extracted the black arrow.
The utin was quickly vanishing from sight, here-again-gone-again behind trunk and branch. Breath tore harshly through Aspar’s lips as he set the relic to his string. He stopped, got his stance, and for an instant the world was quiet again. He felt the immensity of the earth beneath him, the faint breeze pushing itself over the land, the deep slow breath of the trees. He drew.
The utin vanished behind a bole, reappeared, and vanished again. Aspar aimed at the narrow gap where he thought it would appear again, felt the time come right, and released.
The ebony shaft spiraled out and away from him, hissing past leaf and branch, to where the utin’s broad back was a brief occlusion between two trees.
The quiet stretched, but stillness did not. Aspar ran again, already taking out another shaft, cursing under his breath, his heart tightening like an angry fist.
He found Winna first. She lay like an abandoned doll in a patch of autumn-reddened bracken, her dress smeared with blood. The utin sprawled a few feet away, its back to a tree, watching him come. Aspar could see the head of the black arrow protruding from its chest.
Aspar knelt by Winna, feeling for her pulse, but he kept his gaze fixed on the utin. It gurgled and spat out blood, and blinked, as if tired. It raised a six-fingered hand to touch the arrowhead.
“Not fair, mannish,” it husked. “Not weal. An unholy thing, yes? And yet it will slay you, too. Your doom is the same as mine.”
Then it vomited blood, wheezed two more times, and looked beyond the lands of fate.
“Winna?” Aspar said. “Winna?” His heart tripped, but she still had a pulse, and a strong one. He touched her cheek, and she stirred.
“Eh?” she said.
“Stay still,” Aspar said. “You fell, I don’t know how far. Do you have any pain?”
“Yes,” she said. “Every part of me hurts. I feel like I’ve been put in a bag and kicked by six mules.” She suddenly gasped and jerked up to a sitting position. “The utin—!”
“It’s dead. Still, now, until we’re sure nothing’s broken. How far did you fall?”
“I don’t know. After it hit me, everything is cloudy.”
He began inspecting her legs, feeling for breaks.
“Aspar White. Do you always get so romantic after killing an utin?” she asked.
“Always,” he said. “Every single time.” He kissed her then, from sheer relief. As he did it, he realized that in the past few moments he had known the greatest terror of his life. It was elevated so far above any fear he had ever known before, he hadn’t recognized it.
“Winna—,” he began, but a faint noise made him look up, and in the thicket behind the dead utin, he had a brief glimpse of a cowled figure, half hidden by a tree, face as white as bone, and one green eye—
“Fend!” he snarled, and reached for the bow.
When he turned, the figure was gone. He set the arrow and waited.
“Can you walk?” he asked softly.
“Yah.” She stood. “Was it really him?”
“It was a Sefry, for certain. I didn’t get a better look.”
“There’s someone coming behind us,” she said.
“Yah. That’s Stephen and Ehawk. I recognize their gaits.”
The two younger men arrived a moment later.
Stephen gasped when he saw the dead creature. “Saints!”
Aspar didn’t take his gaze from the woods. “There’s a Sefry out there,” he said.
“The tracks we saw earlier?” Ehawk asked.
“Most likely. Are you okay?” Aspar asked.
“Yes, I’m fine, thanks,” Stephen said. “A little bruised, that’s