Gods and Warriors (27 page)

“If you leave me,” called Hylas, “you’ll never find your ship!”

“Yes, I will,” Akastos replied. “You said it’s easy to reach if the wind isn’t too strong. The wind’s been in the northwest since my ship foundered, which means the wreck is on the northwest coast.”

“But—even if you find it, you’ll be trapped when the Crows get here! And they will come! I know a place to hide, I can help—”

“I don’t need your help.”

“Please!”

Something in his voice made Akastos stop.

“Don’t leave me,” pleaded Hylas. “I haven’t
done
anything!”

“I know,” said Akastos in an altered voice. “But I can’t let that get in the way.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “We’re alike, you and I. Both survivors. Maybe you’ll think up something to cheat them of their due.”

“Akastos!”

But he was gone.

The silence after he left was dreadful. Through the black
branches, Hylas watched the last glimmer of daylight drain from the sky. A few pale stars glinted. Then clouds snuffed them out. The darkness deepened. It would be a night without a Moon.

Hylas felt the tree’s rough bark digging into his shoulder blades, and Akastos’ marks stiffening on his skin. He smelled charred wood and the stink of ash.

He heard the rushing of wings.

H
ylas struggled wildly. The bindings held fast. He tried to rub off Akastos’ marks, but his arms were pinioned against his sides; he couldn’t reach.

A deeper darkness sped across the sky.

He searched his memory. He began haltingly to mutter the charm.

The darkness swept past, and the sound of wings faded into the night. He strained to listen. He knew they would be back.

The Angry Ones hunt those who have murdered their kin, and he hadn’t murdered anyone, but he knew that wasn’t going to save him. The Angry Ones don’t care who gets in their way. If you’re too close to their quarry—or if you bear his mark—they’ll hunt you too.

Akastos had known what he was doing. He’d bound Hylas to the tree with knots that couldn’t be undone, and put his mark on him twice, so that there would be no mistake. Hylas was as helpless as a goat staked out as bait for a lion.

A huge shadowy form blotted out the sky. It dropped
onto the rim of the gully. It folded its wings with a leathery
thwap.

Hylas’ spirit shrank.

More wingbeats. Another shadow lit onto the rim. Hylas heard the clink of claws on cinders. He smelled the stink of charred flesh. He saw the darkness move.

A terrible, listening silence.

From the rim of the gully he seemed to see darkness congeal and snake down, swaying from side to side. Seeking
him.

In his mind he felt them. Their flesh was burned black by the fires of Chaos. Their raw red mouths were gaping wounds.

Could they see in the dark? Could they hear his labored breath and the sweat trickling down his sides? Could they smell his terror?

He had no buckthorn to ward them off. All he could do was mutter the charm—but under his breath, in the desperate hope that he wouldn’t give himself away.

At the corner of his eye, something stirred on the ground.

There. At the mouth of the gully. He strained to pierce the blackness, but it was too dense.

Above him, on the rim, the dark was churning, long necks snaking down to find him.

Again that movement on the ground—but closer now, a shadow stealing toward him. The charm stuck in his throat. Dread squeezed his heart…

“Hylas!” whispered the shadow on the ground. “It’s me! Pirra!”

It was so dark that she had to grope her way toward him. If it hadn’t been for his fair hair, she would never have found him.

“Are you all right?” she whispered, tugging at the knots behind his back. They were like granite; she couldn’t undo them.

“Have you got the dagger?” he panted. “Quick! Cut me free!”

She hacked at the rawhide, but it was too tough.

“
Hurry!
They’re right above us!”

She raised her head. Terror washed over her.

A dark shape wheeled down and settled in the cypresses at the mouth of the gully. Pirra heard the scrape of claws and the leathery crackle of wings.

Again she attacked the rope. Her hands were shaking. The blade bounced off.

“He put his mark on me,” hissed Hylas. “That’s what they sense. I can’t reach it—can you?”

“Where?”

“Brow and breastbone. And he tied his hair around my neck.”

Frantically, she felt for his face and rubbed off the charcoal with her fingers, then did the same for his chest. The hair around his neck was too slippery to untie. She tried to cut it. She’d never imagined that hair could be
so strong. At last she managed it and cast the hair aside. As she started on the rope, she remembered the buckthorn leaves in her belt.

“Why’d you stop?” whispered Hylas.

“I’ve got buckthorn—”

“It won’t work, they’re too close!”

Thirty paces away, a shadowy form dropped from the cypresses and hit the ground with an appalling thud.

They froze.

Pirra renewed her attack on the rope. “I can’t,” she muttered. “It’s taking too long.”

“Find a stone,” gasped Hylas, “and a scrap of charcoal. Scratch his mark on it and—and tie the hair around.”

She grasped what he meant. “A decoy?”

“Do it now, untie me after!”

“But—”

“Pirra, if we don’t make that decoy right now, it won’t matter how fast we run!”

She grabbed a stone and snapped off a branch from the poplar. “The marks,” she breathed. “What did they look like?”

“I—I never saw them.”

Her mind raced. “Did he tell you his name?

“Akastos.”

“What did the marks
feel
like?”

The shadow at the mouth of the gully swayed. Pirra heard a dreadful snuffing sound. Dread darkened her mind.

“It felt like—like a dagger pointing down… and I think—bars at either end of the hilt—”

“I know it, it’s the first sound of his name.” Blindly, she scratched what she hoped was the right mark on the stone. But where was the hair? She scrabbled in the dust. Couldn’t find it. Panic closed in.

Got it.
With trembling hands, she tied it around the stone.

“Hurry,”
urged Hylas.

The snuffing ceased. The shadow went still. It had caught the scent.

As if at some signal, another dropped from the ridge, whirling down in a gust of foul wind to settle in the cypresses. Then another.

At last the hair was tied. Pirra drew back her arm and flung the stone as far as she could toward the mouth of the gully.

“Cut me loose!” panted Hylas.

The shadow on the ground halted—swayed—and lurched after the stone.

Feverishly, Pirra hacked at the rope.

“Don’t hack,” said Hylas, “saw, like you’re sawing wood!”

She’d never sawed wood in her life, but she grasped what he meant. He twisted and strained. The rope burst.

Leaping to his feet, Hylas grabbed the dagger in one hand and Pirra’s wrist in the other. Together they fled the only way they could: up the gully, into the unknown.

As they ran, Pirra glanced back—and glimpsed winged
shapes that would live in her nightmares forever, dropping from the trees and converging on the place where she’d cast the stone.

“Are you all right?” Pirra said quietly.

Hylas nodded.

“You don’t look it.”

“Thanks.”

“I only meant—”

“No, I mean—thanks. For coming to find me.”

“Oh.” With her heel she hacked at the dust. “Well. I wouldn’t have survived very long if I hadn’t.”

Hylas hugged his knees and wondered when he would stop shaking. It had been horrible, stumbling through the gully in the dark, dreading at any moment to hear the Angry Ones coming after them. They’d reached a dead end; then the sky had cleared and in the starlight he’d found a ravine winding west. After an endless scramble it had opened out and they’d glimpsed the Sea, a sheet of dull silver in the stillness before dawn.

As the Sun woke, they’d sheltered under a thornbush and shared what was left in the waterskin—which, amazingly, Pirra had managed to keep with her.

“Let’s go,” she said, wrenching him back to the present.

“You start, I’ll catch up,” he muttered.

She seemed to realize that he needed to be on his own, and headed down the slope.

Numbly, he stared at bees bumping about among
clumps of purple thyme, and hoverflies buzzing around yellow thistles. It didn’t seem real. How could all this exist when They did too? Where did the darkness go when the Sun came up? Where were the Angry Ones now?

He could still feel them, like a stain on his spirit. He thought of Akastos, and that haunted look in his eyes.
I’ve been on the run longer than you’ve been alive…

He longed for Spirit. He wanted to dive with the dolphin through the shimmering Sea, and feel it washing away the darkness inside him. Spirit would understand without having to be told.

Pirra was coming back. He watched her scrambling up the slope. Something was wrong. He rose to his feet.

“Get down!” she whispered.

“What is it?”

“A ship! They’re just coming ashore. I didn’t stop to look, but I think they’re Crows!”

Hylas thought fast. “Where is it?”

“Like I said, on the beach!”

“Yes but where?”

She pointed south.

“That’s something. I think our camp’s to the north, so at least we don’t have to get past them.”

Together they crept downhill.

Suddenly Pirra pulled him behind a boulder. “There,” she breathed.

The ship was drawn up on the shingle about a hundred paces to the south. Hylas took in its furled sail the color
of dried blood, and the men leaping over the sides in long black cloaks and boar’s-tusk helmets. He saw the glint of their leader’s bronze armor. He saw their faces.

He saw their faces.

He swayed. There was a roaring in his ears. He felt as if he were falling from a great height.

One of them was Telamon.