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The story so far:
Chapter 3
The Food of Demons
They set out at a brisk trot, hurrying to put the hill-country behind them before they could be ambushed again. But those same hills delayed them; the road kept doubling back, chasing its own tail. An hour’s hard riding took them little more than a mile, as the crow flies, from the place where Lim died. In that bleak terrain, the enemy’s signals, one band of Taken shouting to the next, travelled faster than horses.
‘If the demons want this place,’ said Revel sourly, ‘I say we let them have it.’
‘It was green and pleasant when I was young, Surin,’ said Jandi. ‘There were such deer in the hills then, a hunter would give a season of his life to catch one. All gone now. They fled at the touch of this winter.’
Revel glanced up at the livid sky. ‘So would we, if we had any sense. How do they work this weather, anyway?’
‘All of Anai asks the same question, Surin. Had we such lore, we could fight them without help. This only we know: wherever the demons go, the sun is hidden and the snows follow.’
Another keening cry rose and fell, closer this time. ‘How far to the Cleft of Bones, Jandi?’
‘Not far, Surin. The river lies just beyond that ridge.’
Ridge, thought Revel, was hardly the word for it. A sheer face of cracked and weathered rock barred their way northward, impassable except where the road passed through a narrow notch and over the storm-scoured crest.
‘They’ll try to stop us.’ The Badger pointed at the notch. ‘There or nowhere.’ [Read more…]
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