THE STONE KING -- book two of The Chronicles of the First Age

Chapter Twenty Six

For Theris, the days had become an endless blur of sunrises, sunsets, eating, sleeping and defecating. Even the memories of his wife and daughter had begun to fade in the haze of empty hours. On rare nights, Asophra would appear in his dreams, demanding to know why he hadn't rescued her. Then the pain would return as fresh and sharp as the day his village had been attacked. The rest of the time, her memory-like the world around him-receded to little more than a fevered dream. The only time he felt alive was when he and his men were chasing gob-bocari.

Then, in the twilight hours of dawn and dusk, his pulse would quicken and his eyes sharpen. Even the scents of the wild brush and the moist soil of the un-cursed lands smelled richer at that time. He would stalk upwind sniffing, alert to the slightest whisper of gob-bocari stirring in whatever hidey-holes they had disappeared into during the day. When they were found, the Hunt would explode in a frenzied passion of violence and not stop until they had torn their prey apart with spears and knives.

The gob-bocari always ran to the west. It was as if some animal instinct told them that Theris would not cross the Pardos River. Several times the Hunt was left standing on the banks of that river watching the gob-bocari's round heads bobbing downstream. Theris never learned if they could swim, they certainly didn't seem to make any effort to, yet they would run straight into the water if the Hunt would follow them that far.

The Hunt zigzagged between the Pardos River and the Pelahi mountains, moving ever southward. They spent several days outside the river city of Dinuva Crossing, hiding in the brush and watching the people of that strange tribe come and go. Theris never suggested they enter that city, and though they only saw a small fraction of the population enter and exit its busy gates, he decided his wife and daughters were not likely to be found within. The Dinu didn't seem the sort of people to attack their neighbors and, the more he probed his faded memories, the more he suspected the beast-like men who attacked his village, might in fact have been gob-bocari.

Theris ran, sword in hand and teeth to the wind, as the Hung clambered over hills and crashed through hollows. They had left the last koria of men behind days before and the further away they got, the thicker the number of gob-bocari grew. When a creature fell or became trapped in a dead end, they finished it off with a quick thrust of the spear and raced on, herding the rest of the mob eastward, keeping them pressed against the foothills of the Pelahi.

Bursting through a thicket into river-swept clearing along the rocky shore of the Pardos, Theris heard an angry buzz and saw blurred glimpses of something like small birds striking down the gob-bocari. "Halt!" He called out and stopped, his men stopping next to him, though not before a man on his right was hit in the thigh with what looked like a small spear. The man dropped and the fleeing gob-bocari continued to fall as they tried to run away.

A dozen figures stood about fifty yards away on the opposite side of the clearing holding up short narrow staves. They all looked like youths in Theris' eyes, standing a little shorter than a full grown man, with slim athletic builds and unexpected poise. When the last gob-bocari fell, the short spears stopped flying, but the faeyn continued to hold their staves out as if unsure whether to attack the humans.

Theris lowered his sword and shuffled forward. The faeyn all turned toward him, keeping their staves between them and him. Theris barely noticed the faeyn, for standing in their midst, a little before the rest, was a young woman of such surpassing beauty that all else seemed to fade beside her.

She wore a simple short tunic of dun colored animal skin. She had long straight copper-colored hair pulled back in a tail, exposing the pointed ears that all living creatures that were not human seemed to have. Like the rest of her kin, she had large, upturned, almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones, a small narrow straight nose and a small pointed chin.