On that overlay, a radiant glow hangs over the southeastern horizon, getting brighter by the second. Ilapara narrows her eyes, willing the jackal spirit to give her a clearer image. It expends all of its power to comply, but for the briefest second the glow becomes discernible to her as a brilliant cloud of individually distinct, regular vibrations.
“Shit.”
“What is it?” Tuk says, his irises darkening into pools of blackness.
“We need to leave. Now.” Ilapara looks about and finds Ingacha grazing on a knotted bush just west of the camp. She moves to pick up his saddle. “Salo! Wake up. We need to get moving.”
He stirs, then sits up, putting on his spectacles. His gaze tracks her as she makes her way to her buck. “Are we in danger?”
“I think so.”
Mercifully, the boys don’t ask any more questions. They quietly follow her example and resaddle their animals and are ready to go within minutes. But Ingacha seems more excitable than usual today, and when she mounts him, he rears up, grunting loudly and almost pitching her off the saddle. “Whoa! Easy there.”
She needs several long seconds to get him back under control, and when she looks, she sees that Tuk is also struggling to stay mounted on his horned abada. It’s bucking and tossing its head, making him rock back and forth in his saddle. He seems to take things in stride, though, and when it finally settles down, his eyes sparkle with delight.
“A good morning to you too,” he says, patting the mare’s neck. “Someone’s excited today.”
“What the actual devil was that?” Ilapara wonders aloud. Then her gaze falls on Salo, standing next to his leopard, and she immediately knows he’s involved somehow. He has the most obvious guilty look she has ever seen. “Salo? What just happened?”
He shifts on his feet, looking everywhere but at her. “I . . . may have blessed your animals last night while you were sleeping? Made them jumpy, I guess.”
“You what?”
“We need to go faster,” he says with a defensive shrug. “Ingacha and the abada—”
“Wakii,” Tuk says. “I’ve named her Wakii. It means ‘scales of justice’ in a northern dialect.” He looks down at his mare and grins widely. “My goodness, but did you really bless her?”
“She couldn’t keep up with Mukuni and was skittish around him,” Salo explains. “Ingacha too. I had to do something.”
Ilapara closes her eyes and takes a deep breath—I am not my emotions—and then lets it out. “We’ll discuss your complete lack of personal boundaries later. Right now we need to go.”
Salo nods quietly and ties his staff to the harness on his saddle before mounting his clan’s totem, and then they set off into the northwest, the kudu and the mare taking to their newfound power like they were born to it.
The ravens appear half an hour later.
They streak by overhead, cutting across the sky in a black chevron and then arcing back to make another pass over Ilapara and the other two riders. Her blood cools at this rather unnatural behavior, and she tracks the birds as they fly over her, only for her eyes to settle on the many bright points of scarlet light moving in the grasses not far behind, closing the distance alarmingly fast.
She chokes on her breath, disbelieving her eyes. It is said that dingoneks were the creations of a warlord who used them as foot soldiers during her terrible reign and that upon her death the magic brimming inside the creatures grew wild and volatile. Ilapara has never seen one before, but she’s heard enough horror stories about them to recognize those lights for what they are.
“We’re under attack!”
Just ahead of her, Tuk and Salo look over their shoulders, and she watches them utter curses that don’t quite reach her ears.
“Tell me those are not what I think they are,” Tuk shouts, his eyes wide and blue with ghoulish excitement. He glances over his shoulder again and lets out a loud, incredulous laugh. “My goodness, they are!”
For some reason Salo looks up fearfully at the skies toward their far right. Ilapara spurs Ingacha a little faster to catch up with him on his left flank. “What is it?”
With one hand, he draws his staff from its harness. “We’re not alone,” he shouts.
Behind them a pride of heavily built feline-reptile hybrids finally comes into view, and they begin to fan out as they draw nearer, an obvious tactic to cut off possible routes of escape. Their eyes are like brilliant coals of moonfire. They have scales in place of fur, with spots that burn like molten rock. Ilapara shudders when she sees how they each leave behind trails of blackened grass that smolders without bursting into flames.
She looks ahead and is met with an endless stretch of grassland dotted by acacia trees, no sign of shelter or refuge in sight. A growl of frustration rises up her throat. “We can’t outrun them! They’re too fast!”
“Someone’s controlling them,” Salo shouts back. “I think it’s the same mystic from the town. There!”
He points, and when she looks in the skies to their far right, her heart momentarily stops beating. Dear Ama, not him.
The kongamato is a deltoid shape in the skies, sleek and silver, with a helmeted man bestriding its neck. It swerves toward them just as the first of the dingoneks breaks away from its pride in a menacing charge.
Ilapara lets her mind sink into her spear hand, preparing to fall back and deal with the animal, but she hesitates when she sees Tuk raising his gauntleted hand and balling it into a fist. To her surprise the armor piece expands on his arm, silver panes sliding over each other to reveal a barrel shrouded in a red halo—which he points at the charging beast.
Crack!
His arm recoils slightly as a blast of moonfire erupts from the barrel and punches a hole straight through the dingonek. The beast goes down as if a crushing weight has slammed it from above, but the rest of the pride simply sidesteps its tumbling form and keeps pace with their high-speed gallop.
Tuk releases several more blasts from his strange weapon, taking out a second reptile-cat and cowing a third into slowing down, but that still leaves more than Ilapara can count in one glance.
“He’s casting a spell!” Salo shouts, and sure enough, the rider on the kongamato has started gathering fire around his staff.
Worse, a pair of dingoneks has drawn level with Salo on his right flank, making ready to pounce. Ingacha grunts beneath Ilapara as she steers him with her hips to intercept, putting herself between Salo and the attacking creatures. They close in on her buck, and there’s a terrifying instant during which the closest one leaps forward and she sees into the red-hot interior of its jaws.
But she feeds that terror into her arm and thrusts her spear before the dingonek can bite. She feels a ripple in the aerosteel as a bolt of red lightning arcs from the tip and into the creature.
The beast probably doesn’t die, but it emits a piercing caterwaul as it topples over. The other dingonek tosses it only a passing glance before bounding onward in pursuit, threads of drool dangling from its canines, eyes scarlet with untamed magic. This time Ilapara raises her weapon and swings it in a wide arc so that the ensuing bolt lashes outward and behind her. The dingonek doesn’t change course in time to evade the bolt and is left tumbling in the dust.