Gamble King Chapter 39. Escape .Part I

Ah, the sweet winter mornings in the north.

There was something special about them, really. The way the pre-dawn light turned everything blue and silver. The absolute silence that came with fresh snow. The crisp, clean air that burned your lungs in the best possible way when you took that first deep breath of the day.

Evidently, every place had its problems. The north's problems just happened to include monsters that would eat you if you didn't find shelter before nightfall. And the voices. Those were a nice touch. The ones that whispered your name from the darkness, getting closer each time, until you either went mad or went outside to meet whatever was calling you. Very atmospheric. Real charm to it.

Dying in horrible pain was simply part of the northern experience. Like frostbite, but more immediate.

But if you were lucky enough to have a magically heated cave to sleep in—one of those ancient sanctuaries with enchantments woven into the stone itself, the kind that kept both the cold and the Things That Came At Night at bay—well, then you had yourself a perfect morning. Cozy warmth against the frozen world outside. No creature trying to claw through the walls to get at you. No voices promising you things if you'd just step outside for a moment. The kind of setup that made you want to burrow deeper into your cloak and stay there for another hour. Maybe two. Maybe until spring, if you had enough jerky.

Of course, all of that assumed you weren't currently halfway down a cliff face with a teenager on your back and a very real possibility of plummeting to your death.

Max's foot slipped.

Just slightly. Just enough.

"Shit shit shit—"

Tarak's arms tightened around Max's neck in a panic, grabbing for better purchase, which had the unfortunate side effect of cutting off Max's air supply completely.

"Stop—" Max tried to say, but it came out as a strangled wheeze. He groped for the next handhold, fingers scraping against frozen rock. His other foot found purchase. Barely. "Stop—strangling—"

Tarak squeezed harder.

Max's vision started to go fuzzy at the edges. His hand found a crack in the stone and he jammed his fingers in, holding on with everything he had while his lungs screamed for oxygen.

Bro, perched on Max's shoulder, started to glow brighter. Orange shifting to yellow. Heat building.

"No," Max gasped out, the word barely audible through his compressed throat. "Bro—no—"

The spider's mandibles opened slightly.

Tarak saw it.

His arms immediately loosened. Not completely—they were still on a cliff, after all—but enough that Max could actually breathe again.

He sucked in air, coughing. "Thanks. Thank you. Just—don't let go completely, okay? Just less strangling."

"Sorry," Tarak said from behind him. His voice was shaky. "I thought—"

"I know. It's fine. We're fine."

They weren't fine. They were descending a cliff in the very first lights of dawn with Max's muscles already screaming from the effort and Tarak's weight throwing off his center of gravity. But they were alive, which was close enough to fine for now.

Max found another foothold. Then another. His arms were burning.

"How far is your village again?" he asked, breath coming hard.

"Half a day's walk," Tarak said. "Maybe less. We are fast walkers."

Max did the math in his head while searching for the next grip. Half a day for a tribe kid who'd grown up hiking through this terrain. Figure they moved at maybe three miles an hour, sustained. Call it six hours of walking. That was roughly eighteen miles, maybe a bit less.

"Two hours from here," Max said. "If we move fast."

He gulped and kept descending.

They'd talked about this in the middle of the night. Well, talked was generous. Max had woken up sometime around what he guessed was midnight—hard to tell in the perpetual darkness of northern winter—and found Tarak still awake, staring at the cave entrance.

The White Hands had been expanding their territory recently. That was the first thing Tarak had told him. They'd built a new village not too far from here. Maybe a few hours' walk. Tarak and his friends had found it while hunting, seen the stakes with the white handprints, turned around immediately, and tried to get home to warn the elders.

They hadn't made it.

Which meant the ones who'd escaped yesterday might have had time to reach their village and sound the alarm. Might be organizing a hunting party right now, getting ready to leave at first light.

Or, more likely, they'd been killed by something in the dark before they made it home. The sun had already dipped below the horizon when they fled. Nothing survived out here after dark without shelter.

But if they'd died, their people would track them. Would find the bodies. Would follow the trail back to the cave and then down this cliff. Would give chase.

This was a race against time. The sooner they left, the better their chances.

Max's foot touched solid ground.

He stood there for a moment, panting, letting Tarak's weight settle properly on his back. His legs were shaking. His arms felt like jelly. Bro skittered down from his shoulder and onto the snow, dimming his glow to barely a spark.

"Where?" Max asked between breaths. "Which direction?"

Tarak pointed east, toward where the sun would eventually rise.

Max jogged. Fast as he could manage with a teenager on his back and snow up to his shins.

"There," Tarak said, pointing left. "Through trees. Is faster."

Max adjusted course, breathing hard. Bro scuttled alongside them, keeping pace easily.

Three minutes. Then he stopped, hands on his knees, sucking in air. Thirty seconds. Then he was moving again.

"Rocks ahead," Tarak said. "Go around. Right side."

Max went right.

Three more minutes. Stop. Breathe. His lungs burned. His legs screamed. Keep moving.

If anything, he'd lose all his fat before next year at this pace. Assuming he lived that long.

"Cut through there," Tarak pointed at a gap between two boulders. "Other side is flat. Good for running."

Max squeezed through. Started jogging again.

Stop. Breathe. Move.

The pattern repeated. Max's world narrowed to Tarak's directions and the rhythm of his own gasping breaths. Left here. Straight through this clearing. Watch the ice there.

Then they heard it.

A horn. Low and resonant, carrying across the frozen landscape.

Max stopped mid-stride.

"White Hands," Tarak said quietly. His arms tightened around Max's neck. Not strangling this time. Just scared. "They hunt for us now."

"Okay." Max forced his breathing to slow. Forced himself to think. "Where do we go? You know a place we can lay low?"

"I—maybe. There is..." Tarak trailed off, uncertain. "Place where rocks are tall. Many hiding. But is not so far from here. They maybe find."

Max wanted to curse. Part of him regretted leaving the cave at all. They'd had the high ground there. Defensible position. Could have held out for—

No. No, they couldn't have.

The White Hands had shamans. Tarak had mentioned it last night. Magic users. Max remembered from the books, from the early chapters when Bjorn was still struggling and learning. The shamans had been nightmares to deal with. If he stayed in the cave, they'd run out of arrows before running out of enemies. Then food. Then water. And the White Hands would just have to rotate their fighters, going back to their villages each night, coming back fresh at dawn.

A siege would have killed them slowly.

Better to be healthy now and be able to move.

"Show me," Max said. "The rocks. We go there."

They ran.

Tarak's directions came faster now, urgent. "Left! No, there, between the stones!"

Max's boots pounded through snow. His breath came in ragged gasps that burned his throat. The weight on his back felt like it was getting heavier with every step, which was impossible, but his muscles didn't care about possibility. They just screamed.

"Straight! Keep straight until big tree, then right!"

Bro skittered ahead, then circled back, then ahead again. The spider's glow had dimmed to almost nothing, which meant he was conserving energy. That was probably smart. Max wished he could conserve energy too, but he was pretty sure his body was currently burning through calories at a rate that would make a nutritionist weep.

"There!" Tarak pointed. "See rocks? Tall ones?"

Max saw them. A cluster of boulders rising out of the snow like broken teeth. They were huge, some of them easily twice his height, jumbled together in a way that created gaps and shadows and places where a person might hide if they were desperate enough.

Which they were.

Max pushed harder, ignoring the way his vision was starting to blur at the edges. Just a little further. The rocks grew closer. He could make out individual stones now, see the way ice had formed in the crevices between them.

Another horn sounded behind them. Closer this time.

"Almost there," Tarak said, and Max didn't know if the kid was trying to encourage him or himself.

His foot hit a patch of ice hidden under the snow and he nearly went down. He caught himself at the last second, stumbled forward, kept moving. The rocks were right there. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.

They reached the base of the largest boulder and Max finally stopped, gasping so hard he thought his lungs might actually tear. Tarak slid off his back and Max's knees almost buckled from the sudden release of weight.

"Where?" Max managed to get out between breaths. "Where do we hide?"

Tarak looked around, eyes scanning the rocks. He pointed at a gap between two massive stones. "There. Goes down. Like small cave."

Max looked. The gap was narrow at the top but widened as it descended into shadow. It would be tight, but they'd fit. Probably. He hoped.

"Go," he said.

Tarak went first, sliding into the gap with the ease of someone half his size. Max followed, squeezing through the narrow opening. The stone scraped against his shoulders as he descended. It was dark down here, the sort of dark that made you question whether your eyes were even open. Max's boots hit solid ground after about six feet of careful climbing.

The space was larger than he'd expected. Not spacious, but enough room for both of them to crouch without touching. The ceiling was low enough that Max couldn't stand up straight. Bro crawled down after them, his dim glow providing just enough light to see by.

Max pressed his back against the cold stone and tried to think. They were hidden for now, but that wouldn't last. The White Hands were hunting them, and they clearly knew what they were doing. The horn meant they were coordinating. Organized hunters were the worst kind.

He could hear Tarak's breathing in the darkness, quick and shallow. The kid was scared. Max was scared too, but he'd had more practice hiding it.

Then a smell hit him.

It was wrong. That was the first thing Max's brain registered. Wrong in a way that made his hindbrain start screaming warnings. Musky and thick and rotten-sweet, like spoiled meat left in the sun, mixed with something else he couldn't quite place. Something that made his eyes water.

Max froze.

He knew that smell. The books had described it as "the scent of curdled earth and desperate hunger," which he'd always thought was one of Sabo's particularly bad bits of prose. Overly poetic nonsense that didn't actually tell you anything useful.

Except now he was here, and now he understood. His nose understood. His entire body understood.

A blindrage.

The sound came next. A wet, rhythmic huffing. Fhum. Fhum. Fhum. Like something breathing through a nose that was too big, too open, designed for pulling in scent rather than air. Max could hear it moving above them, heavy footfalls crunching through snow.

He'd never seen one in person. The books had described them, but he'd always had trouble visualizing it. Now his brain was helpfully filling in the gaps with something that looked like it had crawled out of a nightmare. Six legs, he remembered. Muscular body built low to the ground. No eyes, because it didn't need them. The entire front of its face was just nostril slits and sensory organs that could track prey across miles.

And teeth. Lots of teeth.

Max's heart was hammering so hard he was sure the thing could hear it. Could smell the fear-sweat beading on his skin. He pressed himself flatter against the stone and slowly, carefully, began to prepare his spell. It formed in his mind, ready to be cast the moment he needed it.

The huffing got louder. Closer.

Fhum. Fhum. Fhum.

Tarak's hand found Max's arm in the darkness and squeezed. The kid was shaking.

Above them, someone spoke. A man's voice, rough and confident. "Frosthold."

Aah damn.

Max's stomach dropped. They'd been smelled. Of course they had. They were hiding in a hole in the ground and the thing hunting them was literally designed to find prey by scent. This had been a terrible idea.

He reached down and found Tarak's shoulder, gave it what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze. The kid needed to stay quiet and calm. One sound and it was over.

Bro was already glowing brighter. Max hadn't needed to signal him. The spider knew.

The huffing was right above them now. Max could hear the Blindrage's claws scraping against stone as it moved closer to the gap. The smell was overwhelming, making his eyes stream. He raised his palm, pointing it toward where he thought the creature's head would be. His spell was ready, burning in his mind, waiting to be released. He'd get one shot at this. Maybe two if he was lucky.

The seconds stretched. Max counted them in his head while his heart tried to punch through his ribcage. Three. Four. Five.

The huffing stopped.

Silence.

Then it started again, different this time. Focused. Directed down into the gap where they were hiding.

Max saw movement. Just a shadow at first, blocking out what little light filtered down from above. Then more. The thing was descending into the gap. Its head pushed through the opening, massive and eyeless, all gaping nostrils and exposed sensory organs that pulsed and twitched as it pulled in their scent.

Tarak made a small sound. Not quite a whimper, but close.

The Blindrage's head snapped toward them.

Its mouth opened. Max saw the teeth, rows of them, curved inward to hold struggling prey. The roar that came out of that mouth wasn't just sound. It was force. A physical wall of concussive noise that slammed into Max's chest and made his teeth rattle. The books had mentioned this. A defense mechanism. A hunting tool. The roar could disorient prey, knock them unconscious if they were close enough.

Max cast, and Bro fired.

The spell erupted from his palm in a rush of heat and light. Fire engulfed the Blindrage's head, turning the cramped space into a furnace. The creature screamed, a sound even worse than the roar, and thrashed backward. Its body slammed against the rocks as it tried to escape the flames consuming its face.

"Move!" Max shouted, already scrambling toward the gap.

They climbed out into chaos. The Blindrage was running in circles, its entire head wreathed in fire, slamming into boulders and trees. The rider—and there had been a rider, Max saw him now, sprawled in the snow where he'd been thrown—was trying to get up.

Max ran. Tarak was on his back again. They needed distance. Needed to get away while the Blindrage was distracted and—

"Argh!"

Max stumbled as pain suddenly exploded in his thigh, nearly went down. He looked down and saw the arrow shaft protruding from his leg. No. No no no. He kept moving, limping now, each step sending fresh waves of agony through his body.

Another impact. This one in his shoulder. The force of it spun him halfway around.

Tarak's arms released from around his neck.

Max turned, reaching for the kid, and saw the arrow in Tarak's back. Right between the shoulder blades. The kid's mouth opened, trying to form words, but all that came out was a wet gurgling sound.

Another arrow sprouted from Tarak's neck.

The kid's eyes went wide. Blood spilled over his lips. He crumpled.

"No!" Max lunged forward, trying to catch him, and three more arrows hit him in quick succession. Chest. Side. Leg. He went down hard, his hands scrabbling in the snow as he tried to reach Tarak.

Bro was suddenly moving. Max's vision was already going dark at the edges, but he had just enough consciousness left to see his spider charging toward a cluster of snow-laden bushes. Flames erupted from Bro's body as he dove into the foliage. Men screamed. The bushes caught fire despite the snow.

Ambush.

The thought drifted through Max's fading mind with an odd clarity. They'd been waiting. The White Hands had known they might come this way. Had set up archers in the bushes. Had used the Blindrage as bait to drive them out.

That was good tactical thinking. Smart. A mistake Max wouldn't make again.

The screaming from the bushes was getting quieter. Bro was winning, probably. Max hoped so.

Then came darkness.

[NUMBER OF REROLLS LEFT: 11]