Home > The Trials of Koli(8)

The Trials of Koli(8)
Author: M. R. Carey

Then it stopped, and a second later there was this bright, orange ball off to the side of me, like the biggest flower you ever seen was opening right there. It wasn’t no flower, though. It was fire rising up out of the ground as it opened, throwing branches and leaves and earth into the air and then swallowing them again as it growed. I felt the heat of it wash over me. It wasn’t like the heat you’d feel if you was warming yourself by a fire in your house, nor even at a bonfire on the gather-ground. This was like fire had a fist, and it punched you in your whole body at once. It come close to knocking me right off my feet, only I ducked under it as it tried to lift me and kept on running.

That happened two more times, though thankfully the fire-flowers was further away from me and I didn’t get the heat of them so much. They was not flowers for long. When they was at their biggest, they went from being orange to being black, and then they turned into smoke that unravelled into long, black streaks in the direction the wind was blowing.

I knowed tech when I seen it. At least one of them fighters was carrying a weapon from the old times, and though it was somewhat like Catrin Vennastin’s firethrower, it was not the exact same thing. The firethrower sent out a ribbon or a rope of fire. It didn’t throw clenched fistfuls of fire through the air to open just right where you was standing.

I run even faster, though I thought I was already going as fast as I could. Cup was making ground with every stride, leaving me behind, and the drudge was outpacing the both of us. I had lost sight of Ursala, and I could not stop to look around for her.

A branch swept across the path in front of us, and I would of run right into it, only the drudge got there first and hit it full-on. The branch broke clean, the free end spinning away into the weeds and the live end rearing back like a snake. I was past it in a second, but I seen the main trunk of that tree thrash and twist, bringing three more branches down right where I just had been. They would of crushed me flat if I was a mite slower.

I seen Ursala then, some way back. She had left the path and was running through the deep weeds. I seen why she done it too. The branches that missed us had cut her off, so she didn’t have no choice. But the going was a lot harder in them snarls and tangles, and she was falling further behind us.

The drudge knowed where she was though, the way it always seemed to know even if it didn’t have no eyes. It swung round and angled towards her, breaking down and trampling on everything that was in front of it. Cup turned on her heel, quick as anything, to run along in its wake, since the channel the drudge was making through the shifting forest was the safest place there was right then. So it was just me on the path now, and the rest of them crashing through brambles and knotweed and Dandrake knows what else.

Another fire-flower jumped up, real close to where Ursala was running. This time I seen where it come from. In between two big trees that was leaning down towards us, I got a glimpse of one of the soldiers. She was all grey, except for that one red splash on her chest and the yellow spikes of her hair. Her tech was grey too, or maybe silver. It was a long metal tube that she held in both of her hands. It didn’t shine, but I knowed it had got to be metal from seeing the bolt gun and the firethrower in Mythen Rood. She lifted it to her shoulder, aimed and fired without ever stopping or slowing.

Out of the mouth of that tube come a silver slug like a blunted knife blade that soared up high in the air and then fell down again a long way ahead of her. That was what made the piping sound. When the slug hit the ground, the piping stopped and the fire-flower jumped up, with a noise like some big animal roaring in your face before it bites.

I thought the fire had got Ursala, but she come out of the smoke running hard. There was little fires burning on her arm and on her shoulder, like it had splashed on her. She staggered and almost fell, but she righted herself and kept on going.

That was all I seen, for I had got to turn my head again and look ahead of me. There wasn’t much path left now. The trees had crowded together into a kind of a wall, right where we was heading. This was something else I knowed about from when I went with the hunters in Calder Valley. Trees when they was waked seemed to work together, almost. They piled in closest at the edge of a copse or thicket, forcing you into the depths of it.

That meant we was going in the right direction. If we could get past that wall, we would most likely find ourselves out in the open again, or at least nearer to it. But near’s as good as not, like they say. I did not see no way through.

“Full automatic!” Ursala yelled out. “Scatter. Twelve.”

I thought she was talking to me, or to Cup, but when the drudge’s gun started to turn I knowed she was not. The gun spinned round to face straight ahead of us, and spit out shot after shot in a quick, rattling burst. It was firing so quick the noises all joined together, so loud I couldn’t hear nothing over it. The leaves was ripped to shreds and rained down on us, and a few of the thinner branches was brung down with them, It wasn’t going to help us though – I seen that well enough. There was no way the drudge’s bullets was going to break through that big wall of trunks.

But the trees did not like being bit into and cut open. They shrunk from the drudge’s bullets, retreating each from other until there was gaps that got wider and wider. Between one breath and the next, the way opened up for us.

Cup dived through first, and was gone. I come next, but I had used up most of my breath by this time, and I would be lying if I said I was close behind her. The drudge was firing the whole time, its gun spinning round and round so the bullets went right over our heads, making sure the trees didn’t snake back down to grab us. It waited until Ursala had run through the gap and then it cantered through after.

“Strafe,” Ursala gasped. “Six.” She was as spent as I was, and could just barely stay on her feet. The drudge stayed right where it was, beside her, but its gun spun half a circle and fired back through the gap into the forest as we staggered on, away from the last few clutching, swinging branches.

We was in a meadow. There was no trees around us any more, only grass, and there was no beasts to be seen. Ursala bent from the waist, her hands clasping onto her knees, and drawed some breaths that was ragged and hard. She was shaking all over.

“We’re not out of it yet,” I told her, though I was not in any better state than she was and could not of run no further if Dandrake come down from Heaven and whipped me to it.

“Give me a minute,” Ursala said between two of them effortful breaths.

I looked all around, but Cup was not anywhere to be seen. Ursala got to her feet at last and went around to the back end of the drudge. She lifted up the trailing end of the rope, that was cut through none too cleanly.

“Was she carrying another knife,” she said, “or was this you?”

“It was me,” I said. “The drudge was going too fast for her. She would most likely of died if she got pulled down again.”

Ursala give me a look that said she would not of shed too many tears on Cup’s account, but she didn’t waste no time in chiding me again. “I hope she gets back to Calder,” she said. “Or at least a long way away from us. If I see her again, I’m going to tell the drudge to shoot her through the head.”

The drudge lifted up one leg and stamped it down again, maybe because it heard its own name being spoke. Its gun was still pointing back behind us at the forest, and it was still making the clicking, popping sounds it made when it was firing, only no bullets was coming.

Hot Books
» House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)
» A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
» From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1)
» A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime
» Deviant King (Royal Elite #1)
» Den of Vipers
» House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2)
» The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air #
» Sweet Temptation
» The Sweetest Oblivion (Made #1)
» Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6)
» Wreck & Ruin
» Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2)
» Twisted Hate (Twisted #3)
» The Play (Briar U Book 3)