The Born Queen by Greg Keyes Page A

Forest probably was already dead without the Briar King to protect it.
    He should have understood earlier. He should have been helping the horned one all along. Now it was too late, and every breath he drew felt like wasted time.
    But there had to be something he could do, something he could kill, that would set things right.
    And there was Winna, yah?
    He pushed himself up and began to limp his way down to the next broad ledge at the bottom of the slope, where he could see Leshya already searching for a protected campsite.
    In the fading light, from the corner of his eye, he saw something else. It was coming down the way they had, but quickly, like a four-legged spider.
    “Sceat,” he breathed, and drew his dirk, because he’d bundled his bow and arrows and dropped them down before the most arduous part of the climb. They were still ten yards down the slope.
    He relaxed his grip and shoulders, waiting.
    The utin changed course suddenly, leaping from the rock face into the tops of some small poplars, bending them in a nightmare imitation of Aspar’s earlier stunt. As the trees snapped back up, he saw it land effortlessly on the slope downgrade of him.
    He let his breath out. It hadn’t seen him.
    But his hackles went back up when he saw that its next leap was going to take it right to Leshya.
    “Leshya!” he howled, coming out of his crouch and starting to run downhill. He saw her look up as the beast sprang forward. Then his leg jerked in a violent cramp and his knee went down, sending him into a tumble. Cursing, he tried to find his feet again, but the world stirred all about him, and he reckoned that at least he was going in the right direction.
    He shocked against a half-rotted tree trunk and, wheezing, came dizzily to his feet, hoping he hadn’t broken anything new. He heard Leshya screaming something, and when he managed to focus on her, he saw her below him, backed against a tree, grimly stringing her bow. He didn’t see the utin until he followed the Sefry’s desperate gaze.
    The tree-corpse that had stopped him was part of a jumble clogging a water cut in the slope. He was on top of a natural dam.
    The utin was two kingsyards below him. Something seemed odd about the way it was moving.
    Aspar got his footing and leaped.
    It was really more of a fall.
    The utin was on all fours, and Aspar landed squarely on its back. It was very fast, twisting even as the holter locked his left arm around its neck and wrapped his legs around the hard barrel of its torso. He plunged his dirk at the thing’s neck, but the weapon turned. That didn’t stop him; he kept stabbing away. He saw something bright standing in the utin’s chest, something familiar that he couldn’t place at the moment. He also noticed that the monster was missing a hind foot. Then the night was rushing around him at great speed. He leaned back to avoid the creature’s armored head slamming into his face and felt his weapon drive into something. The ear hole, maybe. The beast gave a satisfying shriek, and they were suddenly in the air.
    Then they hit the ground hard, but Aspar had already blown out the breath in his lungs. He tightened his grip and kept thrusting.
    Then they were falling again for what seemed like a long time, until the utin caught something, arresting their descent so hard that Aspar actually did loosen his grip around its windpipe. He expected to be flung off, but suddenly they were plummeting again. He managed to throw both arms around its neck.
    It fetched against something else, howled, and fell again, twisting in the holter’s grip like some giant snake. Aspar’s arms were numb now, and he lost his clench again. This time he didn’t find it before something astonishingly cold hit him hard.
             
    “Holter.”
    Aspar opened his eyes, but there wasn’t much to see. He hadn’t lost his senses in the fall, but it had been hard keeping hold of them since. He’d been lucky in hitting the river where it was deep