Fortunately, I was not the only one who’d been making a move at that point. Without my knowing, Gruin had dragged Morlo and started hauling him out the room, Cedwin had pilfered black powder supplies from elsewhere in the shelter, and everyone else had slowly backed up and readied to retreat.

  Apparently, I’d made the perfect distraction.

  Nobody died, at first. Cedwin knew better—or was told better—than to start shooting and escalate things. It was Vara who made the first move, waving her hands and sending a jet of flame out to cut a burning semicircle between me and the frothing villagers. I didn’t need any prompting at all to follow my instincts and start fleeing.

  “Get them!” someone screamed, which was the last coherent sentence I heard before everything devolved into animal sounds and weapons being readied. I chased my own people outside and risked a glance over one shoulder, calming myself as I saw the townsfolk hesitating at Vara’s flames.

  That was one advantage to the world’s general ignorance regarding all things Thaumaturgy, it always meant that your bluffs carried a lot of weight. Vara was more powerful than me, in fact the gap between us hadn’t really been closing despite my apparently rare talents, and yet she was still early enough in her own training that creating flames both large enough to cover the several breaches at once and hot enough to quickly wound a person leaping through them was beyond her.

  But the townsfolk didn’t know that, nor did they have to. And they wasted a good minute or two waiting for that harmless barrier to die of its own volition rather than even dare approach it. That was enough time for us to haul Morlo’s still-unconscious form to the outskirts, and keep going.

  Of course, there were wretchlings waiting for us outside. It was patently obvious now that they were working for the Demon, as if it hadn’t already been, and if they weren’t nearly so deadly as the darkthings, they were advantaged by their ability to attack by day. They’d actually gotten inside the outer walls while everyone was hunkered down in the shelter, and I estimate at least a few hundred with weapons raised as we were forced to sprint their way.

  We didn’t stop sprinting, mind. Couldn’t afford to. The wretchlings must have been surprised by that. I almost feel sorry for them, in retrospect. They’d probably been expecting us to stumble and halt at the sight of so many gathered in one place.

  Unfortunately for them, they were no more numerous than the bloodthirsty humans chasing us. Nor were they more violent.

  Nor were they even half as big.

  “OUT OF MY WAY YOU LITTLE BASTARDS!” Gruin literally smashed two wretchlings aside with one swing of his hammer and sent them flying a full yard off the ground, while the rest of us worked to help him clear a path.

  It was a lot easier than you’d expect. Believe it or not, wretchlings seem to be less violent than humans, at least on an individual basis. Oh they’re more likely to kill you—largely because humans are our own kind—but believe me, when our blood’s up there’s maybe one species in all the world that exceeds the basic wrath of mankind.

  Fortunately, Gruin belonged to that species and was currently exerting all of the wrath in question on smashing apart more and more of the wretchlings. That, paired with large helpings of Thaumaturgy from Vara and myself, did most of the work on its own. It really was a massacre, let me tell you. Those little bastards didn’t stand a chance. Just a horde of scum to be slaughtered by our heroics.

  It helped, of course, that they weren’t actually there to fucking fight us. But I wouldn’t find that fact out until later, thanks to how much longer our legs are. We burst out the back of their ranks in a frenzy of fear and sudden combat-energy, then just kept running.

  Around then, the townsfolk started pushing open the gate and pouring out after us. I like to imagine the wretchlings gave them quite the shock, maybe even had them wondering if we were colluding with the smaller folk. If so, it probably bought us yet more time.

  With the town behind us and no enemies between ourselves and the way ahead, everything just turned into a contest of speed and endurance. We were exhausted enough that it might have been a losing one, even with our laughably superior level of fitness to most of the common people at our backs, but they didn’t manage to sustain a concerted chase and we were able to pace ourselves well enough to make the dwindling reserves of stamina left in our bodies last some time still.

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  Five miles was all we managed, then a rest was demanded by the legs quivering beneath us and the lungs burning inside us. Even Gruin was finally at his limits for long-distance endurance, though I can hardly fault him for that considering he’d carried Morlo for most of the way and had just recovered from a brief coma the day before.

  Sleep came quickly, and entirely involuntarily. Just a moment of contact with the ground and then unconsciousness. I later learned that most of the fellowship didn’t pass out quite so fast, not as exhausted perhaps, but at the time I didn’t even notice that I myself had. When I came to, we were already moving again.

  No surprise there, and once again no choice. Five miles was no distance at all to avoid pursuit.

  We were slower this time, rather than faster. The need for slumber wasn’t creeping on us as unrelentingly as before, but we’d also given our aches a chance to fester and deepen. That’s the first thing you learn, resting after heavy exertion. Your body gets worse before it gets better.

  Still, there was fitness to consider. And our group was smaller by far than the pursuing townsfolk, which became an advantage in pursuit. Larger forces always move slower than small ones, and this goes double—tenfold even—if they’re as disorganised as the people chasing us were. All in all, we didn’t take long to lose them.

  But that didn’t mean we were content to stop fleeing for a good long while after.

  Vara was struggling once again, though this time her efforts to keep up were going a lot farther. She’d not exerted herself physically the way most of us others had, the night before, and if she hadn’t fully recovered from our flight down the mountains, she was certainly among the freshest present. The least fresh was still probably Morlo, who remained thoroughly unconscious in a most unhelpful way.

  Carrying him didn’t slow us down too much, fortunately. Gruin was able to do so without the slightest visible exertion, and his stamina was as unlimited as I’d ever seen it. Nonetheless I stayed near the Grynkori, all too aware that he had rather strange and radical ideas about the amount of punishment a human body could be expected to weather.

  “He’s still mumbling,” Gruin grunted, “don’t know what about.” I tried giving it a listen, and sure enough Morlo was muttering just as fervently as he had the other day. Faster, more muddled. I caught perhaps two words in three and the sentences they formed were confusing ones.

  All the same, I thought I was getting some idea.

  “Faces,” he croaked, “faces, too many faces. Need to…Need change.”

  That was, I got some idea of the actual words being used and the order they were meant to be in. What those words were supposed to actually communicate was a question for bloody God.

  It was, at the very least, a nice distraction from my perpetual worries as we carried on down the road. But I couldn’t let myself be too distracted, of course.

  Cedwin was the primary concern for the time being. He’d shown me that he was willing to cut and run whenever possible back at town, and I’d shown him that I was willing to headbutt him in the face to stop that from happening. Which meant that he wasn’t going to be asking permission the next time he tried.

  Being optimistic, he’d just disappear in the night when he saw his moment. Being less so, he’d either hold a grudge or worry too much about pursuit and take the time to cut a few throats before heading off. Either way, I was probably on the list of potential dead.

  I was, after all, the fastest behind Il’vanja.

  Now as far as I was concerned, Cedwin could just fuck off and it’d be good riddance to him. I didn’t think we were in a position to hold onto him now, not until Morlo woke up. I’d already given up on that happening anytime soon, as well. It would’ve been fine by me if the gunner had just left.

  Except he was sticking around. Problem number two; we still didn’t know when we might be attacked, and we were in no condition to weather it when we were. If a tenth as many darkthings swarmed us as had struck the shelter, we were fucked.

  That probably remained true if you cut the numbers by another tenth, too.

  Really, the more I thought about things, the more I found my relief at another daring escape shrivelled up and weakened. The more my hope turned into dread. When we caught sight of the wretchlings after us all over again…well, that was just the cherry on top.

  We sped up of course, it was about the only thing we could do. They still had a visible thirty or forty-to-one number advantage and none of us were in a condition to fight against even half that with any serious odds of survival.

  But we weren’t in a condition to keep ahead of them either. Hour by hour they closed the gap and came nearer to trapping us. We started to talk about plans, contingencies. Cedwin gave me the sort of look that I thought came from a bit of consideration as to whether or not he could’ve escaped if he put a bullet in my knee and legged it.

  He couldn’t have, of course. I’d have made sure to kill him out of spite. Maybe he knew that, because he stayed where he was and stuck with us until we reached the hill.

  It was bringing back memories to me. High-up, with strong wind currents that turned into vast Thaumaturgical power for Vara and I. Starlight wasn’t an energy source we’d yet to work out how to draw on, unlike Morlo, and this time the mad bastard wasn’t the one who’d be doing the magic.

  Other than that though, it was just like that night with the shamblers.

  We waited for the wretchlings to trek up after us and start the fight, doing a tally of their weapons as they approached. Cedwin’s eyes were best, and in the light of their torches he claimed to count bows among them with arrows scarcely over a foot long. That wasn’t so comforting, I reckoned twelve inch shafts could kill just as easily as twenty with a bit of luck. I reckoned that because I’d felt them hit me, and barely escaped before that luck came to aid them.

  But there was no great march of the enemy, not that night at least. They sent only a single man, and he carried with him a white flag.

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