Chapter 384: Hunt by Sky

They were less than a mile from the dead garrison when the first shadow came over the high ground.

Too fast to be a bird, but too even to be cloud. Lucian felt the key at his belt throb with a thin, ugly pulse, as though it recognized the approach and couldn’t hide from it. Rhel went to the sky line at once. "Sky line." She said. "Move."

They ran for the broken highlands ahead, the ridges and fallen stone able to break a clean drop, and didn’t make it far when the first team came down.

Five figures dropped from a dark glider frame on bound lines, landing in a spread to cut the road, and isolate the center of the column. No cries, no demands. Seat marked hunters with short blades and locking spears, already moving before they touched the ground.

Lucian met the center pair and drove their lines into the dirt with a tight burst of force. Istra took the left and kept a spearman from getting to Toren. Sera stayed close enough along Lucian’s side that the second wave couldn’t get past him to take her. Rhel and Toren held the rear long enough for the group to break past the landing zone and rougher ground.

They didn’t make it two hundred paces before the second drop.

It was a wider one, and hunters came down on both ridges above them, shooting binding lines down into the break. One hit Sera’s cloak and dragged her off balance. Lucian severed the line with a burst of force, caught her wrist, and drew her behind a leaning slab of stone as more lines struck the rock.

"They are not trying to talk at all." Sera said, breathless.

"The key ended talking." Rhel said. "Keep going."

The highlands turned into a running fight.

They took cover from strike teams that came down at them in waves, some in front, some behind, and some right in the path of where they knew Lucian would be. Instead of holding a shield for the whole line by standing and fighting, Lucian broke each drop as it came, shattered a glider frame from the air before the hunters could finish their landing, and threw a hunter hard enough into the line of his own team to break their sweep. It wasn’t enough to get them completely clear, but just enough to reach the next ridge.

Istra took a grazing hit across the ribs and pressed on. Toren’s wounded shoulder split open again, and Rhel had to half-drag him through a narrow gap as Lucian kept the mouth of it open. Sera stayed on her feet out of stubbornness, blade free and no longer waiting to have to be rescued.

A third wave came to corner them in a shallow bowl of stone. Bound constructs dropped in with the hunters this time, heavier than the ones from the cliffs, built for the open.

Lucian felt the key flare hot against his side as if it knew the seat marks of the plating.

"Through them." he said.

He drove the center construct back into the two behind it, and broke their line with the impact. Istra and Rhel cut the nearest hunters before they could reset. Sera drove her blade into a locking spear and forced the hunter off the path. It was only an instant, but enough for the bowl to open.

They took it and ran.

Above them more glider frames turned for another pass. The sky was no longer empty. It was a hunting lane.

Rhel pointed to a wall of dark cloud building over the far highlands. "Storm front. Old boundary weather. Even seat teams hate entering it blind."

Lucian took in the storm and the next wave already lining up in the air. "Can we reach it?"

"If we do not stop again," Rhel said.

Instead of stopping, they ran harder.

The final stretch was all speed and brutal fighting. The hunters came down right at them and were broken, binding lines snapping against stone and flesh. A construct almost got to Toren before Lucian wrenched it apart in mid-stride. Sera stumbled once, caught herself, and kept running with a streak of blood on her cheek from a hunter that nearly got her with a throwing knife.

The wall of the storm hit like a solid thing.

The wind screamed over the ridge and visibility dropped to nothing. The next glider frames banked hard, refusing the cloud line, and circled out rather than in. A few hunters tried to run them down on foot and were lost to the roaring mass of the sky behind the group.

Inside the storm, the world narrowed to the next step and the shape of the person ahead and at the person behind.

Lucian kept Sera’s arm until the ground leveled enough for her to run on her own. Rhel guided them by muscle memory more than sight. Istra watched the rear even though there was nothing to see but the dust and broken light.

After a long stretch with no more drops or spears out of the cloud, Rhel finally slowed.

"They will wait on the far side." she said, shouting over the wind. "But they will not come in after us in force. Not into this."

Sera bent forward, braced her hands on her knees, and said, "Good. I was starting to hate the sky."

Toren slumped against a rock, pale and out of breath. Istra pressed a hand to her ribs and tested the blood with a look that said it was fine for now.

Lucian touched the key at his belt. It had gone quieter in the storm, as if the boundary weather interfered with the seat-signal. That would not last.

"This only hides us until we exit." he said.

"Yes." Rhel said. "But it keeps us alive long enough to decide how we exit."

Beyond them the storm roared on, a rare piece of ground that the hunters would not break lightly. Behind it the highlands already held people who had seen the key flare and would be waiting when the clouds broke.

Lucian looked into the dark and started walking forward. The sky had taken its turn. Now they had to live through whatever was on the other side of the storm.