“What is it?” Richard asked, turning as he ran, focused on watching for any of the creatures that might break from the flock and come at them out of the sky and down through the forest canopy. He was not eager to be exposed out in the open just to have a look.
“It’s Hunter!” Kahlan pointed urgently. “Look. It’s Hunter. Up there.”
Richard wasn’t all that surprised. He had seen the animal shadowing them from time to time. He wondered if it had been hoping Kahlan would give it another snack.
He was more concerned about their safety than the green-eyed animal, though. “Come on, we need to get in shelter before these things snatch us up out here in the open.”
When they turned and started out of the trees and up into the mouth of the cavern, Hunter cried out again, louder, this time adding an angry snarl that echoed up and down the narrow canyon. It was a menacing sound that got their attention.
This time, nearly everyone turned to look. Once the creature saw that it had their attention, he turned and ran off. A moment later, Hunter was back at the edge of a high rock, watching them. It did the same thing again, running off, then it came back to sit on its haunches.
“Hunter doesn’t want us to go this way. He wants us to follow him instead,” Kahlan said in astonishment.
Richard hesitated, wondering why. He peered off into the cavern they were about to enter, searching for any threat. Deep inside, he saw them, then. It was like a thousand bats taking to wing all at once, headed their way.
Except these things were twice the size of a man. The air erupted with the roar of all their wings.
Hunter yowled again, more urgently this time.
“Come on!” Richard yelled at everyone. “Follow it!”
They all abandoned the cavern entrance and instead ran for the canyon opening where they had seen Hunter vanish. Behind them, Richard could hear the drone of thousands of wings beating. Looking over his shoulder, it looked like a sinister, churning cloud coming for them. One of the men vanished as the black mass swarmed down on him. Even as he saw it about to happen, Richard knew that it was already too late to do anything to save the man. A mist of blood rained down as he was torn apart high up in the air.
As the twisting black ribbon of creatures came lower over their heads, Richard saw Irena and Samantha hunching over as they ran. Irena had an arm over Samantha’s head to protect her. From what Richard had seen, these beasts would only too eagerly rip off any arm they got hold of.
Richard, with his sword out, pushed the two women past him, urging them on faster.
“I’ve heard rumors of these things,” Irena said as she paused to cast a spell of her own, then another, then another, each time causing a few of the beasts to lose their way and slam headlong into the stone walls. “Rumors of places in the Dark Lands infested with what people think might be cave dragons.”
“Whatever they are, there are too many to stop,” Richard told her. “If you stand here doing that, you’ll die. We have to get to safety. Come on—hurry.”
As Irena and Samantha took off running for their lives, Nicci kept a hand on Richard’s back, pushing him along, making sure he didn’t stop. She turned and, as she ran, cast out a boiling cloud of turbulent flame that caught up and incinerated dozens of the black forms, diverting the course of the main mass for a moment.
Wings aflame, trailing oily smoke, some of them bellowed in anger and pain as they spiraled out of the air, hitting the ground with bone-breaking violence. Flaming scales tumbled across the ground. One of them, engulfed in a hot, roaring fire that swiftly consumed the flesh between the bones of its wings, crashed into a pine tree, bending it partway over. The needles went up in a whoosh of flame. Fortunately, the forest was wet enough that the fire didn’t spread to other trees.
Nicci turned to push her hands out again, this time stopping the hearts of a dozen in the lead as they headed in toward them. With their hearts stopped, they folded in midair. Others behind, still flying at full speed, crashed into them, tangling their wings together, snapping bones and ripping the membranes of flesh between them. The midair collision caused the rest of them to divert their course, giving the people on the ground precious seconds to make their escape.
As Richard pushed the last man past him and toward the narrow canyon, he grabbed Nicci’s arm and pulled her along with him. Kahlan, standing close by, urgently snatched up Nicci’s other hand.
The three of them raced after the rest of the men, all chasing after the small, spotted animal as he bounded off over rocks into the distance ahead.
Richard hoped that following Hunter was a good idea. As he looked over his shoulder he knew that the animal had called out just in time before they had gotten too far into that cavern full of the cave dragons. It had probably saved their lives.