Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2) by David Farland

Author:David Farland [Farland, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WordFire Press
Published: 2014-06-04T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

As night fell, Zell’a Cree ambled along the rutted roads east of Battic. His Amen had been following the road since just after dawn, sniffing for the scent of Gallen O’Day and his party. They’d crossed forty kilometers of mountain, hugging the coast, and never caught a whiff of him.

Forty kilometers seemed too far. Zell’a Cree knew that the currents and the wind had carried the little lifeboat east along the coast, and for a good time, he’d kept them in sight as he swam.

Still, they should have landed somewhere closer to Battic. But Zell’a Cree’s nose didn’t lie: they hadn’t set foot on the road.

They’re learning, Zell’a Cree realized. They must have known that if they walked on the road, I would catch their scent. And the coastline here was so rocky in places, that Zell’a Cree could not easily hunt them by following the beach.

He wondered idly how it would be to be a human—living in a world where the senses were so limited, where sight and smell and hearing were so dull. Humans must feel terribly vulnerable, terribly open to attack, and they would have to be wary at all times. No wonder they had developed fear as a basic component of their emotional makeup.

Yet Zell’a Cree could hear a twig snap a mile away, and at night, even in a deep fog, the heat of living things blazed like torches. Zell’a Cree did not need to suffer from mankind’s irrational fears. He was better than that.

At dusk, he stopped, weary to the bone, and said to the three other men, “It may be that we have passed the Tharrin’s trail. I for one believe that we should go back.”

“Bransoon told us to head east. He’s first mate,” a sailor grumbled, a small red-skinned man with yellow eyes.

“But we’ve been walking all day, and still have no sign of them,” Zell’a Cree said. “Don’t you think it likely that we passed them already?”

“Maybe,” the sailor said, scratching his ear with a long knife. “But what if you’re wrong? What if they’re a kilometer down the road, or five kilometers? The wind and current are strong. Maybe they decided to follow the coast by boat. If they’re ahead of us, and we turn back now, we could lose them. But if they’re behind us, most likely they’ll just come down the road right into our arms.”

Zell’a Cree studied the men. It seemed just as likely to him that Gallen and the others would run off into the woods and never be found again. There were hundreds of small hamlets scattered throughout these mountains, with roads going everywhere. It would be easy to lose them on back roads.

The three sailors seemed nervous, and they kept looking east, as if in a hurry to be off. “I’m not sure that you men want to find Gallen,” Zell’a Cree said. “I think you’re afraid of him.”

One sailor licked his lips. “It’s not healthy to tangle with him, that’s for sure.

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