Pillar of the Sun by Bowen

Author:Bowen [Bowen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

As he left, Bear Fist melted down into the shape of a jungle cat to better follow the wounded Arczeckh’s trail. He tasted the heart’s blood of the panther he’d killed to win this shape, and as the transformation overcame him, his vision, hearing and sense of smell all sharpened considerably. The spot where Sarkur had fallen emanated a smell of blood and burnt flesh, and signs of the Arczeckh’s passing stood out against the forest backdrop like stars in the sky. Bear Fist had noticed only about half of them in his human shape, but the sensory acuity that this form gave him revealed all the rest. Keeping low to the ground and out of the sun, he followed the trail the barbarian had left, tracking it out away from Kementeer.

He followed the erratic, delirious trail for miles and miles through the forest, bounding over boulders and splashing through shallow streams without slowing down. The mortal Arczeckh scouts and even his beastmen would have lost the faint, thready trail by now, but his divine senses did not fail him. Eventually, he made it to the edge of the forest and reached more expansive, open terrain, where he found the first Arczeckh corpse. This barbarian had been dead for several days, and raitons had already begun to pick at his flesh. Sarkur had obviously forgotten all about this fallen compatriot and just left him here to rot when he had died. Being beaten down and scattered for so long serves them right, Bear Fist thought as he chased the black carrion birds away and sniffed at the corpse. No respect for their fallen.

The corpse showed signs of having been beaten and stabbed and then forced to walk for gods knew how long without adequate supplies, but it revealed nothing out of the ordinary beyond that. There was nothing to indicate that anything had happened to Sarkur’s band except that their victims had turned against them with surprising results. It marked the head of a more distinct stretch of Sarkur’s back-trail, though, which was all the easier to follow for having been made by two people. The new stretch of trail was so distinct to Bear Fist’s animal senses that he knew he’d be able to follow it from farther away and at greater speed—specifically from the air, now that he was out of the thick of the forest. He bounded up the side of a broken tree that was leaning against a stronger neighbor and leaped out into space. His body melted and re-formed in mid leap, filling his mouth with the tang of a different animal’s heart’s blood. This was the blood of an eagle, and as the memory of its taste came to him, Bear Fist dwindled and changed into one of those majestic raptors. He climbed on a current of warmer air and followed the trail once more. Every dragging footprint or spot of blood on a broken brush stood out with perfect clarity to Bear Fist’s sharpened eyesight, and he made much better time in the air than any scout would have on foot.

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