The Wanderer and the Hill by Warren Hately

Author:Warren Hately [Hately, Warren]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2018-05-18T04:00:00+00:00

***

In his panic and trying to escape, Brihtwolf fell backwards over Max, landing on top of him and Ilsa. With a faint groan, the sylph girl opened her eyes, saw only darkness, and promptly went back to sleep.

Max was crushed beneath his friend’s weight. In his own terror, he couldn’t grasp what Brihtwolf was saying, nor did he remember Ailswy’s fey warning of only two days before. Instead, Brihtwolf lifted a leg and Max rolled out like a fresh-born foal. Only then did he look up at the enormous spiny, hulking form towering over them.

It was the biggest hedgehog Max had ever seen.

On the one hand, that wasn’t much of a prize given the only hedgehogs Max had ever seen were squished on the side of the road on the outskirts of town. This hedgehog, however, was about the size of three elephants taped together. Its whole body was covered in quills that fanned out like jousting lances. Max was reminded of a giant cat with its hackles raised.

Worse still, the hedgehog wasn’t alone. Two more of the huge creatures grazed in the old creekbed nearby. Clearly Max and Brihtwolf’s arrival stirred their interest, if not their ire, and the shambling beasts moved towards them like natural bulldozers and as big.

Their escape had halted on the crest of another rise. The gigantic hedgehogs were concealed by the lay of the land. The six night elves steaming up in pursuit of the Thane arrived just as Max and Brihtwolf dived separate ways to avoid the hedgehog’s charge.

The first startled night elf was soon joined by a second. An instant later, the looming studded foreleg of the mighty hedgehog swept them both aside. They disappeared into a grove of shrubs and fell silent. The third and fourth sylph on the scene changed course with difficulty. One was promptly flattened by the first hedgehog’s mate. The fifth night elf, seeing comrades under attack, unwisely drew his bow and started peppering the hulks with arrows. A fourth hedgehog lumbered out of the night, tipping a tree free of its roots that soon vanished the sixth elf on the scene. The arrow-firing ceased a moment later in a bloody display that left only a pair of skinny, black-clad legs kicking from the huge animal’s otherwise discreet maw.

With the whereabouts of any other pursuers unknown, Brihtwolf and Max regrouped, though still hemmed in by the spiked giants moving in the dark around them. Max scampered like a crab until he collided again with Brihtwolf. Valesfang seemed to wilt like a moonflower in the boy’s grasp.

“Please, stop!” Max cried, his voice breaking. “Stop! We’re no good to eat!”

“No good to eat?” Brihtwolf cried, his normally stalwart voice almost cracking as well. “Wotan’s guts, boy!”

To their surprise, the closest hedgehog – looming over Max with a long snout and tiny yet gigantic blinking black eyes framed by a mane of spines – growled querulously, “NO . . . EEEET?”

“Gods be damned,” Brihtwolf gasped, turning now to face the same way as Max even though a similar doom hung over him – all but snuffled his shoulder, in fact.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.