Page 51 of Halfling
She gasped, pulling off her boot and upending it.
A coin fell into her waiting palm. A beat, and then Sorcha was snorting with laughter.
Replacing her boot, she shot him an impressed look. “Dare I ask where the rest of them are?”
Orek just shrugged, standing and lifting Darrah onto his shoulder.
“Should I be worried about jangling all day?” she laughed as Orek lifted her pack for her to slip her arms through the straps.
“Maybe don’t run downhill too fast.”
Sorcha’s laugh resounded through the trees as they began the day’s journey, and Orek rumbled happily to hear it.
By afternoon, though, his good mood had shriveled. Sorcha had found most of the coins as she walked, replacing them in the purse, but even distracted with that, she too seemed to sense his growing unease.
She walked quietly beside him, her eyes wary, always moving.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” he said gruffly. He didn’t mean to be short with her, but the sense of being watched prickled along his spine. Though unsure what lingered in the trees, tracking them, he knew it was predatory.
He heard her sharp inhale when he pulled his hatchet from its loop on his belt.
Sorcha’s acrid fear-scent beside him permeated the air, but he could do nothing to assure her, not when his instincts not only lingered but grew stronger.
They were being followed. Stalked.
And whatever it was, it was far more dangerous than a handful of human slavers.
Orek took in all the scents he could, but the overriding smell was that of Sorcha’s fear, and hehated it.The scent burned his lungs and made him want to put a fist through something.
Protect. Flush out threat. Eliminate. Protect.
Nothing disturbed his litany as they continued through the forest. They walked another mile without incident, skirting around a homestead by keeping to the trees. Finding the wide river again, he kept the fast-moving rapids to their left and the trees to their right.
Only the sounds of their boots on the rocks and the rushing river broke the silence. All the animals had gone quiet, confirming what he already knew.
He pulled a snoozing Darrah from his hood and handed the kit to Sorcha. She tucked him into the crook of her arm, her mouth pulled into an anxious line.
Soon, his heartbeat joined the rush of water and crunch of rocks, and Orek strained to hear over the din of his own pulse. He flexed his fingers on the hatchet handle and palmed the long hunting knife at his waist.
Up ahead, the riverbank ran into a tall outcropping of rock that cut a jagged swathe into the river. Trees had climbed atop it, as well as blankets of moss on the lower rocks, glistening in the late morning, making a climb over impossible.
He saw it and he knew.
It’s the perfect spot.
Orek sucked in a breath and—
Every ambush he’d ever lived through, every moment of torment by his clan coalesced in that one moment—and kept him alive. The attack came swifter than any before, driving him into the water and sending rocks flying, but instinct had his arm raised just in time.
Orek caught the axe aimed straight for his head with his knife.
Sorcha screamed as Silas fell upon Orek, a flurry of limbs and sharp teeth. The tracker’s shaved skull gleamed in the daylight and threw horrid shadows across his twisted mouth.
He came at Orek like a rockslide, sudden and devastating. Though leaner than other kin, he still stood a half-head taller than Orek and pressed the advantage, using his longer reach and bigger size to hem him further into the water.
But Orek hadn’t lived this long and learned nothing.
