If he accomplished nothing else that would serve as restitution, he was going to by God keep his promise to the Ranyhyn.

The Humbled did not object or argue. They did not waste time. Quickly they mounted their Ranyhyn. Then they leaned down to Covenant, one on each side of him, grasped him by his arms near his shoulders, and lifted him into the air between them.

Mhornym and Naybahn needed no urging to run. In perfect step an exact distance apart, they wheeled away and sprang into a gallop, racing toward their only conceivable salvation: the riven cliffs where Foul’s Creche had once stood high above the sea.

Hanging helpless while his arms wept with pain, and fragments of bone ground against each other in his chest, Covenant heard it now, the unfathomable rumble of the tidal-wave. He felt tremors like incipient spasms in the seafloor, even though the horses were sure of their footing, and the hands of the Humbled were as reliable as iron. If he could have looked behind him, he might have seen havoc looming against the bleak stars, the fragile heavens—

He did not try to look. He paid no attention to the littleness of the Ranyhyn against the imponderable force of a tsunami. He trusted them absolutely, and had no strength left for fear.

The rumble became thunder, an upheaval as vast as the Worm’s movement through the sea. It blotted out the world at his back, making every mortal effort vain. To strive against all things ending was simple vanity, valiant and futile. Like the Worm, the tsunami exceeded living comprehension. It could be neither accepted nor opposed. It required a different answer.

Nevertheless the Ranyhyn ran like figures in dreams, swift as yearning, slow as hopelessness. Their febrile rush tore at Covenant’s arms, but they would never reach the cliffs.

Then they had already done so. At the verge of a great fan of rubble that piled massively toward the heights of the promontory, Naybahn and Mhornym pounded to a halt.

Somehow Clyme and Branl dismounted without dropping Covenant; without dislocating his shoulders. At once, Clyme swept Covenant into his arms. As he sprang at the rising wreckage, he told Covenant, “Here we are quicker than Ranyhyn. There is no path. They must ascend with care. If fortune smiles upon them, they may yet survive the onslaught of waters. But we require greater haste.”

Covenant did not hear him. The roar of the tidal-wave smothered sound. It smothered thought. The tsunami was a mountain-range of water mounting against the Land. It would hit like the earthquake which had riven Melenkurion Skyweir. Its violence might resemble the convulsion which had severed the whole of the Lower Land from the Upper. The Ranyhyn would be smashed to pulp in an instant. Covenant and the Humbled would die in the first impact of the wave.