Far below to the west, war dogs howled and snarled, following Gaborn’s blood scent. Gaborn glimpsed a dog on the trail in the starlight—a huge mastiff with an iron collar and a leather mask to protect its face and eyes. The pack leader. It would be branded with runes of power, to let it run faster and farther than its brothers, smell Gaborn more easily, and plot with the supernatural cunning of its kind.

Gaborn couldn’t escape the pack, not with that dog alive.

He nocked an arrow, the last in his quiver. The grizzled mastiff raced up the path at incredible speed, its back and head showing from time to time as it leapt through low ferns. With endowments of strength and metabolism, such dogs could cover miles in minutes.

Gaborn watched its progress, gauged where it would exit the ferns below him. The mastiff burst from the ferns a hundred yards down, snarling in rage, its mask making it look skeletal in the starlight.

The beast was only fifty yards away when Gaborn loosed his arrow. It flew to its mark, striking the dog’s leather mask, then ricocheted over its head.

The mastiff raced forward.

Gaborn didn’t have time to clear his saber from its scabbard.

The mastiff leapt. Gaborn saw its jaws gaping, the huge nick in its forehead where the arrow had pierced the leather, scraped away flesh.

Gaborn threw himself back in the saddle. The mastiff jumped and brushed past Gaborn’s chest, the spikes on its collar slashing Gaborn’s robe, drawing blood on his chest.

The stallion whinnied in terror and leapt over the crest of the hill, raced through the pines as Gaborn struggled to dodge low branches and remain ahorse.

Then his steed was racing down a steep, rocky hill. Gaborn managed to draw his sword clear, though his bow had been swept away in the branches.

I don’t need it, Gaborn tried to reassure himself. I’m ahead of Raj Ahten’s army now. I only need to race him.

He put heels to horse flesh, let the beast run its heart out, and raised his sword flashing in the night.

Here in the mountains, the trees had begun to thin, so that for the first time in hours he could test this horse’s speed.

It leapt an outcropping of rocks, and Gaborn heard a snarl at his left elbow.

The mastiff had caught up with him again, was running under the horse’s hoofs.

“Clear!” Gaborn shouted. His steed leapt and kicked—a maneuver all his father’s hunting horses were taught. It was meant to clear wolves or charging boars from beneath the horse’s hooves.

Now the war dog took an iron shoe full in the muzzle, yelped as its neck snapped.