“All right,” she murmured, trying to pull herself up, but the horse, startled anew with her weight across its back, began moving, heaving itself up the hillside. Rae fought to hold on.

She managed to swing her leg over just as the horse reached the path—then another wild echoing shriek sent the horse into new terror. It tore away, galloping down the path, spurred on by the fearful noises behind it and the terror of Rae clinging, holding on for all she was worth, fingers twisted in the mane, eyes shut to the ground rushing rushing rushing—blurring root and earth and moss and needle—below.

XLIII

TSPTSP, OR THE VIOLENT NOISE OF NATURE

She could not hold on. She could not hold on. Rae bounced, tilted, slipped, legs hot and pinched on the saddle leather, unable to keep herself steady in the horse’s wild stride. She’d ridden Myntas’s old mule before, but his gentle, bony saunter was nothing like this panicked gallop through the forest, the enormous muscled form hurtling beneath her. She was in air; she was in the saddle. She was in air. Tree branches in new-leaf slapped against her, threatening to sweep her off. Ah!

“Shhh,” she tried to say, voice bouncing as she bounced. “It’s all right. Shhh, shhhh.” The horse heaved under her; she gripped its mane more tightly. The darkening woods, a darkening field, houses lantern-lit below, rushed by. The market village! Rae half realized as they reentered the forest, but the thought had no sooner flashed through her mind than it was replaced with a dark shape—a glimpse of something trailing in the field.…

Her breath caught. She craned, looking back, but the trees closed around them, and the horse, feeling Rae startle, panicked more. It lunged forward, hurtling ever faster along the path, and Rae, under the wild hoofbeats, heard for the first time—

Tsptsptsptsptsptsptsp

—following, a sound pattering just behind them. Tsptsptsp. A rustling, the sound of something, a shadow, keeping pace with the horse streaking through the moonless wood. Something was chasing them. The horse, sensing it, too, lengthened its stride, its sides heaving, its shoulders slick with sweat. In blind terror—What is it what is it—Rae could not hold on: Jounced from the saddle, she clung for a half moment to the horse’s neck, but she was already falling beneath, a hoof clipping her shoulder, her mouth suddenly stoppered with leaf litter and dirt, and tsptsptsptsptsptsptsptsp all she heard before darkness slipped over her.

Tsp.

Tsp.

Tsp.

Tsptsptsptsp. The noise came and went in the dark. For a long time, only that—

Tsp.

Tsp.

Tsp.

—coming and going, coming and going.

It slowed, quieted.

Tsp.

Then—

Rlpt.

Rlpt.

Rlpt.

Wet. Humid. Ripping.

Rlpt.

Rlpt.

Rlpt.

Deep in the senseless haze that had befallen her, Rae could not wake for the sound. The ache in her shoulder, the dull pain in her temples… she could not cast it off. She could not open her eyes. Sleep pressed on her, held her in the deep relief of darkness. But that sound—a kind of tearing, a wet shredding—would not let her drowse.