by James Fahy
“Doesn’t matter. You still have plenty of mana, whether you can use it or not. That will do.”
“How does this work?” Robin asked, reaching for his own mana stone. He knew that mana could be shared. Karya had used mana from Phorbas the knife to save their lives once, drawing power from his mana stone to ‘flip’ them across leagues when her own store was depleted.
“How about I explain the ins and outs of it to you later, Robin.” Hawthorn said. “When we’re not in quite such a pickle? Right now, we need steeds. This cantrip is called Boulder-dash, and it hasn’t been attempted since before the shattering. This might … sting a little.”
Robin opened his mouth to reply, but Hawthorn released a pulse of mana deep into the earth and it boomed through the circle like a shockwave, blowing the grass outwards in all directions and filling the air with an electric charge. More clouds of starlings erupted from the grass around them, hurtling off into the distance, their countless wings filling the sky with noise.
The wave of mana engulfed the three boys, rooting them to the spot, and Robin gasped as though punched in the stomach. It felt as though all the air had been ripped from his lungs, and a great, crushing weight had descended on his back. Buckling, he fell to his knees in the dirt, struggling to breathe as he clutched for his mana stone. From his blurred peripheral vision, he saw Jackalope and Woad the same. Jackalope was on his hands and knees in the grass, pale and shaken, his gritted teeth grinding in pain. On his other side, Woad had dropped into a tight ball on his haunches and had his head buried under his arms protectively. He could see the faun's milky mana stone flashing rapidly and erratically, like a lighthouse sending frantic morse code.
The pain was unbearable. Robin’s own mana stone roared in his fist, the silver and green stone rolling with motion within, a contained storm, as the power of the cantrip flowed through his body, electricity in his veins, his lungs crushed, heart feeling as though it might burst out of his chest. Robin, unable to speak, squeezed his watering eyes shut. Bloody … magic, he thought to himself. Why is it always so … painful?!
He could feel his mana being torn from his body, draining out and down and into the soil beneath them, leaving nothing behind but a chilling, empty feeling inside. It was like bleeding to death.
And then, just when he felt he couldn’t stand it a moment longer, it stopped. A golden-green flash flickered in the circle, bright against his eyelids.
Gasping and drawing in air like a man who had almost drowned, Robin’s eyes shot open. Hawthorn was getting shakily to his feet. He looked unsteady and weak, but his long deep eyes were blazing. His arms were covered with dirt and soil to the elbows. It fell from his shaking hands in clumps, wisps of smoke and steam rising from his grubby fingertips. Beneath their feet, the ground began to shake and buckle.
“Get back,” Hawthorn wheezed, staggering away, bow in hand.
Robin wasn’t sure he could stand at all. He was dizzy and tingling from head to toe, but the discomfort was gone. Flashes and blurry spots clouded his eyes, but he felt Woad’s hand on his arm, hoisting him to his feet.
“Pinky, watch your step,” the faun said in a wobbly voice.
Shapes were erupting from the ground beneath their feet. Two of them. Large things, making the earth and soil buck and heave like water. There was a rumbling roar, and Robin and the others watched in astonishment as two great forms clawed their way out of the earth to freedom, as though digging themselves out of their own graves.
They were beasts. Lions, Robin thought, but much bigger than any lion he had ever seen in the mortal world. Each was as large as a police horse, great muscled flanks shaking off avalanches of soil as they climbed out of the ground, still flickering along their edges with green mana.
“They’re … they’re made of earth?” Jackalope wheezed hoarsely.
It was true, Robin saw. These were not living creatures of flesh and blood. Each of the two vast lions was sculpted from the ground, rocks rolling just beneath the rich black skin of soil and dirt like large bunched muscles. Branches and roots crisscrossed their hides like sinew, tying their forms together, poking from the surface here and there, questing tendrils of tubers, shoots and vines, flexing and shaking as the beasts stood before them. Their vast heads, dark and delineated with grit, pebbles and dirt, were rock and stone, each long tooth in their maws a mica-flecked dagger of slate, and their vast and shaggy lions-manes were composed entirely of the coarse yellowed grass of the hills.
“Well, that worked better than I imagined,” Hawthorn said, as one of the huge beasts stretched, shaking off excess dirt with a flurry of motion. The other creature roared, its loud voice deep and rolling, a landslide. “Quickly now! Climb on.”
“Climb on?” Robin yelped. The monstrous lions turned their great heads toward the sound of his voice, regarding him with hard black eyes of darkest solid coal.
Hawthorn swung himself up onto the back of one of the steeds. It didn’t seem to mind, or indeed to notice.
“Hurry,” he said, beckoning to them. “They won’t hurt you. They’re not alive. Boulderdash is a travelling cantrip. It’s just animated earth. Well, rocks and twigs and bits of old root too, you get the idea. Your father was excellent at this once, Robin. Before the shattering, of course. He always summoned a land-dragon. I could never quite match it.” He held out his hand. After only a moment of hesitation, Jackalope crossed the grass and grasped it, swinging up beside the older Fae. There was plenty of room for two atop the wide back of the curious creature.
Robin considered that out of the options of large and vicious-looking earth-lions or a herd of murderous centaur, they would be better off taking their chances with the former. On legs that still felt more than a little drained and watery, he ran over to the other creature and, grasping the long tangled grass of its mane, he hauled himself up onto its wide, knotted back. Woad landed behind him immediately, holding onto his shoulders.
“These are fast,” Hawthorn assured them. “Very fast. But they won’t last forever, even with mana from all four of us. We make for Briar Hill!”
“Faster than centaurs?” Jackalope asked, as Hawthorn dug his heels into the rocks and wood that formed the steed’s flanks. “It’s a long way to Briar Hill from here.”
“Well, let’s hope so, eh?” Hawthorn replied, as the great cat leapt out of the circle, and began to run with thunderous booming paws swiftly across the hill and out onto the wide hilly prairie. “Just like riding a horse!” he called back reassuringly to Robin and Woad.
Robin, wide-eyed, gripped the thick yellow brown mane in fistfuls. “I’ve never ridden a horse!” he called, slightly hysterical. “There’s not much call for it in the inner-city!” He had no idea how to make the Boulderdash cat move. It was wider than a horse's back, his legs dangling over its great sides as he felt it growl and creak beneath him, like a forest in a storm. But if his father could do it, then so could he.
“Yahhh!” Woad bellowed at the top of his lungs, holding on to Robin for dear life and kicking his bare heels into the cat’s huge earthy flanks. The creature reared up with a deafening roar, and with a lurch that almost threw the two boys from their seats, it set off after its companion, thundering across the ground.
The cantrip beasts were fast. Agile and fleet, their great paws slamming on the ground, heads low and wooden, tree-root tails flickering behind them like great whips as they tore across the uneven ground at tremendous speed. The grass was a blur beneath them, the wind streaming tears from Robin's eyes so that he had to hold his head low and close to the mane to keep out of it. The great creature smelled of deep soil, tree sap and freshly cut leaves. It was an oddly warm and comforting smell, he had time to think, as he clung on for dear life.
“This …” he muttered giddily into the grassy mane, “… is nothing like riding a horse!”
Hawthorn and Jackalope had already made good ground on them and were some way ahead, speeding tirelessly across the grasslands, sending up clouds of startled an
d complaining birds now and again, through which Robin and Woad’s sentient ride leapt with undaunted determination.
The creatures were running full pelt, their footing sure as they leapt up and down the undulating hills, from grassy tussock to rocky outcrop, splashing through the occasional hidden mire in the long grass.
The earth rolled under them at thundering, rhythmic speed, landscape flashing by, and the morning sky, blue now, arched above them cool and high with shredded cloud, an autumn cap of fresh, wild air.
Over the roar of the constant wind, and the pounding of the cantrip's great paws, Robin could occasionally hear Woad whoop and holler with sheer glee, though his voice was whipped away and over the hills almost immediately.
Robin couldn’t help but grin at the euphoric speed. He tightened his fists in the grassy clumps of the creature’s mane, clinging to its back with his legs as they bounded onwards.
“Come on, leafy Aslan,” he muttered breathlessly. “Don’t let us down.”
Robin had no clear idea how far it was to this Briar Hill, nor why Hawthorn seemed to think they would be safe from the pursuing centaurs there. He vaguely remembered Karya mentioning that it was a good few days' hike at least. But that had been on foot across the grasslands, not pelting across the countryside at full magical-herb-cat speed.
*
“They’re behind us,” Woad said after some time. The sun had fully risen by now, and the wide grasslands were bathed in a crisp light, making the tussocks shimmer like spun gold. “They’re not giving up.”
Robin risked a glance over his shoulder. On the horizon behind him, far across the rolling plains, he could make out the herd of centaur, a pale army of racing death. They were raising a cloud of dust in the air behind them, and there was the occasional flash where the sun hit their spears.
“I think they’re gaining on us, slowly,” Woad shouted to Robin. “First, I couldn’t see them. Then I could see them, but not hear them. Now I can hear their hooves.”
“How can you hear anything over the noise of this thing?” Robin shouted back over the roaring wind. The creature they rode groaned and rumbled like a thunderhead with every movement, its magical parts grinding grittily together with every swift motion. Its rapidly falling feet were a constant thudding tattoo on the ground beneath them, and above all this, the wind roared like a freight train. Robin felt it burning his cheeks red, and they surely hadn’t been riding even two hours yet.
“Fauns have the best of all ears,” Woad replied. “You should hear your stomach gurgle at night. I can hear it from two floors away. And that’s just a stomach, not a pile of horsey death.”
Robin watched their tenacious pursuers for a moment longer, then looked forward to Hawthorn and Jackalope still ahead of them, tearing through the grass.
“Do you think we can make this thing go faster?” he shouted to Woad. “I want to get alongside. I’ve never driven a … whatever this thing is again…before.”
Woad considered this for a second. “A Boulderdash. We could try saying ‘ya’ again, only louder?” he suggested.
“Woad, I don’t think–”
“Yaaah!” Woad bellowed in Robin's ear.
The Boulderdash cantrip growled and, to Robin’s surprise, the lion lowered its head further, dropping its shoulders so low that Robin almost toppled forward over the creature's head. Considering the fact that they were moving along in a blur, this would not have ended well for him. He clung on grimly. Their beast sped up somehow, and, leaping between rocks and over clumps of heather with feline agility, it gradually drew alongside its companion.
Hawthorn glanced over at them. His face was very calm, as though he did this sort of thing every day. His hair whipping about his horns.
“Not bad are they?” he bellowed to them, reaching down and patting the flank of his steed, setting loose a clump of soil and dust. “Better than walking, that’s for sure. Though they are a bit unforgiving on the old backside, eh?”
“The centaurs are still following us, Hawthorn,” Robin yelled back, as the two great cats galloped alongside each other. “Woad says they’re closing in. How much further until we get there?”
Jackalope, sitting behind Hawthorn, looked backwards, his ashy grey hair flicking into his eyes in the slipstream.
“Centaurs don’t tire,” he yelled. “They’re bred in the pits of Dis. Engineered for war. They will follow us until their legs give out and they collapse dead.”
“That’s very helpful, Jack,” Robin bellowed back, giving the pale Fae a thumbs up. “Cheerful contribution as always.” He looked to Hawthorn. “Will these things last?”
“Not forever,” Hawthorn replied reluctantly.
“We must have been riding for hours already,” Robin yelled.
“Definitely,” Woad agreed. “My butt is completely numb. I think my tail might actually fall off.”
“How fast are we going? Eighty, ninety miles an hour?” Robin asked Hawthorn, ignoring the faun’s complaints. “So we’ve covered nearly two hundred miles of grassland, give or take. How far is this hill of yours from Erlking?”
“I don’t know miles,” Hawthorn shrugged. “We measure distance in the Netherworlde in days. Erlking is four day’s march from the hill. That’s with resting and sleeping, of course. These earthy beauties don’t need to do either.”
This wasn’t very helpful information to Robin. “What do we do if the cantrip runs out before we get there?” he said.
The old man looked at him sidelong. “We get run down by centaurs and killed,” he replied bluntly.
“And what happens if they do catch up to us?” Jackalope said. “If these things are slowing down?”
“Then we hold them off!” Hawthorn replied, beginning to sound a little testy. “Honestly, the pair of you. Are you constantly worrying about what might happen and what could be? Can you not concentrate on what is? The future is a promise and the past a memory. They’re not real places, so don’t give them all your attention. All there is for us is now, always. A great continuous rolling moment. That’s quite enough to deal with.”
Their rides had crested the top of a tall smooth hill, and more of the grasslands were laid out before them. Hawthorn pointed ahead. “There, look. Between those two small hills on the far horizon. Once we cross those, when we pass between them, Briar should be visible.”
Robin dismayed at the distance. The grasslands were huge and empty, wild ground undulating away. Here and there were occasional low bushes or stubby trees. There was a small purplish blur in the distance which might possibly have been a tiny wood, but that was the only place of any substance to focus on. He could barely make out the smokey shapes of the hills Hawthorn spoke of. He had been on high moors before, back in the human world. Nothing made you feel smaller or more insignificant. It was like being in a desert, but of grass and gorse. At least back there, in the mortal realm, even on the moors there was the occasional road, even a motorway, to hint at civilisation. Here, there was nothing like that. Just wilderness, untamed, immense and majestic. Sweeping golden-brown nature rolling away beautiful and heartless on all sides.
“Hold them off how?” he wondered.
“By resting, and recharging your mana,” Hawthorn advised. “We have little else to do but hold on tightly, after all.”
He was right of course. What else could they do? They rode on in silence, Robin occasionally glancing behind. The centaurs still followed, a wave of pursuing death, but there was still enough distance between them that he couldn’t make out their faces, or their odd and disquieting masks.
If Karya were here, he thought to himself, she’d have a plan, a strategy. She always did. Hawthorn seemed such a wild spirit. He had been living in the wilds of the Netherworlde for so long, used to the constant danger, dodging and avoiding capture. It was understandable that he would live only from one minute to the next.
Well, Karya isn’t here, Robin remonstrated himself angrily. It’s just you, the dour frosty Fae, and a faun, so y
ou’d better think of something yourself. If they do catch up, within say … deadly spear-throwing distance, for instance. What will you do? How will you defend yourself? Harsh language? Distracting mime?
He wondered desperately where Karya and Henry were. Whether they were even in the Netherworlde yet. And if they were, if Karya had the sense to be tracking him using her method of tearing back and forth between the worlds to cover ground. The last thing he wanted was for her and Henry to run into another centaur patrol.
Time passed. The land rolled beneath them and the sky overhead, and slowly, the centaurs gained. It was barely noticeable at first. The tireless, rhythmic thudding of the Boulderdashes' huge paws, the rocking sway of their bodies, was almost hypnotic, as the grasslands thundered by. Clouds drifted in from the east, sending long spiralling fingers stretching across the cool skies. After a time, a light, silvery rain began to fall, thin and fine. It glistened on the hills and rocks, making them glitter and shine when the sun broke through. Robin watched the great shadows of the clouds roll over the vast expanses of countryside, like ghosts of drifting continents.
But each time the land dipped or rose, and they lost sight momentarily of the herd giving chase, they would be visibly closer once they reappeared. The noise of the centaurs was a dull and constant thrumming of hooves, tireless war drums, and they were only getting louder. The occasional angry bestial bellow could be heard now and again. The magical steeds Robin and the others were fleeing on were definitely tiring. Almost imperceptibly, they were decelerating. Slowly but surely, the gap between them and their pursuers was closing.
*
“Look!” Woad exclaimed. The rain had long since stopped, and the autumn sun was shimmering down onto the wet ground through a gauze of cloud so thin and smooth, it seemed like muslin stretched above them, suspending the orb of the sun like a softly cradled egg yolk.
“What is it?” Robin asked, looking back.
“They’re going away … I think,” Woad said uncertainly.
