Sons of the Oak Read Online Free Page A

face.
    Fallion wondered what horrors she had seen.
    For her part, Rhianna stared at the men, and she was too afraid to speak. She could feel something hurting her inside. Was it fear that gnawed at her belly, or something worse? Why were these men still here? Everyone else was dead. She could tell them later what had happened—about the dark stranger, the summoner. She forced some words past lips that would not let her speak. “Please, let’s go. Get me out of here!”
    In the woods above them there was a distant crack, like a wet limb snapping under heavy weight.
    â€œI smell evil,” Daymorra whispered. “It’s coming.”
    Suddenly a voice inside Fallion warned, “Flee!” It was his father’s voice, the warning of the Earth King.

    All the others must have heard the same warning, for Waggit instantly grabbed Jaz’s reins and went thundering downhill through the woods.
    Borenson fumbled with his boot-knife for an instant, thinking to put it away, but then stabbed the damned creature that lay on the limb through the belly, and it wriggled on the end of his blade. He marveled at its strength, until it let out a shrill bell-like bark.
    And in the woods, uphill, an enormous roar sounded, shaking the air, a mother crying out to her young.
    There was the sound of limbs snapping and trees breaking, and Borenson looked back. Fallion was trying to turn his mount, mouth wide in horror. Borenson slapped its rump, and the horse lunged away uncertainly.
    Rhianna wrapped her arms around Fallion. He locked his own small hand over her fist and thought, We were all wrong. My father didn’t send me here to see some old woman. He sent me to see this!
    He glanced back into the woods, trying to discern what gave chase, as Borenson sheathed his knife.
    Fallion’s heart was pounding like a sledgehammer upon an anvil. His father seldom sent warnings, and only did so when a man was in mortal danger.
    There was a sound like the churning of wind, or the rising of a storm up the hill, as if something were rushing through the trees. Fallion peered up through the woods, and it seemed that he saw movement—dark forms leaping and gliding through the trees. But it was as if light retreated from them, and the harder he squinted, the less certain he could be of what it was that he saw.
    â€œRide!” Daymorra shouted as she drew back her arrow. “I will hold them off!”
    Waggit and Jaz were already gone, leaving Daymorra to her fate. Borenson spurred his own horse and kept just off Fallion’s flank. Soon the horses were galloping at full speed.
    Fallion’s training took over and he clung to the saddle and crouched, offering less wind resistance as an aid to his swift force horse and making a smaller target of his back. Rhianna clung to him, warming his back. With his ear pressed against the horse’s neck, he could feel the heat of its body on his cheek as well as between his legs, could feel every thud of its hooves
against the soft humus, and could hear the blood rushing through its veins and the wind wheezing through the caverns of its lungs.
    He was suddenly reminded of an incident from his childhood: on a foggy morning, not five years ago, he and Jaz had gone out on the parapet. The streets had been all but empty so early in the morning, and Fallion had heard a strange sound, a panting, as if someone were running, followed by a call: “Wooo—OOOO. Wooo-oooo.”
    Both boys thought that something was coming for them, scrabbling up the castle walls, and they tried to imagine what it might be. So they ran into the room and barred their doors in fright.
    They tried to imagine what kind of animal might make such a noise, and Fallion had ventured that since it sounded like a horn, it must be an animal with a long neck.
    In their room, the boys had a menagerie of animals all carved from wood and painted in their natural colors. Jaz suggested that it might be a camel that