The others waited patiently for them. Or for her. She seemed to sense this, for after a while she rallied herself, began looking for her horse, Danin. But she stood still a moment, as if listening for a voice in the night . . . and said at last, as though addressing the night itself, "I want this to be over."
I want this to be over.
The black fatality of those words seemed to stand out, stark and clear in the deep night, as though limned with her own life's blood. They stung Anest's heart like acid, even as they left him groping like a blind man for comforting intentions that were now lost forever in the endless depths of some dark place.
They were soon on their way again, proceeding as cautiously as time would allow. They rode two abreast along the road, within a stone's-throw of the river's edge. The land to their left rose sharply; they stood at the foot of steep mountains which reared high above, black and menacing, like the threat of impending violence.
Perhaps it was the latent threat of the enemy, or that of being hunted. For whatever reason, they felt as though the wide world itself conspired against them, that the very elements had become hostile. They scanned the night forest, a watchful line of moving prey tensed in anticipation of the hidden, stationary predator's sudden explosion into savage, slashing, ripping violence. Advance scouts rode ahead into the darkness, but the enemy seemed to have withdrawn.