Dockalfar Read Online Free PDF Page A

draft horse, with thick fetlocks and a flat back that Alex could have stretched out fully upon. The animal grunted under the ogre’s weight. Alex found himself trapped between the ogre’s arms, any route of escape vanished. Not that he wanted escape, with things that even the ogre feared shambling down the slope.
    As the ogre spurred his mount down slope, shadow suddenly melted out from the rock before them. The animal tossed its head in surprise and the ogre growled.
    “Damned assassin,” Zakknr rumbled.
    “Don’t do that.”
    The cloaked form held up a hand showing three fingers. “Three. But go fast, others follow.”
    The ogre swore, and kicked his horse past the man on foot. The cloak swirled as the man danced out of the large animal’s path. Alex looked back only a second later, but there was no sign of him.
    They galloped headlong down the treacherous, rocky path, the hooves of the horse kicking loose rocks that trailed after them. Victoria was wrong. This had to be a dream. There was no other explanation.
    For if it was not, then he was surely insane. It would mean that he had lost the tenuous grip on sanity that the war had left him with.
    The horse stumbled and he was thrown forward, pressed against the hard ridge of neck bone by the oppressive weight of the ogre. He felt the breath leave him in an explosive gasp. Something hit the ground just before them to the left.
    Rock exploded, sending sharp chips flying. The horse screamed in outrage as its legs and belly were hit by the stone shrapnel. The ogre bellowed, waving his ax. Alex risked twisting about to stare up the slope to the right.
    Something monstrous stood there in the glow of evening. Something that made the ogre seem petite and graceful. It was tall as a house and almost as broad. It wore a patch work of skins and furs about its thick middle and carried a club that was more like a medium tree than anything else. A thatch of shaggy black hair was pulled back in a long greasy tail and it wore most gruesome jewelry. Teeth, bones and small skulls adorned its wrists and neck. It stooped and picked up a second bolder, carelessly tossing it down upon them. Zakknr pulled up hard on the reins, jerking the horse to one side as the rock hit and shattered. The troll, for that was what they had said, was coming down the mountain, blew out a gust of frosty air at the miss, then started to clamber down the slope. Zakknr kicked the horse into motion, and the animal eagerly scrambled down the path. They could hear the bellows of the troll behind them.
    The great horse was breathing hard by the time they had descended a thousand feet, but it was faster than the troll, even with the monster strides it was equipped to take. They thundered into a sparse patch of trees growing on the slope, and though the dappled shadow Alex could just see the hindquarters of one of the other horses.
    The spriggan’s mount was out of sight. He wished it far, far ahead and well away from the pursuing troll. They burst out of the trees and found themselves on an incline. The animal scrambled for purchase, the ogre berating it and smacking it with the flat of one broad palm the entire way. The horse of the goblin in front of them sent down a shower of small rocks and debris. At the rise, the ogre stopped, turning his prancing mount to view the way they had come.
    There was no sign of troll pursuit. No movement anywhere. Alex closed his eyes for a moment, trying without success to catch his breath. He felt as if he had run that haphazard route and not the heaving horse beneath him. He turned to look forward, down the other side of the rise and gaped.
    Spread below, no more than a mile of rocky and tree dotted slope away, was a mist-shrouded expanse of plain. It was blue and violet with the setting sun and perfectly flat. It spread as far as he could discern to the right and left, but at the very edge of the horizon a darker line of green hinted at what might be forest at its end.
    The