Path of the Tiger, стр. 457

With a bellow it put its head down and hurtled into a storming charge, and the terrifying sight of it cannoning towards him was enough of a shock to inject a fresh dose of adrenalin into his veins. Overriding the paralysing terror that was restraining him in its icy talons, he sprang to his feet, spun about on his heels and took off at a sprint, with the cannonade galloping of the two-and-a-half-ton juggernaut ringing with alarming closeness in his ears.

He fled blindly through the trees, screaming and bolting at full tilt as branches and leaves whipped at his face and body and tore at his skin. All of a sudden though, with a heart-stopping lurch the ground beneath him simply disappeared, and then he was falling, and then tumbling and rolling and ragdolling down a steep and almost vertical slope.

Eventually William’s mad rolling came to a halt as the gradient of the slope eased up and the ground flattened out. Every part of him throbbed and burned with a terrible pain, and once again all the air inside his lungs had been smashed out. Adrenalin continued to beat its furious tempo inside his skull, and with what little strength he still possessed he scrambled to his feet, wheezing and gasping, and looked around him with wild, terror-wide eyes. For the first time since being thrown off of his horse he had the presence of mind to search for his weapons – and it was with a stab of dismay that he discovered that the sword was gone from his hip, and the Winchester carbine had long since vanished from his back. Both had most likely been torn from his body, either when he had been flung from his horse, or when he had fled through the trees, and they were now probably lying useless at the top of the steep bank. He cursed under his breath and spat into the mud, shivering with naked fear all the while.

There was, however, one more thing that he needed to check for. With a cut-up, bleeding hand he reached inside his now-torn jacket to see if the pendant was still there. He breathed out a sigh of relief; his most precious possession was still hanging around his neck. Panting hard and trembling with fear, he peered around to try to get his bearings and make some sort of sense of his surroundings. As he turned around, though, he stumbled back with surprise, for looming up from the ground before him, and stabbing imposingly through the treetops, was the huge stone temple he had seen from the top of the valley.

Its outer walls had mostly crumbled into piles of moss-thick stone, but the inner section still stood proud and tall. This itself was the size of the average Scottish castle he knew from home, and its conical central tower loomed with silent gravitas through the mist.

A bone-chilling roar reverberated suddenly through the forest, and it was answered shortly afterwards by another roar, which seemed to be very, very close. There was only one logical refuge from the wild beasts now, and so it was that William hobbled with as much haste as he could manage into the eerie shadows of the abandoned temple.

When William stepped inside the morass of tumbled stones, entangled vines and clinging, vein-like root masses, he looked around and studied the faded but still impressive décor of the temple; intricately carved friezes of detailed scenes, featuring fantastical beasts and many-armed gods, some of whom sported animal heads. A life-sized statue of an arcane god leaned against one of the crumbled grey walls, its solemn face still bearing a few flecks of the vividly coloured paint that had once covered its entire body. The white paint that clung with tenacious determination to its eyes gave the statue an eerily lifelike quality, and it seemed to be glaring at William with a malevolent glower as he limped into the shadows of the still-standing tower.

A roar reverberated through the maze of stones, and the gush of fear it brought with it spurred life into William’s aching, exhausted limbs. With the rumble still ringing in his ears he hurried into the nearest doorway, passing through its carved pillars and faded façades. Breathing heavily and racked with pain, he leaned against the wall and peered nervously through the gloom. A few splinters of daylight streamed into the dark space through a vine-choked window opening, and it illuminated the murky room just enough so that William could make out two passageways, each leading deeper into the heart of the temple. With fear pumping hyper-energised blood through his veins, he crouched down on the floor and fumbled around for something he could use as a weapon, but all he managed to find were broken stones and dry leaves and twigs. He jumped back in fright as a huge spider scuttled out from under one of the stone fragments he disturbed, and he cursed loudly, but immediately clamped his hand over his mouth to stifle the sound.

‘William you fool!’ he whispered to himself, ‘you dunnae want those … those devils out there tae know you’re in here!’

A series of rasping barks reverberated through the room from the foliage just outside, and William scurried through to the passage on the right, before whatever was outside the walls decided to peer in through the window. The heavy darkness of the corridor he found himself in smothered out any light from outside, and he had to fumble his way along, groping the rough and damp walls for guidance in the pitch black. He noticed that there were small alcoves every few paces, with empty mounts in which torches, presumably, could fit.

‘If only I had one ay them torches now,’ he muttered.

He licked his lips with a swollen tongue, but the gesture only served to further irritate them; his mouth had been dry from this pervasive fear for quite some time now. He drew in a deep