Free Spider Wars: Book Three of the Black Bead Chronicles by J.D. Lakey

The ambient flared scarlet for less
than a blink of the eye. Just for a moment. She sucked all her
emotions back into her heart, trying to spare Erin and the bennelk,
but it was already too late.
    One did not touch a bennelk
with an unguarded heart. Strong emotion spread like wild fire in a
herd. Her mount bore the brunt of her lapse. Cloud Eye’s head
snapped up, looking for the thing that had caused her so much pain.
Connor had hurt them. Connor must pay. Spinning on her hind legs, her
tusks slashing the air, Cloud Eye bellowed in rage. Kite Wing leapt
away with a squeal of outraged protest, barely saving her rider from
a nasty leg wound. Cheobawn grabbed for the reins, her other hand on
the saddle horn to catch herself as Cloud Eye tried to dance out from
under her, kicking out in displeasure with her spurred hind legs.
    Connor uttered a string of
curses as he jerked Kite Wing around, trying to dodge the lethal
claws. Wise Kite Wing managed to keep her rider and save him from
harm.
    Sigrid shouted something as
he kicked Star into motion and aimed his bennelk at Erin's mount, Red
Leaf, knocking her out of harm’s way before spinning Star around to
do the same for Connor.
    Cheobawn had no time to
care. She had other problems. Cloud Eye danced sideways under her,
her great clawed feet throwing up white puffs of powdered ice. Knees
pressed against the saddle, her body swaying to match Cloud Eye’s
motion, Cheobawn tried to persuade the mountain of animal flesh to
calm down and return to her place. Cloud Eye rumbled angrily and
shook her head as the reins tightened. Cheobawn had no choice but to
ease up on her grip and let her mount have her way.
    Trouble was a contagion in a
group of bennelk. Kite Wing’s blood was up, Cloud Eye’s rage
catching hold inside her brain. She surged towards Cloud Eye, dodging
Sigrid’s attempt to catch her halter as she snapped in irritation
at the younger animal. Connor sawed ineffectually at her reins to no
effect. Cloud Eye, junior-most in the bennelk ranks, should have
given ground. Instead, she turned to defend herself, tusks up,
hissing her ire. Sigrid’s Star turned to join the fray.
    “ Run,” Cheobawn shouted,
at the end of her patience. “Run, you silly beast.” She kicked
Cloud Eye hard in the ribs, jerked sideways on the reins and imagined
running free over an endless plain of white as fast as her bennelk
legs could carry her. Cloud Eye needed no more goading than that. She
leapt clear of the tangle of angry bennelk with a stiff-legged spring
that snapped Cheobawn’s head back with its power. They landed with
a bone jarring thump, elk and rider, on the verge of a frozen drift.
Cheobawn’s head snapped forward onto her chest. Before she could
regain control, Cloud Eye had scrambled ungracefully away, up the
bank and down the other side, claws tearing at the frozen snow,
sending up clouds of ice with each leap.
    The next paddock, the grass
mowed short, had been swept clean of snow by the wind. The need to
run away echoed between animal and rider until Cheobawn was not sure
whose thoughts were whose. Cloud Eye, finding a solid purchase for
her toes, put her head down, laid her antlers along the sides of her
neck and ran as if a demon was on her tail. Cheobawn pressed her face
into the ruff under her fingers and let the bennelk mind take
command.
    For a moment, Cheobawn
imagined that she was free; that the meadow in front of her was flat
and smooth and stretched on forever like an endless sheet of pack
ice, that they could run without needing to stop for rest or food,
time forgotten, with only the starlight from a million stars set in
an ebony sky to light their way. There, behind her eye lids, she
built the icy plain until it seemed almost real, the ice under Cloud
Eye’s toes solid as stone, the canopy of night so close you could
reach out and touch the stars.
    She would have run forever,
letting the cold ease the pain in her heart, but a darkness moved
across the sky,