The hounds of Khor-Sula were not dogs. They were salt-terrors.
Bred by the slaver syndicates to hunt runaways across the waterless wastes, the beasts were the size of yearling calves, armored in thick, leathery hides that had been cured in packed stone salt water until they turned as tough as boiled rhinoceros hide. Their eyes were milky, white, and fully blind, covered by thick nictitating membranes to protect them from blowing sand. But their wide, flared nostrils could scent a single drop of human sweat across two leagues of open dunes. Their broad paw pads were hardened into leathery cushions that felt every sound tremor in the bedrock.
And in the narrow, echoing channels of the underground chimney pipes, they had caught the scent of two hundred bleeding, sweating refugees.
“Hounds!” Master Varos cried, drawing his heavy bronze pry-bar as the deep, deep-throated baying echoed off the vaulted dark rock walls like the roar of an underground waterfall. “They’ve let loose the tracking pack! The hunters are right behind them!”
“Keep moving!” Ren shouted to the refugees, his voice cutting through the panic. “Varos, take the women and children toward the fumarole! Follow Mira’s lavender light! Don’t stop for anything! Nomad, hold the narrow arch with me!”
