Aric tried to argue that he, in fact, killed some of the attackers. She countered that she’d had to drive off the halflings using magic, for which many no doubt resented her, and if it hadn’t been for that magic then Aric—and everyone else—would quite possibly be dead already.
So he was stuck.
The caravan cut across open desert, and since leaving the road the jouncing, jostling ride had been more pronounced than ever. He had to hold onto the bench or put a hand against the argosy’s wall to steady himself each time the wheels rolled over a rock or uneven patch of ground, or let his spine be painfully jarred. He and Ruhm and the others in the argosy, mostly slaves who chose to ride in order to save their strength for the difficult tasks ahead, weren’t talking much. The constant chatter and joking that had marked the earlier part of the trip was gone, and a new mood had taken over. People were tense, mourning the dead but even more concerned that they not follow their comrades into the grave.
Aric sat near a window, so that he could stand occasionally, stretch his legs, and look outside. For the first several days he had reveled in the new and different scenery, but these last days on the trail had knocked that enthusiasm from him. Each new vista was just like the last. Sand, low hills, a few determined plants. The occasional birds flew past overhead, and every now and then they caught a glimpse of an animal, insects, lizards and snakes, sometimes larger beasts. Most of those would no doubt have gladly eaten Aric or any other member of the expedition, but didn’t dare prey upon such a large group.
He would not have said that he missed Nibenay—chaotic, frenetic Nibenay, so often unfriendly to half-elves—but he did miss his little home, and his shop. The only piece of metal he had on this trip was his coin medallion, and he found himself handling it often, taking solace in its familiarity and in the enduring solidity of metal, worn down from his touch but still there after all these years.
A whisper yanked him from unhappy contemplation. “Hsst! Aric!”
Aric reached for the window’s edge and pulled himself to his feet. The argosy rocked, a wheel rolling over a large stone, Aric guessed, and almost threw him back down, but he held fast. Damaric walked beside the window. “What news, Damaric?”
“Kadya says we’re close!”
“We are? How close?” He had no idea what hazards the lost city might hold, but anything would be better than another day in this damnable wagon.
“I’m not sure. There are low, rocky hills ahead. According to the undead man’s map, beyond those lies another short stretch of desert. Then Akrankhot!”
Ruhm had overheard, and now he stood as well, his back hunched over to get his head out the window. “Did you hear it from her?” he asked.
“Everybody’s talking about it. She’s up front with a glass, so she saw it first. She told someone, and that one told someone else, and so on.”
“Are you sure it’s true?” Aric asked. “You know how rumors spread.”
“Aye,” Damaric said. “Sure as I can be. The closer to the front of the caravan, the more people are talking about it. She would never tell a slave soldier anything, but people I trust confirmed it.”
“That’s great,” Aric said. “I think I’m already a head shorter from the way this trip is crushing my spine.”
He leaned out the window and peered ahead. The rocky hills were visible, two rows of them slanting toward each other at the end. As if they tasted the end of the long trek, the mekillots seemed to be pulling harder, hauling the wagons along faster than ever.
The excitement was palpable. Everyone knew they were approaching their goal. Shouts and curses buzzed through the air. The attitude of the travelers had changed, in the space of an hour, almost back to where it had been at the journey’s start.
Aric wasn’t immune to the change. For now, their goal was his goal. Find the metal, load it up, and get home.
After that, no one knew what would happen. But if all went well, he could end up the wealthiest half-elf he had ever known.
There were worse things to hope for.
He was still thinking about it when the creature attacked.
2
It happened while the entire caravan passed between the two rows of hills, which, Kadya assured them, would direct them straight toward the city’s front gates.
Aric obeyed the templar’s order and stayed in the wagon, although he would have preferred to be walking. Ruhm had got out to walk. Damaric took two steps for every one of Ruhm’s, while for Amoni, who had also joined them, it was closer to one and a half.
They were closer to the set of hills on the argosy’s right side—the window Aric was hanging out of—and he watched the rocky slopes, noting the different textures. The hills were rounded, studded with stones of various sizes, some of them nestled in patches of green.
And then one of the hills moved.
Not the entire hill, but a large section of it. It shifted, as if the ground itself had just awakened from a long nap. Then it separated from the hillside around it, its camouflage almost perfect. “Ruhm!” Aric shouted, pointing.
Ruhm and the others followed Aric’s finger. People around other wagons had seen it too. “Earth drake!” someone cried. “It’s an earth drake! Soldiers, to arms!”
The beast revealed its full size, peeling away from the rocky surface into which its scaly, pocked, bulbous hide had blended it. It must have been thirty feet long, or more. Its head was massive. When it let its jaw swing open to release a bloodcurdling roar, its mouth looked easily large enough to swallow humans whole. Aric had heard improbable tales of earth drakes eating entire mekillots. Seeing this one, however, he no longer had reason to doubt. A bony ridge protected the drake’s brow and eyes, and behind those its head flared back in a fan shape, probably to make burrowing easier. Its limbs were gigantic, as big around as some of the old agafari trunks in Sage’s Square.
Having revealed itself, the drake lost no time in attacking.
It lowered its head and glared at the caravan. But what looked at first like it was studying them intently proved to be something more, as a wave of pure energy struck the wagons and those on foot around them. Soldiers reeled against the argosies’ armored walls. One wagon, unbalanced because one wheel was rolling over a large rock its drivers should have avoided, tipped over sideways with a crash. Those on the far side, pinned under its crushing weight, screeched in pain. Aric’s wagon tipped but didn’t fall; he was dashed against the far wall and barely managed to shield his head.
He made it back to the window in time to see soldiers, some of them with blood pouring from noses and mouths, trying to right themselves, and mekillot drivers frantically trying to keep their beasts on track.
But the earth drake was on the move, head down, charging on all four clawed feet. The caravan could not escape it—the drake had caused boulders and debris from the hillsides to float in the air before and behind the wagons, hemming it in—so the best they could do was to fight it.
And fighting an earth drake, stories said, was usually a losing proposition.
Aric turned toward the soldiers assigned to keep him in the wagon. They were anything but friendly at the best of times, and now they looked positively grim. “I’ve got to get out there and help!” he said.
“You don’t leave this argosy,” one of the soldiers said. “For any reason.”
“But—”
“For any reason,” repeated the other. “You looking for adventure?”
Aric cringed at the word. “No. But my friends are out there.”
“Maybe fortune smiles on them today,” the soldier said with a shrug. “Maybe not.”
Aric wanted to rush past them, or to climb out the wide but shallow window. What could they do to him, after all? They wouldn’t kill him to save him.
They could, he supposed, maim or cripple him. Kadya didn’t need him whole in Akrankhot, after all, she just needed him alive.
From their posture, the tenseness of their jaws, and the way they kept casting quick
, darting glances at the wagon’s door, he suspected they were glad to stay inside, “protecting” him.
He returned to the window, from which he could watch the action. If there seemed to be something he could do to help, he would try squeezing through it.
Arrows from the bows of a dozen archers rained onto the drake, most bouncing harmlessly off its rocklike hide. Cast spears had somewhat better success. One lodged in its back, another hit the hard ridge over its brow, glancing off but opening a cut there.
Those minor wounds gave it no pause. Lowering its head, it smashed into one of the argosies. A terrible crashing sound came as it rent the armor. The wagon began to tip, bringing cries of terror from those inside. Then the wagon tumbled down on its side, and screams of fear became the sounds of death. A soldier trapped beneath the wagon’s solid bulk, his torso, head and arms exposed, cried for aid and clawed at the ground, but a pool of blood soaking the earth around him so quickly that Aric knew the man’s hips and legs must have been crushed, if not severed completely.
Almost as if in an act of mercy, one of the earth drake’s rear feet came down on the poor man’s head, ending his desperate flailing.
But the drake had no more sense of mercy than it did of fair play. It wanted only to kill, to smash, to consume. Soldiers attacked it with trikals, with alhulaks, with spears and swords. It took their blows without apparent effect; even when blood ran down its hide and splashed to the ground it showed no awareness of injury.
It rammed a soldier with that gigantic cranium, sending her flying a dozen feet into a boulder. The impact snapped her neck, but she lived, hands twitching and scrabbling at pebbles until a comrade took pity and ended her life with a quick sword stroke.
Another soldier, a goliath, stabbed the drake in the ribs, his sword sinking so deep that he couldn’t yank it free. He tried for too long. When he finally gave up and released its hilt, the drake swung around, that awesome maw gaping open and engulfing the hapless half-giant. It snapped its mouth shut, and for a moment the goliath’s left arm and leg dangled, but then those gargantuan teeth bit through muscle and tendon and the soldier’s limbs dropped to the dirt, as forgotten by the drake as a few crumbs of bread to a person enjoying a fine meal.
Fifteen soldiers formed a line between the drake and the caravan, making ready to rush it all at once. Aric thought they had a chance—at least some of them might get through, and if they went for the eyes then perhaps they could pierce its brain. But it pawed twice at the ground, gave them a forbidding glare, and its psionic energy burst swept over them, forcing soldiers back against the wagons, toppling yet another of the weighty argosies.
Aric turned back to the two guards, huddled against the wagon’s door as if it could somehow protect them from the fury outside. “I’m going out there,” he said. “I’ve got to try to do something.”
“What can any of us do?” one of the guards asked. He hadn’t been near the window, had not seen the drake’s devastation.
“Let him,” the other guard said. “He might even be safer outside—at least there he can run.”
The second guard shrugged and opened the door. “Go quick, then.”
“I won’t run,” Aric said. He pushed between the guards and out the door. He had only the agafari-wood sword on him.
To attack the earth drake with it would be suicide.
But what other choice did he have? He hadn’t seen his friends, didn’t know if they were alive or dead. He couldn’t just sit by while this monster tore through the whole caravan.
He rounded the argosy, sword in hand, on legs that threatened to buckle at every step.
The earth drake stood twenty feet away, snorting and clawing at the earth, readying its next charge. It raised its ugly head, caught someone in its sights. It was Amoni. She stood with legs spread wide, braced for attack, her cahulaks spinning before her.
She would die in a heartbeat.
“Hey!” Aric shouted. “I’m talking to you, you motherless son of a rockslide!” Shifting the sword to his left hand, he dropped to a crouch, picked up a stone bigger around than his fist, and hurled it at the beast. It bounced off the drake’s skull, accomplishing what words alone had not.
The thing turned away from Amoni, its fierce red glare fixed on Aric.
He took the sword in his right hand again. If he could dodge it, run past as it thundered by him, jab at the eye, hang onto the sword and keep doing the same …
It would never work.
He had to try.
3
The earth drake charged.
Aric made ready to move faster than he had in his life. He was a blacksmith, not a warrior, or even a sprinter, but elves were fleet of foot.
Still, the massive beast closed the distance fast.
Aric shifted his weight to his right leg, ready to spring out of its way.
Kadya’s voice called out a phrase in a language Aric didn’t know.
Ice rimed the earth drake’s hide, all at once. Where its hot, moist breath blew out flared nostrils, icicles formed. It skidded to a stop, shivering, stamped its feet and flung its head in outrage.
Then even those actions slowed, as the coating of ice grew thicker on it. Aric could feel waves of cold coming from it, cutting the warmth of the day.
The drake tried to open its mouth. Its jaws creaked, then froze in place. Its tongue darted out from inside, met the cold air, and locked there, sticking rigidly half outside.
It shivered once more, a great shaking that rumbled the earth beneath Aric’s feet.
Then it was still.
Amoni gave it a few seconds, then approached it with her cahulaks loose in her hand. She started to reach out for it with her free hand, but stopped short. “It’s too cold to touch.”
“Leave it,” Aric said. “It’s no threat now.”
Kadya stepped up beside Aric. “Not at the moment, no. But when it thaws out? Earth drakes hate cities. This one might have been on its way to wreak havoc in Akrankhot when it decided we were a juicier target.”
“You’ve beaten it,” Aric said. With your defiling magic, he added mentally. He would have to see from what she had drawn the power for her spell. The fragile plants clinging desperately among the rocks? The dying soldiers and slaves in the toppled argosies? “Is it still alive?”
“Not for long,” Amoni said. She took a step back, got the cahulaks spinning again, and then brought a four-bladed head down against the drake’s skull.
Like a chunk of ice, the beast’s head shattered under the blow. A piece of its snout skidded almost to Aric’s feet, then stopped, thawing in the sunlight.
The floating boulders and debris blocking the caravan’s progress had fallen when the drake died. “Let’s get out of here,” Kadya said. “What’s left of us.”
Aric eyed her with suspicion. She had defeated the drake, it was true. But she had led them into its trap. She seemed to spare not an instant’s thought for those who had died. The ruined argosies would have to be dragged from their path, wounded mekillots put to death, dead soldiers buried and injured warriors tended to before they could leave.
She was a sorcerer, like her husband. Magic had ravaged Athas, turned it into the nearly dead husk of a planet that it was. Attitudes like hers—the belief that nothing was as important as satisfying whatever goal spurred her at the moment—had, Aric believed, been a big part of that.
He hadn’t been sure what he thought of her, until this moment.
Now that he knew, he didn’t like her a bit.
4
What Aric hadn’t anticipated was the impatience with which the soldiers waited for the earth drake to thaw. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as if they performed the other necessary tasks more slowly than they might have—even risking Kadya’s wrath—because they wanted to tear the thing’s body apart. Drake hide, it turned out, made good armor, lightweight compared to bone and chitin, and nearly as strong. He saw soldiers pulling its giant teeth and claws to use as weapons. Kadya hersel
f took advantage of the opportunity to draw some of its blood into a phial.
Others, although they had missed out on the more useful parts, simply cut slices of the thing. “Is it good to eat?” Aric asked Amoni as they watched together. The other work had been completed; they waited only for the division of drake parts to be on the road. Kadya had made it clear that she was in a hurry.
“Terrible eating,” Ruhm answered. He had come up behind them, without Aric even knowing he was there. “But good luck.”
“So some believe,” Amoni clarified. “Not all of us. Enough, though, to judge from the spectacle they’re making.”
Damaric approached them, showing off the claw he had acquired. “I don’t know about luck,” he said with a grin. He touched the claw’s point. “But it’ll make a fine dagger.”
Amoni shot him a withering glare. Damaric nodded. “It’s a bit ghoulish, but why waste it? The drake won’t need it anymore.”
Amoni twitched her head and drifted away from the wagons, and the other three followed. “When I was helping pull corpses from one of the argosies, people were angry, upset, and maybe speaking more freely than they should have been.”
“What you hear?” Ruhm asked.
“Mutiny, almost. They know Kadya’s magic has saved their hides, more than once. But still … it’s magic. Nobody likes magic, except those who use it.”
“True,” Aric said. “But what can anyone do about it?”
“Nobody’ll do a thing,” Damaric said. “She can freeze a charging earth drake in an instant.”
“Lucky for Aric,” Ruhm said.
“I know,” Aric said. “If it had reached me … don’t know what would have happened.”
“We’d be scraping you off the argosy,” Damaric said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m not saying anyone is planning to act,” Amoni elaborated. “I’m only telling you what the mood is. She’s got people worried.”
City Under the Sand: A Dark Sun Novel (Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Sun) Page 16