by Jocelyn Fox
I sighed, trying to tamp down the wave of uneasiness washing over me. After a few moments, it receded, and I tried to take Luca’s advice, checking the Sword more out of habit than necessity before leaning my head back on his shoulder. Farin nestled against my neck, her small body warm against my skin, and began singing a haunting lullaby in the Glasidhe tongue, her voice soft and sweet. Perhaps there was a bit of Glasidhe spell-work in the lullaby, because I found my eyelids heavy and I drifted into sleep.
I didn’t dream, but I came half-awake every now and again when Luca replied to something one of the riders asked; his voice rumbling in his chest vibrated against my cheek, but I soon slipped back into sleep. Once I thought I felt a large hand smoothing my hair and ensuring the slumbering Farin was still secure in the hollow above my collarbone.
Luca awoke me gently as our mount came to a halt. I started, almost falling off the faehal and dislodging Farin, who awoke with a surprised squeal. Luca caught Farin in one hand and steadied me with the other, his blue eyes dancing with suppressed laughter when I twisted to look at him, still blinking dazedly.
“Where are we?” I asked, clearing my throat and trying to regain some portion of my dignity.
“Still in the forest, but we’ve stopped for a little while,” Luca replied.
“Stretch break, great.” I covered my mouth as I yawned. “Sorry,” I said to Farin as she leapt lightly from Luca’s outstretched hand. She spun a few dizzying circles around my head and then settled, hovering just above us, so I assumed that meant she accepted my apology.
Luca kept one hand on my back and dismounted. He didn’t offer me his hand but he saw my expression of discomfort and slight panic when my legs wouldn’t exactly obey my command to move; without a word, he reached up, placed his hands around my waist and lifted me from the faehal with as much effort as lifting a child. I tried to stand but only succeeded in affirming my theory that my legs were numb and mostly useless; I wobbled for a precarious moment like a newborn colt and then fell against Luca with a frustrated wordless exclamation. He caught me like it was the most natural thing in the world and helped me to sit down on the bare forest floor.
I scrubbed at my face with the heel of my hand. “Thanks. You’d think that being the Bearer would give me an extra helping of coordination, but I guess not.”
“We’ve been riding for almost a full day without a stop,” he said. “Not many would be able to do that, and not many would be able to completely sleep through most of it.”
I gave him a half-hearted smile, kneading my thighs and flexing my legs carefully. I gritted my teeth as the blood flowed back into my muscles, bringing a wash of stabbing needle-jabs. Luca stood a few paces away, his blue eyes far-off. I saw him flex his right hand and rub the knotted scar tissue reflectively.
“Here.” Vell handed me a piece of kajuk. She narrowed her eyes at me. “Even though you broke up what would have been a solid brawl.”
I raised my eyebrows at her and she stared back, holding her serious expression for a long moment, and then her golden eyes glimmered with something between droll amusement and irritation.
“I was a little concerned,” I replied lightly, tearing into the kajuk enthusiastically as I realized how long it had been since I’d last eaten.
“As you should have been.” Vell folded her legs with that fluid wolf-like grace and sat beside me on the forest floor.
I chewed the slightly sweet, smoky meat and leaned my head back, tracing the skeletal boughs of the trees against the flat gray sky with my gaze. In the corner of my vision I saw Merrick talking to Murtagh, Finnead standing with his back to them both, one hand on the hilt of the Brighbranr. Wind rustled through the forest, rattling dry leaves like a dying man’s last breath. I sat up straighter as I caught some edge of a scent on the air, something foul-sweet and decaying. Beside me, Vell rolled forward onto the balls of her feet, a long dagger gleaming in her hand; Beryk slid sinuously out of the shadows, his teeth showing white in the half-dark, glistening counterpoint to Vell’s blade.
My skin prickled with goosebumps, and my war-markings stirred beneath my skin. The sixth sense of my taebramh and my connection to the Caedbranr heightened, the air about me growing heavy as I strained to hear any movement through the forest. Vell gave a little hiss through her teeth. I felt the low rumble of the wolves’ growls in the bones of my chest, and it was then I knew that there was something hunting us.
I slid to my side, using my good leg to push me to my knees. I didn’t trust my weary legs to hold me in a graceful predatory crouch like Vell. My right hand found the leather pommel of my plain blade at my hip, sliding it from its sheath with a silver whisper. A pulse of something—Warning? Anticipation?—coursed up my war-markings, prickling my skin, but thankfully the emerald markings didn’t illuminate as they were wont to do. I realized belatedly that it was getting darker—the shadows were deepening, even though it was approaching noon and the grey light should have held. An icy sense of foreboding settled in my stomach. I swept my eyes across the swath of forest in front of me, trying to pick out the Sidhe and wishing that the ulfdrengr and Sidhe hadn’t separated themselves. Searching for Merrick, Murtagh and Finnead, I picked up a slight movement, slinking low among the trees, and my heart surged into my throat before I realized that it was one of the wolves. By the silver sheen on the wolf’s fur I guessed it was Rialla.
The Caedbranr’s hum crested as the darkness deepened around us. Vell tightened beside me, coiling her body like a spring. I felt my breath coming faster, shallower, my lungs compressed by the instincts screaming at me to run, to flee the trap before the hunter leapt upon us. Sweat slid down my back despite the chill night air, and that breeze came again, that deceptively gentle ribbon of air curling around us, stronger than the wave of air before it, blanketing us even more strongly with the smell of death…now accented with the bright copper scent of fresh blood. My stomach seized but I forced it down. The Caedbranr’s power swelled warningly between my ribs. The Sword wasn’t omniscient but it felt danger. I raised my blade slightly and got my feet under me somehow, straining to see in the oily darkness enveloping us.
A scream split the still air, echoing between the bare trunks of the trees. I was on my feet without a second thought, blade held at the ready, even as I sensed Vell moving in front of me, Beryk circling behind me, his growl subsiding into deadly silence. I couldn’t tell where the scream had come from, whether it was human or beast, only that it rang with the sheer and final terror of imminent death. A gust of wind laden with sulfur and blood and death blew my hair back from my face, and suddenly the coolness of the darkened air changed. With the sulfur came a creeping heat, and another terrible scream cut short with a wrenching crack of bone.
“Vell, what is it?” I whispered.
From her silhouette, I saw Vell rise from her predatory crouch, her head tilted up toward the sky. For a bare moment she lowered her blade. Half of the carcass of the large raw-boned faehal crashed down through the trees and slammed into the ground.
“Vell,” I said again, voice rising as another blade of wind blasted over us, making me lean into the force of it. I took a step backward, my feet moving of their own volition. I reached for Vell’s arm, intending to pull her back, even as I recognized that the wind wasn’t wind.
It was wingbeats.
Vell turned, her face so close to mine that I saw the gleam of something close to fear in her eyes. “Dragon,” she said in an awe-struck voice. And then, one more word, as she spun me around and pushed.
“Run!”
Dragon. Dragon. Dragon.
The word echoed in my head, tangling around my scattered thoughts. But my instincts took over as Vell pushed me and I lurched forward into an ungainly stride. Another blast of air, now hot enough to slick sweat down the back of my neck, shoved at us from behind. I belatedly realized that I’d be much slower running with my sword in my hand, skidded as I jabbed it at the sheath and almost stabbed myself but by some incredible luck sl
ammed the blade home. Both hands free now, I sucked in a breath of acrid air and pumped my arms. I knew that Vell could easily outstrip me but weaving between the trees and leaping over fallen logs quickly consumed my attention.
How could we outrun a dragon? My mind slipped at the sheer impossibility of the word. Another wingbeat, closer, almost knocked me off my feet. An edge of panic swept up my spine as my mind conjured up images of dragons from books and films. As the rancid stench of death enveloped us again, swirling around the dark trunks of the trees in a hot miasma, I was certain that this was a dragon more along the lines of Tolkein’s invention than a brightly colored children’s cartoon. The scar on my cheek from the cadengriff stung with the memory of airborne enemies. I concentrated on running, blocking out the persistent ache from the claw-marks in my thigh and the soreness from the cliff climb and travel.
We ran blindly. I didn’t know where we were going. I wasn’t sure whether Vell knew either, and I could only hope that Merrick, Murtagh and Finnead were running too. As we flashed between trees, another wingbeat caught us—not stronger, but not weaker, warning us to keep our pace. My lungs burned. I stumbled, barely stopped myself from tumbling to the ground, and then a warm wolf body slid beneath my still-reaching hand, ghosting away after I righted myself and crashed on through the bare trees.
Without warning the forest ended as if cut by a knife. One minute we were sprinting through the trees, the next minute we were streaking across an open plain, flat and just as dead as the forest we’d left behind, with only a dying twisted tree here and again breaking the monotony of the plain. Vell swore vehemently in the North-tongue. I wondered how she had the breath to curse, heaving air into my lungs, every part of my body from my legs to my shoulders on fire. I risked a glance over my shoulder and immediately wished I hadn’t.
Behind us what looked like a massive stormcloud spread its darkness across the sky over the deadened forest. The blackness—smoke, I realized—swirled and eddied violently as two massive talons appeared at the fore of the cloud and sliced down through the sky, shearing the smoke and allowing me to glimpse a creature that dwarfed any living thing I had ever seen. My brief glance captured bat-like wings, tipped with wicked talons at the joints, and sinuous body so massive the sheared smoke cloud still obscured its true size from my view. Another talon cut through the smoke far to the left of the dragon—the dragon, my mind said again in disbelief—sweeping in a lazy circular pattern. Its tail, I realized. The third talon belonged to its tail.
The glimpse of the dragon slowed me, awe seeping into my limbs, fear catching at my heart with icy tendrils. I felt my foot catch a rock and I fell, skidding onto my knees. I rolled over to look back at the forest, my mind still reeling at the impossibility of that single brief glimpse. Grit seared across my face as another hot wingbeat swept across the open plain, no trees to break its rolling momentum.
A hard hand grabbed my arm, hauling me to my feet.
“No time to be awestruck,” Vell said into my ear.
I steadied on my feet but remained facing the forest, transfixed by the approaching blackness and the monster it contained. “What good will running do?” I stared at the talons cutting through the smoke. “How can we run from…from that?”
“Don’t make me slap you,” growled Vell, giving a hard tug on my arm, pulling with enough force that I had to take a step to keep my balance. And then like a wind-up toy she pulled another step out of me, and another step that turned into a stride, and we were running again. As my legs found their rhythm again, my heart pounded in my ears. My mind reached out to the Sword, but it rebuffed me with a hot pulse of power that stung more than Vell’s threatened slap. I hissed in frustration at it.
Am I just a vessel to you? I yelled in my mind. I didn’t have the breath for words. First the river, then the sirens, now a goddamn dragon and it’s still not worth your effort to protect me?
The Caedbranr’s reply almost knocked me off my feet with its internal force, each word hitting the bones of my ribs and echoing against my sternum, vibrating through my entire body.
You are the Bearer. You will prevail through your own power.
After the ache faded from the teeth, I thought at it dryly, Thanks for the reassurance.
We couldn’t run forever. I strained my eyes to see whether there was any cover, any hope of evading the dragon. Vell suddenly pulled me to the left, and I hoped she’d spotted something that I hadn’t yet seen.
“Something dead over there,” she said shortly, Beryk twining between our running bodies like a corporeal shadow. “Hide us. Mask our scent.”
I could hear the strain in her words and for some reason it gave me a burst of energy. I wouldn’t be the reason that she and her beautiful wolf no longer held the hope of rebuilding their shattered people. A dark shape suddenly loomed in the grayness and Vell arrowed toward it. It seemed to take us an eternity to reach it, our strides kicking up dust on the desparately flat ground. As we neared the corpse I recognized it with a sick lurch to my stomach and a hiccupping laugh escaped me. We skidded to a stop behind the bulk of the dead creature and Vell pulled me down.
“It’s a cadengriff,” I said, my voice bordering on hysterical. “We’re using the corpse of something that tried to kill me to hide from an even bigger thing trying to kill us.”
“Guess all the shadow’s beasties don’t play well together,” Vell replied. “Get down. This won’t be pleasant.” She slid on her belly, tucking herself against the cadengriff’s hindquarters, against its bloated underside. I gagged as I mirrored her, shuddering at the scrape of the dead creature’s claws against the fabric of my shirt.
“Face away from it and tug your shirt up over your face,” Vell told me brusquely.
I pulled the cloth of my shirt up over my nose and mouth, breathing in my own stale sweat spiked with the tang of fear. Another wingbeat washed over us, rocking the corpse, and Vell took advantage of the movement to pull the cadengriff’s wing over us with a dry crack of dead tendons. I gagged again and fought rising panic. Beryk slid under the wing, blocking my view of anything else. I pressed my face into his fur gratefully, one hand clutching at his neck ruff as though he could anchor me to calm. And he pressed his great wolf-head onto my shoulder, for all the world like faithful Lila comforting me after a bad day at school. A wave of homesickness so intense it made tears prick at the corners of my eyes rippled through me. I breathed through my shirt, still tasting copper in the back of my throat, and squeezed my eyes shut as the wingbeats of the dragon blasted closer. Tendrils of smoke curled into our grisly shelter.
“Breathe slowly,” said Vell’s disembodied voice. “Don’t give in.”
Don’t give in. Don’t give in. Don’t give in. I repeated the words in my head, inhaling slowly with each phrase, exhaling with the next iteration. I pulled my arm from its sleeve and covered Beryk’s nose on my shoulder with the cloth, hoping it would help him. The smoke still stung my closed eyes, and I felt gritty ash settling on my skin. I made my breath slow, forced down the building urge to cough. Another wingbeat, pushing the corpse against us. Something wet seeped into my shirt from where I pressed against the dead cadengriff. Each breath became more smoke than air. My focus narrowed to forcing my lungs to inhale. I felt Beryk’s steady breathing and tried to follow his pattern. The wolf was preternaturally calm. I felt Vell pressing her face into the other side of his neck, and the hand that wasn’t sealing the cloth of my shirt over my mouth and nose found her shoulder. A shudder shook me when her hand found mine.
The air turned hot. Heat and smoke and ash, sweat sliding down every plane of me, gathering in creases and joining the dampness from the dead cadengriff.
Don’t give up. Don’t give up. Don’t give up.
Now each word was an inhale, the next a shallow exhale. Beryk panted. Vell made a small wordless sound as another wingbeat rocked the corpse, almost lifting it from the ground. Colors swam on the blackness of my closed eyelids.
The next wingbeat al
most lifted the wing of the cadengriff. With clawing hands Vell and I grabbed the leathery dead wing. I lost my grip on my makeshift mask and choked on a mouthful of ash as searing air blasted into our small pocket of protection. We shifted our weight to pin down the cadengriff’s wing. With a supreme effort of will I pulled my shirt up over my nose and forced myself to stop coughing. As the rush of the wingbeat faded, I realized that the shift meant the dragon had flown over us. I barely dared to breathe as a spike of hope pierced my fading consciousness.
Don’t…give…up…
Each wingbeat, though carrying the dragon farther away, pushed smoke and ash and furnace-hot air against the dead cadengriff’s wing.
Don’t…
Another ribbon of fetid air wrapped around us.
Give…
The ribbon became a breeze, shoving at the leathery wing with light fingers.
Up.
I didn’t remember letting go of the dead cadengriff wing, or letting go of consciousness.
Chapter 29
The voices filtered into my ears in soft pieces, muffled by the lingering darkness wrapping my mind. Beneath the voices there was another sound, something like drumbeats that shook the ground beneath my cheek.
“…looks like the fire-breather didn’t find anything besides its own playmate…”
The voices shone brightly in my head, laced with a foreign accent.
“What was it after, then?” a female voice asked. “We haven’t seen it venture this far south into the Borderlands before. It must have been on the scent of something.”
“If it was, it lost it,” answered a male voice. His words glowed like candle flames in the darkness, drawing me back toward full consciousness.
“Perhaps it was sent,” said a third voice musingly. The voices were getting closer.
“Must we inspect the corpse?” the second voice asked in disgust.