Dragon's Run

by Daniel Potter

  With a grunt, Drosa stalked away toward her own bag. Meanwhile, Blinky began to creep toward Stag, who eyed the spider warily.

  Chapter Nine

  At the end of the Ancients’ world, who was saved by the gods? Who melted into the consuming blackness and devoured their fellows? Was it righteousness? Moral clarity? Strength of will? No. None of that.

  Rictus Hana, Author of The Great Wyrm, the Known History

  Hawk had them break camp after another few minutes. No attempt to hide the campsite was made, a fact that clearly annoyed Stag’s Run, judging from the way he huffed and puffed. Blinky, at Sparrow’s direction, strung lines of sticky silk between the trees that guarded the campsite. Something for their pursuers to deal with if they were incautious.

  Within several hours’ walking, a sharp smell clawed at Ishe’s nostrils: something sickly sweet overlaid an acrid burning. The forest around Ishe seemed to be thriving; the pines gave way to broad-leafed oaks and maples, the canopy above them shining with green. Birdsong became a solid chorus.

  Until it all stopped. The forest ended two hundred feet from the riverbank, a line beyond which nothing lived. Only the corpses of trees, their bark rotted away, stood in the barren soil. The water looked swift, the river fattened with summer’s runoff from the mountains.

  Hawk stepped out over the line that divided the forest between life and death. Ishe held her breath and watched the water. After several more steps, Hawk turned to watch the sky. She grimaced.

  Ishe tentatively stepped out and followed her gaze. The sky was still clear, and several dark shapes winged around the edges of the valley. “None of those are him,” Ishe found herself saying.

  “Too small,” Hawk agreed, then looked to the others. “Start chopping.”

  Stag’s Run stepped forward. “We are upstream of the Grief’s nest. We’d be better off walking until we passed it.”

  “This is how we outpace your trackers.” Hawk’s gaze shifted to her husband.

  Sparrow cleared his throat with a cough. “All right, here’s the plan. Chop enough wood for two rafts. The Grief will be sleepy with the sun so bright. If the nest is a day’s walk or so”—he looked to Stag, who nodded in confirmation—“then we’ll only need a few hours on the river to cover that ground. Once we start seeing Grief, we will dock on the far bank and resume on foot until we’ve passed the nest. We made camp this morning because everyone needs to be on alert for this.”

  “Everyone understand?” Hawk asked.

  Grim nods all around.

  Everyone surged out of the forest, Catter and Gull pulling additional axes from their packs. The dead wood fell easily beneath Ishe’s ax, with the three of them felling trees Hawk and Sparrow began to lash the rafts together. That left Drosa and Stag to stand around, watch the sky, and talk quietly to each other. Everyone stayed as far back from the water as possible.

  As the rafts were completed, Ishe could feel the lack of sleep making its presence known each time she blinked her eyelids seemed to stick together for a moment. Even Hawk yawned once.

  “You’ve done this before?” Stag asked as the rafts were completed.

  Sparrow chuckled. “We have been cleaning the Grief out of Low River for decades. Good medicine wards them out, and the few that make it up the rivers are hunted.” Hawk passed makeshift paddles, consisting of a stout stick that had been split at the end, where a metal plate that had been inserted. Hawk dragged both rafts into the water. They were narrow things, about two people wide shoulder to shoulder. The party split between them. Hawk, Stag, and Catter on one, while Gull, Drosa, Sparrow, and Ishe stood on the other. Blinky clicked frantically, running up and down the bank once Sparrow had stepped onto the raft.

  “Well, are you coming or not?” Sparrow told him.

  The spider chittered back. Sparrow crossed his arms. Blinky took a breath so big, it swelled his abdomen and gave a big whistling sigh as he hunkered down. Then the spider was on the raft with a series of soft whumps, clearing the ten feet without getting a leg wet. The raft was barely wide enough to accommodate his legs in a relaxed state, and the spider pulled them in as far as they would go, lifting his body nearly a foot from the timber and folding his legs beneath him.

  Chuckling at Blinky’s antics, Sparrow explained how to steer and paddle. Being the largest on her boat, Ishe stood in the middle with a long oar, Sparrow took the rear using his shorter oar as a rudder, and Drosa stood at the prow, paddle in hand but her bow hung on a stick behind her, ready to be used. Gull stood directly behind her.

  “Ready?” Hawk asked as everyone got into position. “Drosa, if you see white water, tell Sparrow and he’ll put the boat ashore.”

  Drosa nodded stiffly and Ishe didn’t blame her. This had seemed like a brilliant idea to move swiftly, but now, standing on a pile of sticks about to be pushed into a river, it seemed far less wise.

  “Ishe.”

  “Yes?” Ishe looked up from the dark knots that dotted her paddle’s shaft and into Hawk’s flint-gray eyes.

  “Don’t let anything hurt my husband,” she said.

  “Hawk!” Sparrow’s voice sharpened before he edged into a coughing fit.

  Hawk smirked and pushed the raft into the current.

  Instantly, the raft was moving down the dead river and the breeze of movement flowed over Ishe’s cheeks. It brought a smile to her lips as the glorified sticks beneath her boots shifted in response to both her weight and Sparrow’s steering. It wasn’t an airship, no one would call the makeshift raft a ship, but it was a definite step in the right direction. And she had to smile at the way Blinky indignantly chrrked every time he got a little wet.

  The river swept them downward. At first, Ishe could see the green through the dead trees on the river banks, but after an hour or so, the dead had spread and the river’s water turned from a muddy green to crystal clear. Ishe could study the contours of the rocky river bottom if she leaned over the side. The acrid scent that hung in the air served as a constant reminder that the danger grew with every foot that the current swept them closer to the Grief nest. Drosa traded her oar for her bow, and Ishe didn’t blame her. Hawk pulled her raft in front, paddling intermittently as she held both her spear and the paddle at once, so it looked as if she carried a single stick with a blade on one end and a plate on the other.

  Ishe watched downriver for any sign of movement. Yet the only things in the river seemed to be an occasional boulder that Sparrow steered them around. After two hours on the river, that changed. Rounding a gentle bend, Ishe spotted three evenly spaced rocks in a line. The center boulder shone in the sun.

  As Ishe narrowed her eyes against the glare of the sun, the shiny rock flopped sideways into the water.

  “Sentry! Get to the shore!” Hawk commanded as the black thing shot toward them with such speed that it left white water in its wake. Hawk lifted the spear over her head.

  Not needing any more instruction, Ishe slapped her oar against the water and pushed with all her might. The raft began to turn, but through the shaft of the paddle, Ishe felt the ominous crackle of the wood.

  In front of Hawk’s raft, a black shape burst from the water with a shrieked battle cry. It unfolded, exposing a white flash of bone within the dark mass. With a grunt of effort, Hawk hurled her spear; it struck the creature dead center with a snap. The beast fell back into water with a heavy plunk.

  “Gull! Ishe! Paddle!” Sparrow shouted from behind.

  Shaking herself, Ishe resumed her paddling along with Gull, who had also paused, unable to look away from the thingbut progress toward the bank was slow against the fierce current.

  “They come!” Drosa shouted as she nocked an arrow into her bow and began to chant. Although it was already a bright and sunny day, the colors of Drosa’s body grew even more vibrant as the tip of her arrow became a sun in its own right. Ishe squinted against the glare. Three more Grief were streaking up the river, fast as cannon shells.

  Drosa loosed the arrow and it streaked to
ward the center creature like an elemental lance. Itunleashed a scream that made the jelly of Ishe’s brain vibrate before its wake stilled. The remaining two split, one heading for Hawk’s raft and the other beelining directly for Ishe’s.

  The monster flung itself out of the water to dodge Drosa’s next arrow. Ishe caught a skull’s grin embedded in the inky blackness of its body, before it smacked back down beneath the water.

  “Brace!” Ishe cried, snatching up her axe and sinking into a crouch. It streaked beneath the raft, and Ishe pivoted just in time. Bursting from the water as a shapeless blob of black, it flared open, two great black wings of ichor, revealing bones. The skeletons of several men were embedded in the creature’s tar-like flesh. A maw lined with a family’s worth of human teeth screamed above a too-long rib cage. Inside that, something shone with the opposite of light.

  Ishe’s ax moved with her turn, whipping the business end above her head in a semicircle as the monster closed. “HA!” she cried as the blade smashed into the side of its rib cage; the bone crumpled and the anti-light burst out of it in a plume of shadow.

  The life left the thing but it slammed into Ishe all the same, bowling her off the raft, the black flesh even colder than the freezing water that slapped over the rest of her body. Lungs burned as the dead weight of it bore down. Her back kissed the sandy bottom of the river as she kicked herself free of it. Clawing for the surface, she felt the weight of her boots. She could see the raft ahead of her.

  She broke the surface and sputtered. The raft lay already twenty feet downstream of her. The view proved to be brief as she fell beneath the water again.

  “-reeee!” Ishe broke the surface only to receive a face full of spider as if a giant hand had closed around her head and shoulders. Blinky’s weight pushed them back down into the river, and then Ishe found herself being pulled upward. Lungs aflame, Ishe broke the surface long enough to cough the water from her throat. “Chrrrbrble!” Blinky’s usual sound of distress bubbled.

  “Pull!” Sparrow shouted.

  “I am!” Gull shouted back. Nothing but empty river stretched before Ishe as she cleared her eyes of water.

  As they towed her back to the raft, she caught a ripple across the surface. In a river devoid of all life, that could only mean one thing. “Incoming!” Ishe shouted. Grabbing two of Blinky’s legs, Ishe twisted, to see she was only a few feet from the raft now, Gull reeling in a silk line, Sparrow paddling furiously to keep the raft steady as Drosa gathered light into her arrow.

  “I see!” Drosa called out.

  Ishe reached out a hand to grab the raft, but Blinky’s reach was far longer. She pulled her in the last foot until her hand met with Gull’s. “I got you.”

  With a heavy heave, Gull pulled Ishe onto the surface of the raft. Something flashed and Drosa uttered what sounded like a curse.

  “Good shot, girl, but maybe now ain’t the time for a swim?” Gull said as Ishe finally sucked in air that didn’t have a substantial water content.

  “Gull! Paddle! Give Ishe your ax,” Sparrow shouted.

  Another long-handled ax was pressed into her hands as she climbed onto her knees.

  “Where it go?” Drosa still stood at the bow of the raft, arrow nocked. Ishe noted she only had four more arrows in the quiver at her hip. The raft stood no closer to the shore than when Ishe had fallen off it. The banks did not seem that far, but they were moving rapidly as the current whisked them down river.

  Blinky chittered grumpily, legs hunched close and shivering as water clung to his bristly fur. Gull bent to paddle as Drosa continued to scan the water. Ishe belatedly looked down to see her own hands shaking from cold. Everything still moved slowly. Where had Hawk’s raft gone?

  “AAH!” Gull cried. “Get it off!” A tendril tipped with a set of human teeth had bitten her forearm. Ishe’s muscles moved while her mind stared stupidly at it, the ax head neatly severing the teeth from the tendril. Gull pulled back, paddle clattering to the raft as her free hand went to pry the jaws loose.

  “It’s under the raft!” Sparrow’s voice climbed toward panic. Looking down, Ishe saw dozens of black tendrils forcing their way up through the gaps in the raft.

  “Got it!” Drosa whipped out her knife and held it to the sky. “Eyah!” The metal gleamed like it had caught the sun itself. She stabbed down between the ill-fitting timbers where black goo was forcing itself through. The Grief screamed; all the black seepage withdrew beneath the boat.

  Everyone paused, waiting for the Grief to reappear. It didn’t expose itself, but the water behind the raft trailed inky wisps. Its blood, perhaps.

  A distant roar came to Ishe’s ears, and a glance downriver showed the white churn of water over rocks. It didn’t have to attack, Ishe realized. The rocks would do the job for it. Beneath her boots she felt the wood strain as the thing pulled on the individual logs. They were dead in the water with it grabbing at the paddles. Thirty feet from the shore. The river couldn’t be that deep.

  Perhaps she had been too chilled by the icy waters to be angry, but the idea came to her cold and clean.

  Ishe snatched up the silk cord that Blinky had spun and thrust the end of it at Gull. “Lash this to the raft,” she said as she tied the other end around her waist.

  “Ishe, the current too strong,” Sparrow protested.

  “I bet this is stronger!” She tied the spider silk cable around her waist. Before the rapids were several large boulders in the river. All she had to do was get on the far side of one and the raft would stop.. Ishe judged the spin of the raft and lowered into a crouch. “Everyone out of the way.” It’s going to be like that time Fox Fire went too high, Ishe thought to herself, filling her lungs with air. Drosa handed her the knife. Even in her shadow, it gleamed like it stood in a sunbeam.

  I’m the Rhino. Big, heavy, and strong. She stood at the very edge of the raft and stuck the knife through her belt. Blinky looked at her curiously, clicking.

  Focusing on a particularly stone coming up, she crouched low waiting for the right moment.

  Ishe leapt.

  Chapter Ten

  The difference between those who were damned and the few who could run was simple. Those who first succumbed had crystals embedded in their bodies. Crystals attuned to Fox.”

  Rictus Hana, Author of The Great Wyrm, the Known History

  Nine hells, that’s cold, Ishe thought as the water enveloped her. This time, she had thoughts, at least. She tried to plant her feet but the current moved over the bottom so fast that the stones were nearly blurs. Ishe refocused her attention downriver as her targeted stone whipped by. Another stone lay directly in her path. Ishe spread her arms as it rushed up at her legs.

  Panic fluttered as the rock came at her too fast. This is gonna hurt! she realized the moment before her body met the stone.

  WHUMP! The sheer solidity of the rock slammed through her; the little breath she had left exploded from her lungs. Yet her fingers dug into the stone and found purchase. The current shoved her up farther, and Ishe found herself desperately attempting to coax air instead of water back into her lungs.

  That small snicker greeted her ears as the water popped out of them. Ishe opened her eyes to find a tiny coyote sitting on the crown of the stone. “I thought nearly dying was more your sister’s style.”

  “Dying was never in the plan,” Ishe hissed.

  He pointed his nose upriver toward the rock Ishe had originally targeted. “Had you hit that, you would have shattered your rib cage, and then the raft tied around your torso would have dragged you downstream. Lucky you hit something much softer.” Reaching out, he pawed at the shiny rock beneath him and it gave like flesh. “Enjoy the ride!” His muzzle split into a tooth-filled grin as Ishe felt the rock begin to move.

  Ishe’s eyes flicked to her hands and found that her fingers were not nestled in a cleft as she had imagined but sunk into the shiny skin of the Grief. “Iron tithe!” she cursed as the thing stood, lifting Ishe clear of the river.

&n
bsp; “Ruuuuoorrgh?” it howled groggily, a human skull surfacing from the black. Empty eye sockets glared accusingly at her. The moment stretched out as spider-silk cables around her shoulders began to tighten. Ishe pulled her hand free, fingers trailing goo. The spider silk rope snapped taut, swinging her away from the creature. Free fingers closed around the hilt of Drosa’s knife, and Ishe drove it deep into the Grief’s back as the raft nearly pried her second hand free.

  The Grief’s scream drove a spear of blackness through Ishe’s own thoughts. It fell forward into the river and bucked. Ishe’s entire body floated in the air for a moment. The raft’s weight spun her around with the knife as a pivot point. A tearing sound erupted as the knife opened a foot-long rent in the creature’s black flesh. Ishe howled as the knife snagged on something solid and sank deeper. The skull-bursting scream of the Grief blasted any remaining plans out of her head. Hanging on was the only way through. One hand on the dagger, one with fingers dug into its pliable flesh.

  Scrabbling in a blind panic, the Grief spawned so many limbs that they got tangled up with one another as it fought for the shore. Sprays of water slammed against Ishe’s side as it stumbled and fell. Yet it grabbed ahold of solid ground and surged forward, breaking into a run. A whinny tore through the air, and the beat of hooves pulled Ishe clear of the water and into the dead forest. A crunch of wood sounded behind her as the knife tore free of her hand, while the other claimed a chunk of the featureless flesh as a prize.

  The ground rose up to hit her entire body. The Grief galloped away, a horse with too many legs jutting out of its half-remembered form. It ran through the dead trees and leaped into the living forest. A blur overtook Ishe’s vision. The Grief screamed, and after Ishe blinked, the black form had been impaled by dozens of tree branches that had not been there before.

  A cheer went up behind her. Ishe flipped over to see the raft lodged on two rocks, Drosa on her knees with an empty bow in her hand. The Grief that had been under the raft slumped in the shallow water, an arrow smoking in its hide. Gull pulled a sputtering Sparrow back onto the raft and gave Ishe a tight smile.