Everyone continued to stare at her with unreadable expressions. Except Drosa, whose smile beamed out between dark and disheveled locks, oddly prideful.
Ishe lifted her hand. It had the same oily black sheen as the monsters swarming Yaz’noth. In fact, only at her shoulder did human skin reappear, and even that looked as if she’d bathed in ink. The other arm had the same black skin. Despair made her heartbeat wobble as the bubbling, melting face of Gull loomed in her memory. “Nine hells…” Ishe ripped her eyes off the sight and grimaced at Sparrow. “Am I dead?”
“Maybe? You certainly should be.” His mustache lifted to reveal a forced grin. “We will find out tonight.”
A roar sounded. Nobody looked toward it.
“Then let’s find that out after we get away.” Ishe gritted her teeth. Did they feel loose? Had that awful shine gotten to her face? For the first time since Yaki had nailed her face with a hot poker, Ishe hungered for a mirror.
“You can’t touch that river again,” Sparrow said. “Not even a bit. Nighttime will be brutal. You need to keep yourself in the sun for as long as possible.”
“There…is a path into the Maw that dry. We climb up to the keepers,” Drosa said.
Something drew Ishe’s attention to Hawk, even though there had been no noise or even movement from the woman. Instead, a heavy stillness settled on the space Hawk occupied, and drew her gaze just in time to watch Hawk’s stony frown grow into a small, almost bashful smile. “I see how it must be, then. I will give the dragon something else to think about.” Her gaze slid from Ishe to Sparrow, who expression changed from wary to pained as he looked up at his wife. “Ten years,” she whispered.
“No!” Ishe’s voice gurgled and a coughing fit prevented her from following up the thought until she had hurled another gob of goo out of her lungs. “We run now.”
Hawk shook her head. “You threw yourself into a black maw that has already tasted your flesh to shield me from my own cowardice. You did so without declaring your intentions or shaming me. I am reminded me that I do not walk this world to merely exist within it. I will make sure his pursuit of all of you ends here, little captain.”
In a single move, she swept Sparrow up into her arms and kissed him hard. Not a pretty kiss; his wet and miserable mustache mashed into her thick lips. Sparrow clung to her, dripping and sodden but all the more passionate. “You’ll come back,” Sparrow said as he was set down. Everyone looked back toward the dragon and his battle with the Grief.
Yaz’noth reared up, bent his long neck down toward himself, and roared out a plume of dragon fire onto his own body. Only as a wave of heat washed over everyone did the stream of fire stop. The sizzling remains of the Grief fell back into the water with soft plopping noises.
Hawk squared her massive shoulders, breathed in and out. As she did so, a change came over her, as if a cloud had lifted. “What is to be shall be,” she muttered in Low River. All her accumulated scars seemed to lift from her skin, fading from flesh and memory. The sun found the tip of her spear and it shone with such force that it seemed afire. “Survive, all of you. Remember that there are many destinies and following them is a choice. I choose mine today. To protect my husband, my ward, and my friends. Today is a good day to die.” Hawk lifted her spear and slammed the butt of it into the ground so hard that the earth beneath Ishe bucked. With a battle cry, Hawk exploded into the air, landing on the opposite side of the river with a roll. Striking a tree, she launched herself upriver, the dead trunk shattering in her wake. She ran toward Yaz’noth, who had switched tactics from trying to fly to dragging himself out of the river, clawing at the riverbank. All around him, the dry trees burned as he knocked them over. The Grief still coated his legs and tail, forming a mass of tentacles that were straining to pull him back into the river.
“We need to get moving,” Sparrow said, but nobody budged as Yaz’noth’s head swung around to squint at the giant woman charging him with a steel spear. If most humans were mice compared to the dragon, Hawk would be merely a rat. Still clawing his way free from the river, he opened his mouth and unleashed the energy lance of his breath. Hawk dived at the last moment. The beam missed but its proximity seared her backside. Her skin smoking like a seared steak, she rolled back up to her feet.
Yaz’noth jolted with surprise when Hawk continued to run at him. Spine dove at her and released his own narrow cone of flame. Leaping, she slammed down onto his head, driving it into the ground, and she ran along the dragon’s spine, shattering vertebrae with each step. Not breaking stride, she somersaulted onto the ground, leaving Spine to roll along behind her; a tangle of broken wings. Hammer, who had been following his brother’s attack, missed her entirely, crashing into the deeper forest.
Yaz’noth let go of the ground to take a backhanded swipe at Hawk; his forelimb blurred with the speed that Ishe had seen him use to reduce two men to bloody paste. Hawk twisted her great bulk around it and then dodged a second blow that would have been the return sweep.
Chapter Eighteen
A dragon’s skin, blood, and internal organs are metal, but their bones are crystalline.
Rictus Hana, Author of The Great Wyrm, the Known History
The All sang through Hawk’s blood like a chorus of bees with human voices. She saw the great dragon not as he was before her, covered in tar-like creatures and snarling with anger, but as he would be in the moments that followed the now. The way he would lift his wings in a split second, the color of his breath that would soon spring forth from his mouth. Yet also distantly, the shattered timbers of buildings clenched in his claws, scars he had yet to receive danced over his body, a second head sprouted and bit at his own, a crown of light wrapped around the base of his antlers. All things that could come to be, perhaps possibilities, perhaps certainties. The All danced among them as it guided Hawk around the dragon. Hawk reached out, seizing hold of the claw that had attempted to skewer her, its momentum hurling her into the air. Possibilities solidified and she swung her spear into the dragon’s eye, cracking it like glass as the steel sparked across its surface. The dragon screamed, head flinching away, wings open in a hatchling’s threat display. Hawk hit his neck with both feet and bounced off. The air behind her filled with a cone of orange flame that scalded her feet.
Fast; how did something made of metal, of rock, move so fast? the tiny unoccupied part of her brain pondered as she latched on to the first rib of his wing. She shoved the spear tip through the membrane, thick as a buffalo’s hide. It parted to the sharpness the All had granted the spear.
“Get off!” the dragon boomed. The wing bucked and Hawk’s grip slipped on the smooth scales.
Kicking out, Hawk pushed her leg through the slit in the wing. Hooking her foot and then her hand, she avoided a claw swipe by pulling her entire body through the slit. Her skin charred where it touched the red-hot blood, but pain could not reach her.
The world inverted as the battle crystallized before her. Yaz’noth extended the wing and rolled, attempting to slam her into the ground. Hawk had time to see the forest stretch out around her as she reached the apex of the arc.
There. She let go of the wing and landed on his chest as the wing continued on, slamming down onto the riverbank. Several trees, sharpened by fire, pierced the limb. Yaz’noth roared, a mix of pain, anger, and frustration that hit Hawk with enough concussive force that she stumbled as she ran down the length of his body. The wound that Ishe had talked of sported a red scab that glowed like an inviting warm hearth. Hawk gripped her spear in two hands and shouted a prayer to Tree Mother, inviting her into her body. Then she plunged the spade-sized tip into the dragon’s wound. It made a noise like a shovel hitting a rock, shunkt! It sank only halfway up the spear’s blade.
Not good enough. Every instinct told Hawk to leap away. The All sang to her what would happen if she did not. This moment, the choice between life and death echoed her previous life. Ten years before, she’d chosen life over glory. And life had gone on. Some had died but she hadn
’t; there had been no martyr. The spirits had abandoned her for cowardice, but their war with the Golden Hills had never come. She had become a petty thug, serving a woman who served herself. And despite that, despite her kneeling in front of the root of evil in the world, Madria had become a friend. A friend who had asked Hawk to protect her children.
As her grip tightened on the spear, she saw the girls as they were in the All. Ishe leaning on Drosa, walking forward despite the fact that the Grief taint had claimed her limbs. The Rhino straining forward, regardless of pain. Coyote nearby. Yaki sat at the head of a table, surrounded by men who hated each other but loved her in their own strange way. Hawk gritted her teeth as she strained against the spear, feeling the blade bite inch by inch through reluctantly yielding dragon flesh. Show me, Hawk begged the All, show me that this is worth it. That they are as important as Sparrows believes. The All did not answer, refusing to reward her choice with certainty. Instead, it showed her just how deep the spear needed to be to truly injure the dragon.
Inch by inch, she drove it there. Teeth gritted, muscles straining as she put all her weight and strength into the stout spear. It should have snapped, but the All held it together until the dragon heaved with a scream. Hawk’s world lit with a burning blue light and set her aflame.
Chapter Nineteen
They hurt him! They actually hurt him, the mad bastards. Two kegs of powder hidden beneath a mound of ore that was his dinner. But not enough. He heard the hiss of the fuse. Cog’s rounded up them all up now. She’ll come for me next.
The hidden journal of Katoro, Dragonsworn of the Fifth Generation
Yaz’noth squinted in the still-brightening daylight. He’d always prided himself on being open to new experiences, but he filed hurts to breathe under not interested. “Just get it out!” he groaned around the freshly uprooted tree he had in his jaws. It was the closest he could get to the bite bar that the medics used when they set broken bones.
“Yes, my lord.” Miss Cog bowed and signaled to a group of ten men. The shaft of the spear had been pushed so deep that by the time he had manage to swat the woman off his belly with an energy lance, only a foot of it remained visible. In a display of her usual practicality, Miss Cog drilled a small hole in it and attached it to a chain by means of a steel pin. The men took up the chain and set it to their shoulders. “Please remain still, my lord,” Miss Cog said, and gave the order to advance.
The tree in Yaz’noth’s jaws snapped into three pieces as the stick pulled on his insides. The pain raged through him. As he bit back a scream, a high-pitched keening whimper sneaked out between his teeth. Traitorous stomach muscles clenched around the foul stick, fighting against the efforts to dislodge it.
His claws flexed as fire forced its way up his throat. Burn them! Burn away the pain! his instincts screamed at him.
“Almost there, sir! Stay still,” Miss Cog soothed.
A wet popping sound and the pain finally crested. Panicked screaming filled his ears even as the tension drained from his body.
“Sir, sir! Please plug it. Quickly!” Miss Cog’s panicked voice spiked the wave of relief he wanted to bask in. He looked down to see his molten red blood pulsing from the hole with enough force that it arced away from his body. One of the men lay facedown in the dirt, back a mix of black flesh and cooling stone. The rest of the team had scrambled clear, sporting smoking wounds. “Fetch the healing crystals for all of them,” Yaz’noth said he reached out to plug the hole in his belly. Pain protested, but he stopped the bleeding. What on earth had the big human hit? That spear was barely more than a needle! Yet it felt as if she’d ripped his entire bottom open. After a moment, he lifted his digit away to reveal a new, brighter scab in the middle of the old one.
Then he let his head fall back to the ground and breathed out a sigh. He wanted to rest but the face of that woman haunted the inside of his eyelids. The way her eyes glowed with zeal and the white shine of her teeth. What was she? Were there more of her in the Golden Hills? Had he killed her? Yaz’noth half-expected the woman to crawl out of the river, ready to inflict more pain.
“Are you all right, my lord? You’re growling at the air.”
Yaz’noth opened one eye. He saw multiple Miss Cogs frowning in mirrored concern through his cracked eye. Did she actually care for him? Or was she trying to figure out a way to finish him off? The last time he had been wounded, the time the White Queen had beaten him within an inch of his life, he had crawled home to find the Dragonsworn in a state of civil war. He’d hidden the extent of his mostly healing injuries and dealt with the problem. Now, though. Now his entire nation would see their god laid low, as would the Two Herds tribe. Even with the spear removed, each breath brought pain, and Yaz’noth doubted he had the strength to climb back to his lair. He’d been laid low by a mere human, not a fleet, not even a single ship, but a human armed with a bit of metal. If he’d had the energy he’d curl up and die of embarrassment. He settled for not moving at all.
“My lord?” Miss Cog had taken a step toward him.
“Does it look like I’m all right?” Yaz’noth snapped. “Between that bomb of a crystal and a little stick of wood, I can’t move. If you bring me the iron from the Odin Sphere, then I’ll be on my feet in a day or two.” He lifted his wing and gave it an experimental flap, feeling all the dozen holes where the trees had pierced it. “That’ll be a week or more.” Wings healed slower than anything else. After the White Queen had shredded his, it had been over a year before he flew again. “If you don’t, if you flee over the mountains, then I’ll lie here for a month. A good head start.”
“No one is going to desert, sir.” Miss Cog’s face hardened. “Anyone who tries will have to deal with me first.”
Yaz’noth had a strange urge to pet the woman but resisted. She was a good Miss Cog. He would be sad when a new woman announced she was Miss Cog. Looking at the lines in this one’s face, he thought it could be any day now or might be a decade. He smiled and, to her credit, Miss Cog didn’t flinch. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did run. I’ve oversold my invincibility. Laid low by a toothpick.” He gave a low rumble of misery.
“Sir, respectfully, that was not a human you fought. That was a god. No human can move like that. It took the strength of ten men to pull that ironwood stick out of you. It needed more than that to be put there in the first place.” And if”—Miss Cog halted, blinking away tears—“If you hadn’t taken that crystal onto yourself, she never would have touched you. Omau was such a fool!” Tears ran down her cheeks. Yaz’noth hoped they were genuine. If they were not, then all his plans would fall to pieces as soon as he let sleep claim him. He looked away; humans were good liars.
“Did they find the body of the…god?” he asked.
“No, it fell into the river. We assume the Grief ate it.”
Yaz’noth doubted that. There weren’t many left in that river. Another mistake, letting so many fester there.
“Organize the lifting of the Odin Sphere’s hull to me. Then take Hammer and find Ishe.”
A pause as Miss Cog bowed. “I will see her dead, sir.”
“No!” The force of his voice echoed through the valley, surprising him. She had done her level best to kill him, somehow blinding him while inducing the Grief to swarm. Yet he still found himself unwilling to return the favor. “She will have no qualms about killing you or Hammer. I cannot lose either of you. Watch her, try to prevent her from reaching the city, but do not engage her until I’m able to fly. Do this and I grant you the fifth talon.”
Silence ruled for a moment and a few birdcalls ventured into it. “I only have three now,” she said in a hushed voice.
If she was lying, she was damn good at it. He looked back down at her and found her usual poker face a teary mess, like the collision of too many emotions had shattered her demeanor. Her eyes shone with the eagerness of a child who beheld a new wonder. Yaz’noth dismissed any doubts of her loyalty right then and there. She would have recoiled at the promise of the fif
th talon, made an excuse. A thread of happiness reached through him and his tail gave a twitch. “You have four now. And I don’t know if I can fulfill the promise of the fifth talon, Miss Cog. There are too many variables, but for what it’s worth, I want you to join me in the sky on wings of your own.”
There was no part of him that human arms could encircle, but Miss Cog made a noble effort.
Chapter Twenty
Two Herds’ blood runs close to the spirits. Honored are those who are born of them. Although they are often honored from a considerable distance.
Shaman Neeks, of the Two Herds tribe
Ishe blinked sweat out of her eyes, feeling as if she strode through a desert instead of a forest. Drosa hovered nearby, like a mother near a child who had recently gained the ability to walk. Her wild mane was a dull black as Eyah attempted to bake as much of the Grief’s poison out of her body as possible. For this, Sparrow had stripped her naked to the waist. The ash gray of the poison had spread from her arms and covered her torso down to her belly button. Even her wraps had been removed and her breasts swung free in the sun for the first time in, well… since they had been big enough to be bound in the first place. After a mere hour of this, they ached fiercely.
Instinct kept moving one of her arms up under them for support, only to jerk them away when she felt the cold, rubbery skin. Ishe could feel the dead bones floating in the otherworldly flesh of her arms. It didn’t feel dead, but it certainly wasn’t alive, either. No blood pulsed through them, and if her hands lingered anywhere for more than a moment, it left an oily residue. Sparrow had said, “You must stay in the sun, soak up every ray that Daylight provides, and banish every bit of gray that steals into your skin. If you do not, you will be lost.” And then my wife’s sacrifice will be in vain. He had not said that last part, but it echoed around Ishe’s head as loudly as Hawk and Yaz’noth’s combined roars of pain.
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