What had become of Tanris and Girl? Had he seen the message I’d left him and taken her to safety? Unexpected dread and dismay held me captive. What if things had gone awry and they had been detained? Bursting into motion, I ran down the hillside, slipping, sliding. Dear gods, keep them safe, I begged. A root sent me sprawling, shrubs stabbing and scraping, rocks bruising. I twisted instinctively, trying to protect the egg. My head fetched up against the trunk of a small tree and the impact nearly knocked me senseless. With a groan, I rolled over on my back and held my burning hands up to inspect them. Half the skin had been scraped away and a pound of leaves and debris took its place. I shook some of it loose, then froze. One of the dragons sailed past, a great, dark shadow. With teeth. How stupid to go rushing headlong down the mountain with angry dragons flying about. I glanced around for its mate, but saw nothing.
The gods, in their infinite mercy, had kept me from danger. Closing my eyes, I murmured a quick but heartfelt prayer of gratitude. Then I sat up cautiously, assured myself that I had sustained no crippling injuries, and set about picking the worst of the dirt and leaves from my hands before tearing strips off the bottom of my shirt to wrap them. The gods kept Egg safe, too; it remained whole and the little creature inside responded when I prodded.
My fall had taken me to the bottom of the ravine. I stumbled into the cover of the trees growing along the far side and made my way down the hillside. I had to find Tanris and Girl. I needed a horse—and food. Food would definitely be good. The only place I could get either was from the village, but the village was under attack by dragons eager to roast me.
Except for one little thing: I had their precious egg. It was an advantage I could use if pressed, but better to avoid any such situation. I had first to get the rest of the way down the mountain. The sun hid behind smoke and clouds, but judging by the light it was somewhere about midday, so I could not rely upon imminent nightfall to give me cover. I also had to consider whether dragons could see in the dark. They did, after all, dwell quite nicely in an unlit cave.
I kept an eye on the sky and minded my step lest I take another fall, careful to stick to the cover of trees and rocks. I had to stop and rest far too many times to make good progress. The dragons kept up their attack for some time. The devastation was terrible.
When I finally reached the little valley I found a safe place tucked in among the trees on the edge and waited.
I did not mean to, but I slept for the first time in a day and a half. Night brought cold temperatures and shivering woke me. I had to move. I had to find Tanris and Girl. My body protested with screeching, aching muscles. Movement tore open some of my scrapes and I wished I had salve for them. I had hardly finished the thought when I realized I did. I had the stuff I’d taken from the temple healer! Blessed gods be praised…
A well serviced several of the houses on one edge of the village. I washed myself as best I could, teeth chattering in the cold, attention darting to every imagined movement. I found the sting of the salve curiously reassuring.
Stealing a horse turned into a serious challenge. The village didn’t possess a great number to begin with, and the attack of the dragons scattered most of them. The corpses of two laid on what passed as Hasiq jum’a Sahefal’s streets, too well done even for a crow.
Fires continued to burn, most notably at the temple where figures passed constantly between me and the light. The guards had their work cut out for them, particularly considering that the brothers themselves had been making off with the goods. I wondered if anyone had noted Melly’s disappearance or if people assumed he had perished during the attack. Nowhere could I find my own dear Horse with the white snip on her nose. Nowhere, in fact, did I find any horses, people, or even sheep, which made the village a disturbingly ghostly place.
It began to rain, which did not at all astonish me. I was glad for my hat. It no longer looked remotely suitable for the jaunty feather it had once sported, though it definitely boasted character. Coming to the sorry conclusion that I was not going to have a horse upon which to make my journey, I set about collecting what provisions I could carry, fashioning packs out of deserted blankets and a leather duffel that I discovered.
Finding food proved easy. While many of the houses had burned, and with them the owner’s food stocks, the people had fled. My opinion of the intelligence of dragons went down. I could understand revenge, but how could they have known they wouldn’t cook their precious egg when they lit the houses afire? Unless, of course, their eggs resisted the flames. An interesting concept I had no desire to test.
Nowhere did I find Tanris or Girl, nor their horses, nor any sign of them. I eventually discovered the missing villagers and some of their sheep at the temple where they had come together for the protection the sturdy stone walls and numerous guards. It made good sense if they still wanted to linger in dangerous territory. At the temple they had access to dragon-proof caves where they could hide, or perhaps even live. The temple’s two wings and upper floor had suffered extensive damage, but the great statue over the door remained untouched. I wondered if the supports were still sufficient to hold it up, but that would be a worry only if I was underneath it when it fell, and I had no intention of going anywhere near. If Tanris and Girl had taken refuge within the temple, I could not get to them. At least they’d be safe. I watched for well over an hour, arguing with myself whether to stay or to go. And to think, I had once worried about the possibility of avoiding Tanris in such a small settlement. Finally, I set my steps to the trail leading south.
It took about a mile to decide I had far too much to carry, but what could I do? A heavy load would slow me down, but with one too light I would starve. And so I trudged on through the rain, mulling over how I ached, how long was the trek to the Le’ah River, and how utterly despondent I felt when I should be overjoyed to have accomplished the impossible and now only had to complete the difficult.
An enormous shadow lunging at me from the side of the path brought my heart to a screeching halt. Terror and a fine sense of self-preservation immediately got it going again. An abrupt reversal in direction to escape being rent to pieces by a sneaky, vengeful dragon sent me sprawling on my back, awkwardly propped by my bulging packs. The point of my grapnel dug painfully into a kidney, but I didn’t even have time to wriggle free of it before my attacker loomed over me and lowered its enormous head, only to give me a whiskery sniff and a none-too-gentle nudge in the chin.
I pushed right back and scooted away as speedily as I could manage.
My attacker shook its head, stomped a foot, and whickered softly.
“You’re a horse!” I exclaimed, and nearly suffered another collapse, this one inspired by sheer relief. It took a step closer and leaned down to sniff at me again. Happily, I rubbed its whiskery nose. “Praise the gods, who never let me forget how dearly I am loved.”
A giant of a thing, the beast’s back came clear up to my nose and it was at least as broad as the dragon. It wore no saddle, more’s the pity, but the remnants of a broken harness. I tied it up out of the way, fastened my packs to it, and then looked about for a rock whereby I might climb aboard. Along with rain, the area had rocks aplenty, and when I’d mounted I steered my prize steed back to fair Hasiq jum’a Sahefal, where I concealed my new equine acquisition in one of the burned-out houses and collected a much better supply of foodstuffs as well as another blanket and a good oiled canvas. I also found a saddle, though it would need some reworking to be suitable for Horse Too. And then I was on my south.
As a point of further enlightenment, I must point out that dragons are completely indifferent to rain. I discovered this as I rode along on Horse Too’s far-too-broad back, which already magnified my aches and pains. I learned just how my muscles had stretched to accommodate his back when I paused for a brief rest. Dismounting was a minor disaster. Luckily, when I fell I landed on my side and not on the egg still tucked into the front of my tunic where, incredibly enough, it helped keep me warm.
I walk
ed for a while so I might exercise—or exorcise—some of the pain from my lower limbs. The rain continued, of course. My determination to walk did not last long, and I climbed back aboard the horse, who shall hereafter be referred to simply as “Too.” Draping the canvas over us went a long way toward keeping us all dry and warm, and I didn’t particularly give a flying monkey how unfashionable it looked.
Too possessed a bone-jarring but swift gait, and after a while of sitting it I managed a more or less cross-legged position on his back, balanced by packs of provisions. I could hardly keep my eyes open, I was so exceedingly exhausted. The kemesh I’d found did nothing to ease the queasy state of my stomach, giving the lie to the rumor about the drink’s cure-all properties.
The clouds did nothing but get thicker and more generous in releasing their abundance of moisture. One could scarce mark midday for the darkness. Water ran off the canvas in streams, and poor Too’s mane looked flat and dismal. A sudden cacophony of panic from the Voices yanked me out of my daydreams. I looked about wildly, dragging back the canvas blocking my view. Too twitched his ears at me and kept plodding.
“What? What is it?” I exclaimed.
Before they could reply, a dragon swept out of the mists, skimming around a low hill on my right and letting out a roar fit to crumble small mountains, including my horse.
Too whinnied and bucked and ran.
“Augh!” I cried, tumbling head over heels the other direction in spite of the gear heaped around me. I hit the ground hard and rolled ten or twenty times until I came to a breathless, groaning halt. As much as I wanted to lie there and die quietly for a few minutes, I had absolutely no intention of actually departing life just yet. I’d worked entirely too hard to get to this point.
The dragon fast approaching, I twisted violently to the side and staggered to my feet, minus my usual grace and style, and dove behind a pair of boulders. Fire singed the muddy ground in a stripe. A thump came from somewhere nearby, and then the dragon crashed, cartwheeling madly.
It screamed.
I screamed and ducked.
Someone else shouted.
The boulders behind which I’d taken cover served as a perfect way to curb the dragon’s forward motion, and it slammed into them—and me—with enough force to rattle my teeth and send me sprawling all over again, this time with a dragon on top of me. It was not, thank the gods of unusual circumstances, the full weight of the thing, but my leg had become pinned between the newly arranged boulders. I could not move, though I tried with all my strength. Either my skin or the entire leg would be left behind, but when it came down to life or limb, I chose life.
The dragon thrashed and the rocks ground together. Someone hollered, and the dragon thrashed even more. Something struck me and I succumbed to oblivion.
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“Crow.”
The word came from a great distance, wrapped in wool.
“Crow.”
More insistent this time, and it came with movement. A hand on my shoulder. Burning pain in my leg. The same leg, mind you, as had suffered when Raza’s men chased us half a lifetime ago.
“I’m here,” I croaked with a grimace. “What do you want?”
Someone let out a long sigh.
It was warm on one side of me, cold on the other, and the warm side came with the lovely snap and crackle of wet wood burning.
I sat up suddenly. “Egg! Where’s Egg!”
“Relax, it’s right here.” At my side, Tanris examined me with a sour expression. Someone had propped Egg amongst my gear. Nearby, Girl had her legs drawn up and her arms around them, face as pale and apprehensive as usual.
A blanket covered me, and I pushed it aside to get up, but that didn’t work out as well as I’d planned. I laid right back down again, beating my fist against my uninjured thigh until the staggering pain let me breathe again.
“It’s not broken,” Tanris offered, and held out my bottle of kemesh. With a great deal more care, I propped myself up to take a swig.
“The egg or my leg?” I asked, wiping the back of my hand across my mouth and handing the bottle back with a nod of gratitude.
“Either.”
“Good,” I breathed, “that’s good. Are you sure?”
“Mm. I should have just let the dragon cook you.”
“I’m extraordinarily glad you didn’t. Thank you.”
His brow twitched.
I looked around. A ceiling of rock sloped down to nothing, dirt on one side, rocks on the other, and open in the front. The fire burned between me and the darkness beyond. “Where did you come from, anyway?”
“The village. You remember it? The one you managed to burn down?”
“Why do you always accuse me of everything you don’t like?” I had not personally lit the village on fire, and it was not my fault the dragons reacted the way they did. “It wasn’t that bad anyway. There were still houses. And the temple. Sheep, too, I saw them. And I got the egg.”
“Yes, and left us there to burn.”
I had rather deserted them, though I didn’t intend for them to die. And if Tanris hadn’t found the message I left, he wouldn’t be here with Girl. “I looked for you, but couldn’t find you. I thought you’d left.”
He gave me one of those long looks that said he didn’t entirely believe me. Then he took a swallow of the kemesh and eyed me a little longer. “You went to the dragon’s lair without us.”
“Yes.”
“You went off on your own again, in spite of the danger. Danger, I might add, that was so obvious a blind man could have seen it. Why?”
I closed my eyes against the memory of Melly cartwheeling into the chasm, then abruptly opened them again, unwilling to chance having the image burned forever onto my eyelids. “You know why.” I didn’t look at Girl. Neither did he. He just ground his teeth.
“Was it bad?” he asked finally.
“Could have been worse.” I’m not sure how, but he would never believe me about Melly and Brother Three, never mind about the dragon and the Voices and climbing out of the mountain by way of a chimney-sized hole, so why bother?
“You look like you took a beating.”
I snorted. There’d been three actual beatings, but who was counting?
“Those marks on your belly—what are they from?”
I had marks? I shouldn’t be at all astonished, but I pulled my shirt up to look, and was astonished anyway. The light of the fire revealed squiggly black lines and a strange kind of bruising all over my abdomen. How nice that the pain and stiffness bore illustrations.
“One of the dragons do that?” he asked.
“No,” I murmured, and pulled my shirt down again, realizing I wore only the one, and my tunic and coat had been replaced with a blanket. I shifted it aside and discovered myself bereft of anything but my smallclothes. My injured leg was wrapped up in the remains of a shirt. “You undressed me?” I did not like knowing I had been so vulnerable.
“You were a mess.”
Girl nodded, the expression on her face worried. With a leather glove she lifted the pot on the fire and held it up questioningly. It smelled good.
“Soup,” Tanris said. “Want some?”
“Maybe a little.”
“When did you eat last?”
“I don’t know.”
He grunted. “I brought your things.”
Nonplussed, I looked about. Sure enough, there was my pack, and I should have recognized my extra shirt even if it didn’t look the same wrapped around my leg and slightly bloodied. “Thank you.”
He grunted again, which I assumed meant something like You’re welcome, see how I look after you?
Girl filled a mug and handed it to me with a spoon, shifting to move my useless saddle behind me so I could lean against it. She looked at my face critically, made an adjustment to a bandage wrapped around my head, and sat down beside me. I blew on the soup, then took a few ginger sips. “So what became of the dragon?�
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“Girl shot it.”
“Girl?” I stared first at one and then the other.
Girl’s beam transformed her thin, wan features completely. She looked like a real person rather than a sad waif who might blow away in a strong wind. She looked proud of herself, and well she ought.
“Remarkable. So tell me what happened.”
Tanris looked at Girl. Girl blushed and looked away, so he shrugged and told the story himself, illustrating by drawing lines in the dirt. “Here’s the village. There are three paths leading south. We were circling across, like this,” he bisected the lines he’d drawn with one finger, “looking for any sign you’d been through, though it wasn’t easy because of the rain and the mist. Then we caught sight of someone and followed in case it was you. Saw the dragon coming, so we ran to help. I handed Girl my crossbow. She shot it, and I finished the job with an axe.”
Girl opened her mouth wide and pointed inside, eyes positively sparkling.
“You shot it in the mouth?” I asked, astonished yet again.
She nodded vigorously and Tanris actually smiled. “Right down the throat. While it was flaming.”
“And flying.” I was impressed. “Are you always that good?”
She shrugged and smiled.
“After that, we used the horses to pull the dragon off you. You got lucky. You should have been dead.”
The gods did love me. “And you killed the dragon.” Why did he get a witness to his heroics and mine had to happen in a hole in the ground?
“Me and Girl did, yup.”
“Well.” I dredged up a smile for them both. “Amazing work. Thank you.”
Much to my surprise, Girl leaned over to kiss my cheek, then patted my leg and went off to do Girl things.
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As the Crow Flies: An Epic Fantasy Adventure Page 31