She led them on, the three of them and Joy, stalking along at her side. “Find him,” Saska said to the starcat. Joy’s sense of smell was astonishingly acute, her hearing and sight as well. The cat narrowed her eyes, ears opening, nostrils flaring, then ran.
“Keep up,” Saska shouted, giving chase. The others raced behind. Ahead, the shadowed tents appeared, disappearing in and out of the swirling mists. Creatures moved in their ungainly gait, turning suddenly as they heard them, rushing and closing in. They ran past their outstretched arms, ducking and dashing free. Dimly, in the east, a pale light was dawning.
They reached the heart of the camp, and there he was, in battle. Sir Ralston stood surrounded, a heap of sand climbing about his right leg, another reaching for his left. He was roaring, swinging his blade, cutting the creatures down, but they kept on coming. One loomed behind him, widening like a sail, arms broadening like banners as it went to wrap him up. The Wall bellowed out into the night and gave a great, sudden twist, pulling his right leg free, turning, swinging. The sail of sand collapsed, stones scattering across the ground. They rippled, undulating, shifting, reforming…
“Rolly,” Saska screamed.
He looked at her, eyes wide. “No…no, stay back! Get away!”
She ignored him, rushing in, cutting at the shapes of stone and sand. The Butcher and Leshie were there as well, and Joy, pouncing and slashing. The sand was rising about their legs, gripping, pulling. Saska felt herself drawn down as though she was standing in quicksand. She bent down, Varin dagger slicing, but it was like cutting water, and had no effect at all. Joy scrambled to her side, digging. She managed to pull her leg free, stumbling back and onto solid ground. Leshie was nearby, sinking, the Butcher with her. He reached out a strong scarred arm, and she grabbed it, and he hauled her free, then staggered away.
“Stay back I said,” the Wall bellowed. “Stay back!”
He was alone now. They could not get close. A dozen of the creatures shifted about him, some wrapping about his legs, others reaching out to hug his torso. The sand was climbing his chest, sluicing through the thin gaps in his plate. He swung with his blade, swung and swung again, but it made no matter. They just kept coming.
“Rolly! No!” Saska rushed again…
…the Butcher intercepted her, pulling her back. “We go in there, we all die. There’s nothing we can do.”
She screamed out, a wordless sound tearing from her throat. Fury boiled in her veins, and a terrible fear. “No. I won’t lose him! I can’t! I can’t lose him!”
“We have to think of ourselves, Saska. Of you.” Leshie was looking around. “There are more of them. The ground is moving. If we don’t go now…we’re all going to die…”
The sand was at Rolly’s throat, passing over his gorget. She saw it filling up, rising past his granite chin, his jaw, inching above his lips, up to his nose. Soon it was only his eyes, staring at her from within that prison of sand. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think.
“Saska, we have to go!” Leshie shouted in her ear. Her voice was strangely distant. Saska could feel the blood throbbing in her head. The Red Blade grabbed her arm, and the Butcher took the other, and together they dragged her away.
My Wall, she thought, still watching, helpless. My guardian. My rock. My Rolly…
Tears filled her eyes. What would she do without him?
There was a thump in the skies.
Then another.
The fogs swirled suddenly, shifting, and Saska looked straight up. The sun is rising, she thought, strangely. There was a glow up there, but it was too high, much too high. A deep red glow, spreading.
She blinked, saw a shape outlined above them. A slim body, long neck and tail, wings stretched wide to catch the air. Dust swam about it, obscuring its size. A shadow atop it, a figure in the saddle, and another behind. On the wind carried a voice, a woman’s voice, ringing out loud and clear.
“Burn them,” it called.
And from the maw, gushed the flame.
26
The dragon had been torn apart, its wings snapped back and broken, the lower mandible of its jaw ripped off and cast aside. The neck was savagely crushed, spinal bones jutting out through the thick, dark grey scales. The ground was churned and ruined where it lay, and the blood was everywhere, almost black beneath the bleak grey skies. Lythian looked at the creature with a measure of pity. It had not been a pleasant end.
“He was not meant to kill it,” he said to Vilmar the Black.
The huntsman snorted through the tough bristles of his huge black beard. “They were made to kill dragons. That’s the whole point.”
Lythian sighed. “Did you speak to him? He was supposed to restrain it only, Vilmar.”
“I know. I made that as clear as I could, but there’s no beating instinct. You can’t reason with that sort of thing, can you?”
“Then why did we bother? You suggested it might work.”
“It did work. The dragon is dead. That’s a good thing so far as I see it.”
Lythian shook his head with a measure of annoyance. The huntsman had always been of truculent disposition, and even more so as he’d grown older. “You know that wasn’t my intention. I wanted it alive.”
“Aye. Hruum wanted otherwise, though. So it’s dead, and one less dragon to worry about. No sense in getting your breeks a twist over it, m’lord.”
Lythian was fighting a losing battle with this dragon-catching business, that was becoming clear. “Hruum?” he asked. “That’s his name?”
“Aye. At least, that’s the only way I know how to pronounce it. I can’t speak in that rockfall voice of theirs, but he seems to answer to Hruum, so…”
“I didn’t realise they had names. You’ve been working with them for weeks and haven’t mentioned one so far.”
Vilmar shrugged. “They don’t operate by the same flow of time as we do. Weeks to us is no more than an hour or so to them. The gruloks are thousands of years old.” He looked at the bloody carcass again. “You want to catch a dragon alive, best revert to those other methods of yours. No grulok is going to play nice with them or go along with your fanciful schemes.”
Fanciful schemes. That was a fair way of putting it. Snaring a dragon had proven more than problematic, partly owing to the fact that few ever came close to their traps. Only twice had that happened until now. On the first occasion, the chain-net fired from the ballista had malfunctioned, and the beast had startled at the noise and flapped away. On the second, the net had hit its mark, wrapping the dragon up as it feasted on the corpse left as bait. At once the beast had flown into a wild frenzy, Sir Oswin Cole later explained, blowing fire in all directions, snapping and snarling so much that the men feared to get close. “I went to reload the chain, my lord,” Cole had said, “but by the time I got it all set, the dragon had untangled itself. And then, well…”
Lythian had not needed to ask what happened then. It was clear from the smashed wood and charred lengths of chain, the blackened pit and boiled mud where the ballista had been hidden in its wagon. “The dragon obliterated it, my lord,” Cole had told him anyway. “I was lucky to get away. Only when Nathaniel and the others joined me did the dragon think better of the fight, and fly off. It…” He’d given an ashamed shake of the head. “It wasn’t even a big one. If it was, we might all be dead.”
Lythian had nodded gravely at that, pondering his folly. Losing healthy Bladeborn knights and good fighting men was not a part of his plan. He was tempted to shut down the operation there and then, but Sir Storos had come up with the bright idea of employing the use of a grulok instead. “It could hide on the ground, like a boulder,” he had suggested. “We’d only need to put the bait nearby. If a dragon comes he could reach out and grab it. Do you think that might work, Lythian?”
