“Lie down, master,” the boy told her.
She clenched her teeth. “If you can do it, so can I. Where are my sheaths?” She took them and put away the swords, then strapped them to her sides. “Someone hand me my walking stick.”
The others tossed their burdens onto the sling. The two elders each took a handle and continued forward, while Katalinka and Miklos moved slowly, cautiously ahead of them, and Sarika and Gyorgy took up the rear. They inched down the road. Blasts of cold, freezing sleet struck them, only to be chased away by stinking, burning clouds.
In spite of the cold, the wet, and the choking stench, Katalinka felt stronger than she had since leaving the temple. Her joints ached, and her muscles burned with every step, but her feet were stronger, and could support her weight, so long as she used the walking staff. She continued forward with only a slight hobble.
Miklos groaned. He slipped a hand into his robe and rubbed at his chest, wincing. “Feels like there’s ice in my chest.”
Katalinka eyed him. “Wasn’t that where. . .? Are you sure all the dragon feathers came out?”
“I’m clean, I’m sure of it. But there’s a kind of phantom pain, almost like—”
Before he could finish his sentence, a blast of ice and sleet slammed into them and drove them backward. Katalinka slipped, and would have fallen, had not Miklos shot out a hand and grabbed her arm.
The rain vanished, replaced by a heavy snow, and she heard a familiar thumping of enormous wings. She looked skyward, and her heart froze in terror.
“Demons roast me,” Miklos cursed.
But it wasn’t a demon overhead. The enormous figure flying above them was ice-blue, with clear horns like curving icicles, long and sharp enough to impale a horse. Its feathers looked like sheets of shimmering crystal, and its claws were curving scimitars of ice.
The dragon slowed and beat its massive wings above them. It turned its enormous head and looked down with an eye like an enormous blue diamond. A ripple passed along the feathers, and the dragon opened its jaws and roared.
“Sowen!” Katalinka cried. “Shield yourselves!”
Miklos had been gaping beside her, his mouth open in terror. He threw up his cloak, and his sowen blasted out in the shape of a hardened shield, even as a shower of ice and snow fell from the sky. Katalinka had hers up first, as strong as she could manage, but the attack shredded it in an instant, and tore through Miklos’s nearly as easily. But by then, Sarika, Kozmer, Drazul, and even Gyorgy were joining in the defense. The dragon was already on the move again, perhaps thinking—if such a word could be attributed to the unfathomable mind of a demigod—that its blast would destroy them.
And it very nearly did. The last of their strength faltered as the piercing attack spent itself, and they found themselves knee-deep in snow and ice. If the dragon had struck them a second time, they’d have been done for. Thankfully, it had flown off and left them to recover their battered sowens.
Gyorgy stared up in shock through wet, falling bandages. His skin was pink and raw. “Why would it try to kill us?” the boy asked. “Aren’t we supposed to be its champions?”
Miklos bent and picked up a sharp, glinting piece of what looked at first like ice, but instead was a clear blue feather, which he compared to the pair on the thong around his neck. They were larger and colorless, but otherwise the same.
“It wasn’t trying to kill us,” Miklos said. “It was calling us back into the fight.”
“Did anyone get hit?” Kozmer demanded. “Be absolutely sure,” he added as they looked themselves over and shook their heads.
“That was close,” Sarika said. She gave Katalinka an appreciative look. “We’d have all fallen to the curse if not for your warning.”
But they weren’t in the clear yet. The ground ahead shook with a terrific thump, and the dragon roared from where it had landed. No, there were two dragons roaring. One was the Blue Drake that had tried to bury them moments earlier. The other had a deeper call that vibrated in her bones and made her want to drop to her knees and weep for mercy. Gyorgy wobbled beside her and pressed his hands over his ears.
A glowing ball hissed through the air, flew overhead, and slammed into the snowbank to their rear, as if tossed there by one of the dragons. Steam shot skyward where it landed. A demon crawled out, battered, its legs hardened to stone, and its tail snapped off, while the upper part of its body remained a glowing mass of fire. It dragged itself on its belly for several feet before it let out a final hiss and dimmed.
More demons came flying through the air, thrown by the dragons, and they hissed and died as they landed. But at the same time, other demons clawed their way out of fissures in the earth on either side of the post road. They blazed their way downhill toward the dragons, with the temple warriors standing between them and the fight they seemed eager to join. At first Katalinka and her companions cowered in the snowbanks until they’d gone past, but the falling sleet had turned to rain again with so much fire and heat, and the huge piles of snow began to melt.
Another wave of demons came flying through the air from the road below, tossed by the violence of the fight. They landed broken and dead. One of the two dragons bellowed ahead of them, but this time it sounded more like pain than rage. More demons ran past the humans to join the battle, even as their fellow creatures flew backward, battered and dead, and as they did, the rain lost its chill and finally turned hot. The snow was entirely gone, and the roadway so thick with steam and smoke Katalinka couldn’t see more than a few feet ahead.
Finally, the air began to clear, and a glowing demon spotted them, cocked its head, and darted out a fiery tongue. They held still, hoping it would leave them be, but after three or four flicks of the tongue, it hissed smoke and fire and stomped toward them with a sneer. The beast was eight or nine feet tall, with arms so long they nearly dragged on the ground, and its pace increased as it approached, until it finally sprang at them with a terrific leap. Drazul was the closest, quickly within reach of the monster’s outstretched claws.
He and Kozmer lifted their sowen and pushed, while Miklos and Sarika charged forward with swords in hand. Miklos’s falchion was longer, but the firewalker sohn was quicker, and she reached the demon first. She stabbed the demon in its belly, and it fell back with a snarl. It grabbed for the blade, but she got it out before it could take hold of her weapon and wrench it from her grasp.
Miklos came in from an angle and hacked at its head. A human would have fallen in a single blow from the sharpened, aura-infused steel, but the demon was made of another substance, and while the blade bit into its molten skin, it didn’t kill the thing, only made it shriek in pain and rage. Sarika was already sliding around behind, and this time when she shoved her sword forward, the blade tip emerged from the demon’s chest. It fell forward, cooling rapidly as it hit the ground.
Katalinka barely had time to appreciate that the two sohns had killed a fire demon before she was in a fight of her own, as two more demons came in from either side. Gyorgy cried a warning about still another of the monsters, and soon all six of the temple warriors were battling against enemies who lashed with tails, slashed with scythe-like claws, and snapped with fiery jaws.
Katalinka fought alongside her companions, and though her body was too weak to leap through the air and come in from behind, as she’d have done under better circumstances, her swords were quick enough in her hands. The demon blade cut, but the dragon seemed to be possessed of supernatural powers, and dragged her hand of its own accord in a twisting move that evaded the demon facing her as it made a lunge. It sliced downward and severed both of the creature’s clawed hands with a single blow. The monster fell back with a shriek.
She barely had time to consider how the dragon blade had killed the demon with such ease before another charged forward to take its place, with yet another coming up behind.
“Give me your dragon!” she cried to Gyorgy.
She tossed him her demon blade in return, and he stood with two of
the dark, shadowy swords, while hers were blinding white. The second dragon blade felt strange in her hands. Not only did it have a different feel to its auras, but it was a lesser weapon, not a master sword like the one she’d forged for her own use.
She wanted to alter her fighting stance to take into account the subtle difference with the change in weapons, but the demon was already on top of her. She ducked, swung, and severed the monster at the waist, then had to fall back from a whirling, snarling attack from another.
Meanwhile, Miklos and Sarika had killed another demon, and were fighting two more. Yet another demon leaped into their battle and came after Kozmer and Drazul, who had only their sowen to defend themselves. It lowered its head and battered forward. Katalinka and Gyorgy tried to come to the aid of the two elders, but didn’t arrive in time. The demon shot out an arm, seized Drazul around the waist, and dragged him back.
Drazul screamed. His clothes burst into flame. The demon opened its mouth wide, and before Katalinka could reach his side while fighting off yet another demon, it shoved the elder’s head and entire torso into its mouth. With a huge gulp, it swallowed the man whole.
But Drazul was a firewalker, and not so easily killed by flame. His cries sounded even within the belly of the monster. They still had time. Miklos and Sarika somehow fought their way free, and Katalinka made another direct attack. The trio had almost reached the creature when a burning pain wrapped around her chest, and something threw her to the ground.
It was the demon whose clawed hands she’d cut off. She’d thought it dead, or at least disabled, but it had lashed out with its burning tail and grabbed hold of her. Now it held her fast while it opened its mouth with a belch of soot and fire, clearly intending to swallow her whole.
Her arms were still free, and she got her swords up in time. She shoved one through the monster’s gaping mouth and out the back of its head, and rammed the other into its belly. As it bucked and roared, she got her swords clear and slid out of the way before it toppled over in a final spasm of death.
Katalinka felt stronger than she had in days. Somehow, killing demons seemed to be strengthening her sowen, and thus strengthening its ability to heal her body. A few more dead monsters and she might be whole again.
But there were more than a dozen of the monsters coming at them, and the creatures seemed to have recognized that there was a real fight to be had with the sword temple warriors, not merely down the road battling the two dragon demigods. It took Katalinka a moment to spot the demon that had swallowed Drazul, and to her horror, it had fallen behind several of the others as if to digest its meal. Its belly was distended, and it belched a foul, charred-smelling smoke.
Demons and demigods, was that smoke the remains of the firewalker elder? It must be; Drazul had surely burned alive in its belly by now.
Sarika had been trying to fight her way to her companion’s side, but had only succeeded in exposing herself to concentrated attack. The demon that had devoured Drazul, in fact, was lumbering toward her for another meal, and it fixed her with a hungry gaze. There were too many other demons around to fight them all, and they were at risk of being overwhelmed. Someone else seemed to recognize this fact at the same time.
“Run!” Miklos cried.
Chapter Fifteen
Katalinka turned to follow Miklos, Gyorgy, and Kozmer as they fled the demonic onslaught. Sarika, however, remained in place, bent over almost in two, with her sword dragging on the ground. Katalinka thought at first the woman was wounded, but she was only gathering her power. An instant later, her sowen blasted toward the demon that had swallowed the firewalker elder. Perhaps she hoped to cripple it with her sowen and take revenge with her swords, but the monster seemed to absorb the attack with no ill effect.
There was no time for this. Katalinka grabbed the woman by the arm and dragged her back. Sarika shouted and tried to shake free of her grasp, but then seemed to notice that the rest of their companions were already in full retreat. Dangling in front of the others, exposed not just to the firewalker-devouring demon, but all of its companions, would be suicide. To Katalinka’s relief, Sarika stopped struggling and joined the others in flight.
But there was nowhere to run. A mass of advancing demons blocked their retreat back up the mountain, while a half dozen came slinking past them on either side of the road, barely visible through the flames as they continued toward the fight with the dragons.
The only open path lay toward the dragons themselves. The thought of approaching the demigods filled Katalinka with terror, surpassing even the fear of fighting demons. But there was no other option, and her surviving companions were already on the move.
For the first time since leaving the temple, Katalinka had no trouble keeping up. She’d lost her walking staff when she’d taken up her swords, and the sling with all their provisions was gone, too. Unburdened, they were moving faster than Kozmer could manage, and Katalinka had to call for the others to slow down for his sake, not her own.
She sheathed one of her two swords—the weaker dragon blade Gyorgy had given her—grabbed Kozmer’s arm, and dragged him along. His sowen was stronger than his body; as they staggered forward, the elder lifted rainwater off the cobbled road and drove it into the demons. The water hissed into steam, and the creatures snarled.
The water attack slowed the monsters more than she’d have hoped. They continued stalking the temple warriors, but kept their distance, seemingly content to drive their prey toward the larger fight now visible through the rain and smoke. Some demons backed off as they cooled, apparently to return to the molten holes from which they’d climbed, but other, hotter demons replaced them, and kept up the pursuit.
All the while, the humans kept looking for a way to get clear of the road and let the fight push past them. The right flank was soon blocked by frozen volcanic flow, black and steaming. The left side of the road was a steep hillside covered with the charred, skeletal remains of trees, and no more passable than the lava.
It was the middle of the day, but so dark from the smoke and steam that the only light came from the fiery demons chasing them. Soon, however, a glow penetrated the gloom ahead. Her eyes were useless under the present conditions, and the way forward remained a void impenetrable to her sowen.
The ground shook again. There was a bellowing roar, this time so close it was almost on top of them. A blast of stinging sleet drove them back. With the retreat, Katalinka whirled around, expecting to see the demons on top of them again, but the monsters were blackening under the onslaught and retreating to their holes before they died.
A massive figure loomed overhead, standing taller than the spire of the temple shrine, its wings spread wider than the courtyard. Unlike the blue dragon that had flown overhead moments earlier, this one was the color of milk, from the tip of its snout, to its feathers, to its flailing tail. She was staring at the white drake.
It was the same monster that had flown overhead when she and Abelard had struggled through the storm on their way to the firewalker temple. That was the night they’d taken refuge in the bandit cave, fought the rogue firewalker, and saw Abelard fall to the same curse that would later take Narina.
The white drake opened its mouth and blasted a cone of ice and snow that spewed on enemies standing at its feet that Katalinka couldn’t immediately see. It roared, and it was all she could do not to cower in terror, even though its wrath wasn’t directed at her or her companions. Instead, it was fighting demons on the ground, who had surrounded it in their great numbers, she soon saw.
Dozens, perhaps hundreds, lay dead at the dragon’s feet already. Some were hardened statues of black rock, while others had first been frozen, then pulverized under the beast’s stomping feet. Still other demons dragged themselves away with their limbs hardening, their faces frozen masks of stone, desperate to regain their holes before they were destroyed.
Nevertheless, fresh waves of demons were renewing the assault on the dragon. They stabbed with fiery tridents that sprang fully f
ormed into their hands, clawed and bit at the dragon’s legs, and spewed jets of molten rock. Great, searing wounds opened on the white drake’s clawed feet and legs, and its roars contained equal parts rage and pain.
The dragon fought back with blasts of snow from its mouth and showers of icy, crystalline feathers that fell from its wings like a bombardment of crossbow bolts. Demons died screaming with two-foot-long shards of ice impaling them to the ground. But there were too many for the dragon to defeat them all, and their heat melted the dragon’s attacks too swiftly for them to have much effect.
Just when it appeared that the demigod would fall to the demonic attack—as impossible as that seemed, given its size and awe-inspiring power—a second dragon joined the fight with a thunder of stomping feet and a roar that shook the air. It was the blue drake. One of its forearms hung broken and scorched, and it had lost one of its horns.
Nevertheless, it had vanquished its enemies further down the road, and now, unencumbered, blasted into the enemies hampering its companion. The two dragons opened their mouths and delivered a joint blast of ice, and a row of perhaps fifteen demons hardened and broke apart, while others fell back to regroup. More demons came scrambling onto the road from the flank, coming up from where Katalinka thought the river had once flowed, but was now an escarpment of hardened volcanic flow, punctuated here and there with molten holes from which the creatures continued to pour forth to do battle.
Katalinka didn’t have time to watch the dragons and demons face off, as more than a dozen demons were stalking toward the temple warriors, pressing them ever closer to the battle. This smaller group of demons drew closer, hissing, smoking through nostrils and gaping mouths, and slashing with fiery claws.
One made a move as if to charge her. She lifted the pair of dragon blades, and they flared with a white, ethereal light. The demon flinched. At the same moment, Kozmer gathered sleet and cold rain from the fight at their rear and drove it forward. The demon and its companions hissed and fell back.
Shadow Walker (The Sword Saint Series Book 3) Page 15
