The discussions were cold and banal, speaking to the result of war, the calculations of why men might live or die at the handle of a rifle or saber. Yet, my mind always wandered to the soldiers themselves and how they conducted themselves with their lives on the line. Did primal instinct take over and wash clean the fears of death and dismemberment? Or were they as frightened as I expected they should be, knowing they might only have but moments yet to live?
As the warriors rushed up the slope, weapons glinting in the morning light, the bark of gunfire echoing, I thought back to those sterile times in St. George's Hall and chastised myself for my foolish curiosity.
A quick glance to my left told me that my fright was not mine alone. The warrior I glanced upon held his spear tentatively like an old man using it as a cane. The overwhelming numbers of the enemy had destroyed his hope of survival.
The black-bearded warrior to my right, the one I'd first thought of as Red Nose, snapped his head back. He collapsed near my feet, a bubbling crimson hole in his neck.
I heard mighty drums.
Or was it my heartbeat?
I searched for a weapon as the front of the line reached us.
There was a visceral crack as the two sides impacted, as if the implications of their meeting squeezed forth pale lightning.
I grabbed the spear in Red Nose's not-quite-dead hands. He held on as if it was keeping him in this world.
"Let go," I said, desperate for a way to defend myself.
A mighty yell startled me from my failing effort. I couldn't even take a spear from a dead man. How was I going to survive this?
The tall, broad-shouldered form of Anton went bounding past, a huge two-handed sword in his hands. He leapt into a knot of enemy warriors, knocking them away like sticks and chopping the head off the nearest one.
My energy surged—burning hot, crisping the air around me.
Somebody crashed into my shoulder, and I roared back at them, nearly unleashing my magic upon them.
Magic!
I'd nearly forgotten.
A man rushed up at me, a spear readied to launch.
I opened the channels in my mind, and a swirling, purplish-black mist ripped the warrior apart.
The pace of battle slowed around me; suddenly I could see further than a few feet away.
We fought in a slight depression between two groves of trees, which gave us a protected line. Anton manned the front, his courage hardening the will of the warriors around him.
To my right, Koryak used the illusion of himself to trick enemy warriors into attacking each other. In the chaos of battle, his illusions were frighteningly effective.
I barely recognized Rowan Blade when I laid my eyes upon her. I thought a wild creature had intruded upon our battle and was scavenging the dead. She was crouched over a body, back hunched with malicious intent.
When she was finished, she looked back at me, eyes glowing with a dark menace. I tried to shout a warning when an enemy attacked her with a sword, but she anticipated it, reaching up to snap the man's arm off at the elbow. The ferocity of it frightened me.
I feared for Brassy, as she was a slight girl who had seen little violence, but she held her own in the back with a rifle, picking off enemy shooters from behind a fallen pine. She nodded in my direction as if she were a hardened veteran.
Only Benjamin Franklin seemed out of his element as he ran back towards me with five warriors in pursuit. His knees stepped high and his cloak flapped behind him in ridiculous exaggeration. One of the warriors reared back to launch a spear into Ben's back, so he turned and threw down a glass vial that broke into a ball of mist at their feet. The warriors dropped their weapons and began clawing at their faces, eyes rolling into the back of their heads.
Ben ran past and gave me a roguish wink.
"Get to the dragon," he said.
I couldn't leave my friends just yet, so I waded into the heaviest combat, at the place that Anton and a few of his fiercest warriors were holding their own against larger numbers, and unleashed a wicked rolling wave of sorcery that decimated the left flank of enemies.
This display of magic seemed to break the back of the attack, and the enemy warriors faded back into their streets in groups. We'd survived the initial assault, but deeper into the village, more men and women were rousing.
Our numbers had been reduced. The attack had not been kind. Only our superior magic had been the difference.
Koryak tugged on my shoulder, the spear Gungnir in his fist.
He led me away from the battle, back up through the trees, towards the back of the village. I couldn't help but fear that my absence would be the difference when the Nenet warriors regrouped and attacked again.
Our boots crunched through the snow. Behind us, occasional shouts and the ringing of weapons colliding followed. Gunfire echoed like fireworks.
The smell of the pines was overwhelming in the sharp morning air as if my senses had been turned up by the battle. I wanted to sneeze.
When we crept out of the wood, the sounds of battle had retreated until they were only muffled cries swallowed by the surrounding mountains.
The grotto at the back of the village had impossibly long icicles hanging from the stone. Some of them were at least twenty feet long and as wide as a man's leg.
We crouched behind a log-built house as a group of men and women with weapons jogged past. Guilt welled up in my chest for letting them go past to join the second assault, but filling the balloon and the battle had drained me, and I still had a dragon to fight.
A dragon.
Hah. In my head it was just a word, but I knew that word would become real all too soon.
Part of me still hoped that there was no dragon. But I doubted the Great One would have sent me to kill it if it didn't exist.
A pair of guards stood at the back of the grotto. A cave stretched into the darkness, only faintly illuminated by flickering torches.
"Can you take them?" asked Koryak, his black lips making his face pale in contrast.
"I'd prefer not to kill them if we don't have to," I said.
His face soured, but he leaned out. Suddenly, a pair of coarse-haired pigs appeared from the forest, squealing and snorting. They ran into the grotto and stared at the guards before running off into the village.
The two guards looked at each other momentarily before running off after the pigs.
As Koryak and I moved into the grotto, I asked, "Pigs?"
He shrugged. "I was hungry."
My stomach grumbled in response. "Good point."
I trotted into the torch-lit gloom, the supposed mythical spear of Odin in my hand, on my way to kill a dragon.
That's what princesses do, right?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Further back in the cave, the walls had been cut down with chisels and hammers. The passage narrowed until it was no wider than two men. If the dragon was down here, it wouldn't come out this way.
We froze in our tracks when we heard laughter. Children's laughter.
Then we heard singing. A warbling song about a place in the north where the snow came alive.
Their nerves came through the singing. I heard an adult or two. When the assault force had been identified, the villagers had sent their children into the caves to keep them safe until the intruders could be repelled.
Koryak's face was hard with the thoughts of what he planned to do. I touched his shoulder and shook my head. No killing, I mouthed.
A flicker of shame, mixed with anger, passed across his gaze. He was angry because his village had not been given quarter, their men and women hunted like caribou on the snowy plains. He wanted revenge.
This was how things escalated, when tribes—even ones that had once been united—could no longer get along. One death led to two, then to a dozen, then to complete animosity until one tribe was wiped out. The tribe system was unsuited for an Enlightened world.
We crept forward until we could see them. The passage curved, so we were ab
le to spy without being seen. It opened up into a wider space, an anteroom before the dragon's home. Rosy-cheeked children in puffy elk furs sat in a semicircle around an ancient woman whose wrinkles were deep crevices. The children were between the ages of two and ten. The cheerful voices of the youngest indicated they knew nothing of what was going on outside, that some of them were already parentless. The older children sang in a distracted monotone, their minds on the battle.
There was no way to get past without alerting the guardian or the children. If they saw us, they'd go running back outside, warning the others that we were going after the dragon. I would also feel responsible if one of the children were killed in the battle outside.
I motioned to Koryak that we needed to get past and received a withering look that told me he was insulted by my obviousness. At least he hadn't been planning to murder them.
He gently pushed me behind him and held out a hand as if he were cupping a ripe fruit hanging in midair. His lips moved silently.
The ancient woman in the other room suddenly stopped as if she'd been interrupted mid-thought. The song died in the children's voices as they sensed her unease.
When I heard her speak, I knew they were Koryak's words. He bade the children to close their eyes, so she could tell them a story. After a few gentle recriminations, the children settled into an uneasy silence.
I knew what I had to do. I stepped past Koryak into the antechamber. The ancient woman stared blankly in my direction, her eyes black like Koryak's. Somehow, using the blood magic, he'd taken control of her.
As carefully as I could, I skirted the back of the chamber, avoiding the children and keeping the spear from scraping the wall, until I was out of sight. I waited for a few minutes, wondering if Koryak would follow, but realized he couldn't both move and control the old woman.
There were fewer torches past the children, so I took one from a sconce. Spear, torch, and magic—these were my tools against the dragon.
The passage turned back to natural stone. The floor and walls were slick with half-frozen moisture, making each step treacherous. It was warmer here indicating the earth provided some natural heating.
As I went down into the mountain, the air seemed to squeeze black smoke from my meager light. After a long time, I came upon a chamber that reached beyond my torch. The air was soggy and warm as if I'd tread into an underground jungle. I had reached my destination.
Breath quickened from my lips. Both the torch and spear seemed feeble against the encroaching darkness. What a fool I was to think I could do battle here beneath the earth. The dragon would see me well before I could attack, and without the torch I would be blind to its advances.
Bones were scattered nearby. I could tell they weren't human. Possibly a goat or something smaller.
Something moved in the darkness, well beyond the edge of light, something slick and metallic, something slithering. It knew I was here. There was no use in hiding.
"Greetings, Zmey," I called out, using the Slavic word for dragon.
The sounds of movement across rock came from both my left and my right. Were those echoes or was there more than one dragon?
I held the spear before me like a shield, though it gave me little solace. If the myths about breathing fire were true, I would be a cinder before the encounter was finished.
"Greetings, Zmey," I said while taking a step back.
A claw clicked onto the rock, followed by a second and third. It was taking ponderous steps towards me.
I held the torch high, and it responded to my gesture, spreading its light until the front half of the dragon was revealed.
The dragon was a horrific sight: armored in scales and barbs, talons of black onyx, a hump of wings flattened against its sides, and a furnace for a mouth. It was everything the myths suggested and more. It had to have been birthed by a volcano, or the deepest bowels of the earth. An incarnation of the elements.
"Greetings, Prophecy-Eater Katerina," it said, my name sounding like the grinding of a great engine on its tongue.
"You know me," I said, "but I don't know you."
Before, its eyes had been hidden by great ridges upon its cratery face, but as the dragon sunk its head lower, the portals to its thoughts revealed themselves to me. The irises were like burning gold, and if I could have plucked them from the dragon's head, they would have been the most beautiful and valuable jewels in the world. I was at once enamored, and terrified.
"My name is inconsequential, a sideshow to the greater mysteries," said the dragon.
"Then what do I call you? Zmey?" I asked.
The dragon chuckled. "That is not so much of a name as a nomenclature, a categorization. Shall I call you Squishy-Thing-That-Is-Too-Loud?"
"It was you who declined to name yourself. When presented with the absence of a name, one should not mock the attempt to give it substance," I said.
Only after the words had left my lips did I consider their impact. The constant dealings with myths had left me desensitized to their dangers. I bit my lower lip and calculated if I could make it back up the slope before the dragon could surge forward and snap me in half.
If dragons could growl, then the noise I heard was that. I felt it in my chest. My legs wanted to turn to water, but I gritted my teeth.
"Zmey fails to illuminate as it were, as it is the masculine form of the word snake," said the dragon. "I am nothing like a snake except that I feed on warm-blooded creatures."
"Then, if you please, pick a suitable way for me to address you," I said, holding back my annoyance.
"An impatient creature," said the dragon. "With that seething mess in your head, I would suggest a steadier approach than the reckless advance you have made thus far. Are you so ready for your reality to end?"
My chest went icy cold. "How do you know what's in my head?"
Though it'd been years since I'd heard the Gamayun speak the words, they were etched upon my soul. They burned in my mind like a beacon on a broken shore.
Prophecy Eater! You are the crux, the keystone, the twist of fate! On your words, the multiverse turns. Beware! Beware! Beware! On you, hangs the doom of all worlds! When the Three relinquish the One then you must make a choice! Choose wisely or the void captures us all!
"Remember that yours were not the only ears to hear those words," said the dragon.
At first I didn't understand, but then I realized what the dragon meant. The Gamayun. The bird-women of fate. They desired the destruction of all things. They had spoken the words in prophetic ecstasy, but had not kept their existence a secret. Even though I had stolen the prophecies from them, they still worked towards our collective doom.
"Do not worry," said the dragon. "That fate is not the principal concern right now. And if you wish to name me, then I've been called Humbaba, Tiamat, Grendel, or even the more formal Tugain Zmeyevich, among many others. Pick at your leisure."
"What do you mean...Tugain, that the end of the multiverse isn't the primary concern?" I said, realizing that as I spoke, my spearhead had lowered. I hefted Gungnir upward, in case Tugain was attempting to lure me into inattention.
"Surely you've felt it? Their curious absence when before they were unwanted intruders?" asked Tugain.
"What...? The prophecies?" I asked.
Tugain rumbled out a positive response.
"But how? How are they being suppressed?" I asked, my face prickling with concern.
The dragon tilted its scaled head in the semblance of a lazy shrug. "I claim not the answer to that mystery. Seek it yourself if you wish to find the source."
Tugain was right. The prophecies had been silent these past months. Since the vision of my friends being murdered in the snow, I'd seen nothing. I'd thought they had quieted because I was moving inexorably towards their greater purpose, but now I saw that they'd been withheld from me somehow. But how?
There were few that could accomplish such a thing. The Great One, certainly, as it had stolen inside my head with its voice. Possibly the U
thlaylaa—its powers were still largely unknown. And though I hated to put her on the list, Rowan Blade was strong enough to affect me in such a way.
For what purpose were they being suppressed, except to keep me blind to what was going on? How it was being accomplished would reveal itself when I understood who was behind it.
I was so intent on my mental gymnastics that I did not recognize that Tugain had leaned forward, head tilted like a cat reading to pounce, until it was too late.
Claws scraped against stone as the dragon surged forward. I tried to bring Gungnir around, but it was knocked out of my hand, to clatter against the stones.
I was thrown to the ground, head smacking hard enough that blackness consumed my vision despite the torch lying by my side. Through my scattered consciousness, I watched as the dragon brought its toothy mouth around my head.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The mouth of the dragon put off heat as if it were a blacksmithing furnace. My eyes burned against the heat. I shrunk away as far as I could, but trapped beneath the dragon's claw, I could not move, except to squirm.
The spear Gungnir lay somewhere out of reach. I'd been a fool to come into the dragon's home and expect to slay it without so much as an inkling of a plan.
I don't know what prompted me to say it. With fear turning my thoughts to smoke, I'm not sure how I made the connection, but the words burst forth from my lips before the dragon's teeth could skewer my head.
"Kill me and your spawn die to the void!" I yelled.
Its jaws stopped closing. Horrid breath washed over me. Old dead flesh was stuck between two large teeth. The torch cast long, toothy shadows into the dragon's mouth.
Before the dragon could get second thoughts, I added to my bluff.
"I had this prophecy before I came to Siberia, but I didn't know what it meant until now," I said.
Tugain pulled its mouth away from my head. But it didn't move back. It stayed right there above me, leering down like a barbarian eyeing a tasty meal and wondering if it was filled with poison.
Dragons of Siberia (The Dashkova Memoirs Book 7) Page 12
