Cold Hearted Son of a Witch (Dragoneers Saga)

by M. R. Mathias

  Jade slid in close to Silva. “We’ll hunt them down one at a time if we have to, Rik,” Jenka called back his response. “I think we’d do best to face them like that. Two or three of them at once might be more than we can handle.”

  “I think we should attack them like Crimzon said they got him.” Marcherion joined the conversation by gliding Blaze’s great bulk over the two smaller dragons and their riders and calling down to them. His brown hair was wild and long and he had to fight to keep it out of his face when he looked any way save for ahead. “I think one will be more than we can handle, but if we swarm it, maybe we can distract it so that one of us gets a clean go at that soft spot Lemmy pointed out.”

  Rikky thought it was a great idea, but the mention of Lemmy made Jenka’s expression grow grim. Rikky felt it, too. He’d known Lemmy all of his life, but he wasn’t as certain as Jenka of their half-elvish friend’s death. Lemmy could hide in a band of trolls.

  “We should make a plan,” Jenka decided out loud. “They devastated the temple. If Zahrellion were well, I’d suggest her for the first try at it. I saw her nearly blast a mudged red as big as Blaze out of the sky once. I can still hear the buzzing in my ears. It caused my—”

  “What?” Rikky yelled.

  Rikky suddenly couldn’t hear anymore. Jenka was obviously being affected by a buzzing in his ears too. The sound whined and burbled and then went into an angry grind. Rikky saw that Marcherion was rubbing at the side of his head as well. Could it be one of the Sarax?

  “Aikira!” Rikky suddenly screamed at the girls, who were flying parallel a few hundred feet away. He urged Silva toward them. The silver wyrm responded by streaking away on swift, undulating wing beats. “Zah! Aikira!” Rikky called as he neared them.

  Quickly, he searched the sky for anything, but saw nothing resembling the freakish Sarax.

  When Aikira looked over at him she put her hand over her eyes to shade them from the setting sun. Her bright, toothy smile contrasted starkly with her dark skin. The gleam from her golden helmet was almost blinding. The terror that slowly formed in her expression reached Rikky’s attention the same moment a Sarax dropped out of the clouds overhead and plucked him from his seat by the shoulders. The next thing he knew he was tumbling toward the colorful lush carpet of treetops below, hot wet life spilling from his wide open wounds, his heart so far in his throat he could taste the blood it was pumping.

  ***

  Marcherion hadn’t felt the need to assert himself very much yet, at least not until he saw the Sarax snatch and drop Rikky. Blaze was big, but his bulk shot down toward the treetops as if he were launched from a crossbow. They sped toward a point a score of feet below Rikky, but in his direct trajectory, and then Blaze rolled sideways. The big red wyrm caught Rikky’s armor vest in a claw for a moment, then the material gave way. The youngest Dragoneer spun limply down the short distance through the canopy of autumn leaves. The Sarax started moving that way, but two warbling blasts of concussive energy exploded into it. March wasn’t surprised to see that Zahrellion and Aikira were both on the attack.

  The Sarax tumbled and spun on a wing that looked twisted out of shape. Before it was even half way to the ground it roared out angrily and snapped away in a gut-punching boom that reminded Marcherion of a thunder clap.

  March looked everywhere, but the Sarax was gone.

  He turned around, scanning the sky, trying to locate the others. The irritating sound in his head ceased all together. He saw that Jenka and Jade were going down after Rikky. Then he saw the Sarax reappear, just above and behind the girls.

  There was no time to warn them. Blaze knew it too. The powerful dragon was churning his wings as hard as he could to get there. March didn’t even try to yell. The buzz had returned and was twice as loud and irritating as it had been before. He thrust his hand forward pointing his finger behind them. Aikira craned her neck and saw it. She pulled up, but not in time. Crystal snaked her neck out and sent a blast of icy spew across the creature’s upper body, but it still crashed into Golden and knocked Aikira out of her seat. The ebon girl was dexterous and her arms were strong enough to hold her against the forces that were threatening to sling her away from her wyrm. A second later, Golden righted herself giving Aikira the chance she needed to get herself back into place.

  Silva streaked by and raked a trio of gashes across the Sarax’s shoulder up its neck. Crystal came down on the thing hard right after her, and with her powerful claws, she grabbed hold of it. That turned out to be a mistake as the alien beast’s skin flared bright yellow and appeared to shock both Zahrellion and her dragon into immediate unconsciousness. Luckily, they were just above the treetops and didn’t have far to fall.

  The thing was seeping thick black blood from the wounds Silva had inflicted. It lurched forward on its nimble wings and tried to grab at Aikira when she passed. Her dragon sent a flash of retina-searing brightness into the Sarax’s face. The sound that cut through their heads then was long and terrible, and it only worsened when Marcherion and Blaze snapped into a hover just above the flash-blinded alien and began bathing it in Blaze’s searing dragon’s fire.

  It wasn’t clear how much damage was done, because the Sarax disappeared from under the molten shower of flame before it was killed, but Marcherion thought he saw one of the thing’s wings shriveling. He never saw fear in its expression, of that he was certain. Either way, he was glad that his head wasn’t full of buzzing anymore, but he was angry. Their leader and his magic sword were nowhere to be seen.

  ***

  March and Blaze began circling the sky, watching Aikira and Sylva, who were making passes over the trees searching for the others. He half expected the thing to return with its friends, but it never did.

  Jenka and Jade crashed haphazardly down into the trees near Rikky. Silva saw them. She landed right behind Jade, scrambled her small body around the trees to her Dragoneer, and began licking his face worriedly. Rikky laughed and groaned and then laughed some more. He was crying too, Jenka knew. Not only was Rikky’s peg-leg lying ten paces from where Rikky was, the shaft that made the length of the artificial limb was broken off. The worn stump of flesh that was normally in the extension’s sleeve was an angry red pucker. Jenka couldn’t imagine the pain his friend was feeling.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know anymore, Jenk,” Rikky’s forced mirth died away as Aikira’s yellow-scaled wyrm stalled into a hover over them. Her expression was grim.

  “Zahrellion’s busted up pretty badly,” the ebon girl yelled to them. “Crystal says she can fly, but Zah’s out of it. They aren’t far away.”

  “Help me back onto my dragon, Jenka,” said Rikky. “I’ll go give her a look.”

  They moved over to where Zah was lying and Jenka helped Rikky dismount again. Jenka watched as Rikky took his time working on Zah from a crawling position. He was too concerned for Zahrellion to be impressed by Rikky’s dragon tear-fortified healing abilities, but they didn’t escape his notice.

  Zahrellion didn’t have any extra broken bones as far as Rikky could tell, and he reported that the healing spell he cast on her was far more potent than he’d expected it to be. He struggled for the words to tell Jenka that the teardrop magnified his work tenfold. Jenka had a teardrop too, so he understood.

  The sun disappeared, but the sky was still amber and pink, offering enough illumination for the Dragoneers to see.

  “Where were the green streaks?” Marcherion came stalking through the woods to where they were sitting around Zahrellion. His dragon had set him down and was back in the sky on guard. He looked angry. “Well?” Marcherion threw up his arms when no one responded.

  “What are you talking about?” Aikira asked from her perch on a fallen trunk.

  With Jenka’s help, Rikky mounted again. Silva was snaked out on the ground, resting. Rikky would have been sitting beside Zahrellion, still comforting her, but the idea of the Sarax returning made him want to be ready to leave at a moment’s notic
e; something he wouldn’t be able to do if he were on the ground with the others. Jenka decided they would have to get another peg-leg somehow, and soon.

  “The green streaks that nearly killed me when Jenka’s sword went off on the way into Crimzon’s lair,” March snapped. “We need you to fight, Jenka. Use what you have. That sword might have killed it.”

  “I didn’t want to lose where I saw Rikky hit the trees,” Jenka met Marcherion’s gaze levelly. “But yeah, I hear you.” He forced a thin smile. It was clear he hadn’t avoided the skirmish out of fear or anything like that.

  They stared at each other for a long moment, but Marcherion’s expression faded from anger to understanding, as a memory of Brendly crossed his mind. With a shrug of resigned understanding he let it go.

  “I haven’t heard buzzing like that since Solman and Grondy led us into Hornet Hollow, over by Weston, that one time,” Rikky tried to tactfully change the subject.

  “Weston?” Marcherion turned at the mention of his last name. “What do you mean ‘Weston’?”

  “Weston is—Well, Weston was a farming town that Gravelbone and his trellkin sacked a few months ago,” Rikky answered.

  “Weston is the name my father gave me,” March explained his interest.

  “Did you have relatives that sailed away on a ship called the Dogma a few hundred years ago?” Aikira asked.

  Jenka wasn’t paying attention to them anymore. Rikky had just given him an idea that could make killing the Sarax easier than any of them expected—at least one of them. “We have to go there,” Jenka said suddenly. “The Sarax came at us, way out here away from anywhere. They will come at us again. I don’t think the Outlands are where they are going, though. I think they are stalking us. Or maybe they are after our dragon tears. I can’t figure it.”

  “I think they just want to kill us,” said Rikky.

  “We’re going to the Outlands, Jenka,” Aikira’s tone brooked no argument. “After these eyes see that Indale is safe, then we can move on.”

  “That’s fine,” Jenka agreed. “We need to get some supplies, and enough rations for one of us to hole up for a while over by Weston. Can we get toadflax in Indale?” The last question was directed at Aikira. She shrugged as if she had no idea what the stuff was.

  “What do you mean hole up by Weston?” Zahrellion asked as she sat up slowly. “Crimzon said we’re not supposed to get separated.”

  The spell Rikky had cast on her had to be powerful, because the swelling from her older injuries had lessened considerably. Jenka decided that, even with a purple and blue bruised face to go with her silver tattoo, she was as pretty as ever, but her beauty didn’t take his mind off of the task at hand.

  “Rikky gave me an idea.” Jenka stood and thought about it a moment before continuing. “We have to turn the tables on the Sarax. We can’t just fly around and look for them. We have to draw them to us.”

  “Now you’re talking my language.” Marcherion nodded.

  “After we rest, we go to Indale and stock up,” Jenka re-voiced the plan to make it official. “Two of us can go all the way in. The others can rest or watch over us from the sky.”

  Seeing Aikira hug herself from the chill, March went and started gathering wood for a fire. Jenka shook his head at the noble, but unnecessary gesture. Before March gathered his second piece, Zahrellion cast a hissing blue druid’s fire into being. It was hot enough to keep the deep mountain chill off of them while Jenka figured out exactly what they were going to do after they left Indale.

  Chapter 26

  Herald waited for the blow, or the bite, to end him, but it didn’t come. Instead, he heard a voice sounding crazily over the terrible noise of flesh being ripped and chewed before him. There were no words being spoken, but he recognized the voice anyway. It was Kember’s elvish friend, Lemmy. He’d heard the strange golden-haired bastard make those very same animalistic sounds when he was culling strays from an elk herd by scaring the piss out of them.

  Herald looked toward the call and was just in time to see a deep blue sphere of druid’s fire form in Lemmy’s hands. It went streaking at the creature, which was still right in front of Herald. He somehow found the presence of mind to crab walk away backward toward the keep. There was still a contingent of maybe six rangers loosing arrows from the open doorway. Only one or two men remained alive outside, but those in the entry were not willing to leave them just yet. An ogre, with a severe gash across its middle, limped toward them, but visibly deflated when it realized it was too big to fit through the stronghold’s entrance.

  Lemmy’s blast knocked the Sarax from the ground. It flailed back once, but its wings snapped open and it managed to land on its feet. Lemmy’s second blue sphere hit, and carried the thing backward again. This time it hit the trees before it could catch its balance.

  Lemmy was charging toward it now, another blue sphere forming in his hands. Herald snatched up the sword from one of the fallen rangers, and with the wounded ogre on his heels, charged after them.

  Lemmy’s third blast pummeled the creature deeper into the trees, shattering them into splinters where it hit. Then Herald was there plunging the dead man’s sword deep into the Sarax’s guts, over and over again.

  Suddenly its skin flared a bright yellow, and a bone-jarring jolt sent Herald flying backward arse first with his hands touching his boots in midair. He didn’t see what happened next because the air was driven from his lungs when he hit the ground. It took a few long minutes for him to recover, but he saw the creature after. He learned that the ogre pounded the monster with a tree limb, until its head was little more than ruined pulp. Rangers were still pouring out of the keep and milling around in amazement.

  “Be getting those axes out lads,” a captain shouted. “Let’s cut it apart before it jumps up and gets us again.”

  Herald thought that might be a good idea. He’d never seen blood so dark that it was almost black instead of red. And the smell of the thing’s innards was like an oily film that kept coating the inside of his mouth every time he took a breath.

  He studied it as they removed its limbs and flattened head, though. Lemmy watched from beside him. After it was in at least six pieces, they went inside the keep and were greeted with pats on the back and congratulations by the relieved men. Lemmy pulled away, found some parchment and ink, then wrote out a message.

  The room fell silent when Herald took it and read it out loud.

  “Two days’ hike north of the Temple of Dou there is a cavern full of those things,” Herald read. “Two others have escaped that place.” He had to shush some nervous murmurs, and jab a finger at a man, to get the room quiet enough for him to continue. “Vax Noffa, the Outland wizard, has been sustaining their confinement. The three that broke free killed him. Soon, hundreds of those things will be ravaging the land. All the people, even the Outlanders, must be warned. Send the rangers forth.”

  The room stayed silent for a moment, everyone waiting to learn more, or find out something about the things, but finally one of the rangers broke the silence.

  “Well whatta ya think we should do?”

  Herald looked around and realized that he was the highest-ranking King’s Ranger left alive at the keep. Commander Stark had been killed soon after the Sarax attacked and none of his peers would dare try and step over him. Not for the first time since she’d flashed away did Herald wish Mysterian were around. She was the one who always talked with the Dragoneers and told him what they were about. He didn’t let on that he had no idea what to do, though. Like he used to do with the foresters he trained, he began barking out orders.

  “Captain,” Herald reached over and touched the man’s shoulder because he didn’t know his name. “Take your men and start digging graves down by the orchard.” He pointed at another man with bars of rank on his vest, his voice growing louder with each word. He was a firm believer that if you were yelling at a man he would get a fire under his feet. “You! Have the dead listed as quickly as possible.” He pa
used to rub at the missing part of his arse, but only for a moment. “We need to get digging some graves. We don’t want one of the other two bastards sniffing all that gore. And someone tend to the that big green bastard out there...” And so it went.

  Lemmy, seeing that warning the people wasn’t on the agenda, left to find another ogre he knew.

  ***

  The Dragoneers landed half a day’s walk outside of Indale and, while the dragons fed and rested, Aikira took Jenka into the city. He was disappointed to find that the place wasn’t that much different from Three Forks, or Midwal. Wood-planked buildings along wagon-rutted roads. The occasional block structure and cobbled lane graced the cleaner areas, and the urchins looked far better than the street children of Outwal and Port. His misconception that Outlanders were nothing but thieves and pirates was shattered too. Outlanders were just people. Aikira reminded him that almost every one of them had been born beyond the wall, just like he had. He decided he had as much in common with them as he did with the people of the kingdom.

  Finding the herb he wanted was no easy task, and he ended up settling for Devil’s Ribbon, which he knew would serve the same purpose as the other in a pinch, but wasn’t nearly as potent, and it had a subtle smell. Aikira didn’t understand why he wanted the stuff, but she went out of her way to help him procure it. She sold a dagger to get the coins they needed to pay for it all. When they stopped in front of a leather shop, and the ebon girl stood staring at the even darker-skinned man working inside, Jenka decided it was time for them to go. He knew why she was so concerned with Indale now, but he said nothing. Aikira followed him away, if hesitantly.