Death Comes To All (Book 1) (58 page)

I
can’t stay here.

He thought about the distance that Trick had guided him
so far. They couldn’t be far from the Hut now, he knew. If his
sense of direction was right, and it was rarely wrong, it should be
somewhere between ten and twenty miles to the northwest. Not far.

A sudden thought hit him so hard he almost exclaimed out
loud before stifling himself. The Hut! If the dragon continued
searching for him in that area, it would almost certainly find it! If
it did, Raine and Drom would be doomed! He had to do something.

First, however, he would have to heal himself. He could
still feel the burning pain in his back where the dragonfire had
scorched him. If left untreated, it could cause him to lose
consciousness, and then he would be dead. Taking another deep breath,
he slowly sank beneath the water once again. He had to find a place
where he could work without the dragon spotting him.

Raiste had always hated his magic. He was an assassin.
His entire life had revolved around being able to defeat an opponent
without taking injury. The only opponents that could harm him were
those that had as much training and experience as he had, and men
like that were a rare breed. Magic that could only be used to heal
himself was almost completely useless.

Well, unless you are attacked by a dragon anyway,
he thought darkly.

He continued swimming, only coming up for air when he
had no other choice, afraid of what might see him when he broke the
surface. Finally, he decided he might have gone far enough for now,
and dared to look back to where he had been attacked. He couldn’t
see the place. He couldn’t even see the light from the fire,
though it might have gone out. Not even dragonfire could burn forever
in swamp.

Now, instead of trying to push away the pain as he had
been trained to do, he concentrated on his scorched back. The pain
came to him in a rush, threatening to pull him under, but he fought
against it. For several moments he stood at the precipice, until he
was almost not certain if he would be able to push through it before
passing out.

Finally he felt the pain begin to ease. He felt the skin
on his back begin to knit back together, underneath the wound. At
last the pain was gone altogether. The burned skin on his back tore
away, like a snake would slough its skin. The new skin revealed
underneath was pink and healthy. Unlike the rest of his skin it was
untanned, the sun had never touched it, but otherwise it was
flawless. It would itch for two or three days, he knew, as it
strengthened itself, but he was healed.

OK,
what next?

He could not allow the dragon to find his friends at the
Hut, he knew. He would have to find a way to stop it. How he was
going to do that, however, he didn’t have the slightest idea.
All of his supplies had been in the boat. He reached down at his
waist, realizing with dismay that it wasn’t only his gear that
he was missing. His sword was gone as well.

At least he still had his belt knife, he discovered. He
didn’t think that it would be a very effective weapon against a
dragon, but it was better than nothing.

He had studied dragons in his readings, but had never
expected to face one. Not even his father had been able to stand
against one, and his father had powerful magic as an ally. The only
thing Raiste could do was heal his wounds, if he even survived long
enough to get the chance. He had gotten lucky on that score once
already. He didn’t think it likely that he would do so again.

Without man-made weapons the only options left to him
were natural ones, and those were extremely limited. The most obvious
weapon, fire, was completely out of the question. He didn’t
have any way of making a fast and ready source, for one, and even if
he did it would be useless. Dragons carried the powerful flames of
dragonfire inside themselves, hotter than any other flame. They were
impervious to fire.

They more he thought about it, the more impossible the
task seemed. Dragons had unnaturally thick hides, difficult to pierce
with even the strongest steel. It would take more strength than he
had to wound this beast.

However, it wasn’t impossible, he realized. All he
needed to do was put enough force behind it, and even a sharpened
stick could kill. As he considered it, a plan began to take root. His
plan, however, would take time to prepare. It was a long shot, he
knew, but it was the only chance he had left. This thought firmly in
mind, he sunk back underneath the water. He would need put some
distance between himself and his pursuer, he thought. He needed time.

The dragon slowly threaded its massive bulk through the
trees, its nose in the air, testing. Now that the flames of its
failed attempt had died down, the smoke no longer ruined its sense of
smell. It had the man’s scent now. It could track him.

It silently cursed the swamp it was being forced to
travel through. Dragons were the rulers of the skies. They were not
meant to have to stomp through thick forests, and the damp permeated
everything here.

It hated the damp. It hated it almost as much as it
hated the man it was sent to attack. It had been created with one
purpose, to kill this man. The dragon hated him more than anything
else.

It cast the thoughts of the damp from its mind,
concentrating on the scent. Yes, it was here. The man had been here,
and recently too. In fact, either the man had only just left, or he
was still here somewhere! The dragon’s eyes peered into the
gloom of the swamp, searching.

With a scream from deep within himself the man burst
forth into the open, leaving behind the ferns he had been hiding in.
He charged at the dragon, armed with nothing more than a small knife.
The man is brave, the dragon thought. Brave and stupid.

It never saw it coming.

From behind it, the opposite direction from the
attacking man, something large and heavy crashed into it. As the
dragon toppled to its side it saw what had struck it.

It was a log! But not just any log, but a huge log, with
thick, sharpened stakes fixed into its side. It swung freely,
attached to several vines that held it to the trees around it.
Somehow the man had pulled it up into place, a wonderfully set trap.
His attack had been nothing more than a trick, to divert the dragon’s
attention. Something like that would surely kill any beast.

But then, it was not just any beast, it was a dragon.
Its hide was as strong as any shield. The man had done well in
tricking it like he had, but it wouldn’t help him.

The dragon leaped to its feet in an instant, ignoring
the shallow wounds on its side where the spikes had managed to push
through. They were not deep, the dragon knew. It would not be nearly
enough to stop it.

The man skidded to a halt in front of it, but it was too
late for him as well. Believing that he had severely wounded the
dragon, he had allowed himself to get too close. Now the dragon had
him instead of the other way around.

The dragon let out a burst of dragonfire, but the man,
seeing the danger, dived to the side, narrowly avoiding the jetting
flame. The man renewed his charge with vigor. The dragon understood
at once. At a distance the man stood no chance at all of even
wounding it. Up close it would be much harder for the dragon to use
its flames, and would have to fight the man hand to claw.

That was just fine to the dragon. The man did not carry
a spear, or even a sword. The only thing he had was a short knife,
not even long enough to do any significant damage. Should the man
somehow get close enough to use the knife, it would be a useless
gesture.

As the man closed in the massive beast swung a hard claw
in his direction. With a speed that astounded the dragon, the man
danced back, swinging his knife at the claw as it passed by. The
knife landed as the man had expected, but not with the results he had
hoped for. With a loud crack the knife snapped just above the base,
the blade of the weapon flying uselessly across the top of the
shallow swamp. It skipped across the water like a stone before losing
its momentum and coming to a halt, sinking at once.

The dragon snorted its amusement, swinging the claw back
a second time, almost absently, at least to the dragon. To the man it
came with the speed of a crossbow bolt, almost invisible, impossible
to dodge. The strike caught the unarmed man right underneath the his
raised arm, sending him skidding across the water as his knife blade
had only moments before.

The dragon heard the audible, satisfying crunch of one
or more of the man’s bones snapping. Whether it was a rib or an
arm, or both, it hardly mattered. In another moment there wouldn’t
be enough left of him to make any difference anyway, the dragon knew.
It lazily stepped over to the body, which had been cast into waist
deep water by its devastating blow. It raised its claw to deliver the
killing stroke.

A streak of sapphire flew directly into its face,
seemingly from nowhere. The little dragonling flew directly at its
eyes, clawing, scratching, and biting. The dragon roared, swatting at
the creature as one would a fly. Several times the creature assaulted
its larger cousin. The attacks were nothing more than an annoyance to
the dragon, but the small creature kept up the attack, as if it
believed that, against all hope, it could somehow prevail. Finally,
unable to inflict so much as a tickle on the massive dragon, the
dragonling gave up its attack, disappearing quickly into the swamp.

The dragon looked down at the place in the water where
the man it had been sent to kill had been thrown, and roared anew,
its mighty voice causing the trees around it to shudder. The man,
Raiste Goldstone, was nowhere to be seen.

Chapter Twenty

“
I
haven’t been able to find a thing!” Drom announced in
exasperation, putting down the book on the history of the races he
had been pouring through. This was the fifth book he had read, cover
to cover, and yet he had not found one reference to the ever elusive
bree.

“
Maybe
the little man was telling the truth,” Raine suggested for
perhaps the seventh or eighth time. “He had told us that even
the mages didn’t know about them; that no one did. I didn’t
think that it was possible either, but I know I’ve never heard
of them before. If the books don’t know anything about them,
maybe the mages really don’t either.”

“
How
could the bree have stayed hidden for over four thousand years?”
he asked again, for perhaps the seventh or eighth time. As before she
didn’t really have an answer. It seemed, however, that, against
all odds, such was truly the case.

Raine
knew that his preoccupation with the bree had nothing to do with the
small beings themselves. Drom had been like this ever since he
learned that she was pregnant. It wasn’t that he was unhappy,
she was quite certain of that. After the initial shock of the news
wore off, he was overcome with joy. It was simply that he felt the
need to do something to further their cause, and could think of
nothing else he could do.

Like
before, they spent every day in the same routine they had been
following. Drom would start the day with practice, while Raine looked
on, then they would clean at least a small portion of the Hut.
Afterward, they would spend some time out at the dock fishing
together, then dinner and relaxation for the rest of the night. Now
Drom understood the reason why she was so interested in all the
cleaning she had been insisting upon. It was not likely that they
would be staying in the Hut throughout her pregnancy, they both knew,
but her subconscious mind still told her to prepare for the coming of
her children.

Not
child, but children, plural.

It
took her nearly a week before she had gotten up the nerve to tell
Drom that little tidbit of information. It was rare that feral woman
had only one child result from a pregnancy. Usually they would give
birth to two or three, sometimes even as many as five or six. Rarely
was there only one. It was likely that, in only a matter of a few
more brief months, they would have several children underfoot.

Of
course, it was always possible that there would only be one child.
Drom had a sorvinian father and a human mother. Both were races that
commonly only had one child result from the pregnancy, so it was next
to impossible to know what to expect.

They
also wondered which of the two parents the children would favor.
Their father was, like all of his father’s race, a strict
vegetarian, while she, like all ferals, had a diet almost entirely
consisting of meat. It was impossible to predict what the children
would be like. To the best of her knowledge, there had never been a
child born of a sorvinian and a feral before. They were, under most
circumstances, a rather unlikely pair. They had no way of knowing
what their children would look like, what they would eat, or for that
matter anything at all about them until they were born.

Drom
understood that those were questions that couldn’t be answered,
so each evening he spent his time deep in Raiste's books, trying to
gather as much information as he could about their strange new ally,
the bree. Much to his dismay, however, any questions about the
miniature race seemed as unanswerable as those about the children
growing inside Raine.