Slowly, he reached until he could place one hand on the hilt of his sword. The flapping of the huge leathery wings cloaked him an icy wind, but by the time his fingers closed on the sword, Lyrec was sweating. He brought his other hand to it and gripped tightly, squeezing his fists until the pain didn’t drown the feel of the hilt.
Then, by torturous degrees, he withdrew the blade. Holding it against himself, he waited—waited until he had the strength to follow through after his actions. Otherwise he would succeed only in achieving death from a great height. Everything now depended upon timing.
Again he brought his head up, trembling with the effort, neck muscles corded. He studied the belly, looking for lines of musculature and bone beneath the slick scales. He found a soft hollow that swelled with each breath. His eyes never left that spot, while he waited, breathed, and prepared.
He jabbed the sword up into the monster’s belly, driving the blade in up to the hilt, screaming at the fiery agony this brought.
The monster screamed, too—a shriek like cloth ripping. It twisted in flight and tried with its tiny useless arms to reach the sword. A thick yellow blood dribbled out of the wound. Again, Lyrec reached up. He grabbed the sticky sword and tugged it down, opening the belly wider. Viscous yellow fluid spattered and stung his face.
The talons released him, but he had anticipated this. He clutched one of the feet and held on.
The monster tried to kick him loose, then used its free foot to strike at him. He pulled himself up the monster’s leg as the kicking foot raked his side.
His fingers slid down the oily skin, and he grabbed wildly for a solid purchase. The monster began to descend. Angrily, it doubled over and reached for him, round yellow eyes with one spot of pupil, its tusk-like teeth snapping at him. Its breath smelled like rotting meat. He climbed higher up its leg. The arms tried to reach back to get him. He lashed out with his foot. It was caught for an instant, but he pulled loose and kicked again, and felt something snap beneath his toe. The krykwyre shrieked and rolled in the air to dislodge him, but this put him on top for a moment and he climbed higher up the body. The monster dropped ever closer to the ground.
Now Lyrec reached under its arms, found the sword and ripped it toward him. The creature’s bowels dangled out of the wound.
The monster tried frantically to fling him off, tumbling again as it did, but he moved with it once more, using the sword hilt to push himself up, finding purchase on its back between the two great wings. They swatted him, the blows against his shoulders knocking him so hard that the sky lit up with sparks and he thought he would be crushed to knocked senseless. He pressed tightly against the foul-smelling skin. His whole being seemed composed of pain; his actions directed themselves.
Taking his dagger, he stabbed the monster over and over, all along the spine. He shouted, “Die, will you not
die!”
Instead, the krykwyre bucked and rolled again, screeching constantly now, and he did not know how it was that he hung on.
Suddenly, there were tree branches slapping at him, and cracking all around. The krykwyre crashed down through the smaller upper branches, and slammed against the trunk. Lyrec was thrown free.
He fell spread-eagle onto a limb only an arm’s length below him, wrapped himself around it as he had around the monster and hastily inched his way along to where the branch became thicker. When his head struck the trunk, he stopped, and tried to catch enough breath to do what he had to next. Nothing came after him.
Cautiously, he began to climb down.
This proved hardest of all, for he had to hold himself on one branch while he probed with his feet for one below. His vision was blurry, his head on fire, and he feared the yellow blood might have harmed his eyes; but he had no strength left for panic, for fear, for anything but lowering himself, branch by branch, in dull, mechanical fashion. He could not have stopped. He lacked enough sense to stop, even to wonder if he was climbing down to his death.
Before he had descended, however, he ran out of energy. He tried to draw upon his last resources only to find them depleted. For a moment he hung in place, wrapped around a branch, begging his body to give a little more, just one more branch, wheezing and nearly in tears, and too exhausted to see what lay below.
He tried to lower himself again.
His arms gave out. He teetered and fell.
An instant later Lyrec struck the ground—he’d been dangling no more than his own height above it. He fought a roar of drowning darkness as he rolled over slowly and tried to get to his knees.
A figure moved in front of him. He ordered his throbbing eyes to focus on the blood-red smear of the shape, but they could not obey. The figure loomed larger, coming toward him. He saw a gleam of something in its center—his sword!—and knew that the krykwyre still lived. It must have been waiting for him.
He groped for his dagger, but the sheath was empty. It had been lost in the fall. He would not die on his back, though—the outrage of that produced one final burst of energy.
Pushing, inching, whimpering in torment, Lyrec climbed to his knees. The figure hadn’t moved.
Come for me!
he thought he called to it.
Come on!
The figure moved into the air, as if it were walking up the side of the tree. It slid up the edge of his eyes, tilting; and he watched it, watched it, as he crashed down, unconscious, onto his side.
Chapter 16.
Grohd stepped out of his tavern and stood beneath the overhang of thatched roof to listen. He was not sure he had heard the sound, or heard it rightly. Probably a bird call that had become distorted as it penetrated his sleep. A faint tittering cry from somewhere off in the woods, a winter bird come back early—these were the more likely explanations
.
He heard birds all around him now, but none of them sounded anything like the strange whining that had awakened him.
He yawned widely, spraying out a fountain of saliva, then walked back inside. The day was young and there was little at all to do. The kegs of grynne he had set to brewing outside beside the huts would go on bubbling for another day at least. The fires would need no tending for some time. Grohd returned to the keg on which he had been sleeping before, leaned back against the wall, sighed and closed his eyes.
At the precise instant where consciousness fell away and sleep overcame him, he heard the whine again. He jolted upright. The sound faded into silence. It was not like a bird call at all, he decided: more like an axe being sharpened on a rotating whetstone—and even that failed to capture it.
He returned to the yard, crossing over the coach ruts and into the trees. Beneath the high branches he began to walk in circles, searching for Voed knew what. The sound did not repeat, but he no longer anticipated it. He understood now that he couldn’t hear it while awake.
Around he went, kicking through brush, peering under branches, even walking back to the center of the yard and studying the ruts. Aware that he had no idea for what he searched, by the same token he believed he would know it when he saw it.
The search led him to the stable, presently empty. No coaches were due in this day, no company and no horses; no one going north, everyone gone west, to Atlarma. Grohd rummaged through every stall. Dimly he perceived that his actions were ridiculous and distraught. Something in the nature of the sound sped him along in search of its source. It was as if he were being called.
He left the stable behind to explore the grounds between there and the outbuildings. He leaned around a tree.
And there it was.
At first he could not move to pick it up, just stared at it and released a great pent-up sigh, knowing that he’d found … whatever it was. He recognized it all right. He could even recall thinking how ineffectual a thing it appeared to be.
How had it come to be here? After Lyrec had been escorted away, Grohd had gone into the loft and found it empty. The cat, too, had vanished. Come to think of it, though, Lyrec had not been wearing the weapon that morning when the fiends had come for him. Bastards, ganging up against a man like that who had obviously never used a sword in his life. This set Grohd to wondering exactly to what the semi-circular silver knuckle-guard was attached.
He bent down. Some prudent instinct caused him to refrain from touching the shiny guard. He hefted the weapon by its leather scabbard instead. His hand began to tingle.
He called out, “Lyrec?” and felt stupid for having done so. The fellow, powerful as he had been, was surely dead or worse than dead by now. Nevertheless, Grohd waited there until he was certain no one would answer him. Then he headed for the tavern.
Inside, he sat at the first table he came to, then changed his mind and moved to the rear, near his cooking hearth.
He used two fingers to slide the weapon delicately out. As he’d suspected, it was a broken sword; but the tip where the blade must have been snapped in two was polished into a smooth curve. The thing had never had an edge. What a useless novelty, he thought.
At first, he thought the bell was
smoothly hammered silver. But close up, he saw that it had a texture of fine indented lines running in all directions from the base of the “basket.” He passed his palm over the surface. Lifting it, he saw for a second the color had darkened where his hand had touched it. This faded so quickly that he doubted he’d seen it. Maybe the darkness had been the shadow of his hand. So he brushed it again, slowly, watching very closely now. The silver swirled beneath his fingers and spread apart, leaving darkness where he touched. Grohd looked at his fingertips. He held the hilt away. He looked up at his tavern—at the walls and kegs and tables—to re-anchor himself in the world, then considered the silver thing again.
Holding it still by the end of the blade, he turned it up. The inside of the knuckle-guard was ribbed and, in places, studded with tiny crystalline projections. These did not appear to have any discernible pattern to their arrangement and left him debating their purpose. Did they keep the hand more firmly against the hilt? They looked as if they would hurt, though. Grohd leaned back and pulled at his nose. Whatever the thing was, it was truly a remarkable piece of craftsmanship, but, all the same, impractical. He wished Lyrec were here to tell him how it had come to be broken, who had taken off the edge and polished the tip so, and what kind of material it was made from. Recalling the tales Lyrec had told, he expected the truth to be utterly fantastic. That poor man, coming so far in his quest, overcoming so many perilous obstacles, only to perish here. If the soldiers had refrained from slaying him outright—which Grohd very much doubted—then Ladomirus himself would have tortured or killed him as a spy or under some other pretense. Grohd decided he would mount the hilt and scabbard on the wall above the bar where it would be seen by all, leading inevitably to tales of the brave traveler who had taken on six, no, ten enemy soldiers single-handedly to protect others. He imagined the battle as one brave swordsman slew others around him with such speed that they fell to the ground before their blood knew enough to flow. Yes, what a story. And there would always be the weapon to prove it. The remnant of his sword, broken by the angry Ladomantines in their hatred of all the lives it had cost them. And where was the rest of the blade? someone would ask. And (grinning as he thought out his answer) Grohd would reply:
No one knew—it had disappeared.
Why, the traveler was no man at all, but a god in mortal disguise, like in the old stories. Maybe even Voed himself. And then there was his unusual cat.
*****
So captivated was he by his story, Grohd did not notice the approach of the two men who came along the road. They had horses, but had reined in and walked the beasts the last part of their journey. The empty yard and the absence of a coach assured them that nothing stood in the way of their goal. Stealthily, they crept forward, tied their horses, and moved to the tavern door. For a time they simply stood and satisfied themselves with watching the keeper dream his tale of the man who’d bettered them. Then Fulpig nudged Abo and they stepped through the doorway. Abo slammed shut the door.
Grohd’s head whipped around. For an instant he did not comprehend the situation. Then, recognizing the two soldiers, he became paralyzed with fear. His axe was across the room.
Neither soldier brandished a weapon, but this hardly mattered. Fulpig’s arm was in a sling, close against his chest. His nose was mostly dark crust, making his entire face look decayed. Abo had what appeared to be the same dirty strip of linen as before tied round his wrist. He did not hold his arm as if the wound bothered him any longer. His expression seemed a trifle glazed, however, as though he were still waking up from a long nap.
Fulpig noticed the abbreviated sword lying on the table and began to laugh. “You going to stick me with that, taverner? Think I’ll let you? Why don’t you pick it up and let me see if you can?” He gazed around the room. “Now, where’s my favorite cat?”
“Gone.” He glanced hopefully at the bar. “Do you want drink?”
“Soon enough. We’ll drink over your corpse, how’ll that be?” Fulpig started toward him.
Grohd had little choice in what to do—the polished stub of a sword was all he had. He grabbed it up and jabbed out to threaten the Ladomantine off. Fulpig drew his own blade, snorting in derision, and casually tapped the shiny smooth tip of Grohd’s weapon away. He laughed: This was going to be a pleasure.
Grohd heard the whine that had come to him in his sleep; only this time he was wide awake and the sound was inside him. His forearm began to shudder. A soft pressure applied itself against his hand. It was all he could do to point the weapon in Fulpig’s direction. Neither of the soldiers seemed to notice the whine nor found his look of terror out of place.
The bell of the sword suddenly collapsed and flowed over his hand and wrist.