Rise of the Fire Tamer (The Wordwick Games #1) (11 page)

Chapter 11

T
he way up the mountain was hard, but then what did Gem expect from a secret entrance? If it were easy to get to, everyone would know about it. As it was, it didn’t look like anyone had been this way in years, if not centuries. While the path had clearly been cut by human hands, fallen stones and worn away sections made the climb almost as hard in places as if it had been over rough rock.

There were statues here and there among the rocks. Jack seemed fascinated by them, stopping at each one until one of the others tugged him back into motion.

“What is it about them, Jack?” Gem asked after a while.

“W-well,” Jack began, and Gem winced. She had been hoping that his nervousness around her would abate given time, but there was still no sign of it, “all of these seem so old, and the style of dress is different. It’s more old-fashioned. These statues were built a long time ago.”

“Maybe we’ll see more further on,” Gem prompted. She didn’t really mind Jack’s wanderings away from the main point, but at the moment any digression was going to cost them time. Thankfully, her words were enough to get him moving again.

They didn’t have to go far before they ran into something that caught Jack’s interest again, but to be fair, the great entranceway before them had everyone there staring up at it. The intricate carving of the marble pillars and stone doors made even Anachronia’s castle look prosaic by comparison, and that was far from ordinary.

“Assuming what I saw is right,” Gem said, the way to the dragon is through here. Is everyone ready?”

The others nodded. Sparks and Rio pushed at the nearest of the doors. It ground open slowly to let the group slip inside one by one. Once inside, Gem paused to look the place over. There was certainly nothing frugal or thrifty about it. Gold leaf covered marble, and gems glinted in the shaft of light let in by the open door. Arches suggested spaces for tombs or something similar. Gem and Rio fetched the flashlights out of their satchels, and several of Goolrick’s men produced wooden torches that they lit, casting a flickering glow over the place. In the light, it seemed even more beautiful. Except for one thing…

“You know how you said there might be one or two zombies?” Kat said.

“Yes?”

“There are
never
just one or two zombies.”

Every archway held human sized figures, some little more than bleached bone, some mummified and wrapped in bandages, while a few looked perfectly preserved. Every figure wore armor of some sort. It was battered and rusted, but Gem was willing to bet that it would still work. So would the weapons, probably, and there were plenty of them.

“It’s all…wrong,” Jack said. “There’s dozens of different types of sword alone. None of it fits.”

Gem saw Goolrick draw his sword, looking over the massed hordes cautiously.

“Perhaps you could abstain from historical comment until we are safely through this?” he suggested.

“It
might
be a good idea to leave it alone for now, Jack,” Gem agreed, though she said it more gently. “It’s probably only a matter of time before those things start moving.”

“We don’t know that they will,” Sparks pointed out, edging forward. Gem noticed that he drew his sword anyway.

“They will.” Kat seemed certain of it. “Haven’t you ever seen any movies?”

It was like that was a signal for it. It seemed utterly spontaneous, but then, the dead were probably pretty good at acting without thinking. As one, the ranks of dead warriors converged on them, and Gem found herself reaching for her bow. Her first arrow passed straight through an armored skeleton’s ribcage, but she adjusted her aim with the second, hitting it in the knee and bringing it down in a clatter of bone and metal. Jack had less luck with his shots, hitting only armor.

“Aim for the unprotected parts,” Gem told him, and his next shot was better, pinning one of the zombie-things to a wall while it struggled to work out what was happening. Gem brought down another skeleton.

Rio and Sparks battered undead creatures with blow after blow from their swords. The things were slow, but since it was hard to kill something that was already dead, they were hard to hurt, and there were a lot of them. Even with Goolrick’s men, the creatures had them well outnumbered.

It didn’t seem to bother Goolrick. While his men hacked and slashed around him, he fought coolly, aiming powerful blows at whichever opponent was nearest while parrying any slashes from ancient weapons that came close. Kat was currently near to him, though she didn’t stay there long. She wove her way though the dead, darting and dodging, too fast for any of them to catch up with her as she aimed the occasional stab low, to bring them down.

A zombie burst through the main line of fighting, shambling towards the spot where Gem and Jack stood. Without thinking, Gem put two arrows through it. Jack managed a third. A hacking blow from Sparks beheaded it, and it fell.

With space to think, Gem tried to work out where she could help the most. Sparks, Rio and Goolrick seemed to be doing well, but there were spots where the fighting was harder. It took Gem a second to realize that they were mostly around the bandaged figures of the mummies. She said as much to Jack.

“M-maybe the mummification process makes them tougher?”

“Whatever it does, we need to find a way to stop them. Keep them off me a moment.”

Jack did his best, shooting at anything that looked like it might break through. Gem used the time to fish through her satchel and dig out some bandages from the first aid kit, along with the plastic lighter. She wrapped strips of the bandages around arrows. Picking one up, she lit it.

“Instant flaming arrows,” she explained, then fired at one of the mummies.

It worked. Whatever else the mummification process did, it also made mummies extremely flammable. In seconds it was little more than a burning pillar of bandages. By that time, Gem had fired two more shots, hitting two more of the creatures.

While she was doing that, the others were making headway with the rest of the horde. It was almost a shock to see Rio and Sparks working as a team, with each boy parrying attacks aimed at the other. They hacked and slashed their way through a pair of skeletons as Gem watched, then turned their attentions to a zombie. Rio cut it down at the knee, while Sparks took its head off. Beside them, Goolrick shattered a skeleton with a mighty blow of his sword, while Kat achieved much the same effect simply by tripping one up as it tried to stab her.

One final skeleton tried to throw itself at Kat as she knelt there. Gem knocked an arrow and fired, smashing its skull to powder dry fragments.

“Thanks,” Kat called over, then looked around at the mess left in the wake of the battle. “You know, I really hope we don’t have to clean up all this.”

Gem sort of hoped so too. Bits of bone covered the floor. A skull rolled forlornly off to one side. In the middle of things were three piles of ash with scraps of bandages in them, all that remained of the mummies she destroyed. She looked around, making sure that no one was badly hurt. A few of Goolrick’s men had minor injuries, but the others seemed unharmed. Goolrick cleaned his sword and sheathed it.

“It seems that the dead are no match for the fortitude of the living.”

“Undead nil, humans one,” Sparks echoed. In fact, the whole mood seemed a lot more jubilant. Rio actually high-fived Jack, who admittedly had to shake some feeling back into his hand afterwards. Kat was grinning like she had never thought the world could be such a happy place. Gem briefly found herself thinking that, if people generally reacted this well to fighting hordes of undead, maybe more people ought to try it. Then again, maybe not.

“From here, we go to face the dragon!” Goolrick announced, and his men let out a cheer. “All we have to do is find the way to its lair!”

“A regular demagogue, isn’t he?” Kat said. “A right rabble-rouser. And a handsome one too.”

“Kat,” Gem warned.

“What?” Kat continued a little more softly. “You’re the one who kissed him.”

Gem didn’t blush, because that wasn’t the sort of thing she generally did, but she knew the embarrassment would show on her face.

“Yes, but… well, I’m not sure… look, Kat, it’s complicated.”

“Of course it is. Anyway, he
is
handsome, if that older guy thing is what you like. One of my friends has a boyfriend in… I guess it’s what you’d call college, and-”

“Kat,” Gem interrupted, “shouldn’t we be trying to find a dragon about now?”

Kat walked off to help the search, but she was definitely smirking as she did it.

The search didn’t take long. It was Sparks who found the way through, noticing a crack in the stone wall at the far end of the catacombs, along with what looked like grooves worn into the stone floor by constant use. A little more looking revealed a series of chains and pulleys. Sparks pointed to one of them.

“I think they doors should open if we pull on this one.”

Gem raised an eyebrow.

“You’re sure?”

“I like to know how things work, remember?”

That was good enough for Gem, and apparently good enough for Goolrick, who had a couple of his men haul on the chain Sparks had indicated. With a harsh whine of stone on stone, the doors swung open, revealing a tunnel, rough hewn and unlit, barely wide enough to get down in single file. Sparks insisted on going first, but Gem got in behind him on the basis that she had one of the flashlights. The others followed in their turn.

The tunnel kept on for what seemed to be miles, but probably wasn’t that far in reality. It was just that it kept switching back on itself. Surprisingly for a tunnel, it was warm. From the little Gem knew about caving, she had thought that all caves were cold, and in a lot of cases damp too. The warm nature of this tunnel didn’t really make up for it being cramped and claustrophobic though.

No sooner had Gem thought it than the tunnel started to widen, quickly giving way to a much larger space, larger even than the hall they’d been in before. It looked like a natural cavern, open to the sky at one end, but it was bigger than any cave Gem had seen. She could see the litter of bones, both human and animal, that lay scattered across the cavern floor. Something iridescent shimmered on the far side. A few of Goolrick’s men came forward with their torches, and the iridescence brightened.

It took Gem a moment to really see it. Maybe that was because, no matter how many times someone tells you that you’re going to see a dragon, it’s still hard to picture the reality of a scaly form bigger than a bus, with huge bat wings spread around three sleeping heads like a blanket. Clawed feet larger than a human served as pillows for at least one of the heads.

“I think it might be sleeping,” Rio said. He stepped forward. Several of the others did the same. Sparks hurried to keep up with the other boy. Gem edged forward more cautiously.

They’d made it halfway to the beast before something went wrong. Gem didn’t know which of them stepped on the bone, but it cracked in a way that made the average dry twig look almost amateurish. Six eyelids lifted simultaneously, revealing six yellow, snakelike eyes. There was a still moment as everyone froze in place, half-hoping the thing would go back to sleep, then, with a rumble like a jet taking off, the dragon woke.

Sparks
stared up at the dragon, but he didn’t step back. He’d spent his life living around creatures bigger than he was, and he knew that you couldn’t show them any fear. Instead, he hefted his sword, waiting for the battle that would surely come…

Rio steeled himself for the fight. The dragon was big, sure. It probably wouldn’t be easy. But after the time they’d just had against the zombies and skeletons, how much harder could it be?

Kat watched the dragon’s head weave back and forth, noting the rhythm of it. It would be so easy to dodge past that, she decided. Just like skating past someone. This wouldn’t be a problem at all…

Even Jack felt confident. After all, the stories people used to tell, even if they were made up ones, were all about people defeating dragons, not about being eaten by them…

Goolrick hung back with his men. Soon, the beast that had been plaguing his people would be slain…