Part 8 (1/2)

I cursed myself for not having thought to prepare an avenue of retreat. Now we were trapped with the enraged monsters pinning Chron and me against the cliff wall.

The dragons were terribly burned, screeching furiously. We planted our backs against the rock wall and gripped our spears with both hands.

The world slowed down as my body went into hyperdrive. I saw the first of the dragons looming before me, jaws wide, arms reaching for me. Those taloned claws could have ripped a rhinoceros apart.

I ducked beneath its outstretched arms and jammed my spear into its belly, tearing the lizard open from breastbone to crotch. It screamed like all the devils of h.e.l.l and tottered a few steps sideways, then went down. Turning, I saw Chron with his spear b.u.t.ted against the rock, desperately trying to stave off the dragon that was clawing at him.

Pulling my b.l.o.o.d.y spear from the beast's gut, I clambered over its whitening body and rammed the metal spear point into the dragon's thigh. It stumbled, turned toward me. Again I rammed my spear into the undefended belly of the beast while Chron stabbed higher, nearer the heart.

Before the dragon could fall, the third of the monsters was on me. My spear was jammed inside the second beast. As I tried to work it loose, to the screams and shrieks of the dying monster, its partner slashed at me with a three-taloned hand. I saw it coming in slow motion and started to duck beneath the blow, but my foot slipped in the thick stream of blood covering the ground and I fell sideways.

I felt the dragon's sharp claws slice through the flesh of my left arm and side. Before the pain could reach my conscious mind I clamped down on the blood vessels and shut off the nerve signals that would carry their message of agony to my brain.

Looking up, I saw Chron ramming his spear into the dragon's throat. It reared up with a screaming roar, tearing the spear out of the teenager's hands. I got to one knee and reached with my good arm for the spear still embedded in the second dragon's hide.

Chron was flattened against the face of the rock, his eyes wide with terror, ducking and dodging as the wounded dragon slashed at him with pain-driven fury. It ignored the spear hanging from its throat in its fury to kill its tormentor. Its claws scored screeching gouges in the solid rock. It bent over to snap at Chron with its frightening teeth, and even I felt its breath, hot and stinking of half-digested flesh.

I reached the spear and worked it free of the dying carca.s.s as Chron desperately twisted away from the dragon's furious slas.h.i.+ng and snapping. The lad was faster than the lizard, but not by much. It was merely a question of who would tire first, the defenseless human or the wounded, burned reptile.

Getting shakily to my feet, I rammed the spear into the dragon's flank with all of my remaining strength, felt the copper point sc.r.a.pe against a rib and then penetrate upward, into the lungs.

The dragon shrieked like a thousand demons and swung its thick, blunt tail at me. I couldn't get completely out of the way, and it knocked me sprawling.

The next thing I knew Chron was kneeling over me, tears in his eyes.

”You're alive!” he gasped.

”Almost,” I croaked back at him. My back felt numb, there were deep slashes in my left arm and side.

With Chron's help I got to my feet once more. He was unwounded except for a few sc.r.a.pes and bruises. The three huge dragons lay around us, enormous mounds of deathly gray scaly flesh. Even flat on the ground, their carca.s.ses were taller than my height.

”We killed all three of them.” Chron's voice was awed, astonished.

”The others,” I said. My throat felt raw, my voice rasped.

Chron picked up our spears and we staggered off in the direction our three comrades had fled. We did not have to go far. Their b.l.o.o.d.y bodies, sliced to shreds, lay sprawled only a few minutes' walk away.

Chron leaned on the spears, breathing heavily, trying to control his emotions. The dead men were a gruesome sight. Already ants and flies were crawling over their bone-deep wounds.

Then the youngster looked up, his eyes narrowing. ”Where are the dragons? Do you think-”

”They've run away,” I told him.

”They could come back.”

I shook my woozy head. ”I don't think so. Look at their tracks. Look at the distance between the prints. They were running. They stopped long enough to slaughter our friends, then headed northward again. They won't be back. Not today, at least.”

We started back toward the south. Chron caught our dinner that evening, and with food and a night's rest I felt considerably better.

”Your wounds are healing,” he told me in the morning's light. ”Even the bruise on your back is smaller than it was last night.”

”I heal quickly,” I said. Thanks to the Creator who made me.

By the time we returned to the village deep in the forest of Paradise where we had left Anya and Kraal and the others, my strength was almost back to normal. The slashes in my arm were little more than fading scars.

I was eager to see Anya again. And Chron was bubbling with the antic.i.p.ation of telling the villagers all our news.

”We killed ten dragons, Orion. Ten of them! Wait until they hear about that!”

I gave him a grin, but I wondered how Kraal and his people would take the news of their village being ma.s.sacred.

Before I could tell him, though, Kraal had his own heavy news to tell me.

”Your woman is gone,” he said. ”The dragons took her.”

Chapter 11.

”Anya gone?” I was staggered. ”The dragons took her?”

The village was nothing but mud huts beneath spreading oaks and elms. We stood on the bare ground of the central meeting area, the warm sunlight of midday s.h.i.+ning through the trees. All the villagers were grouped around Chron and me, staring at us with troubled, frightened eyes.

”We killed dragons!” Chron blurted. ”Ten of them!”

I looked straight into Kraal's s.h.a.ggy-browed s.h.i.+fting eyes. He avoided my gaze, uneasily shuffling from one foot to the other like a guilty little boy. Reeva stood behind him, strangely decked with necklaces of animals' teeth.

There was no sign of a battle in this village. No sign even of a struggle. None of the men were wounded. As far as I could tell, all the people who had been there when I had left were still there.

”Tell me what happened,” I said to Kraal.

His face twisted into a miserably unhappy grimace.

”It was her or us,” Reeva snapped. ”If we did not give her to them, they would kill us all.”

”Tell me what happened,” I repeated, anger simmering in my blood.

”The dragons came,” Kraal said, almost mumbling in his shame and regret. ”And their masters. They said they wanted you and the woman. If we gave the two of you to them, they would leave us alone.”

”And you did what they asked?”

”Anya did not fight against it,” Reeva said, her tone almost angry. ”She saw the wisdom of it.”

”And you let them take her without a fight?”

”They were dragons dragons, Orion,” Kraal whined. ”Big ones. Six of them. And masters riding them.”