‘They’ve come for us!’ shouted another within the tent, prompting more screams and cries.
‘We’re next!’
‘Drogah have mercy!’
I stepped away from the ropes as the guard advanced, the mace suddenly looking very menacing. He followed as I backed away. Once we were behind the tent and out of sight of the wizards I dug my feet into the ground and launched myself at him before he could finish lifting his weapon. My shoulder drove into his breastplate with my not inconsiderable weight firmly behind it, sending him crashing backwards.
I barely winced as my black talons slid out between my knuckles again. I’d only recently remembered I had them, and how to use them. They were originally meant for defending my territory, and were made to pierce the hides of other dragons, along with anything else stupid enough to challenge me. As I had grown in strength and size my challengers had become fewer and fewer and as such I’d used them so rarely in my later life that I could almost forgive myself for having forgotten that I’d had them.
The ghoul didn’t know or care about any of that though. I grabbed its ankle and pulled it towards me even as my other hand punched it in the face, driving the length of the talon through its eye and out through the back of its skull.
But I had underestimated how resiliently these ghouls could move, and even as I wrenched the talon from the wreckage of its skull it lashed out with the mace, the angular spikes digging into my flesh and scraping the bone beneath. The impact knocked me sideways to the ground, tearing more flesh as it ripped free. It tried to sit up, but the gaping hole in its skull finally registered and it fell back, its limbs trembling uncontrollably. My injured arm didn’t want to move, so I simply threw myself onto it, using my greater weight to stifle its flailing until I could slip my right talon under the edge of its helmet and push it up through its flapping tongue and deep into its foul brain. It shook once more, then abruptly deflated, vomiting foul smelling blood across me as I twisted the talon and pulled it out. I stood up as quickly as I could, wincing as the movement sent pain shooting up along my shoulder and neck.
For all of the violence, the fight had been brief and, apart from my grunting and the sounds of impact, conducted in relative silence. The groan that broke from my lips as I stood and tested my shoulder was perhaps the loudest noise of all. The numbness imparted by the force of the blow was rapidly fading, and blood was running free from the gashes it had torn open. The women in the tent had stopped shrieking, and it seemed that none of the wizards seemed to have taken the slightest notice of it, but then with so many already dead perhaps they didn’t notice them anymore. I peered into the tent and found myself being stared at by several dozen pairs of eyes set into gaunt faces.
‘Go!’ I almost had to shout it to hear myself over the sound of the ritual, ‘Run, save yourselves!’
The first of them hesitated until they were outside the tent, at which point they seemed to realise that this wasn’t some cruel trick and sped off as fast as their spindly limbs could carry them. The rest didn’t need much encouragement after that and dashed out as one, most of them pouring between the largest gaps in the tents. It was a false hope, for that gap would lead them back towards the guard posts, but with hysteria gripping them there was no point in me even trying to warn them. The mass exodus of course sent the wizards into a fit of shouting, and several of the runaways were felled by brightly flashing spells, adding to the chaos. It was all a boon for me for though, and I ducked inside the tent to examine my shoulder. As I reckoned it, no one would come to investigate an empty tent, at least not yet, and I needed my arm working if I was going to get out of there in one piece. I winced as I moved it. The blood was still flowing freely, cutting red tracks through the mud and filth that had coated me in the ditch. I dredged up a mote of power and carefully settled it across the wound, letting it settle across the rawness like fine cloth. It wasn’t strong enough to mend it there and then, but it would staunch the worst of the bleeding and at least start the process. I could then finish it once I was away from the corruption that hung in the air.
‘Startus?’ croaked a voice from the back of the tent.
I edged forward as a half-naked figure moved out of the gloom, his skin creased and folded across muscles and bone like the roots of an old vine. He shuffled closer and stared up at me through eyebrows like wild hedgerows.
‘Stratus,’ I corrected him. ‘Hello, Crow.’
The old tinker gave the same wheezing laugh that I remembered from our time on the road together. ‘Are you rescuing me?’
‘I only rescue princesses.’
He bared his remaining teeth at me and grabbed onto my arm as he embraced me, and even his feeble strength was enough to send a flare of pain racing up my arm and into my neck. He must have felt me stiffen because he pulled back and stared at the blood I’d transferred onto his shirt with surprise.
‘You’re bleeding.’
‘Yes I am,’ I said.
‘Is it bad?’
‘It isn’t good.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘There’s no time for that.’ I peered out the tent. ‘We have to go.’
‘Won’t argue with that.’ His voice trailed away as he looked into the large tent, his mouth hanging open.
I turned his head away and twisted his nose for good measure when he resisted, which made him curse and flail.
‘Don’t look at it,’ I said as he rubbed his nose. ‘What do you know of it?’ I said, tilting my head towards the tent. ‘What have you seen?’
‘Not much. They take prisoners from the tents and replace those who keel over while they’re singing.’ He spat into the mud. ‘Whoever goes in there doesn’t come out alive.’
I grunted to hide my disappointment. I had hoped he would have noticed something I hadn’t. The ritual was clearly a time-consuming one, which meant that its form and purpose would be difficult to divine until the very end, something I dare not remain here long enough to witness. What I needed was someone who knew what was coming. Someone with the kind of knowledge that could only come from being involved with this terrible project, and who could point me to wherever they had taken Tatyana. Someone like a wizard.
‘Come with me,’ I said, ducking out of the tent and pulling my hood up. The night hadn’t yet surrendered to the dawn, so I hoped the combination of the murky light and morning’s mist would let me pass as a wizard from a distance.
‘Where are we going?’
‘I’ve seen as much as I need to. We need to get out of the camp now, somewhere I can heal myself.’ I paused as three of the wizards rushed by towards where several of the prisoners had overpowered one of their fellows and were beating him soundly with his own staff. None of them so much as looked in our direction. ‘But first I’m going to catch myself a wizard.’
‘Ah,’ Crow wheezed in reply. ‘Clever. Like a disguise.’
‘Something like that.’ I lowered myself into the ditch, cursing as a disjointed arm rolled under my foot and forced me to grab at the wall to steady myself. I looked over my shoulder and saw Crow standing on the edge, his arms limp at his sides, his hands trembling.
‘Get down before they see you.’
‘Gods above and saints below,’ he breathed, the words barely audible. He dropped to his knees, but remained stubbornly on the edge.
‘Get in.’
He didn’t even look at me, and one of Tatyana’s favourite curses spilled from my lips before I realised I was saying it. He looked up at the sound of it, just in time to see me grab his arm and pull him into the pile of bodies. Whatever torpor had gripped him at the sight of the piled corpses vanished as he landed amongst them and, as small as he was, it was a struggle for me to keep him silent. By the time his struggles subsided into tears the trickle of blood from my shoulder was a steady flow once more.
‘Crow.’ He ignored me and simply sat there, arms hugging his narrow chest, his gaze fixed on a nearby head. ‘Crow.’ I turned his head towards me as gently as I could. He blinked rapidly, but didn’t say anything. ‘They’re dead. They don’t care anymore.’
He hugged himself tighter and whimpered as something in the layers below us gave way in a loud blast of gas and he tipped sideways onto the waxy torso of a younger man. He squirmed away from it and closed his eyes.
‘So many,’ he said, and I sighed, relieved that he had not in fact lost his wits entirely. He turned to me. ‘I have to get out of here. I can’t do this, Drogah forgive me.’
‘If you do, you’ll be as dead as them.’
‘This is Hel!’ he hissed.
I resisted the urge to shake him. ‘It’s just a riverbed full of corpses.’
‘They’re people.’
‘Dead people.’
‘They were people, damn you. People.’
‘And now they’re dead people. They don’t care about your sandal on their head.’ He opened his mouth to say something, but I jabbed a finger against his forehead, fixing his attention on me. ‘And if you cannot stomach crawling over them, then you can march up back to that tent and wait to be killed like a sheep.’
He pulled himself upright, the fogged look in his eyes was gone, replaced by the clarity of anger.
‘You monster.’ Now he jabbed a finger at me. ‘What if it was your family laying here? Would you be so careless? So disrespectful?’
‘I have no family.’ I didn’t let the memories that rose within my mind show on my face.
‘Everyone has family,’ Crow was saying. ‘Avoiding a question isn’t the same as answering it.’
I felt my own anger brighten inside my chest, the tips of my draconic teeth pushing against the inside of my mouth. I forced them back with some effort.
‘Dead is dead,’ I said, fighting to keep my voice above a growl. ‘Live and avenge them, or die here. The choice is yours.’
I turned away and began the awkward journey back along the riverbed, hugging my injured arm to my chest. After some time I heard the wet rasp of Crow’s breathing behind me, interspersed with whispered entreaties to his god, who I imagined was paying them as little heed as I was. I slowed as I reached the point where I had first entered the riverbed. My shoulder was throbbing, and I spent more of my carefully hoarded energy to slow the bleeding once more, something that was a bit easier to do further away from the ritual. I was still crouched there, peering over the lip of the embankment when Crow caught up with me. He didn’t say anything and simply sat there, breathing like a half-submerged bellows.
‘I came from that way,’ I said it more to myself than him, but he pushed himself up and looked over the edge with me. ‘There are far less of them on that side, but forcing my way will still be like kicking a wasps’ nest. Dawn isn’t going to make it any easier.’
‘So what’s your plan, son?’
I peered at him, looking for any sign of a head wound, but there was too much blood and dirt caked on his face to tell for certain. ‘I am not your son.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘Say what?’
He shook his head and slid back down into the muck. ‘So what happens next?’
‘First things first.’ I closed my eyes and sought out the touch of the Songlines. They were faint, distorted by the unnatural echoes of the wizards’ ongoing spells, but they were there. As strange and disturbing as their magic was, it still needed the raw energy of the Songlines to exist. I sighed as I drew power to myself and quickly sent more of it into my healing pattern, numbing the deep ache radiating from my torn shoulder.
‘You don’t have a plan, do you?’ Crow’s voice jolted me. I’d all but forgotten he was there.
‘We go through the camp and escape.’
‘That’s your plan?’ He gave a brief chuckle. ‘You do know there’s a bloody great army just behind that little hill?’
‘It was more of an idea than a plan,’ I growled. I clapped a hand over his mouth as he drew breath to reply. ‘Someone’s coming.’
I sank back from the edge of the embankment and watched as two figures came walking along the bank. I took the first to be a soldier, and a living one too from his gait and the scarf wrapped around his face. The other was clearly a wizard, judging by his staff and robes, quite possibly even a necromancer if I was really lucky.
‘We’re fucked,’ whispered Crow.
‘Wait here,’ I replied.