Those minor wounds gave it no pause. Lowering its head, it smashed into one of the argosies. A terrible crashing sound came as it rent the armor. The wagon began to tip, bringing cries of terror from those inside. Then the wagon tumbled down on its side, and screams of fear became the sounds of death. A soldier trapped beneath the wagon’s solid bulk, his torso, head and arms exposed, cried for aid and clawed at the ground, but a pool of blood soaking the earth around him so quickly that Aric knew the man’s hips and legs must have been crushed, if not severed completely.
Almost as if in an act of mercy, one of the earth drake’s rear feet came down on the poor man’s head, ending his desperate flailing.
But the drake had no more sense of mercy than it did of fair play. It wanted only to kill, to smash, to consume. Soldiers attacked it with trikals, with alhulaks, with spears and swords. It took their blows without apparent effect; even when blood ran down its hide and splashed to the ground it showed no awareness of injury.
It rammed a soldier with that gigantic cranium, sending her flying a dozen feet into a boulder. The impact snapped her neck, but she lived, hands twitching and scrabbling at pebbles until a comrade took pity and ended her life with a quick sword stroke.
Another soldier, a goliath, stabbed the drake in the ribs, his sword sinking so deep that he couldn’t yank it free. He tried for too long. When he finally gave up and released its hilt, the drake swung around, that awesome maw gaping open and engulfing the hapless half-giant. It snapped its mouth shut, and for a moment the goliath’s left arm and leg dangled, but then those gargantuan teeth bit through muscle and tendon and the soldier’s limbs dropped to the dirt, as forgotten by the drake as a few crumbs of bread to a person enjoying a fine meal.
Fifteen soldiers formed a line between the drake and the caravan, making ready to rush it all at once. Aric thought they had a chance—at least some of them might get through, and if they went for the eyes then perhaps they could pierce its brain. But it pawed twice at the ground, gave them a forbidding glare, and its psionic energy burst swept over them, forcing soldiers back against the wagons, toppling yet another of the weighty argosies.
Aric turned back to the two guards, huddled against the wagon’s door as if it could somehow protect them from the fury outside. “I’m going out there,” he said. “I’ve got to try to do something.”
“What can any of us do?” one of the guards asked. He hadn’t been near the window, had not seen the drake’s devastation.
“Let him,” the other guard said. “He might even be safer outside—at least there he can run.”
The second guard shrugged and opened the door. “Go quick, then.”
“I won’t run,” Aric said. He pushed between the guards and out the door. He had only the agafari-wood sword on him.
To attack the earth drake with it would be suicide.
But what other choice did he have? He hadn’t seen his friends, didn’t know if they were alive or dead. He couldn’t just sit by while this monster tore through the whole caravan.
He rounded the argosy, sword in hand, on legs that threatened to buckle at every step.
The earth drake stood twenty feet away, snorting and clawing at the earth, readying its next charge. It raised its ugly head, caught someone in its sights. It was Amoni. She stood with legs spread wide, braced for attack, her cahulaks spinning before her.
She would die in a heartbeat.
“Hey!” Aric shouted. “I’m talking to you, you motherless son of a rockslide!” Shifting the sword to his left hand, he dropped to a crouch, picked up a stone bigger around than his fist, and hurled it at the beast. It bounced off the drake’s skull, accomplishing what words alone had not.
The thing turned away from Amoni, its fierce red glare fixed on Aric.
He took the sword in his right hand again. If he could dodge it, run past as it thundered by him, jab at the eye, hang onto the sword and keep doing the same …
It would never work.
He had to try.
The earth drake charged.
Aric made ready to move faster than he had in his life. He was a blacksmith, not a warrior, or even a sprinter, but elves were fleet of foot.
Still, the massive beast closed the distance fast.
Aric shifted his weight to his right leg, ready to spring out of its way.
Kadya’s voice called out a phrase in a language Aric didn’t know.
Ice rimed the earth drake’s hide, all at once. Where its hot, moist breath blew out flared nostrils, icicles formed. It skidded to a stop, shivering, stamped its feet and flung its head in outrage.
Then even those actions slowed, as the coating of ice grew thicker on it. Aric could feel waves of cold coming from it, cutting the warmth of the day.
The drake tried to open its mouth. Its jaws creaked, then froze in place. Its tongue darted out from inside, met the cold air, and locked there, sticking rigidly half outside.
It shivered once more, a great shaking that rumbled the earth beneath Aric’s feet.
Then it was still.
Amoni gave it a few seconds, then approached it with her cahulaks loose in her hand. She started to reach out for it with her free hand, but stopped short. “It’s too cold to touch.”
“Leave it,” Aric said. “It’s no threat now.”
Kadya stepped up beside Aric. “Not at the moment, no. But when it thaws out? Earth drakes hate cities. This one might have been on its way to wreak havoc in Akrankhot when it decided we were a juicier target.”
“You’ve beaten it,” Aric said. With your defiling magic, he added mentally. He would have to see from what she had drawn the power for her spell. The fragile plants clinging desperately among the rocks? The dying soldiers and slaves in the toppled argosies? “Is it still alive?”
“Not for long,” Amoni said. She took a step back, got the cahulaks spinning again, and then brought a four-bladed head down against the drake’s skull.
Like a chunk of ice, the beast’s head shattered under the blow. A piece of its snout skidded almost to Aric’s feet, then stopped, thawing in the sunlight.
The floating boulders and debris blocking the caravan’s progress had fallen when the drake died. “Let’s get out of here,” Kadya said. “What’s left of us.”
Aric eyed her with suspicion. She had defeated the drake, it was true. But she had led them into its trap. She seemed to spare not an instant’s thought for those who had died. The ruined argosies would have to be dragged from their path, wounded mekillots put to death, dead soldiers buried and injured warriors tended to before they could leave.
She was a sorcerer, like her husband. Magic had ravaged Athas, turned it into the nearly dead husk of a planet that it was. Attitudes like hers—the belief that nothing was as important as satisfying whatever goal spurred her at the moment—had, Aric believed, been a big part of that.
He hadn’t been sure what he thought of her, until this moment.
Now that he knew, he didn’t like her a bit.
What Aric hadn’t anticipated was the impatience with which the soldiers waited for the earth drake to thaw. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as if they performed the other necessary tasks more slowly than they might have—even risking Kadya’s wrath—because they wanted to tear the thing’s body apart. Drake hide, it turned out, made good armor, lightweight compared to bone and chitin, and nearly as strong. He saw soldiers pulling its giant teeth and claws to use as weapons. Kadya herself took advantage of the opportunity to draw some of its blood into a phial.
Others, although they had missed out on the more useful parts, simply cut slices of the thing. “Is it good to eat?” Aric asked Amoni as they watched together. The other work had been completed; they waited only for the division of drake parts to be on the road. Kadya had made it clear that she was in a hurry.