Tell me what you see, I asked him.
“A whole lot of fog!” Ymmen said in annoyance, and suddenly my mind received an image—or a ghostly dragon-impression of an image—of a vast opaque swathe of silvered-white, dense and yet constantly shifting, with the occasional nubs of something darker poking from its roof—singular trees, or pinnacles of rocks.
That is what the Sea of mists looks like from the air? I thought. It really did look like a sea, I realized, and I tried to work out where our caravan of guards and slaves were in the middle of it all. I couldn’t even see the yellow haze of our lanterns, or the blue glow of the mechanical dragon’s eyes.
“No, nothing penetrates the mist; it covers any sound or smell,” Ymmen explained fiercely. “And it makes sound act strangely,”
I murmured that I understood. It had the same effect for us humans, too—even though the last wagon was only a few meters in front of me, sometimes I couldn’t hear the creak of its wheels at all, and other times I could hear them coming from either side of me, as the fog blanketed everything.
“But I heard something. Metal rattling. Feet splashing through water,” Ymmen said.
“Are you sure it’s not us?” I whispered, thinking that Abioye had been using his mechanical dragon, scouting through the fen, as I kept my eyes ahead focused on the dim yellow glow of the wagon’s lanterns, affixed to its sides. The rattling metal could well be the internal metal organs of the mechanical dragon grating and shifting, after all.
“I thought so. But now I am not sure,” Ymmen said, and I could feel his worry.
If I had been the one to hear these things, or if any of the others on the expedition had voiced these concerns, I would have brushed it off as mistaking the noises of our own passage through the Sea of Mists for another’s.
But I trusted Ymmen. His senses were far more acute than my own—or any humans—could ever be.
“How long has it been going on?” I whispered.
“Since you entered the mists,” Ymmen said, and I could feel—like a shadow behind his words—the angered crack of his wings as he flew faster somewhere high, high above us.
“What about the Red Hounds?” I asked, worried that those that had attacked us had returned to finish the job. “Did you track them?”
“Of course! I did. But they lit fires—set great swathes of Plains-meadows alight to obscure their passage. And suddenly, I could no longer smell them…” Ymmen said.
“The salve.” I suddenly remembered how Nol Baggar had instructed his men to put some ucky sort of salve onto all of us when he had taken us from the river. He had claimed that it would hide us from any senses that the mechanical dragons might have—but it had also appeared to work against real dragons as well!
“That has to be the answer,” I said. “The Red Hounds know of a mixture that makes them invisible to dragon-senses…”
“Not immune to my fire, though!” I could feel Ymmen’s outrage at being thus thwarted.
I knew that I couldn’t be sure that Ymmen was right, and that there really were any others out there in the Sea of Mists coming for us—but given what he had just told me, I couldn’t rule it out either.
“Keep an eye, I’m warning the others,” I whispered, breaking into a run towards the wagon, whose dull yellow light grew brighter and clearer, before revealing its bulk, slowly trundling ahead of me. I could see the guards on the back, huddled in their cloaks and mostly asleep or else hunkered over some game of dice or another in their despair.
“Warning!” I shouted out. “Warning, I think we’re being—” I shouted up at them, just as a small, fast-moving line of yellow flashed out of the mists.
Thock! I stumbled, surprised, and realized that there was a flaming arrow sticking out of the side of the wagon.
I was already too late, I realized, as suddenly more flaming darts hissed out of the Sea of Mists to fall amongst the expedition.
I could hear the horses screaming and stamping, as well as the shouts of alarm from Daza and guards alike.
“We’re under attack!” Homsgud’s loud voice reached me before being quickly swallowed up by the wall of fog.
I could see no farther than the immediate wagon in front of me, and the guards there were already shouting in alarm and fumbling for their crossbows. They’ll probably shoot me in this murk! I thought, and decided the safest place would be on the other side of the cart.
And they could shoot the Daza, I realized as I ran down the edge of the packed-earth path, with the guards frantic above me in the bed of the wagon. And the other guards.
There were more hisses as flaming arrows struck the ground ahead and the wagon wheels behind me. I could hear the tighter, sharper twangs of our guards’ crossbows firing back—but no answering cries of pain. Really—how, under the stars, did the guards expect to fight back against such an unseen enemy!
“Stay together!” I shouted as I crested the front of the wagon to see the first few shapes of the other Daza slaves ahead, some hunkering to the floor, others heading forward. They can’t run into the fog—they’ll die in the mud! I was frantic, reaching the first Daza huddled on the ground, patting him on the shoulders to let him know that he at least wasn’t alone—only to realize that he wasn’t moving at all.
In the watery yellow haze of the stalled wagon behind us, I turned the man over to see that he had an arrow in his stomach. He hadn’t even had a chance to see who had attacked him.
“SKREYARCH!” Ymmen’s roar of fury was in both my mind and my ears, as somewhere, far above us he flew.
“I cannot land! I cannot fire!” Ymmen bellowed with anger into my thoughts, making me shake from the force of his impotent rage. If he dared try to attack, he could just as easily incinerate all of us as any others who attacked us—
“Hold!” I insisted to the dragon quickly as I heard more hissing sounds of fired arrows and hit the ground. I still had the tent pole in my hands, the only weapon I had.
It would have to do.
“Stay together! Get under the wagons!” I shouted to the remaining Daza—who were little more than shadows and flitting shapes in the mists. I had no idea whether they even heard me, but all I could do now was urge them to the safest place possible under such circumstances.
I have to find Abioye, I thought, springing to my feet to race past the next wagon and the huddled forms of the Daza. I had only just passed it when I discovered where Abioye was, by a sudden flaring in the fog—a roar of burning red and a thunderous boom.
“Abioye!” I shouted, for a second fearful before a shadow rose out of the mists. It was the head and shoulders of the mechanical dragon, its eyes glowing a cold blue and its mouth spewing an explosive jet of flame. Time seemed to slow as I skidded to a halt and watched the dragon-flame shoot over the wagon, illuminating the terrified faces of slaves and guards alike—and revealing the tufts of reeds and mud slicks beyond our path—as well as the falling shapes of bodies, caught by the blast of fire. It was the mercenaries of the Red Hounds, I recognized their hardened jerkins, studded helmets, and dark cloaks, carrying bows and swords. They had come for us.