“Perhaps we should slide back toward Palishchuk, my lord,” Maryin offered quietly. “In reach of their ballistae—”
“Nay,” Sir Donegan began before Maryin had even finished. “The wyrm is too smart to be goaded near the town again. The half-orcs nearly brought it down the first time.”
“If it is the same dragon.”
That thought gave Donegan pause, for he could not dismiss the reasoning. Until a few months ago, Donegan had seen only one dragon in all of his twenty years of adventuring, and that was a small white up near the Great Glacier. With the coming of Zhengyi, the Knight of the Order had learned far more than ever he had intended regarding dragonkind, for evil chromatic wyrms of many colors filled the sky above the Witch-King’s advance. Reds and whites had laid waste to many villages, including Donegan’s home town, and the knight had done battle with a pair of blues, an encounter that had cost him a horse and had left a blackened line of lightning scarring across the back of his otherwise silvery armor.
Too many dragons, Donegan thought. Far too many dragons.…
Zhengyi stood on the northeastern bank of a small pond a few miles to the north of Palishchuk. Gone were the human trappings of his former self; he saw no need for such vanities out there, alone. He had his hood back, revealing his skull, the splotchy patches of hair, and the flaps of rotting skin. His robes smelled of mildew, hanging in tatters and showing green spots of mold. He clutched a twisted oaken staff, leaning on it heavily, and stared out to the south.
He saw their approach, the glint of the sun off their lance tips, off the armor of their mounts. He heard the thunder of hooves and marching soldiers.
The remnants of the Witch-King’s lips curled in a wicked smile. He thought of Byphast’s declaration: that she would not go against such a contingent except in her lair.
Any dragon would fight against any odds to protect its lair. To the death.
More flashes showed in the south. They followed the trail Zhengyi had dug with his magic, thinking it the tracks of a dragon.
He lifted his twisted oaken staff again, located a suitable spot, and uttered a command word. The ground erupted where he’d pointed his staff. Clumps of dirt flew into the air. The magic dug at the soft ground, bursts of energy tore up and threw aside yards of ground as efficiently and powerfully as a dragon’s talons might.
Zhengyi glanced southeast, to the distant troop of warriors. Perhaps they had noted the disturbance, perhaps not. They would be there soon enough, in any case. His spell completed, the deep hole dug, Zhengyi stepped into the water. It did not feel cold to the Witch-King, of course, for he could no longer experience any such sensations. In any case, no chill was more profound than the icy embrace of death.
His robes floated out behind him as he stepped in deeper, and soon he was under the water, not breathing, not moving. As the surface stilled, Zhengyi’s otherworldly eyes peered through the film to the northeastern bank. His trail would take them to the dig.
He clutched his staff more tightly, preparing the next spell.
Maryin crept along the muddy ground, staying low and letting her elven cloak, a garment of magical camouflage, hang down around her. She had left her horse back with Donegan and the others, who marched along some hundred feet behind her. Maryin’s job was to detect any potential ambushes, and to keep them moving toward the dragon. Given the dirt flying high into the air a few moments earlier, the knight had every reason to believe she had completed that task.
She had found another few tracks not far back, for the beast had apparently set down, but then she came upon a great hole, not far from the bank of a small pond. She crouched at the rim, considering the tunnel at the bottom.
“Did you go to ground, wyrm?” she whispered under her breath.
Maryin lingered for a few moments, then, hearing the approach of her companions, she straightened, glanced around, and moved her hand out from under the protection of her cloak, raising her fist high into the air.
She glanced at the water, not realizing that the eyes of the Witch-King looked back at her. Behind her, Sir Donegan slowed his contingent and approached with some caution. He walked his horse up beside the knight scout.
“Into the tunnel?” he asked, inspecting the hole. “Or is it a ruse, and the beast has gone under the pond?”
Maryin pulled back her cowl and shrugged. “I’m finding nothing to say it is and nothing to say it isn’t.”
“A wonderful scout you are.”
Maryin smiled at him. “I can track almost anything, and you know it well—even that little lass who thought to sneak into your room. But you cannot expect me to track a dragon that keeps taking to the sky. Do you think its beating wings will flatten grass from on high? Do you think the beast will cut a wake through the land as a boat might do across a lake?”
Sir Donegan laughed at her endless sarcasm and the wicked little jab against him. He still had a bone to pick with Maryin over that wench incident, for Donegan had been anticipating the visit, and the interception had not been appreciated. But that was a fight for another day, and a thought came to him.
“Has the water risen?”
Maryin looked at him, curious, then caught on and moved to the pond’s bank where she began inspecting for signs of a recent swell. The pond wasn’t very large, after all, and surely the displacement would be noticeable in the event a creature as large as a dragon had entered its depths.
A moment later, Maryin stood straight again and shook her head.
“And so the wyrm did not enter the pond,” Donegan said with a sigh. “Good enough, then.”
“There are no tracks from the hole to the water, and if the beast had taken to the air for any distance, we should have seen it—or should have heard the splash when it dived in. My guess is that the dragon, confident and oblivious to our pursuit, took to the tun—”
She hunched forward, and Donegan leaped back. Behind them, horses and soldiers bristled. From the hole came a low, throaty growl, a resonating rumble befitting a beast of a dragon’s stature.
“Form up!” Sir Donegan commanded.
He turned his charger and thundered back to the ranks. Maryin pulled her cowl back over her head and face and appeared to melt into the shadows at the pool’s edge.
The growl continued for a few moments, then gradually receded.
Lances were lowered, swords were drawn, and wizards and priests prepared their spells.
Then it was quiet once more. And through the long hush, no great monster sprang from the hole.
When Donegan and the others finally dared to approach, they stood on the edge of the deep, wide, funnel-shaped pit, looking to the broad tunnel at its base, which ran off both east and west.
“It would seem that we have found our wyrm,” Sir Donegan told his troop.
“Are we certain that a dragon dug this pit?” another knight asked.
“There are spells that can facilitate such things,” Fisticus the wizard replied. “As there are beasts.…”
“A dragon?”
“There is little turmoil a dragon cannot create,” Fisticus explained. “Such a wyrm as the one that attacked Palishchuk those days ago would have little trouble boring through the soft ground of the Vaasan summer.”
Sir Gavaland, another Knight of the Order, said, “One would think that if the dragon meant to announce its presence in such a manner, it would have burst forth to attack us in that moment of surprise.”
“If it knew we were here,” Donegan replied.
“The growl?”
“A purr of satisfaction before settling down to sleep?” the wizard offered. “Such beasts are known to growl as often as a man might sigh or yawn.”