The river flowing blackly behind her and the forested bank beyond. The man on his knees with his bloody hand and him not looking for the knife but just reaching to his belt to draw his sword.
The world waiting.
She threw herself at him. Rising and stumbling and then pushing twice hard in the sliding gravel with her feet. Just those two chopping steps for force and lowering her shoulder.
She hit him hard in the jaw as he looked up, the sword free and in his hand. The bone splintering under her shoulder and the cracking as his teeth came together and a great guttural sound from him that was neither scream nor cry but something deeper and more real than either. The pain flaring and all the air going out of him and the noise involuntary in his torment.
They both went over in the dirt and she rolled to her feet with her shoulder screaming its own and his eyes were nothing but white. Both legs bent under him and the sword in the dirt at his side. A loose-wrapped black hilt and rusted blade.
She picked it up and turned and ran back up the alley to the street. There were people on the porches and she heard the horse and knew he was coming and what that meant. The crossbow must already be in his hands and if there was any distance when he saw her it would be no fight at all and so she must erase that distance now before she could see it and so she ran. Her body a machine thrust into this primal combat that would pay later but that now responded as it must and wrenched on.
Leaping up to a wooden porch running the length of the building. The wood hollow and loud under her feet. People watching her and others the road where he was coming. She listened for the horse and adjusted her gait just slightly, her eyes on the corner. He was rounding it tightly and fast and she stepped up onto the bench at the end of the porch and then pushed hard with one foot off the railing and threw herself into the air as the horse came around the corner.
She hit him in the side with her full body and he did not make a sound. At the last moment starting to turn toward her with the bow but it was too late and she knew it. They went over in a tangle of limbs and the horse stumbling back and she ran that rusted sword up to his neck as they fell. Not feeling it bite and pushing and then they hit the ground with her on top and that was what it took. Her body slamming into the blunted back edge of that blade and it pivoting through the side of his neck and both of them awash in blood.
She stood after a moment, trembling and covered in the hot blood. Her fingers tingling and not feeling like her own. All about the townspeople staring at her and everything very quiet.
Without a word she walked over to the man lying unconscious with his eyes rolled back and she put the sword through his neck until it stuck into that packed dirt of the road below. The blood boiling again and a thundering sound in her head.
She did not look at the people watching her and she turned and walked in that roaring silence to the river.
Chapter Twenty
They walked through the desolation and the dead. This city of absolute ruin. The white and gray stones of the walls torn and blackened. The bodies between them lying in all states, some half burned, others rent as if by a great sword too large for any but a god to wield. In other places just pieces of the dead as they'd been torn limb from limb and all those parts scattered.
The dragon had descended on this place and brought down that thin veil between this world and hell and for perhaps an hour hell had reigned.
They had fought, Brack knew, for there were soldiers and a scattering of weapons. Archers with broken bows. Arrows littering the ground, a sword with the blade snapped cleanly in the middle, the handle of an ax with the head torn off. Some of them had stood and fought and others had run and then turned to fight as it fell upon them and still others had just run and now lay dead with the marks of those claws in their backs.
In the end they were all the same and they were all dead. For that was how a dragon left a place when it came in fury on the wing and desired to kill. He'd seen ranks of men told for days they could kill it and aligned perfectly and armed with blades said to be made specifically for dragonflesh and he'd seen them all swept aside in the beast's first pass. He'd seen men rise up in desperation with nothing else but stones and field tools in their hands and he'd seen them torn apart.
It did not make a difference. It never did and it certainly had not here.
A main cobblestone road ran through the city from one wall to the other and it was that road that they took. The gate at the far end made of iron, lying off its hinges. Canted to the side and with enough room to let them pass under the wall. A deceptive distance that they could see as they walked but which would take them an hour to reach.
“How do you know?” Juoth said. His voice cracked and loud in this forsaken place.
“Look,” Brack said.
Juoth was quiet a moment. “You can know you haven't found her. But you can't know she's not here.”
Brack looked at him grimly, then nodded. “It's not hope, if that's what you think. I'm not that much of a fool. To say she's not here simply because she's dead and I can't face it. If she were I'd be looking for her body.”
“I didn't mean that.”
“You did mean it and you were right to.” Brack pointed ahead, over the wall. “But look there.”
Beyond the wall there stood a black tower of smoke, thick and condensed like a pillar. Swirling straight up into the sky and looking as if it could pierce the clouds. A writhing, living thing. Or very nearly.
Juoth stopped, and the girl beside him. Brack did not and when Juoth spoke his voice was faint. “Where is it?”
Brack stopped then and turned. Looking first at Juoth and then locking eyes with the girl. Something in them he had not seen before, a flickering as she watched him. This mute girl with fair hair who had been dead in that river.
“Darish-Noth,” he said softly. “The dragon is at Darish-Noth. And that's how I know she's not here. Because he's tormenting me with her. He wouldn't just kill her and leave her like this.” He pointed with his sword at the looming tower of smoke. “That's for me. Telling me where he is and where she is and what will happen to her. Just like this entire city.”
The girl began walking forward first, still silent. Stepping in bare feet among the rubble and shards. Juoth watched for a moment and then followed her, trotting quickly and passing her. Stopping right by Brack and hissing:
“Then you think it's a trap.”
Brack smiled. “Not precisely. But yes. After a fashion.”
“And you're going to go anyway?”
Brack was quiet. Then he nodded. The girl had come up and stood looking at him and he met her eyes and had to look away for what was in them.
“Yes,” he said. “I'm tired of being hunted. If it wants to hunt and it wants to use my sister to taunt and bait me, then so be it. I'll go and it will find out exactly what type of prey it has drawn out.”
They went on and the pillar of smoke seemed to grow before them. Brack did not watch the sky but knew the dragon must sense them. Perhaps had known they were in the field while they slept. And it waited for them, content in this knowledge.
It was a foolish way to kill, he thought. For there had been many other times when the kills would have been easier and faster. Going back to the keep in the burning yards and billowing clouds of steam as snow and ice a hundred years old melted. Or in the road as they went up from the farmer's house. Or it could have faced him in the ice field, could have come to that quartered horse as an equal combatant and brought on what end would be.