Bone Trail Page 15

  And they had waited. And as they did so, Azura had realized that they weren’t the only ones on the trail of the kith. There were others. Loathsome, stinking creatures, wearing tattered clothes and bone masks, and the stench of death.

  Keld.

  If kith were vile, then the keld were a thousand times worse. A kith might kill a wyrme. A keld would capture it, enslave it, torture it, stunt it . . .

  Kesh and she were of the same mind. They would rid the weald not only of these kith who had humiliated him, but also of the keld following them, whose very presence in the high country was an abomination.

  Finally, when all five kith had set off further eastwards, and with the keld still in silent nighttime pursuit, Kesh and Azura went with them. The packs on the kiths’ backs were bulging and looked heavy, and Azura had guessed they were seeking out their own kind to trade and barter with. She and Kesh had tracked them, keeping to the high peaks, staying low on the horizon, out of view.

  The kith had found a trading place – though they did not stay there for long. And before the five of them returned on a westward trail, Azura had smelled blood on them.

  Whatever had happened, the kith were clearly shaken. The man, who was always so careful in his choice of camp, had called a halt in the foothills of the ridge country in a shallow gulch beneath a high outcrop – oblivious to the fact that, as the sun set, their keld ­pursuers were emerging from cracks and crevices in the rocks and taking up positions on the outcrop above them.

  The kith were down there now, huddled around a small fire, talking in low voices. All five of them. Together. And no watcher had been posted.

  As clouds scudded feverishly across the bright gibbous moon, Azura could sense Kesh’s keen excitement. He swallowed the last of the rustfly larvae and wiped his mouth, before climbing to his feet and peering down from their vantage point on the ridge-top ­opposite. When he spoke, his wyrmetongue was guttural and hard-edged, yet little more than a whisper.

  ‘Slowdeath to them all.’

  Thirty-One

  The air had chilled, the wind had dropped. The moon was large and plump and almost full, and when something flickered blinkfast across its face, Micah flinched.

  Broadspread wings. A long sinuous neck. A black lance, stark against the silver disc . . .

  A whitewyrme was circling high overhead. A whitewyrme with a rider.

  Micah turned to the others sitting around the campfire. Eli must also have seen the wyrme and rider, for he had his spitbolt ready in his hands and was kicking dust and gravel into the fire to extinguish it. Behind him, Ethan let out a stifled cry of alarm, while Cody ­scrambled to his feet. Cara reached out for Micah, but he barely noticed the touch of her hand. His stomach was turning somersaults.

  The whitewyrme folded back its wings and arrowed down through the air. A bright white jet of flame roared from parted jaws as it plunged earthwards.

  But not at Micah. Not at any of them.

  Instead, as they watched, the wyrme and rider swooped down towards the ridge of rocks above them, where a number of figures had just appeared, their outlines dark and jagged against the moonlit sky. They wore facemasks and breastplates of bone-armour, and carried weapons that glinted in the silver moonlight. Bone-hammers and rockspikes. Jaghook flails. Cudgels, sidewinders, longknives . . .

  ‘Keld,’ Eli muttered. He backed away from the smoking remains of the fire, his blue eyes fixed on the crag above, and Micah and the others followed. ‘Dozens of them . . . I should have spotted them before. How could I have been so careless?’

  ‘You mean they’ve been following us?’ said Micah, his voice taut and breathless.

  Eli nodded grimly. ‘Sure as hell ain’t no coincidence they’re here. You mess with the keld, lad, and they don’t ever forget it.’

  Micah felt Cara’s grip on his arm tighten as the whitewyrme hovered over the ridge and spat jets of flame down at the cowering figures, forcing them to scatter for cover. In the fiery light he could see a woman in a black cloak. She was standing her ground, her eerie snow-white features impassive as she stared up at the wyrme. A group of keld formed a protective shield around her.

  With quick darting movements, the kin on the wyrme’s back stabbed downwards with the black lance. Three keld screamed and toppled forwards, their cream-white bone-armour punctured and spurting blood as they fell from the crag. A fourth followed, body ablaze and flailing about uselessly as he plunged. They landed in a clatter of bone-splinter and twisted weaponry around the campfire where, moments before, Micah and the others had sat hunched and exhausted and oblivious to the impending danger.

  The cloying smell of cave-mould and crevice-must filled Micah’s nostrils, followed by the acrid stench of burning hair and flesh. Sweeping Cara along with him, Micah fled, following Eli, Ethan and Cody down into a narrow, shadow-filled gulch some way off.

  Above the crag, the wyrme and its rider dodged and ducked in the air as the keld sent a fusillade of rockspikes and sidewinder bolts up at them. With twisting movements and scything claws, the wyrme deflected the missiles as best it could, spitting out jets of hissing flame, while the hooded kin on its back wielded the black lance with deadly accuracy.

  In the darkness of the gulch, Micah could hear Cara breathing heavily close beside him. Ethan’s voice sounded, croaky, quavering.

  ‘The wyrme and the rider,’ he whispered, as half a dozen more keld fell in flaming arcs down towards the camp fire. ‘I recognize them . . . They’re the ones that tried to kill me.’

  ‘Happen you’re right, lad,’ came Eli’s voice. ‘Reckon they were tracking us too. Him and his wyrme. And would have finished off what they started, had they not spotted them there keld about to do the same thing. Kin hate keld worse even than kith, which is to our good fortune.’

  Micah looked up. The top of the crag was firebright illuminated by the human torches of burning keld, and in the flickering light Micah could see that the wyrme had been hit in several places. The white scales on the chest and flanks were streaked with rivulets of dark blood – though hovering above the ridge, the creature seemed oblivious to the wounds.

  The kin had pulled back his hood, and Micah now saw that Ethan had been right. It was the kinyouth with the flame-red hair. His thin narrow face stared down below at the devastation he and his whitewyrme had wrought.

  Keld fighters, bleeding, smouldering. The corpse of an obese keld woman, squabbling crevicewyrmes tearing strips of flesh from her belly. Two dead figures lying side by side, one wearing a high collared velvet coat; one without a nose, his ruined face fixed in a rictus of horror and surprise: both with thick gleaming blood on their chests where the kin’s blackpine lance had skewered their keld hearts.

  In among them was the woman in the black cloak, standing hunched over the bodies of her followers. The kin was taunting her with delicate thrusts of his razor-sharp lance and high chittering burst of wyrmetongue as his wyrme circled low overhead. All at once, the woman straightened up, her white face twisted and contorted with hate. From the folds of her cloak she drew out something round and metallic and the size of a clenched fist. And as the short sparking fuse fizzed at the top of the globe, Micah recognized it as a keld grenade – the same sort of weapon the winter caller had used . . .

  Kesh thrust down with his kinlance. The blood roared in his ears and a savage delight made his heart race.

  The bloodfrenzy was upon him.

  Azura sensed it as she opened wide her jaws and sent a jet of flame hurtling down at the white-faced keld woman below. She was holding a smooth pebble, shiny and silver, in her outstretched hand, but recoiled as the flames hit the rock at her feet.

  The rest of the keld lay dead or dying around her. Despite their fearsome weaponry and hideous appearance, these cave dwellers had proved no match for a battle-hardened wyrme and its kin. Up here in the open air Kesh and Azura had skewered and roasted the sub­t
erranean creatures like so many fat damsel grubs.

  Dead, they were all dead – all except for the white-faced hag. And she had nothing left but this stone to throw at him. Kesh tossed his head back and let out a shriek of triumphant laughter. He would finish her now. Run her through with his lance. And then he and Azura would take their sweet time with the kith who were ­cowering in the gulch below . . .

  Micah watched the keld woman swing her arm and hurl the grenade.

  It arced up over the wyrme’s head and, with a ­dazzling flash and a head-splitting crack, exploded in mid-air. A cloud of dirty yellow smoke, as dense as bollcotton, bubbled and billowed and rolled over and over itself as it expanded.

  Twisting and writhing, the wyrme came tumbling out of the boiling pall of smoke, her wings beating and neck arched, before regaining her balance and steadying herself in the sky.

  There was no rider upon her back.

  The smoke cleared. There was no sign of the keld woman in the black cloak either – but among the smoking remains of the keld dead on the ridge-top, Micah saw the white gleam of soulskin. The kinyouth lay in a twisted heap, like a settler child’s discarded ragdoll, his broken limbs bent at grotesque angles; his face a bloody mask of red.

  The whitewyrme had spotted the body too. She came down to land on the crag, silently, in the way of whitewyrmes, folding her great wings as her hindlegs touched the rock. She stood tall, her sinuous neck bent in a graceful curve and yellow eyes fixed on the dead youth at her feet.

  ‘Kesh. My Kesh . . .’ Her voice was like the wind ­soughing through pinnacle pines. Slowly, gently, the whitewyrme inclined her neck and nudged the corpse with her muzzle. Then, eyes pale yellow with sorrow, she rose back to her full height, stretched her wings and let out a piercing cry of grief that made Micah shrink back into the shadows of the dry gulch.

  Beside him, Cara was shivering uncontrollably, and Micah reached out and drew her close to him, folding his arms round her trembling body. He could feel her breath, quavering and warm, against his neck.

  When he looked up, the whitewyrme had launched herself back into the air and was flapping slowly away to the west, the limp body of her dead kin cradled in her foreclaws.

  Eli had risen to his feet and was walking back over to the charred remnants of the campfire, followed by Ethan and Cody, who were picking their way carefully through the dead keld.

  ‘Maker knows, we’ve been lucky,’ Eli said, retrieving his rucksack and dusting it off.

  ‘Lucky!’ Ethan exclaimed. ‘You call being hunted by wyrme­kin, shot at by scrimshaw thieves and tracked down by these . . . these . . . bone-faced monsters lucky?’

  Eli pulled the pack onto his shoulders with a shrug. ‘No, lad,’ he told him, ‘but being alive to tell the tale surely is.’

  Thirty-Two

  Far to the west, a full season’s flight away from the valley country and the galleries they had abandoned, the whitewyrme colony was stirring. Sick, forlorn and out of place in this strange land, they awoke to face another day as the sun rose over a landscape of basalt blocks and obsidian flow; a landscape crisscrossed by lava-glow crevices and deep ravines.

  At the lip of the greatest of them – a broad V-shaped chasm – dark shapes were moving back and forth against a backdrop of crimson smoke and great spewing gobs of liquid rock that turned from white to yellow to red. Thunderstorms rumbled and growled on the horizon as they teetered on spindly legs of lightning around the ring of mountains, while sulphurous smoke twisted up from the ravines below and hung over the rockscape like swathes of yellowstain muslin.

  Standing on a rock bluff, Alsasse, the leader of the colony, extended his snow-white neck stiffly and surveyed the world around him. It seemed half-formed and unknowable. His nostrils flared at the pungent odours of phosphorus and sulphur and molten ores.

  It was furnace-hot here, far from his beloved valley country – a land of highstacks and deeplakes, plateau­lands of swaying grass, waterfalls and green havens and sweet babbling snowmelt streams. There, the air was cool and the sky was clear and blue, unblurred by smoke or steam. And rising above the rolling grasslands was the glistening sandstone fortress of the wyrme ­galleries . . .

  The air seemed to tremble like boiling water and, immersed inside its searing heat, the dark shapes of the blueblackwyrmes moved over the landscape like basalt boulders come to life. And all the while, from the great chasm which glowed and throbbed like a raw wound, more blueblackwyrmes were emerging. This was their home, and the whitewyrmes were their guests – but unwelcome, barely tolerated.

  The ancient whitewyrme craned his neck, wincing as he did so, and peered down into the chasm. Hardbake mud galleries lined the curving walls of the glowing abyss; landing-perches and fluted uprights scored the rock. And from them the blueblackwyrmes were launching themselves into the air, slicing through the wreaths of smoke on knife-edge wings as they rose on thermals that carried them up to the lip of the chasm.

  The whitewyrme was about to turn away when his attention was caught by a blueblackwyrme standing braced at the edge of a steaming, algae-fringed pool close by. It was a wyrmeling, little more than half grown, yet already larger than the whitewyrme himself, with huge black talons and powerful jaws. Its stout muscular neck was stuck out rigid over the bubbling water, and it was watching attentively, oblivious to the toxic fumes. Saltflies and sulphur bugs buzzed round its unblinking gem-blue eyes and parted muzzle.

  All at once, there was a flash of orange and red as a small pot-bellied wyrme launched itself off the far side of the pool. It flapped its angular wings and snatched a brace of plump damsel flies from the air.

  At the selfsame moment, the blueblackwyrmeling lunged forward, wings raised for balance. It clamped its jaws round the pot-bellied wyrme, puncturing its gut, and shook its head sharply. Then, with an odd delicacy, it removed the limp creature from its mouth with its ­foreclaws.

  From the other side of the pool, there came a grunt of approval, and the whitewyrme saw one of the black boulders stand up and reveal itself to be a full-grown blueblackwyrme. It inclined its head as the wyrmeling held up its dead prey.

  ‘Tear the head off, then the wings,’ the blueblackwyrme growled.

  ‘Like this?’ the wyrmeling said as it obeyed its parent’s instruction.

  ‘That’s the way,’ the full-grown blueblack encouraged. ‘Now eat the rest.’

  The whitewyrme had to concentrate to understand their harsh guttural words, yet their intent was clear. These great lumbering creatures were no different from the whitewyrmes. Like them, they were devoted to their young, teaching them, nurturing and nourishing them.

  And yet, of course, there was a difference. For unlike this robust wyrmeling, with its bright blue eyes and gleaming blueblack scales, the pale wyrmelings of the whitewyrmes were failing to thrive.

  The ancient whitewyrme turned his head and looked back across the savage landscape to the sulphur lakes where the whitewyrme colony was roosting, far from the glowing chasm. They had chosen to settle away from the furnace heat of the chasm. Yet they could not escape the miasmal air, nor the sulphurous water, and the prey they consumed – though it eased their hunger – made them sick. Every day, more of their number were dying.

  From his vantage point, the whitewyrme could see the colony in the distance responding to the rising sun – glitters of white that flecked the black shores of the sulphur lakes. He stepped down from the rock bluff, scree shifting between his clawed feet. His legs felt heavy. His head swam. And as he stretched out his great wings and launched himself into the air, he let out a low groan.

  The thermals took the whitewyrme effortlessly over the dark landscape, his ruddering tail guiding him down towards the bubbling lakes. He circled over the colony on the shore of the largest lake, his yellow eyes bright and glowing.

  An ancient female below him bent her head and plucked listlessly at scales that we
re coming loose on her breast and haunches. Two males had to help each other to stand. Their necks hung low, inverse arches, and their legs bowed. A female nuzzled her motionless wyrmeling before letting out a long, low, keening cry of anguish. The cry was taken up by others close by.

  The whitewyrme came in to land a little way off.

  ‘We lost another last night, Alsasse,’ came a rainswirl voice, and Alsasse turned to see a second wyrme approaching him, deep sorrow in his eyes.

  Alsasse felt his stomach cramp. ‘Another?’ he said. ‘Who this time, Alucius?’

  The wyrme dipped his head. He was the second of the host, the largest and strongest of their number, yet as he came closer Alsasse noted that even he was being laid low by their surroundings. He was walking with a hinking limp, there were open cankers at the side of his mouth and when he spoke, his voice was weak and reedy.

  ‘Alwynia.’

  Alsasse let out a small moan of despair. Alwynia. One of the young females. Alucius’s mate.

  ‘She laid a wyve in the nest we had prepared together – on the bluffs above the lake,’ said Alucius. He inclined his head, as though the weight of his words were pulling it down. ‘She was greatly weakened,’ he added, ‘and died shortly before daybreak.’

  ‘Alucius, I am sorry . . .’

  But the second in the host looked away. ‘The wyve perished also,’ he continued, and he shook his head. ‘Like all those others we brought with us, it needed the gentle warmth of the highstacks back in the valley country, not the searing heat of this volcanic inferno.’ He fixed the ancient leader of the colony with his amber-shot eyes. ‘Alsasse, we are sick. Our young are dying and our eggs are barren. There is no future for the colony in this place . . .’

  Just then, from behind them, there came the sound of raised guttural voices. Alsasse and Alucius turned their heads and looked back towards the great abyss in the ­distance, where groups of blueblackwyrmes were ­gathering, heads back and necks craned, staring up at the sky. The two whitewyrmes followed their gaze.