Bone Trail Read online

Page 21


  ‘From the ridge country to the west of here,’ the kith said slowly, beads of sweat collecting on his broad forehead and trickling down the sides of his face. ‘Been rounding up them greywyrmes that pass through there . . .’

  Thrace’s lance quivered, and the kith flinched ­nervously.

  ‘Not to kill, you understand,’ he said shakily, attempting to smile. ‘No, but to harness like. To send ’em back to the badlands.’

  The kith glanced across at the whitewyrme, whose eyes, blood-red and furious-looking, unnerved him even more than the kingirl’s lance.

  ‘We don’t treat ’em rough,’ he said, a boyish sincerity to the words. ‘Real gentle we are with the great brutes. Have to be, else Solomon Tallow don’t pay us when we get ’em to that stockade of his . . .’

  He was babbling now, in a frantic attempt to keep the lance from skewering him or the whitewyrme from turning him into a flaming torch, like it had done to poor Israel.

  ‘Wyrmes are wonderful creatures, their ways strange and wondrous to behold, and I for one don’t hold with hurting them, not one bit . . .’

  ‘Tallow?’ Thrace said. She knew that name. He was the leader of the gang that had seized the wyrmeling Asa, sold him to the keld . . .

  ‘Solomon Tallow,’ the kith repeated, nodding ­furiously. ‘He has this plan to use the greywyrmes. Harvest their precious flameoil. Use them as pack animals to take folks from the plains up to the high country, in a way their mules and ox cannot on account of the wealdsickness . . . Gathered hundreds of folk at the new stockade, he has, and thousands more will follow them, I reckon . . .’

  He stopped suddenly, aware that he’d gone too far; said too much.

  ‘You kith,’ said the kingirl, her voice soft as a sigh to the man’s ears, yet fearful. ‘You spread your taint, des­troying everything you touch. Wyrmes. Wyrmelings . . .’

  She leaned forward, and as the lance slid smoothly into the man’s chest, she brought her face close to his, her beautiful dark eyes staring into his startled, disbelieving ones. She twisted the lance.

  ‘Wyves,’ she whispered.

  Thrace stepped back. She was breathing hard, her heart hammering in her chest, and the cold fury that came upon her whenever she encountered the murderous kith made her body quiver and muscles flex with a life of their own.

  ‘What did he say?’ Aseel’s voice, soft and rustling like wind through half-summered trees, calmed her, soothed her.

  She slumped to her knees, suddenly exhausted.

  ‘The kith said there are more coming,’ she said in comfort­ing, sonorous wyrmetongue – though the words themselves made her want to sob. She could see the fire in Aseel’s eyes flare once more. ‘Thousands of them are gathering in the badlands at a place he called the new stockade.’

  Aseel dipped his great head, his eyes half-closed and nostrils flared. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, little more than a whisper. Weary. Full of sorrow.

  ‘The new stockade,’ he repeated.

  Forty-Two

  Cara teased the last tangle from her wet hair and placed the fine-toothed scrimshaw comb on the rock beside her. She was aware that Cody was watching her with those green eyes of his. He’d been watching her for some time now – ever since she’d stepped out from behind the wedge-shaped rock bluff, with the spring water pouring down into the clear pool at its base.

  When they had stumbled across it, Eli had seen at once how Cara’s face had lit up at the prospect the spring and pool afforded for bathing and washing out clothes. Cody had noticed too, though Micah, as usual, had not. Instead, he’d wandered further along the trail with that sad haunted look he’d had since the three of them had returned from gathering the manderwyrme eggs.

  Eli had crossed to the rope-like waterfall, cupped his hands in the twist of water and drunk long and deep, then wiped his dripping hands over his forehead, down the back of his neck. Arms raised, he’d sniffed tentatively at his underarms and grinned.

  ‘Happen I’ve had just about enough of stinking like a polecat,’ he’d said. ‘What do you say we stop here and indulge in some ablutions?’

  He’d looked across at Cara, who had laughed ­delightedly and agreed at once.

  ‘Now, we menfolk’ll step back a ways,’ he’d ­continued, glancing at Ethan and Cody, ‘while you take yourself over there, Cara, and bathe.’

  Ethan had giggled, and Cody had blushed furiously, but both of them followed the cragclimber back round to the other side of the bluffs, out of sight. And Cara had wasted no time.

  From her backpack, she had retrieved one of the pale-green cakes of soap she’d purchased back at the scrimshaw den, and soon the pool frothed and the air was perfumed by the sweet fragrance of myrtle. She had washed herself, then her clothes, and finally, luxuriously, her long auburn hair, the grime and dust of days out on the trail dissolving away in the clear cool springwater. Then she’d slipped on the white linen shift that she’d been saving since the last wash at the falls, so long ago, and stepped round the corner of the rockbluff to begin combing her hair.

  Ethan and Eli were off gathering brushwood some distance away, and there was no sign of Micah. But Cody was there. He was sitting on a rock, pretending to sort through his pack – but watching her all the while.

  Not for the first time, Cody was struck by the ­kithgirl’s beauty. She had finished combing her hair. Now it framed her face, emphasizing the soft golden tan of her skin, the fullness of her lips and the delicate band of freckles that crossed the bridge of her nose and crinkled up when she smiled. And those eyes; bright and gleaming, like shards of polished turquoise . . .

  They were looking at him now, with a mixture of amusement and tenderness that set Cody’s heart thumping. Cody looked down, overcome with shyness. He found himself staring at the scrimshaw medallion of the dragon, nestling against the gentle heave of her breasts.

  His medallion. The one that he, Cody, had given her. Not Micah’s. Micah’s one was lost. She was wearing his one. His, his, his . . .

  ‘Where do you think Micah’s got to?’ Cara asked.

  The small question had come seemingly out of nowhere. It jangled inside Cody’s head. Micah was always there on her mind. Even now.

  ‘Daydreaming as usual, I reckon,’ he said wryly. He laughed, to show that he meant no disrespect by the words, even though he did, and was relieved when Cara laughed back.

  ‘Or checking the horizon for wyrmes and their riders,’ she said, and if she felt she was betraying Micah it did not show.

  She got up and walked over to where Cody was sitting, the contents of his pack spread out at his feet. Her white shift, Cody noticed, clung to her body, still wet from the pool. He tried not to notice how the linen ­contoured her breasts, her hips; how the hem reached only a little below the top of her legs. Instead, he looked up into her eyes as she sat down beside him. And this time, he did not look away.

  ‘Got any other trinkets to give to me?’ said Cara, smiling mischievously as she fingered the medallion round her neck.

  Cody’s expression was serious, his eyes fixed on Cara’s. ‘Don’t have nothing to give,’ he said quietly. ‘No wealth. No possessions. No great learning, nor fancy words . . . All I’ve got is myself.’ He paused and his eyes glistened as he spoke. ‘But I would gladly give myself to you, Cara, body and soul, if you ever asked or wanted me to.’

  Cara swallowed. She looked at him closely, this hard tough young man, whose rages frightened her but whose sensitivity and passion warmed and agitated her like she was a pot of water set upon a fire to boil. She reached out, stroked his cropped hair, her hand resting at the back his head, which she pulled gently towards her. She bent forward and placed her lips upon his forehead. Kissed him once. Then again.

  Cody looked up. A smile flickered. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, brought her closer.

  Their lips pressed together;
parted. Their tongues touched . . .

  At that moment, Micah emerged from round the side of the cliff, and stopped dead. He stood for a moment, unnoticed and unmoving, then turned away and disappeared back the way he’d come.

  Forty-Three

  The sky was full of whitewyrmes and their riders. The girl, Zar, and her young wyrme, Asa, hesitated on the rockslab ledge of an upper gallery and looked out into the bright dew-soaked morning.

  High above them, the two kingirls from the jagged ridges, their eyes sparkling brightly from behind the masks of black sootgrease that crossed their faces, were engaged in some kind of rolling manoeuvre in the air. The young male whitewyrmes they rode pitched and rolled in somersaults and figures of eight, the daubed black markings that encircled their necks seeming almost to flash as they did so.

  To the east, over the rolling grasslands, the three kin from the black pinnacles, their thin plaits writhing like snakes, were in the middle of an aerial mock-battle with three kin from the western saltflats. The black pinnacles’ wyrmes were young and agile. They swooped and dived with great skill and ease, but the ancient battle-scarred wyrmes from the saltflats were stronger and had guile born of long experience. As Zar and Asa watched, they outstripped the black pinnacles’ wyrmes in straight flight with strong measured wingbeats, then turned and blocked them with the swishing curves of their great tails.

  To the west, meanwhile, the kin from the yellow peaks were skimming over the blue-grey mountains, their jagged saw-edge peaks seeming to stretch away into the distance for ever. Since the incident with the cragclimber and his group in the grasslands, when Kesh had wanted to torture the kithyouth, Zar and Asa had got to know the yellow peaks’ kin well.

  Kesh had not returned, and Ramilles and his wyrme, Aluris, were the leaders now. The others, Timon, Baal and Finn and their wyrmes Aakhen, Amir and Avaar looked up to them and followed their lead. Now, as the dawn sun glinted on their white scales, they rose and fell on the distant thermals in an undulating formation, with Aluris and Ramilles out in front.

  Zar smiled. She liked the big brawny kin with his curly black hair and piercing blue eyes. Like an older brother, he’d been kind to her, and Aluris had been kind to Asa, teaching him how to manoeuvre in the sky, taking advantage of updraughts and anticipating air currents, and how to fly through ravines and canyons no wider than a wingspan.

  To the north and south, more whitewyrmes and their riders were on the wing. Everyone, it seemed to Zar, had left the galleries to patrol the skies. Eighty, ninety wyrmekin, Zar wasn’t sure. But what she did know was that she and Asa were the youngest, with the most to learn and the least time to do so. She wished Thrace and Aseel were here, but they had been gone for two days now, and hadn’t told her where they were going . . .

  Next to her, Asa gave a low growl, his eyes darkening to a rich amber. Blinking into the sunlight, Zar followed his gaze. High over the smoke-hazed mountaintops to the west, there was something twisting and writhing in the sky like a stormcloud on the horizon. As the dark cloud came closer, growing larger, the sun picked out shades of burnished black and blue as it flexed and bowed – and revealed itself to be a vast flock of wyrmes.

  They spread out across the sky, the sound of their wingbeats growing loud and insistent. Their blunt-muzzle heads and vast wings stood out stark against the pale-blue sky. They were huge and brutal-looking, and Zar had never seen wyrmes like them before.

  Behind them she saw that there was a second flock of smaller wyrmes. They were white and silver in the morning light, whitewyrmes like Asa, flying in a rigid formation and seeming almost to hang back. As the great host of blueblackwyrmes approached, Zar’s stomach lurched when she realized that Ramilles and the yellow peaks kin were directly in their path.

  ***

  All at once, a blueblackwyrme broke formation and dived down at Ramilles and Aluris, a jet of yellow flame flaring from its parted jaws. Ramilles ducked down and pulled up his hood as the searing heat scorched the air.

  This wyrme seemed intent on killing him. But why?

  Quick and nimble, Aluris beat her wings and soared up over the shoulder of the oncoming wyrme. Ramilles twisted round and lunged with his kinlance as they passed overhead. It scored a line down the neck of the massive blueblackwyrme, then tore through its wing, leaving it gaping and ragged.

  The wyrme went into a tailspin and, as Ramilles and Aluris swerved back round in the air, they saw the fatally wounded creature crash into the ground far below with a splintering thud and a puff of smoke and dust.

  Ramilles trembled. He hated to kill a wyrme. But it had given him no choice . . .

  Just then, an agonized scream split the sulphur-taint air, and Ramilles turned to see that a dozen more blueblackwyrmes had descended and were in pursuit of Timon and Aakhen. They opened their jaws and the whitewyrme and her kin were engulfed in flame. As Aluris and Ramilles watched, horrified, the wyrme and rider turned about and flew back into the attacking throng. As Timon screeched, his blazing kinlance took out one, then another of the blueblacks. Then a third. Their bodies tumbled down out of the sky – along with the kin and his wyrme, spent now, as they arched down to earth like a blazing comet.

  ‘Why?’ Ramilles cried out in wyrmetongue. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘The taint!’ roared the blueblackwyrme spiralling towards him, his voice harsh and guttural. ‘You bear the taint!’

  Behind him, forty more took up the cry. ‘The taint! The taint!’

  All around Ramilles and Aluris, the sky was full of the monstrous wyrmes, huge and ungainly in flight but immensely strong and with flaming breath that had an awesome reach. Aluris flew into the midst of the throng, dodging slashing claws and heavy clubbing tails, the blueblacks unable to breathe fire at such close quarters for fear of incinerating each other.

  There were hundreds of them, and Ramilles cut a swathe through the great dark shapes with his kinlance, allowing his whitewyrme to soar upwards into the thin clear air high above. He looked back down and struggled to make sense of the unfolding horror. The blueblack flock were passing below. They swept up Baal and Amir and tore them bloodily limb from limb. Finn and Avaar turned and tried to outrun the host, only to be consumed by jets of flame.

  Aluris flew higher. Ramilles’ heart was pounding; his stomach churned. The lance in his hand felt cold and clammy, and sweat ran into his eyes, making them sting. He looked around desperately for the rest of the kin – from the black pinnacles, the jagged ridges, the saltflats . . . Instead, his gaze fell upon the host of wyrmes hovering over the peaks some distance to the west.

  Whitewyrmes.

  He thought they had abandoned the galleries for ever. Yet here they were, back again, and with a horde of savage wyrmes, unknown in the valley country, to do their fighting for them. He didn’t understand. Whitewyrmes might have shunned kin but they had never sought to kill them – until now.

  Ramilles tore his gaze away from the host and looked back over his shoulder. Beneath him, he felt Aluris shudder.

  The blueblackwyrmes were nearing the sandstone bluffs of the wyrme galleries, their guttural cries echoing through the colonnaded caverns. There they were, the wyrmekin, strung out in a thin line of glittering white. Their faces were shadowed beneath raised hoods and their black lances were levelled as they braced themselves to receive this sudden onslaught. The eyes of the whitewyrmes they rode blazed blood-red as they hovered in the air on steadily beating wings.

  Ramilles tore off his hood, eyes stinging and a lump in his throat.

  As he watched, helpless, the blueblack host ­thundered into the thin streak of white. The line of wyrmekin quivered, bent back, but for a moment refused to break. The whitewyrmes and their kin were holding their own, their black lances stabbing out in front of them, wreaking havoc. Wyrme after wyrme tumbled and crashed into the canyon beneath the cliffs. But the blueblackwyrmes kept attacking with relentless ferocity.
Abruptly the line broke, and with a low moaning sigh, the whitewyrmes and their riders scattered – only to be picked off individually, or in two and threes, by the pitiless horde. The barkshod kin from the saltflats, the masked kingirls from the jagged ridges; Mara and Keel, from the southern grasslands . . .

  Ramilles could watch no more. Nor could Aluris. She arced round sharply and sped down into a jagged ravine to the south.

  Looking back, Ramilles saw the hovering host of whitewyrmes pull back their wings and glide slowly down towards the wyrme galleries. Victory was theirs. Yet even at this great distance, he thought he saw sorrow in the stoop of their sinuous necks and the pale yellow of their eyes.

  ‘We must leave this place,’ Zar said breathlessly.

  The sounds of the battle far above reverberated down through the tunnels and echoed round the clawscritch walls of the nursery chamber.

  ‘Leave?’ Aylsa looked up from the infant boy curled up fast asleep in the folds of her coiled body. ‘To go where?’

  ‘To the east,’ said Asa, ‘to find Thrace and Aseel. They’ll know what to do.’

  Zar looked into Aylsa’s eyes. ‘Monstrous blueblack wyrmes,’ she said tearfully. ‘A vast flock from out of the west are attacking all the kin and their wyrmes without mercy.’

  The whitewyrme dipped her head and nuzzled the infant awake. ‘So they’ve come east,’ she said, and when she looked up, her yellow eyes glowed pale with fear and sorrow. ‘It is the taint,’ she said, climbing to her feet, the boy cradled in her claws. ‘They will kill all they find . . .’

  She walked across the chamber and out into the tunnel beyond. Zar and Asa followed, comforted momentarily to be with the older wyrme, who seemed to understand something of this new and unexpected terror.

  ‘Hush, little one,’ Aylsa purred to the infant in her arms, breathing out sweet aromatic smoke as she spoke. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said reassuringly, even though, deep down inside, she knew that it would not.