Bone Trail Page 24

  ‘Just in case,’ the head of the family, a broad-­shouldered father of six youths, kept telling them. ‘Nothing to worry about. But just in case . . .’

  The pretty young widow, Mary, was scanning the groups of settlers for any sign of her son.

  ‘Josiah!’ she called. ‘Josiah, where are you?’

  She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t see him anywhere.

  Up ahead was Solomon, his shaven head gleaming in the sun, but for once Josiah did not seem to be with him. And as Mary watched the gangmaster load the great sidewinder mounted on a metal brace to his greywyrme’s neck-saddle and aim it at the sky, her heart missed a beat. Something was not right. Below him, holding the greywyrme’s tether, his chief wyrmehandler – Enoch, she thought his name was – pushed two fingers into his mouth and blew hard, and the air rang out with a strident whistle.

  At his signal, the other wyrmehandlers released the greywyrme tethers they had been clinging to and swung the spitbolts and sidewinders from their backs. Then, gripping them in their hands, they dropped to their knees and pointed them skywards.

  Finding themselves free, the terrified greywyrmes pawed the ground, then reared up and roared, their eyes rolling back in their skulls. One of them managed to slip the ropes that hobbled its rear legs, and it stampeded off across the grasslands, bellowing raucously at the top of its lungs. Two more went with it, screeching with fear. Ropes came loose upon their backs, tarpaulins flapped, and sacks and crates tumbled to the ground as they stumbled on . . .

  All at once, from high above, an earsplitting screech drowned out their pitiful cries. The flock of huge blueblackwyrmes was almost overhead, and one of them broke formation, folded back its wings and swooped down suddenly out of the sky.

  The unhobbled greywyrme glanced up, white-eyed, and lumbered on as fast as it could. The two others, their rear legs still bound together, stumbled and lurched; awkward, ungainly. And as the horrified settlers watched, the blueblackwyrme opened its massive jaws and released a bolt of white-hot flame that engulfed both greywyrmes in a vast fireball, before swooping down on the third.

  Gideon clamped a hand over Gideon Junior’s eyes. Bekkah’s mother hugged her daughter even tighter and turned away. From the settlers all round them, a low despairing moan went up.

  Screaming with pain, the blazing greywyrmes ­staggered on, like huge bonfires on legs, flaming fragments of rope and wyrmeskin fluttering to the ground in their wake and starting small fires in the parched grass. Meanwhile, half a dozen blueblackwyrmes had joined the first, and were tearing the third greywyrme limb from limb, the contents of the various loads on its back being thrown high in the air with each slashing blow of their talons.

  The settlers had seen enough. They abandoned their greywyrmes, their possessions; they tore the heavy packs from their shoulders and tossed them aside, and they scattered in all directions, dashing off into the shoulder-high grass. Crouched down, the wyrmehandlers watched them go. They primed their spitbolts. They waited . . .

  Moments later, a dark shadow engulfed them as the blueblack flock blotted out the morning sunlight.

  ‘Fire!’ Solomon Tallow roared, pulling the trigger of his sidewinder as he did so.

  The heavy bolt thudded into the neck of the blueblackwyrme that was heading out of the sky straight towards him, a jet of fire roaring from its gaping mouth. For a moment, the creature seemed almost to hesitate in the air, before crashing down to the ground. Its jaw snapped shut. The flames were extinguished.

  From behind the gangmaster, the wyrmehandlers fired, then swiftly reloaded and fired again. The air hissed with the sound of the flying bolts and the dull thud of metal on scale as they found their mark. A dozen or more mighty blueblackwyrmes came plummeting down to earth, some dying in an instant, others lying wounded and wheezing and gasping for breath.

  Far above Solomon and his gang of wyrmehandlers, the flock of blueblackwyrmes began to circle, spiralling down to attack in waves, their open jaws spitting jets of fire. Six more greywyrmes were incinerated where they stood. The handlers crouching down beside them jumped back to escape the inferno – only to be seized by huge curved talons and lifted, wriggling and squirming, high into the air, then dropped.

  ‘Enoch! Tam! To me!’ Solomon bellowed. He swung his mounted sidewinder to the left and fired another bolt. ‘Isaac! Shadrak! And you, Lev! Over here!’

  Below him, the greywyrme bucked and struggled.

  ‘Get rid of the load!’ the gangmaster ordered the wyrmehandlers as they ran up towards him. ‘Then climb aboard!’

  He tilted the sidewinder back and sent a bolt ­thudding into the side of a swooping blueblackwyrme. It fell heavily a short distance away, wheezing and gasping, white froth bubbling from its nostrils, its eyes encrusted in green mucus.

  Having cut the load from Solomon’s wyrme, the five wyrmehandlers clambered onto its back, the spitbolts in their hands primed and ready to fire. They looked about them, hunkered down. Around them, the rest of the gang and the greywyrmes were faring less well.

  Pockets of grassland were ablaze where the torched greywyrmes had collapsed and lay bellowing and flailing around as they burned. Their handlers scattered and fought in ones and twos before being set upon by diving blueblackwyrmes. Only the gangmaster’s great side­winder was keeping him and his wyrme from the same fate. As he fired bolt after bolt at the wyrmes attacking him, Solomon Tallow began to notice that most of them appeared to be sick.

  They coughed. They wheezed. Thick phlegm rattled around inside their lungs. Some seemed too weak to pull out of their dives and crashed instead into the ground. All of them had the same crusted green mucus around their eyes, affecting their sight and making their attacks increasingly erratic.

  ‘Hold on tight, boys!’ Solomon shouted. ‘We’re going to make a run for it!’

  Tugging hard on the bridle, he hauled the greywyrme’s head round and dug the heels of his boots viciously into its neck. The creature bellowed and turned and began lumbering back towards the ridges to the east. From overhead there came a hoarse rasping roar, and Tallow swung round in the saddle and fired the sidewinder.

  There was a gurgled cry as the bolt buried itself in the throat of the one-eyed wyrme that was bearing down on him. Behind him was another of the massive ­creatures. As he cranked back the sidewinder’s drawstring, Solomon quickly reached for another bolt from his belt.

  But not quickly enough.

  He was seized in the wyrme’s great hand, two curved claws piercing his shoulder. With a flap of its great wings, the blueblackwyrme wrenched him from the saddle and soared back up into the sky, the other wyrmehandlers staring up at the hapless gangmaster, too fearful of wounding him to fire their spitbolts. Solomon dangled helplessly, the pain in his shoulder raging like fire as the great wyrme screeched and howled deafeningly in the strange language of its kind.

  What was it waiting for? he wondered. Why didn’t it drop him to his death?

  The pain in his shoulder was agonizing. At least death would be quick . . .

  Beating its wings and rising still higher in the sky, the blueblackwyrme held the gangmaster out in front of it. Solomon stared into the wyrme’s mucus-encrusted eyes in horror. It was toying with him.

  With something like a casual shrug, the creature raised its free hand and drew the point of a claw slowly down Tallow’s front. The outer hide split open. Flying higher still, the wyrme repeated the action, this time slicing through the inner hide. Blood erupted from the jagged red wound; plump innards bulged and spilled.

  Solomon stared down at his stomach, scarcely able to take in what was happening to him. He clamped his hands to his belly, desperately trying to hold his guts in. His ears were roaring. His hands were slippery with blood.

  The blueblackwyrme roared at him in its harsh ­guttural language. Solomon gagged at the stench that poured from its ulcerated mouth – a stench that grew
more foul still as he was drawn up towards the creature’s parted jaws.

  ‘No!’ he screamed.

  A pair of blade-sharp fangs closed over his shaven head . . .

  There was a splintering of bone; a spurt of blood. The blueblackwyrme’s jaws opened and the gangmaster’s lifeless body was sent tumbling back down through the smoke-laced air. It landed heavily, like a sack of seedcorn in the long grass, just missing a group of cowering settlers who looked round and gasped, or screamed, or clamped their hands over their mouths as they stared at the dead body, its belly split open and skull crushed.

  ‘It’s the gangmaster, Mae,’ a stricken voice whispered. ‘Solomon Tallow . . .’

  The farmer, Amos, raised himself up on his elbows and peered through the long grass. The blueblackwyrmes had all but destroyed the wyrmetrain by the looks of it, and the grasslands were dotted with the flaming pyres of the heavily laden greywyrmes. Only one remained alive that he could see, far in the distance, clambering up the screeslopes, returning to the ridge country from which they’d come. Overhead, the blueblack host circled, fewer in number and low in the smoke-stained sky. And as Amos watched, the wyrmes gathered themselves and flew off across the grasslands towards the hiding groups of settlers.

  ‘They’re coming, Amos,’ his wife whimpered. ‘They’re coming . . .’

  The farmer and his wife shrank back and hugged each other, their eyes shut tight.

  ‘Never thought it would end like this, Ida . . .’

  Crouched down concealed in the long grass, other settlers did the same. Whispering reassurances and ­stifling cries; holding onto one another.

  No one noticed the flashes of white in the eastern sky at first. And when three whitewyrmes appeared out of the smoke-clouded air, arrowing down, the settlers were at a loss to understand what they were seeing. On their backs, the three whitewyrmes carried white-clad riders, each one armed with a long black lance.

  ‘They’re kin!’ Cain the ploughboy muttered to his friend.

  The two of them watched as the whitewyrmes flew deep into the heart of the blueblack host, which ­scattered before them. Then, fanning out, the kin and their wyrmes set to hunting them down. The tips of their lances glinted in the muted dazzle as the kin stabbed repeatedly, leaving a trail of dead and dying blueblackwyrmes in their wake.

  Lying in the long grass, curled up in a ball, his hands cradling his head, Josiah tried to blot it all out. He had Tallow’s silver coins in his pocket. He’d wanted to work for Solomon Tallow. He’d wanted to prove himself . . .

  But then, when the wyrmes had come, he had run. Run as fast as he could. Back to his mother.

  He felt ashamed, and had to suppress the sobs rising in his throat.

  The thing was, in all the confusion with the greywyrmes going crazy and the blueblackwyrmes attacking, he hadn’t been able to find her. Nor had he managed to get back to Solomon Tallow. And now he was lost and alone, just wanting it all to stop. The shrieks. The bellowing. The sweet smell of burning wyrmeflesh . . .

  He took a hand away from one ear.

  It was quiet.

  He opened his eyes. Through the stems of grass he could see the towering forms of the blueblackwyrmes sitting on their haunches, their heads bowed. Hundreds of them.

  Josiah lay very still and fought back the desire to scream.

  Standing in front of the closest blueblackwyrme was another kind of wyrme, its skin as white and dazzling as the others were firerock dark. Its snake-like whiskers were quivering and its jaws opened and shut, almost as if, Josiah thought, it was talking . . .

  ‘Tell your wyrmes to give up,’ Aylsa said. Her eyes narrowed as she noted the evidence of the blueblackwyrme’s ill health. The misted-up eyes. The streaming nose and mouth. The hideous wheezing, as though every intake of breath might be its last. ‘Our country has made you sick,’ she pronounced. ‘Just as your country made us sick.’

  The long silvery barbels at the corners of Aylsa’s mouth twitched.

  ‘You do not belong here,’ she told the blueblackwyrme. ‘You must return to your homeland, or die . . .’

  Hasheev-gul turned and stared down at his dead father. Then he pulled himself up to his full height, ­struggling not to cough as he did so.

  He stared at the whitewyrme before him, at the two-hides next to her, cradling an infant, and at the two other whitewyrmes and their two-hides, who were standing a little way off. Those black spikes of theirs had wrought terrible damage to his host – but this low flat country they called home threatened to do worse.

  ‘You don’t deserve our help, snowwyrme,’ he growled. ‘I curse the lot of you. You and these tainted wyrmes who now stand beside you.’ He turned his burning eyes away and stared back towards the west. ‘But you’re right. This stinking land of yours’ – he coughed violently, blood spattering on the rocky ground before him – ‘is killing us . . .’

  He beat his wings and, with great effort, took to the air. The remnants of the once mighty blueblack host rose with him and fell into formation as best they could, their wingbeats slow and laboured.

  Thrace, Aylsa and her kinchild watched them go. Silent and unmoving behind them, Zar and Asa, Ramilles and Aluris also watched. When at last they turned away, they saw the small settler child standing a little way offin the long grass, his pale face soot-stained and his clothes claggy with rich dark soil.

  He raised a hand and scratched at his thick tousled hair, then swept his arm round in a broad arc. ‘What about us?’ he said.

  Forty-Eight

  Dozens of small fires flickered like gemstones in the swaying grass; a skein of black smoke hovered above. The air was still.

  Eli made his way through the long yellow-green grass, his spitbolt wound and loaded in his hands. Ethan walked beside him, his jag-blade knife drawn, while Cara and Cody followed close behind, both of them holding loaded spitbolts of their own.

  They came to a burning mound, pink and blue flames flickering over the charred remnants of a greywyrme that had been loaded up with what looked like someone’s worldly possessions. The dead wyrme’s skin was blistered and charred. Beneath the blackened tarpaulin and half-burnt ropes, fire still smouldered.

  Eli moved past the carcass and stopped beside another corpse, that of a monstrous blueblackwyrme. He examined it for a moment, his eyes narrowing, before slipping his pack from his shoulders. Beside him, Ethan stopped and whistled.

  ‘I ain’t never seen a more fearsome wyrme,’ he said. ‘Have you, Eli?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Eli, taking a huge claw from his rucksack and comparing it with the claws on the blueblackwyrme. ‘Been wondering what manner of creature this belonged to for a while now,’ he said. ‘Looks like I finally have my answer.’

  He stooped down and observed the green mucus crusting the creature’s eyes, and sores pockmarking its muzzle.

  ‘Fearsome, maybe, but it was sick before it died,’ he observed.

  Behind them, Cody pulled back the tarpaulin on the greywyrme’s back, dislodging a small wooden box that fell to the ground with a metallic crash. The lid fell open and silver knives, forks and spoons tumbled out onto the scorched grass.

  Cara stared at the polished cutlery. ‘How . . . how sad,’ she whispered huskily, her eyes filling with tears.

  ‘Whoever owned them,’ Cody said, ‘they had brought everything they needed for settling here.’ He raised his spitbolt and pointed at some of the other objects strewn in the grass around them. ‘See there. Sacks of seedgrain. Timber. Farm-tools. A loom . . .’

  He looked deep into Cara’s eyes.

  ‘They could have built themselves a farmstead with all this – furnished it, sown crops . . .’

  ‘Built a new life,’ Cara said softly, holding his gaze. ‘A good life.’

  ‘A good life,’ Cody agreed. ‘Right here in the grasslands.’ He reached out and drew Cara
to him. ‘Well, what do you say, Cara?’ His eyes sparkled. ‘Shall we do likewise? You and me?’

  Cara looked up to see the cragclimber and Cody’s brother looking back at her.

  ‘You know me, Cara,’ said Eli with a rueful smile. ‘I don’t hold with settling down. But it seems to me you two are old enough to make your own minds up on the matter . . .’

  ‘I don’t hold with settling down neither,’ broke in Ethan hotly, his face flushed an angry red. ‘And I’ll take my chances with my good friend Eli here.’

  There were tears in Cody’s eyes as he stepped forward and embraced his little brother. ‘Guess this is a parting of the ways,’ he said.

  ‘Guess it is.’ Ethan’s voice was muffled in his brother’s shoulder, but Cody could feel the sobs racking his body.

  Cara hugged the cragclimber. ‘Thank you, Eli,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for everything.’

  When she stepped back she noticed that the four of them were not alone. Heads were appearing in the long grass as settlers rose to their feet and looked around. And as the breeze picked up and the pall of smoke began to clear, she could see that in the distance, more were ­gathering around the smoking hulks of the greywyrmes that littered the grasslands and were busy salvaging anything they could find that had not been destroyed by the flames.

  Solomon Tallow was dead, along with most of his wyrmehandlers. The surviving few had fled. But the ­settlers, watchful and cautious, had hidden at the first sign of trouble and most, if not all, had survived unscathed.

  Cara pointed. ‘Eli, look!’ she exclaimed, but the cragclimber had seen them already.