James Enge - This Crooked Way

The snake-leopards went back to protect their spidery masters, and the whole group fled south and west over the ridge.

Morlock and the werewolf stepped out of the fire on different sides. They said a few things to each other that Thend didn't catch. Then the werewolf stood there, a black smoldering wolf-shape with fire-red eyes, as Morlock turned and walked away.

"So you speak Wolf, too, Morlock?" Naeli said as the crooked man rejoined the group. Thend admired her nerve in being able to talk to him. But then, there was something of the monster in Naeli too. (And in himself? He was her son. But he didn't like to think about that.)

"Not really," Morlock said. "My sister knows more. I think he offered me part of his kill." Morlock gestured behind him at the fallen dragon. "I'm not sure if he was just boasting. He says he killed it last night while it was sleeping, and the spiderfolk took its rider: that would be your friend, I think," he said, glancing at Thend, who flinched.

To cover up his fear Thend said, "I'm surprised you didn't take any. I bet dragon meat is mighty tasty."

"Dragons think so," replied that horrible old man and turned away.

They went on out of the valley, north and east.

The march went on and on. During one of their rare and brief halts the adults were discussing whether they should find a place to sleep for the night. Morlock didn't think it was safe to strike the lights they would need to travel after dark, but Naeli argued it was still more dangerous to settle in a place where their enemies might come upon them. But they were well toward the eastern side of the pass now, nearer the Khroi than the spiderfolk, and Morlock was saying it was a good risk to stop and rest.

Thend stared away into the eastern sky, still hot and red with sunset.' There was a cloud of strange birds over there. It was as if their eyes were reflecting the sun, even though they were facing toward the night-dark western sky. After a while, as they got bigger and Thend was more sure that the evening light wasn't playing tricks with his own eyes, he pointed at them and asked, "What kind of birds are those?"

Morlock glanced over and swore, "Sustainer!"

"They're sustainer birds?" Stador asked, not understanding.

"It is the dragon cavalry of a Khroic horde," said Morlock, in something nearer his ordinary speaking voice. "My friends, I have led you astray. We must part company here. I will do my best to draw them away from you. Bear north as straight as you can and God Sustainer be with you."

"But they can't have seen us yet," Roble protested. "Let's take cover and talk it over."

"We have no time to debate," Morlock said. "If we can see them, they have seen us. It was my fault we didn't turn west after we left the werewolf. Save yourselves and go!" He shouldered his pack and ran off eastward, toward the dragons.

Roble turned away from the fiery eastern sky, his dark face twisted with a dark emotion. "Let's go, then," he said, "and save ourselves." He said it like a curse.

They went as fast as they could, but it felt like crawling. Whenever possible they kept to the shadows, hiding from those fiery eyes in the eastern sky. But they stumbled over stones in the dark, and they had to feel their way carefully over the broken ground, lest they fall into a pit or a ravine. They didn't dare strike a light.

Soon they heard Morlock's voice shouting, "Khai, gradara!" Rising like a swift distorted moon over the line of rocks to the east, they saw a dim blue dragon fly upward, lit by its own smoky red eyes, snarling in triumph. The struggling shadow of a man was gripped in its right foreclaw. But the man still carried a glittering crystalline sword and, dealing it deftly, he cut the claw from the dragon's foreleg at its joint. The man fell out of sight, still gripped by the severed claw; the dragon screamed in pain and wrath and plunged upward, vomiting fire and smoke. Other fire-eyed, bat-winged, serpentine shapes followed the course of the fallen man to earth.

Thend clung to the side of the rock face, stunned with the thought that Morlock was dead, or soon would be. He hadn't known it would hit him so hard. He felt somebody sneak her hand into his, and looked down to see Fasra looking up at him with a tear-streaked face. She shrugged as if to say, What can we do?

There was nothing they could do except try to get away, and that was what they did, creeping along the dark side of every rock they could find to cover them.

But it was all for nothing. The dragon cavalry flew over them and dropped nets and, when they were trapped, the Khroic soldiers came and knocked them out one by one.

Thend struggled as best he could, but it was no use. He noticed, too, that the Khroi who clubbed him into unconsciousness had a purplish carapace marked by savage scraping near the neck. The point of a rock was stuck there in the Khroi's shell like a tooth.

"I should have left you for the spiders!" Thend shouted; then the Khroi's club descended and darkness with it.

Thend dreamed he was flying, and then when he woke up he found it wasn't a dream. He was hanging facedown in a wire net, hundreds or thousands of feet over the moons-lit broken ground of the Kirach Kund. Twisting around, he saw the net was gripped in the claws of a dragon. He wanted to shout something defiant and insulting, but fear kept a grip on his throat: he had never been so high in his life and he didn't like it. He closed his eyes and pretended he was somewhere else, anywhere else.

He must have slept or passed out. When he awoke he could hear the adults talking to each other in low voices. But he could hear other, inhuman voices, too, so he was spared the terrible, tempting illusion that their captivity was only a dream.

Thend opened his eyes to see Fasra's frightened face in profile. If she was scared, then things were pretty bad. Beyond her Thend saw his brothers. On the other side he saw his mother and her brother, and beyond them Morlock looking rather beat up.

Roble and Naeli avoided meeting Thend's eye, but Morlock looked him straight in the face, smiling sadly. "We meet again!" said the crooked man.

"Unfortunately," Thend said rudely, because he didn't know what else to say, and Morlock nodded in agreement.

Things were unfortunate indeed. They were all sitting there in a valley, bound hand and foot with leathery rope. Even the werewolf was there, hogtied and snarling. Standing over them were huge Khroi warriors, of a type Thend had never seen. On one slope of the valley, rank on rank, sat a whole horde or tribe of Khroi. Facing them, on the other side of the valley, were dozens of fiery, bat-winged, serpentine forms in various dark colors: an irregular burning rainbow of dragons.

Thend looked up to the sky. Chariot, the major moon, was eastering; and Horseman, the second moon, was high in the sky. Thend looked up at it, thinking that this was the last sky he would ever see. The thought was convincing but cold; he felt nothing about it. He wondered if this were part of dying: giving up interest in anything as the jaws of death clamped down.

He looked at the valley. He saw the Khroi were of many different types. There were the strange gigantic warriors who stood over them, guarding them with spears. Nearby were the warriors, wearing spiked blades on their palp-clusters; they wore white ceremonial tabards with some kind of writing on them. Above them were ranks of Khroi wearing black surcoats. It struck Thend that they might be elders, Khroi who had aged out of the warrior class. Above them on the slope was a milling crowd of Khroi dressed in black and white rags. Some were dancing, others were lying on the ground, waving their palp-clusters and ped-clusters in the air. Highest of all was a lone figure who sat on the steps of an empty gigantic throne. He wore a tabard of white embroidered with red and black in a chaotic pattern.