David Drake - The Mirror of Worlds

She could freeze one in its tracks, but the other'd snap her up like a caterpillar in a wren's beak. That would end the problem to which Ilna saw no solution: how she could kill all Coerli, wipe out the beasts to the last kit and gray-maned ancient? The hunters began to angle out in front of her, one to either side. "No," Ilna said firmly; she wouldn't get angry if they obeyed immediately. "I have to lead. It's necessary that the brute comes straight at me." Temple was well to the right, heading toward the abandoned village. His long strides gave the impression of being languid until you noticed how much distance each one covered. The wyverns had torn the thatch roofs off several houses and the front wall of another had collapsed inward, so it didn't seem to Ilna that the buildings brought much safety. She shrugged mentally.

The big soldier had the confidence of a man who knew his business.

Often enough that meant very little, but Temple had proved to be an exception in the past. The wyverns lounged beside the altar in front of the temple. They'd made a kill during the night and brought it back to eat; by now they'd torn the carcass to a scattering of bloody bones. The mottled wyvern was lying on its right side. It lifted the stripped remains of a thigh to its jaws with the talons of its left leg, then bit; the bone cracked in half. "I guess that's a goat?"

Karpos said. "I guess," said his sharper-eyed partner. "It's past caring, whatever it was." The pale wyvern had been following Ilna and the hunters with its eyes. It got to its feet without haste. Its claws folded up against its ankles so that the points stuck out forward; that was how they stayed sharp when the creature walked. Ilna had knotted her pattern of yarn before she started into the valley. That was the sensible thing to do, of course, but she'd have preferred to have the task yet before her to keep her fingers busy. The thought irritated her because it showed weakness. She smiled minusculely. She wasn't weak enough to allow discomfort to affect her reactions, of course. The pale wyvern raised its head to the sky and shrieked, vibrating its black tongue. Its mottled partner sprang to its feet in a single motion and started downhill. The knob of the bone it'd been eating sailed high in the air, flung away unnoticed. The beast was striding toward Temple, who'd just started up the north slope toward the village. The pale wyvern crouched, vibrating like a plucked lute string. Ilna continued forward at the deliberate pace she'd set herself to begin with. She kept her eyes on the creature she intended to kill, ignoring the stones and sharp leaves her bare feet touched as she walked. There'd be time enough for lotions and poultices after the job was done; if she missed some foreshadowing of the beast's intentions, however, it might be her thigh that they cracked tomorrow.

A woman came out of the shrine. She stood on the porch to watch what was happening. Her hair was dark blond and tangled, and her only tunic had a stiff, russet stain down the right side. Temple began to run uphill, moving easily. He hadn't drawn his sword, and he held the buckler close to his body. The sky was bright enough to show color, but the sun hadn't risen to wink highlights from the polished metal.

The pale wyvern launched itself toward Ilna like a stooping hawk. Its wings stuck out from its shoulders, tilting like the pole of a rope-walker as they and the tail balanced the creature's downward career. This early in the year, the creek at the bottom of the valley was still running. Ilna walked through the water, grimacing at the feel of pebbles washed smooth and slimed with cress. She started up the north slope, holding the pattern folded between her clenched hands. She heard the whirr of Asion's staff sling, and the corner of her eye told her Karpos had raised and half-drawn his bow. The wyvern shrieked as it kicked off from an outcrop of grayish limestone. Each leap took the beast twice its own length toward Ilna and her companions. One more and it would be on them. Ilna opened the pattern between her hands and raised it overhead. The oncoming wyvern stiffened in the air. Instead of skimming toward Ilna and the hunters, it tripped and crashed to the ground. After skidding nose-first for a moment in a spray of coarse dirt, it rolled over on its left side. Its frozen muscles couldn't correct for the angle it'd been leaning at when Ilna's pattern struck through its eyes like a thunderbolt. The wyvern had small ears. The right one vanished in a splash of blood, shot away by a sling bolt that'd just missed crushing the skull.

Karpos' broadhead buried itself to the fletching at the base of the creature's right wing. The wyvern continued to slide, its powerful hindquarters slewing ahead of its half-open jaws. A pall of yellow-gray dust rolled downhill ahead of it. Ilna turned to keep her pattern toward the beast. Its eyes were a brilliant blue and had vertical slits for pupils. Karpos shot the wyvern in the throat;

Asion's second bullet punched a dimple in the fine gray scales of the creature's chest. Blood splashed, but the impact didn't shatter the wyvern's breast keel as Ilna'd hoped it would. She continued to turn as the beast slid past. Asion straightened to shoot again, putting his torso between Ilna's pattern and the wyvern's eyes. It sprang uphill toward the hunter as though it hadn't been wounded at all. Asion threw himself aside. As the wyvern snatched at him, an arrow snapped between its open jaws and banged out the base of its skull. The beast bent double, its head almost touching its long, tendon-stiffened tail. The legs kicked violently, the right one clawing a divot the size of a bushel basket from the soil; Ilna closed her eyes reflexively as the grit sprayed her. The wyvern thudded downslope, then rolled till its head lay in the stream. Blood trickled from its mouth. The right leg continued to twitch, but its eyes didn't react to the fine dust that was drifting over them. Ilna knelt and breathed deeply. The dust was still settling; she sneezed and covered her face with the sleeve of her inner tunic. It was just luck the wyvern's momentum hadn't carried it straight ahead, plowing through her and the hunters. Even if the impact didn't finish them, she'd seen how quickly the beast had reacted when her pattern no longer held it. She'd made a mistake… "That was too bloody close," Asion said quietly. He wiped the palm of his right hand on his tunic, then gripped the sling-staff again. Karpos looked down at the wyvern; it spasmed violently. "I'll never get those arrows back," he said. There was a red patch on his left wrist where the bowstring had stung it. "It'd take all day to cut'em out, and long odds the shafts're split anyhow."

"I'll help you turn new ones," Asion said. "That wastoo close." Ilna got up and dusted her tunic where she'd been kneeling. She held the pattern bunched in her left hand; she wouldn't pick out the knots until she knew what'd happened to the other monster. "Come," she said, angling now toward the abandoned village. "I'll lead. We'll find Temple." The houses mostly trailed along either side of the track leading into the valley, but at the upper end they spread in a skewed checkerboard below the wall around the shrine. Dust was settling there, but nothing else moved. Karpos had an arrow nocked. He glowered at the drystone hut on his side of the narrow street and muttered,

"This is too tight for comfort. It's bad as going after a tiger in brush." "I don't hear the brute," Asion said. "It called a couple times when it took after Temple, I heard that. I wasn't paying much attention, though. They could run down deer, it seemed like, the way the gray one was coming at us." The street kinked around a house bigger than most of those in the village. It was built on three sides of a courtyard. There was a brushwood fence across the front to pen goats at night. Asion's staff whirred, and Karpos drew the string back to his ear. Ilna raised the pattern before her and stepped around the corner. The blue-mottled wyvern lay in the ruins another courtyard house, its head buried in fallen stone. The beast must've lunged forward when it got its deathblow, demolishing the thick wall.