Jim Butcher - Captain's Fury

Amara tried to turn the fall into a diving roll, so that she would be able to come up on her feet and running-but halfway through, something struck her in the shoulder and sent her into an uncontrolled tumble. She hit the ground hard, first on one knee, then slammed into the ground with one shoulder, and fetched up against a tree with stunning force. She dropped to the ground, the world rolling back into normal motion again, as she lost concentration on maintaining the link with Cirrus.

The wounded garim lashed its heavily muscled tail, with which it had just struck her, and doubled back on itself with sinuous, liquid speed. It rushed her, fangs bared. Amara fumbled dazedly for her sword, knowing, even as she did, that the weapon would be of little use. She thrust out as the garim closed on her, and the sword skittered off the hide of its chest. She screamed.

And then a length of wood came out of nowhere and landed with crushing force on the creature's muzzle, slamming its jaws closed and into the ground. Its head rebounded from the earth, and the wood landed again, and again, the blows precisely timed and savage.

The First Lord of Alera flung himself onto the garim, slipping his damaged staff across the beast's throat, and with a snarl of effort and a wrench of his entire body, twisted away, taking the garim with him, rolling the lizard belly-up.

"His underside!" Gaius cried. "Countess, where the scales are thin!"

Amara seized her sword, lurched to her knees, and struck down, through the garim's exposed throat, just beneath where Gaius's staff still held back the creature's head. To her surprise, the sword swept cleanly through the finer, smoother scales there, and blood rushed out in a scarlet fountain.

The garim thrashed wildly, but the First Lord had the creature pinned. Though it flung him back and forth, it could not escape Gaius's hold. Amara struck again and again, until the garim's thrashing slowed, and the First Lord rolled clear of the dying animal.

"My lord!" Amara gasped.

"I'm all right," Gaius panted. "The Count."

Amara rose, looked around wildly, and realized that there was something else about the deadly lizards she had not known.

They ran in packs.

One garim hung thrashing fifteen feet above the forest floor in a willow tree, where dozens of the slender branches had seemingly reached down and wrapped around it. Another thrashed and contorted wildly on the forest floor, bounding up as high as five or six feet above the ground. A woodsman's axe protruded from the dying garim's head, where a powerful blow had sunk the weapon to its eye in the lizard's skull.

And the bloodied Count of Calderon himself was locked in combat with a third garim-unarmed. Like the First Lord, he had managed to gain a position on the beast's back, but he had locked his arms around the creature's throat. Amara could see that blood covered one side of his face, his throat, and half of his upper torso, but he was conscious, his face locked into a rictus snarl.

The garim thrashed wildly, rolling over several times, and its tail whipped about with savage energy, hammering Bernard on his legs and lower back. He let out a howl of rage and pain.

Amara cried out and rushed toward her husband, sword in hand.

Bernard's head turned to one side, and he released the garim with one arm, seizing its tail. The beast rolled wildly, twisting free of Bernard's grip, and scrambled at the forest floor with its powerful legs, to rise and sink its teeth into Amara's husband.

Bernard, though, had found his feet first, and hauled at the garim's tail before it could regain its balance. It scrambled toward him as best it could, and Bernard shuffled away from the jaws, still hauling hard on the tail.

At first, Amara thought he was simply trying to buy time-but by the second circle, the garim began to pick up speed. The beast was the largest of any Amara had seen, and must have weighed five hundred pounds if it weighed an ounce, but the Count of Calderon whirled it up off the ground as if it were a child's toy.

Pivoting in a great circle, Bernard roared in rage and triumph, and slammed the garim's skull against the thick trunk of a tree. It broke with a wet, hollow thunk, like the sound of a melon being smashed open, and the lizard fell to the earth, abruptly and totally limp.

The garim trapped in the willow snarled and tore its way free of the grasp-ing limbs and fell to the ground behind Bernard. Amara cried out in a wordless warning.

He looked up at her, and then his head whipped around. He flung out his hand, and cried, "Brutus!"

The earth beneath the garim suddenly shuddered and erupted into motion. The shape of a hound the size of a small horse rose from the earth, its shoulders and chest made of flint and loam, its eyes of glittering green gems, its jaws of granite. Bernard's earth fury seized the garim in its stony maw, and the lizard hissed and thrashed wildly as Brutus lifted the lizard entirely off the ground. The great hound continued rising from the ground, like a dog emerging from the waters of a lake, and shook the garim as a terrier would a rat. Amara thought she heard the lizard's neck snap, but Brutus was not satisfied until he had slammed the garim against two trees, and repeatedly hammered it into the ground. By the time the earth fury was finished, the garim was a bloody mass of pulped flesh and shattered bone.

Amara slowed and came to a halt a few feet away from her husband. Bernard watched until Brutus was finished, then nodded, and said, "Thank you." The stone hound champed its jaws twice, shook its head, sending pebbles and bits of mud flying, and sank down into the earth again, turning circles like a dog about to lie down as it went.

Bernard sagged and dropped to one knee.

Amara rushed to his side. "Bernard!"

"It's nothing, I'm fine," Bernard slurred, still breathing heavily. "Gaius?"

"He's alive," Amara said. "Let me see your head."

"Looks worse than it is," Bernard said. "Scalp wounds bleed a lot. Flesh wound."

"I know that," Amara said, "but you've got a lump the size of an egg to go with the cut. Concussions are not flesh wounds."

Bernard reached up and caught her hand. He met her eyes, and said in a quiet, firm tone, "See to the First Lord, Countess."

She stiffened with anger. "Bernard."

"I have a duty to my lord. So do you."

"I also have a duty to my husband," she whispered back.

Bernard released her hand, and growled, "See to Gaius." His tone became gentler, and very tired. "You know I'm right."

She put a hand to her face for a moment, took a deep breath, then touched his head gently. Then she turned and went back to the First Lord.

Gaius lay on the ground with his eyes closed. He opened them as Amara approached, and said, "I haven't done that in a while."

"Sire?"

"Hunted garim. Not since I was about seventeen." He exhaled heavily. "It was considerably less strenuous back then."

His voice was tight with pain, the way it had been at the beginning of their journey. "You're hurt."

"It's my leg," he said quietly. "The good one." He nodded at the still-twitching garim. "I'm afraid this fellow managed to trap it between his hide and a stone. I'm fairly sure it's broken."

Amara bent to examine the First Lord's leg. It was swollen, and his foot rested at an utterly inappropriate angle to the rest of the leg. It had been a twisting break, not a clean snap of the bone. Amara knew that they could be very ugly. "I can't see any bone poking out," she said quietly. "You aren't bleeding. How bad is it?"

"It's only pain," Gaius said, but his voice trembled as he did. "I see that Bernard gave rather a good accounting of himself."

Amara would need to set the leg as soon as possible. They would have to splint it as well. "He killed three of them."