P. Hodgell - The Sea of Time

“It could just be a mirage,” said Timmon.

“Or the spires of a city,” Jame said, staring hard.

An uproar burst out near the shore where the moas had gathered to drink. Something huge lunged out of the reeds and chomped down on the nearest bird. The rest flopped down flat and froze like so many brown lumps, some with their heads inadvertently underwater.

“Ancestors preserve us,” said the senior randon. “A rhi-sar.”

The beast stood on the shore, ignoring the motionless birds. The long legs of its prey dangled out of its toothy jaws, twitching slightly. It threw back its massive head and bolted them down. A second giant reptile emerged from the reeds. Both stood on their powerful hind legs, smaller forearms tucked almost delicately against their armored chests. The first was blue and mottled green, its scales edged with gold. The second was orange shading to the dark red of dried blood. Their lashing, scaly tails made up nearly half of their thirty-foot lengths.

The reeds parted and a third, smaller reptile joined them, this one creamy white with watery blue eyes.

I should have brought Death’s-head, thought Jame. As she had foreseen, however, he had stayed behind with Bel.

“Stand still,” said the randon. “They react to motion.”

Too late: Char broke ranks and dashed to grab a spear.

The two rhi-sar bellowed and charged the camp.

Yells sounded as the cadets scrambled for weapons and into formation. The blue brute lunged at one such group, catching a spear and jerking its wielder out of place. Its red mate snapped sideways, catching the cadet and folding him double backward before bolting him down. The senior randon plunged to the rescue, only to get caught between the two.

“No!” Jame cried, but already they had grabbed him, one on each side, and between them had ripped him apart. Blood sprayed the sedge. The water tinged pink.

Both rhi-sar spread their frilled collars and trilled their triumph.

Jame turned to watch the white rhi-sar. It had held back so far but not, she thought, out of fear or weakness. Its small eyes switched from reptile to reptile like a general directing troops. One of them lumbered back to it and vomited mixed body parts, steaming with acid and already half-digested, at its feet. An offering.

Someone handed her a spear. She balanced it, advanced, and threw it at the white beast. More by luck than skill, she caught the creature in one eye. It reared back, bellowing, and clawed at the shaft, snapping it off in its eye socket. The other blue eye focused on her. How well could it see? Well enough to chase her if she moved.

The other two rhi-sar seemed confused, snapping at random as cadets ran past them. Damson stood before one of them, holding it in her baleful gaze. It lunged at the air on either side of her as if unable to bring her into focus. The other rhi-sar stumbled into it and they fell, tearing at each other.

But the white one wasn’t confused. It thundered straight at Jame, jaws agape. She turned and ran, trying to draw it away from the other cadets, but they in turn were running toward her. Char thrust a spear between its hind legs, tripping it. It turned its fall into a lunge at Jame, missing by inches when she dodged to its blind side. Before it could recover, she threw herself on its head and clasped its jaws shut with her arms and legs, half expecting them to be ripped off. But she had guessed right: the muscles that opened that fearful maw were weaker than those that closed it. The brute reared up, trying to shake her off, scraping futilely at her with its foreclaws.

Cadets darted in and stabbed at its exposed belly. It was armored as thoroughly as a rathorn, but there were wrinkled gaps of bare skin under the forearms. Gorbel’s spear found its mark and bit deep. The creature toppled over backward, pinning Jame under its massive muzzle, knocking the wind out of her. She thought at first that she was dead, but then hands pulled her free.

The other two rhi-sar retreated to the water and reeds. The white one lay on its back, thick crimson blood sluggishly crawling down over its plated stomach. It scrabbled feebly at the sky, then fell limp, its armored jaw harmlessly agape.

Timmon pulled Jame to her feet and she clung to him, gasping. “Did I really . . . just do that?”

“You certainly did, and scared the spit out of me.”

Gorbel braced a foot against the creature, wrenched free his spear, and limped up to them. “I could claim the kill, but it only happened because of your insanity. Besides, I’ve already got a rhi-sar suit. I’d say that you’ve just earned your own armor, Lordan of Ivory.”

They gathered the dismembered limbs of their dead, such as they could retrieve, and gave them to the pyre. Char scowled at Jame over the flames.

I had as much to do with this kill as you did, he seemed to be thinking, and that was probably true, given that she couldn’t have pinned the brute if Char hadn’t tripped it first.

On the bright side, only two Kencyr had been killed, thanks mostly to Damson.

“Good work,” Jame told her.

The plump cadet nodded. She looked thoughtful, not smug, as Jame might have expected.

“I asked myself what you would do, Ten, if you could do what I can. Not run.”

“I did, though.”

“To draw off that white monster. I saw. Then you turned on it. I know I don’t think or feel the way that other people do. Something is . . . missing. But I can imitate you.”

Jame stared at her. “Trinity, Damson, you’d do better to take someone else as a model. Why not Brier?”

The cadet shook her head. “I can see that Five is a good randon. Someday she may even become a great one. But she isn’t like me. Not a bit. You are.”

Jame considered that as she watched the cadets start to skin the white rhi-sar—no easy task given the toughness of its hide. When properly tanned, it would be nearly as impenetrable as rathorn ivory, which itself was the second hardest substance on Rathillien after diamantine. Brier cut free the skull and they began the messy job of hollowing it out, leaving the fearsome, hinged jaws. Others worked on the feet, flaying them but retaining the claws.

All her life, Jame had turned to the Kendar as guides, primarily to Marc, whose moral sense she trusted far more than her own. To have one of them return the favor was . . . unnerving. But Damson was right: as a destructive Shanir, she and Jame had a lot more in common than either did with Brier Iron-thorn.

Meanwhile, Gorbel was arguing with the senior surviving officer, Onyx-eyed. The Caineron Lordan wanted to pursue the caravan.

“That would violate our standing orders,” said the randon.

“Yours. Not mine. My father told me to follow them. Anyway, as lordan I’m the highest ranking Caineron here.”

“You’re the only Caineron here.”

“Fine. I’ll go by myself.”

Jame peered at the black line of the distant horizon, all that separated sky from reflecting sea. The slight, wavering distortion was still there on the edge of sight.

“How far away is it?” she asked. “Three miles? If that’s a mirage, most of what casts it could be below our line of sight, if there’s anything there at all. Still . . .”

The randon looked at her, as blank of expression as ever. “So you want to go too.”

“And me,” said Timmon, coming up.

“You’re asking me to risk the heirs of three houses.”

“We aren’t asking anything,” said Gorbel, his jaw thrust stubbornly forward. As a cadet, he took orders; as a lordan, he gave them. They could all feel the authority radiating off him like heat off a sun-baked stone, and like that stone his will was no easy thing to break.

Onyx-eyed blinked. “Take an escort with you, then,” she said mildly, “and turn back if you lose the tracks.”