He drew a deep breath, grateful for the pungent chaelor oil masking the stench of decay. Setting a punishing pace up the hill, he was soon feeling the strain in the backs of his thighs and calves. As the path widened to claim a broad, undulating ledge at the base of the peak, men drew level with him on either side. Beyau was surrounded by waniors of the Chazen household, their armour brilliant with beads of moisture, the muffled light of the sun turning their naked blades to dull silver. Mezai was in among the fishermen burdened with their nets and ropes, other men from the Gossamer Shark gripping clubs and long knives.
A broken knife edge of rock rose sheer on one side, the broad ledge falling away into a confusion of forest on the other. As the slope grew less cruel, Kheda pushed on faster, Zicre still at his side. Beyau and the swordsmen ran with them, faces grim beneath the brow bands of their polished helms. The tramp of the countless feet behind Mezai and the mariners reverberated across the steep valley.
Kheda rounded the shoulder of the peak and the hollow of level ground between the two ridges running down from the peak opened up before them. Some of the biggest ironwoods he had ever seen had claimed this sheltered, fertile spot for their own. Hidden from foresters who would have cut them down long since and thought them a mighty prize, they had soared upwards.
The great grey trees with their lofty crowns of dense green leaves looked no more than saplings behind the massive bulk sprawled in front of them. The reek of decay hung stifling in the air. The dragon lay awkwardly, hindquarters slumped to one side, stormy-blue hind legs drawn up to its pale grey belly, its massive tail, dark as thunder cloud, curling around. The wounds torn in its hide by the dead fire dragon gaped wide, dark bruised flesh barely visible beneath clusters of flies and beetles, intent on feeding and not caring if their prey was alive or dead. Every now and again the dragon’s skin twitched in a feeble attempt to shake off the tormenters. A few flies were dislodged, only to return with buzzing eagerness. Where beetles fell away, their place was instantly taken by newcomers from the glittering horde scrambling over and around each other. The ground below the creature was a crushed mass of bushes and saplings foul with blackened blood.
There was more life in the front end of the dragon. It rested on its chest, forelegs braced, white crystal claws digging into the shattered twigs and leaf litter. Its massive blue-grey head swayed from side to side, hoary spines bristling with malice the length of its long, muscular neck. Eyes blue as sapphire glowed with malevolence beneath frosty brow ridges and it opened its mouth to hiss menacingly, long cobalt tongue flickering over teeth like steel sword blades. With a rattling clap, it spread its wings.
It couldn’t spread them very far. The rents torn by the fire dragon had ulcerated horribly. Purple slime soiled the cloudy membrane, oozing from the spreading wounds. The creature’s defiant hiss turned to one of agony as it let its wings fall back in painful disorder.
The men of Chazen crowded behind their warlord, each man lending courage to those gathered close around him, inadvertently pressing Kheda forward. He raised his sword slowly, then cut it down with an audible swish. He was already running, Zicre on one side, Beyau on the other, mariners, waniors and huntsmen hard on their heels.
The dragon disappeared. A veil of mist opaque as silk came down before their astonished eyes. Kheda barely hesitated, plunging on through the fog. After a moment’s indecision, the men with him followed. The whiteness wrapped around them, denser than ever. Kheda looked from side to side and found he could barely make out Zicre or Beyau even though he was close enough to touch them. He slowed just a little.
‘Where is it?’ Beyau asked through clenched teeth. ‘It can’t have flown away.’ Shivers wracked Kheda and he looked down to see frost forming on his chain mail. Not on those wings. And we’d have heard it.’
‘What magic is this, my lord?’ Zicre’s sweat-sodden clothing crackled as he fought against its sudden icy embrace.
‘We must kill it before we all freeze to death.’ Kheda gasped. The all-enveloping mist deadened his words and he realised he could barely hear anything beyond aim’s length either.
‘My lord?’ It was Mezai, teeth chattering uncontrollably, breath frozen white in his beard. ‘Come on,’ Kheda said with difficulty, his jaw stiff with cold.
‘My lord!’ Barely coherent, Beyau threw himself at Kheda and knocked the warlord off his feet. The dragon’s head appeared out of the deathly mist, snapping at the void where Kheda had just been standing. Mezai and Zicre stumbled forward, brandishing their weapons. Their yells of wordless defiance were instantly swallowed by the fog swirling ever denser around them.
‘I got it!’ The ice in Mezai’s beard cracked as he grinned, proffering his crude hacking blade.
Kheda pulled himself painfully to his feet, chilled thighs and forearms aching bone deep from the impact on the brutally frozen ground. ‘Well done.’ An icy smear of dark-blue blood glittered on the burnished steel of Mezai’s weapon.
‘Here, my lord.’ Zicre bent to recover a scatter of small blue-white scales with fingers withered by the cold.
Tossing aside the chaelor-soaked rag, Kheda held out a gloved hand and examined the scales the hunter laid on his palm. They were edged with putrid flesh where they had been ripped from the underside of the dragon’s jaw. He closed his hand around them and felt them crumble. When he uncurled his fingers, all he held was glittering powder.
Velindre said it would fade away to nothing.
‘Perhaps its hide won’t be so tough after all,’ said Zicre cautiously.
‘Come on.’ Kheda threw the dust away, brushing his hand against his thigh.
They advanced slowly, Kheda at the forefront, the other three behind him to make a rough arrowhead, every man’s eyes looking in all directions. Shadows in the fog fleeted on the edge of vision. Noises came and went so fast they might just have been imagined. Kheda ripped off his helmet and threw it away. ‘My lord,’ Beyau protested.
‘Seeing and hearing have more value than armour in this.’ Kheda strained eyes and ears. ‘Are we the only ones going forward? Can you hear anyone else?’
A scream ripped through the mist and the clouded air swirled violently around them. More yells tumbled’over each other, punctured by a rattling sweep. Then the mist gathered ever closer, deadening the noise.
‘Its tail?’ hazarded Zicre through clenched teeth. He brushed frost from the front of his tunic but the oiled leather vanished beneath a fresh layer of white.
‘Where’s its head?’ Kheda gripped his sword tight with aching fingers and peered into the fog. He could feel cold moisture seeping through his hair to trickle down his scalp and temples.
A stealthy current in the air alerted him an instant before he saw the sapphire glint of the dragon’s eye cutting through the white mist. Its blue head darted forward, jaw agape, cobalt tongue lashing, blue-black blood dripping from its chin. Kheda didn’t flinch, sweeping his sword around and up to slash at the slack hide beneath the dragon’s jaw. He ripped the blade away and ducked sideways to lose himself in the mist. The creature’s roar of pain made the fog all around throb.
Kheda tensed at a swirl of the vapour then relaxed as the other three emerged and crouched beside him. ‘We have to catch its head somehow,’ he told them forcefully, ‘so we can force it down and have at its eyes. We have to blind it!’
‘We’ll find a net.’ Mezai was shivering so violently he looked like a man in the grip of fever. Jerking his head at Beyau, he stumbled backwards to vanish in the white mist. The swordsman hesitated. ‘Go,’ Kheda ordered.
Zicre moved to stand with his back to Kheda’s. Do you think it can see us through this?’
‘I don’t know.’ Kheda shivered as the other man’s weight pressed the frozen padding beneath his mail against his chilled flesh.