“Yes, but - ” Shandi looked confused.
“You could go back by yourself, if you want to,” Steelmind continued. “But it seems to me that you would be going back on the agreement you made with Darian if you did that, and I suspect that you feel the same way. Is that why you’re being so negative, trying to get us all into agreement to give up and go home so that you won’t have conflicting duties?”
Shandi flushed, and had a hard time meeting his eyes. She couldn’t meet Darian’s either. Something in what Steelmind had said had hit home.
“All right, then; you’ve tried and failed, so give it a rest,” Steelmind said decisively. “Either be helpful toward our objective, or be silent.”
Shandi flushed again and bit her lip; she obviously wanted to make a retort, and didn’t want to do so in front of the others. Darian exchanged a knowing glance with Keisha, feeling conspiratorial. The first lovers’ quarrel? Could be. And I think he’s going to hear about it from her when there isn’t an audience. He couldn’t blame her for wanting to give up at this point - but he and Steelmind had faced other monsters in the past, and he wasn’t going to let a mere monster stand between him and finding his family. They’d encountered spirit manifestations before, but this cold-drake was, for all of its fearsome power, still flesh and bone.
“What else can we do?” he asked. “Can Kel and the birds confuse and distract him without getting into range of his eyes or teeth?”
“We could drrrop thingsss on him,” Kel said meditatively. ‘Sssimple but effective grrryphon tactic. Rocksss. Trrreesss. Perhapsss, if my luck isss good, I could drrrop sssomething over hisss head?”
“Just before we’re ready to go for the final kill - even if you don’t get the thing over its head, you’ll distract it. A shot at the eyes themselves is not likely except from directly in front of it, and we all know what the danger is there.” Steelmind fingered the hilt of one of his watersteel knives, thinking. “The main thing is to keep it from freezing any of us again.”
“Could we just sneak by it?” Keisha asked diffidently. “Wouldn’t that be better? If you use any magic at all, Darian, you’ll show the Wolverine Shaman where you are. He can’t ignore the presence of a Master mage so near to them.”
Darian grimaced. “I know - but we can’t do this without magic, and no, I don’t think we can just sneak by it. You heard what Steelmind said about how it’s sensitive to footsteps.” He stood up. “If we’re going to get over the pass before nightfall, we have to do this now. It isn’t going to get any easier as the air gets colder, and if we camp, it may come after us.”
They took out bows and arrows from their baggage, even Shandi. Kel and the birds took to the air. In this instance, being mounted would not be any advantage, so the dyheli and Karles were to stay out of the creature’s range, and only come in to rescue them if they fell under its spell again.
Darian alone was unarmed, as he would need to keep all of his attention on his magic. Carefully, watching the ravine with every step they took, they approached the clearing. Darian’s heart was in his mouth with every step; his breath sounded very loud, and he had to control a start at every unexpected noise. When they were at the periphery, the birds went into action.
Diving and shrieking, they showed where the monster was hiding and teased it up into the open. Their talons could not harm the creature, but they annoyed it, and it lunged upward the full length of its neck as it snapped at them in irritation.
Oh, gods . . . it’s huge. How are we ever going to defeat this thing?
Now Kel joined them, sweeping in from the west, dropping clawfuls of stones and branches on the cold-drake. He was aiming for the head, but the drake was too agile for any of the weapons to hit the skull; most of them fell short, or bounced off the armored hide of the shoulders without touching anything. What Kel did accomplish, was to distract it from Darian down below, who tapped into the nearest ley-line and began the simplest of all magics - creating heat. His heart pounded in his ears, but he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. With energy from the ley-line, he could pour heat into the ravine, warming the very stone around the drake. He concentrated on raising the temperature of the area surrounding the drake, though there was no perceptible effect for some time. They didn’t have arrows to waste; the only time that any shots were taken were when they were sure ones - clear shots at the creature’s eyes or nostrils, the only two vulnerable places on it.
None of those shots hit the mark; the cold-drake evaded the arrows even as it evaded the missiles dropped on its head - but it was angry, and getting angrier by the moment. If Darian had allowed himself to feel it, he knew he would have been terrified. The drake towered over them, its bone-white plates glinting with the sheen of ice. Its head was the size of a dyheli, the fanged mouth looked large enough to take in any of them whole, but they all fought against instinct to keep from looking it in the eyes. It hissed and snarled, snapping at the birds, threatening the humans around it with upraised talons. They had to keep it irritated and off-balance, but not get it angry enough to charge.
Darian shut his ears to the screams of the birds and of Kel, and to the battle sounds of the drake, which sounded like the tearing of canvas. Heat. That was all he dared think of.
The others came forward for a cautious shot or two, hoping for that lucky moment - being able to hit the eye and strike the brain. Kel must have given up on his idea of blinding the thing with a dropped tent-cloth, because he hadn’t come back for one. The drake particularly wanted a piece of Kel; every time he came by, the creature clawed the sky in his direction and gave one of those harsh battle cries. Kelvren pressed that advantage, at great cost to his endurance, engaging the cold-drake in a duel of feint-and-trick while staying airborne. A dive from the left would turn into a slip to the right in an instant, drawing the cold-drake up onto his hindquarters. That would be followed in an eyeblink by a blinding twist in midair, and the attack would be mirrored as the drake dropped back down to all fours again. Showers of ice crystals sprayed from the beast’s shoulders when Kel did get a solid contact in, but not even gryphon talons got a single blood mark on the drake. A well-aimed wounding strike was out of the question - Kelvren was using all of his skill just to stay alive and engaged.
Meanwhile, Darian kept concentrating, raising the temperature around the drake bit by bit. He could feel the difference in the air now, and by its behavior, so could the drake.
It was uncomfortable; it tried to move farther back in the ravine where the rock hadn’t been heated, but Kel wouldn’t let it, dropping quickly retrieved branches on it, stooping at it, hovering in the air just out of reach and screaming at it. For one fleeting moment, Darian wondered if he ought to call Kel off and let it retreat - but it was too late to change their plans now.
Darian kept pouring heat into the small space containing the cold-drake, and the beast began to react to the heat as a human would react to the cold; the swipes of its talons became less sure, it snapped its jaws on empty air, and its eyes took on an odd glaze. It was fighting off torpor, and they all moved nearer. Then Steelmind let fly a shot that hit the mark - one in the nostril. The cold-drake screamed, but in a far different way than the battle snarls and cries from the combat with Kelvren.