Beyond the New Sea lay the mountains that were their destination. He let his thoughts drift and the wind consume him. There would be time enough to address his worries when his feet were again on the ground and when Fiona was in other hands.
Suddenly Dhamon felt the manticore tense beneath him. He opened his eyes and looked over the great beast’s side. Through the beating wings he spotted three black shapes rising from the blackness of the New Sea. The shapes were difficult to discern, and if the moon was not out, their coloration would have rendered them effectively invisible.
“Spawn!” Dhamon cursed. He drew his sword with his right hand and firmly twisted his left in the manticore’s mane. Fiona’s sword was already out, though she kept one hand hooked in Dhamon’s belt.
The manticore tucked its wings against its sides, turned, and dived on the lead creature. Ragh again dug his claws into the manticore and swore inwardly for not warning Dhamon about the somethings he’d seen a while ago.
They were particularly large spawn, each at least eight feet tall, broadly shouldered, and vaguely man-shaped. Glossy black against the blackness of the New Sea, their scales caught the moonlight and made them shimmer like oil. Through the wind Dhamon heard their scalloped wings beating, faintly heard their almost-in-unison intake of breath, their jaws opening wide. He braced himself.
The lead spawn was the first to release its spray of acid. Under the right circumstances, it would have drenched the manticore and its riders, seriously injuring them all and probably causing them to fall to their deaths. But the manticore had angled itself with the wind, cutting the force of the acid-spray. Only the manticore and Dhamon were hit, and only lightly.
“Aye, but you are a smart beast!” Dhamon called to the manticore. “You use the wind to our favor!”
The spawn hovered, keeping their distance and hurriedly communicating in a collection of hisses and grunts. Dhamon strained to catch the few intelligible words, but even his uncanny hearing couldn’t entirely cut through the shrieking wind and the loud, insistent flapping of the manticore’s wings. All he managed to pick up were the words “attack” and “ssslay,” both of which seemed staples in spawn vocabulary.
Suddenly the middle creature raised its claws, and the other two flew off to either side, attempting to circle the manticore and its riders. Dhamon stretched as far as he dared, leading with his sword and swinging, but he couldn’t quite reach the nearest spawn—it was just beyond his range. That meant it was also too far away to claw at him but close enough to breathe on him—and this time the spawn was on the quiet side of the wind. The spawn released a gout of acid that splashed against Dhamon’s tunic and burned through to his skin. Most of the spray caught Fiona, however.
“Come closer!” Dhamon shouted at it in frustration. “Fight me, you scaly demon!”
Behind him, he felt Fiona lurch in pain, nearly dislodging him because she was holding fast to his belt.
Somehow she held on and was swinging at the spawn on the other side. She shouted in triumph as she landed what felt like a solid blow.
“Fight me!” Dhamon shouted at the nearest spawn, which was readying another blast of breath.
“Fight…” The rest of his words were lost as the manticore roared louder than before, the sound piercing him and making him so dizzy he nearly lost his grip.
Without warning, the manticore shifted its position, head thrown back so its mane fell across Dhamon, covering him like a blanket. The creature was angled nearly straight up, desperately trying to evade the acid spray, and Dhamon, Fiona, and Ragh threw all their efforts into simply holding on and not being sliced by the back spikes that were cutting into them. As it climbed, the manticore’s wings beat at an odd angle, so ungainly that Ragh was surprised the creature could stay aloft. A keening came from the frantically beating wings, a shrill whistling that drowned out the wind and filled their senses, made them feel as if hundreds of heated needles were pricking at them.
“Hold on!” Dhamon yelled to Fiona, shaking his head to work it free of the mane so he could see.
Another roar, and Dhamon believed he’d heard nothing so deafening in his entire life. Not even the roar of the blue dragons on a battlefield matched this eruption. Gritting his teeth, he barely managed to sheathe his sword and with his free hand flailed about behind him until he grabbed a fistful of the Knight’s tunic.
“Fiona, hang on!” Don’t become one more name to add to the list of dead comrades, he thought.
As the painful noise continued, Dhamon sucked in a breath, his chest achingly tight. The sound became unbearable to a man whose hearing was so sharp. The multitude of stabbing needles felt like fiery daggers now, and at the same time, as they climbed upward, he felt as if his body was being pressed down by heavy stones.
“Can’t breathe.”
He was growing stupefied, as if he were drunk. He felt his blood pounding against his temples, and he was certain he would black out at any moment. He clamped his teeth down on his tongue, hoping to create a different pain that would keep him alert. He wound his hands tightly in the mane and in Fiona’s tunic. The sound is torturous, he thought. Does the creature mean to kill the spawn and us, too?
“Stop!” he shouted to the manticore. “You’ll kill us!” Then he bit down on his tongue again and tasted blood.
The sound was also brutal to the spawn. The two smaller spawn slammed their clawed hands over their ears in a futile effort to block out the noise. Dhamon twisted, and through a haze of pain spotted the largest spawn—the closest one—the one who offered the greatest threat. But the enemy was helpless, rather than dangerous. It contorted in the air, wings beating erratically, then abruptly it bucked and seized and plunged like a rock. It finally regained control at the very edge of Dhamon’s vision. It hovered there for but an instant, then resumed its dive toward the New Sea until it disappeared from his sight.
“Stop it!” Dhamon tried again, jabbing his heels against the creature’s sides. “Stop the noise or we’ll die!” The manticore did not pay any attention to him.
Ragh had his chin tucked into his chest and his elbows squeezed against his sides, equally beleaguered, the sound and the pressures threatening to unseat him at any moment. Fiona, too, was fighting to stay conscious in the cacophonous onslaught.
The remaining two spawn had their mouths open, screaming in pain, Dhamon felt certain, though he couldn’t hear them over the manticore’s keening. Blood ran from one creature’s nose and mouth, its eyes were wide and fixed, its wings were beating feebly now. A heartbeat later its wings stopped, and it joined the first in a swift plummet toward the water far below. The last spawn held on, its eyes narrowed, flitting between each of the passengers, lingering on Dhamon—who was the only one able to return its hate-filled glare.
Lips quivering in a snarl, the spawn dropped several feet below them, gaining some distance, only to swoop up suddenly on the other side. The spawn darted in, slashing at the manticore’s wing, then retreated to a safe position again—all the while its mouth parted in a hideous, pained expression. Dhamon saw blood glistening in the moonlight, a long rent in the manticore’s wing that looked ugly and raw. Still, their massive mount managed to beat its wings, keeping its odd position, its keening continuing unabated as it shifted ever so slightly to once more surprise the spawn by materializing in its path. Then the manticore roared, whipping its tail and flicking out its spikes to catch the spawn in the chest.