Ahead, perhaps five hundred yards away, he thought he caught sight of a familiar figure standing in one of the wagons, a curved longbow held at the ready, while behind her the horses, some with two riders, seemed just to stand there, simply watching as the immense and deadly dark-made horror thundered towards them.
Four hundred yards, and breathing hard now but keeping pace with the Kraal, watching the jerky, jolting rise and fall of the great muscular hump behind its head and the ridges and folds of the armoured skin there. The beast’s great eye bulging unseen in the flat forehead facing straight down the road, completely oblivious to the young man now drawing level with its hindquarters.
Three hundred and fifty yards, and the slender elfin seemed incredibly to be drawing the bow. Run, Elayeen! What are you thinking! flashed through Gawain’s mind as he drew alongside the Kraal’s mid-section.
Three hundred yards and sure enough, an elven longshaft flashed into the leaden sky, catching the last rays of sun setting beyond the trees in the west. Only to be trampled underfoot by the thundering Kraal after landing harmlessly in the road.
Two hundred and fifty yards, and Elayeen loosed another shaft, and this one too fell short. Still the riders on their horses seemed intent on simply watching their doom charge towards them.
Two hundred yards, and Gawain saw Elayeen nocking another shaft. But with a sudden surge and his eyes fixed upon the Kraal’s hump, Gawain drew alongside the beast’s shoulders, and then reached out with his right hand, and leapt…
Gawain clutched at the folds of skin on the hump of muscle and bone behind the Kraal’s head, the skin here wrinkled and protruding like the seams of a badly-made boat. To Gawain, it was as simple and as dangerous as mounting a horse on the run in a battlefield, only it was no saddle he had grasped, and it was no horse he straddled.
A hundred and fifty yards and incredibly another elven longshaft flashed briefly before slamming into the Kraal’s long face, just below the black horn. A glance up, and now the riders beyond the wagon were moving, but north, the one direction they must not go. And alone, in the wagon, the frozen face of Eldengaze fixed forward, Elayeen drew another arrow from her quiver.
A sudden feeling of profound loss swept over Gawain and once again, the world seemed to slow. The jerking ride upon the Kraal’s back seemed to undulate smoothly rather jolt, the sound of thunder from the road becoming lower, more constant, and the blur of the trees at the periphery of his vision seemed to come into sharp focus. Ahead, Eldengaze stood poised, bow drawn, broken fingers clearly forgotten, waiting to release the shot.
Gawain wanted Elayeen back, if only for a moment, just long enough to say goodbye.
A hundred yards.
Gawain sighed and leaned forward over the beast’s hump, and clinging to the creature as best a master horseman could with just his legs, slipped two feet of the bright steel of the Sword of Justice from its scabbard.
Eighty yards.
Releasing his grip on the pommel of the longsword, then forming his right hand into a spiteful claw, reaching up into the air, summoning his strength, and plunging it down and back into the awful jellied orb of the Kraal’s eye, bursting it…
Seventy yards.
Grasping fingers clutching the bony rim of the crusted, armoured lid as instinctively the beast tried to close the useless eye, heaving back and up…
Sixty yards.
The Kraal’s head swinging up, and Gawain still with his right hand heaving upward, his left sliding the longsword under beast’s throat…
Fifty yards.
A final heave on the eyelid and Gawain saw the pommel of the sword below and to the right, rising as the beast’s head came up…
Forty yards.
Gawain gripped the pommel of the sword, still half in scabbard, and began heaving back, feeling the steel rasp against the armoured and scaly skin under the Kraal’s jaw…
Thirty yards.
Kraaaa… but the beast’s cry of agony and rage ended abruptly. Its head thrown up, the eyelids closed, the white line of soft, pliable skin Gawain had noted between the armoured plates of head and chest yielded easily to the honed edge of the Sword of Justice; with a strength born of desperation Gawain heaved it up through the bone of the neck and into the enormous muscles heaped upon the immense collar of the Kraal’s shoulders…
Twenty yards.
Sound began to return in a rush and his sense of balance told him that the Kraal had collapsed beneath him. He caught a brief glimpse of Eldengaze still standing alone in the wagon, still aiming the longshaft, and then a great bow-wave of dirt, grit and gravel began to spew up in front of him, and he let go of the sword.
The world tumbled, he closed his eyes, and tried his best to roll into a ball. Something slammed violently between his legs before had time to draw his knees up to his chest, he felt the air blasting from his lungs and hoped that the something hadn’t been the Kraal’s black horn. Then, impact after impact, and he was tumbling violently too.
Five yards. With a sound like rain, the noise of dirt and grit showering on wood. A great pain deep in his bowels and the wind blasted from him. He opened his eyes and for the briefest of moments, he saw Eldengaze, bow relaxed but shaft still nocked, gazing down at him, cold as the crime of a frost-rimed rose in winter. Then he rolled over, gagging for breath, retching and writhing with the agony of a kind only a man can know.
“Longsword!” a distant cry, “Longsword!” nearer this time.
The sound of horses, hooves and boots on gravel, and great waves of pain.
“Longsword! By the Teeth, Longsword!”
The sound of something heavy crunching into the dirt near his head, heavy breathing from at least three men, and then hands gripping his shoulders.
“Longsword! Gawain! By all that’s sacred let my king live!” Allazar’s voice gasped.
Gawain simply succumbed to the waves of pain welling up from deep within him, and was only vaguely aware of being lifted, and carried, and then put down on something a little softer than gravel, though not by much. Hands rubbed at his temples, and he heard a faint chanting. One panicked thought flashed into his mind like a blazing arrow, chickens! And then the pain faded into nothing.
When his senses finally returned, the great billowing clouds of gut-wrenching agony had subsided, and other pains vied for his attention. Knees and elbows stang, hips and a shoulder throbbed, and his shoulder-blades and back ached. Last time he had felt like this had been in training, losing his seat on Gwyn while trying to take a jump followed by a hairpin turn far too quickly. Memory flooded back, his ears began working again, and he flicked his eyes open.
The sky was leaden, dusk had fallen, and flickering shadows spoke of lit torches, which was surely madness on the road. He was about to protest when Allazar’s grimy face swung into view, blotting out the sky.
“Ah. He is awake.”
At once he heard a whispering, and then great cheers, loud and triumphant, a raucous din which, if the torches were madness, was truly insane.
“Are you all mad, wizard?” Gawain gasped. “Douse the flames! Silence that cheering!”
He tried to push himself up on screaming elbows but Allazar’s hand upon his chest pressed him firmly back onto the pile of horse-blankets in the wagon on which he lay.
“Rest, Longsword, and be at peace. The darkness is destroyed, and reinforcements are arrived from Callodon. The eyes of the eldengaze report nothing but the light of life all around, and you live! Rest, and gather your strength. There’s to be rabbit stew for supper, isn’t that wonderful?”