And one of them just seized her shoulder in a heavy hand with heavy claws.
Granted, given all that Gariath could do with his claws, she suspected she ought not to have snarled at him when he effortlessly spun her to face his vast chest. She had to look up to meet his black eyes.
And when he looked down at her, it was a harsh gaze set beneath a pair of horns that traveled down a snout brimming with sharp teeth in a bare snarl of his own.
At the best of times, Gariath didn’t need a reason to kill a person, even one that approached his vague definition of “companion.” Given that he had a slew of reasons, ranging from her abandoned plot to kill the only human he respected to her witnessing him talking to invisible people, she had to wonder, not for the first time, why he hadn’t done it yet.
That wasn’t the sort of musing one did vocally. And when he did no more than thrust an arm at her, she counted herself lucky.
“Here,” the dragonman rumbled.
He let go of the long object in his hand, leaving it to teeter ominously before collapsing against her. She buckled under its weight, struggling to keep it up.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“What you asked for.”
She looked down at the object. A spear. . or a harpoon? Hard to say; the amalgamation of metal long rusted and old wood left the weapon’s exact purpose vague beyond being something suitable for stabbing.
Still, that was what she had asked for.
“I should remind you this thing has to go into a snake the size of a tree.” She hefted the massive weapon; a long sliver of wood cracked and peeled off. “We want to impale it, not give it splinters.”
“Your plan,” Gariath grunted.
She stepped aside twice as he shoved his way past her: once for his immense shoulder, twice for the batlike wings folded tightly against it. She failed, however, to account for his tail, creeping out behind his kilt. It snaked up behind him, lashing at her cheek with enough force to send her snarling. Not as hard as he could have, just enough to remind her of the dangers of not giving him a wide enough berth.
“If you don’t like what I found, you can go find another one.”
He gestured over his shoulder with a broad hand. She didn’t have to look hard to see what he gestured to.
It was staring back at her.
Considering the sheer number of the skulls littering the island, she suspected she ought to be used to their massive, empty eye sockets staring at her, their shattered jaws and fractured skulls paled in comparison. Still, one never truly became accustomed to seeing a thirty-foot-long unholy amalgamation of man and fish lying dead.
And they were just one macabre feature of the graveyard that was the beach. Fragmented ballistae dotted the landscape, their rusted spears caught between ribs whose flesh had long rotted away. Catapults lay crushed, the only remains of their ammunition within the gaping holes of the demonic skulls. Most curious were the monoliths: great statues of robed figures, holy symbols of gods carved in lieu of faces, sinking on rusted metal treads and lying in pieces on the beach.
The war in which mortalkind battled Aeons, the corrupted servants of the Gods, for supremacy. Nothing remained of that battle besides this graveyard.
That, she thought, and the tome. Which is why you’re going to Jaga in the first place. Hence the plan, hence the spear. . the rotting, rusty spear. . She blinked. You know, if you do kill them, the chances of this plan killing you are far lower.
She ignored that thought. It was getting easier.
“The shict is insane.”
She had been intended to hear it. Tact and volume were not qualities known to the Gonwa, or their leader.
Tall and lean, sinew and scales, Hongwe shook his head as he surveyed the vessel’s progress. He scratched the beard of scales drooping from below his chin, a low hiss emanating from behind pressed lips as a long tail twitched behind him.
“Completely insane,” he muttered again.
“I can hear you, you know,” she said.
“Good,” the Gonwa replied. He turned upon her, narrow yellow eyes staring at her from behind a blunt snout. “Better to remind you again and clear my conscience before you decide to kill yourself.”
“Look, I know we’ve only known each other for a week now,” she said, grunting as she leaned the spear against the vessel. “But trying to kill ourselves is sort of what we do.”
“Sometimes each other,” Gariath growled as he stalked forward to stand beside Hongwe.
“Right, sometimes.” Kataria did not miss the knowing glint in his eye.
“And I tell you again,” Hongwe said. “Your biggest danger is not anything with teeth or arrows.” His voice was sharp, threatening. “The shennisah-nui, the Great Gray Wall, is a reef so sharp with stone and so thick with fog that anyone, human, Gonwa, or Owauku, doesn’t even see the rock that impales him. No one passes but the Shen.”
“And the Akaneeds,” Kataria said. “They know the way.”
“Jaga is their home. Jaga is the home to snakes that swallow sharks. Appreciate that for a moment. The least of your concerns are the Shen.”
“Not true.”
The voice was a withered one, something so used to joviality and whimsy that its mournfulness was something that stuck in flesh instead of ears. As they looked up to the nearby rocky outcropping, it was easy to see who had spoken it. Togu’s body, too, had once been taller; as much as a reptile with a body like a beer keg could be, anyway.
Now the Owauku sat upon the rock, hunched over, head bowed.
Good.
A spiteful thought, Kataria knew, but a just one. That Togu lived at all was a decision of Lenk’s she neither understood nor questioned. The creature, king of his people, had welcomed them to his home of Teji, delivered them from their shipwreck, only to deliver them again into the hands of the netherlings. Lenk, perhaps, only saw his betrayal as just that.
Kataria had been aboard the ship, though. Kataria had seen the creature known as Sheraptus and had seen what he had done. Kataria had heard Asper scream.
And it was only out of acknowledgment of her own betrayal that she obeyed Lenk’s decision and didn’t put an arrow in Togu’s gullet.
“The Shen are not like us,” he said. “Maybe once all green people were from the same stock. But while the Gonwa swam and the Owauku starved, the Shen killed. They killed when our peoples separated so many years ago, and they have never stopped. They come out of Jaga in their canoes, the Akaneeds swimming with them, and they kill. They kill with clubs. They kill with arrows.”
He turned to stare at her. His eyes were bulbous yellow things, moving independently of one another as they both turned upon her.
“The Shen will kill you, too. All of you.” He shook his head. His scaly whiskers shook with it. “I will not mourn.”
“We die, you die.”
It was Lenk who spoke, Lenk who came trudging through the sands. Lenk spoke in certainties these days.
“Kataria, Gariath, and I are going to Jaga,” he said, fixing his gaze upon Togu, whose own eyes quickly faltered. “This ship sinks, we die, we don’t come back. Denaos, Dreadaeleon, and Asper take care of you.”
“There’s no need for threats,” Hongwe said, unflinching from Lenk’s stare. “The boat will deliver you as far as you can manage it. It’s solid, Gonwa craft. But you will not return. This journey is madness and the Owauku must suffer for it?”
“And Gonwa,” Lenk said. “You didn’t lift a finger to warn us. You could have prevented this.”
Speechless, Hongwe looked to Gariath, pleading in his eyes. The dragonman stared at him for a moment before shrugging.