Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [200]
“Ye gods,” Enj whispered. “Ye gods! I wish I spoke the elven tongue, to know what she does say.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, my friend, it’s all rather ordinary. I doubt me if she’s got a large wit, when you come right down to it, or maybe it’s just that her concerns are on the simple side.”
Enj laughed.
“Very well, then, I won’t bother regretting it. I wonder if my sister’s scried us out? A fine sight we must be, riding on a dragon.”
“You’re forgetting about the talisman.” Rhodry laid his hand on his shirt over the stone. “And I don’t dare take it off to allow her a look at us.”
“That’s true. Ye gods, Rori. I keep forgetting the grim truths, don’t I? About your enemies, and the siege down in Cengarn.”
“Well, war or no war, I think me we’ve a right to gloat.” Although both men woke as stiff and sore as if they’d been in battle, on that second day they learned even more about the proper way to fly. By the end of the day’s travel, Rhodry felt nearly as comfortable as he did on a horse—not that he would have wanted to try fighting on dragonback, mind, with all the swoops and tight turns such would have called for. Enj seemed more relaxed as well, sitting upon rather than clinging to Arzosah’s back. When they camped that evening, Arzosah flew out and caught herself another doe, then fell straight asleep again. They were probably tiring her, Rhodry decided, with all this long travel, but soon they would be back at Haen Mam, the place he’d come to think of as home, and the dragon would be able to rest.
“I wonder what she’ll think of the beasts in the lake?” Rhodry said.
“Oh, they’re not half-elegant enough for her, I’m sure.”
They shared a laugh at their own jest. Later, of course, they would wonder how they could have been so at ease, so ignorant, when the dweomer that lay all round them should have at least given them some small hint of danger.
On the third day they left the white peaks behind, swooping lower to fly over the hills that had cost Rhodry and Enj so much time to cross. By Enj’s reckoning they would reach Haen Marn before sunset, but long before then they saw their first evil omen. Arzosah was flying along a grassy valley when Rhodry glanced down and saw a peculiar mark, a gash in the grass that stretched east like a road. Without waiting for a command Arzosah dropped some twenty feet to skim the earth. From this height Rhodry could see clearly enough to call her to land. She circled back and settled gracefully to earth at the spot where the trampling began.
Whatever had passed by had cut a wide swath indeed, some hundred feet of grass become mud, hoofprints and horse droppings, wagon ruts and the abrasions of booted feet. Rhodry slid down from her shoulder and ran, dropping to one knee at the edge of the damage where some of the prints separated themselves out. Enj came trotting after.
“What be this?” Enj said, utterly puzzled. “Never have I seen such a thing in my life.”
“In your lucky and sheltered life, lad. An army’s passed this way, and not long ago at all. Yesterday, I’d say.”
“But where did they come from? The tracks just start out of nowhere.”
“Dweomer,” Arzosah cried in Elvish. “I can smell it!”
Rhodry got up, turning to look at the dragon. She was crouched tense, breathing hard, her great head flung up, her coppery eyes rolling. Her wings trembled as if only sheer will kept her from flying.
“You’re right, no doubt,” he said. “And from the size of these hoofprints, the horses were as big as plow stock. That means the riders had to be Meradan.”
Her claws shot out to dig the earth in hatred.
“Let’s go,” Rhodry said to Enj. “And pray that Haen Marn’s dweomer held.”
Once they were settled on her back, with a flap of wings she leapt up to fly the faster, following the track like a road. Rhodry felt as if the season had changed to winter, and he’d swallowed rocks of ice. Toward midafternoon, when by Enj’s reckoning they were close to Haen Marn, the tracks turned south.
“Shall we follow and kill?” Arzosah bellowed.
“Not yet! Keep heading