Fire Dragon - Katharine Kerr [119]
“But I never saw them after. We should stop and wait—”
“Stop? Here? Under this moon?”
“True enough. Well, maybe they're just circling our line of march.”
“So I'll hope.” Evandar's voice sounded full of doubt, not hope. “I should never have trusted that slimy little wyrm.”
Thanks to Rhodry's coaxing, Arzosah had flown into the dweomer mist readily enough, following the horsemen. Evandar, however, had forgotten that the mist would blind any creature who flew so high above the ground. At first Arzosah flapped along steadily through the light-shot silvery air, and Rhodry thought he could hear the jingle of tack and the clopping of horses' hooves. All at once, though, they burst out of the mist into sunlight and looked down upon open sea, dotted with what seemed to be white islands. “Ah by the black hairy arse of the Lord of Hell!” “What?” Arzosah called back. “Speak louder!” “Doesn't matter!” Rhodry raised his voice over the wind sweeping over him as they flew. “We've lost them.”
“I can see that for myself.” The dragon dipped one wing and began to turn. “Hang on!”
He clung to the leather straps of her harness as she banked a wing for the wide turn around. When he risked a look at the ocean below, he saw the white islands more closely and realized that they were chunks of ice, exactly like those that form on lakes of a winter but a thousand times the size. The mist rose up all silver and lavender in front of him and swallowed the ice from his view. They swooped into the fog, flew some way in the blind grey, then swooped out again. Below them crawled a lead-colored river, oozing its way through brown reeds.
“Here we are!” Arzosah called back. “I know this place.”
“How?”
She ignored him and flew smoothly onward over the grasslands. At the horizon he could see the dark mounds of what appeared to be a forest. Arzosah changed course slightly and headed for it.
“The mother roads go through there,” she shouted. “They must have gone that way.”
“If you say so, then.”
All at once Arzosah flung up her head and sniffed the air like a hunting dog. She let out a screech that made the hair on the back of his neck prickle, then with a huge beat of her wings launched herself upward, flapping hard to gain height. Rhodry clung to the straps for all he was worth.
“What are you doing?” he yelled.
He got no answer until she'd risen so far above the ground that he felt dizzy. She levelled off her flight, banked one wing again, and turned in a lazy arc.
“Look down!” she called out.
Rhodry saw, so far below that they might have been beetles crawling on a dead log, a line of horsemen marching in military order. When Arzosah began a long glide down, he could count about twenty of them, all riding heavy horses and leading pack mules. He could also discern that they had manes as wild and long as those of their mounts. Leading them, flying fairly low to the ground, was a raven the size of a small pony.
“Horsekin!” Rhodry yelled.
“And Raena with them! Let's have a bit of sport!”
With a roar like a river in spate Arzosah plunged down. The raven saw them first; shrieking, she turned tail and flapped away fast. The men looked up just as their horses smelled the dragon. Kicking, plunging, bucking, the horses tried to bolt. The Horsekin riders were yelling and grabbing manes and necks, shortening up on their reins, clutching their saddle peaks—anything to keep from being thrown. Some of the horses did bolt, with cursing riders still clinging to them. Arzosah ignored them and swooped after the raven.
Shrieking, the raven dodged, darting this way and that, but steadily the dragon gained. Arzosah reached out with the full length of her neck and snapped. With one last shriek the raven disappeared, bursting through some invisible gate to another world, but Arzosah had a pair of black feathers in her mouth. She spat them out, then turned in a wide arc. Below the panicked Horsekin were trying to collect their mounts and their marching order.
“Shall we go after them again?” Arzosah cried out.
“No! Do you