Guild Wars_ Edge of Destiny - J. Robert King [114]
She backed up another step, the powerstone arrows jutting before her.
But the lion and the hyena only turned away. Side by side, they bounded back over the trench and rushed into the oncoming wall of monsters.
“Snaff’s got them,” Eir said breathlessly. “He’s got control.”
The lion and the hyena tore apart a number of the beasts, but more slithered and pounded and bounded forward. Some dropped right into the trench, and others tried to leap over it, but all of them were brought down by dragon-blood stones. All of them turned from attackers to defenders.
“He’s buying her time,” Eir said, at last releasing the three arrows to vault skyward and explode in the hide of the beast. “If only Glint can set the yoke.”
Kralkatorrik held Glint in a death grip. It would never release her now. It wanted her dead, and to kill her, all it had to do was close its talons.
But then—boom! boom! boom!—three bright green blasts erupted across its belly. Pain ripped through it, and for a moment it was not thinking of the traitor clutched in its grip.
A moment was all Glint needed. She wrenched sideways, ripping the claws of the dragon from her side, and darted away from it on the wind. The dragon-blood yoke was still clutched in her fangs—this one slender hope for success.
Though her lungs were filling with blood, Glint labored skyward like a wounded dove. She would have but one chance this time. Kralkatorrik knew she was there in the storm, would be seeking her with all its focus. If only she could spot its head first.
And there it was, below her and to the left.
Glint tucked her wings and dived. She jutted her jaw so that the blood-stone yoke reached forward to take hold. She fell from the sky, millennia of vengeance packed into a moment.
The yoke stabbed down toward the dragon’s horns and neck.
But it glimpsed her.
Its head darted up.
Before she could set the yoke, its fangs snapped onto her body.
Glint jolted, seized in the maw of the monster.
She could almost reach the back of Kralkatorrik’s head, could almost put the yoke in place, but one more bite from him would kill her.
She lunged.
Kralkatorrik bit.
A dragon scream split the heavens.
Eir looked up. “Which one?”
The black cloud parted, and something plunged from it.
“No!” Eir cried.
The figure that fell was Glint. Broken wings streamed in the wind. Claws jutted stiffly. She fell like a comet, trailing smoke.
The other heroes saw it, too—staggering out into the sands.
She plunged toward the desert. Her body struck, hurling up a great plume of sand. Fire erupted around her, and she tumbled end over end across the ground.
Two seconds later came the sound of the impact—shattering stone, a mountain breaking. The ground trembled and reeled, and the dragon’s broken body left a long furrow ending in a crater. A storm of sand rose into the heavens, and a rain of crystalline scales cascaded all around.
The dragon Glint was dead.
THE CHARR VANGUARD
Logan Thackeray and Flinteye Blazestone marched nearly a hundred charr warriors up from the bowels of Ebonhawke Keep. As they reached the ground floor, Logan gestured through a doorway: “Weapons in there, boys!”
The charr roared, piling through the door and greedily grabbing up swords, crossbows, axes, hammers, knives . . .
Logan strode to the banded-iron door and hoisted the beam. The door swung outward. “Whoever wants a fight, follow me!” He turned and bolted through the archway. “Charge!”
“Charge!” echoed Flinteye.
The charr vanguard rushed out past the ravaged body of Dylan Thackeray and into combat with the creatures that had slain him.
Crystalline hyenas ran rampant through the bailey and feasted on the fallen. The beasts looked up from their meals, jowls spattered in red. One loped away from its kill, and two more joined it. The pack formed up and came on. Stone hackles spiked across