Guild Wars_ Edge of Destiny - J. Robert King [77]
Eir strode up before the fang, which was eight feet tall, broad, curved, and icy white. The crowd murmured excitedly as they settled in around it. Eir’s eyes traced across them all, and she bound her red hair back from her shoulders.
“You have heard great tales of us, of the ones who slew Jormag’s champion. But we did this thing only to weaken the dragon himself. I’ve come here tonight to see if he is weak enough that we can face him.”
The crowd applauded, watching avidly as she drew two great axes from her belt. When she began to swing the axes in wide arcs, though, the spectators fell back.
“Spirit of Wolf, guide my work.”
The two blades crossed in midair, and then Eir lunged forward, and the heads came down on either side of the tooth. They crashed into it, their keen edges biting into the hard whiteness—but no. It was biting into them. The axes skirled down the fang in a shower of sparks, their faces worn away in curves.
Eir looked at the blades, burrs rising from their ruined edges. She tossed the axes aside. “Axes are for trees,” she said, and the crowd laughed. Eir drew from her belt a large, keen chisel and a great mallet. “Imagine these on your own tooth.”
As the crowd cringed, Eir positioned the chisel in a line that ran the length of the fang. She raised the mallet and brought it down with a crack. The fang showed no damage. She reared back with the mallet and pounded the chisel again. Crack! Still no fault shown on the fang. Then she took a deep breath and struck it an almighty CRACK!
The fang was unharmed, but the chisel’s end had curled over.
Eir dropped the chisel and mallet beside her. She also let fall the whole belt of tools. Closing her eyes, she raised her face toward the dark rafters high above and said, “Spirit of Bear, guide my work.”
She swung her arm at the fang, but before she could strike it, fingers had become claws. The foreleg of a great grizzly lashed at that tooth. Claws rasped across it but left no mark. From the other side, more claws ripped at it. These were claws that could tear down a young tree, could scratch stone, but the fang stood, inviolate. Now fully a bear, Eir lunged in to set her own massive teeth against the dragon’s great tooth. Enamel skirled, but no harm came to the Fang of the Dragon.
Eir reeled back, her figure transforming again into that of a norn warrior—shaking, sweating, enervated, and defeated. She looked out numbly at the crowd.
Rytlock stepped up, pulling Sohothin free. “Let me have a shot at that thing.”
Logan arrived with hammer in hand. “Me, too.”
“No!” Eir snapped. “We’re done here. Let me through! Let me go!”
Her friends pushed back the crowd and moved in to hold her up as she went.
“It’s fine,” Snaff said softly as they moved along. “So, we’re not ready yet. But we will be. We’ll defeat the dragons. Together, we can defeat anything.”
That night, there were more gifts and feasts and stories and ale. But Eir was quiet through it all, and all the comrades felt the weight of what had happened. Even more norn had flooded into town. From hundreds of miles, they had come, and the merrymakers from the last two nights had not dispersed. The sound of the ongoing party was like a logging camp next to a stockyard beside a slaughterhouse.
“With an army like this, they could have done it without us,” Eir muttered.
She gathered her companions and led them to her workshop. “I’ve had about as much of this as I can take,” she confessed.
Rytlock laughed out loud, but then looked around at the others, saw that they agreed with Eir, and sullenly stared at his claws.
“Norn ale is stiffer than most,” Logan said, rubbing his forehead. “And norn pints are gallons.”
“That’s what I like,” Rytlock said.
“And here they are!” came a new voice at the workshop door—a deep