Reign of Shadows - Deborah Chester [54]
All their lives they’d been told to come home at once if they heard the bell. She would have run, but he flung his arm across her chest and held her bodily.
“Not you.”
“But, Caelan, they want us to come home. We have to—”
He picked her up and pushed her into the cave. She clung to him, screaming his name, but he pulled free.
“Promise me you’ll stay here,” he said sternly, knowing he must keep her from following him. “Promise me you won’t go to the hold, not until the dragons are gone.”
She was crying again, her eyes clinging to him, eating him up. Slowly, fearfully, she gave him a tiny nod.
“Hide and don’t come out,” he said. “If you run out of food, you follow the stream south. Watch the sun and you won’t get lost. You follow it to E’raumhold.”
“Aren’t you going to come get me?”
“Yes,” he said firmly. “I promise I will. Now hide.”
Touching her curls one last time, he turned and started running.
“Caelan!” she screamed after him, but he didn’t look back. There wasn’t time.
Chapter Eleven
Now THE DEEP snow wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t fun. It held him back when he needed to run like the wind. Soon his breath was sawing in his lungs. He wasn’t that far away from the hold, only a quarter of a mile, perhaps less, and yet the distance never seemed to close. The bell rang again, then abruptly stopped.
Ignoring the pain in his lungs, Caelan drove his aching legs onward until he reached the edge of the forest. There he stopped, concealed by pine branches. He gulped in deep lungfuls of air. It felt like razors in his lungs.
The pale walls of the hold reflected the sunlight. To the north, the mountains rose mightily, filling the world. And overhead circled black creatures from a nightmare, too many to count, their wingspans as huge as despair. Leathery wings beat a hum that filled the air. And when the wind shifted, Caelan caught a peculiar scorched scent that made his nostrils wrinkle.
The dragons’ long serpentine necks ended in narrow, crested heads and fanged snouts. Their bodies were long and thin as well, with clawed limbs tucked up light against their scaled undercarriages as they flew.
Directed by riders clinging to leather harnesses, the dragons bugled, whipping their long necks around as they sailed low over the hold. Flames shot from their gaping mouths, searing the rooftops within the hold. Smoke was already roiling skyward in a dark column.
The riders carried weapons that looked like spears, only the tips were as long as a man’s arm with jagged edges, and the hafts were short—weapons for stabbing, not throwing.
Dragons dropped into the hold, only to lift again in a constant shifting of motion. The stabbing spears dripped red, and Caelan could hear screams.
Still breathing hard, he gripped his own dagger in his fist and felt fear like a wall around him.
The gates burst open, and Caelan could glimpse smoke and flames inside the courtyard.
A pair of wild-eyed ponies came plunging out, dodging and snorting. Both were badly burned, and the mane of one was smoking. One pony broke for the forest, but the other passed too close to a dragon that was landing.
Unfurling its wings, it whipped its head and struck the pony in the neck.
Screaming, the pony dropped to its knees, still fighting despite the crimson blood that spurted across the snow. With a fierce shake, the dragon ripped open the pony’s throat and gulped down a chunk of meat.
The lifeless pony fell sprawling in the snow, and with roars of greed, other dragons broke off the attack to fall on the carcass. They ripped it apart and gulped hide and steaming flesh, ignoring the riders who beat at them and shouted commands.
Fresh screams came from inside the hold, whether from animals or people Caelan could not tell. Agonized, not sure what to do, he drove himself to think of something that would help. The people inside were helpless since Beva had destroyed all the weapons in the arms room. As for the warding keys, they’d been spell-forged to keep out malevolent spirits, not to prevent physical attack.
Caelan turned and went running through the