The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [171]
He turned in the direction the arrow had come from and saw Leshya running down the street toward them, still fifty yards away.
She was supposed to still be up on the hill, but he was glad she wasn’t. He picked up the bow and ran toward Winna.
Aspar felt as if everything good in him had been ripped out—mornings waking in the ironoaks, the quiet of the deep forest, the feel of Winna’s skin—everything wonderful was gone. All that was left was the ugliest beast he had ever seen about to take a bite out of him with sharp, gleaming, serrated black teeth. With a hoarse cry, he threw himself aside, suddenly noticing a stench like the bloated belly of a long-dead horse or the breath of a vulture.
He came back up with his dirk and ax out, feeling silly. He saw it better now, as it heaved itself up on the dock. Its head was otterlike, as wedge-shaped as a viper, and twice the size of the biggest horse skull he had ever seen. Like the greffyn and the utin, it was covered in scales, but also with oily green-black fur. At first he thought its body was that of a huge snake, but even as he reckoned that, it suddenly heaved up onto the dock with short thick forepaws. The feet were webbed and had talons the length of his arm. Silent now save for a sort of gurgling whistle, it lurched toward him, dragging the rest of its mass up from the river. He backed away, unsure what to do. If he let it sing again, then he would surely walk stupidly back into its jaws, as he had almost just done.
At least he knew what had happened to the people of Whitraff. They had walked smiling down to the river and been eaten. He remembered an Ingorn story about something like this, but he couldn’t remember what it was called. He’d never much cared for stories about nonexistent creatures.
Another arrow appeared in the sack below its throat, but aside from being unable to croon its damning call, the beast seemed relatively untroubled. It was all out of the water now, except for its tail. Its rear legs were as squat as the front, and as far from them as the length of two horses, so that its belly dragged along the wooden planks. Although it looked clumsy, once on land it moved with a sudden speed Aspar wouldn’t have guessed at. It lunged at him and he dodged aside, cleaving his ax at the back of its neck. To his surprise, the blade sheared a notch in the scales, albeit not a deep one.
He was still surprised when the head swung violently into him, knocking him off his feet. He rolled, feeling as if his ribs had been cracked, and came up to find the head darting toward him once more. From his crouch Aspar twisted away, cutting at the exposed throat with his knife and feeling the tissue part in a long, ragged slash. Blood sprayed his arm, and this time he dodged the counterattack and came to his feet running.
As soon as he was clear, arrows began pelting the beast. Most were bouncing off; for now it was tucking its head down to protect its vulnerable throat. Aspar saw that Leshya and Stephen were doing the shooting.
The monster was bleeding, but not as much as Aspar had hoped. Still, after a brief hesitation, it seemed to decide it had had enough. It sprinted back to the river, slid in, and vanished beneath the surface, leaving him panting and wondering if the thing was poisonous, like the greffyn. But though he felt a mild burning where the blood had touched his skin, it was nothing like the sick and immediate fever he’d felt confronting the other beast.
Leshya and Winna were a different story. Winna was on her hands and knees vomiting and Leshya was leaning on her bow, the blue veins of her face prominent beneath her skin.
Stephen seemed fine.
Aspar went to Winna and knelt by her. “Did it touch you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No.”
“It’ll be fine, then,” he murmured. He reached out to stroke her head.
“Don’t,” Leshya snapped. “The blood.”
Aspar stopped inches short