The Kingless Land - Ed Greenwood [109]
Hawkril lunged under its scaly bulk, twisted up to slash with his dagger along the edge of its mouth, and left the steel buried hilt deep in the angle of those cruel jaws.
As the wyrm turned away from the fresh pain, thrashing, the warrior sprang forward and got one arm hooked around the bloody, curling stump of neck from which he'd severed its other head. His grip held, even when its frantically flapping batwings plucked him aloft-and with a snarl, Hawkril sworded its remaining head again and again, ignoring the thrusts of its snout and its wriggling attempts to bite him or slash him with its teeth. He went on hacking until he'd slashed that head to ribbons, and he was rolling in forest leaves drenched with dark blood and half crushed beneath a heavy, wildly whipping body of black scales and quivering agonies. Still eerily silent, it died.
Hawkril rose, saw no fresh spell menacing him, and let out his rage on what was left of the nightwyrm. He was not gentle in his butchery. By the time he'd dismembered the dragon-thing, he was drenched in its dark blood, and his eyes blazed like twin coals.
He stalked toward the sorceress, who had somehow ended up on her knees with her wrists held behind her by a grim-faced Sarasper.
Their eyes met. He'd never seen a woman's eyes so large and dark before. She shook her head a little but said nothing.
Embra's face was pale, and tears had left two bright tracks down her cheeks. Her lips trembled as Hawkril loomed up over her.
He took her by the throat and hauled her to her feet, and he was not gentle about it. "Well, wench?" he growled. "Why?"
"I-I-," Embra said, and choked. Her next word was a sob; wordlessly she shook her head, fresh tears bursting forth.
"She was under compulsion," Sarasper said quietly. "Some spell sent by her father's mages, no doubt. She's said the wyrm was meant to kill us."
Hawkril nodded curtly and took Embra's chin between two of his fingers. Almost delicately he shook her head swiftly back and forth until she stared at him dazedly, tears abated.
"So what, Lady Silvertree," he asked coldly, "are we to do with you? Are we to trust you or…?"
Embra's eyes held shame, and pleading, and a vast weariness as they looked up into his. "Kill me," she whispered, her lips trembling.
"Slay me now, swiftly, before they come into my head again… or I start pleading. Oh, Hawkril, I am so sorry! I-slay me! Please!"
The armaragor's face was cold and as unyielding as a war helm as he nodded, drew in a deep and reluctant breath, lifted her chin with his thumb to lay bare her throat, and drew back his bloody war sword.
Craer stayed in the tree until the light of the risen moon outshone the last afterglow of the dying day. No one came skulking through the forest in any direction.
The procurer had just begun the climb down when, glancing back at the ruins one last time, he found himself looking into the calm, dark eyes of a wizard watching him from the heart of the ruins.
At least, he judged the man to be a mage. Who else wears robes and does sentinel duty by standing on empty air seventy feet or so off the ground?
Stifling a curse, Craer went down the tree in frantic haste, clawing the bark for handholds in the night gloom. His landing was noisier than he liked, and he dodged a good six paces in a false side foray before slipping toward the hollow. Should they all move on immediately? No, trying to blunder around in the deep forest now, all four of them, would make so much noise that 'twas wiser to stay still. Had Hawk heard anyone else moving nearby, though? Hawk-had the Lady of Jewels by the throat. Sarasper stood watching, the dark coils of some slain serpent-monster lay all around, and Hawk's war sword was drawing back for-for"Hawk, have your wits fallen right out of your head?" Craer was too aghast to keep his voice down or his words prudent; his shout cracked across the hollow like a pine bough shattering in a fire.
"Gods above, man," he added furiously, striding across the slaughtered nightwyrm as if it wasn't there, "has some