Word of Traitors_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [69]
“Plant-eaters?” said Ashi.
“Just the daggertail,” said Ekhaas. She pointed. “Look there!”
The rider of the fallen clawfoot had his mount up again. The creature’s pointed tongue licked at a muzzle covered in sand and the clawfoot might even have pressed itself back to the arena floor if the halfling hadn’t vaulted into the saddle and hauled back on the reins that guided it. The lizard shrieked in protest.
“What’s it doing?” Ashi asked, then her eyes widened as she realized what Ekhaas already had. “The blood out of the sand!”
“Five days’ worth of blood from the games,” said Ekhaas. To a hungry predator, the smell in the arena must have been intoxicating. No wonder the clawfoots seemed hard to control—and no wonder the daggertail seemed skittish and wild. To a plant-eater, the arena would stink only of death and danger.
Keraal must have realized it too. As the daggertail’s head and forelegs came closer, he pushed himself to his feet and ran—not away from the lizard but at it. The halfling hunter saw him and shifted his grip on his glaive, abandoning efforts to goad his mount in order to defend himself. Sticking between the daggertail’s double row of plates, he darted back along its spine, trying to keep pace with Keraal.
The hobgoblin was quicker, though. With a shout, he leaped high and thrust the head of his stolen glaive into the daggertail’s side with all of his weight and strength behind it.
The great lizard let out a terrible honking screech and reared up on its hind legs. The halfling on its back, trying to stab down between the plates at Keraal, had to drop his weapon and hang onto one of the plates with both hands. Keraal just clung to the shaft of his glaive as his weight dragged the sharp blade inexorably through the creature’s flesh. Blood spurted out, spraying him. The daggertail crashed back to all four legs. Its head twisted around to try and bite at the source of its agony and its spiked tail thrashed wildly, but Keraal had chosen well: neither neck nor tail were flexible enough to reach him where he clung. He kept digging with the glaive, forcing the wound deeper and wider.
The slapping tail kept the clawfoot riders back, too. The half-ling on the daggertail whistled and waved, gesturing for one of them to throw him a glaive, but the other riders were busy trying to control their hungry clawfoots as they caught the scent of fresh blood—and a moment later, the daggertail decided to act on its own. Turning suddenly, it made a lumbering run for the nearest wall of the arena. Spectators sitting in the lower rows fled for higher elevation, even though the spiked tail couldn’t have done more than splinter the wall below them. The clawfoot riders scattered. Keraal seemed to reach into the wound before he flung himself away from the beast, leaving the glaive behind.
The daggertail’s rider wasn’t fast enough. Yelling at the beast as if he could calm it by voice alone, he hung onto one of the plates along its back right up until the moaning daggertail slammed its side against the wall and began to rub like a cow against a tree. The impact jarred the halfling loose. He screamed as he lost his grip and went sliding down between the great lizard and the wall.
The audience winced and groaned with one voice.
Keraal had his chain free again. He let it swing loose in one hand as he stalked closer to the nearest clawfoot, a blue-streaked monster somewhat larger than the others. The halflings were wary now. The others circled as the hobgoblin warrior’s target backed his mount away—but Keraal’s eyes were on the lizard, not the halfling. He stretched out his free hand, in it a big chunk of bloody flesh torn from the body of the daggertail.
The blue-streaked clawfoot cocked its head like some enormous bird.
Its rider saw the chunk of flesh and stiffened, then bent over his mount’s neck, maybe trying to whisper to it, to control it. No luck. Keraal took two quick paces forward then flung the meat to one side