“Can you tell what is going on? I don’t like the feeling here,” Sasha said
“No, I can’t.”
“Let’s move on to the next house,” Arkin suggested.
They mounted the horses and rode slowly to the next house. Empty again, and then another, and another. Finally, they reached what must have been the co-op’s center. There were signs of violence here. There were five buildings. Most looked like they were once storage, but not anymore. Their roofs were gone and blood was in the street and on the walls. A chill crept up Kovos’ spine. Where were the people?
“Do you think that the army…” he began.
A woman crawled out from under some rubble. She was covered in gore, from head to toe. Her clothes were ripped and there was a large cut down the right side of her face. She stood and walked to them slowly. Sasha swung off Murray and started to her, but was stopped by Arkin.
“Get on your horse!” he barked.
“But Arkin…” She stopped, and even Kovos felt fear course from Arkin’s mind to hers. She leaped back on the horse, which also sensed that all was not well here.
“What happened here?” Arkin asked.
The woman responded. “I’ll tell you what happened here: they happened.”
“Who are ‘they’?” Arkin asked
“Dragons.” She looked around. There were no tears. Kovos figured she was in shock.
“Were there others?” Sasha asked
“Yes. If we tried to leave town then their archers got to practice on us. But mostly it was the dragons.”
“What did they do?” Sasha asked, terror in her voice.
Sara spoke coldly. “Iumenta dragons prefer fresh meat.”
“So they…” Kovos started.
The woman broke in, tripping on her words. “The army needed the livestock for their human and Iumenta soldiers, now didn’t they? But what of the dragons? They needed meat too. And that meat was…”At this she seemed to snap. “They ate them. They ate them! They’ll get you too!” she screamed. She ran away as Kovos heard in the far distance a soft but distinctive THUD. He was moving even before Arkin began yelling for them to run.
Keither clung on to Pixy for dear life. Up until this point, he thought that she had been doing rather well. Presently that belief was being challenged. Pixy was young and smaller than all the other horses, not to mention that she was carrying the greatest weight, but her will to live was apparently far greater than the others as she was pulling ahead of all of them. He wasn’t sure if he was still holding the reins or not, but even if he was it didn’t matter. He chanced a glance to his side. They were passing Sara, who was riding the mare they bought her in Salez. She was white, so Sara had named her Ghost, and she was fast-really fast. Sara yelled at him.
“Keither, are you ok? You looked like you were going to fall.”
“That’s because I am going to fall, Sara,” he thought. The question wasn’t if gravity was going to win, but rather when. If they made it to the forest and he fell, that might not be that bad. If he went before, there was no way the others would be able to stop their terrified animals before he got eaten.
He looked down desperately, trying not to get thrown off. They were coming up on the forest. Thank goodness the co-ops were small. He couldn’t hear the dragon over the sound of hooves and his own heart, but he knew it was there. He must have been holding the reins because they suddenly slipped out of his hands. Then he heard it-a roar from behind him. It was a sound like nothing he’d ever heard before, piercing him to his core. They were just about to enter the forest when he looked back, morbid fear getting the best of him. Was it on them? No, it was hovering over the former center of town, presumably angry that there wasn’t more than one lowly person to eat. It brought large gray bat-like wings down, raising itself further from the ground. He knew it was too far away but he swore he saw blood on its mouth. Had the woman from town met her end? The dragon reared its head back and opened a giant mouth to show black teeth. “Look away,” a voice in his head said. But he didn’t.
Fire erupted from its mouth like a wild river of flame and destruction. The fire covered the ground in an instant, swallowing two of the buildings. Then as the dragon drove its wings down the force of the wind carried the flames over the rest of the center, curling up to meet the sky. Never in all his life had Keither even dreamed of anything like this. The dragon busied itself burning the center with a continuous stream of fire that must have lasted thirty seconds. Then it looked in their direction, following the cloud of dust from their frantic retreat. Two grey eyes with yellow where the whites should have been met his. As the first tree of the forest passed by him, Keither knew a new kind of terror, one that he knew would haunt his dreams for the rest of his life. Of course the rest of his life was a relative term right now. Chances were there weren’t going to be any dreams now that he had locked eyes with an Iumenta dragon.
He looked forward, panicking. Now they were in the forest, but it was like a dream to him. Nothing was real. Just terror; that’s all that existed. Maybe he could use a script from the Jezeer. He thought, but he couldn’t remember them. Sound was gone, but then he heard that roar again and jerked in his saddle. Pixy was delirious with fear, not unlike her rider, but still running. She was trying to throw him off. It worked. The last thing he saw was the trunk of a tree.
Arkin reached out with his mind, trying to make contact with the resistance. The dragon didn’t pursue them, which had its pros and cons. The pro was that they were alive. The con was that it had surely sent people to come find them. He stretched again, hoping to feel someone, but nothing was there. They were holed up in yet another clearing that Legon found with animals, but this one wasn’t as ideal and they needed to move as soon as Keither woke up.
The boy had hit that tree hard and Arkin was sure that he was going to have a concussion. But that was better than death. For the first time in many years, Arkin felt a very real fear. So much work had gone into this whole thing and the people he was guarding were innocents. Any of them dying would forever stain his hands with blood. He repeated the fear script in his mind.
Fear is the blinder; I am the light and master of sight, I will master my fear and never again see night.
He repeated it again, controlling his breathing, changing his heart rate.
“Wh… what happened?” Keither asked as he started to wake up. Maybe he wouldn’t remember the dragon at all. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing?
“You fell and hit a tree,” Kovos said, hovering over him. He hadn’t gone more than a foot away ever since they had arrived at their hiding spot. Seeing his brother awake, a look of relief washed over his face.
“Do you remember anything?” Sasha said as she checked his pulse and looked at his eyes.
“I don’t think so. The last thing I remember was a tree and that I was scared… because we were running from…”
Keither tried to get up but Kovos held him down. “It’s ok,” he said.
“No it’s not, no it’s not! I looked into its eyes! We are not ok!”
So much for hoping Keither wouldn’t remember.
“It’s going to be fine,” Kovos said soothingly.
“No it’s not, Kovos. I’m going to die out here and it’s your fault-your fault I came with you to warn Legon, your fault we left Salmont.”
“Keither, I’m-”
“You’re what? Sorry? You’re sorry for me getting beaten, sorry for me watching someone die, sorry for all this?”
“I don’t know what to say other than-”
“There is no ‘other than’! This is your fault that I am out here! If you want to go get yourself killed for Legon and Sasha that’s fine, but you didn’t need to bring me into it!” Presumably, Keither was only kept from yelling due to a massive headache.
Kovos looked hurt. “Look, I can’t change what has happened, and I told you that I was warning Legon about danger.”
“Then why did you drag me along? Couldn’t you tell that I didn’t want to be there? Or did you want proof for Emma that you weren’t a horrible person and that you cared about people other than yourself?”
Kovos’ face flushed and he gritted his teeth. “No, I didn’t drag you along so I could make my girlfriend like me, Keither. You wanted to come and then changed your mind. I wasn’t going to let you go walking around in town
