A Legacy of Dragons(4)

Vilmos unsheathed a curved blade, turned Warbær in tight, cautious circles. "I still don't understand why the bears can't come with us through the door."

"Too hot for one." Ærühn started Lilbær moving forward at a slow march into one of the deep turnings. "Fire and bears don't mix well for another--and where we go fire has a life of its own. It lives in the flesh of beasts and men alike."

Vilmos made certain that Warbær stayed abreast of Lilbær. His eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness and it allowed him to see subtle new shades of black within the gloom.

It was to the deepest, darkest depths of the turning that Ærühn went. When they were surrounded by inky blackness, he dismounted.

"Don't be alarmed…" Ærühn whispered, his voice trailing off as he thrust his blades in the ground and started unsaddling Lilbær. "Follow my lead. Learn why fighting bears are black."

Vilmos dismounted. After sheathing his sword, he labored to unsaddle Warbær. As he worked, the words "Don't be alarmed" turned in his thoughts and he asked himself how he could not be alarmed.

"This turning is empty," Vilmos whispered.

Ærühn grunted in agreement. "Precisely, and the only one that is."

Vilmos gulped down a lump in his throat. "The only one that is?"

"The others," Ærühn said waving and pointing. "They're occupied."

Vilmos' thoughts spun. "How occupied?"

The iceman wrapped his arms around Lilbær's giant furry neck. "Soon," he told the bear. To Vilmos, he said, "Not odds I like, but if we can hold this space we may live."

Vilmos' eyes went wide. "Did you know this when you marched into the darkness? Shouldn't we have simply rode out or held the middle ground at the least?"

Ærühn tittered at what he perceived as a little joke. "Our fate was sealed when we rode in, though a good thing troll warrens are such dark places. It helps to even--"

Ærühn stopped abruptly, readied his twin blades. "Remember, the darkness gives the bears an advantage. Don't take that away with your mage flame."

Vilmos moved to a ready stance, gripped his single blade with both hands, so he could put a driving force behind his swings. "Are you sure about this?"

"Use the walls behind you as safeguards. Hit everything that moves, because everything that moves will be foe and not friend."

"But the b--"

"Lilbær and Warbær will be occupied elsewhere. You're ready for this. We've trained for this. You can't use your sight, so use your other senses. Can you smell them? Manure, blood, death. Can you hear them? Shifting feet, heavy breaths. Coarse grains grinding against thick, scaly flesh as they turn stone cudgels in meaty hands."

Vilmos took a deep breath, noted he was no longer shivering from the cold. He stared into the dark void. "What are they waiting for?"

"The bears. They're waiting for the bears to charge, then they'll attack en masse and trust that their numbers are sufficient to overwhelm us."

Vilmos widened his stance. "Are they?"

"They are," Ærühn said plainly. "Die well, my friend. Find glory in battle."





Chapter 4





Light streaming through cracks in the closed shutters roused Adrina to conscious concerns. She awoke in a sweat, perspiration dotting her brow. She stretched through a yawn, and then sat up in bed, gripping her thick fur blanket tightly. The air in the tiny bedroom was so cold she could see her breath as she exhaled.

Coaxing away thoughts from her dream--a dream in which she was standing naked before the dragon king, her body covered in dark marks--she put bare feet into slippers, pulled a thick robe around her and went into the next room.

The hut's main living area was a cavernous room with a large fireplace and open areas for sitting, eating and cooking. She turned her attention to the fireplace first, surprised not to find a bright fire burning.

"Xith?" she called out as she searched the ashes with an iron poker. The scant few embers she found meant that Xith had roused hours ago or that he'd forgotten to stoke the fire before departing. Neither seemed right, for it couldn't have been much past first light.

After carefully arranging dry wood over the embers, Adrina slid back the bolts on the hut's heavy double doors and opened them wide. Though she couldn't see the sun, she knew at once the hour was much later than she thought, closer to midday than midmorning. A water bucket outside the doors was crusted over with last night's snowfall and she had to knock it against the ground a few times to clear the snow.

She hurried off to fill the bucket with water for bathing and drinking from the nearby well. The slippers she wore did little to protect her feet from the cold and her toes felt nearly frozen by the time she returned to the hut.