Page 130 of House of Ashes
I had to get to them, and half the town was still in my way. A shout reached me from the roof.
“Want another ride?”
I squinted up, seeing the small figure waving down, and nodded. I kept my sword firmly in my grasp as the wyvern swooped down, picking me up none too carefully, and the rider let out an excited whoop as we launched upwards over the townscape that remained.
Rhylan and Kalros had crashed into a field, killing half the livestock in it instantly. Heaps of bloodied corpses were strewn under them, being trampled into the slurry of mud and blood.
Rhylan was screaming fire at Kalros, whose face had begun to resemble charred bone.
We were so close… and then the wyvern jerked, banking to the left and carrying us back to town.
“What are you doing?” I shouted, straining against the claws digging into my shoulders.
“Bloodless soldiers!” the rider shouted in that high voice. “Look!”
The wyvern carried us over the town’s ruined square…and there below us were Bloodless men I recognized from Farpost, all the way back on Mistward Isle.
So Kalros hadn’t taken only dragons. He had managed to find criminal Bloodless to do his dirty work, as well. They were invading a barricaded shop, smashing out the windows, dragging out the Bloodless people under Orisien’s aegis.
The wyvern deposited me in the square, and I tripped and fell from the rough landing, my knee smacking into a rock. With a curse I rose, and found a Bloodless man ten feet in front of me, still wearing the rags of Mistward, twin axes clutched in his hands.
His lips spread slowly into a grin, revealing cracked and blackened teeth.
“Draga bitch,” he grated out, and I raised my sword.
The Bloodless rushed at me, swinging his axes wide to chop me in half, and the violet wyvern reared up behind me with a shriek. The man hesitated, just long enough for me to bring the sword up, cutting him open from cock to chin.
A slew of glistening, reddish-purple guts spilled out, and he dropped his axes, hands trembling as he reached for the mass.
“You’ve killed me,” he whispered, and I slashed hard across his throat, opening a red smile.
“Now I’ve killed you.”
I stepped over his corpse as the other Bloodless dragged a woman from the shop and over the stones. She shrieked, battering at them with fists and feet, but they simply laughed.
The wyvern swooped over them, plucking one man up by his head. The rider brought the wyvern skyward, and dropped him.
Even from a hundred feet away, I heard the sickening wet-splash crunch of his body hitting the ground. My guts twisted, imagining how close I’d come to making such a sound only a short time ago.
The other Bloodless sneered at me, pushing a dagger to the woman’s throat. “She’ll die before you can get me in the air.”
I stared him down, flicking blood off my sword. The wyvern landed heavily next to me, neck swaying as it hissed at the man.
The rider looked down at me, and I blinked with shock. She was a girl—hardly more than fourteen, with still-round cheeks and big dark eyes.
“Where is your dragon?” she demanded breathlessly. “Why isn’t he coming for you?”
Because he can’t hear me, I thought bitterly, and said, “If he kills Kalros, these bastards will scatter. Kalros is the only one holding them together.”
As though my name had summoned him, a tower on the other side of the square exploded, the top half teetering for several interminable seconds before it groaned, and fell to the ground with an earth-shaking crash.
We all flinched as bits of stone came flying, pelting us and stinging exposed skin.
The Bloodless man flinched as well, his blade never leaving the woman’s throat…but he wasn’t looking at me.
He was watching as Kalros slithered over the ruins over the tower, a skull-faced dragon hoarsely screaming defiance, skin bubbling where Rhylan had burned him…and Rhylan came after him, slashing with clawed forefeet at Kalros’s belly.
I stepped to the left, quickly and silently, and again, until I was on the man’s blind side.