Page 7 of Court of Talons
My skin seems to melt into Merritt’s, my finger bones on fire. The warrior band appears to be a simple circlet of leather as wide as my hand, but it might as well be a fire snake as quickly as it moves, and before I can pull back, it leaps with sudden viciousness onto my wrist.
“No!”
I can’t escape it, though. The acid from the band slices through my skin with a savage heat, searing me bloody. It tears its way up my left arm, shredding my tunic sleeve, burying itself into my bicep like some flesh-eating monster.
For a moment, I register nothing but the shock of it, then that too is burned away with a roar of such agony I start to scream. Only I can’t seem to catch my breath, can’t clear my eyes as smoke and fire wrap around me. Nausea then horror flood over me by turns; time seems to stop, sputtering and cracking—or is that the sound of my bones breaking? No sooner does it pass then another scorching wave strikes me, over and over again.
When I finally manage to make any noise at all, it’s little more than a ragged pant, my gasp barely squeezing by the rising gorge in my throat. I’m coated in sweat and blood and suddenly cold…so cold.
I crawl out of the ditch, out from underneath Merritt, but I’ve lost all sense of place. Where am I—and why is Merritt so still and small below me? Why am I surrounded with the smell of charred and blackened skin?
New shouts ring out in the distance, curdling death cries that cut through my delirium. Agony swamps me in ever-sickening waves as I wrench my gaze away from Merritt’s empty eyes.
The truth of my position crashes back down on me.
I can’t stay hidden another moment. I have to go—to fight!
I turn away from Merritt’s shallow grave, struggling to ignore my throbbing arm as I stagger forth. My legs are too heavy, my head too light despite my blood-soaked hood and filthy cloak. I sway beside Merritt, a stranger in my own skin, the heat from the warrior band biting all the way to the bone. Another cry of raw pain rises in my throat, but only a tortured groan escapes.
A horse screams again beyond the hilltop, and I lurch forward almost blindly toward the sound. I follow the edge of the rocky promontory as it runs along the banks of the stream, until I’m splashing through shallow water at its end. With every step, my head clears, my senses sharpen. I finally emerge from behind the small hill and take in the field before me.
It’s utter chaos. More than two dozen marauders are striking down our scant five soldiers, who are obviously no match for the attack. Adriana lays in what looks like a dead faint off to the edge of the field.
No…not a faint, I realize, as bile rushes up into my throat. Blood coats her hair, and her face is misshapen, her body collapsed and still.No.
“Adriana!” I scream, but no one can hear me. Men and horses crash together, swords clang, and everything’s washed in dust and blood. I even see Nazar—Nazar!Rushing on foot into the melee, his hands clutching a sword I know the old man has no hope of wielding. Fury spikes through me.He’ll die. They all will die!
With an instinct I can neither understand nor control, I clap my right hand to my left bicep, my need to stop this—stopallthis—so great, so terrible?—
“No!” I cry. My voice grows and grows, filling the canyon with a bellow loud enough that the very trees flatten before me, the mountains tremble, the air fractures and flows away.
Except…itisn’tmy voice that’s roaring with such unfathomable force.
Or not my voice alone.
A wall suddenly crashes down beside me, thudding into the ground so hard, I go flying—only to rebound off another wall that’s solid, smooth, and…green.
I yank myself back from its surface. It’s warm to the touch, warm with the texture of hairless hide, like the skin of a lizard or a snake, but it’s a wall…awall.A wall that’s closing in on me!
I whirl around, seeking a way out, but the wall ends not in thin air but in the smooth ebony of a new surface that ends with the cruel jutting curve of…claws? Yes, jet blackclawsstretch out from the ends of these hide walls, and I instinctively crouch down, lifting my arms to protect my face, even as the dust chokes off my vision and the booming noise continues to rage above me.
I can’t stay here!The creature above me draws in another breath to bellow, and I scurry forward like a beetle, bursting out from between the walls of sleek black talons.
Before me on the field of battle, I can see the truth. I am too late—far too late. A dozen or so riders are racing away in fear, none of them wearing the distinctive green livery of the Tenth House. I thrust my feeble arms forward, unable to do more than scream.
The giant above me leans forward as well, his own arm sweeping down in a grasping arc a mere handspan behind the desperately fleeing horsemen—but they escape into the forest. If any of them had originally thought to return and give fight, those ideas are drowned in the full-throated howl of the monster above me, a thunderous tide that almost reminds me of?—
“Gent?” I whisper, the word so soft, I’m not sure I’m even speaking at all.
The howling stops.
I stagger forward, unable to fully comprehend the sudden silence of the field in front of me—how can so many men lay so still?Then I turn and slowly crane my neck, peering up…up…dizzy with confusion as I stumble back several more steps, trying to see, to understand.
Above me, three times taller than Gent had been, stands…a colossus.
A giant. A god.
It’s—it’salmostlike the Gent I knew before, but impossibly, insanely different. Still bear-shaped with improbably long front limbs, still horned. But where Gent’s fur was a muddy sage, this Divh is cloaked with deep silver fur over dark green skin. Where Gent had a single horn protruding from its snout, this Divh sprouts horns from its temples as well—and its shoulders, elbows, and knees that I can see. This Divhcan’tbe Gent. Everything about it seems mightier, especially its upper body, its arms now thicker than our entire manor house and, yes, long enough to sweep an army from its path. Unbidden, Merritt’s excited declaration about the Divh who’d been in this valley before us comes back to me, icy horror on its heels.