The Bones of the Earth (The Dark Age) (21 page)

“
Hello, Photius and Javor, and Princess Danisa,” said the one in the middle in a voice as cracked and horrible as her face. The others grinned and Javor could see their long teeth, pointed like a dog’s. “So nice of you to stay for a meal,” she cackled, and the three stepped even closer.

Javor jabbed his sword into her chest. She looked down at it and laughed as he wrenched it out again. No blood spurted—there was just a hideous, gaping wound in the middle of her chest, beside a sagging, shrunken breast. She snatched at the blade but he managed to pull it away.

“
The knife, Javor, the knife!” growled Photius. He waved his glowing staff at the three horrible women, who shrank back from the light. One drooled and spat as she dodged. Javor had just enough time to re-sheath his sword and pull out his great-grandfather’s dagger. He brandished it toward the centre bloodsucker and she shrank back, hissing. The other two howled as he swept the shorter blade toward them.

“
To the water, children, hurry!” said Photius. They ran, stumbling over rocks and uneven ground. Javor tried to hold the dagger out behind him, which threw off his balance. The light from Photius’ staff wavered and sputtered. Javor was surprised to see how fast Danisa could run. She reached the stream-bank first.

The villagers and the three
strigoi
followed at a distance. “Into the water!” Photius cried and jumped in. Danisa and Javor followed, and the cold water was a shock on Javor’s sandaled feet. Photius led them, splashing and stumbling downstream, walking backwards to watch the
strigoi
and their enthralled villagers.

Danisa waded fastest, intent on escape.
She’s strong!
Javor realized.

Their pursuers stopped at the bank. The
strigoi
ran along the stream, careful to stay outside the circle of bluish light from Photius’ staff. Then one of the villagers stepped into the stream. He stiffened when his foot touched the water as if a spear had jabbed his back. He pitched face-forward into the water and lay still.

Javor, Danisa and Photius ran downstream, but it got deeper, slowing them down. Soon, they were waist-deep, but the stream was also wider, and they were farther from the bloodsuckers on the bank. The
strigoi
screeched, waving their arms and legs. Then Javor could no longer touch the stream-bed with his feet.

“
Can you swim?” Photius asked, holding his staff over his head to keep the glowing end out of the water.

“
Yes,” Danisa gasped.

“
Sort of,” Javor lied.

“
Then do your best, boy!” Photius lowered his staff and launched himself into the water, kicking and sweeping his arms before him to propel himself forward. The staff’s tip hissed as it touched the water and the light went out, and they realized just how dark the night was. Danisa did not seem to be having any trouble keeping up with Photius, swimming just as strongly and confidently.

Javor somehow sheathed the dagger underwater and tried to mimic Photius’ actions. He kicked and splashed, but was having trouble keeping his head out of the stream and kept swallowing water.

Behind them, the
stigoi
began a terrifying, high-pitched chant. Javor could hardly see anything. He was cold and the weight of his clothing and weapons dragged him down.
What am I doing? I can’t swim!
He panicked and his head went under the water.

He sank until his feet touched the mucky bottom; he pushed and his head broke the surface. He took a shuddering breath, swallowed more water, coughed and sank again. This time he pushed harder against the bottom and managed to take a deeper breath when his head came above the water. He found a pattern: breathe in above the water, shut the mouth tight, sink, breathe out under water, push against the bottom, try to swim forward, breathe in again when he breached the surface.

The stream was now a full river. Javor concentrated on keeping his head above water when he realized the current was pulling him from their pursuers faster than he could swim. He looked to his right: the strigoi had stopped, stymied, where another stream entered the river he floated in.
They can’t go into the water!

Photius and Danisa were swimming, slowly but strongly, toward the left bank. They held onto a branch that extended over the river, and Danisa climbed onto the shore. As Javor floated by, Photius grabbed his shoulder and pulled him sputtering and flailing to the bank. Slowly, they dragged themselves out of the water and collapsed on the ground. Everything was heavy: clothes, packs, weapons, even their sandals felt heavy. They panted until they began to shiver.

“
Let’s find some shelter,” said Photius when he had caught his breath. They found a protected spot under a leaning tree. Javor used his sword to chop pine-boughs into a windbreak. Photius tried to make a fire, but even with magic couldn’t get a spark from his staff. Javor found a tinder-box wrapped in oiled cloth in his pack, and managed to start a fire naturally. Photius grinned gratefully as the flames caught the tinder and kindling, holding his shaking hands to the heat. Danisa threw dried twigs and pine needles on to build it up, then huddled against Javor for his body heat.

“
What were they?” Danisa asked when she could control her chattering jaw.

“
Strigoi
, shape-shifters, damned undead women who drink the blood of the living,” Photius answered. “They have taken over that whole village, and the people are completely under their spell. Every night, the women come to feed, draining not just their blood but their will and their very humanity. Even with our help, the villagers are unable now to prevent the demons from taking more blood. They do the bidding of their parasites—that was why they pursued us. And they are becoming
strigoi
, blood-drinkers and cannibals, themselves. You saw how that one young woman bit me!”

“
What would they have done with us?”

“
Taken our blood, too, which is more potent than what’s left in those poor villagers. We would have made them even stronger, and able to create yet more bloodsuckers.”

“
How did they know our names?” Javor asked.

“
The
strigoi
have some ability to read minds, or perhaps to tell the future; I am not certain,” Photius answered, staring intently into the flames.
Is he making it burn hotter that way?
Javor wondered. “We must dry off and rest tonight, and leave at first light. And until we are through the mountains, we had best stay away from any people we find in these lands.”

Photius took first watch, but chilled and terrified, Javor found it hard to fall asleep, and when he finally did, it seemed like mere minutes before Photius woke him again for the second watch. Nervous and cold, Javor peered into the darkness until dawn purpled the sky. They had no more food, so they shouldered their damp and clammy packs and walked along the river until Photius recognized his way south-west.

They continued walking during the day as quickly as they could beside the remains of the Roman road. On their right were low, sullen hills; on their left a flat, forested plain. The road followed a river valley which became a pass between the lower mountains.

By afternoon, Danisa had recovered her composure. “Javor, was that knife the one you cut off the dragon’s foot with?” she asked. Javor hesitated to answer. Photius gave him a warning look.

Danisa would not let the question go. When they made their camp in the evening, she asked Photius about the dagger. “Why did Javor’s dagger repel the witches, when the sword was no threat to them?”

“
I have put spells on it,” he lied as he filleted a fish he had caught. His eyes remained focused on the thin blade. “Spells that repel creatures of the underworld. It was not so much the blade as the spells.” Danisa drew her lips together until they almost disappeared.

Nights grew longer and cooler, and as they climbed into the mountains, game got scarcer. They had to keep to the road most of the time, as it was their only path beside the swift river. The road grew steeper as they climbed higher; the mountains thrust jagged heads and necks of grim grey stone over evergreen-clad shoulders. They passed ruins several times a day, and often they could see more than one at a time.

At least twice a day, Photius would make them hide in thickets. He was spooked by the sound of hooves on the road, sometimes by a sound carried on the wind or sometimes even the number of birds in the sky.

At night, it got so cold that Photius let his chills overcome his caution and allowed Javor and Danisa to build larger and hotter fires. Of course, that meant that they had to gather more firewood. All of this slowed their progress. Photius spoke less as the road climbed higher and higher.

As the summer was coming to an end, they made camp in the midst of a small stand of trees that was almost isolated in the rocky ground. Danisa sat on a log to rest and Photius began setting up for supper. As usual, Javor went to gather firewood. The light started to fail before he had found enough, and he nearly lost his balance as he carried an armful of sticks and leaned with his free hand on a boulder that jutted into the path. Beyond the boulder, the ground pitched down steeply. A stream tinkled over a small waterfall.

And there, just below him, blinking great bright red eyes and dripping water from the end of its snout, was the dragon.

Javor had no doubt—the setting sun was behind his shoulder and shone right onto the beast. It was the dragon from Ghastog’s mountain: horse-sized, black-skinned, gleaming reddish in the setting sunlight. It blinked at Javor, then reared back, raising its snakelike head high on its thin neck, jaws gaping. Its front legs rose up, and Javor could see that the left leg had no claw, but a stump of light green with two long bumps.

He dropped the firewood and scrambled back around the boulder, then crouched and listened. There was a lot of crashing and trampling, but the sounds receded. His feet took over and he found himself running to the campsite. Photius was whetting his sword and Danisa was drinking water. They looked up in alarm.

“
The dragon! The dragon from the mountain! It’s found us!”

Photius sprang to his feet. “Where?”

Javor pointed up the slope. “Where the two hills meet.” He described his encounter.

“
It sounds like it was as scared as you were,” Photius concluded. “Still, we’d best not stay here.” The three retraced their steps down the slopes to a brook, splashed upstream for a while and then got out on the far side where the trees were low and thick.

By now it was completely dark, and clouds blotted out what little starlight there could have been. The only thing they could see was a sullen red glow from behind the mountain. Photius chanced a dim glow on the end of his staff and led them under a dense bush. They found a hollow big enough for them to sit side-by-side. To Javor’s frustration, Danisa chose to sit with Photius in the middle.

The hollow was damp and smelled of rotting leaves, but Photius refused to move any farther. He dimmed his staff just as it started to rain. Thick as it was, the bush didn’t prevent the water from dripping on them. After about an hour, a little stream of run-off from up the slope found its way right under Javor’s buttocks. He tried to move, but Photius hushed him. “It’s looking for you right now,” he whispered. “I can sense it.”

“
I thought I was invisible to it!”

“
You are, but I am not. And if you keep shaking that bush, you’ll make it wonder what’s underneath the leaves, and it will come to investigate. Now hold still!”

The three spent a sleepless, miserable night under the bush, waiting for the sun to rise. And when it did, it rose behind thick grey clouds that continued to drizzle on them through the day. The drizzle continued for the next several days as they climbed up the long pass through the Montes Serrorum, until one day the sky cleared as they stood on a crest, looking down a long valley that fell slowly lower between towering crags of rock.