“The Kirns say drink helps a man overcome his fears before battle,” Vetra remarked distantly, swaggering forth to swig a gulp from the wooden cup on the fallen log. “More the act of love, in my opinion.”

  Jhara made a husky avowal.

  “Keep my extra sword. You’ll need it. You’ve earned it. I’ll show you how to use it properly later.”

  “You mean it?” Her eyes lit up.

  “Of course! You’d think I’d joke at a time like this? We’re in the midst of war. Come on, let’s dance.” He gave a hearty grunt, a sound deep in his throat then offered his arm. “That’ll get the rest of that minx-energy out of your loins. I see it has no end.”

  She laughed and grabbed his arm and he pulled her up to the dance area, a squared section of cool sand that felt good on their bare feet. Makeshift drums were beating with hypnotic rhythm. Many Thrules had joined in dancing. A lively melody, unknown to Vetra’s ears had him reminiscing on days of youth in many a tavern on his journeys. He thought he had heard all the strange melodies and rhythms of the lesser-known tribes.

  Vetra failed to see Zren’s burning gaze fall on him and the girl, gyrating in the heat of merriment. The Thrule’s eyes were sullen and looked with resentment that an older man, an outlander had captured the girl’s interest.

  Later that evening, Zren went off to a quiet, private place while the embers glowered, to lash himself with a thorn-tipped branch and in a fever of murmurings, recount his vows, taught him by Samos the shaman, to remain pure of spirit and redeem himself of sins. To pray also to Turga, the quiet, wrathful dragon god for revenge on the shame and humiliation caused by the outlander and his female harlot.

  When the moon rose higher still, Vetra spoke in low tones to Jhara. “Your father did well.”

  Her face fell. “He passed away a year ago. Cast out of the league of protectors. He came to Dragonskull an innocent Mercian trader and died penniless. Someone murdered him. My brother Aeke and I have been on our own since.”

  Vetra frowned. “You’re worried about him, aren’t you?”

  “Much so, I admit. I left him with friends of mine. I hope he’s well.”

  “Likely he’s faring better than us,” grunted Vetra.

  “If he keeps his hands off the vendors’ apples,” she muttered with a laugh. “Hold me. It has been a long time since I felt the touch of a strong man.”

  Though the hides spread unevenly on the ground, she came next to him and thrust her warm back against his bear-like chest. He roused with a grunt, surprised at her unfettered way of showing her need. He clasped her in gentle arms, his fingers tracing suggestive lines down her thigh, and he thought with a wry breath, “Let us enjoy this interlude. Tomorrow may not bring as gentle tidings.”

  IV: Tomb of the Ancients

  The way to the vale of Zabenzar was cut with dry gullies and boulder-strewn ridges. A strange range of sparsely populated woodland rose up in their path—a deadlands in its own right. At one time the blackened trunks must have been healthy eucalyptus. What had killed them, Vetra did not know. Dunon suggested a blight had passed through these lands long ago. Besu, who was more knowledgeable about such matters, remarked that fires had ravaged the area, taken the trunks and hollowed out their cores. It was apparent that over the years, these trees had developed a resilience to fire. Some still showed green leaves in the tops. Smooth, ghostly limbs twined from stem, like withered bones of skeletons. The odd lizard darted underfoot with long tail, sliding behind one of the trees, or down a hole of one of the blackened trunks. Overhead the squawk of a desert bird came as an eerie intrusion; likewise the shadow of a circling buzzard, appearances which set a forlorn mood over the company in the sweltering heat of the noonday sun. They broke out of the trees and stood panting at the fringe of the wood to see a rugged canyon wall facing them.

  “Call a halt!” Vetra wiped sweat from his brow. It had been two days since the attack at the mines and his eyes burned with a vengeance, squinting under the yellow glare.

  “I think we’re lost,” called the old Thrule Besu at his side. His bowed frame slumped on a charred log.

  “I think that landmark is familiar,” muttered Lehundr. He lifted a finger to the canyon face. “Is that not the eagle ridge crest depicted here in this hill mesa?”

  Dunon stirred; Jhara hissed an excited breath.

  Eyes scanned the area; indeed, the shape of the hills and its eagle-winged formation resembled a section of the ancient fabric at Lehundr’s ribs, all purple and gold, with its cryptic collection of images

  “It’s the only place remotely looking like any place for a tomb,” Aus said. “We might as well investigate.”

  A trail wound up the cliff, cut crudely in the form of a ledge into the crumbling rock.

  They set feet up the path, though there were many grumbles amongst the company. Like outcasts on a singular mission, the Thrules trudged up the desolate track, boots crunching on pebbles, the sun beating down on their backs.

  Vetra looked over the edge. A sprawl of boulders and prickly foliage promised a quick doom should one fall. A queasy feeling crawled in his gut at the sight.

  The trail curved around the far side of the cliff, veering away from the valley. The ravine was quiet, save for a soft sigh of wind brushing the cliff’s sides. The path widened to twenty feet. Ahead in the narrow gully loomed two rounded boulders rising three times a man’s height in precarious poise. Both looked menacing, balanced as they were on sinister angles. Positioned to ward off intruders? Vetra scowled. Or only a natural formation?

  Regardless, the boulders nearly blocked their path, only a narrow gap between them.

  Samos gushed out a jabber of warnings about the cursed nature of such boulders. “They’re jinxed”, he cried.

  Vetra rubbed his jaw with great weariness. He had not expected such a timorous reaction from the Thrules. It seemed even the shaman was doubtful about treading here. An omen—likely men would avoid this way believing it was cursed. What better place to hide a tomb? Vetra allowed himself a grin. Possible tombs that had not been rifled in these long ages? He flourished a fist. “A small team and I will go on ahead,” he muttered. “Dunon, Besu, Lehundr and Jhara.”

  Zren’s red hot face pushed forth. “Why shouldn’t the rest of us go? We’ve come this far.”

  Vetra shook his head. “Cthan and his dogs could be marching up the valley soon to liberate the Thorian mine. I need you here to watch the valley and signal if necessary. It’s not hard for them to track us here.”

  Besu gave a grim nod. “Aye, better to take no chances.”

  A flicker of resentment flashed in Zren’s eyes. “Why not keep back your precious girl then?” He spat at the outlander’s feet. He flung a finger at Jhara and glared with envy at her.

  Vetra’s mouth curled in a sneer.

  Zren capitulated, shrinking in the mercenary’s shadow.

  Despite the shaman’s gibbering and amulet-waving, Dunon waved them through.

  They left the packbeasts behind, and the majority of Thrules were invested with instructions to make traps, triggering piles of rock to fall down from the steep trails and defend the gap on the other side should enemies be sighted.

  Jhara and the three Thrules slipped through the crack. It was all that Vetra could do to squeeze sideways between the two mammoth boulders.

  He stared up the valley and turned warily to Lehundr. “I don’t like the fact that we can’t see the valley from past this barrier. With a Behundrian army on our tail—” he left that dangling.

  “Nothing we can do,” the half Thrule muttered. “As you said, we have the scouts.”

  Jhara struck light-footed up the trail with inexhaustible energy.

  Vetra called her back with the others. “Slow down. We don’t know what dangers lie ahead.”

  Jhara reluctantly dropped back.

  Eagles made their nests in the low crags rising to either side of the canyon and screeched at the intrusion to their domain. The canyon was well-named. Vetra looked down at the rough crumble of shale and chips at his feet. He had a feeling no one had been in this corridor for hundreds of years. The whole canyon had a dead, eerie feel to it, as if it were separated from the rest of the lands and sinister eyes watched them from realms unseen.

  Before long a daunting cliff rose to their left. Sculpted out of the rock jutted a fearsome, weathered face in full relief. It might once have been that of a dragon with its great gaping mouth and hollowed-out eyes rising head heights above them. At one time the entrance had been sealed but the giant snout had cracked and toppled, maybe from an earthquake, leaving only a crumble of boulders at the foot, blocking out the dark path that led into the stony maw.

  The three Thrules regarded it with spell-struck wonder. Besu muttered while fingering the oil lamp he had brought along. Primitive, old beyond imagining, the gateway to the tomb was awesome and mystifying—and creepy enough, thought Vetra, unable to stop the shiver that crept over his flesh.

  Lehundr crawled past the boulders and made two steps into the dark interior. The four plunged after him into the darkness. Lehundr led with bluff confidence. The entrance opened up into a small domed cavern. Vetra’s eyes widened in the gloom, his blood quickening to the echo of booted feet on smooth stone and the mysterious weight of ages.

  The sprinkling of daylight from the entrance revealed a massive stone sarcophagus looming at the far end of the chamber. Besu lit the lamp with trembling fingers. Any jewels or gold which had lain strewn about the chamber had long been pillaged. The crate-like sarcophagus lay flush to the far wall and was flanked by serpent pillars. Draped in shadows under the flickering light, a hulking animal statue with a dragon’s head and leopard’s body sat watching, eyes glued ahead like an unforgiving sphinx. Vetra felt his blood pulse; he heard others’ sharp breaths as they squinted in the gloom.

  The sarcophagus’s head was mantled with a carven dragon skull. At the foot stretched a stone tail into a darkened passage. All looked with dread, loath to enter that passage. Lehundr, for all his mettle, feared to tread over the vile, serpentish tail, as if it would come to life. Vetra reached down a finger tip, driving back the apprehension that inspired such irrational superstition. Cold, dead to the touch, the ancient stone was smooth carved and painted yellowish green from what weak light shone from the lamp or in from the entrance. He could not help but shudder at the thought of groping and stumbling down into a crevasse or some sepulchral pit of doom.

  The floor gave Vetra cause for reflection. The polished paves were crusted with bones and ancient remains which altogether seemed abnormal, for no reason availed such mangled flesh. The paves showed rough scratches, but the ceiling was bare. No chute for boulders to tumble from upon high to crush a skulking thief. Dragon carvings raked the walls, wings lifted in majesty, jaws agape, eyes burning, as if portals to some inside knowledge beyond time and space. In the same panoramas the rightmost wall was smeared with ancient blood and bits of gristle and bone, unless Vetra missed his guess.

  He kicked a clump of sinew and the bones rattled like fiendish dice, sending ghoulish echoes and dust around the chamber.

  Jhara’s teeth chattered. “Would you stop that?”

  “Aye, it’s disrespectful,” muttered Lehundr, “not to mention jarring on the nerves.”

  Vetra grunted. He thrust his head into the tunnel, calling his own name. The echoes died in a dull murmur. Tink, tink. A drip of distant water—and a wash of dusty vapours, sediment and musty layers compiled from the ages. “Goes on a long way, I think,” Vetra mused.

  “This must be where the dragon lord who was buried in yon sarcophagus once walked,” whispered Besu.

  “Aye, probably where he went to feed his faithful protectors,” said Dunon. “’Tis said the oldest dragons lived in caves, dark and deep, that stretched to the centre of the earth.”

  Vetra snorted. “Or perhaps it’s just some old underground cave carved by water and time. I think you two have vivid imaginations.”

  Lehundr frowned. Folding arms over his chest, he gripped his cloth-sewn map like a beggar would his last morsel of food.

  Jhara spoke, “I heard that the dragons were gatekeepers to the world below. They were used to judge human souls when they passed the river of death for their deeds, good or evil. Men fought and died to tame them because they thought that they would have victory over death. So my father told me.”

  Vetra uttered a laugh. “Or how about it’s all a myth? And that men built this tomb, not dragons. They dressed it up like a dragon tomb, and inside that stone crate there’s at worst some mouldered human bones, of a petty lord or forgotten king?”

  Lehundr scowled; his mouth was drawn tight. He refused to accept that the treasure was not real and that dragons were anything less than magical.

  Dunon tested the slab. “The lid’s heavier than a mountain. We may never know. None of us could lift that.”

  “Unless we all get our swords under it and pry it off?” suggested Besu.

  Vetra shook his head. “We’d bend all our blades.”

  “Maybe the dragon things were not the mystical creatures with untold wisdom and the wealth of ages past we think,” argued Besu.

  Dunon’s eyes grew solemn. “Those with dragon heads and bodies of men were ancient before the stars were young,” he whispered. “The dragon lords tamed the dragons and became their masters. This is one of their tombs.”

  The group fell silent and edged their way along the far wall.

  By the arched way they could make out the tunnel which stretched off into murk. None wanted to go down there, not even Lehundr, for all his keenness.

  Maybe they didn’t have to. Glyphs and symbols were carved into the wall around the door. Possibly the makings of a map, and there, at a place below, alongside carven knobs and levers, lay a foot-long, sharp and hard thing, pointed like a claw, a great dragon claw.

  Besu gaped. “Can it be? A real dragon claw. They’re rarer than finding the gilded elephant tusks of the Kirns!”

  “Now do you believe me?” gasped Lehundr with triumph. “Here are signs. This must be the key!” The half Thrule gingerly lifted the claw out of its cradle.

  While they murmured and argued, none recognized the shadowy figure creeping over to the sarcophagus.

  “This dragon claw must be the key to opening the portal to the fortress,” cried Lehundr. “Though I can’t understand the script, it’s some form of dragon runes.”

  “Why didn’t thieves take it?” demanded Vetra.

  “They were looking for gold, not claws. They wouldn’t have known it was the key either, unless they had the map.”

  Besu pointed. “I’ve heard the dragon fort’s never been opened since it was sealed by the curse of a dragon’s death, or some old dragon magic. Many a plunderer has tried to and all have failed.”

  “Aye,” said Dunon. “Most died. It’s leagues from here out in the middle of the desert.”

  Vetra suddenly felt a chill crawl over his skin. He peered up and blinked. He felt an unknown presence in the chamber. A razor-sharpened sense of danger told him trouble was near. He reached for his sword. There—a shift of movement near the sarcophagus. Some thin, skulking shape. Something else caught his attention—the perfectly polished wall at his side, almost too polished, and there were those vertical seams forward and back that ran suspiciously up to the ceiling, as if they were—

  He gave a harsh cry. “Watch out! Fall back!”

  Sliding stone sounded from underfoot. In the moment that the skulking Zren had passed his hands over some hidden lever behind the sarcophagus, the floor suddenly sank a foot lower.

  A sharp choking cry rang out. Jhara somersaulted backward, landing on her feet like a cat. The floor gave way several more feet and with the others, she clawed with desperation for something to hang on to—to no avail.

  Vetra fell and was knocked on his back, gasping for air. Zren tumbled into the pit too, his fall cushioned by Dunon and Lehundr who gurgled out surprised oaths.

  Twenty feet up the sheer walls of the twelve-foot square prison, Vetra peered and heard a sound more terrible than the hiss of vipers—the grinding and scraping of heavy stone on stone. Two parallel walls of massive construction writ with dragon insignias, one which slowly advanced toward them with ominous implication. With savage energy he tried to mount the walls, but they were too sheer and high.

  He stared in mute astonishment. Someone had triggered the trap, likely the Thrule, or perhaps it was the girl taking hold of the jeweled lever? No, it couldn’t have been her. She had been tracing fingers on the map. Jhara’s fingers had not yet touched the ancient runes. It was that wretched Thrule lolling at his feet. “You idiot!” He kicked him in the ribs. Zren sprawled in pain.

  “Quick!” Vetra snarled. “Up the wall. Climb on my back!” He crouched and motioned Dunon to climb on. The Thrule wasted no time and Vetra yelled a harsh command at Lehundr next. Putting backs to wall and boots to the advancing opposite wall, they formed a human ladder, Vetra on the bottom, Dunon and Lehundr next, and then Zren. Jhara scrambled last over, legs and arms pinwheeling while others palm-lifted her up to grasp the rim. She heaved herself up over the lip.

  Falling dust from the ceiling caught the weak sunlight and Jhara’s sweat-grimed face peered over the ledge.

  Vetra tossed the dragon claw to her. She caught it and set it aside, then continued to help each man out of the pit. First pulling Zren up, his fingers groping thin air. Reaching over the edge, she just managed to grab Besu’s fingers while Zren kept her from falling. Besu scrambled over the top, gasping into his beard; together they formed a backward chain.

  The wall was inching slowly closer. Vetra, last in the pit, bared his teeth in a growl. With no less than three feet to spare, he jammed his blade lengthwise between the constricting walls. The steel quivered, buckling fast. He hated to see his only weapon compromised—but it purchased him a few more seconds...

  He squeezed himself part way up, pushing with boots on one wall and inching spider-like with back against the other. Barely had he hooked fingers over the edge when hands hauled him up and over, and the walls clanged together like jaws.

 

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