Extraordinary Zoology Part 3

She grabbed his right arm and yanked him hard to the right. He flung his hands out to break his fall, but he still hit the broken turf so hard his teeth rattled.

The gorax roared again. He heard a heavy, splas.h.i.+ng thump and a horrible crunch.

Silence.

Lynus rolled over and sat up.

Pendrake's bola was wrapped around the gorax's feet, and an arrow sprouted from its shoulder. A vicious gash spanned the creature's back. Kinik stood over the fallen gorax, polearm in her left hand, right hand on her hip. She looked back at him.

"More than three steps," she said. "I am lucky to have a polearm and big blades." Her blade certainly was big, and blood-spattered. That must have been the finis.h.i.+ng stroke.

Lynus blew out a breath and turned toward the others, who were running his way.

"Brilliantly bungled," said Pendrake, shaking his head. "Mama turned to follow you, but the angle was wrong."

"You still managed to put an arrow into it and your bola around it, old friend," Horgash said. "Though I think we all know it was my bullet to the heart that felleda""

Another roar, m.u.f.fled, rose from the burrow. Everybody turned to look.

A wall from one of the flattened homes burst upward as another gorax, this one a full-maned male, emerged with a frenzied roar. It bounded up and into the clearing, then turned and glared at Lynus and the others.

From the dark hollow under the fallen home came two more gorax.

"Reload!" Pendrake shouted, loosing an arrow and nocking another. Horgash and Edrea broke their rifle breeches and slid cartridges into place.

Lynus scrambled for his own rifle amid the sounds of breeches slamming closed and arrows taking flight.

"You know where to put bullets!" shouted Kinik. "I am a student! Where do I put blades?"

A pair of weapons thundered, closely followed by cacophonous roaring from charging gorax.

Lynus grabbed his rifle and looked up at the ogrun towering above him, her enormous war cleaver at the ready. She'd shattered the spine on a gorax that was down with two arrows and two bullets in it, buta"

"WHERE?"

Now Kinik meant to go blade-to-claw.

"Sorry . . . um . . . under the jaw and up, like pithing chickens. And, uh . . . between the ribs"a"he was interrupted by a volley of gunfire and roars of paina""but your blade is too wide. Umm . . ." That huge cleaver blade wasn't likely to pith or pierce anything unless Kinik could drive it with enough force to crush several very st.u.r.dy bones on the way in. Which maybe she could, but he hadn't seen her work yet.

Pendrake drew his sword and turned to Kinik. "Bleed," he pointed with a slas.h.i.+ng motion just above her pelvis, where a gorax's abdominal artery ran. "Hobble," he stepped aside and gestured behind her knee, "and then stay out of reach."

Lynus realized he hadn't taken a shot yet. He swung his Radcliffe up and aimed between Horgash and Pendrake, where he had a clear view of a charging gorax. Not quite a perfect portrait of the flank, but enough to work with. As he squeezed the trigger he noticeda"too latea"mud at the base of his sight. The end of his rifle barrel exploded. Shrapnel hit him just above his right eye.

Horgash, blades at the ready, dropped to one knee and screeched something with a terrible gurgle.

Morrow preserve me, mud in the muzzle, and I've shot Horgash in the throat.

Pendrake turned to Horgash, but the trollkin waved him away with a hoa.r.s.e snarl. "Take care of the gorax in the middle, not me."

The three gorax bounded toward them, loping on long arms and thick legs, foul-smelling drool pouring from their mouths. Lynus a.s.sumed they were wounded. The one in the lead was visibly so with three arrows in its chest. But their approach was terrifying. Lynus stumbled to his feet and pulled his sword rig from across his back. Casting the scabbard aside, he grasped the great sword's hilt with both hands and struggled to keep the tip of the heavy blade up where it might do some good.

He braced himself for the charge, determined not to follow his instincts and run for the horses. His skin started to tingle. He prayed it would stay attached to him for the rest of this day and hopefully years to come. Under the circ.u.mstances, holding his ground was the best he could manage.

He stood like that, frozen, watching Pendrake, Kinik, and Horgasha"limping badly, but not throat-shota"meet three charging gorax in the slaughter field of Bednar.

Horgash appeared to be in trouble. He stumbled and lowered both his weapons as he caught himself. The smallest of the three charging gorax sensed weakness, let out a roar that sprayed fetid drool, and pounced. Horgash s.h.i.+fted to his left, his injury not hobbling him as badly as it had first appeared. He raised his left sword, blocking and catching one sweeping claw, then drove his right sword straight up under the gorax's jaw and into its brain.

Kinik was an apt student. She was nearly as tall as the thick-maned monster she faced, but far more nimble. She slashed deeply across its lower belly, just above the pelvis, and was rewarded with a howl and a gout of blood. She ducked, rolled to the right, spun, and swept for the back of its knees. Her blade turned, and she only managed to trip the huge male with the flat. He quickly found his footing, turned, and lunged. Kinik backpedaled over a muddy berm and into the ruined village.

Pendrake, blade in his right hand, clutched something in his left. When his quarry was just one bound away from him, Pendrake tossed up a handful of bright Cygnaran crowns. The gorax raised one claw to swipe at the s.h.i.+ny distraction, and Pendrake dove under that arm, driving his sword between the pectoral fold and the rib below it. That sword was sharper than it had a right to be, piercing far deeper than any of the arrows had, and with much less effort.

The gorax bent forward, teeth and claws converging on the spot that Pendrake deftly vacated, slipping under the beast's left arm and around behind it. With two sweeping strokes he hobbled the beast. It fell to all fours, rolled onto its side, and expired.

Kinik called out from a good thirty paces away. "How long do I stay out of reach?" She had the giant male loping in a slow, enraged curve, a path he was clumsily painting in steaming red splotches.

"Until it falls down," Edrea said. Lynus turned and saw her standing next to him, her furrowed brow relaxing. Her hands were emptya"no rifle, no sworda"but a ring of glowing runes spun silently around her feet.

"What were you going to do if they got through?" he asked.

"Light them on fire while you stabbed them to death." Edrea smiled weakly. "Perhaps give myself a headache trying something new and dangerous." She lowered her hands and exhaled deeply. The runes vanished. Lynus' skin tingled again, and then the sensation faded.

"What was that?" He had seen her wield Iosan magic in the past, but she was always a little secretive when asked to explain it.

"Just a little toughening up. I'm quite pleased we didn't need to see exactly how effective it was."

"Forty steps!" shouted Kinik. She stood over a maned mound. "Heart and head kill is much faster. Less running."

He turned back to Edrea, but she was already walking back up the track toward the horses. A more detailed explanation for the tingling skin would have to wait.

Lynus collected his Radcliffe. The barrel was split and flared outward at the end like a withered lily. Ruined. He put his hand up to his forehead and felt the shallow wound there. He winced. Morrow, but that was stupid, firing with mud in the barrel.

"The boy shot me, and he's weeping over his rifle?" Horgash was stomping back up the slope, gorax blood all over his right hand and arm, his own blood staining a ragged tear on his right leg. He held a limp gorax pup by a hind leg. "Worse still, those charging gorax crushed their own pups! There's folks in these woods who'll pay good money for an unweaned gorax!"

"Money is a secondary concern at best," said Pendrake. "Let me tend to your leg, and then I'll have a word with the boy."

"I've ignored far worse than this scratch," Horgash said. "But if you'll have the book-whelp sew up the hole in my britches while you shout him into the ground, we can call it even."

Lynus looked at Pendrake, and for just a moment he was relieved to see no fury there. Then he recognized the expression cast over the square-rimmed spectacles as disappointment, and his heart fell.

"You heard Horgash. There's needle and thread in my kit if you need it. Also, you need to strip and clean what's left of your Radcliffe so we can use it for parts."

Of course. Edrea's Radcliffe was a twin to this one.

"First, though, help Edrea collect our mounts while I collect my thoughts."

Lynus jogged up the trail and met Edrea coming up the other way, leading Oathammer and Codex. He opened his mouth to speak, but she shook her head and pa.s.sed the lead lines to him.

"I'll get the others," she said.

He accepted the leads from Edrea and turned back up the trail, his heart sinking with every step.

Lynus was torn as he watched Pendrake and Edrea investigate the frame-and-thatch ruins of Bednar. On one hand, that was just the sort of work that he loved. On the other, it left him to his punishment in relative peace. He had his rifle disa.s.sembled in just a few minutes. Horgash's leggings were going to take a little more work, but it was only tedious, not difficult. He rinsed them with water from his canteen and began pus.h.i.+ng the heavy needle back and forth through equally heavy leather. The needle and thread from Pendrake's kit more resembled an awl and hawser. Field repair on st.u.r.dy protective leathers wasn't the same as darning a sock, let alone binding a book.

After a score of st.i.tches he looked up from his work and saw Pendrake and Edrea moving along the flattened picket fence, walking the perimeter.

Kinik had hauled the four gorax corpses and two dead pups to the western slope, where she was poking them one-handed with her war cleaver, her other hand holding the Monsternomicon open in front of her. Lynus imagined himself in the same position years ago, minus the war cleaver and the book, poking something dead to get a better look at it, wondering if he'd ever figure out how it worked on the inside.

Horgash curried Greta while Oathammer and Aeshnyrr looked on with a measure of suspicion and longing. They didn't like the smell of this place, and they were always skittish around trollkin. Codex was asleep on his feet, grabbing a nap in the field like a good soldier.

Lynus finished mending Horgash's leggings and admired the precision with which he'd s.p.a.ced the forty st.i.tches. The heavy leather had required more finger strength than st.i.tching a book binding, but he'd done good work.

Lynus carried the leggings to Horgash, who was now tending to the bison.

"Here you are, sir," he said. "I think I got all the blood out, too."

Horgash accepted the bundle and eyed Lynus' work with narrowed, deep-set eyes. "Now they're cleaner than the rest of me," he growled. "And that st.i.tching, I'll never afford finery to match that." Then he grinned, a broad affair the length of a man's hand. "Don't worry if you never get around to figuring out the right end of a rifle. You can wash and sew for your keep."

Pendrake spoke from across the ragged green. "Oh, Lynus knows the right end of the rifle. I just need to drill him a bit on keeping hold of it." The professor waved Lynus over. Lynus walked dutifully, stepping around scattered bits of homes.

"You threw your rifle into the mud. Threw it!" Pendrake shook his head. "You froze when I told you to move, and when you did move, you went the wrong way."

"I'm sorry, Professor."

"Lynus, you've had four summers in the field with me, and that magnificent mind of yours has you well on your way to becoming a professor in your own right. But the spine suspended from it doesn't always do you credit in a fight."

Pendrake reached out and grasped him by both shoulders.

"You need a stronger spine, boy. Morrow knows you've bent your back more than any of us over the books and the lab of late. We need to straighten you out, stand you up." And Pendrake did stand him straighter with that grip on his shoulders. "I'm proud to have you at my back in a fight, boy, but my back seems to be the only place I find you."

"I'm sorry, sir." Lynus couldn't think of anything else to say. He had a head full of words, but none of them would fix this.

Pendrake sighed heavily.

"I'm sorry too." Pendrake frowned and scratched his chin. "And I'm not being quite fair about your spine. You stood your ground, putting yourself between Edrea and the b.l.o.o.d.y melee, and that counts for something."

"Thank you, sir."

"Not much, but something. I suspect she was more help in that fight than you were." Softer, then, almost conspiratorially. "Did your skin tingle? Just before the clash?"

"It . . . it did, Professor. And I saw spinning runes at her feet."

"Good. I thought I recognized some protection. Probably toughening us up. Might be why Horgash still has his leg."

"Horgash has his leg," came Edrea's voice from across the green, "because he is trollkin, and as such, his leg is made of stone and stubbornness."

Horgash laughed, the sound like a rasp on a barrel. His bison chuffed heavily, as if it were in on the joke.

"More to the point," she said, walking toward them, "I only thought to cast after all our shots were fired." She bowed her head deeply. "I regret this. My failing was more than a match for Lynus' misfire." She turned to Horgash and bowed deeply. "I must apologize."

"And I'm sorry for the wasted trip," Horgash said with a shake of his head. "It looks like the mysterious monster I promised you was nothing more than a gorax pack. They smashed the place on their first pa.s.s and came back to dig burrows later. That's the only way I could have missed them when I first came through. Even so, I should have at least caught a whiff."

"Everybody makes mistakes," Lynus said.

"Indeed," said Pendrake. "But Horgash did not." He walked over to a thatch-and-splinter pile. "What do you see here?"

Edrea spoke up. "A wattle-and-daub wall, crushed in place."

Lynus stepped closer. The wall had been reduced to kindling and splinters, but all of the pieces were still quite close together.

"Crushed in place!" Pendrake said. "A heavy steamjack might be able to flatten a house in this manner, but not a gorax."

"Professor," Lynus said, "even in all this ripped-up ground, a steamjack would leave sharp-edged footprints, right?" He looked around the ruined village. "And perhaps some ash?"

"Indeed. So once again, we know what this was not." He smiled. "We have ourselves a genuine puzzle here. Something big flattened this village, and pushed and churned the ground, but for all the tracks I can find coming and going from Bednar, it might as well have dropped out of the sky."

Kinik looked up, wide-eyed, then began flipping through her Monsternomicon.

Pendrake noticed. "And since the entire area hasn't been scorched, frozen, or otherwise blighted, I don't suspect this is the work of one of the dragons."

Kinik relaxed.

Lynus stepped over to her and pointed at the ill.u.s.tration she had flipped to. "I cross-referenced several pa.s.sages from The Wyrmsaga Cycle for scale. Those little dots are people."

Kinik stared down at the book. Lynus thought he'd done a pretty good job with that picture. He hoped to never learn exactly how good.

He walked over to the shattered home that the larger gorax had been sheltering beneath. The thatched roof was gone, and the ground around it was particularly well-churned. A bushel basket, crushed flat, had walnuts spilling out of it. A hand axe lay pressed into the mud.

Midday sunlight shone into the hole. Mud, blood, and sc.r.a.ps of what used to be peoplea"this was where the last of the bodies had ended up, dragged in here by a scavenging pack of gorax. Blowflies swarmed, and Lynus briefly considered attempting a field test of the "carrion clock," but thought better of climbing down there.

The hole was deep, with pooling water at the bottom. The gorax pack would have had the opportunity to bathe, something your average gorax didn't do nearly often enough. Even if they'd just wash their faces, get rid of the drool, and remove the rotting food from their teeth, maybe they wouldn't smell quite so foul.

Lynus stared into the hole. Teeth. There was something about the shape of the hole. It didn't look like any burrow he'd seen before. He turned his head sideways. Layers of loam were stretched and pulled, along with long, questing roots from the nearby grove of apple and walnut trees. They weren't dug out with gorax claws, but punched through from below. Like an argus tooth punching through an entomology text, stretching bits of the cover, tearing pages, dragging the raw edges of the hole with it.

The hole in the ground looked like an exit wound.

"Professor Pendrake?" he said. "This isn't a bas.e.m.e.nt, and it also isn't a gorax burrow."

Pendrake walked over, adjusting his gla.s.ses. "Go on."

"Something punched up from below. Something about as big around as this hole."

Pendrake nodded and rubbed his chin.

Edrea, Horgash, and Kinik joined them at the edge of the hole. The stink of the still water wafted up.

"Mother Dhunia, he's right," said Horgash. "Is there anything in your book that could do this?"

"This, and worse," Pendrake said. "I'm taking heart that this hole seems a bit on the small side for a gorgandur to have returned."