Masques (Sianim #1)(61)

Tracking wasn't her specialty, but it didn't take her long to find what she sought. When she was looking for them, they were hard to miss - very large, reptilian footprints with marks beside them that could be trailing wings. Just like the ones she'd seen the day she'd been taken by the Uriah.

"Well, Myr," she said thoughtfully, examining the teeth marks on one of the corpses, "I think I know what dragons eat."

* * *

"SO," SAID MYR IN DRY TONES AFTER ARALORN RELATED HER discovery, "we exchange Uriah for a dragon. Wonderful."

"At least the dragon's quieter," commented Aralorn, leaning against the cave wall and watching Myr pace.

The main cave was almost empty. Myr sent out a party to look for the missing hunters as well as a party to look for meat. He'd also ordered several watches on the lookouts.

"At least we knew something about the Uriah," Myr complained. "A dragon ..." He broke off when the sounds of ragged cheers echoed into the cave, followed by the missing hunting party and the searchers.

When the welcoming was done, Haris the smith, who had led the party, told their tale, "We came upon a herd of mountain sheep and got two, so we headed back, About halfway here we stumbled upon some tracks, as if an army were wandering around out. We followed the trail and pretty soon we could smell 'em and knew that they were Uriah. Since their path was the same one we were on, it was obvious that the things were coming here.

"Figuring that we were too late to make much difference, we worked our way up the side of the mountain until we could see the Uriah. We couldn't see the cave, but the way they were swarming around showed that you must have found a way to keep them out. We decided that there was nothing we could do but wait. Our vantage point was far enough away that the chance of the Uriah seeing us wasn't considerable."

Hans cleared his throat and then said, "Late last night, just after the moon had set, I heard a cry like a swan makes, only deeper. I was on watch and it wasn't loud enough to wake anyone else up. Something big flew over the top of us, but I couldn't quite see it. After something passed overhead I saw a flash of golden fire down here and heard the Uriah step up their noise. Then it quieted down.

"This morning it looked like the Uriah had left, so we started home. The reason it took us so long to get here is that there are still a lot of Uriah scattered about. We were dodging two parties of the things when we almost ran into a third. It's a good thing that they smell so bad, or we wouldn't have made it back at all."

* * *

A WAR COUNCIL WAS CONVENED WITH MYR PRESIDING. THEY kept careful record of where the Uriah were seen, and hunting parties were directed away from those areas. Wolf took time out from his research to produce a detailed map of the area on sheepskin, which was hung on a wall of the central chamber.

With tactics that drew grunts of approval from Wolf and admiration from Aralorn, who had seen a few of the great military minds in action, Myr developed a series of Uriah traps in key locations.

Each group of hunters had a rough copy of the map, and if they ran into a group of Uriah they would lead them to one of the traps. The Uriah were slowed enough by the cold of the deepening fall that the humans could outrun them most of the time, especially since they were careful only to go out when it was coldest.

Hans suggested an adaptation of a traditional castle defense and created a tar trap that was one of the most effective. The easiest way to kill a Uriah was with fire. So pots of tar were hung here and there, kept warm by magic. Ropes were carefully rigged so that they would not easily he tripped by wild animals. When they were pulled the pots tipped over, and the motion triggered a secondary spell that lit them on fire, dousing the Uriah with flaming tar. The spells on the traps were simple enough that everybody, except for Myr, could do them after a little coaching from Wolf.

With this renewed purpose, the small group became a close-knit community, the grumblers fewer. Every evening they would all sit down and talk, when complaints and suggestions were heard and decided upon by Myr. Looking at the scruffy bunch of peasants (the nobles, by this time, blended right in with the rest) consulting with their equally scruffy king, Aralorn compared it with the Rethian Grand Council that met once a year and hid a grin at the contrast.

Only Wolf was excluded from the camaraderie, by his own choice. He made them nervous, with his macabre voice and silver mask. Once he saw that they were intimidated by him, he went out of his way to make them more so. He was seldom with the main body of the camp, sleeping somewhere deep in the caverns and spending most of his waking time in the library. He attended The nightly sessions with everyone else, but kept his own council in the shadows of the cave's recesses unless Myr asked him a question directly.

Most mornings Aralorn spent entertaining the children. Occasionally she went out with a hunting party, or alone to exercise Sheen and check the traps. The afternoons she spent in the library with Wolf, keeping him company and reading as many books as she could.

The nights she spent in the library as well, for she was still having nightmares and didn't want to wake the whole camp. Night after night she woke up screaming, sometimes seeing Talor's face, alive with all that made him Talor, but consumed with a hunger that was inhuman and wholly Uriah. Other times it was the ae'Magi's face that she saw, a face that changed from father's to son's. It was because of the latter that she didn't tell Wolf about her dreams.