White Stag (Permafrost #1)(51)
“Are you afraid of it?” I asked, incredulous. I didn’t think Soren could be afraid of anything.
“You aren’t?” he said. “My nursemaid told me bedtime stories about those things before I started walking. You’d have to be an idiot not to be.”
Soren had a nursemaid?
We hurried through the passageway, the walls constricting. My lungs heaved in my chest as the walls closed in. They were so close together, if they collapsed, we’d be buried under a mountain of rubble. I forced myself to breath normally. Calm down. You’re not going to smother to death.
“Your kind has an odd idea of what constitutes a bedtime story.” Soren shoved me through an opening in the tight passage, and I tumbled to the ground, landing in a mess of feathers, moss, and bones. The iridescent crystals from before formed piles high to the ceiling, and stalagmites shot up from the ground.
Soren slid down after me, stopping before he fell face-first onto the rough earth. But as soon as he got his bearings, his eyes widened at something in the corner of the large cave.
Along the floor, littered with the leftovers of prey, among the swirling feathers, were giant eggs. They were a rich golden color swirled with soft cream, and sleeping soundly beside them was another lindworm.
Its massive body curled around itself, the blue sheen of its scales glittering against the lights from above. Five wickedly sharp claws lay at the end of its massive front legs, and sharp fangs slid out over its lips. Even its snoring shook the walls until pebbles rolled to the ground.
Soren swore softly, eyes scanning the area for another way out. His hands trembled until he clenched them into fists, fighting for control. The nervous, panicked look on his face, his darting eyes, and the way he stood frozen on the spot were all alien to me.
“Let’s climb back up the way we came,” I offered, looking at the hole we dropped from. Smooth stone surrounded it, but both of us were strong enough to give each other a leg up, and if it came to it, we’d find another way. Otherwise, we were lindworm food.
Soren cast one more glance at the sleeping lindworm, then up at the hole. The tips of his ears sharpened as he cast out his power and heard beyond the normal limits. Then he jumped back, pulling me with him, and unsheathed his double swords.
“Hey! What are you—” I stopped midsentence as Lydian and four other brutes tumbled from the hole. His once-blond hair was plastered to the side of his face with blood, and more blood seeped from a large gash on his shoulder. A dark stain covered one of his men’s trousers and another stain bled through a tear in another’s jerkin. The other two goblins looked dazed, but they weren’t bleeding. Yet.
From above there was an eardrum-shattering roar as the pursuing lindworm clawed at the opening, and the melodic snores of its sleeping companion before us came to a stop.
“Are you an idiot?” Soren snarled, slowly backing away from the waking monster.
“Idiot?” Lydian spat. “I wasn’t the one who found the nest in the first place.”
“Yes! But you were the one who followed me into it.” Soren’s teeth clenched as the lumbering dragon stood and stretched, then gazed down at us with beetle-black eyes.
From above, the earth shifted and moved in spirals as stones rained from the top of the cavern. Cold dread formed a hard pit in my stomach as the second lindworm descended on us, its fangs dripping yellow venom from its maw.
“So,” one of Lydian’s men said in a rather cheery voice. He looked younger than the seasoned men surrounding Lydian and his dark hair was cropped short around his ears, showing tattoos that spiraled around his neck and scalp. “Who wants to slay a dragon?”
Lydian hissed, “This is not the time to be funny, Seppo.”
The goblin, Seppo, just smiled. “Nonsense, it’s always time to be funny.” He unhooked a feather staff from a holster on his back, shaking the decorative metal shaft until three wickedly sharp prongs slid out from the top.
“You keep strange company, dearest uncle,” Soren said, almost to himself.
“I could say the same of you, beloved nephew,” Lydian said.
Then the lindworms attacked.
I rolled out of the way, back into an open area where my bow might be of more use. Odin’s ravens, how am I supposed to kill these things? To think I’d wanted to hunt them.
The red one lashed out at Lydian, its jaws dripping with venom. Lydian swung his greatspear, once, twice, backing the creature away from him. His eyes narrowed, and I shuddered as his body changed, adapting from inhumanly beautiful to a monstrous predator. As his proportions lengthened, I swallowed down my terror. The last time he was like this did not end well for me.
One of Lydian’s men—the one who had blood all down his leg—stood with Lydian, swords out, trying to goad the monster into a corner. But the lindworm was smarter and whipped its tail around, smashing the goblin against the stone wall. The goblin fell to the ground, twitched once, and then lay motionless.
Another earthshattering roar filled the chamber as the blue one raged at me. The blue one is female. I skidded far away from her nest. The red is her mate. The blue one would be more dangerous then. The first rule of a hunter was to never get in between a mother and her children.
My arrow, still notched and ready, shot forward at the blue lindworm, but it broke into pieces upon contact with her scaly armor. Instinctively I reached down for my holster, only to remember that my axe was somewhere on the mountainside, far away from here.