The Second Book of Swords by Fred Saberhagen

Author:Fred Saberhagen [Saberhagen, Fred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780708881507
Publisher: Tor
Published: 1983-06-15T05:59:52+00:00

CHAPTER 10

The monkbird screamed, on and on. To Ben it seemed to have been screaming for days. With the Sword of Heroes still dripping dragon's blood in his right hand, he clung to the cliff-edge rocks, looking down a hundred meters at the sullen surge and smash of waves below. It was a fine day, and the sea wore delicate shadings of blue and green over most of its vast surface.

The fall on rocks had pulped the huge beast's body like a dropped fruit, but the waves were already sorting and sifting and dispersing the organic wreckage, on the way to accomplishing a tidy disposal of it. And Golok's body had already disappeared completely.

Mark had come to Ben's side, had taken him by the left arm, was pulling him back from the brink.

Doon was frothing angry. "The bird, the demon-damned bird!" He looked up at Dart's small, frantic shape flying not far above his head, as if he were about to strike at it with his Sword. Dart's voiceless keening mingled with the racket of a cloud of seabirds that had been startled up from the shoreline rocks.

"How are we going to be able to use it now?" , As if intentionally answering his question, it came down suddenly, down in an abrupt swoop to Ariane standing nearby. Her left arm was extended in the traditional gesture of beast masters to their flying pets. Now, with its fur dark brown against the coils of her red hair, the monkbird huddled on her shoulder, mourning almost silently for its dead master, clinging there with feet and wings like some half-human orphan.

Ariane whispered to it and stroked it. When Mitspieler came to her to see if he could help, she sent him away with a gentle headshake, and continued to soothe the creature.

Doon observed this with visible relief. "Good job, Princess. We may not have lost much here after all."

He took a quick glance at the sky. "They may think they've lost their dragon over the cliff by accident, chasing a rabbit or some such. Anyway we'll have come and gone, if we do the job right, before the dragon's missed. Let's move."

And he moved ahead himself, Wayfinder drawn.

Ben, having cleaned Dragonslicer as well as he could on prickly leaves, followed closely. Mark was near Ben, and the others only a few steps behind.

Ben could still recognize no details of his surroundings, though it looked in general like the same landscape from which he had fled by night. Now, in broad day, it held no sign anywhere of humanity or of human works, apart from the adventurers themselves.

The wasteland stretched away to north, west, and south, kilometer after kilometer, empty arid grimly beautiful.

"Where s your local Blue Temple?" asked Mark, sticking his head up over a hillock beside Ben's, to scan the way ahead.

"Somewhere inland, over there. Kilometers away. It took us half a day and half a night to get here from there, even riding part of the way."

And on impulse Ben turned his head to look back across the water.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.