(Shadowmarch #1) Shadowmarch by Tad Williams Read Free Book Online

wyvern hissed and sideslipped the blow, but as it did so one of the other men—Briony thought it might be Tyne, the hunting-mad Earl of Blueshore—drove his spearhead into the thing’s ribs just behind its shoulders. The wyvern contorted its neck to snap at the shaft. Kendrick seized the opportunity to drive his own spear into the creature’s throat, then spurred his horse forward so that he could use its force to pin the wyvern against the ground. The spear slid in through a sluice of red-black blood until the crosshaft that was meant to keep a boar from forcing its way up the shaft stopped it. Kendrick’s horse reared in alarm at the thing’s agonized, furious hiss, but the prince stood in his stirrups and leaned his weight on the spear, determined to keep the thing staked to the earth.
    The dogs swarmed forward again; the other members of the hunt began to close in too, all anxious to be in at the kill. But the wyvern was not beaten.
    In a sudden, explosive movement the thing coiled itself around the spear, stretching its neck a surprising distance to bite at Kendrick’s gloved hand. The prince’s horse reared again and he almost lost his grip on the spear entirely. The monster’s tail lashed out and wrapped around the horse’s legs. The black gelding nickered in terror. For a brief moment they were all tangled together like some fantastical scene from one of the ancient tapestries in the castle’s throne room, everything so strange that Briony could not quite believe it was truly happening. Then the wyvern tightened itself around the legs of Kendrick’s horse, crushing bones in a drumroll of frighteningly loud cracks, and the prince and his mount collapsed downward into a maul of red-gold coils.
    As Barrick and Briony stared in horror from twenty paces away, Summerfield and Blueshore both began to jab wildly at the agitated monster and its prey. Other nobles hurried forward, shouting in fear for the prince regent’s life. The crush of eager dogs, the writhing loops of the injured wyvern’s long body, and the thrashing of the mortally injured horse made it impossible to see what was happening on the ground. Briony was light-headed and sick.
    Then something came up suddenly out of the long grass, speeding toward her like the figurehead of a Vuttish longboat cutting the water—the wyvern, making a desperate lunge at escape, still dragging Kendrick’s spear in its neck. It darted first to one side, then to the other, hemmed in by terrified horses and jabbing spears, then plunged through an opening in the ring of hunters, straight at Briony and Barrick.
    A heartbeat later it rose before them, its black eye glittering, head swaying like an adder’s as it measured them. As if in a dream, Briony lifted her spear. The thing hissed and reared higher. She tried to track the moving head, to keep the point firmly between it and her, but its looping motions were quick and fluidly deceptive. A moment later Barrick’s spear slipped from his clumsy, one-handed grasp and banged sideways into Briony’s arm, knocking her weapon out of her hands.
    The wyvern’s narrow jaws spread wide, dripping with bloody froth. The head lunged toward her, then suddenly snapped to one side as though yanked by a string.
    The monster’s strike had come so close that when she undressed that night Briony found the thing’s caustic spittle had burned holes in her deerhide jerkin: it looked as though someone had held the garment over the flames of a dozen tiny candles.
    The wyvern lay on the ground, an arrow jutting from its eye, little shudders rippling down its long neck as it died. Briony stared at it, then turned to see Shaso riding toward them, his war bow still in his hand. He looked down at the dead beast before lifting his angry stare to the royal twins.
    “Foolish, arrogant children,” he said. “Had I been as careless as you, you would both be dead.”

2
    A Stone in the Sea
    WEEPING TOWER :
    Three turning, four standing
Five