The Black Mausoleum (Memory of Flames 4) by Stephen Deas Read Free Book Online

until it burned from the inside. But no, couldn’t do that. Couldn’t leave a monster
alive if he could leave it dead. Always the chance that some other dragon would dig it free.
    The dragon’s lips curled back, letting them see its teeth. Vish weighed his axe. As he climbed close, it tried to snap at him, but it couldn’t turn its head far enough to reach, not
with the stones crushing its neck. It sent a weak blast of fire at Skjorl, forcing him to shelter behind a shattered column, but then Vish was round behind it, and when it tried to reach him,
Skjorl dashed up the rubble, and then they were both where it couldn’t touch them, halfway up and round the back of its head. It shuddered and closed its eyes and lay still.
    From the far side of the collapse, stone smashed against stone. Skjorl set to work on one side, Vish on the other. Killing the dragon with their axes was hard, like chopping at stone, but the
monster never made a sound. Its eyes opened towards the end, looking at them as they finally hacked their way through its scales to the sinew and bone beneath, and then slowly closed again. Skjorl
stopped, panting from the effort. Vish kept chopping away until Skjorl raised a hand.
    ‘Enough. It’s dead. Let’s go.’
    Vish grinned back at him like a madman. ‘We killed a dragon, Skjorl! We killed a dragon! With our axes! We killed a dragon and we’re walking away.’
    ‘And we’ve got eggs to finish. And there’s still the other one.’ The ground shook. ‘Can’t expect those stones to stop it for ever.’ The Night Watchman
had killed more then ten on the night the Adamantine Palace had burned, but he’d had the Speaker’s Spear and the dragons still got him in the end. He and Vish, they’d killed an
adult and they’d done it with steel and their bare hands. Not much chance they’d get back to the Purple Spur to brag about it, but Vish deserved his smile. They both did.
    A stone the size of a child hit Vish square in the back with the force of a charging horse, arcing down from the top of the collapse. Vish sailed through the air like a thrown-away doll, arms
and legs limp and loose. He landed like a sack of turnips. Skjorl stared in disbelief. Then jumped away and looked behind him. Just a pale white haze of dust and sand in the air lit up by his
firebox. Beyond that: darkness. He could hear, though. Stones moving.
    Vish!
    He snuffed the firebox and dived sideways. Kept rolling until something stopped him. He felt the air tear as another stone hurtled past him in the dark, heard it bounce and smash. He knew what
came next. Had enough time to curl up tight, cover his hands and his face, put his back to the rubble and let his shield take the worst as the fire came. The air roared. The wind almost toppled
him. He put a hand out to balance himself and felt the heat burn at his palm where there was no dragonscale, only soft leather.
    It was coming from the smashed-in hole in the cistern roof.
    The next stone caught his outstretched hand. He felt the shock more than the pain. Screamed as he saw the boulder fly off amid the flames.
    The fire wasn’t stopping. It was getting him, slowly, finding its way through his armour. He jumped back to his feet and ran, let the dragon’s flames light his way, weaving from side
to side. Another rock whizzed past him, missed his head by a yard. The fire was weak by the time it reached him now. Weak enough that the few gaps and cracks between the dragonscale he wore would
hold. The joints in his armour might be black and brittle by the end, but he’d be alive.
    The next boulder didn’t reach him. It hit the ground and bounded past, shattering a cluster of eggs. Lifeless hatchling bodies flopped out across the cistern floor. When the fire stopped,
Skjorl eased his way sideways, getting as far as he could from where the dragon had last seen him.
    ‘Jasaan?’ he had no idea where Jasaan was.
    Vish was dead. Should have been the other way round. Jasaan