Weatherwitch: Book Three of The Crowthistle Chronicles by Cecilia Dart-Thornton Read Free Book Online Page B

cavern floor, where it swirled amongst rising clouds of ash and sparks, engendering bouts of coughing and cursing and slapping.
    “Oi still say we should ‘it that village jest across the Ashqalêth border,” Captain Ruurt was saying to his fellow captain. “Last toime we got good pickin’s there. Cracked a lotta heads, too. Good sport.”
    “Nah, that’s too far away, ya block’ead,” replied Captain Krorb. “Go fer somethin’ closer, I say. Loike some place on the Mountain Road or the Lake District.” He scratched at his third ear, a sanctuary for fleas.
    “We orways go for
them,”
argued Ruurt, spitting into the fire. “Too much work, not enough fun. They got their defenses built up, these days. They got their lookouts, and sojers.”
    “Not fer much longer, if them soft’eads can be trusted to keep their word, eh?” Krorb uttered a cackle of laughter.
    “Can’t depend on that. Gotta try further off. That swarm from up Capstone way, whadda they call ‘emselves? The Seed of Havoc?”
    “Yeah, Seed of Havoc. Good name. Better than ‘Sons of Blerg.’ ”
    “Yeah, them. Some ‘o their gangs go out as far as Grïmnørsland, I ‘eard.”
    “The further off we go the more loikely we’ll be spotted boy some nosy weather-squeezer in one o’them sky-balloons.”
    “What’s the matter? Lost ya nerve?” The color of the bulbous growth on Ruurt’s forehead transmuted from raw pink to congested purple, always a sign his temper was on the rise.
    Krorb was in the process of formulating a suitably scathing response when a terrible scream ripped through the local smoke-haze. Heads jerked in the direction of its source, and there was a sudden flurry as men leapt totheir feet—or other extremities used for locomotion—and fled away from the darker recesses at the back of the cavern. They huddled in fear, as far from the back wall as they could get, cowering and staring into the gloom.
    Whispers rippled amongst them.
    “The Spawn Mother . . . ”
    A second wild yell pierced the air, growing fainter as if traveling fast-paced along a tunnel that led away from the Main Cave, which in fact it was. The Spawn Mother had abducted yet another unwary man.
    Marauder women were as pleasant to look upon as the men. In character they tended to be a little less violent; were this not the case they would eventually have slaughtered their own issue, and the comswarms would have died out years before. Most of the women—who lived communally with their brats, in caves separate from the men—possessed sufficient nurturing instinct to care for their offspring until they were old enough to fend for themselves.
    Not so the Spawn Mother.
    This gigantic progenitrix lived in a deep cave, and stole men as she pleased, when they ventured into the lairs near her abode, or when she wandered the network of tunnels. Most often, these abductees were never seen again. The litters haphazardly produced and abandoned by the Spawn Mother had to be removed by the other ghastly females while she was sleeping, or she would devour her own progeny as she probably devoured their fathers. Her children grew up to be the largest, fiercest, most demented killers amongst the Marauders; so berserk they had to be raised in cages to ensure the longevity of the community.
    Silence now reigned in the Main Cave.
    “Reckon that was fat-for-brains Scroop,” muttered a voice. “I seen ‘im go over t’wards the Steep Passage not long ago.”
    “No, it wozzen me,” shrilled an anxious second voice, apparently belonging to Scroop. “Reckon it woz Grak.”
    “ ‘Twozzen me noither,” quavered the equally timid Marauder known as Grak. In an attempt to appear insouciant he shrugged lopsided shoulders. “Dunn o who.”
    After a long while the men began to breathe easily again. They shuffled back to their fires and resumed their previous occupations, but presently their tranquillity was disturbed once more, this time by Captain Ruurt, who barked, “Look