He scowled and charged at me. I dodged it, but he continued running past me into the pond for another attack on the young dragon. It screeched again, though this time it sounded like fear more than pain. Its cry stung my ears and burned holes through my heart. How could this man be so unfeeling?
I attacked him from behind, but he grabbed me and threw me sideways into the pond, then stabbed downward, slicing my arm. I felt the sting of the injury, but something worse came with it, like vinegar was seeping into the wound.
“Simon!” Trina darted from the trees and shot the man who had stabbed me, but my attention was on the Rawkyren perched within
easy reach of me now. It had enormous eyes, filled with as much pain as I felt. It widened its mouth, revealing developing rows of teeth, and let out a cry that could have easily come from me too.
I reached up with my injured arm to remove the disk stuck in its leg. The instant I pulled it out, the Rawkyren recoiled, then opened its mouth again and shot fire onto my arm.
I screamed as it seared my flesh, but the instant it was over, Trina grabbed my other hand, pulling me from the mud pit. With her arm around my shoulders to brace me, I took another glance back at the dragon, hoping for a better look at it, but it had somehow disappeared. The voices of more soldiers weren’t far off. We needed to go.
Trina nodded at my arm as she helped me hurry away. “We need to get some water on it. Different water … than what was in that pond.”
We had passed a stream a short distance back, and I followed Trina there now. I knelt beside it and dipped my right arm in the water. The dragon breath had burned much of the sleeve of my longcoat, exposing the flesh, which was bright red from the burn except for the line created by the stab wound. It wasn’t bleeding anymore, but instead was a solid black line. Whether intended or not, the dragon’s breath had cauterized the wound. My arm stung beyond anything I could describe, not only the skin, but inside my arm, as if sealing the wound had kept something inside me that shouldn’t be there.
Trina gasped when I pulled my burned arm from the water. “Does it hurt?”
I tilted my head at her, unwilling to explain the obvious. When she nodded in understanding, I shrugged and said the only thing I could: “Let’s rejoin the others.”
By the time we returned to the main part of the forest, the morning sun was higher in the sky, and I recoiled in horror. The forest was littered with the dead and wounded from both sides. And still the Dominion kept coming. Their condors had broken holes through the forest canopy and rained fire pellets down whenever they spotted a valuable enough target. Carnoxen and oropods ran wild without riders, attacking fighters from both sides who happened to be in their way, and I saw no discernable leadership in place, meaning the fighting had become exactly what Mindall had predicted: chaotic and brutal.
This was entirely different from my past experience as a Corack. We hit hard and fast, with sharply focused targets and clear goals. I wasn’t at all prepared for open warfare such as this.
Trina led us toward the clearing around King’s Lake, where the fighting worsened considerably. Here, the casualties carpeted the ground, making it impossible to travel five steps in any direction without nearly tripping over a fallen body. Black smoke rose from a patch of burned trees, the air reeked of blood, and the only noises were the clashes of steel blades and grunts of soldiers fighting for their lives.
I recognized Harlyn in the battle and was relieved to see her safe. She had just rescued a Reddengrad soldier whose halberd was broken in half. She offered a hand to help him up and briefly smiled at me.
Commander Mindall was with his fighters to my left, attempting to hold back a line of Ironhearts to stop them from entering the clearing. While Trina ran in one direction, I joined the Commander, but when I reached for my sword, I lacked the strength to even pull it from its scabbard. I backed into the thicket until I was alone and examined my injury again. The burn had turned darker but wasn’t blistering as a severe wound should. Which would have given me hope, except my arm also felt weaker than it had when I’d first been burned. Something was definitely wrong.
Out in the clearing, Mindall called for all available Halderians to come for reinforcement. I made a fist and grimaced at how weak it was, then heeded his call.
When I emerged, I almost careened into a large Ironheart riding a carnox. The animal reared up, and while I fumbled for my knife, it pushed me to the ground with its front paws. I landed on a small stump of a fallen tree, which dug into my back and stole my breath.
“Simon!” Harlyn cried.
The Ironheart leaned over the animal and gave a booming laugh. “You’re Simon Hatch? We assumed this would be harder!”
“That what would be harder?” Better we talked than he ordered his carnox to take a bite from me.
“Finding you in all this chaos. We expected they’d have protected you better. Don’t you know that every soldier here has orders to find you?”
By then, I had squirmed free enough to reach my knife with my left hand. I pierced the hide of the carnox but that made it angrier and it stomped a paw down on my leg. Hoping to ease the pain, I rolled sideways, but it didn’t help and put me in a worse position defensively.
The Ironheart started to give his animal an order, but then he grunted loudly. By the time I looked back, he was already falling from the animal, with Harlyn standing directly behind him, her sword now in the carnox’s side. It stumbled back, freeing my leg, and fell dead.
She rushed over to me. “Are you hurt?”
“Hurting, but not hurt,” I said, though it took her help to stand again.
However, before she released my hand, she rotated it to see the burn on my arm and the cauterized wound. “What happened?”
I pulled my hand away. “I’m sure someone in the Reddengrad army knows what to do. Or our physician, Loelle.” I wished I knew where she was.
“It looks painful.”
I started to shake my head but Harlyn put a hand on my shoulder. “Why do the soldiers here have orders to find you?”
“Long story.”