Page 14 of Crown of the Dunes (The Ballan Desert #2)

Chapter four

Erix

M y eyes burned and watered as the dry wind wafted smoke into my face.

Try as I might to stay upwind of the fires, the constant shift of the desert blew the scent of charred flesh over me at odd intervals.

After days of burning bone spiders, stacking the severed limbs like demented kindling, the whole encampment reeked of death.

The stench had seeped into my clothing and my hair.

It would take a good bath to rid me of the decay, but with water supplies running lower by the day, no such luxury was in sight.

As I approached the next fire, I grabbed a limb from the bundle I carried—an arm with clawed fingers on the end of a gnarled hand—and tossed it onto the blaze.

These limbs were fresh, hewn from a bone spider that emerged from Stygian depths of the chasm last night, after a fire on the far side of the camp ran out of fuel.

Luckily, I had been nearby, and managed to aid the riders in dispatching it before any were killed.

I had almost been thankful for the fight giving me a temporary reprieve from the chattering in my head and the overwhelming feeling of impotence at being trapped here.

Still, one member of Clan Ratan had lost an arm, and currently lay in the healer’s tent muttering under his breath about how the spider would return to take the rest of his limbs .

As I trekked to the next bonfire, ready to distribute more fuel, the cry of a falcon cut the air. I looked up to find a familiar set of banded wings wheeling in the sky above me.

Zephyr circled lower and lower, and a bolt of satisfaction mixed with relief rang through me at the sight of a jackrabbit dangling in his claws. I would be able to add meat to at least one stew pot tonight.

It was a pleasant change from the stab of disappointment that had pierced my heart every time he had returned for the past weeks.

I had sent him out half a dozen times with messages tied to his legs, each one a plea for Keera to tell me she was alive, to come back and join me—even to tell me she hated me and wanted me dead, if that is what was in her heart after returning to the city that I was still determined to see crumble to the ground.

In my last message, I had even become desperate enough to address it to Queen Ginevra, hoping that if my message was found, they would deem it important enough to get it into the right hands.

My knuckles shone white, and the charcoal stick creaked in my hand, threatening to break as I had written my mother’s name.

There had been no acknowledgement of our relationship, just a demand for Keera’s return to the clans.

The voices in my head chattered loud enough that I could barely grasp the words to write—functioning more difficult by the day.

I swallowed my pride and the bile in my throat to send that plea, but it was all for nothing.

Zephyr returned with every letter I sent still tied to his leg.

He had been gone for several days on each occasion, giving me hope that he had journeyed to Kelvadan, but my hope was in vain.

I wondered if we were perhaps too far from Kelvadan to make the journey, although their riders had been close enough to mount an attack.

If the city was too far for Zephyr to reach now, then it was the desert’s will that it was so.

As the encampment’s food supplies dwindled, I could no longer justify sending him on such fool’s errands when he could supply much needed meat for the clansmen under my protection. In that, he had not failed me yet.

I extricated one arm from my bundle of carrion kindling, holding it out for him to alight on. He dropped his prize on the ground at my feet before landing on my wrist, having learned to perch where my leather gloves offered me some protection from his wicked claws.

I nodded my thanks to him, wishing I had more of a reward to offer him for his service, but there were no tasty morsels to spare.

He would have to find his own meal, in the form of the small lizards and snakes that roamed everywhere in the Ballan Desert, ever present but so quick to hide that they rarely caught your eye.

I moved to set down the bundle in my other arm, intending to briefly stroke his head and wings to show my gratitude.

Before I could, he squawked indignantly and ruffled his feathers.

My brows drew together as I frowned at his strange behavior.

He responded by trilling louder, and this time, the sound was one of distress as he spread his wings.

I didn’t have time to chide him before he took to the air, flying off in the direction of our shared tent. I opened my mouth to call after him when I heard it.

A clap like distant thunder disturbed the air. I froze, eyes narrowing as I searched the horizon for an incoming storm. It came again, this time closer—an echoing crack. A third clap came, then a fourth, developing into a distinctive rhythm: wing beats.

My gaze snapped up to the sky in time to see massive wings cast a shadow over the encampment. It was like nothing I had ever seen before, and my blood ran cold at the sight of the creature dominating the sky above me.

Tattered wings of darkness stretched wide to carry the unwieldly bulk of a skeletal bird. Its neck stretched too long, ending in a skull-like head adorned with a razor-sharp beak. As I watched in horror, it flexed its feet, each toe ending in a talon as long as my saber.

The memory of a drawing flashed in my head, from a bestiary I had seen long ago, detailing the horrors that haunted the desert before it was crossed. This was a gravehawk—a flying terror that feasted on the flesh and blood of battlefields.

The gravehawk pulled its wings in and began to dive, the lethal points of its talons poised to snatch up any unsuspecting prey. My heart pounded in my chest, and I snapped from my shocked stupor .

“Take cover!” I shouted.

Screams already ripped through the camp as the flying terror drew closer, blotting out the light of the sun.

“Get into the tents!” I yelled, using the voice I deployed in battle to be heard over the sounds of growing panic.

Even as I shouted instructions though, my bowels turned liquid. The gravehawk was large enough to tear through the encampment as it swooped—able to carry away entire tents and horses in its gigantic talons.

There was no cover that could protect clansman from this predator on the plateau.

My fingers curled around the hilt of my saber before I even realized I was reaching for it. Sand puffed up around me as I ran toward where the gravehawk dived. A moment before it leveled out, I realized its target.

The creature hit the ground with a thud just beside one of the bonfires. The clansman in charge of tending to it couldn’t even scream before the creature’s head shot out on a disproportionately long neck. Its beak closed around his torso and a sickening crunch filled the air.

My stomach threatened to empty itself at the sound of his spine shattering as the bird tossed his body up in the air, tipping its head back and swallowing him in a single bite.

I grit my teeth against the sensation and charged forward, saber in one hand and dirk in the other.

A cry tore from my throat as I approached, but the monster seemed preoccupied with the smoldering bonfire, nearly extinguished by the wind from its wings.

It pecked at the heap of charred flesh, clearly seeing it as food despite the scent of decay that permeated the air.

The fires we had used to ward off one predator had drawn the attention of another.

Finally, I was within reach of the creature, and I leapt, the power of the desert at the base of my skull pulling taut as I flung myself into the air.

I slashed my saber down at the creature’s outstretched and vulnerable neck, only to be batted aside by a tattered wing as it spun toward me.

Breath exploded from my body at the impact, but I managed to tuck my head and roll as I hit the sand .

I barely had time to let momentum bring me to my feet again before the opposite wing swung toward me. I raised my dirk in time to block what a curved hook at the end of its wing—white like sun-bleached bone but deathly sharp.

The sound of the blow echoed through the air and sent a shock through my arm that threatened to knock my knife from my hand.

The crescendoing voices in my head overpowered both the sound and sensation, giving me the strength to twist my wrist, locking the boney hook around my blade.

With the creature’s wing momentarily trapped, I used the saber in my other hand to slash at the flesh of its wing stretched grotesquely over bone.

I stabbed through the membrane, and a screech like a sword scraping stone rent the air. Black blood oozed over the quillons of my sword and dripped to the ground where it sizzled like viper venom.

I drew my arm back to strike again, but the bird was too fast, wrenching its wing from my grasp and taking my dirk with it.

The force of its movement overbalanced me, forcing me to stumble a few steps forward. Instead of fighting the motion, I leaned into it, using the vibrating fibers of the desert’s magic to correct my balance.

Screaming in my head drowned out everything around me, but for the first time since carving the chasm into the earth, I didn’t fight them. They washed over me like a sandstorm, and while my vision narrowed to the monster before me, my awareness stretched the confines of my skull.

This time, when I leaped, I anticipated the creature’s turn, trying to position its injured wing behind it. Power coursed through me as I flew impossibly high, swinging my saber with both hands in a decisive arc at the base of its neck.

The blow reverberated up my body, shocks running through every joint from my fingers to my shoulders as my sword struck bone. Instead of the give of flesh and cartilage under my razor-sharp sword, it was as if I had struck stone .