Page 29 of Dragons of the Great Wyves: Fire and Song
She became serious. “Who are you? Would pretty Mr. Darcy chase fourteen Blackcoats alone?”
My name sounded strange on her lips. “I am chasing you.”
“You found me.” She cocked her head, studying my wrinkled clothes. “You are less pretty. That is an improvement. Find me again when your sword is sharp, and I will show you another trick.” She turned away.
“Wait! You need me.”
Smiling, she turned back and placed her hands on her hips. Waiting.
I tried to think, ignoring my irritation over her jibe about clothes. “You need reinforcements.”
She snorted. “You?Will you have them form a line, then ask them to fight one-by-one so the others can admire your footwork?”
“You need clothes. A bonnet. A bath. Food.” I was throwing ideas randomly, and her eyebrows notched higher with each one. “Tea. Boots.”
Her skepticism vanished. “You have my boots?”
“Um… notwithme.”
She laughed and turned away, then stopped mid-stride, toes in the grass, one bare heel lifted. I had forgotten how delicate her feet were.
I tried again. “At Pemberley—”
She held up her hand.Silence.
Escalus snorted. He stamped the turf, great head swinging and ears twisting.
A rattle grew in the forest, like a hundred twigs drumming on wood.
Elizabeth yanked her skirt up, exposing a scandalous length of muscular leg and a makeshift cloth sheath strapped to her thigh. She drew the dagger Gramr and let the skirt fall.
“Why are you watchingme?” she hissed.
I started and turned, peering into the dense forest. Clicks come from every bush and shadow.
A giant foul crawler slipped into the clearing, the clatter of its feet hushing on the soft grass. It was serpentine, four feet long, thick as a man’s leg but flattened and low to the ground. A pair of jointed legs sprang from each shiny, armored segment. The front third lifted into the air, questing blindly as if scenting, the finger-length pinchers on the head clacking open andclosed.
Elizabeth reached it with one lightning step and stabbed underhand, driving her dagger through the lighter-colored bottom shell. The creature gave a peculiar squealing hiss, writhing on her blade.
“Above you!” she shouted. I looked up as a six-inch crawler fell from a branch. I jerked back. It brushed my thigh, the feet scrabbling but missing their grip. It landed by my feet.
Another crawler, longer than my arm, burst out of the bush and ran at me, legs a blur. I kicked it, as awkward as kicking a rope, and it retreated in a seething mass. The smaller crawler was hissing, so I stamped in the grass and felt shell crack just before the long one flowed out again, faster than a snake. I jabbed it with the sword. The tip skittered off the shell, then the pincers closed on my boot toe, crushing the thick leather and squeezing the bones of my foot. I kicked, a disgusted reflex, and its grip on my boot whipped the crawler like a yard-long rat shaken by a dog. There was a sharp snap, and it fell off, limp.
Escalus whinnied and bucked. I raced to him and stabbed at another long crawler squirming by his feet. Again the blade skidded. Fool. I backed two steps and executed a proper downward lunge—in practice, I hit targets the size of a guinea. The point caught between two segments and slipped under the shell, skewering the thrashing vermin to the ground.
The back of the creature flicked over its head, scorpion-like, the stingers hunting for flesh. Then Escalus’s hoof came down, smashing a dinner-plate-sized chunk of the body into shards of shell and mushed, clam-like flesh.
The horse reared again, screaming, front feet sawing the air, and a hoof clipped my forearm with a stinging smack. “Easy!” I shouted. “Down!” I caught the reins left-handed, sword in my right. The pistol on his flank was in reach, but priming it would take an eternity. A blade was better.
The clattering had stopped. There was only Escalus’s frenzied panting and my own.
Frightened, I spun, seeking Elizabeth. She was turning a wary circle in the center of the clearing. In her hand, Gramr dripped unpleasant, yellowish gore. Four large crawlers lay dead in the grass around her.
“Where did they come from?” I gasped. My words shook with the strange, harsh tremble that follows combat.
She looked up. Even now, her eyes made my heart stutter. It was Elizabeth’s serious, steady gaze.
“That is what she does,” she said. “The woman with them. She sends crawlers.”
