Page 42 of Miss Bennet's Dragon
“I thought our attempt to use draca in war had failed?”
“How did you hear that?” The colonel appeared surprised.
I could not mention Mr. Darcy, who had told me while frustrated and on official business. So I said vaguely, “In the papers?” and the colonel seemed satisfied.
I spotted Lydia with Denny, and excused myself to pursue my droll and clever sister.
I slowed when I saw she was in an argument. Denny was speaking sharply, and I knew Lydia too well to mistake her waving hands and jutted chin.
She stalked off, layers of wool flapping.
It would be hopeless to discuss Brighton when she was already vexed, so I resumed walking to Denny.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he nodded.
“Lieutenant. Are you enjoying our sunshine?” That was unexpectedly witty as my teeth chattered.
He smiled, and we talked amiably. In fact, the day was warming, the frost melting in the sunny patches, and the wind had almost stilled.
Sour orange and bitter almond.
The scent was gone again as a gust flicked by.
“Did… Do you smelloranges?” I asked.
“I think there is flavored coffee. I have been smelling it all morning.”
“Really.” I looked around the meadow. For what, I was not sure. Draca, I suppose. But there was no reason to bring draca on a social outing, and the few married officers were not gentry, so they were not even bound.
But that was the wrong question—the odor had not been from live draca. It had been around the Lucases’ dead tunnelworm and the dead roseworm in Meryton.
One mystery of draca was their origin. People accepted that bound draca appeared overnight, fully grown. But from where? I had asked and received shrugs and guesses. From the woods. Dropped from passing wyverns, as if they were delivered by some modern air post.
Could there be a dead, feral draca nearby? The elm forest was one of the few ancient, unlogged stands in Hertfordshire, overgrown with holly and dogwood.
The air stilled, and the scent reappeared, astringent and biting.
Denny, his nostrils pinched, interrupted his own story. “I cannot imagine who woulddrinksomething like that.”
It was too pungent to be distant. I stepped back, and it diminished. “Forgive a question that seems improper, but might you have something on your person with that scent?”
He laughed and made a show of sniffing his sleeves, then twisted his neck to sniff at his shoulder. His face contorted. “Phew!Oof, yes!” He turned, trying to see his own back and looking like a dog chasing his own tail. “My sincere apologies. I must have brushed something…”
From the forest, a clattering sound was growing, like a military drummer banging sticks on a log at ferocious speed. Laughs and chatter faded as curious faces turned. Winter-bare branches jerked and swayed at the edge of the trees, perhaps thirty yards away.
A multi-legged, serpentine body, thick as a large man’s chest, poured out of the dark underbrush. It kept coming—as long as a horse, then twicethat—segmented in greenish-brown chunks a foot long, each with a pair of jointed, insectile legs that moved in lightning, clicking sequence.
The front swarmed onto the grass, coiling like a giant earthworm that had sprouted dozens of legs. Behind it, a loop of churning body climbed an elm trunk like a wave, surging higher while each pair of legs scrambled to push past, lopping branches and flaying bark, until the trunk splintered and fell.
Ladies screamed. A few people ran. The colonel shouted an order, lost as a dozen concerned voices rose.
The monster was into the open now, twisting as it explored the grass, more flexible than a snake. The body and legs had the glossy, armored appearance of shell.
“It is a foul crawler,” I said.
The size had defied recognition at first. Crawlers, like the one that stung Jane, were inches long. Large ones—five inches—were called cockatrice, or sometimes draca bane, for they were said to fight draca. There was another name from myth…
“A basilisk!” Denny shouted.
