Champion of Fire & Ice - Megan Derr Page 0,19

and other refuse.

"No smoke, no movement of any sort," Lee said. "I guess we weren't really expecting any, though."

"I'm more concerned there's no livestock. The reindeer might have scattered after a bit, if plague wiped everyone out, but the musk oxen would have stayed close, since there's room aplenty and reliable food and water here. Plague or bandits, there's no reason for all the livestock to be missing. Keep alert, Lee, and be ready to run."

"Yes, sir," Lee said quietly.

Cimar led the way down the hill toward the keep, making certain his sword could be easily drawn if necessary. He'd come prepared to roust bandits or burn the remains of plague victims. He had not come prepared for a mystery.

The wind picked up slightly as they reached the valley floor, and Cimar gagged at the stench it brought: death, decay. Not really a shock that everyone was dead, but according to what he'd been told, these people should have been dead for months. Their bodies should be frozen, unable to leave much in the way of stench until the spring thaw.

"This grows increasingly ominous," he said. "Let's ready our bows."

Lee immediately stopped and swung his pack down, swiftly untying the bows he'd secured to it and digging out string from one of the many pockets. He handed one length to Cimar and used the second to string his own bow.

The wood didn't like the cold, but Cimar paid well for his armor and weapons, and these bows had been specially treated to endure extreme climate. They'd be stiffer and slightly more prone to breaking, but in expert hands they'd do well enough, and neither he nor Lee was an amateur.

Lee favored a short bow, which broadly was more useful. Cimar, though, had grown up learning the long bow and had never been able to part with it.

When their arrows were unpacked and in the quivers at their hips, they resumed walking.

"What do you think it could be?" Lee asked. "How could the smell be that strong? Surely there aren't any people or animals around in enough numbers to be that… fresh."

Cimar's jaw tightened as he weighed possibilities, but only one stood out bright and sharp in his mind. "I don't think it's the bodies that smell that way. I think that stench emanates from the problem itself. If I am correct, Castle Bone has been overrun by a lindworm."

"Well. Fuck."

"Precisely."

As they drew closer, the stench grew so bad that Lee had to pause to throw up, and he remained a sickly green the rest of the journey to the castle.

They stopped several paces shy of the drawbridge, and it took everything Cimar possessed not to throw up his own breakfast.

Lindworms were ravenous beasts, gigantic serpents with a seemingly bottomless appetite that preferred their food to be alive when it was swallowed. They were covered with thick, nearly impervious scales that were a deceptively beautiful silvery-white, with a head that closely resembled that of dragons to the untrained eye. They had bloodred eyes and venomous fangs that paralyzed victims so they'd go easily into the gullet, where they'd be slowly digested.

The worst thing about lindworms was that they had once been human. Shifters who got stuck in their shifted form and went mad, or otherwise corrupt, and began to shift again, growing and shedding and growing until all that remained was a monster.

Someone in the castle had been a shifter, and something had happened to turn them into a lindworm, and in their ravening they'd consumed the other inhabitants, all the people they'd called peer and friend and family.

"I've only ever read about them," Lee said, voice shaking slightly. "Never thought I'd actually encounter one. Do you really think that's what we're up against?"

"Unfortunately, I do. One of the tell-tale marks is that they smell like rotting corpses." He didn't bother to elaborate that most of that stench came from the fact lindworms perpetually had bodies rotting inside them. "The complete lack of anything living is another tell." He handed Lee his bow and extended his left arm, where he wore the leather bracer. He whistled sharply, high and piercing, and far above them Valor gave an answering cry as she made her way down. "Get a message ready."

A few minutes later Valor alighted on his arm and accepted the food he offered. While she ate, Lee got the message affixed to her leg.

When she was done eating and the message secure, Cimar launched her back into the air and then