lurched to her feet. She was bleeding from a cut below her eye.
She faced them. Felt her teeth ache, her throat close. Here it came.
The crowd roared. The shadows separated into people. Somewhere, the girl was shouting. Ren could barely hear her. She could not see her in the crowd. Blood and tangled hair fell into her eyes.
First came the fangs. Then came the fur.
Then came the fury.
9
THEIR HORSES’ HOOFBEATS WERE MUFFLED by ivy, by dead leaves, by a decade-old carpet of scum on the cobblestones. The forest loomed at the far end of the road, swallowing the farthermost houses. The shadows of trees sprouted straight through their roofs, black branches choking their chimneys. If Lukasz had been a more imaginative man, he would have said that the forest was strangling what remained. But he wasn’t imaginative. He was a pragmatist right down to the broken bone.
He kept a hand on his rifle. It wasn’t as if he’d be using the sword again.
“You know,” said Koszmar. He had a very deep voice, with a wild kind of edge under it. “They killed the strzygi. And the strzygi killed them.”
It took Lukasz a moment to realize he meant the bodies in the graveyard.
“Was that poetry?” he asked dryly.
“Lukasz,” murmured Koszmar. “If the strzygi and those poor souls killed each other . . . who buried them?”
Lukasz didn’t answer, but a shiver scuttled over his shoulders.
The sooner he found Franciszek, the better. Hopefully he was still somewhere in the forest, because Lukasz had no interest in revisiting the Mountains. Then he and Franciszek could get the hell out of here and return to Miasto. Franciszek would finally get what he wanted: he could quit hunting dragons, especially now that Lukasz was probably off the job permanently. Besides, they had enough dragon gold in the vaults of the Royal Welona Bank to live in luxury for the rest of their lives.
Koszmar drew up his horse. Near the end of the row, light flickered behind the shutters of one of the houses.
“There—”
Lukasz spurred Król on, urging the horse up the steps to the front door. The wood creaked alarmingly under Król’s heavy hooves, but Lukasz ignored it. He unslung the rifle from his shoulder and pounded the door.
“RYBAK!”
At the shouting, a nocnica scuttled through the branches overhead, pincers clicking. Lukasz was about to raise his rifle when a white eagle swooped down from the darkness and snatched it off its branch.
“Eugh,” said Koszmar.
“RYBAK!” repeated Lukasz. “It’s Lukasz Smoków, and you’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do!”
No response. It didn’t seem possible. Six years, and he was still alive . . . and he’d lied.
Lukasz slid from Król’s back and hammered on the door until it danced on its rusty hinges.
“OPEN THE DAMN DOOR, RYBAK.”
Behind him, Koszmar dismounted. With two fingers and an expression of exquisite disgust he looped his horse’s reins around a slimy horse rail. He cast a doubtful look to the eagle overhead, crunching loudly in the eaves.
Lukasz hammered the door again. That lying, cheating—
“RYBAK, OPEN THE DOOR.”
No one stirred inside. Lukasz took a step back and stared up at the second floor. The whole house had a precarious lean to it. He cupped his hands around his mouth.
“RYBAK! OPEN UP, YOU FILTHY, STRZYGO?-KISSING, BANNIK-B—”
“Steady on,” interrupted Koszmar languidly. “I wouldn’t be rude, if I were you—”
The door swung open.
“STRZYGO?-KISSING?” boomed a voice from inside.
A figure appeared in the doorway, the top of his head lost in the shadows of the room beyond. All the color drained from Koszmar’s face, but Lukasz was too angry to be scared.
“Well, it’s about goddamn time,” he growled.
“You are very lucky,” said Jakub Rybak. One eye glittered in the dimness. His voice was different from how Lukasz remembered it; it was softer. A bit lisping. “If you had broken my door, young Smoków, I would have removed your teeth one by one.”
Like the rest of the house, the door was falling to pieces.
“Yeah, right.” Lukasz rapped the door, and the top hinge clattered to the floor. “I could huff and puff and blow this shack down.”
Every word cracked like a gunshot. Rybak didn’t respond. Then he moved out of the black interior and into the damp moonlight. Lukasz retreated a few steps, right into Koszmar.
He wasn’t sure Koszmar would have been his first choice, but at least he had someone to back him up. Besides, the noble was a major. Surely that counted for something?
“What do you want, Lukasz Smoków?” asked Rybak.
It