A Time of Blood (Of Blood and Bone #2) - John Gwynne Page 0,89

shell and slime.

A creature stood before Fritha on squat legs with a broad skull and flat muzzle. Wide, heavily muscled shoulders and a scaly torso tapered into a thick tail. From snout to tail-tip the baby draig was about the length of Fritha’s arm. It opened its jaw, revealing rows of needle-like teeth, and let out a croaking dog-like bark, then it sniffed the air, snapping its jaws.

It’s hungry.

Fritha lifted a portion of slime-covered eggshell and the draig sniffed it, a long red tongue appearing, licking the mucus, and then it was crunching into the shell, devouring it in a series of rapid gulps. It looked at Fritha, wanting more.

Fritha laughed and fed it more of the eggshell; in a few moments all of it gone into the draig’s belly. It stared at Fritha again, thick tendrils of jelly hanging from its jaws, its tail twitching.

Still hungry.

“Gunil, some wyrm meat.”

They had stripped the wyrm carcasses of meat once her Ferals had had their fill—not that there had been much left after the feeding frenzy of eleven Ferals and Gunil’s bear. Gunil had cooked it and packed it with salt. Fritha had found it surprisingly tasty.

Gunil opened a barrel strapped to his bear and passed Fritha a filleted section of wyrm. She waved it in front of the draig, its snout following the meat, sniffing it, and then its head was lunging forwards, chomping into the meat, a head-shake like a terrier with a rat, and it tore a chunk, chewed and gulped, then immediately attacked the remaining meat. It swallowed the last portion, belched, then turned in a circle, scratched at the forest litter and lay down. Within heartbeats its belly was rising and falling in sleep.

Fritha stroked its broad head, scales still slick with glutinous slime. She looked over her shoulder, up at Gunil, and grinned. He did not look so happy as her, a slight twist of disgust on his lips.

It is life, new life. There is nothing but beauty in that.

“Gunil, we might need another cage.”

A rustling of branches above and behind Fritha, a bird squawking, and she jumped to her feet, turning, sword hissing into her hand.

It was Morn, descending through the treetop canopy, something in her arms. She alighted before Fritha and held out a shifting, squirming bundle. It took Fritha a moment to realize what it was.

The net Morn had been snared in, and within it, a big black crow.

Fritha smiled at Morn.

“Let Flick go,” the crow squawked.

Fritha clapped her hands in delight.

“Thank you, Drem,” she said to the sky. “One of Dun Seren’s talking crows. Your gifts just keep on coming.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

RIV

Riv stood in a huge chamber, a half-circle of tiered stone seats leading down to a dais about a hundred paces wide. Ben-Elim thronged the room, a real sense of awe filling Riv at the sight of so many of the winged warriors in the same place.

Is this all of them?

She had lived her whole life at Drassil and so was used to seeing many Ben-Elim, and she had been on numerous campaigns as support to her sister’s hundred, but never had she seen this many Ben-Elim gathered together.

There must be three thousand of them in here.

Riv had been made to stand on the dais before the gathered Ben-Elim. She had received more than a few harsh looks, but to her surprise she also saw many faces that regarded her with something that resembled interest more than hate.

Or perhaps it’s wishful thinking.

Kol stood up. He was seated in the lowest tier, on the far edge of its arc, so that as he stood he could angle himself to look up at all of the gathered Ben-Elim, and still be facing Riv.

“We must vote,” he said. “The day is almost done.”

Beams of light through huge unshuttered windows cut into the room, low as the sun dipped into the horizon. Riv had been standing in front of the gathered Ben-Elim long enough for her feet to ache. It had not been the most pleasant time of her life, bearing the brunt of three thousand judging pairs of eyes.

“Not all are here yet,” a voice called out—Kamael with his fair hair, standing on the far side of the room, a dozen tiers up from the ground.

“You mean, Sariel is not here yet,” Kol said.

“Aye. Sariel is leader of the southern garrison, a respected elder. We cannot proceed without him.”

“If Sariel cannot find the time to come to our Moot, the first that has been called