Dragon and Herdsman

"Then I will wait with you," Draycos said. "When you're ready, we'll go together."

"Look, just go, all right?" Jack said, starting to feel annoyed. "If you want to know the truth, I'm more worried about Alison than I am about me. Anyway, they can't be that far ahead of us. Just find them, then come back and get me."

"But—"

Abruptly, Draycos broke off, and in the darkness Jack saw his tongue flicking rapidly in and out of his mouth. "What is it?" he whispered.

"Movement," Draycos murmured back, putting his snout right up against Jack's ear. "The Malison Ring soldiers have arrived."

Jack's heart seemed to freeze in his chest. "Where?" he breathed.

"To the south," Draycos said, his tongue flicking out twice more. "Twenty of them at least, including nonhumans. They are traveling north in a sweep-line, fifty to one hundred yards back from our position."

Reflexively, Jack pressed his back harder against the tree. By pure blind luck he'd sat himself down on the north side of a tree that was wide enough to shield him from the view of the approaching soldiers. But that would only protect him until they passed and someone decided to take a look to the side.

"And," Draycos added, "there are three to five more already past us to the north."

Jack frowned. Two separate waves? Could Colonel Frost have figured out that he and Alison had split up?

"The lead group will be scouts," Draycos said, answering his unspoken question. "The larger group is the main fighting force."

So Frost didn't know he and Alison had been separated. Jack started breathing a little easier again. "Can you tell where Alison and the others are?" he asked Draycos.

Again, the tongue flicked out. "No, but the lack of activity implies they have not yet been attacked. Possibly not even spotted."

And in the meantime, Jack and Draycos were sitting between two enemy waves, both of which were completely unaware of their presence. There ought to be some seriously interesting ways to take advantage of that. "Any idea how the bad guys are traveling?"

"Most likely in a similar formation to that which they used earlier," Draycos said. "They will be in small groups of two to five soldiers. All the members of a group will be in sight of each other, but they will be spaced far enough apart to keep me from stopping all of them before they can sound an alarm."

Jack grimaced. "Any ideas?"

"They will be expecting a K'da warrior," Draycos said, lowering his voice even further. "But they will not be expecting a K'da warrior with a tangler."

"Ok-a-a-ay," Jack said slowly, frowning as he handed over the weapon. "And this is going to help us how?"

"You will see," Draycos said, taking the tangler and tucking it under his left foreleg. "How many shots are left?"

"Eleven."

"Good," Draycos said. "Stay here and remain still. The tree and its surrounding reeds should protect you from—"

And suddenly, without even a whisper of warning, Jack's head and shoulders were shoved hard into the tree trunk behind him as the red Phooka riding his skin suddenly leaped from the front of his shirt.

Reflexively, Jack opened his mouth to shout a warning, strangled it down just in time. Move! he thought urgently toward the Phooka, wiggling his fingers toward the creature as violently as he dared. The soldiers could arrive at any second. Get out of here!

But the red dragon ignored him. He shook himself once, like a dog just in out of the rain, and twisted his long neck around once to look at Jack. Then, turning around again, he jabbed his tongue out a few times and started casually loping northward.

He'd gotten perhaps ten paces when the forest exploded with the brilliant light and the shattering noise of gunfire from behind him.

"No!" Jack howled, the sound of his voice swallowed up by the stuttering thunderclaps.

But it was too late. Before the red Phooka could even react, his scales were already bursting apart with multiple hits. He writhed once in surprise and agony, collapsing to the ground.

An instant later he was gone.

Jack stared at the spot where the Phooka had been, his stomach wanting to be sick. Draycos had told him how K'da simply vanished when they died, going two-dimensional and fading away.

But to watch it happen right before his eyes was as eerie as it was horrifying.

And still the gunfire continued to rake the area. Jack pressed his hands tightly to his ears, trying to block out the noise hammering his skull and wondering what in blazes the soldiers were doing. Did they really think that poor, stupid animal could have escaped their attack?

And then, suddenly, he understood. Of course no mere animal could have lived through that. But they weren't hunting animals. In fact, odds were they didn't even know the Phooka herd existed.

They were hunting Draycos, poet-warrior of the K'da.

And they probably thought they had just killed him.