Murtagh

I could not reach you any faster, said Thorn.

“I know,” said Murtagh, still coughing. “It’s all right.”

I would have rescued you and killed Muckmaw no matter what.

He hugged Thorn again and then turned to look over the lake. “You don’t have to convince me…. I didn’t think I could hate Durza any more.”

What other evils has he left in Alagaësia?

The question gave Murtagh pause. “I wish I knew.”

A roiling disturbance in the water twenty feet away caused both of them to tense, and Murtagh started to climb onto Thorn’s back.

Then Muckmaw bobbed to the surface and rolled belly-up, his entire length limp.

Murtagh swore and brushed his wet hair out of his eyes. His heart was still pounding, and he felt ready to leap back into battle.

“Hold on. There’s something I have to check.” He pushed off from Thorn, set out paddling, and swam to Muckmaw’s enormous corpse. Thorn followed at a slower pace, slithering through the water with sinuous ease.

Murtagh pulled himself around Muckmaw to the creature’s head. Sticking out of the overgrown sturgeon’s skull was—as he’d thought—a length of broken bone. A human thigh bone, by the look of it.

Murtagh’s mind returned to the butchery that lay submerged beneath them, and a disturbing suspicion formed within him. The sheer number of corpses made absurd the idea that they could be Muckmaw’s victims and his alone. No one would have endured the presence of such a monster. The amount of slaughter—even spread across the past sixty years—would have driven the common folk from the lake and sent word of Muckmaw throughout the land until others more fearsome still came hunting the murderous fish.

He glanced at Thorn. “I’ll be right back. Brisingr!” Again he set a werelight burning in front of himself, only this one was blue white and brighter than before.

Then he took a deep breath and again dove under. The water bubbled and steamed around the ball of fire, but the glowing ball of gas still provided enough light for him to see.

Down he swam into the freezing depths, down and down until the field of crusted skeletons came into view. In the seething illumination of his werelight, the bones seemed to shift and stir with unnatural life, as marionettes badly puppeted and desperate to escape their casement of decay.

He kicked himself to the nearest skeleton and dug through the mud and silt covering the torso. The muck was cold as despair. His fingers found a tattered scrap of leather, and he pulled it free, held it up. Suspicion solidified into certainty. As he had feared, there was embossed on the leather the standard of Galbatorix’s infantry.

Murtagh took one last look over the watery boneyard where so many of the Empire’s soldiers lay. The weird and grotesque desolation made his heart hurt to see.

Then he pushed off and again ascended.

With a burst of spray, he broke free of the water. He gasped and clung gratefully to Thorn when the dragon swam over to him.

What is it?

Murtagh swore and banged his forehead several times against Thorn’s hard scales. The water was a frigid blanket around him, heavy and constraining.

“They’re down there,” he mumbled. He kept his brow pressed against Thorn’s neck. “Blast it. They’re all down there.”

Thorn’s alarm increased. Who?

When Murtagh shared what he’d seen, Thorn’s sorrow joined his own. “The elves must have driven them into the water. They never stood a chance.” The last he’d seen of Galbatorix’s battalions, the squares of men had been huddled together upon the smoke-shrouded plains outside Gil’ead while the ranks of tall elves marched upon them with inexorable force.

In a gentle tone, the dragon said, It is unfortunate, but their deaths are not our responsibility.

“They are. If Galbatorix had let us stay, we could have—”

The elves would have killed us. Even with Yngmar’s strength at our disposal, we could not have withstood their combined might.

“We should have at least tried!”

Would you have seen the elves defeated and Galbatorix triumphant?

“No! But there must have been a way to save the men. Somehow.”

Thorn’s neck vibrated as the dragon growled. You cannot force the world to be as you will.

“Can’t I?” Murtagh lifted his head to look at Thorn. “If you want something badly enough—”

Want is not always enough. Thorn nuzzled the top of his head. The means must be there also. You know this.