“Well …” Hadrian thought. “We can dig a pit, lure it there, and trap it.”
“We’d have better luck asking Tomas to pray for Maribor to strike the Gilarabrywn dead. We really don’t have the time or the manpower for excavating a pit.”
“You have a better idea?”
“I’m sure I could come up with something better than luring it into a pit we can’t dig.”
“Like what?”
Royce began walking around the still smoldering stick forest, angrily kicking anything in his path. “I don’t know, you’re the one who thinks we can do something, but I know one thing: we can’t do squat unless we can get the other half of that sword. So the first thing I would do is steal it tonight while it’s gone.”
“It would kill Thrace and Arista for certain if you did that,” Hadrian pointed out.
“But then you could kill it. At least there would be the closure of revenge.”
Hadrian shook his head. “Not good enough.”
Royce smirked. “I could always steal the sword while you and Theron fool it with the blade Rufus was using.” Royce allowed himself a morbid chuckle. “There’s at least about a single chance in a million that might work.”
Hadrian’s brow furrowed in thought, and he sat down slowly.
“Oh no, I was joking,” Royce said, backpedaling. “If it could tell the blade was missing last night, it can tell the difference between the real thing and a copy.”
“But even if it doesn’t work,” Hadrian said, “it might give me time to get the girls away from it. Then we could dive in a hole—a small hole that we do have time to dig.”
“And hope it doesn’t dig us out? I’ve seen its claws; it won’t be hard.”
Hadrian ignored him and went on with his train of thought. “Then you could bring the other half of the sword, have Magnus forge it, and then I can kill it. See, it was a good thing you didn’t kill him after all.”
“You realize how stupid this is, right? That thing decimated this whole village and the castle last night, and you are going to take it on with an old farmer, two women, and a broken sword?”
Hadrian said nothing.
Royce sighed and sat down beside his friend, shaking his head. He reached into his robe and pulled his dagger out. He held it out in its sheath.
“Here,” he said, “take Alverstone.”
“Why?” Hadrian looked at him, puzzled.
“Well, I’m not saying Magnus is right, but, well, I’ve never found anything that this dagger can’t cut, and if Magnus is right, if the father of the gods did forge this, I would think it could come in handy even against an invincible beast.”
“So you’re leaving?”
“No.” Royce scowled and looked in the direction of the tower of Avempartha. “Apparently I have a job to finish.”
Hadrian smiled at his friend, took the dagger, and weighed it in his hand. “I’ll give it back to you tomorrow, then.”
“Right,” Royce replied.
“Did your partner leave?” Theron asked as Hadrian approached him, walking up the slope of the scorched hill that had once been the castle. The old farmer stood on the blackened hillside, holding the shattered sword and looking up at the sky.
“No—well, sort of. He’s headed back inside Avempartha to steal the other half of the sword just in case the Gilarabrywn tries to double-cross us. There is even a chance it might leave Thrace and Arista in the tower while it comes here, and if it does, Royce can get them out.”
Theron nodded thoughtfully.
“You two have been real good to me and my daughter. I still don’t know why, and don’t tell me it’s the money.” Theron sighed. “You know, I never gave her credit for much. I ignored her, pushed her away for so many years. She was only my daughter, not a son—an extra mouth to feed that would cost us money to marry off. How she ever found the two of you and got you to come all this way to help us is … well, I just don’t think I’ll ever understand that.”
“Hadrian,” Fanen called to him. “Come down here and see what we’ve got.”
Hadrian followed Fanen down the hill to the north edge of the burn line, where he found Tobis, Mauvin, and Magnus working on a huge contraption.
“This is my catapult,” Tobis declared, standing proudly next to a wagon on which a wooden machine sat. Tobis looked comical in his loud-colored court clothes, propped up on a crutch Magnus had fashioned for him, his broken leg strapped down between two stiff pieces of wood. “They dragged it out here when I was bumped from the roster. She’s exquisite, isn’t she? I named her Persephone after Novron’s wife. Only fitting, I thought, since I studied ancient imperial history to devise it. Not easy to do either. I had to learn the ancient languages just to read the books.”