“I’m guessing you hail from warmer climes, huh, Lieutenant?” Clay asked him.
“Takmarin’s Land,” Sigoral said. “A large island bordering Varestian waters. And yes, it does get very warm there in summer months, though it’s many years since I’ve seen it.”
“No family waiting back there? Wife and young ’uns, maybe?”
“I enlisted as an Ensign of Marines at fourteen. It’s Takmarin custom to give third sons over to Imperial Service. My father wanted me to join the army but had a prideful insistence I be an officer. However, commissions fetch a high price and his miserliness outweighed his pride. The marines are the only branch of the service to appoint officers due to merit rather than purchase of commissions, so that was that.”
“Coulda told him to stuff it,” Loriabeth commented. “Followed your own path.”
“Respect for parental authority is a cornerstone of Corvantine society,” Sigoral replied, though his stiff tone sounded a little forced. “A lesson you Corporatists would do well to learn.”
“We’re independents,” Loriabeth returned. “Anything we get is earned, and my folks never tried to push me down a path I didn’t choose.”
“No, you all spend your lives grubbing for personal gain whilst unfortunates are left to perish in the gutter. I’ve sailed to enough corporate ports to know.”
“Oh, fu . . .”
Her riposte was cut off by a piercing and familiar shriek, louder and closer than the one they heard before. It was quickly followed by another, this one farther off to the right, then another to the left.
“She’s gathering the pack,” Loriabeth whispered. Clay heard her shift into a crouch then the sound of iron sliding over leather as she drew her pistols.
“And fixing our gaze,” he whispered in reply, drawing his own revolver and turning so that he and Loriabeth were back-to-back.
“What do you mean?” Sigoral demanded, shuffling closer.
“The noise is a diversion,” Loriabeth said. “For every one you hear there’s another you don’t. Reckon it’s time for you to light that fire.”
“Won’t it draw them to us?”
“They already know where we are, and we can’t shoot ’em if we can’t see ’em.”
She kept watch as Sigoral and Clay moved about, gathering what fuel they could find on the forest floor. It amounted to a few bundles of twigs and fallen branches, which were swiftly snapped into smaller lengths and stacked close by.
“Hurry up,” Loriabeth said as another trio of cries cut through the gloom, closer now.
Sigoral produced a flint from his pocket and struck sparks onto the stacked wood, which failed to catch. “Need kindling,” he said. “Paper, something to catch the flame.”
Loriabeth uttered a soft obscenity which was followed by the sound of a knife being drawn. “Here,” she said, tossing a thick length of hair at them. Sigoral tried again, the cascade of sparks catching the bunched hair immediately. He and Clay piled on more wood as the flames rose, bathing the surrounding trees in an orange glow.
“They’d best turn up soon,” Clay said, drawing his revolver once more and taking up position at Loriabeth’s back. “This ain’t gonna last more than a few minutes.”
“What’s your ammo like?” Loriabeth asked.
“Thirty rounds,” Clay said.
“Lieutenant?”
“Six in the carbine, another forty-four in my bandolier.”
“Me and Clay will fire first, you keep them off us when we reload. Remember what I said, gotta get ’em in the head.”
They waited, eyes on the trees and the blackness beyond as the fire’s glow dwindled by the second.
Clay had begun to debate the wisdom of retrieving more fuel for the fire when he caught a flicker of moving shadow. His gun hand snapped towards it instantly, arm straight and level as honed instinct kept the tremble from his grip. It’ll charge now, he knew. Once it knows it’s been seen.
He exhaled, finger tensing on the trigger in expectation of the beast’s imminent rush. Instead the shadow he had seen paused for a second then shuffled closer. It was smaller than expected and for a moment he assumed he was seeing only the silhouette of the drake’s head, but then it came fully into the light, yellow eyes blinking in the fire’s glow. It was undeniably a Green, but unlike any he had seen before.
“I thought they were bigger,” Sigoral said, training his carbine on the beast.
“They are,” Clay replied, still staring at an animal that stood all of twelve inches at the shoulder and couldn’t have been more than a yard in length.
The Green angled its head as it regarded him, a long pink tongue dangling from its open jaws as it hopped closer, issuing a short chirping cry.
“Is it an infant?” Sigoral wondered.
Clay’s gaze tracked the Green from head to tail, finding numerous scars and wrinkles to its scaly hide. This was clearly an animal with many years behind it, and yet he had seen new-born Greens of far greater size. “I don’t think so,” he said.
The Green chirped again, bouncing on its stumpy legs and swishing its tail from side to side in puppyish animation.
“Looks like he wants to play,” Sigoral observed.
“She,” Loriabeth corrected. “And tiddler or not, it’s still a Green.”
“It probably doesn’t even know what we are.”
“Knew enough to hunt us.” Loriabeth turned to her front, bringing both pistols level with her shoulders. “Just shoot it, Clay. Sooner we start this party, sooner it’s over.”
Clay trained his revolver on the beast’s head, then hesitated as it continued to stare up at him in wide-eyed fascination. “Not so sure about that, cuz,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at her. “Could be, we leave them alone, they’ll . . .”
His words ended in a scream as the diminutive Green leapt forward in a blur and clamped its jaws on his leg, crunching through flesh and bone as it bit deep.
CHAPTER 22
Lizanne
“Take ten steps into the tunnel, then stop,” Tinkerer said, pushing the grate open and moving aside. “Do not turn around.”
Lizanne followed his instructions, counting off the required steps and coming to a halt. She resisted the impulse to turn on hearing the rattle of a reattached lock followed by the rapid clicks that told of a scrambled combination. “If you kill me,” he said, moving past her, “you will be trapped here and Melina will kill you when she comes to check on me.”
“Duly noted,” Lizanne said. She followed him to the main chamber where he made his workshop. He paused to light a small oil-lamp of ingenious design, featuring a convex lens to magnify its glow. He moved wordlessly to the passage that led to his sleeping chamber and knelt next to the cot. Lizanne watched as he slid aside a panel on the plain wooden box that formed the cot’s base, then reached inside. There was a loud clunk as he turned a hidden lever. Tinkerer stood back as the cot raised itself up to a thirty-degree angle, Lizanne hearing the rattle of chains somewhere in the walls.