Free The Black Mausoleum (Memory of Flames 4) by Stephen Deas Page A

isn’t going to work,’ he said as the afternoon wore on.
    ‘No.’
    ‘What are we going to do?’
    ‘On my own I could get there.’
    ‘You’re going to leave me to die then?’
    ‘Don’t have much choice. Better than both of us.’ This time Jasaan could bloody well accept it.
    Jasaan shrugged. ‘I got a different idea. We don’t move at all. We sit it out right here. We find a cave and we stay in it. We wait until you can hold an axe properly. Until I can
run and climb again. Then we bolt for the Spur, fast as we can. We got water. The river.’
    ‘And what do we
eat
, Jasaan? Even if I could, there’s nothing to hunt here.’
    Jasaan sniffed. He looked away, back across to the river to Bloodsalt. ‘Dead meat, that’s what.’
    Skjorl laughed. ‘Dragons? Hatchlings? They burn, remember. There’s nothing left but ash, Jasaan. You can’t eat ash!’ He was losing it.
    ‘I wasn’t thinking of dragons.’ Jasaan was looking at him. Hard and steady. Waiting for him to see it. Took a while too, because no one else would even have thought of such a
thing.
    ‘You mean mean Vish, don’t you?’
    Jasaan didn’t say anything. But yes, that’s exactly what he meant.
    ‘You want to eat Vish?’
    Jasaan’s eyes didn’t leave Skjorl’s face but now they showed iron. ‘It’s not like we don’t both know there’s good eating on a man, eh?’
    Scarsdale. That’s what he was thinking. When they’d left and what they’d taken with them to keep their bellies full as far as the Silver River. Desperate times, men did
desperate things. Eat another Adamantine Man, though? Cold, that was. But the other choice he’d given Jasaan was a cold one too. Skjorl turned away. Had to think.
    ‘Can’t be doing that, Jasaan,’ he said at last. ‘Can’t be eating Vish.’
    Jasaan didn’t say anything. Just looked at him. Adamantine Men didn’t have friends. Trouble was, that cut both ways now.
    ‘Vishmir’s cock!’ Skjorl’s fists clenched themselves.
    ‘He’s dead, Skjorl. Gone. You know that.’ Jasaan spoke softly. ‘Best chance of one of us getting back to the Spur is we do what I said.’
    Hard to say if that was true. Hard to take even if it was. Should have been Jasaan down in the cisterns, climbing up towards the trapped dragon and hacking its head off. Then Vish would have
been here and with both his legs working and they’d be laughing now and running all through the night, up to the start of Yinazhin’s Way and onward, as far and fast as they could.
    ‘Vishmir’s cock,’ he said again, quietly this time. ‘Where we stayed right before we crossed the river – you reckon you can get there in one night?’ An
overhang. Not quite a cave, but with a tumble of rocks in front of it. The sort of place a few men could stay hidden from anything short of something poking its nose right inside.
    Jasaan nodded.
    ‘You’ll be on your own.’ Skjorl took a deep breath. ‘Two days – one to get in, one to get back, if I get back at all. Might be there’s another egg hatched.
Might be one of the young ones has gone down there. Might be Vish has gone already. Eaten. Might be you’ll never see me again. Might be I’ll run.’
    ‘Then I’ll be no worse off than I am right now. Besides, you are what you are, Skjorl, and you wouldn’t do that. You might kill me, but you wouldn’t lie to me.’
    For some reason that made Skjorl laugh. ‘That’s us, isn’t it?’
    ‘From birth until death.’
    ‘Blood and honour and fire.’ Skjorl took a deep breath. The sun was edging the horizon now, setting the sands and salts of the desert rippling red. Together they watched it go down.
‘I’m taking the water,’ Skjorl said.
    It took him a night longer than he’d thought – one to get in, two to get back. Wasn’t any easier carrying a dead Adamantine Man than a crippled one. Vish
wasn’t there, no sign of him, which meant a dragon had got him. But when he looked hard, it wasn’t so difficult to