Free The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) by Miles Cameron Page B

two alarms in the night. Both found the captain fully armoured and ready, but there were no attacks and no engagements.
    In the morning, the captain found a splay-footed track just south of the horse lines, and a heavy war arrow. He brought it to Cully, who eyed it and nodded.
    “Canny said he hit something. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, it seems.” Canny was a barracks lawyer and a liar and scarcely the best archer, but the bloody fletches told their own story.
    The captain tossed the arrow in the air and snapped his fingers. The arrow paused—and hung there. The captain passed his hand over the length of the broken arrow and the head flared green.
    Slowly, as if a vat filling with water, something began to form in glittering green and gold, starting from the ground. Soldiers began to gather in the dawn, and there was muttering. The captain seldom used his hermetics in public.
    Mag came and watched him work.
    He was in deep concentration, so she
    found him in his palace. As they had once been bonded—however briefly—she could enter his palace at will. He smiled to see her.
    “A pretty working,” Mag said.
    “Gelfred’s,” he said. “A sort of forensic spell. All the huntsmen have variants of it.”
    She watched him as he manipulated his
ops
in four dimensions and cast, his use of power sparing and efficient.
    The thing continued to fill with light.
    “What is it?” she asked.
    “I have no idea,” he said.
    It had an elongated head and far too many teeth. The head seemed to speak more of fish than of animal—streamlined and armoured. The neck was draconian—long and flexible. The body seemed armoured in heavy shell, at odds with the elegant neck.
    It crouched, ready to attack, back bent at an unnatural angle, at least to a man, with back-hinged arms and legs.
    They both emerged from their palaces together to look at what he had wrought.
    “What is that thing?” Ser Gavin asked. “I thought I’d seen—everything.”
    Ser Gabriel shrugged. “I suspect that the Wild is much bigger than our notions of
everything
,” he said. “What is it? It’s the thing that came for our horses last night. Good shooting, Canny. Next time, kill it.”
    He clapped his hands and the sparkling monster vanished and the arrow fell into his hands. He handed it to Wilful Murder. “Put that head on a shaft,” he said. “And keep it to hand.”
    “An’ I know why,” Wilful said. He was pleased to have been picked—it showed.
    The captain got on his riding horse, the last fires were put out, and the column began to ride. Wilful was one of the last men at the fires, and then he used the goodwife’s breakfast fire to get his resin soft. He didn’t leave the clearing until the sheep herd was moving, and he waved to Tom as he cantered past, leaving a mother and twelve scared-looking children alone with the Wild.
    He handed the completed arrow to the captain, and Ser Gabriel took it, said a few terse words in Archaic, and handed it back to Wilful, who put it head up through his belt.
    Six miles on, where the old West Road—really just a trail, and scarcely that—branched towards the tiny settlement at Wilmurt and the GreatRock Lake before plunging north into the High Adnacrags and eventually reaching Ticondaga, the scouts found a man, or the ruins of one. He’d been skinned and put on the trail, a stake through his rectum and emerging from his mouth. His arms and legs were gone.
    Count Zac frowned. “I’ll have the poor bastard cut down and buried,” he said.
    The captain shook his head. “Not until after the column rides past,” he said. “I want them all to see.”
    Ser Michael caught his eye. “The hunter?” he asked quietly.
    Ser Gabriel sighed. “Hell. I didn’t even think. Oh, the poor woman.”
    Ser Michael nodded.
    “I’ll go,” Father Arnaud said. He snapped his fingers and Lord Wimarc, who had joined them with word of the council at the Inn of Dorling, brought him his great helm.
    The