Free Blood and Royalty by M. R. Mathias Page A

might have just been murdering the very weapons being sent from the heavens to save them. In Jenka’s case, he was just killing something that could end all of humanity if it ever made it back across the sea.
    For all he knew, his whole world, and everything around him, was just the whim of someone else’s creation.
    He could sense the Sarsaraxus as if he were smelling a savory dish. Once they’d teleported themselves across the sea, tracking it was even easier. When he finally saw it, and what it was doing, though, his thinking suddenly ended, and fear, true fear, filled his body.
    Had he been wrong about the nature of this thing? Or had the Nightshade taken it over as it had Gravelbone, and then Richard?
    For an instant, he wondered where his brother was, but the Sarsaraxus and the Nightshade it was riding were turning toward him. It was all he could do to urge Jade out of the way of the brunt of a devastating fist of energy.
    As Jenka felt the pain of the blow’s edge and then saw how the Sarsaraxus sat perfectly on the hellborn wyrm, how perfectly black they both were, he decided that maybe the Nightshade had caused the Sarsaraxus to crash the ship here, for the sight of those two foul things moving together as if they’d been created to do so, wouldn’t leave Jenka’s mind.
    It was only Jade who saved them from crashing, but even as they gathered themselves and started into hyper-movement, another fist of energy hammered them backward, then another.

Chapter Seventeen
     
     
    “We can’t get past them,” Marcherion whispered. He, Rikky, teenage Pascal, and another boy, were all huddled in the crawl space underneath the statue of an old Outland pirate-turned-hero. A half-dozen mudged had found a sheep herd and were using the park-like area around the monument to land and feed. March couldn’t see any way to get the two boys through, but he had an idea.
    “I’ll go alone,” March said. “I’ll come back on Blaze and light this place up. If you guys stay under here, you’ll be safe, and with Silva’s help, maybe we can cover your way back out to the forest, where there is room to mount up.”
    “No use in me trying to sneak around.” Rikky tapped his peg leg on the ground angrily. This caused one of the larger mudged, one with prominent shades of blue and green to its scales, to look right at them.
    “Shhhh,” Pascal hissed.
    “It’s coming right at—” The other boy’s squeal was cut short when Marcherion’s hand wrapped around his face.
    The mudged was coming across the ground fast, but Rikky stood there in the opening and drew an arrow. His ability to disregard the charging dragon was amazing, but then March realized that its head was way too big to fit into the opening that led into the hollowed out area in which they hid.
    He watched his friend and saw the arrow fly. It went right into the mudged’s eye and disappeared completely, its full length passing through the wyrm’s ocular cavity into its brain.
    The fargin’ wyrm didn’t stop, even though it was dead. It hit the granite slab, shaking the whole structure, and they were lucky it rolled to the side enough for March to sneak through.
    They were far better protected now, though. March threw off his canteen and dug out a leather satchel full of jerked meat from his pocket.
    “You can stay here as long as you have food and water.”
    “You’re coming back, right?” Pascal asked, his ebon-skinned face looking almost exactly like his mother’s.
    March nodded that he was, but he took a deep breath and then asked the question that had to be asked.
    “Where is your father?”
    Pascal sniffled and almost started bawling, but he caught himself and, with a good bit of pride in his voice, he answered. “He died staving off a mudged so Zephan and I could break away from the hold’s back way.”
    He, too, took a deep breath, and ignoring the tear sliding down his cheek added a “Sir,” reminding March that he was as well-trained as any