Rurik's Arc

Chapter 7 of 22

The north slope was open. Rurik had proof of that. But when his wyrm circled back a second time, it slowed over two dead trees on the ridge. Rurik read the pause. He crept forward through the brush and looked. Two ravens sat on the bare branches. They wore worked leather bands on their legs, cut with old knotwork. These were not wild birds. The enemy had posted them as watchers. One raven would fly at the first boot on the slope, and the whole camp would wake before an axe fell. "Watchbirds," Thorin said beside him. He spat. "You can't rush past those." Brenna crouched low and studied the trees. She had scouted this camp with her eyes for days, and now she read the birds the same way. "Two of them. Wide apart. One bow can't drop both before the other lifts." She shook her head. "We shoot one, the other screams." Bjorn said nothing. He knelt and watched the ravens, hard-eyed. Rurik knew he was counting the same odds and finding none. Rurik looked at the wyrm coiled at his feet. It had flown over the birds twice and they had not moved. They knew it. They did not fear a thing that circled and left. "They ignore the wyrm," he said. "They've seen it all night." "So?" Thorin asked. "So it doesn't spook them. It can get close." Rurik set his hand on the iron scales. "Fast, both at once, before either takes air." Bjorn's head turned. "One beast. Two birds." "One pass," Rurik said. "It takes one in the jaws and one in the claws." He had walked the wyrm a hundred times. He knew how it struck. He knew it could take two men in a single lunge. Two ravens were smaller game. Brenna held his eyes. "And if it misses one." "Then the camp wakes and we're dead on the slope." Rurik did not soften it. "But we're dead on the slope either way if I do nothing." He pointed the wyrm at the ridge and gave the low whistle. The beast slid off through the dark, belly to the ground, the way it had never flown before them. It went slow. The ravens watched it come and stayed still, because it had come and gone all night. At the last stride the wyrm rose. Its jaws closed on the near bird. Its claws snapped shut on the far one. Both went down without a cry. No wings hit the air. No sound reached the tents below. Rurik let out his breath. The watchers were dead. The slope lay open and blind. "Now," he said, and stood. "Before they post new ones." Bjorn was already moving. Brenna set her shield. Thorin drew his father's axe. The gap was theirs, and the count against them had just begun.