And it worked. Under the onslaught of forged metal, the cloud of birds swirled, screamed, then fluttered away, avoiding the war party.
Shaken, the members of the group recovered themselves in the aftermath, checking torn clothes and small bleeding wounds. Everyone seemed to be whole. After their previous evening of feasting and relaxed celebration, this horror had jarred the men back to the seriousness of their quest. They rode on grimly, more wary of their unnatural enemy. Coyote ran ahead, leading them.
The next attack came in the form of numerous gray and rotting revenants that rushed at them, emerging from the very rocks and dust.
Using his air rifle, not worried about depleting his remaining ammunition, Meriwether shot as many as he could, but here they seemed to be stronger, infused with a greater magic, than the shambling forms that had attacked elsewhere along the river. Unless he managed to place a bullet in the revenant’s head, they would recover from the wound and lurch forward again, relentless. When the undead warriors closed in, walking over their own fallen, he had to use the butt of his rifle to beat them away. He urged his horse closer, bashed the head of one tall, gaunt revenant who reached for Sacagawea.
He heard a bloodcurdling scream, and saw one of the young men from the expedition, Patrick Gass, dragged from his terrified horse and torn to pieces by undead teeth and claws.
But Coyote also ran about among the revenants, snarling like a predatory animal. In his canine aspect, he lunged amid the attackers, ripping with his teeth and claws. He mangled enough of the undead that the war party could ride through the mass, spurring their horses on to great speed, and then return to pick off more of the disorganized revenants.
At last, Meriwether ran out of targets and stopped, shaking with exhaustion and the afterburn of adrenaline. The war party surveyed the pile of bodies, fallen dead as well as two casualties of their own, Gass and one of the Shoshone warriors.
At the end of it, they stood in the middle of a lot of body parts, most of them from revenants. The stink from the piles of festering flesh was unbelievable. One of the horses had a long slash torn in its flank from the claws of a revenant, and Meriwether had to put it down. The men groaned, covered with gore, angry at what they had faced. Meriwether didn’t want to let their fear set in, and he urged the party to continue.
Coyote set off, loping along with his oddly swift and inhuman gait.
They covered several more miles before Raven came at them again—this time in the fierce form of the spirit dragon, flying low overhead and roaring. Before the dragon could plunge toward them to unleash a mouthful of fire, Meriwether had all of the warriors open fire, hitting the enormous flying reptile with a barrage of metal bullets, and Coyote also summoned his own magic, hurling it at the sky. The onslaught was surprisingly strong, and drove the sorcerer’s form away. With the loud, heavy beat of wings, the dragon turned back. The men cheered, but their triumph did not last.
They had nearly reached their destination, though without much of a sense of triumph, when the resurrected antediluvian beasts attacked—not only the towering lizards with great jaws and stunted forelegs, but also the smaller carnivorous reptiles that hunted in packs, as well as shrieking, flying reptiles that looked more like scaly bats than a fearsome dragon.
Meriwether and the war party knew the attack was coming, though, and they were prepared. After everything they had faced that day, their defense was a matter of habit. Loading and reloading, they shot so swiftly and so many times that the creatures collapsed into mounds that smelled of flatulence, and then collapsed further into rotting old bones.
Likewise, Meriwether expected the fire demons, five of them, their forms woven from burning trees and human remains. This time, the component victims twisted into the demon bodies were screaming, an endless wail of pain and anger. The burning constructions of wood and flesh stumbled forward, each as tall as a barn. The arcane heat rippling from them was palpable.
“Hit them with your knives or metal spearpoints!” Meriwether cried, holding his own knife with its blackened hilt. “Now.”
Spears and knives flew through the air, and on contact with the pure forged metal, the creatures exploded, blasting apart in an eruption of splintered brands and charred bones. At last, the screams of the component victims died away with the thick, putrid smoke.
Meriwether led them through the confusion of limbs, roots, and skeletons. Though they did not want to linger among the bodies and debris, he insisted that they try to retrieve blades and spearpoints. The day’s battle was far from over.
They rode on toward the lair of the dragon sorcerer, when more furtive movement came from the rock formations on either side of the path—children, native children of all ages, from toddlers to teens.
“Not what I expected,” Meriwether said aloud. And, oddly, he found them even more frightening. At first he thought the children were alive, refugees of the horrible events in the blasted land of Raven, perhaps kept alive as thralls, the way Toussaint Charbonneau had been.
Sacagawea let out a worried cry. “We have to help them.” She shifted on her horse, ready to dismount to go to the children.
Then the smell hit them, the same rotting stench of revenants, like the breath from a thousand open graves. And as the children came closer, like innocent pleading beggars, Meriwether spotted their blank eyes, the greenish tinge of putrefaction on their skin. Some of them even showed grievous festering wounds, the injuries that had taken their lives.
He yelled at Sacagawea. “They are already dead! They’re not children. We must free them.”
He winced, sickened at what he had to do, yet when he saw Sacagawea looking longingly at the child revenants, he could not hesitate. He shot with the air rifle, dropping one of the waifish horrors.
His shot was the signal for the rest of the horrified party to open fire or stab with their lances. York led a charge forward, trampling some of the undead children under the hooves. Coyote showed no mercy either, wielding his own magic to devastating effect.
When the attack of the small revenants had ended, Sacagawea was sobbing, and the warriors seemed sick and saddened. But they could not stop now, and Meriwether kept his horse moving, with Coyote running by his side.
Finally, just ahead, their path branched, splitting in two directions…with the prominent, raw mountain peak rising up between the fork in the road. Meriwether saw it with a combination of relief and dread. This was the point where the party would divide and make their separate attacks.
Coyote made a sign to York, who led the main war party on their frontal assault against the lair of the dragon sorcerer. The big man squared his shoulders, bellowed to the expedition men and the Shoshone warriors. The bulk of the war party rode off down the leftward fork.
Coyote gave Meriwether a disturbing grin that made his flesh crawl. “Are you two ready?”
On her own horse, Sacagawea looked pale and stunned, but she summoned strength from within her. “We will do what we must.”
“We are ready,” Meriwether said.
Then, as if sharing a great secret, Coyote nodded at them. “Come with me.”
He led them to the right fork, but only for a few steps before he broke from the path and set off overland into a dry field, so pockmarked with holes that the two horses had a dangerous time walking. The animals shied, picking their steps carefully.