The Tamworth Incident

"There weren't always dragons in the valley," said Sir Telgard. "At least, until now."

His brother, Sir Mareward, shook his wild mane of jet-black hair and spat. "Now there's a big dead one, and more will come. They'll come like carrion-eaters, to feast on their dead, and pillage the dead dragon's hoard. The dragons will fight, squabbling like children over wooden blocks, and they will feast, and the valley will blaze with dragon fire. But dragons are an ancient and cunning race, and they will realize that there is no hoard to plunder here, and they will take to the villages and farms and loot what they can, leaving nothing but blackened husks and ash in their wake."

Sir Telgard contemplated this for a moment.

"You know, you can make for really sober company at times."

Mareward laughed briskly. "I do believe you've said as much before."

"Where did you acquire all that dragon knowledge?"

"It's called a 'book', dear brother," said Mareward snidely. "The castle library is full of them. You should pick one up sometime."

Telgard grimaced. "I'll be sure to do that, if ever I want to be a wealth of dreadful knowledge and an absolute delight at parties."

Sir Mareward shrugged.

They rode side-by-side, their horses steadily cropping the path up the hill, hooves clopping the rocky trail until the path became too narrow, then Sir Mareward pulled the reins on Kalthat to fall behind his brother.

“Gods, but it’s beautiful here,” he breathed. The Cauldron Valley was comfortably nestled in the bosom of the Elethor Crown Alps, an endless sea of swirling green trees and buttercup-filled fields. Cows, sheep and chukkas grazed in amongst them, barely contained between moss-ridden fenceposts. The Warden River cascaded from the snow-capped mountains in a peaceful trickle over smooth grey river-stones. Vibrant blue and orange dragonflies flitted over the surface, and the glacial water was so clear that though it was several lengths deep where it pooled, the bottom of the river seemed a mere hand away. Insects chirruped in the undergrowth, while swallows and gruppits streaked through the grass, snatching up the bugs startled into the air. It was a place of tranquility, and peacefulness.

On the other side of the hill was a completely different story.

His horse’s hooves clattered over the rocky top of the ridge and pulled up next to Telgard’s, and Mareward got his first look at the carnage.

“Nine ploughing hells,” he swore, under his breath.

Blood, gore and fire. The two brothers regarded the scene bleakly.

The town of Tamworth was small, as most townsfolk were of farming stock. But the townspeople had fled since it had been seized was by Lord Gaeton and his men. That decision may have spared the townspeople a terrible fate.

Towers of smoke clambered into the sky and blotted it black, while ash rained from the heavens like grey snow. The land surrounding Tamworth was a circle of darkness and burnt earth, the flames still licking at the forest, and glowing embers slowly consumed the charred husks of the buildings. Even from here, they could see the bodies of Gaeton’s men littering the streets like candy wrappers, all orange and red in Lord Gaeton’s colors.

But their attention was drawn to the dead dragon. The colossal reptile was sprawled out on its back over one of the buildings, wings limp and broken, and its guts spilled out from an enormous wound in its belly.

“So, this is what happens when you take a dragon as your steed,” murmured Telgard.

Mareward cursed angrily. “No, this is what happens when you’re a giant dickhead. Look at all this destruction, all because some warlord wanted to look bigger. He captured a dragon. He occupied a farming town way out in the middle of nowhere with no protection from the King, and unlikely to form a militia. He simply walked in with his army, pillaged, enslaved, and raped his way through Tamworth with nobody to stop him. That is nothing but sheer cowardice to fluff up his ego, is what it is.”

Despite his brother’s anger, Telgard snorted. “You’re hardly one to give criticism on the majesty of one’s steed.”

Frowning, Mareward stared down at his horse, whose hair, still shimmered a purple sheen in the fading light. Enchanting live beings was a new step in the art of magic, but as soon as the College of the Reach had successfully imbued horses without accidentally turning them inside out, the King had commissioned for his Knight’s horses to be charmed for an extra edge in battle. Both Mareward and Telgard’s horses were gifted extra speed, endurance and strength, making them among the most valuable steeds in the country. Mareward, however, was the only Knight to pay out of his own pocket to give his horse a visual addition.

The Knight’s horse was a dapple-grey beauty with white and blue-grey shading, but it now also had a light purple sheen in coloration, and wherever it roamed, it left an amethyst trail behind it. Its hoofprints burned with purple flame for a few fleeting seconds before evaporating, and a faint purple shimmer trailed in the air behind it. The flames and shimmer did nothing other than look impressive; solely a vanity project. Mareward had even named the horse after the old hero Kalthat, whose tabard had been a rich, deep purple.

Telgard’s horse was a chestnut brown horse with a white patch on its face, named it ‘Thorn’ after a rosebush had lodged itself into the flesh of his neck on the way to the stables.

Mareward scowled at his brother. “Don’t you dare compare me to that monster. Kalthat has a touch of flair; a dragon screams of a tiny cock. It wasn’t enough that Gaeton had a purebred black Adorrasian, and you should’ve seen the enchantments on that thing. Blazing eyes, mane , hooves, and the thing left a literal trail of fire behind it.”

Telgard scrunched up his face. “Sounds like Gaeton had a thing for fire.”

Mareward grunted. “He better not have survived this. I’ll run the bastard through myself.”

The two brothers stared at the destruction while longer. Then wordlessly, Telgard clicked his tongue, and guided Thorn down the track on the other side, and a moment later Melgard tightened his thighs around Kalthat, and followed his brother.

The Knights wrinkled their nostrils as the smell of charred human flesh and gore hit them as they entered Tamworth. It was a scent the brothers were very familiar with, but it never ceased to be unpleasant.

The market sat on the right-hand side of the road leading into town signified Tamworth's borders, and a breeze caused its remnants to shift with sound. The last of the canvas flaps adorning the stalls flapped horrendously like beating wings. Rotting food decorated the tables, softened apples, tomatoes, lampfruit and oranges blanketed with buzzing flies. The only other sound was the hiss of cooking wood, sizzling softly as the embers slowly consumed it.

The brothers dismounted their horses and let them roam. The grass was black and the dirt bare in many places, and when the horses had bent to taste it, they had given grunts of displeasure and cantered away to seek greener pastures.

Mareward and Telgard moved slowly into Tamworth, hands clasped on the hilts of their swords. Their eyes were fixed on the dragon, but their ears were strained for any movement coming from the burned buildings. Lord Gaeton had never been friendly with the Kingdom of Eldonar, but this conquest of Tamworth was considered the first phase towards invading it. Any surviving soldier might fear execution if their enemies captured them, and may attempt a desperate ambush to elude it.

But Tamworth remained terribly quiet.

Their boots squelched in the quagmire, caking them in a viscous mixture of mud, animal dung and blood. They stepped high over the corpses, avoiding placing their feet in a puddle of entrails or through the torrefied face of Lord Gaeton's soldiers. Most casualties had been swallowed by dragon fire, but a dragon has many means of slaughter.

Here, an unfortunate soul had been skewered on the dragon’s tail spikes, and the force had punctured his armor and thrown him at a column that held up the façade of the Kingfisher's Feathers Tavern & Inn. The column had held strong, and the soldier had wrapped around it backwards like a ribbon. Another had gotten quite close to the dragon, and had been crushed beneath its feet. It appeared as though his head had been driven down through his torso, and then into the wet earth beneath it. His armor had crumpled like parchment, and his ruptured flesh squished between its cracks like mud between the toes.

Most peculiar, perhaps was the use of the dragon's ancient magic. An eerie sphere of swirling sickly-green wheels hung in the air, rotating between each other like clockwork gears, etched with the scratchy letters of dragon-speech. Diced human body parts sliced into the proportions of small pebbles, hung in the air between the wheels, circling each other like a school of tiny fish. A lone eyeball stared unblinkingly at Telgard, rotating on those unseen axes. Further up the road, a series of armoire-sized shards glowing an azure blue jutted out from the earth and Riverbrook Tailor & Clothier, where they had pierced the bodies of at least three men. It was difficult to tell.

The two Knights were sure to give the magics a large berth, and pressed on up the main street of Tamworth. Their gaze locked on the dead leviathan at the end of the road.

The first intelligence report received by the King's Court prior to Lord Gaeton's demise was that upon acquisition of Tamworth, he had taken up residence in the largest inn in town: The Crown of Metharr. Telgard reasoned that the inn's name had appealed to Gaeton. The following intelligence report, informing the Court of Gaeton’s demise, had neglected to mention that Tamworth’s largest tavern was now its smallest. The dragon's body had collapsed onto the inn and crushed most of it.

As they drew closer, the overpowering aroma of rotting intestines betwixt with feces grew stronger. The dragon's mouth hung open, and a forked tongue lolled out the left side. Its eye, golden other than a black reptilian strip of iris, stared lifelessly at the brothers as they approached. They stared back in hushed silence, bridled by awe at the mighty slain beast before them.

"Have you ever been this close to one before?" asked Telgard.

Mareward shook his head. With a trembling gauntlet, he reached out and touched the beast's chin. Heat still permeated the dragon's hard, smooth scales, and the bronze color seemed to shimmer beneath the Knight's touch.

"Incredible," he breathed.

Telgard moved to mirror his brother's actions, as Mareward traced the dragon's jawline with his hand and walked around the dragon's crest of long spines, the length of which were similar to Mareward's height. As he rounded them, he found an enormous collar strained about the beast's throat. The binding was an unfamiliar black steel, blazing with red magic.

"Look here, Tel," he said. "I've found how he kept the dragon in check."

Telgard moved into view on the other side of the dragon, his head and shoulders only visible above the dragon's gullet. He leaned closer to inspect it, but was careful not to touch it.

"You're more familiar with magic," said Mareward. "Do you recognize it?"

Telgard extracted a lens from inside his cloak - a cloak as deep green as the pine forests in Arrondale. It would bring out the color in his eyes, his tailor had assured him, and as far as Telgard was concerned, the tailor was right on all counts.

The knight peered at the shackle for a long while, uttering a low, monotonous hum as he watched the magic swirl. Mareward continued down the dragon's length, recognizing his brother's investigative process. He walked past the beast's shoulder, where its arm slumped to Telgard's side, but the wing lay sprawled and broken across the street. Gingerly, he placed a foot over the wing's forearm, and stepped out onto the membrane, afraid the sensation would resurrect the dragon. But it stayed dead, and the skin beneath his boot felt strange and slippery as the layers rubbed against each other as he placed pressure there.

"It's nothing I’ve ever seen before," announced Telgard, stifling the lens back into his cloak pocket. "But Gods, it must be powerful; I’ve never heard of a dragon restraint before. How did he even get it on?"

Mareward grunted. "You’ve no idea how right you are, Tel. Dragons aren't just clever creatures flapping around our kingdom and occasionally stealing an unlucky farmer's pig. Dragons are old; as old as maybe the world itself. They possess magic far greater than we could ever know. I mean, you saw the spells it cast back there, and I doubt it was even using a fraction of its power! I've read of how some of them can talk. Talk! As in, the words of man. And the stories they told, the stories of worlds beyond the stars! They are majestic, and here I am, walking along the wings of one."

Telgard scratched the back of his head, and wore a disbelieving expression his brother could no longer see. "I don't know about interplanetary travel, but I do think whatever that collar is, it's designed to keep the dragon tame. It may weaken its powers, too. The scales beneath it appear dull and colorless, unlike the rest of the body. Might explain the lack of truly powerful magic, as you say, but I wonder... oh, hello."

"What is it?" Mareward's voice travelled over the dragon's thorax.

"I believe I've found Lord Gaeton," replied Telgard, crouching to get a better look.

Mareward's excitement overpowered his fear of the dragon awakening. He scrambled over the dragon's chest and slid down to land at Telgard's side.

Face-down, buried beneath the dragon's back, was a set of gorgeous black armor with glowing orange flames imbued into the armor. Everything beneath the armor’s upper back was trapped beneath the dragon, leaving only the shoulder pauldrons, arms and helmet free. Two holes had been raked out by the Lord's flailing hands as he’d tried to claw himself free from beneath the crushing weight, and the armor’s gauntlets were coated with mud.

No luck, Gaeton, thought a satisfied Mareward.

"Enchanted armor," mused Telgard. "Mostly for show, but looks like there must also be strength. Otherwise, the dragon's weight would have squashed him more... What are you doing?"

Mareward had squatted down to fiddle with the clasp beneath Gaeton's helmet.

"Looting," he said.

"Are you serious?" said Telgard, disgusted by his brother's actions.

"I wanted these for my collection," replied Mareward. "I was hoping to get the full set, but the dragon has made that rather impossible. Ah, there we are!"

He lifted the dead Lord's head and wiggled the helmet, unceremoniously trying to loosen it from the corpse. The head shook side-to-side until the helmet popped off it, and it fell back to the mud with a heavy slap.

With his bony, squarish features, Lord Gaeton had been an unattractive man, but there was no denying the authoritative air and frighteningly heavyset jaw. His eyeballs had already begun to sink with decomposition, and dried blood specked his lips. In contrast, the helmet was beautiful, crafted lovingly by a skilled blacksmith. The fiery enchantment matched the rest of his armor, and the crown had been sculpted to bear a matching resemblance to the dragon's spiny crest.

Mareward stared at his trophy lovingly.

"You're a Knight of the King's Court," hissed Telgard disapprovingly. "Have some dignity and leave the looting for those beneath your stature!"

Mareward frowned at his brother. "And what, let some farmer have it so he can plough his field in it? Absolutely not! I'm performing my duties as a Knight by confiscating this! Who knows how dangerous this is?"

Telgard pulled a face. His brother was right, but for the wrong reasons. Telgard stood with a grunt of irritation and walked further down the dragon, just as Mareward began loosening the straps on Gaeton's gauntlets.

Telgard walked alongside the dragon’s body. Other than the gouge that had disemboweled it, the hide was impeccable, baring only a few scars where it had tousled with other dragons. There wasn’t much that could pierce a dragon's hide, let alone cause such a degree of damage. Holding his breath, he leaned closer and looked at the wound. The thick, purple-grey entrails of the beast were steaming slightly in the cool mountain air, and Telgard felt the heat coming off it, even after days of decomposition. The smell was ghastly; an offensive mixed aroma of shit and heat and sickly-sweet rotting meat.

Whatever had caused the wound, had cleaved through dragonscale and layers of skin and the internal membrane of the dragon’s thorax. It had been long and sharp and immensely strong, whatever it was.

"What are you looking at?" asked Mareward from over Telgard's shoulder.

Telgard turned to speak and jumped instead. "Take that off!" He hissed.

Mareward lifted the visor of Gaeton's helmet with Gaeton's gauntlet. "I'd rather not," he said haughtily. "This is the safest way to transport these items."

Telgard winced. "That is utterly revolting!"

"I wiped them down!" replied Mareward defensively.

Telgard rolled his eyes, wishing quietly that the visor would snare his older brother’s nose, just to teach him a lesson. Telgard glanced back at Gaeton's corpse, seeing no sign of any weapon. He turned back towards the dragon.

"The dragon fell through the roof of the tavern," he said aloud, pointing a finger at where he presumed the rooftop had once existed. "I think we can assume that Gaeton delivered the killing blow, which means that in order to be here, Gaeton must have been on the roof to about there."

Mareward nodded.

"So, when the dragon crashed through the rooftop, he was either pinned beneath it, or he was flattened trying to flee being flattened."

Mareward pulled a face. "I think the latter. I would guess that he tried to jump off the rooftop, but the dragon landed on him anyway. There’s no pieces of broken building anywhere near him, see?"

Telgard nodded, tracing a hand over Gaeton's trajectory. He could see the whole thing in his mind - the dragon rearing up before the tavern roof, wings outstretched, claws reaching, and Gaeton ramming - something - into its stomach before it could bathe him in fire. The dragon twisting and screaming in pain, then falling backwards towards Gaeton. Gaeton running away towards the edge of the building and leaping off fearlessly, knowing his armor would cushion his fall, and being surprised as the dragon collides with him in mid-air and crushes him into the quagmire. He could see the weapon being knocked from Gaeton's hand.

"Would you Gaeton was right- or left-handed?" He asked Mareward.

Mareward briefly glanced down at his new gauntlets. "Right. There's more wear in that grip."

Telgard nodded. "Which means that it should be right about..." He marched around the beast's entrails, and came to stand near the bottom membranous section of dragon wing. "Here. Help me lift this?"

Mareward shifted and crouched beside his brother, gripping the bottom of the wing. Together, they heaved it up with a grunt aided by the strength enchantment in Mareward's new gauntlets, and Telgard crawled beneath the membrane as his brother wrestled with its weight.

When Telgard re-emerged, Mareward dropped the wing behind him.

"Well?" he asked, breathing heavily.

Sitting in the mud, Telgard dropped the weapon to the ground in front of his brother.

"Perhaps you should confiscate that, too," he replied victoriously. He stood, and began brushing the mud off his clothes.

Mareward picked up the sword and gazed at it adoringly. The sword was crude and uneven, up until the bevel and the very tip. It was shaped like a much longer butcher's knife, but out of a material that wasn't metal at all. It shimmered with the same red energy as the dragon's collar.

"Nine Hells, Tel. This is dragon bone!"

"Definitely worth confiscation," said Telgard.

Mareward stared at his brother. "Where did Gaeton get all this stuff!? Nobody in the kingdom has anything like this."

Telgard shook his head. "I have no idea. Nor do I know why the dragon went berserk. We've known that Lord Gaeton has had a dragon for months. So why has it waited ‘til now?"

Mareward shrugged. "Perhaps, it'd finally had enough of being Gaeton’s pet? Or maybe the collar had lost some of its power through magic degradation?"

"I don't think so. I think the dragon was restrained the entire time. If the collar had lost power, you would think that the dragon could’ve flown away. So why didn't it? None of these attacks were aerial-based."

Mareward nodded in agreement. "That makes sense. Those magics back there, awful as they were, were not very powerful spells. I've read dragons to be capable of much more. I've even seen a novice magician cast the one with those weird blue spikes. It was on an innocent sheep, but still."

"So, the dragon broke free of the enchantment that kept it tame, but its powers remain restrained?"

Mareward wrinkled his nose. “That does seems unusual.”

“Agreed.”

“So, what do we do?”

Tilting his head, Telgard considered his response. His stare passed over the road, over the carnage and over the dead dragon itself, to finally land on the tavern below it. He rubbed the back of his head again.

“Enter a broken-down building with the potential to fall on us at any moment?”

Mareward flexed his fiery new gloves and nodded.

The Knights approached the entrance of the Crown of Metharr Tavern & Inn. Behind the doorway, the ceiling had collapsed, leaving an impassable collection of debris. Mareward skirted the entrance and found a broken window that led into the tavern. The bar was at the back of the room, with a lone intact door in the back wall. The dining tables were shifted together to form a makeshift war room, where the maps, intelligence reports, figurines and chairs were scattered around by the dragon’s impact. Mareward noticed all the flagons and bottles had tumbled from the bar, smashed glass and whiskey coated the floor.

What’s a bit more, then? He thought, smashing the dragonbone sword through the broken window and crashing it about, clearing the windowsill of any glass. He clambered inside, using the sword to balance him.

Telgard wordlessly followed his brother, wrapping his cloak around him to prevent it from snagging on any glass. He scoured the room, forming a mental map of the cracked floorboards, and marking possible exits if the roof did come down, before checking the ceiling above for the possibility collapse points. It already had in one spot over the bar, presenting an entrance to the higher floor, although there didn’t seem to be much space up there.

Mareward was picking up the maps and intelligence reports, trying to piece together the information.

“Looks like they were planning the invasion of our kingdom,” he murmured seriously, peering down at the reports. “And it doesn’t look like Gaeton was working alone.”

A shiver ran up Telgard’s spine. “Who else?”

“Don’t know,” said Mareward, squinting. “It’s all in code, but nothing our cryptographers can’t figure out. But this map indicates we may be surrounded. Or will be soon.”

A cold sensation pass over Telgard like a dragon’s shadow. “This is serious, Mare. We need to get this information back to the Court.”

“Agreed. Let’s gather up as much of this as we can. Beneath a crumbling ceiling is no place to decipher the kingdom’s problems.”

Mareward shrugged off his leather backpack and heaved it onto the table. Together, they rolled up all the intelligence and shoved them into the bag, including hand-picked figurines from amidst the glass shards. He snapped up the latches and slipped his arms back through it the straps.

“Where to?” he asked Telgard.

Telgard went over to the door behind the bar and hesitantly pushed it open. He could see nothing other than what he’d expect from a kitchen. A door led out the back of the inn, and through the glass, he could see the stables and the dragon’s spiked tail resting in the water trough. But other than that, nothing.

Telgard returned to the war room grimacing and pointed up at the hole in the ceiling. “I was hoping for another way up, I think that might the only option. The rest is debris or dead reptile.”

Mareward shrugged indifferently. “All right.”

Telgard sighed. He clambered up onto the bar and waddle beneath hole in the ceiling, where he was able to stand upright. Like a rabbit poking its head out of the hole, he was able to stare directly into the room above.

It appeared that the room was the inn’s main suite. The roof had caved in, hiding the entrance and bathroom, but the bed, dining table and writing desk were all still visible and somewhat accessible, if only on hands and knees. He pulled on a couple of planks to test their strength, before hoisting himself upward. The debris was directly overhead and he was forced to slither on his belly until he could start crawling.

Telgard turned to look back and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Gaeton's mask staring back at him.

"Take that off, will you?" he hissed.

Mareward slowly shook his head. "Never," he whispered.

Telgard wheezed in frustration, before shimmying up to the desk and rummaging through the drawers. Mareward shuffled past Telgard, searching the bedside tables.

Most of the drawers were empty. One had contained an inkwell and a magnificent feather quill (from a dread owl, Telgard guessed), another large ring of keys (which Telgard left behind, assuming they were the master set for the inn and rather redundant). Others had luxurious linen and silk clothing, folded neatly. Telgard pulled these out, and threw them aside in a messy pile, but found hidden beneath them.

He glanced over at his brother. “Anything?” asked Telgard.

“Nothing,” said Mareward, dropping the mattress back down on the bed frame. “Yourself?”

“No, this is all... wait,” he paused, extracting a leather-bound tome from the bottom-most drawer. The book was alone, wrapped in twine to keep its bindings closed, and embossed on its front cover were two bears locked in battle.

The Gaeton Insignia.

“Maybe.”

“Good,” said Mareward. “Grab it and let’s leave this place. I can feel the walls pressing in on me.”

Telgard tucked the book away, and followed his brother, who was already shimmying backwards towards the hole in the floor. Telgard felt something too, but not the fear of small places. The back of his neck was itching, as if spiders were crawling along it. Something was very wrong, and he knew it. Something unnatural. He could almost perceive invisible presences, things utterly ghoulish, staring at him as he lowered himself downstairs.

It was the feeling of being watched.

*****

The brothers sat on a rock near the base of the hill, their horse grazing up somewhere behind them. Both Knights were silent in the falling ash; one regarded where the dragon lay, the other was reading the tome his brother had found in the dead lord’s desk. Telgard waited patiently, knowing his brother would relay everything in paraphrase, if only he gave Mareward the chance.

So, he waited.

Mareward eventually cursed violently, and Telgard looked at him curiously. Telgard’s face had taken a pale hue, looking like he’d swallowed some of the goop from the dragon’s entrails.

“What is it, Mare?”

“Oh, Tel,” said Mareward croakily. “Something bad. Something very bad. I think I know what happened to cause the dragon to attack.”

Telgard could sense his brother’s distress, could feel his own apprehension growing. “What?”

Mareward met his stare with large, round eyes.

“Fear,” he answered so quietly, it was only a little more than a whisper. “Terror. If the dragon was acting out of fear, then the collar may not stop it. If it was rearing, like a horse spooked by a wildcat, then no matter what the reins are or how tame it is, that horse is still going to buck you no matter what.”

“Fear,” mused Telgard. “Of what?”

“Of what Gaeton explains in this journal of his.” He waved the leather-bound book. “Our enemies, whomever they may be, have discovered the grimoire of the sorcerer Vethruk.”

Mareward’s eyes widened.

“They’ve found the Forgotten Gateways to the Tanish-Ka,” said Telgard, his voice breaking again.

It was Telgard’s turn to curse. “Are you certain?”

Grimacing, Telgard waggled the journal at his brother. “They had one here, Mareward. They had one of those monsters here. Gaeton had one in Tamworth, and it spooked the dragon.”

“Where is it now?”

Mareward shook his head. “I don’t know.”

The silence fell back over the brothers, the only resonance were the horses champing the grasses and the wind streaming past. But that breeze had lost its gentle purr. It carried an eerie stillness, like the quiet calm before chaos. The sensation of watchful eyes fell over both brothers, now. Suddenly, the Cauldron Valley no longer felt safe; the threat of invasion at the hand of unknown enemies felt far too close.

“We have to go, Tel. We have to warn King and Court.”

Telgard nodded. “With haste. Let us not dwell here any longer.”

Together, the Knights mounted their horses. Both sensed the stare of the Tanish-Ka, unseen in the shroud of forest, boring into their backs like dragon claws. Neither were sorry to leave Tamworth behind.