Read Falconfar 03-Falconfar for Free Online Page A

more, curling up in a helpless ball to hack, and retch, and then spew his guts out.
    Or so it felt, as he rolled weakly on into the darkness, just trying to get farther from the dust—and the faint light of the sky he could now see, through swimming eyes, somewhere above and behind him.
    Timbers groaned, a little way off in one direction, rising to a shriek and breaking off into dull, floor-shaking crashes. The greatfangs demolition crew were still at work.
    Another crash, this one closer. Tomb indeed, brought right down on his head, if he didn't move.
    Still coughing, Rod forced his eyes open and tried to sit up. The crashing he was hearing was coming from right there—and there, in this now-dimly-seen room, was a place where the wall was bulging outward as he watched.
    To break, jaggedly, showering the room with fieldstones, mortar dust, and splintered wood that a moment ago had been paneling; a tumbling cloud of wreckage that fell away from a row of dark, curving knives that Rod recognized all too well as greatfangs talons.
    Talons now sweeping across the room at him, even as a scaly and sinuous neck looped in the air above, to bring one cruel eye to peer in at him.
    Sighing out a curse, Rod Everlar stared back at it and made a rude gesture before hurling himself into a frantic roll again.
    He was heading for the unseen, unknown far end of the room— but he was really just striving to get away.
    It was all happening so fast.
    The talons swerved toward him, the body of the greatfangs blotted out all light, and Rod tried to console himself with the thought that the beast was flying overhead; it would be past and gone in another moment.
    The trick would be living through that moment.

 

     

     
    IT WAS STILL raining broken branches, amid the gunshot cracks of dead limbs as they struck lower trees, when the lorn swooped in.
    Straight through all the shards and showers of rotten wood and disintegrating bark, plunging toward where they'd last seen Dauntra—with Iskarra grimly clinging to the carry-harness beneath and behind her.
    The Aumrarr and her cargo were now nowhere to be seen, though there was much thrashing in tangles of dead wood, below. The lorn found nothing but endless trees, and circled back to the chaos. Quieter, now, with only a few branches falling free from where they'd caught to descend amid smaller crashes. The dust of disintegrated wood hung in the air in a heavy cloud, drifting to the forest floor.
    Where the two winged women must already be, barring some strange Aumrarr magic. Gliding cautiously lower, the lorn waved to each other to get right down under the wooded canopy so as to get a proper look.
    There were well over a dozen of them, Garfist concluded sourly, peering up through the drifting dust. He stood above an untidy pile of dead branches, many of them still bearing leaves or needles, that he'd heaped over Juskra.
    Who was now glaring up at him fiercely for doing so—and for planting one of his boots firmly on her chest, to keep her there—but seemed too dazed to even hiss a protest, much less struggle to her feet. Garfist had already plucked her sword out of its sheath and planted it point-first in the rotten trunk of a fallen tree right beside him, to have ready in case he needed a replacement for his own blade. Her wings—bruised and worse—were so tangled up in all the fallen tree-wreckage that she couldn't hope to get herself upright without help, even before he started tramping all over what was holding her down.
    He gave the scarred Aumrarr a twisted grin—just as she went limp, and her eyes closed.
    Garfist shrugged—and then stiffened, going into a crouch, as something moved behind the trunk of the huge tree behind Juskra. A living tree, as solid and unyielding as a castle wall—that she might have flown them both face-first into if her collision with the dead forest giant hadn't set her to tumbling instead.
    Two faces slid into view, peering cautiously around opposite sides of