A Stone's Throw (The Gryphonpike Chronicles Book 3) Read Free

warakin started to howl, the sound high and grating in my ears. I shot an arrow at the closest one, but it fell short by a few feet. The creature slunk forward and sniffed at the shaft, then raised yellow eyes and resumed its terrible cry.
    “Those don’ look like mangy wolves to me,” Makha said.
    “They’re hemming us in,” Drake said. “Got to be twenty at least.”
    “Stay under trees. Rahiel, can you break their line?”
    “Sure, Azy,” Rahiel said. She and Bill flew past me, moving high into the air.
    “Don’t set the grass on fire!” Makha yelled.
    The pixie-goblin sent a crackling bolt of blue flame into the warakin I’d tried to shoot. The creature yelped in pain and collapsed as blood spurted from a deep wound in its side and meaty smelling smoke wafted on the breeze toward us.
    The rest of the warakin charged, their long legs eating up the open ground between us with stunning speed. Rahiel threw more bolts, each one finding a target with hissing, wet smacks and terrible screams of pain. A handful of warakin turned and tried to leap for her, but she and the mini unicorn were far out of reach even from their powerful leaps and each creature came smashing back to ground, smoke rising from charred and wounded hides.
    I took one out with an arrow through its open mouth. Another of my arrows gouged a deep furrow in the thick hide of a second warakin, but the creature didn’t slow. I moved back behind Makha, putting her armored body between me and the onslaught, and my back to the trunk of a poplar. I shot another arrow crunching through the eye and into the brain of a leaping beast, and then they were upon us.
    Makha threw one warakin down with a mighty bash of her shield. She sliced through its throat with a quick jab of her sword and shifted in time to catch the teeth of another on her armored thigh. The thick yellowed teeth were no match for the blue-black scales of Makha’s Saliidruin maille and they splintered with a wet gust of red blood, the warakin falling prey to Makha’s sword even as it tried to back away.
    Fade leapt into the fray, his body larger and stronger than any of the warakin and his knife-like claws gouged huge swaths of flesh from any that dared close in on him. The mist-lynx sprang away from my side, landing on a warakin that shrieked and twisted even as Fade’s huge jaws closed down on its neck, snapping its spine with a bone-shuddering crunch.
    One of my arrows found a warakin’s throat in mid-leap as it came over the fallen bodies of its packmates, snapping for Makha’s head. Another monster came around the side of the tree and struck at my leg. I sprang to the side, nearly colliding with Drake as he fended off another with his dancing, needle-sharp rapier. Having no space to draw I jabbed an arrow into the warakin’s face again and again, not doing more than superficial damage but causing it enough pain that the creature slunk backward, hissing.
    It moved back just far enough that I had time to draw my bow and send my arrow crunching through its gouged and bleeding skull. The warakin crumpled to the ground and another leapt in, snapping its teeth on the empty air where I had stood just before. Makha’s shield bashed its brains out in a sickly, salty-sweet gush.
    Azyrin shifted toward us, covering Drake’s right side and the gap between a tulip poplar and a red maple, creating a choke point through which he funneled the warakin. His falchion’s heavy blade cracked through their broad skulls with brutal force.
    Makha whipped her sword around in time to sever a leg of another beast as it jumped the bodies of its fallen kin and nearly bit a chunk out of my elven scale hauberk. Its jaws came close enough that I caught a faceful of its foul breath as I deflected the snapping teeth with my bow. Hot blood sprayed my arm from its hemorrhaging leg and the creature fell back, limping and yowling. Fade sprang onto it and tore its head from its body, sending a gleaming crimson spray