Read Online Dawn of the Ice Bear by Jeff Mariotte - Free Book Online Page B

lower half. The hardened mercenaries screamed with panic. Among them, the snake—even bigger than the last one they’d seen—writhed and bucked, fangs flashing in moonlight as it lunged at another of the soldiers.
    Other soldiers tried to fight the thing, their blades hacking and slashing at it. But the snake whipped its massive tail and smashed six of them against the compound’s wall. The cuts of the others didn’t seem to slow the thing at all.
    Kral felt Mikelo’s hand on his arm, holding him back. “If it kills them, so much the better,” the boy said.
    â€œIf it kills them, we’re next,” Kral countered. He pulled free of Mikelo’s hand and charged into the fray.
    The snake exuded a foul, fetid odor, as if it had only just crawled out from the depths of hell itself. Its skin was pebbled, gray-black. It moved with a grace that Kral found at once repulsive and strangely beautiful. That didn’t keep him from slashing at it with the keen edge of his blade. But the snake ignored the blow. It crushed a soldier underneath it, then turned its attention to the newcomer.
    Kral was almost hypnotized by the eyes locked on his. They were golden in color, penetrating, with pupils like dark, bottomless slits. They stared unblinkingly at him, and he thought he could easily fall into them and never come out. A strange, awful intelligence seemed to inhabit those eyes, as if the creature might begin speaking in its own odd and sibilant tongue, sharing all the knowledge its kind had amassed over the eons. Perhaps this was why some worshiped snakes, why they let them roam the streets freely. Kral shut his eyes tightly and struck out with the sword just before the snake lunged at him, its fangs dripping liquid poison. When he dared look, the tip of his sword had become embedded in the snake’s forehead, just above the right eye. Thick green blood welled up around the wound. When Kral yanked his blade free, it jetted toward him as if from a fountain, splashing him with a hot, acidic stream.
    The snake jerked away from him, writhing in pain. As it did, its coils wrapped around some of the mercenaries, who hacked and stabbed at it with their own weapons. Even wounded, the thing was supremely powerful, and one of the men dropped his sword as his shoulders and head turned red, then purple. Others started trying to slash their way to him, to free him, but before they could do so, he slumped over onto the snake’s back, dead.
    After wiping off as much of the snake’s burning blood as he could, Kral turned his full attentions back to it. He approached its head again, dodging its snapping jaws. The head lunged toward Kral, and he swatted it with the flat of his blade. It retreated, then came again from a different angle. This time, Kral stabbed upward when the head neared him. His sword cut up through the beast’s chin, shattering teeth. As it tried to back away, Kral held the sword still, and the snake ripped a huge gash in its own lower jaw.
    It let out a kind of keening wail, a sound unlike any Kral had ever dreamed snakes could make. Its acidic blood splashed everywhere. Its writhing sped up, as if in a panic, and Kral heard several of the men cry out in pain.
    Finally, the snake slumped to the ground as if all its muscles relaxed in sequence, tail to head. The head twitched a couple more times, the horrible golden eyes staring at him with their own weird intelligence, even in death.
    Kral shuddered, glad the confrontation was over. His flesh burned where the blood had spattered him, and his ribs ached where the stab wound he’d gotten from the pirate captain Kunios had been aggravated by the struggle. He bent at the waist, hands on his knees, to catch his breath. As he did, Alanya, Donial, and Mikelo came over to him.
    â€œGood job, Kral!” Donial enthused. “Had it not been for your efforts that monster would likely have defeated all of those mercenaries.”
    Kral