Karin nodded and pulled her sword from its scabbard on Stigi’s saddle. Senta did likewise.
Karin reached up and took Stigi’s bridle. As quietly as she could, she turned the dragon around until he was facing out of the crevasse toward the zombies. Senta brought her dragon around. By jockeying and shifting the riders were able to get the dragons squeezed in side by side almost lying on each other but facing out the same way.
“Stigi,” Karin whispered as the first zombies came into view, “fire.”
Stigi needed no encouragement. A gout of flame swept down the ravine, incinerating the first of the undead dragon riders. As Stigi reached the end of his breath, Senta’s dragon released his flame, causing Karin to avert her head and Stigi to bridle under the heat.
Twice more the dragons breathed fire turn and turn about and twice more zombies charred, burned and fell backwards into the foaming sea.
But it was a temporary victory and both of them knew it. As soon as the zombies got dragons aloft they would be incinerated in turn by dragon fire from the skies. Indeed, as Karin watched, one of the zombie dragons launched off the rock and flew low out over the ocean, wings beating to gain altitude.
A tentacle lashed out of the water and swept dragon and rider into the sea.
Another tentacle swept the cliff knocking another dragon and two more zombies into the water. Then another tentacle and another and another lashed onto the shore, seizing dragon and rider alike and sweeping them beneath the foam.
“Kraken!” Karin hissed. “Keep still!”
As the living dragons and their riders pressed back into the crevasse a forest of tentacles lashed from the sea and swept over the island, tapping, probing, searching for prey. The zombies did not scream as they were picked off the rock and dragged beneath the water. Their dragons did not roar. But one by one they were all taken as food for the monster of the reef.
Still the tentacles swept on, feeling for more. Several of them explored the crack where Karin and Senta hid and one of them came so far in that it actually touched Karin.
It took all her will to keep from flinching when the tip of a slimy tentacle brushed across her boot. She squeezed her eyes shut and bit her lip until she tasted blood to keep from whimpering aloud at the creature’s foul touch. In the part of her mind that could still function all she could think of was Mick.
The tentacle passed on and withdrew down the crevasse. There were a few more tentative stirrings and then everything was still, save for the waves and the sea.
At last Karin dared to breathe again and she and Senta looked at each other across their dragons’ backs.
“Fortuna,” Senta breathed, “Let us be gone from here before something else happens.”
Karin could only nod.
In spite of the glow lamp the tunnel ahead was dark, as if something was dimming the light. Taj started forward, but Jerry held him back. “Wait a minute. I don’t like the looks of this.”
“Bunny time?”
Jerry nodded and spoke the spell. First the Emac appeared and then the pink fuzzy mechanical rabbit, drum at the ready and gun slung across its back, obscuring its battery. The decoy spun mechanically and then marched down the corridor beating its drum. It had barely crossed the threshold when it disappeared in a blinding blue-green flash. Before the watchers recovered two more energy bolts smashed into the rocks over their head triggering an avalanche.
Jerry gestured frantically and the rocks seemed to bounce off an invisible shield to pile up and block the tunnel before them. Even after the rocks stopped falling the dust stayed impenetrably thick in the air, converting the humans to shadowy outlines.
The big programmer coughed and spat out a mouthful of dirt.
“Didn’t work,” he said unnecessarily.
“These things learn fast,” Taj said. “That’s probably built into their programs because it’s a survival characteristic. I don’t think we’d better use the same spell twice.”
Jerry was still coughing and spitting, so he just nodded. “I think we’d better find another way through here,” he said when he got his breath back.