Hawk glided over the camp, a sparrow in his talons. As he came in to land, he dropped the sparrow and transformed in mid air, billowing out into the minotaur. He clattered to the ground with a loud thud before scrambling to Louis on all fours.
‘You’re bleeding!’ he said.
Louis nodded. He was the orc again, holding one of the missing man’s lost socks against his head. ‘I was attacked.’
‘The monster?’ said Hawk. ‘Did you kill it?’
‘No, it got away.’
‘What was it?’
‘A gargoyle.’
Hawk’s large, dark eyes looked at him blankly.
‘A gargoyle?’ Louis repeated. ‘You know, a bit like a dragon but small. And they turn to stone in the daylight.’
‘Oh,’ said Hawk. ‘Are you hurt bad?’
‘No, I think I hurt it worse. It won’t get far.’
Louis looked out over the desert sands, now a haunting blue in the moonlight. He could still sense the monster, pulling him toward it like a compass.
‘It’s dangerous to go into a desert unprepared,’ said Louis. ‘We’ll rest the night and go after it in the morning.’
Hawk frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Why?’ Louis repeated, nonplussed. ‘It killed someone. We can’t let it roam free.’
‘But it can’t be the worst monster out there. How many do you suppose your dragon killed before you met him? Surely there’s more… valuable souls?’
Louis studied Hawk carefully. He’d killed so many creatures, but most were small critters, rodents, lizards and birds. Could it be he was a little jealous of the souls Louis had collected? Was a small winged creature that could only come out at night just not appealing enough a catch?
‘It can pass through stone, you know?’ Louis said.
Hawk’s ears twitched. ‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. I threw it against the rocks but it swam through them like water.’
‘Hmm…’ Hawk considered. ‘Alright. Come sun up, let’s hunt.’
* * *
They took advantage of the abandoned camp, though they didn’t use the tent, the night being plenty warm enough to lie naked on the rock. In the morning, they drank from a water can they found and took flight, Louis a dragon and Hawk his namesake.
Louis lead the way, gliding for the most part so Hawk could keep up. He hadn’t properly explained that he could sense where the gargoyle was. He wasn’t sure how he could express it when it appeared Hawk didn’t share that sense. Hawk hadn’t questioned how Louis knew the way, so Louis hadn’t mentioned it.
The golden sands passed beneath them. The sun was relentless but Louis was cooled by the rushing air. The desert seemed even more endless than the plains had, but flying was much faster than on foot or hoof. Louis could feel they were rapidly gaining on the monster. He sensed it was still alive, but where could it go in a desert as empty as this?
Then Louis spotted something in the sand. From the sky, it looked like a flat, round stone sitting upon the sand with a swarm of ants around it. Louis was drawn to it like a bee to pollen. The gargoyle was there.
Louis began a spiralling descent, glancing over his wing to check Hawk was following. As they lowered, Louis saw lines of lighter sand stretching out from the object. Were they roads? More details emerged and Louis saw the circular stone was actually made up of many smaller squares and rectangles. It was a city and these were the buildings. And what he had fancied as ants were people.
Not wanting to know how the people would react to a dragon swooping upon them, he corrected his course to land a ways off, out in the sand. Quickly trotting to a stop, he tucked the dragon beneath his skin and shrank back into the orc, feeling his bulk and strength fold into something more compact and measured, by comparison. A second later, Hawk the minotaur was beside him.
Together, they crested a dune and saw the city again. From the ground, it was huge. Great, sandstone towers and minarets, billowing flags and columns of smoke. In the very centre, a huge pyramid towered over everything. At the edge, a great, dusky wall surrounded the entire city. Not far from them, a grand gatehouse marked the entrance. Outside this was a market, filled with stalls, beggars and traders, preying on the caravans and camels that passed into the city. For a moment, Louis was both scared and excited of the idea that his brother Warwick might have a stand there, but reason told him he never journeyed this far to trade and he certainly couldn’t gotten here faster than Louis had. And while there were many humans among the crowd, they were in the minority. Louis saw dwarves and orcs but most of all were sphinxes. Creatures that stood and walked like men but with the heads and fur of great cats.
Louis suddenly felt naked, just as he had done at the camp. If somebody at the market happened to look their way, what would they think of a naked orc standing out in the desert? Quickly, he dropped his body against the sand, positioning himself so only his head was above the summit of the dune.
The minotaur looked at him quizzically. ‘Don’t let them see you,’ Louis hissed at him.
Hawk obliged by laying down next to Louis, but didn’t hurry about it.
‘I think this is Madinat al’Asad,’ Louis explained. ‘The great walled city of the sphinxes. I always thought it was a fairytale.’
‘And that’s where the monster is?’ asked Hawk.
Louis nodded. ‘I bet it can’t hide in sand. This is the only rock for miles.’
‘Let’s go, then,’ said Hawk, getting up.
Louis grabbed his arm and pulled him down again. ‘We can’t just walk in! They’ll attack a minotaur on sight.’
‘Fine,’ Hawk shrugged. His deep voice cracked as he shrunk in mid-word. His fur thinned, his horns vanished, his tail pulled itself into his rump and soon he was smaller than Louis, a cocoa-skinned human lying in the sand. Louis was suddenly struck how long it had been since he had seen Hawk this way.
‘That won’t work, either,’ said Louis. ‘Without clothes we’ll stand out a mile off. And even then, I’ll bet there’s a toll to get inside.’ Louis felt with a pang that it may have been a mistake to leave all of his gold and belongings in the plains. For all of Hawk’s convincing arguments, maybe Louis had been right all along.
‘Then we’ll just fly in,’ suggested Hawk.
‘You might be able to,’ said Louis. ‘But I’ve only got a dragon. They’ll shoot me out of the sky.’ Louis nodded at the city walls, where large cannons were posted at intervals. How the city had used them to repel countless sieges was the stuff of legend.
‘I can’t find the gargoyle by myself,’ said Hawk ‘I’ll catch you a bird.’ But a quick glance at the empty sky proved that might be easier said than done.
Hawk slumped into the sand. ‘Then how do we get in?’