It will take longer to get there, the dragon said, but banked to the right, following Dyrfinna’s direction.
“Yes, but then we can pop up from behind Queen Saehildr’s keep and fly straight into their battle. They won’t see us coming in, even if they’re high in the air.”
I like how you keep popping out from behind things at our enemies.
“I hope they do not like it,” Dyrfinna said.
I agree. The dragon closed her wings hard, and they shot past the long base of the mountain. The tall majestic firs of the mountainside swished past like tiny blades of grass.
Dyrfinna held on for dear life. She ducked low behind the dragon’s neck because the wind blasting on her face was brutal, ripping her hair back on her head. But this was glorious.
That is a good idea, the dragon said again, as if she’d been thinking it through and figuring it out. So when we pop up behind the hill, we can speed right into the fight—
“And they won’t know what hit them,” Dyrfinna said with satisfaction.
Okay. So what about the boats?
“If we come straight over the queen’s keep at full speed, we’ll be going too fast to join the fight,” Dyrfinna said. “Shoot through the fight and throw the attacking dragons into disarray. Then bank around as you turn back to join the fight. Your momentum should carry you close to the ocean, and while you’re banking, you can lay down a line of fire on top of the ships. Then come back in low over the town and see where the child-killers are, and maybe pick off a few as you come up to join the fight.”
Thinking about the layout of her town—thinking about what the fight they were coming up on might look like—Dyrfinna pulled her sword from its scabbard. She breathed deep, preparing herself for battle as they came around the base of the mountain on the low side of the queen’s keep and the wall around the town. From the other side of the wall came the screams of dragons, a flicker of flame.
“Aim for those flames,” she called. “Use those flames to calculate where the enemy dragons are.”
Right, said the dragon.
“Pop up over the wall. Keep up your momentum and blast through the dragons. Those are our biggest challenge. Burst through, fly over the town, fire the ships, swing around, and hit the dragons.” If we can save our guardian dragon, she can help us in the fight, Dyrfinna thought wildly as the top of the queen’s keep came rushing up. The wall blurred before her eyes as they soared up its side—
And they burst over its top into a full-fledged dragon war, flying straight into a gout of flame that billowed out at them.
The wound on Dyrfinna’s arm lit up, turned unbearably hot as fire blazed across her. She roared, surrounded by flames.
Rjupa’s dragon banked so suddenly that Dyrfinna would have fallen if she hadn’t been tied into her seat. The dragon flipped her underbelly to take the full brunt of the flame, protecting Dyrfinna.
Dyrfinna jerked, sure she was falling, but grabbed the straps with both hands and thrust her face between her arms, up against the dragon’s back, as unimaginable heat broke across her whole body in pain.
A moment later, cold air broke over Dyrfinna, and she raised her face with a gasp. They were out. Her dragon shot a gout of flame at one of the other dragons as it fell out of the sky, but then it regained its wings. Dyrfinna seemed to be alive after that blast—good enough for her.
And her heart leapt.
Looking ahead, she found not a single house in Skala burning.
No billows of black smoke. No fire.
“It isn’t too late!” Dyrfinna cried. “Dragon, you were right!”
Hope roared through her. “To the ships, to the ships!” she screamed.
They came out of their bank and leveled off, streaming madly through the air. The cold air across her face made her awake and alive as never before.
Familiar landmarks rushed past below, and Dyrfinna shouted, “AESA, I LOVE YOU,” as they raced low over the thatched rooftops, her heart trip-hammering. She gripped the straps and leaned left with the dragon as she winged swiftly toward the ships.
Far ahead, around bows of the ships, tiny figures milled. But as Dyrfinna and the dragon came hurtling toward them, they started to mill faster, like ants from an anthill that’s been kicked.
One of the dragons pulled off from the fight with their guardian dragon and flew straight at them to join battle.
Gods, how she wished she had a bow and arrow. But at the same time, she wanted that other dragon to come on because it meant that Skala’s guardian dragon had one less fighter to contend with.
Ah! I know that dragon, said Rjupa’s dragon. He is my enemy. Hold on!
Dyrfinna gripped the straps tightly, just as the dragon suddenly flipped upside down in the air to grapple with the incoming dragon. In a vomit-inducing moment, Dyrfinna found herself hanging underneath the dragon, houses zooming by just a little ways below her head—a sudden shock that would have bounced Dyrfinna straight down at the ground if the straps had not been secure. Rjupa’s dragon snapped open her wings and flipped upright, swinging the other dragon hard toward the ground, releasing it at the bottom of the arc to let it tumble through the air.
Dyrfinna, finally upright, heaved over the dragon’s side, praying all the while that nobody would notice her, a dragonrider, vomiting her guts out.
That’s one of the dragons that attacked my Rjupa, the dragon said angrily. Oh, you want some more? Because the other dragon had recovered before it hit the ground, and fought to gain altitude.
“No! Don’t fight her yet,” Dyrfinna cried. “To the ships, now. To the ships while the other dragon is trying to recover! Fly!”
Rjupa’s dragon complied, though she said, I need to kill that other dragon.
“No suicide missions,” Dyrfinna said. “You said so yourself! We’re here to wipe out those child-killers and stop them. Then we need to get back to our troops.”
The dragon bounded forward in the air with a great burst of its wings. The other dragon came at them, and Dyrfinna again wished for her bow and arrows, because they were at that moment passing over her house, where she had six sets of them. But there was no time.
The ships came up fast.
“Drop fire and burn every one of those dogs!” Dyrfinna cried.
They’ll retaliate from behind with fire, the dragon replied.
“Let them! Let them! I’ll be fine! Go!”
They went screaming over the last part of the town toward the ocean, the other dragon laboring to catch up to them.
Rjupa’s dragon came in low with fire, the child-killers scattering before her, many running straight into the ocean before the flames. Arrows came clattering up from below. Dyrfinna pulled her legs up and crouched on top of the dragon so she wouldn’t be hit by a stray arrow. Her shield sat on her back, and she imagined she looked like a turtle. Fine by her.
Rjupa’s dragon roared her fire out. Dyrfinna felt the great rumbling from inside the dragon as she blasted the fire across the running fighters.
But from behind them, their pursuing dragon spat flames. A great rush of heat overcame Dyrfinna, but Rjupa’s dragon darted to the right, dodging the fireball and getting Dyrfinna out of harm’s way.
Another fireball blasted over Dyrfinna, much closer now. She pulled herself tight against the dragon’s back, only partly covered by her shield, covering her face as the impossible heat blew over her. The dragon jerked to one side and roared out fire again. A gust of heat billowed up from a burning ship. Her dragon opened her wings to catch the hot billows, circling up and up in a narrow gyre, carried swiftly aloft on the back of the heat that roiled up from below.
It seemed Rjupa’s dragon had learned from her mistake of trying to attack from below. But at the thought of Rjupa on fire, Dyrfinna’s stomach dropped so much that she thought she was going to vomit again. Both dragons were coming at her, just as they had come at Rjupa. This time, at least, Dyrfinna sat higher than they were.
But her brain froze up. She saw Rjupa
on fire, her body ablaze, the flames rolling and snapping off her as the dragon made her steep plunge.
And she remembered her sister, Leikny, lying on the ground, her last breath sighing out of her lungs, her eyes glassy, staring at nothing.
“No, not now!” Dyrfinna screamed. “Don’t give in! Aesa is still down there and she needs me!”
Dyrfinna snapped back to herself. She grabbed the dragon’s strap and got both her hands underneath, then leaned hard to the right. “Bank!”
The dragon flipped to the right and banked hard, swinging around and veering away from her oncoming pursuers, who blasted fire at Dyrfinna. Their fires hit the dragon’s underbelly, and the dragon’s body and wings protected Dyrfinna from the worst of it. Dyrfinna kept banking, then suddenly said, “Dive again at the ships. Go in fast, blast the ships you missed, then up again as quick as you can.”
They went into a steep dive, so steep that a lot of her own dragon’s fire was blown back at Dyrfinna’s face, and she had to duck behind her neck.
“Now up! Up!” she cried, and the dragon’s dive bottomed out just above a burning mast, and she shot skyward through sheer momentum and through the billowing waves of heat rippling up from two of the three ships. But on the third ship, the wood started to smoke as it heated up, and fighters were leaping over the sides of the ship.
“You’re not going to burn my sister’s house,” Dyrfinna said grimly as she rose over her adversaries.
“Save your strength for a moment,” she added to the dragon as they rose and as the enemy came after them. “Let them come after us.”
Suddenly something slammed into them from below. The straps yanked tight against Dyrfinna’s body, barely keeping her from falling.
One of the black dragons had rocketed up on a thermal from the flames and slammed into them from below. Dyrfinna vomited again, spitting it down at the black dragon that had hit them. The dragon’s rider screamed at her and made obscene gestures as he passed.
Then the second one barreled up to strike them from below.
I can’t keep dodging them, Rjupa’s dragon said. I’ve been flying too hard. I’m worn out.
Dyrfinna cursed herself. She should have remembered that a dragon that had flown in from a long ways away should be ridden carefully so it wouldn’t tire.
Fire boiled up from below and from behind.
Terror seized her.
Suddenly, out of that terror, she burst out in song magic. A protection spell that she sang loudly, swiftly singing out a sphere over herself and her dragon.
The music leapt out of her, the magic she wove with the song throwing that sphere out around them, and all the while she thought, Control, control, control, control—
A huge, head-rattling explosion at her back. Out of nowhere.
Had they been struck by lightning?
A moment later, she found herself halfway down the sky, falling on her dragon, a uncontrollable babbling coming out of her mouth.
The Bad Wolves
She couldn’t move.
They were falling, the dragon was stunned, there was blood on the dragon’s neck from where Dyrfinna’s head must have struck. She fought to move her body and regain control. But nothing happened.
With a gigantic effort of will, she finally managed to move her foot and strike the dragon with her heel.
“Dragon!” she croaked, watching the ground loom larger.
The dragon fought to open her wings. Now Dyrfinna hammered with her heels until the wings opened all the way. Thank Freyja. Instead of falling, now they were gliding, gaining a few short moments.
Oh, Eldr, the dragon groaned, and seemed to pull herself together, and she took a few strokes with her wings so they could stay aloft—and houses whizzed by only a dragon’s length beneath them.
Dyrfinna’s head still felt like it was bouncing from the recoil. No control again.
This was why she didn’t sing. It was stupid to have even tried.
She looked over her shoulder. The black dragons had apparently been blown back from her exploded song-magic, because they were also flailing around very close to the ground as she and her dragon were. But if they were as addled as she was, they would not be giving chase.
Just then the guardian dragon and another red dragon came flying in. The black dragons turned tail and flew out over the ocean, their flight not as true and straight as it usually was.
What was left of the child-killers were hurriedly running down the hill, away from Skala, leaving on the one ship not engulfed in flames. The armed warriors that were left in Skala chased them out of the city, shouting and jeering after their fleeing enemies.
Dyrfinna collapsed on her dragon’s neck in relief.
She had an idea of who was riding that red dragon that had just arrived. He certainly had the knack of showing up at the worst possible times.
I need to land, the dragon said. What happened? What happened?
“You can land over here,” she said, guiding the dragon to a small plaza near her house.
Down they coasted, the Skalans gathering around and cheering.
As soon as her dragon’s mailed feet scraped on the stones of the plaza, Dyrfinna unbuckled herself and slid off.
“Aesa, Mama,” she cried, her legs wobbly. And here they were, running to her.
Dyrfinna knelt on one knee and threw her arms open wide. Aesa ran right into them, crying, “Sissy, Sissy!”
Dyrfinna cried a bit, squeezing her little sister tight. “Oh my wonderful girl,” Dyrfinna said into Aesa’s tangly hair. “I thought about you all the time.”
“Did you get my picture?”
“Oh, yes.” Dyrfinna let go of Aesa to pull it out of her shirt. “See? I keep it right here.” Then they squished each other again. “Do you call that a hug? You’re not squishing me tight enough … ooh, that’s better.”
Aesa giggled. How Dyrfinna loved that giggle. After everything that she’d gone through, this made it all worthwhile.
“I stopped the bad guys, the bad wolves,” she told Aesa. “I did it all for you, sweetie pumpkin.”
“I am not a sweetie pumpkin,” Aesa informed Dyrfinna.
“I did it all for you, so I’m going to call you sweetie pumpkin if I want to!” Dyrfinna cried, grabbing her up again. Aesa squealed and laughed.
Just then, another dragon landed nearby. A red one. Dyrfinna stiffened.
“Papa!” Aesa cried. Dyrfinna put her down so she could run to him.
Dyrfinna got up and there was Mama, holding out a hand to her. Dyrfinna threw herself into her arms. That hug felt wonderful, too. Dyrfinna got tears in her eyes and had to push away the image of them in the fire … of those awful soldiers waiting for them to come out, burning. She squeezed Mama tighter.
“Oof. I missed you too, sweetheart.”
“Oh Mama, I’m so glad you’re okay.”
Her papa leapt off the dragon and caught Aesa up and gave her a quick hug, but he put her down to yell at Dyrfinna. “Why can’t you control that! Why do you refuse to control that?”
Because oh yes, he was all about control.
“Papa! Don’t yell.” Aesa said. “Be nice.”
Dyrfinna rested her head on her mama’s shoulder, smiling at Aesa. Mama stroked her hair.
“Egill. Give your daughter a moment,” Mama said.
Dyrfinna closed her eyes. Mama hadn’t stroked her hair since she was a little girl. Commander though she was, even after having saved her town from attack, she was blissfully happy for a moment.
Then Papa burst in. “I need you to answer the question. Dyrfinna. Why do you refuse to control your song-magic?”
Dyrfinna let go of her mama. “Hello, Papa. I just saved your town and all the people that you love. How are you?”
“You nearly blasted one of the queen’s dragons out of the sky! A dragon that you are not authorized to ride!”
People were gathering; Papa glanced at them and lowered his voice. “You were not authorized to do any of this.
Were you?”
“I had a vision,” Dyrfinna said, looking in her mama’s eyes. “Skala was … burning, and people killed. So I sacrificed to Rjupa’s dragon and bade her to bring me here. We chased off the invaders.” She took a deep breath, looking at Mama. “And you’re okay.”
Her mama smiled, resting her hand along Dyrfinna’s face. “Thank you.” She stroked Dyrfinna’s cheek with her thumb.
“But you stole Rjupa’s dragon,” her papa said.
“Rjupa is not using it,” Dyrfinna said quietly. “She can’t use it. Remember? She was burned yesterday.”
They locked eyes.
“Oh, no! Rjupa?” her mama asked. “But why was Rjupa riding a dragon?”
“Because the dragonrider’s honor went to her,” Dyrfinna said. She could not keep the bitterness out of her voice.
Mama gasped. “What? You mean to tell me that when Rjupa stopped by here on her way to see you … she was …. ” Open mouthed, she turned her shocked gaze to Papa. “Egill! You knew Rjupa wasn’t ready, and you still put her on a dragon?”
He looked straight at Dyrfinna. “Because, as you saw just now, Finna has no control over her song-magic. Did you see her knock herself and one of the queen’s dragons, which she had no right riding, out of the sky?”
Shame silenced Dyrfinna.
Aesa wound her little arms around Dyrfinna’s leg. “Love love.”
“I love you too.” Dyrfinna was not interested in talking to her papa. She knelt down and said, “Look what I found.” She pulled the ruby ring off her finger, the one that she’d found on the dragon isle with Skeggi, and gave it to Aesa. “Plunder. It is yours. I want you to wear it and think of me.”
Aesa put it on. It was big on her little finger. “It’s so pretty,” she said, and kissed the deep red ruby.
“I can put it on a chain for her,” Mama said.
Dyrfinna looked up at her. “Where is Hakr’s daughter and wife? I, um, have something for them.”
Her mama’s hands went to her mouth. “Oh, no. I knew I recognized that brooch you’re wearing.”
Dragons and Mages: A Limited Edition Anthology Page 20
