They went.
*
Aldric stood up in his stirrups again, scanning a non-existent horizon for non-existent signs of life, then settled back into Lyard’s saddle and exhaled a smoky sigh of relief. It was now four in the afternoon and they had ridden constantly since half-past one, pushing their horses as much as they dared. There were seven horses now; three extra pack-ponies loaded with provisions were a token of Imperial generosity and also, Aldric suspected at first, a means to slow them up. He distrusted Lord General Goth, a man who might overhaul them and take away their Imperial travel passes not for any malevolent reason, but simply to reassert his reach and influence with the power to withhold or return the vital documents.
But perhaps he was wronging the General, because even Ymareth the firedrake high above had seen no sign of pursuit and now the day was darkening to twilight. Or maybe, he thought with a quick grin, someone else knew how Goth’s mind might work and had forbidden any attempt to follow them. All that truly mattered was that there was nothing to fear, and nothing to see.
Nothing except Kyrin and Gemmel, sitting a little way off with the horses, in a thin fog of exhaled breath which clung about them all like skeins of spider-silk glimmering on a meadow in the first light of dawn.
Nothing except Ymareth, far, far overhead where the first cold jewelled stars began to show.
Nothing except snow, and more snow, its once-blinding whiteness shading down now to silver and smoke-blue in the shadowed dusk.
Aldric touched heels to Lyard’s flanks and rode forward to be with his companions, the lady lost and regained, and the father more than any parent. Behind him the pale blue of Heaven became tinged with rose and saffron as the sun set into the distant fringe of haze where a horizon might have been. Ahead was that same haze, velvety, darkening to a star-fired night where the world reached up to touch the very sky itself.
A sky that, if what Gemmel said was true, might go on for ever...
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The Dragon Lord Page 31
