Wings of Fire

by Jonathan Strahan; Marianne S. Jablon

Each winter was longer and colder than the one before.

  Each year the thaw came later.

  And sometimes there were patches of land, where the ice dragon had lain to rest, that never seemed to thaw properly at all.

  There was much talk in the village during her sixth year, and a message was sent to the king. No answer ever came.

  “A bad business, ice dragons,” Hal said that summer when he visited the farm. “They’re not like real dragons, you know. You can’t break them or train them. We have tales of those that tried, found frozen with their whip and harness in hand. I’ve heard about people that have lost hands or fingers just by touching one of them. Frostbite. Yes, a bad business.”

  “Then why doesn’t the king do something?” her father demanded. “We sent a message. Unless we can kill the beast or drive it away, in a year or two we won’t have any planting season at all.”

  Hal smiled grimly. “The king has other concerns. The war is going badly, you know. They advance every summer, and they have twice as many dragonriders as we do. I tell you, John, it’s hell up there. Some year I’m not going to come back. The king can hardly spare men to go chasing an ice dragon.” He laughed. “Besides, I don’t think anybody’s ever killed one of the things. Maybe we should just let the enemy take this whole province. Then it’d be his ice dragon.”

  But it wouldn’t be, Adara thought as she listened. No matter what king ruled the land, it would always be her ice dragon.

  Hal departed and summer waxed and waned. Adara counted the days until her birthday. Hal passed through again before the first chill, taking his ugly dragon south for the winter. His wing seemed smaller when it came flying over the forest that fall, though, and his visit was briefer than usual, and ended with a loud quarrel between him and her father.

  “They won’t move during the winter,” Hal said. “The winter terrain is too treacherous, and they won’t risk an advance without dragonriders to cover them from above. But come spring, we aren’t going to be able to hold them. The king may not even try. Sell the farm now, while you can still get a good price. You can buy another piece of land in the south.”

  “This is my land,” her father said. “I was born here. You too, though you seem to have forgotten it. Our parents are buried here. And Beth too. I want to lie beside her when I go.”

  “You’ll go a lot sooner than you’d like if you don’t listen to me,” Hal said angrily. “Don’t be stupid, John. I know what the land means to you, but it isn’t worth your life.” He went on and on, but her father would not be moved. They ended the evening swearing at each other, and Hal left in the dead of the night, slamming the door behind him as he went.

  Adara, listening, had made a decision. It did not matter what her father did or did not do. She would stay. If she moved, the ice dragon would not know where to find her when winter came, and if she went too far south it would never be able to come to her at all.

  It did come to her, though, just after her seventh birthday. That winter was the coldest one of all. She flew so often and so far that she scarcely had time to work on her ice castle.

  Hal came again in the spring. There were only a dozen dragons in his wing, and he brought no presents that year. He and her father argued once again. Hal raged and pleaded and threatened, but her father was stone. Finally Hal left, off to the battlefields.

  That was the year the king’s line broke, up north near some town with a long name that Adara could not pronounce.

  Teri heard about it first. She returned from the inn one night flushed and excited. “A messenger came through, on his way to the king,” she told them. “The enemy won some big battle, and he’s to ask for reinforcements. He said our army is retreating.”

  Their father frowned, and worry lines creased his brow. “Did he say anything of the king’s dragonriders?” Arguments or no, Hal was family.

  “I asked,” Teri said. “He said the dragonriders are the rear guard. They’re supposed to raid and burn, delay the enemy while our army pulls back safely. Oh, I hope Uncle Hal is safe!”

  “Hal will show them,” Geoff said. “Him and Brimstone will burn ’em up.”

  Their father smiled. “Hal could always take care of himself. At any rate, there is nothing we can do. Teri, if any more messengers come through, ask them how it goes.”

  She nodded, her concern not quite covering her excitement. It was all quite thrilling.

  In the weeks that followed, the thrill wore off, as the people of the area began to comprehend the magnitude of the disaster. The king’s highway grew busier and busier, and all the traffic flowed from north to south, and all the travellers wore green-and-gold: At first the soldiers marched in disciplined columns, led by officers wearing plumed golden helmets, but even then they were less than stirring. The columns marched wearily, and the uniforms were filthy and torn, and the swords and pikes and axes the soldiers carried were nicked and ofttimes stained. Some men had lost their weapons; they limped along blindly, empty-handed. And the trains of wounded that followed the columns were often longer than the columns themselves. Adara stood in the grass by the side of the road and watched them pass. She saw a man with no eyes supporting a man with only one leg, as the two of them walked together. She saw men with no legs, or no arms, or both. She saw a man with his head split open by an axe, and many men covered with caked blood and filth, men who moaned low in their throats as they walked. She smelled men with bodies that were horribly greenish and puffed-up. One of them died and was left abandoned by the side of the road. Adara told her father and he and some of the men from the village came out and buried him.

  Most of all, Adara saw the burned men. There were dozens of them in every column that passed, men whose skin was black and seared and falling off, who had lost an arm or a leg or half of a face to the hot breath of a dragon. Teri told them what the officers said, when they stopped at the inn to drink or rest; the enemy had many, many dragons.

  For almost a month the columns flowed past, more every day. Even Old Laura admitted that she had never seen so much traffic on the road. From time to time a lone messenger on horseback rode against the tide, galloping toward the north, but always alone. After a time everyone knew there would be no reinforcements.

  An officer in one of the last columns advised the people of the area to pack up whatever they could carry, and move south. “They are coming,” he warned. A few listened to him, and indeed for a week the road was full of refugees from towns farther north. Some of them told frightful stories. When they left, more of the local people went with them.

  But most stayed. They were people like her father, and the land was in their blood.

  The last organized force to come down the road was a ragged troop of cavalry, men as gaunt as skeletons riding horses with skin pulled tight around their ribs. They thundered past in the night, their mounts heaving and foaming, and the only one to pause was a pale young officer, who reigned his mount up briefly and shouted, “Go, go. They are burning everything!” Then he was off after his men.

  The few soldiers who came after were alone or in small groups. They did not always use the road, and they did not pay for the things they took. One swordsman killed a farmer on the other side of town, raped his wife, stole his money, and ran. His rags were green-and-gold.

  Then no one came at all. The road was deserted.

  The innkeeper claimed he could smell ashes when the wind blew from the north. He packed up his family and went south. Teri was distraught. Geoff was wide-eyed and anxious and only a bit frightened. He asked a thousand questions about the enemy, and practiced at being a warrior. Their father went about his labors, busy as ever. War or no war, he had crops in the field. He smiled less than usual, however, and he began to drink, and Adara often saw him glancing up at the sky while he worked.

  Adara wandered the fields alone, played by herself in the damp summer heat, and tried to think of where she would hide if her father tried to take them away.

  Last of all, the king’s drago
nriders came, and with them Hal.

  There were only four of them. Adara saw the first one, and went and told her father, and he put his hand on her shoulder and together they watched it pass, a solitary green dragon with a vaguely tattered look. It did not pause for them.

  Two days later, three dragons flying together came into view, and one of them detached itself from the others and circled down to their farm while the other two headed south.

  Uncle Hal was thin and grim and sallow-looking. His dragon looked sick. Its eyes ran, and one of its wings had been partially burned, so it flew in an awkward, heavy manner, with much difficulty. “Now will you go?” Hal said to his brother, in front of all the children.

  “No. Nothing has changed.”

  Hal swore. “They will be here within three days,” he said. “Their dragonriders may be here even sooner.”

  “Father, I am scared,” Teri said.

  He looked at her, saw her fear, hesitated, and finally turned back to his brother. “I am staying. But if you would, I would have you take the children.”

  Now it was Hal’s turn to pause. He thought for a moment, and finally shook his head. “I can’t, John. I would, willingly, joyfully, if it were possible. But it isn’t. Brimstone is wounded. He can barely carry me. If I took on any extra weight, we might never make it.”

  Teri began to weep.

  “I’m sorry, love,” Hal said to her. “Truly I am.” His fists clenched helplessly.

  “Teri is almost full-grown,” their father said. “If her weight is too much, then take one of the others.”

  Brother looked at brother, with despair in their eyes. Hal trembled. “Adara,” he said finally. “She’s small and light.” He forced a laugh. “She hardly weighs anything at all. I’ll take Adara. The rest of you take horses, or a wagon, or go on foot. But go, damn you, go.”

  “We will see,” their father said noncommittally. “You take Adara, and keep her safe for us.”

  “Yes,” Hal agreed. He turned and smiled at her. “Come, child. Uncle Hal is going to take you for a ride on Brimstone.”

  Adara looked at him very seriously. “No,” she said. She turned and slipped through the door and began to run.

  They came after her, of course, Hal and her father and even Geoff. But her father wasted time standing in the door, shouting at her to come back, and when he began to run he was ponderous and clumsy, while Adara was indeed small and light and fleet of foot. Hal and Geoff stayed with her longer, but Hal was weak, and Geoff soon winded himself, though he sprinted hard at her heels for a few moments. By the time Adara reached the nearest wheat field, the three of them were well behind her. She quickly lost herself amid the grain, and they searched for hours in vain while she made her way carefully toward the woods.

  When dusk fell, they brought out lanterns and torches and continued their search. From time to time she heard her father swearing, or Hal calling out her name. She stayed high in the branches of the oak she had climbed, and smiled down at their lights as they combed back and forth through the fields. Finally she drifted off to sleep, dreaming about the coming of winter and wondering how she would live until her birthday. It was still a long time away.

  Dawn woke her; dawn and a noise in the sky.

  Adara yawned and blinked, and heard it again. She shinnied to the uppermost limb of the tree, as high as it would bear her, and pushed aside the leaves.

  There were dragons in the sky.

  She had never seen beasts quite like these. Their scales were dark and sooty, not green like the dragon Hal rode. One was a rust color and one was the shade of dried blood and one was black as coal. All of them had eyes like glowing embers, and steam rose from their nostrils, and their tails flicked back and forth as their dark, leathery wings beat the air. The rust-colored one opened its mouth and roared, and the forest shook to its challenge, and even the branch that held Adara trembled just a little. The black one made a noise too, and when it opened its maw a spear of flame lanced out, all orange and blue, and touched the trees below. Leaves withered and blackened, and smoke began to rise from where the dragon’s breath had fallen. The one the color of blood flew close overhead, its wings creaking and straining, its mouth half-open. Between its yellowed teeth Adara saw soot and cinders, and the wind stirred by its passage was fire and sandpaper, raw and chafing against her skin. She cringed.

  On the backs of the dragons rode men with whip and lance, in uniforms of black-and-orange, their faces hidden behind dark helmets. The one on the rust dragon gestured with his lance, pointing at the farm buildings across the fields. Adara looked.

  Hal came up to meet them.

  His green dragon was as large as their own, but somehow it seemed small to Adara as she watched it climb upward from the farm. With its wings fully extended, it was plain to see how badly injured it was; the right wing tip was charred, and it leaned heavily to one side as it flew. On its back, Hal looked like one of the tiny toy soldiers he had brought them as a present years before.

  The enemy dragonriders split up and came at him from three sides. Hal saw what they were doing. He tried to turn, to throw himself at the black dragon head-on, and flee the other two. His whip flailed angrily, desperately. His green dragon opened its mouth, and roared a weak challenge, but its flame was pale and short and did not reach the oncoming enemy.

  The others held their fire. Then, on a signal, their dragons all breathed as one. Hal was wreathed in flames.

  His dragon made a high wailing noise, and Adara saw that it was burning, he was burning, they were all burning, beast and master both. They fell heavily to the ground, and lay smoking amidst her father’s wheat.

  The air was full of ashes.

  Adara craned her head around in the other direction, and saw a column of smoke rising from beyond the forest and the river. That was the farm where Old Laura lived with her grandchildren and their children.

  When she looked back, the three dark dragons were circling lower and lower above her own farm. One by one they landed. She watched the first of the riders dismount and saunter toward their door.

  She was frightened and confused and only seven, after all. And the heavy air of summer was a weight upon her, and it filled her with a helplessness and thickened all her fears. So Adara did the only thing she knew, without thinking, a thing that came naturally to her. She climbed down from her tree and ran. She ran across the fields and through the woods, away from the farm and her family and the dragons, away from all of it. She ran until her legs throbbed with pain, down in the direction of the river. She ran to the coldest place she knew, to the deep caves underneath the river bluffs, to chill shelter and darkness and safety.

  And there in the cold she hid. Adara was a winter child, and cold did not bother her. But still, as she hid, she trembled.

  Day turned into night. Adara did not leave her cave.

  She tried to sleep, but her dreams were full of burning dragons.

  She made herself very small as she lay in the darkness, and tried to count how many days remained until her birthday. The caves were nicely cool; Adara could almost imagine that it was not summer after all, that it was winter, or near to winter. Soon her ice dragon would come for her, and she would ride on its back to the land of always-winter, where great ice castles and cathedrals of snow stood eternally in endless fields of white, and the stillness and silence were all.

  It almost felt like winter as she lay there. The cave grew colder and colder, it seemed. It made her feel safe. She napped briefly. When she woke, it was colder still. A white coating of frost covered the cave walls, and she was sitting on a bed of ice. Adara jumped to her feet and looked up toward the mouth of the cave, filled with a wan dawn light. A cold wind caressed her. But it was coming from outside, from the world of summer, not from the depths of the cave at all.

  She gave a small shout of joy, and climbed and scrambled up the ice-covered rocks.

  Outside, the ice dragon was waiting for her.

  It had breathed upon t
he water, and now the river was frozen, or at least a part of it was, although she could see that the ice was fast melting as the summer sun rose. It had breathed upon the green grass that grew along the banks, grass as high as Adara, and now the tall blades were white and brittle, and when the ice dragon moved its wings the grass cracked in half and tumbled, sheared as clean as if it had been cut down with a scythe.

  The dragon’s icy eyes met Adara’s, and she ran to it and up its wing, and threw her arms about it. She knew she had to hurry. The ice dragon looked smaller than she had ever seen it, and she understood what the heat of summer was doing to it.

  “Hurry, dragon,” she whispered. “Take me away, take me to the land of always-winter. We’ll never come back here, never. I’ll build you the best castle of all, and take care of you, and ride you every day. Just take me away, dragon, take me home with you.”

  The ice dragon heard and understood. Its wide translucent wings unfolded and beat the air, and bitter arctic winds howled through the fields of summer. They rose. Away from the cave. Away from the river. Above the forest. Up and up. The ice dragon swung around to the north. Adara caught a glimpse of her father’s farm, but it was very small and growing smaller. They turned their back to it, and soared.

  Then a sound came to Adara’s ears. An impossible sound, a sound that was too small and too far away for her to ever have heard it, especially above the beating of the ice dragon’s wings. But she heard it nonetheless. She heard her father scream.

  Hot tears ran down her cheeks, and where they fell upon the ice dragon’s back they burned small pockmarks in the frost. Suddenly the cold beneath her hands was biting, and when she pulled one hand away Adara saw the mark that it had made upon the dragon’s neck. She was scared, but still she clung. “Turn back,” she whispered. “Oh, please, dragon. Take me back.”

  She could not see the ice dragon’s eyes, but she knew what they would look like. Its mouth opened and a blue-white plume issued, a long cold streamer that hung in the air. It made no noise; ice dragons are silent. But in her mind Adara heard the wild keening of its grief.