I signed a thank you and breathed a sigh of relief, strapping the crutch to my arm so I wouldn’t lose it. I should keep it close. Next time, Leng might not be so close.
Raolcan dropped the Silver to the ground, climbing back into the descending clouds. A dark storm front was rolling our way. Between dark blue clouds, rays of gold pierced the sky, illuminating tiny spots along the hillside in halos of gold while the rest of the landscape grew dark.
One golden gilded the hilltop Shonan had prepared and sparkled along the wings of the Silver dragon who landed before it.
Paaaalk. Iskaris rides him. A proud dragon, sworn to service and trained to defend. He does not care who wears the mask, he is loyal to it regardless.
Maybe we could persuade him to defend the real Dominar.
The real Dominar is the one in the mask.
The real Dominar was Shonan.
What we know is true and what everyone else knows is true are different. We can’t just demand that they see the truth we do. We need to find a way to show them. Would you change your mind just because someone shouted that Iskaris was Dominar?
Hardly.
Then let the true Dominar prove his point.
He was about to. Raolcan was already moving to his next target, but my eyes were glued to the showdown beyond us. Iskaris dismounted from his dragon and strode to the center of the hill, his single arm holding a sword at ready stance. Shonan had his own sword out – the only two one-armed men I knew, and they were ready to fight. I swallowed. Why would Iskaris fight when he didn’t have to?
Even the worst of us can’t silence the voice in our heads saying, ‘Maybe you are nothing after all.’ Even Iskaris needs to prove to himself that it isn’t true – that he has the right to be the Dominar. He knows Shonan – knows he is no great swordsman – knows his weaknesses in a way that only a faithful guard could. He knows he can win. The temptation to silence him in such a public way is too much for him. Shonan knew it would be true.
But could Shonan win?
Raolcan wheeled to the side, avoiding an Ifrit hand that smacked the air around us. Behind us, dragons were grouping again, ready for a second assault on the Ifrits. We had numbers on our side, but were they enough? I swallowed as I realized how many dragons lay on the ground already.
The Silvers are no longer our problem. They are guarding Iskaris on the hill. The Magikas fight to hold their bridge in place. They can’t hurt us with fire while they are occupied with that. Only the Ifrits need concern us now.
But that wasn’t so easy. For every Ifrit our dragons shredded, we lost multiple dragons. I watched as a Gold was snatched from the air and hurtled into the rocks below, breaking his back over the granite. Carefully, I counted Ifrits and then dragons and then Ifrits again.
We didn’t have the numbers.
We have the spirit!
Shonan would have to face Iskaris alone. We could spare no one to guard him.
He’ll be fine.
And we didn’t have the numbers.
Stop worrying so much.
We dove toward the Ifrits, but even in the middle of the smoke and flame, as Raolcan helped lure an Ifrit after him to let a group of Greens pounce on it, I was still trying to find some way we could turn the tide on them. There had to be something more that we could do than just fight.
The time for planning is over. Now it’s time to put our heads down and rip and tear!
Raolcan was giddy with the excitement of it, reveling in every Ifrit he tore to shreds.
For each one I destroy, hundreds of humans and dragons are saved.
But I was watching the hillside where another battle was being fought in snake-like sword stances and the road beyond where the silhouettes of a human army marched across the land like a swarm of ants. Time was running out.
Chapter Fourteen
“The army will be here before we can finish off the Ifrits,” Leng called to me. Ahlskibi had flown to level with Raolcan as Raolcan spiraled upward to get a better look at the battlefield. This many hours into the battle we were all soot-streaked and exhausted. Behind us, on the hillside, Shonan and Iskaris still fought, their stances and sudden lunges slowing as the weariness of a long battle overcame them.
Leng’s gaze swept to them every few minutes, his body language tense. One-armed fighting wasn’t the same as two-armed. One slip could be a disaster. Worse, Iskaris’ experience and heavier musculature were beginning to show. A knot grew in my belly as the swordplay stretched out longer and longer.
Below us, dragons tore another Ifrit to pieces, but our numbers had lessened, and the shoals of colored dragons were thinner ribbons than they had been before. A dozen Ifrits still stood, protecting the Magikas, and now Iskaris’ army was almost here.
Ten minutes.
Even Raolcan was sounding tense. Too many broken dragons littered the riverbanks, some of them swept down the river like fallen leaves.
“If they make it here first, they’ll rush across the river and this whole ambush will have failed!” Leng said, his face screwed up in concentration as he considered the approaching army.
But what could we do? Any direct attack on the Magikas would be a suicide mission with the Ifrits still guarding them.
I swallowed.
Some things are worth dying for.
“We need to attack the Magikas as hard and fast as we can,” I called back. “Ignore the Ifrits and go straight to them!”
Leng nodded grimly, rubbing a hand over his face like he could wipe away the task in front of him. I gripped my cane, took the Pipe out of the saddlebags and tied it around my neck. Whatever came next, we needed to be ready.
Unstrap the bags. There is nothing in them so precious as the extra seconds we can gain without them.
I hurried to comply and saw Leng doing the same.
“You still have my davari?” he asked as he worked.
I lifted a hand to show him, worry making my head feel light.
He smiled very briefly before calling out, “Don’t lose it. The promise still stands!”
Before I could respond, Ahlskibi was plunging forward, Raolcan hot on his heels. I gripped his neck. We’d be okay, wouldn’t we?
Of course! It takes a lot to bring this dragon down!
We fell toward the earth like meteors, wind whipping around us, other dragons rushing to fall in behind us. Raolcan dropped until I thought we would hit the ground. I was already bracing for impact when he suddenly swooped up, skimming the ground with his belly as he crashed through a knot of Magikas. They tumbled in all directions, their magical light that fed the bridge faded for a moment.
Already, the ones picking themselves up again were casting balls of flame at us as quickly as they could. Raolcan’s neck arced around to grab one off the ground and shake him, tossing him into a woman who had both her hands lifted, flames surrounding them. Both of them fell to the ground, the flames sputtering out.
A quick glance showed me that two other knots had been disrupted, but one was already reforming, the Ifrit protectors around it having left the attacking dragons crumpled on the ground nearby.
Raolcan! On your right!
He spun just in time to avoid the Ifrit that sped toward us, jumping into the air, but his launch was interrupted as the Ifrit’s hand grazed his wing tip, knocking us to the ground.
I cried out as my leg hit the ground – not hard and not for long, but enough to hurt! We tumbled, and I could tell Raolcan was maneuvering to avoid hurting me.
He scrambled up from the earth as soon as he could gain control of himself, clawing through dirt and over the fallen body of a dead White to try to get enough clearance to fly. A fireball splashed beside us, lighting the rocks and ground ablaze. I flinched from the flame, guarding my eyes with my forearm.
Raolcan leapt into the air as two more fireballs hit around us. I looked around, disoriented, but I was too dizzy to place where we were. Where was the river? The horizon wove in my vision and nausea filled me. I couldn’t quit
e get my bearings ...
Humans and horses surged beneath us, channeling into a single stream.
The bridge!
They surged across the bridge of magic as Raolcan steadied himself and then swooped toward them like an arrow. He flamed across the bridge, sending humans and horses plunging to a watery death.
I held my breath, stiffened by terror as we turned to do it again.
My Raolcan.
My rock.
Fearless.
A second pass across the bridge and I was beginning to hope we could stem the tide of soldiers. Maybe we had a chance here! We could do it!
I clung to Raolcan’s neck, channeling all the love and support I could into him.
We were going to make it!
A blow came from the side, knocking me loose from the saddle, I was flung hard against my straps. They creaked but held and then I was plummeting to the ground, dragged by Raolcan’s heavier weight. Something had hit him from his blind side! I hadn’t seen it coming to warn him.
Raolcan! Are you okay?
A cloud of reeking dust surrounded me. I couldn’t breathe! I choked against it and then a second hit spun me in a new direction and with a snap, my strap broke and I was plummeting through the air, arms wind-milling as air whipped around my face.
I didn’t know if I was screaming or not. Didn’t know if the tightness gripping my heart was real or imagined, but the awful silence of my dragon’s mind deafened me.
Something snatched me from the air at the same moment that I felt water spray on my face. I struggled against the grip, looking for Raolcan.
Where was he? Was he okay?
The dust was subsiding.
I thought that, perhaps, it was his purple form I saw sweeping down the roiling river and out of sight.
My heart burst.
Chapter Fifteen
“Don’t fight me!”
I twisted to see Leng gripping my safety strap, hauling me up onto Ahlskibi’s neck. We were flying low in the carved out riverway, along the water.
“Raolcan!” I gasped. “He went down the river!”
My crutch caught against Ahlskibi’s saddle and Leng freed it, tucking it in beside me. Ahlskibi coughed, fell a little in the air, and then recovered, flapping up the bank of the river and then over the side. He was flying low to the earth.
“We have to go after him!” My gaze couldn’t leave the river – not for a thank you, not to find comfort in Leng’s eyes – I needed Raolcan to be okay. I didn’t hear his voice in my mind no matter how hard I tried to listen. We needed to go after him. This battle meant nothing without my dragon whole and well.
“Ahlskibi is hurt,” Leng said tightly at the same moment that I was jarred so hard that my teeth shut in a violent chatter and my neck jerked forward and then back.
I ripped my gaze from the river to the clods of flying dirt around us. Ahlskibi skidded along the ground, tearing a line through the grass on Shonan’s side of the river. His great wings tangled around his neck and when he came to a stop he was limp and crumpled.
Leng leapt off his back racing to the head of his great dragon. I already knew there was nothing he could do. Dirt was packed around his head and forelegs from where he hit the ground.
Panicked, I scanned the world around me. It looked different from my place on the ground – tangled, chaotic, bloody. Dragons lay dead or dying in heaps, both near us and across the river. The army of Iskaris surged across the magical bridge, fanning out over the road and grassy hills to make space as more and more of them ran or rode or drove carts across the bridge. I watched as a knot of Magikas carefully crossed, holding their bubbling light in the center of their group the entire way across.
Up on the hill, Shonan and Iskaris still fought in a slow dance of death. Silver dragons ringed the hill, guarding the battle. All the other dragons – our dragons – were busy on the other bank, fighting the last of the shadowy Ifrits. Even if they won, we were too late. The ambush had failed.
Despair sunk into my heart as I carefully dismounted, leaning into my crutch. I hobbled up to where Leng stood by Ahlskibi’s head. The Purple dragon’s big eyes were closed but little steam bursts still came from his nostrils. Maybe he’d recover in a moment and we could go after Raolcan. He’d be okay. He’d wash up on the shore and we’d nurse him back to health and ...
My gaze met Leng’s and I felt cold fill me, starting at my face and then spreading down to fill every part of me like freezing rain in winter filling a barrel and coating the sides with ice.
There were tears on Leng’s face. Leng – who had faced torture and death. Leng – who had been hunted by the Dusk Covenant and tapped by Magikas to trap dragons. This Leng was crying.
I looked around at the dust and chaos, breathed in the pungent, eye-stinging smoke from patches of fire in the grass, heard the shouts of soldiers running just a dragon length from us as they ran to form up along the road and I realized that we were defeated. I couldn’t catch a breath. I couldn’t hold a thought. I didn’t know what to do next.
There was only Shonan and his battle left to hope in. If he won ...
I gasped as a Silver dragon swooped down suddenly over us and yanked Leng off his feet. His eyes grew large and his mouth opened, but I didn’t hear what he said before he was gone. Involuntarily, I reached toward him, feeling as if my heart had been wrenched from my chest. Not Leng, too!
I was yanked off of my own feet so suddenly that I lost my breath and then rough hands threw me over the back of a saddle. I grunted as the breath was knocked out of me. Wet leather and the smell of dragon filled my nose.
“Stay put,” a rough voice said.
I lifted my head to see what was happening and received a cuff from a gloved hand in return.
“I said, stay put!”
I was shaking all over, my teeth chattering and my hands and feet trembling uncontrollably as we flew through the air. Not being able to see where we were going and lying belly-down over the back of a saddle without even being strapped in left me queasy and ill.
When the Silver landed, it knocked my breath out a second time, and then I felt the same rough hands winding rope around my wrists and ankles and then again around my middle, cinching it tightly to the saddle.
“There. You can watch your leader die before we move on. But don’t try to escape. We don’t have to leave you alive. It’s only a courtesy to a fellow Rider.”
I lifted my head carefully, expecting another blow, but the Dragon Rider who captured me was already dismounting. His gilded armor was dull in the shadow of the dark clouds above us, but his face had a noble cast to it and his dragon rider braids were familiar as he strode away from the Silver he’d left me tied to. The unfamiliar dragon rumbled under me. For the first time in a very long time, I felt fear at being on the back of a dragon.
All I could think about was how different this one was from my Raolcan.
I was trying not to think of Raolcan as dead. There had to be some other reason that I couldn’t hear him in my mind. He would have survived the fall. He would be fine, floating in the river. Maybe he was hurt like Ahlskibi. Maybe he was just resting somewhere while he caught his breath. He’d been fighting for hours before he fell. He was probably tired. We were probably just too far apart to hear each other.
Excuses came faster than thought. But though my mind went through a thousand reasons, my heart welled up with sadness. It knew what I wouldn’t admit – that only death would keep my dragon from saving me. Only death could keep us apart. And if he hadn’t returned yet, he never would.
Chapter Sixteen
I didn’t realize how close I was to the battle between Iskaris and Shonan until I heard Iskaris’ voice.
“You weaken, boy.”
Boy? Shonan had been a man for at least a decade. Did Iskaris really think that treating him like a child would mean anything?
My mind was racing. Shonan winning right now was our last and only hope. If he won, then he would pick up that mask
and put it on and everyone would know Iskaris had deceived them and the Silver Dragon Riders and the men who followed Iskaris would have no choice but to switch their loyalties to Shonan. The Magikas would be another matter, but our dragons could deal with them. They were fighting the Ifrits and Magikas on the other side of the river, but we didn’t need them there anymore. We needed them to help Shonan.
Part of me asked how they could help now when they couldn’t help before, but the rest of my mind suppressed it. Shonan’s battle was our only hope. The dragons were our only resource. I needed to match one with the other and it would work out.
But how? Raolcan was not here to direct them. I felt the dull pain where the Pipe dug into my chest between me and the Silver’s saddle. Perhaps, if I wiggled around I could shift it out of my shirt and out to where I could grasp it in my lips and play it – not well, obviously, but playing it at all would do.
I twisted and wriggled, feeling like I was moving it by increments.
“You’ve got a live one there,” a woman’s voice said and then the rough voice of my captor responded.
“She’s tied securely. She’s going nowhere.”
“Why capture her at all?”
“She’s a Dragon Rider. Honor demands that the Dominar judge for himself what to do with her.”
As if I wasn’t already motivated enough. I knew exactly what Iskaris would do to me. I wriggled more, feeling the Pipe jab at my throat. Success! It was almost out of my shirt. I glanced up to see if anyone was watching me.
The guards were focused on the battle between Iskaris and Shonan. I watched as Iskaris made a tired lunge and Shonan barely evaded it. He was getting too slow. That lunge nearly had him. Sweat poured down the true Dominar’s face, glittering in the light through the parted clouds. His dark face was grim but there was a sense to his expression, as if a part of him were tucked far away from all this – untouchable, unstainable.
Dragon School: Troubled War Page 5
