The four Tridents all gave him a thumbs-up.
“All right, then. Let’s tickle the sea.” With a single thought—down—relayed to him, Brynn’s dragon plunged, wings tucked. Bubbly whitecaps vaulted toward his face. He veered up at the last moment, talons slashing through the water.
Junior Captain of the Trident Crests, Sir Gullus Mayle, took a silent breath of air as he broke the surface. The Trident Crests were a small subgroup of the Tridents focused mostly on aquatic combat. They numbered only twenty, and four of them were here tonight.
“Everyone okay?” Gullus asked as his men quietly broke the surface with their mouths and gulped fresh air. Eventually their heads came up and they watched as the tails of five dragons coalesced into the moonlight.
“Fog’s thick as chowder here,” said Geets.
“Better for us,” Gullus said. “Esse’s Hump is this way. Remember the plan, boys. And before we go, allow me to thank you all. It’s been a pleasure.”
As the warm salt water lapped against their chins, all four soldiers swam as silently as bipedals can. Swimming next to them, tied to their arms, were leather bags. Inside lay conjured spheres stuffed with explosive light that would detonate with the right amount of pressure.
They’d never get to use the spheres, and they knew that. The clutches perched upon Esse’s Hump would sense the magic long before the Crests got in range. They’d ravage the men, and they’d undoubtedly see the yellow eel stitched on their tunics—a statement that Farris Torbinen knew the dragons were here.
The clutches couldn’t allow that knowledge to be spread. They’d fly for Torbinen, to burn it. To flatten it. To poison it. And, unwittingly, to spring a trap that Oriana of Liosis had expertly laid.
There was just one problem. Gullus and his men had swum to Esse’s Hump. They climbed onto the protruding chunk of rock and stood on wet sand.
“Am I missing something here?” Gullus said.
“Yeah,” said Geets, “dragons. They ain’t here.”
Another soldier bent down and picked up a shed talon. “No, but they were.”
Terror marked the faces of all four men. They knew what this meant, and there was nothing they could do to help.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Adom pushed the toe of his boot into Elaya’s thigh. “Can’t well stay here forever, can we?”
She rocked back and forth, knees pulled up to her chin. A fire raged before her; Tig had just dumped in a fresh stock of pinecones. She sat at the tip of the same bluff she’d marched down less than one hour ago. Silderine lay empty, but it was all an illusion.
She had seen one thousand men and women and children walk obediently into the keep, utterly spellbound. Maybe Elaya would have been among them, if Laythe hadn’t personally carried her away.
She wondered why he had done that. He’d told her that Silderine couldn’t fall. This was her fault; the return of the Twin Sisters… her fault. He should have let her die. No—he should have let the Twin Sisters bring her back into Daughterhood.
“We shouldn’t linger here long,” Paya said, agreeing with Adom. “When those women—”
“Gods,” Adom corrected.
“I don’t care what they’re called. They’re no good, I’ll tell you that. Did you see the way those slaves looked at them? Dead in the eyes. Absolutely dead, I’m telling you. We need to leave this place, and I shouldn’t think we’ll ever return.”
Elaya rocked. Back and forth. Forth and back. Sometimes she blinked, mostly she did not.
Adom sat beside her. “Elaya. Hey, look at me.”
She stared ahead.
“They broke her,” Adom said, looking up at Tig.
“I’ll carry ’er,” Tig said. “Back to Tactin’s Fist, I say. ’Less you all vote to join that boy and his army of dead.”
Lavery and Laythe had offered the Eyes to tag along; they were going dragon hunting, they said, and they brought with them at least fifteen thousand walking, talking corpses called risen. But Elaya had climbed the bluff and plopped herself down, refused to move. Her mercenaries stayed too, not that many of them were eager to rub elbows with apparent living cadavers.
“All right,” Tig said, “up we go.” He scooped his hands under Elaya’s butt and lifted.
She shrieked.
Tig backed away, slowly. “O…kay. Er.”
Elaya rocked. Back and forth. Forth and back. Faces flashed before her. Dirty faces. Hungry faces. Tear-filled eyes and parched lips. She heard their voices, all of them telling her, Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you. Goddess, thank you. Thank you.
She freed them from a bad life and gave them a worse one. How could she live with this guilt? She’d ruined one thousand souls, and who knew how many thousands more with the Twin Sisters’ arrival.
She didn’t deserve to live. She no longer had the right to live.
“Elaya,” Adom said, hand on her shoulder, “you’re gonna freeze if you stay here. Come on.”
She rocked.
Bastion Rook had gotten the letter six hours before. With the might of his bannermen, he claimed the largest armies on Avestas. But how could he have prepared?
He hadn’t listened to Baern, the rambling old bastard. Dragons—it was absurd. Horace Dewn had come to him as well, told him that his spies had brought down two whelps. But when asked for evidence, he’d conveniently left them with Maren O’Keefe in Valios.
Bastion was convinced they were working with Farris, to pry his focus off the Torbinens.
He wished he’d listened.
The letter came to him from his brother, Taerl, Lord of Whitewatch about eighty miles east. It was short and hastily written, scribbled by a panicked hand. His brother said he had it on good authority that over twenty-five villages west of Whitewatch had burned, been iced over, or boiled with plague. At least seventy dragons, he said, maybe even a hundred.
They’re coming for me, brother. They’re coming for you.
Bastion crumpled up the letter. White-knuckled, he walked to the keep doors for the tenth time in as many minutes. He opened them, hoping maybe it’d go away.
He coughed as smoke filled his lungs and his kingdom smoldered.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Oriana yanked on the straps of her boots, tightening them. She rolled up the cuffs of her shirt, straightened her ponytail. She triple-checked Sarpella’s saddle; everything looked fine.
The clutches likely wouldn’t arrive for another hour at least. Unless the Evanescence dragons breathed them in, but that was unlikely. The Evanescence Clutch was rarely used to initiate assaults—mostly their breaths were saved for retreat.
“Moon’s big and fat tonight,” Rol said, making his rounds.
Oriana picked up the torch she’d been carrying. “How’s catapult work going?”
“Got the sixth one up just now. Prolly the last one we’ll have time to assemble. The bowyer and his little helpers got a hundred fifty bows made. Haven’t heard on the fletcher, but so long as he’s keepin’ up, we ought to have a good offensive. Er, defensive, I suppose.” He toddled and added with a quiet, uncertain voice, “Hope this works.”
She stroked his cheek, the ring he’d crafted her grazing his beard. “I think—”
A scream as pure and chilling as silence in a dark forest rived the air.
Rol and Oriana looked at one another with bulging eyes. Another scream. No, a wail.
From the Eastern Shore, a directive: “Turn ’em! Turn ’em!”
Over there—a blare, crackling and sizzling. And then a wedge of fire cleaved the sky and seared the pale moonlight. It crashed into the eastern wall, vomiting up a whooshing pyre. Sparks jumped high and floated downward as a confetti of wood, crushed stone, and linen snowed onto the sands of Torbinen.
Rol mouthed holy shit. “I gotta—”
“Go!” Oriana said. She let her hand slip from his as they held one another’s eyes for a moment more.
Head racing with a bevy of thoughts, she slapped a hand o
n Sarpella’s saddle horn, put her foot in the stirrup and heaved herself onto the seat.
Fly, she thought. Before Oriana could get the word from mind to mouth, Sarpella had already thrust herself upward. With a violent beating of her wings, she gave the citadel a wide berth, arcing around to the other side and coming into the city proper again.
The change of direction gave Oriana a view of… well, death.
Several dragons from the Iron Clutch landed on the parapet, their scales twisted and mangled, the color of steel scrubbed free of shine and luster. They chewed into the battlements, throwing back their heads and devouring the stone.
With their strength surging, a swift lash of one’s tail crumbled a portion of the wall.
Oriana saw a Trident grasped between talons. She prayed the dragon would throw him, end his life with a brief tumble off the wall. Instead, blood spurted from where his head used to be. As for the head itself, a mouthful of razor-like teeth chewed and masticated it, crushing bone, spewing brain.
“Ho!” bellowed a soldier. A catapult fired, its arrow fwwhiping into the night, missing its target.
“There, there, there!” Oriana said, her attempt at calmness betrayed by the lump in her throat and the shakiness in her voice. Sarpella drifted to the balcony of a towering church.
An appointed chain commander stood there, white-knuckling the banister. “What’s happening?”
Sarpella fluttered in place. “The clutches,” Oriana said, yelling over a deafening eruption of fire. She saw another whooshing flare from the corner of her eye. “They’ve come in from the east.”
“A surprise attack…”
“The plan still stands. Pass that message down the chains. Do not reveal yourself until I give the word.”
The sorcerer nodded and dashed inside.
From Torbinen’s West Shore approached a V of five dragons, headed by Brynn.
Brynn leaned high in his saddle, pointing behind Oriana. “Ori, we’ve got to pull them in. There’s not gonna be an eastern part of this town for long if we don’t.”
More screams. The kind that pimple your arms and send a shiver crawling across your shoulders. They came from gutted soldiers and terrified men who’d never once picked up a sword before this day. They came from women who wanted to show their strength but didn’t understand what going face-to-face with dragons meant. None of them understood, Trident or otherwise.
“We’ll—” Oriana shielded her eyes from an intense faucet of flames that had opened up and poured across the parapet. Two crimson dragons flew in opposite directions over the eastern wall, breathing fire over its expanse.
Everyone on that rampart had been baked alive.
“Shit,” Ingriss said.
“Shit’s about right,” Brynn agreed.
Oriana watched for a moment, studying, examining. She had precious little time, but charging in without a solid strategy for luring the dragons deeper into Torbinen would have spelled disaster.
Right now the clutches were still holding back. They wouldn’t for long, though. Once their initial reign of chaos sent people fleeing through the streets, they’d converge. But Oriana needed to bring them in on her terms, not theirs.
“Ori!” Brynn said. “Two m—no, no, four more. Crimsons. They’re doing another swath run.”
Swath runs were used by the Crimson Clutch to scorch a long and wide swath of space. At least two dragons would approach from opposite sides and fly toward one another, breathing fire on all that lay below them. It forced their defenders to retreat and boiled anything in their path in a bath of hot, syrupy fire.
This swath run wasn’t focused on the wall, but rather the first twenty feet behind it. General Hastings was likely somewhere in that area. So too were most of the Tridents. And Rol…
Call it selfishness, because maybe it was, but Oriana had to act. “Brynn, you and Estelia get to their flank, or as close to it as you can. Spit plague them. No swath runs; it’s too dangerous. Davok, Nyla, spit fire the front lines. Haran, protect them.”
“If they chase us?” Davok asked. His dragon, Jarom, opened its mouth and squealed.
“That means you’re doing something right. Lure them deeper into the city; don’t engage one-on-one, our dragons are too young. Soon as the clutches turn their attention to you, back out. Then bob back in.”
“Ori,” Brynn said. “Crimsons are in position.”
Oriana gave an affirming nod. “Good luck,” she said, then pressed on Sarpella to fly faster than she ever had before.
The dragon of the Bluesoul Clutch weaved in and out of Torbinen’s spiraling architecture. She expertly tucked her wings in, thinning herself between tightly packed buildings, emerging from alleyways with a burst of speed Oriana had never before seen. And her scales… they seemed to almost glow, like moonlit ice.
“You’re angry, aren’t you?” Oriana whispered. She felt her dragon gain newfound confidence—or was it swagger?
The four crimson dragons sucked in a bellyful of air. They were beginning their swath run.
Come on, come on, Oriana thought, leaning low in the saddle. Sarpella swung out wide and high. She straightened her trajectory to meet two of the dragons. In a steep descent, with her wings folded in, she gained on them.
A little ways ahead, where flames would soon conflate, ran Tridents and women and children. There was no shelter here. There weren’t even any cobbles. Only a stretch of deep sand, sucking and swallowing at boots and bare feet.
The sand here was soft and had been wheeled in from the coast, stuffed into trenches. It was a defensive measure, to allow Tridents to jump off the wall and fall back hastily. The design had never taken into account a dragon assault.
Some of the people dropped their weapons in a bid to flee faster, but legs cannot outrun the speediness of wings.
A little more, Oriana thought.
The crimson dragons stretched their necks. They aimed their mouths at the poor, poor souls who didn’t deserve this.
Suddenly, a cry.
Sarpella rolled sideways, throwing her wing up to keep Oriana secure. With her mouth aimed at the belly of one dragon, she blew forth a conal blast of blue gas. It sprayed across the underside of the beast’s wing, encasing it in glossy ice.
The dragon roared as it involuntarily lurched to one side, flapping its free wing frantically but unable to keep itself upright. Plumes of flames puffed into the black sky and there they vanished, extinguished by the stars and moon.
Given her vantage point—being broadside to the ground—Oriana watched the dragon plummet into the wall, its ice-encased wing shattering. Its eyes closed and not another breath was taken.
“Steady it now!” hollered a masculine voice. “Fire!”
Sarpella turned herself upright, allowing Oriana to view the scene as it’d been set. The three remaining crimson dragons had pulled up, abandoning their swath run. The partner to the one who Sarpella had downed peeled away in one direction and those straight ahead went another, flashing their bellies and throats at a contingent of bowmen below.
Oriana couldn’t hear the arrows cutting through the air, but she knew at least some had hit their target when piercing wails washed over her.
“That’s right, fuck you!” a soldier hollered.
Both dragons bobbed drunkenly, plunging and rising. Their ascents never quite matched the descents as blood fell from their throats. They tried clearing the wall, scurrying away, but their limp legs clipped still-standing battlements.
Chunks of stone soared and dragons fell. Sand billowed high as their corpses cratered the shore.
At this point, Oriana should have felt overjoyed. But war is messy. War is unpredictable. War ebbs and flows, and a victory is often met with nearby peril. From the corner of her eye, that peril flashed to life.
“Ori!” Brynn’s voice.
Three members of the Iron Clutch bounded toward her through a vast opening in the wall. They launched themselves into the air, almost completely vertical. She saw bl
oody talons, a foot in length, reaching for Sarpella’s jugular. She heard teeth gnashing as jaws opened and clamped shut.
Sarpella craned her neck. She spewed frozen breath at the first dragon, but it’d engorged itself on stone, fortifying its scales, innervating its muscles. The ice clung to its face momentarily like a wet, flimsy sheet of cotton, then evaporated.
The dragon slowed, but barely. And it seemed even angrier. The space between it and Sarpella closed. Oriana feared the worst. Her dragon could bank to the left, but she had too much forward momentum to make any sort of sharp turn. The raw power used by the Iron dragon to launch itself toward Sarpella had made getting away near impossible.
“Sod off!” Brynn bellowed. He barreled toward the dragon on his own. Eris was her name. She was a plagueborn dragon, belonging to the Wryth Clutch. Had she been older and better trained, Brynn likely would have had her dial in on the Iron dragon and spit globs of poison at it.
But Eris was young, her aim not at all precise. That had to be the reason, Oriana thought. It was the only reason why Brynn would risk her life. His life. She slammed into the Iron dragon with the full weight of her body, knocking it off course.
The Iron dragons bringing up the rear got tangled up in the mess, crashing into their brethren and Eris.
Sarpella escaped, darting upward, away from the chaos. Oriana looked back, squinting. Where was… no. No, no, no. Please be there. Brynn, please.
As the dragons fought to free themselves from one another, Oriana caught a glimpse of Eris’s saddle. It sat empty.
“They’re pissed!” said Davok, coming in on Oriana’s right side. “We got a lucky shot in on two Bluesouls; think they only got one of those left. But they’re—” He looked back. “Oh, yeah. They’re coming.”
Oriana pushed aside a deluge of morbid thoughts revolving around Brynn. There would be time to grieve, but that time was not now.
“Where are the others?” she asked.
Davok guided his dragon closer to Sarpella. “Iron bastard got Nyla. Haran was fending off a couple Wryths. It didn’t look good.”
The Dragon Thief (Sorcery and Sin Book 1) Page 38
