by Rachel Ford
We rose five meters, then ten, and I clutched at the saddle for some manner of hold. Suddenly, the wyvern banked to the right. The knight slid out of his stirrups, down across the dragon’s back and wings, and landed with a heavy, sickening thud below me. His sword followed.
I barely noticed. My legs had gone out from under me. I clutched the caparison with one hand and held onto the sword Lil had given me with the other. My legs flailed as I tried to catch onto something – anything.
The tips of the toes on my left foot grazed one of the ladder rungs once. I kicked out, trying to find them again. And this time, my boot caught. Perching on the tips of toes, I pushed myself up until I could bring the other foot into range.
The dragon was still thrashing this way and that, trying to shake me off. It was everything I could do to hold on. My arm quivered, and my legs trembled as I inched upward, toward the saddle.
An eternity seemed to pass before I dragged myself into place and secured myself on the wyvern’s back. I was shaking from head to toe, and every glance downward, as the ground grew further away, the world smaller and more obscure, only added to my terror.
My brain was in a haze of panic, a fog of terror, and for half a minute, I just clutched the saddle. Then, though, my mind returned. The reins. Get the reins. That’s how they control these monsters: just like a horse. Only, bigger. And evil.
I took and loosed a breath, seizing the reins and sheathing my blade. I’d been riding since I was a child. I hadn’t met a horse I couldn’t handle. I could handle this too.
I pulled at the reins, like I would if bringing Freya to a sudden halt. And lurched forward, as the dragon dove downward, and banked again.
My heart stayed firmly in my mouth for a long minute after that, as I clung to the saddle and the monster righted itself. I tried again, more gently this time, easing it to the side.
It snarled and snorted and beat its wings angrily. We bobbed up and down with the violence of the movement.
But it turned, ever so slightly, in the direction I’d indicated. And I let myself catch my breath again. See? Just a big, evil horse.
Chapter Thirty-One – Callaghan
Once again, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. The fight had been to give them a quick exit to launch their attack. The attack was intended to level Cragspoint, the military base standing between the army at our border and the unsuspecting heartland.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I didn’t know if Lidek had seen it already. I didn’t know if anyone had. All I knew was, we couldn’t do anything with enemy riders here: we couldn’t save our people from the inferno below, or the army to the south.
So that’s where I focused: on the riders. I counted eight. The livery and saddles were different between North and South. Our dragons had been outfitted with nothing more than practical saddles and harnesses, but theirs had come in parade colors befitting a visiting delegation.
As galling as it was, considering the business they were about, it made identification a little easier in the moment. One of our own riders was missing – grounded or dead, or perhaps below the smoke. Without seeing the missing wyvern, I couldn’t say. But, counting myself, there were only five of our dragons still visible.
And eight of the enemy. Those were better odds than what we’d started with, and I focused on that. I headed for the nearest wyvern, a great, crimson beast, what remained of its white and blue caparison singed and tattered. This, no doubt, was the handiwork of the Northern dragon he pursued.
The beast dove, banking sharply to the right. Whoever was behind the reins seemed to be trying to double back, to face the Southerner head on. A little help, I decided, would not go amiss.
So I nudged my own wyvern in that direction. “Let’s go.” He probably couldn’t hear me – not with the rush of air and the chaos of battle all around. But he responded like clockwork to the tapping of the reins.
We went up, higher and higher until we were well out of the rider’s field of view. We flew like this, adjusting as we went so that we lined up with the Southerner. Then, I tugged the reins downward, and tapped my heels.
Wind rushed past in a deafening roar, and we fell at a dizzying speed. Fall was the right term, too, for my wyvern had pulled his wings in tight against his body and angled his head straight down, letting gravity propel him as fast and hard as an eight-ton beast could go.
We plummeted toward the other wyvern. It was busy unleashing a blast of fire on the Northerner it pursued. But its rider must have heard our fall. He glanced up a few moments before impact and scrambled to pull out of the way.
Now, my wyvern opened his wings, morphing from a solid drop to a crushing glide. A moment later, our trajectory lifted. Then, we hit.
Rather than a direct, dragon-to-dragon, midair pileup, we grazed the top of the Southern wyvern – hard, fast, and heavy. It was thrown completely off course, listing to the side, flapping its wings to right itself.
And its rider? Well, I couldn’t make out much of the rider beyond a bloody streak across the saddle. Wherever he was – what was left of him, anyway – he was quite dead. I was certain of that.
I wasn’t sure whether to celebrate or throw up. We leveled off, and I turned to find the Northern knight. He offered a wave of thanks and moved on.
I glanced around the field, looking for my next target. The skies surrounding me were empty, but my eyes lit on a low flying dragon in the distance. It was dark, its scales more muted than the crimsons of some wyvern and not so dark as the black of my own. I couldn’t make out the color of its caparison, but it was dark too.
I noticed these details in passing, but it was the curious manner of flight that really caught my attention. Up and down, bobbing like an apple in a barrel of water, it seemed to be struggling to figure out a direction.
If dragons could get drunk, this, I imagined, is what they’d look like. In another situation, in another time, I would have watched in sheer curiosity. Now, though, I set aside the feeling. Whatever was going on there, I saw the tiny black silhouette of a knight on its back.
And I smiled to myself. “Let’s go get him, boy.”
Again, he didn’t hear me, but, again, he moved with precision at my prodding. We turned our backs to the main conflict, heading in the outlier’s direction. Up and down, rising and falling, he bobbed.
I readied my pistol. In a sense, it felt unsporting. Whoever this rider was, clearly something was wrong already. Still, he’d come to murder us. He’d come here in the company of a suicide bomber, to kill us as we spoke of peace.
As I squinted over the barrel of my pistol, I paused. The knight had begun to flail his arms. What the…? I couldn’t make out much in the lighting and at such a distance, but he was thin and tall.
A voice, sounding very far away, hit my ears. I would have sworn it was Ana’s. But that, of course, was impossible. I wouldn’t have been able to hear her – not from up here.
“Lil,” it repeated, and this time I was certain. I glanced down toward the surface, my eyes searching for her. I saw flaming buildings, so small from this vantage they looked like children’s toys. I saw men running, seeming little bigger than ants scampering this way and that around a smoldering hill. But mostly, I saw smoke – clouds and billows and pillars of it, some rising heavenward, some spreading out over the land, and some lingering halfway between the heavens and earth.
In none of this, though, did I see Ana.
And the knight, its injured dragon weaving this way and that, was getting closer. I turned back. He was still flailing his arms. And I frowned.
‘He’ was not a he at all, but rather a woman. I could see long hair now, falling behind her.
“Lil, it’s me. Lil, don’t shoot.”
I blinked, dropping the weapon arm. “Ana?”
It was indeed Ana, and the nearer she got, the clearer it became. I could make out her face now, and the dragon too. It was undoubtedly one of the Southern birds, decked out in the livery of – I hoped – a dead knight. W
hat she was doing with it, I couldn’t begin to guess. But it did explain the uneven handling.
Ana had never trained with dragons. She was a consummate horsewoman, but dragons were in a league all their own. I was surprised – and a little fearful. But mostly, I was worried that she’d be mistaken for a Southerner by someone else – someone who might not stop in time.
She saw that I’d holstered my weapon, and now lowered her arms. I heard her shout something, but I couldn’t tell what it was. My mind raced. The dragon’s caparison had to go. In a few seconds, I’d have flown past her. In a few seconds, she’d be headed for the thick of battle, where other knights might not recognize her.
Chapter Thirty-Two – Derel
I was just breathing a sigh of relief – Lil must have heard me, as she’d put her gun down – when a wash of flames poured over me and my dragon. The wyvern steel protected me as it had before, but the sight stunned me.
“What the hell, Lil?” I demanded.
My dragon, meanwhile, seemed to bristle at being hit without being allowed a response. He harrumphed a protest, with sparks and smoke rising from his nostrils. It wasn’t pain, I knew. They were some of the only living creatures that could withstand dragon fire. Which made sense, since they were also the ones who produced it.
Still, he snorted and shook himself, and twisted his head around to throw a sidelong look in my direction. I blinked at the ire in those golden eyes. For perhaps the first time since I’d encountered a dragon, I saw something more than brute strength and menace.
It was the look a good horse or a good dog might give, the kind that was well-trained enough to follow commands but with the brains and spirit to hold opinions about those commands, too.
“Sorry, boy,” I mumbled. “I don’t know what’s gotten into Lil.”
I glanced around. For that matter, I didn’t know where she’d gotten to at all. She must have sailed past in the initial blast. I craned my neck behind me, trying to pick her out. But she was nowhere to be seen.
Then, I almost leaped out of the saddle when a voice, muted by the wind, called, “Ana, your colors: you need to lose them.”
It came from above, and I angled my head in that direction. Sure enough, she was there, coming back around and leveling off to fly alongside of me. She flew a little higher and further ahead, gliding so that the wings of our two mounts didn’t touch.
“What?”
“Your colors: they’re Southern colors. You need to lose them.”
I blinked, glancing down at my dragon. The purple caparison he’d worn earlier was in tatters now, scorched and burned and hanging. All at once, I understood why she’d fired at us: the blast had devastated the fabric.
But it hadn’t been enough – and there was no way I could do better. Even if I knew how to take them off, which I didn’t, we were in the air. “Again,” I shouted. “Fire at us again, Lil.”
She nodded. “Copy that.”
Then, she drew off, putting distance between us. I reined my own mount to a slower flight. Then, sucking in a nervous breath, I reached down to pat him. His scales were solid, like polished rock under my hand. I flinched but didn’t draw away. “Sorry about this, boy. But neither of us want to die, I think.”
And then the fire came again. Again, my dragon snorted and shook with irritation. Then Lil rounded on us again, so that she was flying alongside me. “What are you doing up here?” she shouted.
“Things didn’t go as planned. Long story.”
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t know how to ride.”
“No,” I conceded. “But I think I’m learning.”
Even in the meager moonlight, even at the distance we were at, I could see an eyebrow arch up. “Do you know how to land?”
“Not yet. Getting there.”
“Ana, look south.”
“South?” My eyes darted over, expecting to find a rider approaching. The skies were empty, though, and I frowned into the night. “Lil, I don’t see…”
Then, I did see it, and I gaped. Far away, a dark, slow moving mass blackened the horizon, punctuated with occasional points of light. Vehicle headlights, I guessed, and torches. “An army.”
“It’s an invasion.”
I licked my lips with a dry tongue. The explosion had probably been the signal. All that time that they’d talked and laughed and ate and drank with us, they’d been waiting just across the border. They’d be through No Man’s Land, soon enough. Terrence’s Fort would fall quickly, and then they’d be at Shire’s End. Here.
“We need help, Ana.”
I nodded. That was for damned sure. Even if Cragspoint hadn’t been hit, it was more a training base than anything else these days. There weren’t enough knights here to prosecute a full-scale border defense.
“You can reach Edgerton in half an hour on dragon. Go there. Get reinforcements.”
“Now?” My heart sank at the idea of leaving in the middle of battle – of leaving Lil.
But she nodded. “They’ll be here in hours. We need to be ready.”
“After we save Cragspoint,” I said. “I’ll go then.”
“Go now. We can take care of this. But you’re not a dragon rider. You shouldn’t be in combat.”
I was about to argue further when movement below us caught my eye. It was to the rear of our two dragons, a dark flash barely visible in my peripheral vision. I turned my head, and my eyes bulged. “Lil, look out,” I screamed, pulling hard on the reins of my own dragon.
Another wyvern – a huge, muscular beast in Southern livery – was on an intersect course, flying fast and coming hard at us. I banked just in time, a great gust of wind and fire spraying my retreating side.
Lil was not so lucky. I heard the impact before I could level off to see it. Her dragon had taken the brunt of the force, and for half a moment spun out wide and wildly, its wings flapping impotently as it tried to regain control. It was dropping, heavy and fast, like a stone. Mercifully, she was still in the saddle, alive and clutching on for dear life.
The Southerner, meanwhile, was coming back for another round. He ignored me, and went straight for her, intent, it seemed, on finishing what he’d started.
I didn’t think twice. I didn’t hesitate. I reined my mount back around and followed him down.
Chapter Thirty-Three – Callaghan
We were spinning out of control, my dragon and me, and plunging downward. The vertical drop combined with the circular motion and centrifugal force was making me nauseous. If I hadn’t already lost my dinner, I’d have lost it in the moment.
As it was, I fought to hold on, and fought to stay conscious. I’d lost the reins. They were flapping and whipping this way and that with every new motion. Now and then, as we spun to the right vantage, I saw the Southern dragon on its dive toward us. It was moving in a straight line, fast and unflinching.
Fuck. We were still falling, but the haphazard spinning had slowed. Now, my dragon seemed to be working on righting himself, and leveling off.
I strained to reach the reins, pulling myself forward on the saddle. My fingers brushed the leather, but a sudden jerking of his wings threw me backward. When I regained my equilibrium, I tried again. And this time, grasping them with the tips of my fingers, I managed to snag the reins, and draw them back into my palm.
I waited until the dragon had restored his balance, giving only a nudge here or a tug there as I thought it would be useful. But the beast had been flying far longer than I, and he knew how to manage his own affairs better than a human. So I left the business of getting back in the air to him.
And he managed it with not much time to spare. When we resumed a normal, steady flight, we’d plummeted so low his wings brushed the treetops below us.
Our pursuer had drawn back a little, slowing his own descent. I think he half expected us to crash to our deaths and save him the trouble of murder. When we didn’t, though, he pursued the business of murder with a vengeance.
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He was bearing down on us from above, and I had the unhappy sensation that I was coming perilously close to winding up dead in precisely the gruesome fashion I’d disposed of the last Southern knight I fought.
All at once, I saw our pursuer plunge wildly off course. In the next instant, I saw a second dragon – Ana’s dragon – had careened into him. She was pulling back, trying to control her own mount, as I glanced behind me.
I was searching for the Southerner, to see what had become of him. Was he still in the air, ready to pursue all over again? Or had she, at this low altitude, knocked him out of the sky for good?
I took my eyes off what I was doing for a moment too long, though. I might have pulled the reins, too, as I pivoted to look.
My wyvern shifted course, dropping the tiniest bit – just a few degrees. That was all it took. In the next instant, branches slapped into my face, and scratched at me. “Oh. Fuck.” I tried to pull up, to lift us above the tree line.
But it was too late. Once caught in the mire of limbs and foliage, we didn’t rise again. The wyvern absorbed the brunt of the impact, the great branches snapping off him like twigs. For my own part, I was consumed by the business of shielding my face from flying debris and trying to unfasten myself from the saddle – without flying off in the meantime. But I did not want to find myself pinned in place when we finally came to rest.
Whole trees came down all around as we careened downward. I felt the sting of impacts all over my body, from my head to my torso to my limbs. Nothing seemed to have snapped, but I could feel the burn of blood running down my face and arms, hot against my flesh.
Then, abruptly, we came to a halt between two great oaks. The wyvern impacted with the trees hard, and they groaned and gave a little, until they leaned at a precarious angle. But they did not topple, and he stopped.
