by Rachel Ford
For my own part, I kept going, pitched clear off the saddle, over the wyvern’s back, and between the great trees. I flew freely through the air for a few more meters, landing with a heavy, painful thump in a patch of undergrowth.
Rolling for a few more feet after I hit the ground, I finally came to rest at the base of a tree – having rolled into it with enough force to send a shiver of pain up and down my body.
For a moment, I think I blacked out. I don’t know how long I was out, but when I woke, my wyvern was gone, having lifted out of the makeshift clearing sometime during the interval. I was at once relieved – he’d survived, well enough to beat a retreat – and alarmed. I didn’t have a precise bearing on my location, as I’d been spun and tossed and jostled more than a little on my way down.
But I was well at the periphery of base. I knew that.
Grunting and groaning, I pushed myself onto my feet. I followed the path of destruction, picking my way through felled trees and smoldering greenery. Apparently, my wyvern had been breathing fire as we went down. Testaments to his handiwork still smoked all around me.
After about three hundred meters of devastated forest, I reached open land. I saw dragons overhead, but fewer now than there had been. I glanced around, at the open area. I was looking for the other knight, the one who had pursued me down.
I’d been looking for him when I crashed but hadn’t seen him. Now, I wasn’t sure where I was in relation to where he’d gone down, or nearly went down. Hell, I wasn’t entirely sure where I was, either. I saw smoke and fire to the north, so I figured I was somewhere south of the main compound. But beyond that, I had no clue.
I peered into the darkness, squinting to see. The clouds were parting, and, as far as I was from the cluster of buildings, the smoke did not blot out the moonlight here. So I could make out some of the features of the landscape, cast in shimmery, bluish silver illumination.
About three hundred and fifty meters to my left, a patch of trees lay in the same kind of disarray as those directly to my rear. I knew instinctively what that meant. The rider had gone down after all. He was probably dead, I thought. And if he’s not? I pondered for a moment if I should go in search of that Southern knight.
If I lived through the night and got to recount the evening’s battle to squires – or the Commander, for that matter – I’d probably say that surviving my own crash took a hell of a lot of skill.
The truth was, it was more damned good luck than skill that had pulled me through. Sure, there’d been a few times when presence of mind probably saved my hide. But clinging to the back of an eight-ton wyvern, careening into the earth at breakneck speed, there was only so far good planning could carry you. The fact that my brains hadn’t been battered out of my skull by a low hanging branch, or that none of the larger debris had flown back onto me, or that my bones hadn’t been smashed into splinters had almost nothing to do with my efforts, and everything to do with blind luck.
So what were the odds of two riders surviving crashes like that, back to back? Not good. What was more likely was that the dragon had survived. Wyvern were bigger, their bones stronger, their scales practically impenetrable. They were living, breathing tanks – tanks with wings. They could take a hell of a beating and pick right up where they’d left off.
Mine had done so. But what if this one hadn’t left yet? What if he’d broken a wing, or otherwise been injured, and couldn’t fly away? From my vantage, I couldn’t tell. He might be hiding in the cluster of downed trees, or he might be long gone. I just didn’t know.
I stood there, indecision coursing through me. Unlikely didn’t mean impossible. For all I knew, the knight might still be there. But if I went in search of him, and the dragon was there, I’d die. The wyvern steel of my dragon’s saddle had kept me safe in the air, but that – along with my dragon – was long gone. Hell, even my pistol was gone, as I’d tucked that into one of the saddle holsters.
No, I decided. I needed to get back to base and get my hands on weapons. I could always come back to verify that he was dead later.
I’d just started my trudge back to the flaming compound when a shadow passed overhead. I froze, glancing upward. I knew what it was – the only thing it could be. But I didn’t know if it was friend or foe.
“Lil,” a voice called, putting my fears to rest. It was Ana. “You’re alright.”
I waved to her, quite unnecessarily, as she’d already ID’ed me and was circling overhead. “Fine.”
“I’m trying to figure out how to land,” she shouted. “Give me a minute, and I’ll pick you up.”
I nodded, stepping well back of her approach. Ana was doing remarkably well for someone on her first flight. But first landings tended to be a little bumpy. And bumpy, when dealing with as many tons of heft as a dragon possessed, meant deadly for anyone in the way. I was determined not to be that someone.
It wasn’t the smoothest landing. I was pretty sure I heard her dragon snort in annoyance. I definitely wound up wearing kicked up dirt and grass. But she made it down in one piece, and the dragon seemed alright too, if slightly aggravated, to judge by the side-eye he threw our way.
She leapt off as soon as the creature came to a stop, and, before I could open my mouth, wrapped me in another bear hug. “Dammit, Lil,” she said, “when you went down, I thought…”
“I know. I’m sorry, Ana. I took my eyes off what I was doing for half a second.”
She let me go, and I saw that there was a sheen of moisture in her eyes that she was blinking back furiously. My heart lurched at the sight, and I froze for a moment, dumbstruck, trying to breathe. It was as if, of all the horrors I’d witnessed tonight, that one – tears in Ana’s eye – stood out as the worst. “That’s it, KP: that was your last freebie. You scare me like that again, I’m going to kick your ass.”
I grinned, as touched by the sentiment in her expression as I was unnerved by the fierceness of my own response. I deployed one of my tried and true coping mechanisms for confronting uncomfortable emotions: deflect with humor. “If it helps at all, that crash did kind of kick the shit out of me.”
“Good,” she said, in a tone that didn’t sound at all like she meant it. “It’s nothing more than you deserve.”
Chapter Thirty-Four – Callaghan
Derel mounted the dragon, who stamped his foot in a seemingly impatient or frustrated fashion. I couldn’t tell which, but that the beast was displeased was clear. My own wyvern, she’d told me, had flown off not long after I left. So had the Southern Knight’s. “Without him on its back.”
When I asked if she’d gotten a clear look at him, she shook her head. “No. Sorry, Lil, but he was too far away to ID.”
“Well, he’s probably dead anyway.”
“I hope so.”
“Me too. Hey, will you give me a lift?”
“Of course. Where to?”
“Back to the dragons. I need to get another one and get back in the air.”
“Righto. Follow me, then.” She’d assumed her spot in the saddle and beckoned me to follow.
I had just laid hold on the first rung of the ladder when a blast of laser fire seared past me, centimeters from my hands, and fizzled out on the wyvern’s scales. I ducked instinctively, drawing down to make myself a smaller target, and glanced for the shooter.
I didn’t move a moment too soon, either. A series of blasts tore through the air where I’d been standing a moment earlier, landing harmlessly on the dragon where they would have struck fatally on myself.
I noticed this, but my focus was on the knight. His face was obscured by the stream of blinding light emitting from his pistol. But I recognized the man without seeing his face. The hulking form, the angry, confident posture: it was all seared into my mind.
This was SKP Valarian, the leader of this band of murderers and cutthroats, the man on whose head rested so much blood and death and destruction. I reached for my gun, remembering with frustration that it was gone.
Ana had already
drawn her own pistol and was firing in return. Her shots went wide, peppering the ground around him. Valarian, meanwhile, moved his aim from me to her. I traced the streams of light, and I saw it before it hit: a burst of energy, on track to hit her.
I screamed out a warning. It was probably not much more than insensible noise. But I was too late.
The blast struck, and I saw Ana propelled backward by the force, out of the saddle.
For half a second, I thought I’d been shot. The white-hot pain surging through me, that seemed to split my heart in two, felt like a shot. But I was as whole and unscathed as ever.
Still screaming, I pushed to my feet. I leaped for the ladder, climbing two rungs at a time until I had reached the saddle. Ana’s gun lay there, dropped when she’d fallen. I grabbed it, and the sword that hung in its sheath, and leaped down.
Valarian was still shooting, and I returned fire, running for him as I went. My pistol’s shots were scattered, in the same way I’d observed when Ana used it. There was something wrong with the gun. Perhaps it had been damaged in combat earlier. Something certainly seemed off with the targeting mechanism. But whatever the cause, the bolts were dispersed in a wide pattern, out and away from the point of focus.
I shifted my aim a little rightward, and half of my shots got closer. The other half fell even further afield. Then, I saw Valarian had stopped shooting. He glanced for a moment at the gun and dropped a charge cylinder. With his free hand, he reached for refills.
But he had none strapped to him. Like all of us, he was in fancy dress. His recharge canisters would be on his dragon.
He cast the pistol aside, raising his sword and charging for me.
Maybe it was straight up hubris. Maybe it was pure, raw hatred. Maybe it was misplaced chivalry. But in the moment, some darker force overrode my good sense. I wasn’t going to shoot Valarian from a distance. I was going to meet him, man to woman, knight to knight. And I was going to kill him myself. No guns and energy bolts.
No. This was going to be up close and personal, so I could deliver the death blow with my own hand. So I could watch him, watching it coming.
I tossed the gun aside and pumped my legs a little harder. We met in a clash of steel. He was strong, stronger even than he looked, and the feeling of that strike reverberating down my sword and through my entire being was my first inkling that perhaps I’d miscalculated.
I’d thrown my full bodyweight into that strike, and while I felt it in my bones, he hadn’t even flinched.
There was murder in his eyes, as dark and determined as the murder in my heart. But there was something else, too: satisfaction.
As far as Senior Knight Protector Valarian was concerned, I had indeed made a fatal error. Even in the moonlight, it was clear as day on his features. I gritted my teeth.
He’d killed scores, perhaps hundreds, of good knights. He’d killed Ana, my poor, sweet Ana. He was probably going to kill me. And he had the audacity to grin about it?
No. Not tonight, Valarian. I might not live through this, but I’d be damned if he did either.
He didn’t give me much time to ponder that, though. As soon as our blades met the once, he drew back for another strike, and then another, each as powerful and heavy as the first. Their speed didn’t diminish either. He wielded the blade as easily as if it was a twig.
I found myself on the defensive, scrambling to keep one step ahead of him. He saw it too, because he grew even more confident. He pressed his attack harder, taking less care with defense and advancing more boldly.
Back and forth we went, circling the field. We were in a wide, unobstructed clearing, far from the dragon and Ana’s body. The ground was flat, with not much more than a dip here or a depression there. I almost lost my footing once, and I saw him catch his balance another time. But mostly, the field provided no obstacle.
We were far from the smoke too – a fact for which I was intensely grateful. With as hard as my lungs were heaving, I don’t think I would have survived lungsful of smoke.
And still, we went round, blocking and parrying and dodging. He’d feint, leaving a false open in the hopes that I’d step in, or pretending to come at me one way when he intended another.
I got something of an idea of his ability and style in these first go-rounds, and he, I felt, learned little of mine. How could he? I was on the defensive, while he prosecuted the attack. You don’t learn as much from a retreating enemy.
But after a space, I decided it was time for Valarian to get a little education of his own.
I waited until he came for me, moving in quick and agilely on the balls of his feet.
I could counter strength like his, but I couldn’t match it. He was counting on that to carry him to victory. But I could move more quickly, and with more precision.
Which I demonstrated, with a leap up to cross blades. I felt the slam of his blade into mine and heard the clang of metal. And a moment later, he felt the impact of my foot, kicking at a sideward angle into the joint of his knee.
A satisfying crunching of bone preceded a roar of agony from the big man. I grabbed for his sword arm with my free hand, as he reached for me. The shattered knee buckled, but he managed to keep himself standing. With one hand, he reached for my throat, and with his sword arm he pulled against my grasp.
Even injured, he was considerably stronger than me. His fingers were seizing around my windpipe. I knew I had about two seconds to finish this, or he would hobble off this field the victor, and I would remain, a corpse. I drew my sword arm back, plunging it between his ribs even as his fingers tightened, cutting off the flow of oxygen to my lungs.
The tip of the blade pierced leather and fabric and then flesh, and bit in deep. A strangled cry left his throat, becoming a gurgle. His hand loosed around my throat, and the blade dropped from his own grip.
I staggered backward, gasping for air. He collapsed to his knees, a crimson streak running down his tunic. It looked black in the evening light. Then, he fell forward, landing with a heavy thud.
I stood in place, catching my breath. I nearly pissed myself with fright when a bolt of energy zipped past me, and Valarian’s body jumped with the impact. My reaction was a little more measured the second and third time, as I realized the shots were aimed at the body, but not much. I was still too oxygen deprived, and had come too close to death, to be entirely rational.
I spun around, looking for the shooter. And I damned near fell over when I saw Derel standing there, one arm hanging limp, the discarded pistol in the hand of the other.
Chapter Thirty-Five – Derel
Lil careened into me, and for half a second, as the impact reached my injured shoulder, I was seeing stars. But, in the next, I felt her arms wrapped around me, and I forgot about the pain. “Ana,” she said, and I could hear tears, “my gods, you’re alive.”
“Course, KP.” I tried to keep my tone light, as if I wasn’t fighting with every fiber of my being not to read too much into those tears. “You’ll have to try harder than that to –”
I was going to say that she’d have to try harder than that to get rid of me. But I never got the words out. She’d drawn back from the embrace, and now pulled me to her in a kiss.
I saw stars again.
How long we stayed there, I couldn’t say. It might have lasted a moment, or an eternity. I only knew that I was breathless when she pulled away. “Lil,” I whispered. “Why…?”
“You know why, Ana.”
I did. The doubt and confusion of earlier was long gone. The world might be going to hell around us, but in that moment, I knew that what I felt for her, what I’d sensed of her feelings for me, wasn’t wrong. I felt giddy, and a little lightheaded. I thought I might cry.
So, I blinked back the tears, and forced a laugh. “Hell, KP, if that’s all it took to get you to kiss me, I would have let myself get shot a lot earlier.”
She laughed too. “Come on. You’re injured. We need to get you to a medic. And I need to get back up there.”
So I got on the back of the dragon, held onto Lil with my good arm, and kissed her goodbye when she set me down beside the compound.
Now that the dragons were otherwise occupied, the camp was alive with knights and squires at work. A makeshift hospital had gone up on the far side of the yard, and bucket brigades were making way for a lumbering firewagon. Rescuers scrambled in and out of burning shells, dragging charred and wheezing bodies with them.
“Stay safe, Lil.”
“You too, Ana.”
And with that, she was gone, my reluctant dragon indignantly obeying her commands, as he’d done mine.
Time seemed to pass in turns at breakneck speeds and then glacial paces after that. My wound was patched, quickly, between more serious surgeries. The last of the Southern dragons were killed or run off, and the fires put out. Phillip found me. He’d joined one of the bucket crews, and then a rescue team. He was covered in filth but threw a heedless hug around me anyway. “Thank the gods, Ana. I thought that dragon would have killed you.”
“To be honest…so did I, Phil.”
Lil sought me out as soon as she could. And with the return of the riders, came news of the invasion. Before long, it had spread throughout the survivors. A kind of informal war council sprang up by the edge of the smoldering compound. Lidek and KP Alduran were there, and most of the senior knights who had survived. Lil was there, of course, and Phillip and I settled at the outskirts. I was not quite sure if we were invited, and this seemed a good way to eavesdrop without drawing too much attention to ourselves.
“They’ll be here in just hours. We need to get our people to the keep,” Lidek decided. “There’s nowhere left, here, to defend. We’ll meet them from your castle, Callaghan.”
