Sonata Form

by Carole Cummings

If, Ellis didn’t say out loud. If.

  Torcalon had seemed vast to him, once, the countryside between it and the Croft endless—fields and pastures; streams and pools; moors and bluffs; trees and trees and trees. Now it was only a few fingerlengths on a map, nothing at all between his home and those who meant to take it. Nothing at all but him, and those with him, and the men and women right now lining the banks of the Chwaer farther north, because if the enemy took the waterways, Wellech was done. And Wellech was bloody lousy with waterways.

  The Confederation hadn’t got through Wellech before Sowing. They’d come in through Hollywell, dragons leading the way, burning everything splashed by that silver-white light, but one dragon had been clipped on the wing early in the siege and gone down somewhere in the woods west of Granstaf. No one had seen it since. Everyone hoped it was dead. Ellis sort of hoped it had managed to limp to Whitpool.

  Something young and optimistic in him had halfway expected an end then—you didn’t make it, it’s too late, you’re done here. Except it hadn’t ended. It just went on. Goals changed, timetables altered, strategies amended. Because there was always Reaping.

  Bethan made herself more comfortable on the muddy ground, headset still in place, listening and digging in to wait for the signal to move.

  They’d been separated from Yelton weeks ago. And then they’d been cut off from the RF lieutenant who’d made Ellis’s ragtag assembly of Wardens and citizens with guns into a rearguard. Missions planned and sanctioned by people who knew better than Ellis, so he’d put up no fuss. That ended under heavy fire at the ferry port when the lieutenant ordered a retreat, and Ellis had decided they were not leaving all those ferries just sitting there, waiting to be used by the Confederation.

  They’d lucked into Dyfan only a few days before. The lieutenant hadn’t quite understood why having the head of the miners’ union within reach was such a boon; Dyfan was not a young man, after all, more paunch now than pluck, and years in the mines had given him a distinct wheeze when he exerted himself. Perhaps the reports the lieutenant must’ve received afterward, detailing how every ferry in port had been reduced to kindling in the water, had clued him in. Because if you want a good, precise explosion—or a host of them—put a miner on it. And since the first thing Dyfan had done when the Confederation breached Wellech’s beaches was to evacuate and hide every one of his demolitionists and squirrel away every last blasting cap and speck of gunpowder in various boltholes throughout the parish, Ellis had put Dyfan to immediate and violent use. Ellis might never know what the lieutenant thought of it all, because Ellis and the rest of his small band had been unable to get back across the lines in the aftermath of their first foray. And then, once Bethan got hold of someone in charge on the radio, they’d been ordered not to. Because even if the lieutenant hadn’t recognized what Ellis was doing, Mastermind had.

  They were M Company now. A band of guerillas. Officially unofficial, and answerable only to Walsh and Alton. The M is for Miscreants, Walsh had said wryly. Ellis liked to think of them as freedom fighters. Resistance. The enemy, he knew, thought of them as savages. With what he knew of the Confederation’s tactics, Ellis thought that was proper hilarious. He also thought he was pretty much all right with it.

  Demolitions, ambushes, theft, arson. Weaseling through back ways into enemy encampments or strongholds, and wreaking what havoc they were able. Wriggling through weak points in pickets, and stealing ammunition or just blowing it up, because this was their home, all of them, they’d lived here all their lives, they knew it, knew how to exploit it like the enemy never could. Blowing bridges, boobytrapping roadways, destroying railways, because if they couldn’t get the enemy out of Hollywell, they could at least hold them there.

  Bethan took off her headset and began packing up the radio. “Undeg says the way’s clear. Just waiting on us now.”

  Undeg was one of the four who’d listened to Lilibet at the Coven and come forward to answer Wellech’s call; she was also one of the few students Lilibet had grudgingly agreed had learned enough to be effective in battle without getting themselves killed five minutes in.

  Ellis vaguely remembered Undeg and her brother Bowen spending summers at Rhediad Afon, like Milo used to do. Two near-identical faces among over a dozen eager young student sorcerers and witches, but that was about it. If he’d had impressions of them from whatever brief, distant encounters he might’ve had over the years, those impressions would’ve been small and timid and quiet. And he would’ve been very, very wrong.

  “Let’s move, then,” Ellis said, and started leading the way back. They’d need every one of those five minutes to get clear.

  “Syr, it’s a matter of making the air pressure work for the detonation, enhancing the blast,” Undeg had told Ellis, eager and bright-eyed, back before they’d got their first official order to keep doing what they’d been doing. “Making one stick of dynamite work like ten.”

  Dyfan had merely shrugged confirmation, his smirk small but definitely pleased.

  It had been helpful, certainly. One stick of dynamite instead of ten meant bigger blasts with fewer materials, and fewer necessary raids to collect them. There were still places explosives were stored that Dyfan knew and the enemy hadn’t yet discovered, but that couldn’t last forever.

  “And maybe even starting the spark,” Bowen had put in, gaze keen on Dyfan, looking for permission, perhaps, and when he got a nod and another shrug, Bowen turned back to Ellis. “We haven’t got that bit perfected yet.” He wrinkled his nose, annoyed. “’Tisn’t as though we can practice, yeah? But if we can do it, we could conserve the blasting caps and the timers.”

  They’d had plenty of practice since then. And that had been helpful too. M Company could travel lighter, move faster, hit more targets, do more damage.

  The quiet whirr of a long-eared owl sounded out of the dark. Bethan pulled ahead of Ellis and quickened her pace toward it.

  Bowen and Undeg were hunkered where Ellis had left them behind a ridge on the other side of the valley, facing each other with knees in the mud. Bowen’s hands covered Undeg’s, and Undeg’s head was bowed, eyes shut, concentrating. Dyfan was keeping a close eye on them, and when both Bethan and Ellis had ducked down beside them, guns ready, Dyfan told Bowen, “Now.”

  Bowen gave Undeg’s hands a firm squeeze; it wasn’t even a second later that Tair Afon went up, the first explosion hitting Ellis right in the chest and rattling his teeth.

  Ellis and Bethan immediately stood, heads poked just over the top of the ridge along with the barrels of their guns.

  One second.

  Two.

  Voices shouting. Another explosion—bigger, louder, brighter. And then another, more distant, as the Crickway Bridge over the Chwaer went up.

  Three seconds.

  Two dark silhouettes against the bright strobe of the next bomb going off. Ellis targeted the figure on the left, knowing Bethan would take the one on the right. Two down.

  Four seconds.

  Five.

  Four more silhouettes, running. A strut on the Twelve Furlong Bridge over the Aled gave with a grinding screech. Ellis kept shooting. Two more went down at the end of his sight.

  Six seconds.

  The stringers blew on the trestle of the Brunway over the Addfwyn, the whole block giving way and crashing down through the braces. It was still falling when three explosions within milliseconds of each other took out the South Parish Bridge and every yard of roadway beneath it.

  The valley of Tair Afon was little more than an overly large gorge—too rocky in its few flat places for planting, too wet in its lowlands for living, and hugging the western edge of Torcalon Wood so close it was doubtful one could dig anywhere furlongs out without hitting an impenetrable root system. It was, Ellis often mused, likely given a name on Wellech’s map for the sole reason that it sat at the confluence of three rivers, and people needed to call it something. A travel artery more than anything else, it had no stations, no laybys, no people, only a
wealth of choices by which one could pass over it. It was, however, practically made of bridges and trestles—waythroughs and fords and roadways and train tracks. And Confederation troops had gained control of it three days ago.

  Ellis and his “miscreants” had tried to work their way up from Hollywell without looking like they were working their way up. Blowing tracks near Gwynedd one night, a small bridge east of Granstaf the next. Covering too much ground for sleep, but it was worth it for the lack of pattern and therefore the lack of foreknowledge on the parts of the Confederation troops getting more of a foothold around Hollywell every day. If Wellech could keep harrying the opposition, keep cutting off routes that would allow the enemy to expand its hold, Ellis could sleep later. Some day.

  Ten seconds.

  A siren began to warble. Someone was blowing a whistle. More backlit figures spilled out of tents along the banks of the three rivers, some of them too far out of range; Ellis pulled back to reload just as those he’d assigned to the Aled side opened fire. Three more explosions synced as one. The Brunway went down all at once, lashings listing over broken columns before pulling a ribbon of train tracks down into the river with a tortured shriek of twisted metal.

  The orders were to sever transportation of any kind north and west. The Confederation’s push west toward Tirryderch had given way almost immediately to a push north toward midparish and then would no doubt try for west to Whitpool, but that had been no surprise. Ellis wondered if the Confederation had given up on Tirryderch altogether—the naval reinforcements had ensured no one was getting in by sea, and the magical defenses on land were being discussed in international news with dry, informative language that still somehow leaned toward awe.

  Ellis also wondered if the Confederation were finally regretting their self-inflicted lack of Dewin, because he knew he certainly was. What he wouldn’t give to have Zophia and her broken Preidish with him here, but Walsh had commandeered her for one of the Royal Forces generals. Regrettable, but Ellis hadn’t had much say in the matter. Or, well, any. Undeg and Bowen might be modestly powerful sorcerers, but Zophia was the next best thing to having Milo at his side, and bloody damn, but Ellis wanted Milo at his side right now. Ellis had barely even Dreamed of him lately. Then again, it was possible that was because he’d barely slept.

  Fifteen seconds.

  The night was near to daylight. The enemy camps, not nearly dug in yet, were chaos. The explosions were still coming, taking out every bridge and roadway and therefore any high ground Ellis’s Wardens and ragtag magicals weren’t already picking the stunned soldiers off from.

  This, Ellis thought, vicious, is what you get when you don’t know the ground you’re trying to take.

  To Dyfan, he only said, “You three start toward the rendezvous. I want to make those hills by sunup.”

  The Royal Forces had struck their lines along Wellech’s southern tip from Gefēonde to Gwynedd, but that still left the Confederation troops too much leeway and too many resources, both held and potentially won. Cutting off the people of Granstaf and Hollywell, and anyone in between, was a harsh strategy, but even Ellis hadn’t been able to come up with anything better if they meant to keep the enemy contained and keep the contingent on the eastern shore from making it through the Torcalon Wood.

  And M Company was the only one—at least that Ellis knew of—between the two fronts. Which meant there was no one to ride to the rescue if this went wrong.

  He waited until the last bomb went off. Until anyone in his gun’s range was already dead. Until he was sure every easy way north or west was now smoking rubble.

  Only when it was clear that there was nothing left to do but watch did Ellis give Bethan a nudge and tell her, “We’re done here. Let’s go.”

  His ears seemed stuffed with wool—he barely heard himself. His vision was spotty, bright green blobs in the shapes of burning bridges floating in front of his eyes, and blinking wasn’t helping. He led the way cautiously, hoping he wasn’t making more noise than what he could hear himself, though it did make him thankful for the mud for the first time since he’d surveyed the area with Dyfan when they’d been forming the plan. It had gone exactly as they’d hoped so far, though some small, optimistic part of Ellis that still insisted Wellech had a future was already calculating how much money and how much work was going to have to go into repairing the mess they’d just made when all this was—

  Ellis stopped so short Bethan nearly walked up the back of him. He turned sharply, scanning the sky, but he still couldn’t bloody see.

  Bethan stopped beside him. “What’s the m—?”

  “I need you to run,” Ellis said, low and firm, one hand gripping the rifle that was about to be useless, and the other settled over the stone in his pocket. The stone that had just flared so hot through his shirt it felt like it had burned a hole through his ribs. “Where’d it even come from?” he wondered. The Confederation had two in this region when they’d started their assault; one had gone down and the other had been sighted this morning over the Goshor. It wasn’t unreasonable to assume a dragon could make that flight in the time given, but what about the dragonkin controlling it? “No way,” Ellis muttered, because no way could anyone have got through all the roadblocks that had been thrown up all over Wellech, even if they’d managed to get through Caeryngryf, which he’d been assured no one could. Impossible.

  To Bethan, he barked, “Now,” and shoved her ahead of him, turning, saying, “Go, now, go!” just as the distinctive sound of a dragon’s roar rattled the night.

  That got Bethan moving.

  “Head to the rendezvous!” Ellis shouted after her, watching only long enough to be sure Bethan kept going.

  She moved slower than Ellis would like, but he didn’t think the dragon would be sent after one retreating target. Not when there were a good fifteen other targets who’d thirty seconds ago thought having the high ground was a good idea. Targets he’d placed there.

  He took off back toward the gorge, not even trying to be careful or quiet this time. The others down by the Aled side would have all started heading west to the rendezvous, through the flats and open spaces, betting on the Confederation soldiers being occupied with exploding roads and bridges for at least long enough that Ellis’s people could climb the ridge and head toward cover. He hadn’t even considered a dragon. There’d been no reason to.

  He could hear the shouts now, down in the gorge where Ellis couldn’t see. Close, though; close enough he could hear the sound of boots in mud, even through his still-clogged ears. “Andras, get down!” he heard someone shout—Tilli, he was sure of it—then a scream drowned out by the bellow of the dragon. Ellis was almost there. So close to the lip of the ridge he could see the orange flare when the dragon shot its flame. Hear the heavy flap of webbed wings. Smell petrol so thick in the air it burned his eyes and the back of his throat.

  “Hang on!” He had no idea how to get his people out of what was happening. No idea what he was supposed to do. Except maybe get the dragon to focus on him long enough to give them a chance before it crisped him. But he kept running anyway, yelling “Hey! Hey!” pouring his last breath into moving as fast as he could, then—

  “Bloody…”

  —coming up so short when he reached the edge of the dropoff he almost thought time stopped. He knew his breath did. Everything in him did. Except his heart—that he could hear thumping like a drumbeat in his ears.

  All he saw at first was the top of the head. So close below he could see the pattern of the blue-gold scales struck iridescent in the shifting glow of the fires, and, well, that answered that question, Ellis thought numbly—the one up north was a marauder; the only dragons sometimes blue-scaled were… blunt-horned ravagers.

  Because of course the Confederation would choose the breeds with the most vicious-sounding names to do their dirty work.

  The air was hot, hardly even breathable. It whooshed in rhythmic beats against Ellis’s face, pushing him back a step from the edge as the dr
agon rose. And rose.

  Horns.

  Brow ridge.

  Eyes.

  Eyes five times the size of a thresher’s wheel. At least. Wider than the spread of Ellis’s arms. A gold rich as the sun, slit-pupiled. Old. Ancient. Half-mad, maybe. Half something Ellis couldn’t help thinking of as a peculiar rue. Misery. An uncanny sort of asking that made him think of the redcrest.

  Clearly seeing Ellis. Focused on him. Watching him.

  Huge. Bloody immense. Bigger than anything Ellis had seen before. Bigger than he’d thought anything could actually be. Or maybe that was just because it was so bloody close.

  It hovered in front of him, rising slowly, rows of razor teeth twice the length of him this close to his face, venom dripping over them like drool. Smoke heaved from its nostrils in a noxious brume, twin dense puffs curling all around Ellis again and again in time to its wingbeats. It hung there, only for a moment, still watching, massive wings rhythmically thumping the air, pushing Ellis back and sucking him forth in a hot swish of wind wrought heavy with sulphur and the smell of burning. It resumed its ascent. Slower than Ellis would’ve thought possible for something its size. Deliberate. Almost meditative. He was face-to-neck with it now, could clearly see the thick iron collar, patches of missing scales around and beneath it, and a wide swath of raw, exposed hide down to midbreast, cragged with moss. The glow of its fire lit its throat, piping up then ebbing down, up then down, as though it wasn’t sure if it should fry him or not.

  The dragonstone had never been so hot, not even when he’d been basically petting a razorback calf. Stunned, clumsy, he reached for it, closed his hand around it.

  The dragon pulled back, still hovering right in front of Ellis, but its heat wasn’t actually singeing his face now. Slowly, he drew the stone out of his pocket, held it palm-up in front of him like an offering, and said, “Tilli, Andras, get them all and go,” shockingly calm and even.

  Tilli and Andras moved immediately, thankfully without question or argument. Quickly they chivvied everyone into a wide berth and up the ridge.