Her left hand thumped against her chest, and then the pain stopped as if it, too, had fallen away to the heather below.
Elevera snapped her wings open. The breath was whipped from Trysten as her dragon pushed upward, straight into the sky. For a moment, Trysten’s body hummed with the power behind her back, the wings extending and flashing down on either side of her peripheral vision. Beyond, and upside down, she saw the confused knot of Western dragons and their riders struggling to control their mounts and bring them around.
Their alpha was dead.
With a grunt, Trysten crunched her abdomen, curled forward, and sat up enough to grasp the lip of Elevera’s saddle a second before the golden dragon let out another roar and another gout of fire. Trysten closed her eyes against the onrush of new dragons, of new souls and hearts and minds flooding into her own. New injuries flared across her flesh. Fire rushed down her back where one of the riderless dragons had torn a gash down the back of a Western dragon.
She gritted her teeth, sucked in a breath, then commanded Elevera to whip around.
As the golden dragon banked and then leveled out, Trysten meant to look out across the sky of battle and assess the situation. Instead, her gaze dropped to her right hand. The dragonslayer sword was still there, under a white-knuckle grip. The curved blade swept out like a great, sharp claw of pale steel, and smeared along the edge was the blood of the dragon she had just slain.
A coldness flooded through her, cold water rushing over her muscles and bones. And then a fiery rage blasted after it as she took in the sky of battle.
This would stop. This had to stop.
The newest Western dragons swept in under Elevera in their show of deference to their new alpha, their riders crying out in disbelief. To the north, a twisted knot of wings writhed in the sky as Paege and the rest of the hordesmen took on the other Western horde. Paege would prevail. The wisdom of dragons would carry them through.
Ahead, to the west, the knot of wings was much less confused, much less concentrated. Though she couldn’t see for sure at this distance, it looked like Karno was on the defensive, evading and distracting more than attacking. Her help was needed there. And then it would be needed to end the army.
The taste of blood registered. Trysten wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. It was streaked with blood. Her nose thumped in pain.
She took a deep breath through her lips, and with a thought, urged Elevera on. In a great rush of air and flurry of wings, Trysten and over sixty dragons hurtled forward to throw themselves at the army.
Chapter 47
As they approached, the first licks of smoke began to rise from the fire break. Trysten watched with detached awe as the flaming arrows from the villagers arced up through the sky, then fell to the field. Patches of flame smoldered among the heather but had yet to take off. The army continued to march toward the bunkers. Shield bearers hefted shields as if they were the archers’ targets. Western archers returned their own arrows. Arrows fell like rain along the edge of the village.
One of the catapults launched with a loud crack that Trysten nearly felt in the air. A spray of stone flew from the basket. Most of it fell short, but a few stones knocked down several soldiers in the vanguard and sent others to their knees.
There wasn’t much time left to stop the army. Rather than fly to Karno’s aid, Trysten commanded the dragons around her to take up formation. She sent the recently captured dragons to make a V. The hordesmen stranded upon their backs yelled and screamed and waved at their countrymen as the longbow archers took aim.
Trysten tried to forget the pain, the blood, the aches and the slaughter so close that she could see and feel, hear it, smell the blood on the wind. She let it all go. Her vision went hazy as she concentrated on the second wave of dragons, and then a third. Finally, she urged the remainder of the riderless dragons to take up position behind her.
Maejel fell into place off of Trysten’s right flank.
“Forgive me,” Trysten whispered as she leaned forward and placed her hands on either side of Elevera’s neck.
A few arrows streaked down from above as the remaining Western hordesmen forgot Karno's men and focused their attack on Trysten.
“Now!” Trysten shouted.
The waves of dragons dropped down, their wings folding neatly behind themselves, open enough to direct their descent, but closed enough to allow them to gather momentum with gravity’s pull.
A loud thump and crack rang through the air. The spears from one of the launchers fell away before reaching the horde, missing every dragon and dropping to the ground below. Too early. The army was panicking.
In Trysten’s mind, wings shot open. A sky full of wings. Ahead of her, the dragons all snapped their wings open in unison and swept down across the fields of heather.
Fire. Fire erupted across that sky of wings. A great rushing column of fire spanned the kingdom in Trysten's mind. The air hummed.
The army's vanguard let loose their arrows. A wall of pain slammed into Trysten as the arrows found many targets. She grunted and jumped in the saddle as if struck. Her grip tightened against the saddle’s lip. The grunt became a groan, a howl shoved through her teeth, and then a roar as a curtain of fire dropped down from the leading dragons. It swept into the vanguard of the army. The air itself roared and swept aside the screams of men like so much ash and dust.
Arrows exploded from the army. They flew in confused waves up from the archers. Trysten’s body twisted in agony and her mind screamed to shut down, to let it go, to retreat back into her human self.
She hummed and hollered, clenched the saddle with her hands and thighs as if holding herself to Elevera, anchoring herself otherwise the pain would sweep her away, brush her into the air like silkweed fluff.
Hold. Hold. She clutched the image in her mind. Dragons and wings and fire. The sky alight. Rippling with fire and wings.
Dragons dropped into the army. So full of arrows. They plunged into the crowd, rolling and crushing, tails and necks flailing. Still, the horde pushed on, a rippling curtain of fire being drawn. A broom of flame clearing away those who would stand against Aerona.
Hold on. Hold.
Tears tore from her eyes, ran across her cheeks and softened the crust of blood. Heat rolled back in waves and wiped away the tears. It blistered her lips as they pulled back from her teeth.
Hold.
More arrows. Another wave. The crack and thump of a spear launcher. Another. Trysten's heart danced and quivered as a spear impaled the chest of the dragon in front of Elevera. Dragons dropped away. Fell. The army grew closer. Above and behind them, in the heat-scorched air, the spear launchers appeared, shimmering and wavering. The great arms rose up and back as the army cranked them into place.
Elevera! Trysten opened her mouth to scream, but there was no air to be had in her lungs.
Hold on. Hold on. Hold.
The spear launchers loomed. The first to launch settled into place. Soldiers hurried to fit the armature with the great spears.
The first two waves of dragons were gone, dead. The wave ahead laid down a curtain of fire that enveloped the beasts of burden and the soldiers near them.
The dragons peeled away, pushed off to either side as Trysten imagined the sky splitting, the blue parting, the wings falling away like the last few flakes of a winter snow.
And there were the spear launchers.
At the head of one, atop the platform, a soldier notched an arrow in a longbow and drew it back. His aim fell straight on Trysten.
Hold on.
The arrow flew.
Fire. Fire. More than split the sky. Fire to everything. The world on fire. The world ended in a roar of fire.
Elevera rumbled. Fire blistered from her maw as the arrow struck Trysten hard in the chest.
She snapped backward in the saddle, thrust back so hard her back clenched in pain as her chest thrummed and throbbed. Her scream came as a gasp as flame danced above. She lifted her head. She tucked
her chin enough to see fire engulf the archer and the spear launcher behind him.
Then Elevera banked away, twisted outward to the north, her body rocking in the regular rhythm of gaining altitude.
Trysten peered down at a hole in her armor. A hole where the shaft of an arrow ought to be. Her body trembled in pain, so lit with injuries that she couldn’t separate her own from that of the dragons. She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t dead, why the iron tip of an arrow hadn’t replaced her heart.
Chapter 48
Elevera drew up level in the sky.
Trysten pulled herself up, her back in spasms. She clutched the saddle lip with aching fingers and turned her face to the scene below. A catapult cracked. The spray of stones fell into smoldering ash. Puffs of smoke blossomed up like gray flowers and then blew away. The firebreak was gone. A dark, charred scar stretched from the edge of Aerona to the flaming skeletons of the spear launchers.
Soldiers rushed the village along either side of the scorched pasture. Their screams were distant, hardly discernible through the ringing of Trysten’s ears. Village archers picked them off as they approached.
At the rear of the army, hundreds of soldiers ran to the west in retreat.
Trysten wavered. She stiffened her elbow to keep herself from slumping forward as she swung her attention up to the skies. Karno and his men sparred with a few remaining dragons.
To the north, the magenta color of Sone led the rest of the Aerona horde back to the front line.
A hint of a grin curled the edges of Trysten’s lips. Paege was all right. She couldn’t count the dragons, couldn’t focus her gaze enough, but she could sense that most of them survived. Not all of them, but most.
She returned her attention to the ground, to the mar of ash. A gust of wind blew in from the south and wiped away much of the gray smoke. It eddied around the bodies of fallen dragons. So many dragons among the fallen soldiers. And among them lay Muzad and Avice, fallen in battle.
Trysten straightened her back and felt incomprehensible pain along her arms and legs, across her chest and back, throughout the wings that she carried in her heart and mind.
Hold on.
She clasped the lip of Elevera’s saddle.
“Finish this,” she whispered past her heat-cracked lips.
Elevera swept down out of the sky, leading the tatters of her horde. They swept over the village, barely clearing the watchtower. They dropped down and hugged the edge of the scorched ground as they made their way toward the remaining soldiers.
The advancing soldiers froze in place, halted, then turned and ran, fanning out to avoid the sweeping dragons.
Elevera rumbled with fire, and Trysten closed her eyes.
As she lifted back into the sky, Trysten looked over her shoulder. Paege and the rest of the horde were setting up to do the same to the other half of the army. Below, soldiers fled, running in retreat. They fanned out away from the village, racing through the heather for wherever they’d come from.
A spear launcher collapsed in a puff of smoke. Sparks swirled up into the air.
It was over. Finally. Trysten looked over her shoulders, each, to confirm what she knew. Eleven dragons. Maejel struggled to keep up after a spear had torn a great rent in her left wing and destroyed some of the delicate bones that webbed through the thin membrane. She would make it back.
“Home,” Trysten whispered and laid a hand upon Elevera’s neck.
Chapter 49
Elevera banked through the sky, over the field of ash. Below, the villagers erupted into cheers. They waved and appeared to shout, but their shouts were deafened, stamped out by the ringing in Trysten’s ears.
The gold dragon threw her wings open wide and dropped her hindquarters to take the ground. With a sharp breath, Trysten thought of her father, the sight of Aeronwind collapsing and rolling onto him. But Elevera held true. She dropped to the ground and remained upright. Her wings folded neatly behind her as if they had done nothing more than herd a dole of doves.
Trysten’s trembling hands worked at the leather straps upon her saddle, but her fingers failed to pluck apart the knots. She reached back, pulled a knife from her saddlebag, and severed the leather cords with several strokes.
The blade fell away, slipped from her fingers and tumbled to the ground. As the villagers raced into the yard, screaming and cheering, Trysten slid from the saddle. Her legs crumpled beneath her and she hit the ground hard. Her cheek slammed into the dirt.
“Trysten!” people shouted, and then she was being yanked up, pulled up by her arm. When she turned her head to see who was doing it, she found herself staring into Elevera’s open jaws. The dragon’s tongue was wrapped around her bicep, lifting her to her feet.
As soon as Trysten's feet were firm on the ground, Elevera let go. She held her head high and looked out among the crowd of people gathered around her. Their cheers were gone. Their celebration had evaporated. They stared with quiet, wide eyes, faces pale and full of shock.
Trysten looked into the eyes of the villagers. How strange they looked now as the awareness of dragons still coursed through her, filling her mind. Her own body fit so poorly, stretched out like a wrung rag, a shapeless bag trying to hold the enormity of the horde in her heart and mind.
Trysten’s fingers, pink and singed from the heat that washed over them, dug into the bodice of her armor and pulled at the chain around her neck. With a tug, she fished the pendant up and out into the open.
What dangled from the setting was half a tooth. It had been split, shattered. The tip of it was gone, and a great crack ran up the length of what remained and then disappeared into the metallic setting.
Murmurs broke out among the crowd.
Trysten pulled the pendant from around her neck, then with a trembling hand, pulled her braids from the loop of chain. As the singed braids fell back against her armor, she flung the pendant aside, into the dirt between herself and the crowd.
Without looking back, she gripped Elevera’s reins and led the dragon back to the weyr.
Chapter 50
Paege clasped Trysten’s shoulder and gave a slight tug. She rocked back onto her heels, still on her knees where she had fallen when trying to remove Elevera’s saddle.
“Galelin!” Paege shouted. “Someone fetch Galelin now!”
Trysten shook her head. “Dragons,” she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper. She winced slightly as her lips cracked and smarted. She swallowed to try and get some moisture into her mouth. There was none to be had. “Dragons first.”
“By all the wilds, Trysten,” Paege said. “The dragons will be fine, but we need to see to you, too.”
She shook her head. The scent of burnt hair wafted up around her. From her braids. It stank. Acrid. She scrunched her nose.
Paege moved in close, brushed right up against her. The scent of burnt hair was replaced with leather and sweat, and then she was grimacing, her teeth locked tight against the pain in her back. She was up in the air again, lifting up toward the sky.
Her eyes flicked open. The weyr’s ceiling and Elevera’s face were above her. She was not flying. She was in Paege’s arms.
And then he was rushing her down the aisle. People called after them, asked if she was all right. The doorway passed overhead, then it was the sky above. Blue and pure and solid and the most beautiful thing Trysten had ever seen. So huge and encompassing. Why would anyone come back to the ground ever? Moisture finally returned to her eyes. She blinked, and it hurt.
Shouts muscled their way through the ringing in her ears. Metal clanged and scraped, the sounds of hordesmen in sword fight.
“Paege,” Trysten rasped.
“Quiet,” Paege huffed as he hustled along, jostling her in his arms. “You!” He shouted. “Open her door... Thanks!”
“Paege,” Trysten tried again, and then the sky was gone, replaced by the ceiling of her cottage. “The Fallen, Paege. Who fell?”
“Don’t worry about it right now,” Paege said
as he burst into her bedroom and laid her upon the bed. He stood and took the odors of sweat and wool and leather with him. The burnt hair returned.
“An order. It’s an order. Who?”
Paege looked around the room wildly, then slipped away. Trysten anchored her elbows beneath her and began to push herself up in bed when Paege returned with a cup in his hands. “Take a drink,” he commanded and slipped his hand around the back of her neck. It felt good. Cool. She wanted to press herself against it, soak in the coolness of his touch, and then the coolness on her lips as he tipped the water up against them.
She drank thirstily, and when he pulled the cup away, she settled back against the bed. Her body still hummed and ached with all of the damage taken by the horde. She tried to step back, to shut the pain away as if closing the doors to the weyr, but it felt impossible anymore, so enormous. It was like trying to contain the sky.
“Trysten!” her mother shouted. A heartbeat later, she was standing at the side of the bed, staring down at her. “Little Heart,” she cried and choked back the rest as she swept up Trysten’s hands in her own. She squeezed, and it helped bring Trysten back to herself, the awareness of the dragons fading slowly, their pain rising to the ceiling, leaving her in her bed with her own injuries.
“You did it, Little Heart,” Caron said, and her voice cracked. Her face wavered, nearly breaking and then composing itself. “You did it.”
“The Fallen,” Trysten said to her mother. “Who are—” she swallowed against the growing knot of pain in her throat.
“Get Galelin,” Caron snapped at Paege.
“Already called for him,” Paege responded. “I’ll go get some rags.”
The Dragoneer Trilogy Page 78