Oro and the Scouts of Halla were in motion, too. As soon as the first force of the blast had passed and the rubble now filling the former valley settled, every unicorn waiting upon the plateau sprang forward. They dashed headlong across the quaking new stretch in a sweeping charge while smoking grey cinders pelted out of the sky, covering them with a dusting of grey.
The Scouts of Halla were across the rift. As they reached the far side, Jan realized with a start that the hills were gentler here. Beyond, he saw, lay the waterless Salt Waste. Wind blew in the direction of the Waste, pursuing the sprinting unicorns. Cinderfall grew heavier, the ground’s trembling more ferocious. Had Oro’s band not surged forward precisely when they did, Jan saw, they would never have managed to cross. Brightness infused the ashfall. Some of the cinders glowed. Some were not cinders at all, he grasped, but droplets of dragonsflood.
A bright fountain spewed from a rift in the ruin of the fallen peak’s broken base. Beneath welled a molted tongue of red that spilled slowly to the shallow depression’s floor. Once the fiery flood had wound across, all passage would be blocked, at least until it cooled. How long would that take, Jan wondered—days? Weeks? The Scouts of Halla fled on toward the Salt Waste across the foothills of Dragonsholm. Their heels raised a cloud which mingled with the falling ash.
20.
Battle
Summer. The suddenness of transition startled him. One moment Jan had seemed to be wheeling over the snow-capped Smoking Hills, air obscured by clouds of dust and smoke. The next, he found himself leagues upon leagues away, the wide, green Plain rolling beneath, a clear cloudless dawn sky above, the Hallow Hills before.
Unicorns of the Vale lay in the tall grass, gazing toward their unreclaimed homeland. Tek, flanked by Ryhenna and Dagg, couched at the crest of the rise. Jah-lila, Teki, and Ses waited close behind. The rest of the band reclined below them, well hidden. No colts lounged among the band, no ancient elders or suckling mares. Warriors only made up the great warhost, nostrils flaring to scent the breeze, ears swiveling to catch every sound. Thick haze hung low in the sky far to the east, its source beyond horizon’s edge. It tainted the sunrise orange-red, a fiery light bathing the Hallow Hills. The dappled warrior beside Tek shifted.
“No sign of him,” he muttered. “Where is he? He set out an
hour since.”
“Grant him time,” Ryhenna soothed in the strange, lilting cadence of her former tribe, the daya. “Dawn breaketh only now.”
The pied mare turned, called softly. “What is that haze in the east? Can you tell?”
Below her, the red mare lifted her head. “Naught that will affect us here. It comes of the Smoking Hills.”
“A blood-bright dawn,” Teki the healer beside her murmured. “Will the weather hold?”
“Aye,” the red mare told him. “It will.”
“Blood-stained but beautiful,” the pale mare, Ses, beside them whispered. “Its red light illumines the hills. So they appeared on the eve of my initiation, years ago.”
“When thou sawest thy vision of the Firebringer?” Ryhenna inquired.
Ses nodded, wistful. “And other things.”
Tek turned back to the Hallow Hills, glowing crimson in the dawnlight still. “Where is Jan?” she barely breathed. “Why has he not returned?”
A shrill cry fell from above, piercing as a kite’s. The pied mare started, felt the warhost behind her stir. Her gaze darted skyward. A moment later, his shadow passed over her, and she was able to glimpse Illishar, his hue so well matched to the green sky he had approached unseen. Circling, he began to descend.
“At last!” Tek heard Dagg exclaim. “Once the wingcat reports, we can devise our best means of attack.”
The wyverns lay concealed, hidden behind boulders and rocky outcroppings. The ravine formed a box canyon, its banks gentle at first, but whoever ventured its narrow passage found the sides soon steepened to precarious slopes. The wyverns often drove game here: deer and boar, bands of antelope that had strayed from the Plain. No game drives now since the first of the year. Instead, they had waited, king’s loyalists ever on watch for unicorns, those thrice-cursed skulkers of the Vale who never failed to steal into the Hills sometime during the spring.
“What a ruin,” the first of two wyverns sheltering behind a single boulder hissed. “This dawn marks summer’s first day, and where are the unicorns? They never came.”
“Nor will they,” its companion muttered, smaller than the first, and more slenderly made. “They died out or gave up or lost their way. The sum is, they come here no more.”
“Precisely,” the first wyvern muttered. “We’ve frittered all spring on this fruitless task, when we might have been coursing young fawns and cracking their bones.”
This larger wyvern was of a bluer cast than the more slender one. Its tail was longer, the sting upon it more wickedly barbed. A rudimentary second head was budding from one shoulder, no more than an offshoot, its features still indistinct, mouth sealed shut, the bulbous, bruise-dark lids of its nascent eyes not yet open. It writhed fretfully against the thicker stalk of the bluish wyvern’s primary neck. With one blunt, badger-like claw, the ice-blue wyrm petted it, humming.
“This ravine makes a fair enough game-trap,” the slimmer, more pearl-colored wyrm was saying. A summer hopper flicked through the air. With a snap, it downed the long-legged thing. “I’ve run down onc and springer here, even a Plainscalf once.”
Its two-headed companion nodded impatiently. “As have we all. But now we must let game pass unmolested, lest we spook any phantom unicorns that might wander near.”
“The king has lost his wits,” the pearl-colored wyvern murmured, sniffing the grass in search of other hoppers. “Ever since the queen was slain.”
“There was a wyvern,” the elder wyrm exclaimed. Its rudimentary nob slumbered now against its collarbone. It scratched its main pate’s gill ruff with one knife-nailed badger claw. “She’d have thrown the king down and taken his place, had the unicorns not finished her.”
A scarlet earthworm wove through the grass. The bluish wyvern stabbed after it, but missed. Its companion studied a yellow butterfly fluttering about its head.
“Then we’d have fire still,” it answered. “She’d have shared it among us again. It was only the king’s edict—and his fear—that forbade each of us keeping our own fire, as we used to do. All those winters lazing beside a burning brand! That’s what made us strong. It’s lack of warmth caused all those stingless prits to hatch.”
The yellow butterfly fluttered near. The pearlescent wyvern clapped its jaws, but the next instant spat, shook its head and pawed its muzzle to dislodge the clinging yellow wings. “Uch! It tastes of saltclay and sulfur.”
Its companion chuckled. “No doubt. What you say of fire is true as well. Now that the king’s let his own brand die, our last flame is gone. Unless we find another source, no more stinging wyrms will hatch of our broods. Mark me.”
“The stingless ones,” the pearly wyrm added. “You heard they fled? Aye, across the Plain. Six days ago.”
Its bluish companion turned. “Fled? I thought they were in hiding.”
“Nay,” the slender wyvern assured it. “Yet not one stinging loyalist was sent in pursuit—lest we miss the unicorns! Time enough to track peaceseekers once we’ve dealt with His Majesty’s unicorns—what is this sudden fascination? He says he sees them in his dreams. Says he feels them watching him.”
“Unicorns,” the bluish wyvern scoffed, glancing at the ravine’s grass-covered slopes dotted with boulders and slabs of exposed stone. “We’ll never see another…”
“Hist!” his companion snapped, suddenly alert. The pearl-colored wyvern’s gaze was fixed downslope. The larger wyrm heard grunts and whiffs of surprise from fellows massed behind other boulders on both their own and the facing slopes. Only those hiding lower on the near hillside were visible to the bluish wyvern. They, too, had become instantly attentive. Alongside, the pearl-colored wyvern bre
athed a single word: “Unicorns!”
Downslope, filing into the canyon, came a party of unicorns. Late morning sun blazed down. The breeze sighed balmy, just a bare trace cool. A robust young stallion led, his yellow dappling into grey along shoulder and flank. Only a few others in the band appeared, like him, to be warriors in their prime. Most seemed youthful half-growns. They traveled cautiously, eyes darting, ears up-pricked. The wyverns waited in fevered silence until the last of the band, a slim, coppery mare, had entered the confines of the sloping ravine.
“Now!” the pearl-hued wyvern screamed, rising to plunge down the slope in a streaking slither. “Drive them deep into the canyon. Trap and devour them!”
The bluish wyvern also lunged. All around, its fellows dodged from behind boulders and coursed toward the hapless unicorns, who wheeled and whistled in alarm.
“They’re mostly striplings!” the bluish wyvern cried. “Helpless prits. Sting them to death and drag the meat to the king!”
It saw its own kind across the ravine, pouring down the opposite slope toward their prey. But what was this? Instead of scattering in terror, the unicorns were massing. Racing toward them, the two-headed wyvern heard the party’s leader, the grey-and-yellow dapple, coolly whistling orders, saw the coppery mare and young half-growns beside her swinging to form themselves into an outward facing ring, horns bristling to meet the wyvern onslaught. Here was no motley band of colts. Those wyrms who reached them first were skewered and tramped, fell back with screams of surprise, hisses of rage.
“No matter!” the ice-blue found itself shrieking. “No matter they’re warriors. We’re larger than they. We outnumber them. Use your stings!”
Its own tail lashed to scourge the dappled stallion ramping before him. The unicorn braced for the coming blow, did not so much as dodge. He held his place in the outward-facing ring, hooves set, horn aimed.
“See how your blood burns at this!” the ice-blue wyvern shrilled, bringing its tail barb down like a flail.
The yellow stallion shuddered, shrugged the stroke aside, then lashed and lunged. The bluish wyvern drew back, surprised. All around, its snarling companions swarmed. None of the unicorns broke ranks. The blue wyrm saw them repeatedly stung, but though they flinched, they did not fall. The battle became a grunting, panting shoving-match, wyverns pressing in against the circle, horned warriors refusing to buckle.
“Our stings have lost their power!” the pearly one beside it cried, panic beginning to edge its voice.
“Our horns have not,” the copper-colored mare beside the dappled stallion retorted, lunging. Her horn pierced the pearlescent wyvern through one shoulder. It sank, writhing, colorless blood streaming down its pale hide. Its badger claws pawed ineffectually at the wound.
“I’m pierced!” it shrieked. “Pierced through the bone! The unicorn has rent me!”
“Our weapons are keener than once they were,” the dappled stallion panted. One flailing forehoof landed a stunning blow to the wounded wyvern’s skull. “And tempered by fire. Your fibrous bone no longer dulls and chips our skewers.”
Beside the stallion, the copper mare bent to finish the fallen wyrm. With a shriek, the bluish wyvern beheld others of its folk struck down by these half-grown colts, these stripling warriors. It reared to flee. The dappled stallion sprang. The bluish wyvern felt searing pain cleave its breast. Pierced, it realized, stunned. Riven. Already its awareness ebbed. Run through the heart. The cartilaginous breastplate that had protected its kind for centuries worthless now. Our stings, useless. Our king’s fire, burnt out.
Sky above burned impossibly blue, not a cloud or a wisp obscuring the sun at zenith. Something circled there. A lute? No. Too large. Too green. Not the right shape at all. This creature’s lower half looked like a pard. The wyvern’s thoughts evaporated. Dimly, it felt the dappled stallion pulling his skewer-like horn free of its breast. Faintly, it felt itself fall. Distantly, it heard the high-pitched cry of the pard-bird overhead. Around the dying wyvern, its companions began to flee.
New whistling arose, not from the ring of young unicorns in the heart of the ravine, but from elsewhere on every side. The wyvern’s transparent eyelids sagged. Unicorns, many more of them, streamed into the ravine from the entryway. A pied rose-and-black mare charged at their head. Other groups poured over the tops of both slopes, one led by a black-maned, mallow-red mare, the other by a poppy-maned mare pale as flame. These two bands converged on the fleeing wyverns while the third, larger mass swept up from the ravine’s egress.
Trapped, the dying wyvern thought, astonished still. Trapped even as we had hoped to trap them. Screams from the wounded. The concussion of falling bodies. The dying wyvern’s eyes slid shut. Battle’s din, ever more furious, receded to a gentle buzz. The wyrm felt, barely, as from a great distance, the tramp of heels and the slither of bellies passing over it. Overwhelmed by innumerable, invulnerable enemies, it thought. The utter absurdity. The waste. When our king bade us lie here in wait for unicorns, we, too, should have fled.
“It will be a rout, then,” Jan whispered, gazing into the illuminated darkness of the dragon’s brow. His conclusion startled, confounded him. “Who would have believed it could be so? I had always thought recapturing the Hills would be arduous, a mighty struggle…”
He let the words trail away as Wyzásukitán stirred. “Oh, a rout is it?” she asked him gently.
Her smoky breath flowed and swirled about him. Across the dark pool, fleeing wyverns fell beneath the heels and horns of the unicorn warhost pursuing them across the Hallow Hills toward their limestone dens flanking the cliffs where the sacred moonpool lay. The dragon queen turned her head ever so slightly.
“You think it will be a rout?” queried Wyzásukitán. “You suspect your folk can win back your Hills so easily they have no need of you?”
The dark prince shuddered, considering. Did he truly believe these predictions, then? Dared he trust the visions? Had he gradually, without realizing, come to accept the images as the sure and certain future? But were they, he wondered? Would the events portrayed here come to pass in time, regardless of his own actions or failure to act? Dared he relax into such a soothing complacency?
“Nay, I…,” he started.
“Watch,” the dragon queen murmured.
The images upon her brow intensified, their colors deepening, becoming brighter. Jan felt himself drawn in the way that had become so familiar during his brief stay with the dragon queen. How long had it lasted—a few hours? Half a day? How far into the future lay the events that he observed? He ceased to wonder as the view pulled him back into its depths. As before, he merged with it and lost himself.
He floated in the air above the Hallow Hills. The wyvern warriors who had lain in ambush in the box canyon had all broken ranks, seeking to flee the steep-sided ravine. Unicorns pouring over the sides fell upon them without mercy, the whistled orders of Tek and Dagg, Teki and Jah-lila, Ryhenna and Ses sounding clearly above the din: shrieks from the wyrms, the clash of hooves and horns, groans from the dying, panting and snorts.
Bodies littered the canyon, impeding the long-leggèd unicorns. The wyverns, with their slithering gait, snaked over and between mounds of the fallen. Ineffectual stings forced them to fight with teeth and claws. The few who managed to escape the ravine flashed away faster than coursing rainwater. The unicorn warhost gave chase, managed to cut a fair number down as they fled across the open, rolling hills, through broken scrub and groves of slender trees.
The fleeing wyverns’ screams had evidently been heard, for out of the limestone shelfland adjoining the moonpool cliffs poured fresh waves of stinging wyrms. Shrieked warnings of the invaders’ seeming invulnerability only confused the rescuers, who attacked the unicorns in the traditional manner, with their stings. The battle changed from a chase to a series of pitched skirmishes as the two surging warhosts broke apart into dozens upon dozens of smaller assaults and combats.
Morning passed. Noon sun, coolly ablaze in the deep blu
e sky, declined to middle and then late afternoon. The great black stain upon the air to the east continued to grow, filling that quarter, and then that half of the sky. It chased the sun like a dark, enveloping mass. Watching it, the wyverns groaned. “An omen, an omen!” Jan heard some crying. “A darkness from out of the Smoking Hills. Surely it marks the end of the world.”
Wyverns fell. Unicorns, as well—but far fewer than the wyrms. Repeatedly, small bands of a half-dozen unicorns maneuvered to surround one of the huge, stinging wyrms. More than a few had double heads, they were so old. The ring of warriors then pressed in on the wyrm, striking and slashing, pummeling with hooves and stabbing with horns, while the wyvern lashed ineffectually with its barb, snapped needle teeth, and raked what unicorns it could with the knifelike claws on its broad, stub paws.
Even seasoned warriors working in concert took a long time to bring down each large, fierce wyrm. And for every wyvern felled, it seemed another, fresh foe emerged from one of many entryways to the wyverns’ subterranean dens. Jan glimpsed Tek and Dagg consulting, Ryhenna and Teki leading others to guard the larger entryways, prevent wounded wyverns from escaping back underground, and kill new wyrms as they emerged.
The strategy achieved only partial success. The crumbling limestone of the wyvern shelves made precarious footing for even the most agile of unicorns, and so many entries pocked the surface of the shelves that the guardians could not ward them all. Jan saw many more wyverns enter or emerge. Yet the pied healer and the coppery mare stemmed the flood of wyverns, slowing the pace of reinforcements and hindering safe retreat.
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