Sensing the other one thrusting his head over to defend his comrade, Talon let go, meeting the attack. Two sets of fangs clashed in a flurry. They gouged each other, and pain erupted in Talon’s snout. Blood dripped to the floor beneath them.
Though he did not want to retreat, Talon backed away; he expected the other one, broken leg or not, to find a way back into the fray soon, and he would be vulnerable when fighting two at a time.
But strangely, the injured guard had stopped fighting. He stood, one foreleg hanging limply, blood spattering the stone below him as he stared past Talon. The second guard stared over his shoulder too.
As much as Talon wanted it to be a trick, his senses told him that two dragons had come up behind him. He hadn’t thought those side chambers led to anything except sleeping alcoves, but he must have been wrong. Or maybe some dragons had been resting in them.
Not just some dragons, he realized. These dragons were familiar, and the fight bled out of him as recognition washed over him. He recognized two of his former warriors, males from the unit he had commanded.
Before he could think of something to say to them, several more sets of clacking claws announced new arrivals from the other direction. Four more warriors surged down the tunnel to bolster the chamber guards. He recognized them, too, including the one in the lead. Lieutenant—no, Sub-commander—Merathosius.
Are you going to fight us, too, Aristalonis? Merath asked, his tone grave. Or will you surrender?
Merath used his name, not his rank, not a sir. Of course. Talon had turned his back on his kind; in their eyes, he did not deserve rank or respect anymore. He was a traitor.
Surrender? Talon asked. Do you have orders to take me alive? Or to kill me?
He had already committed himself to dying to give Zala the time she needed, but the idea of fighting Merath and the warriors he had once commanded made him sick. Could he truly attack them? If they tried to kill him, he would have to—his survival instincts would demand no less. But he did not wish to hurt them, certainly not to kill them. They were only following orders, as he had once done.
Merath hesitated before answering. Our orders were just to stop you. But we haven’t heard from the king. He may...
Want death for me, Talon finished grimly. He could not expect anything less, not after he had killed the guards Hul had sent after him.
Clashes of swords and roars of combat came from the direction of the king’s chambers. The two warriors behind Talon whirled in that direction.
Scarcely thinking, Talon whirled around and leaped for them. If Zala had found the battle she sought, he had to make sure she could finish it without reinforcements coming to help Hul. Talon wouldn’t fight to kill against these warriors, though they may try to kill him. He would simply try to delay them, and he would hope that Zala had found Hul, that all of this hadn’t been for nothing, that she and her storm sword would kill him and that a new king would rise, one who might be more reasonable toward the natives of this world.
The warriors spun back to face him, to meet his charge. Talon heard Merath and the others charging at him from the other side. One dragon’s golden eyes flashed with light, and he saw his fate in their glow. He saw his death.
Chapter 21
Since Salena had taken the initiative, running straight in and trying to attack the female face-to-face, Zala followed the wall in an attempt to flank the big dragon. Though she moved swiftly, wanting to act as the diversion Salena would likely need, she also scoured the chamber for other exits. If these were the king’s chambers, might not he be in here somewhere too?
There were two other passageways, but she couldn’t tell if they led to smaller chambers or back out into the tunnel system. As much as she wanted to check and see, the female dragon already had Salena on the defensive. One wing swept toward the floor, almost knocking her off her feet.
Zala raced in and drove her blade between the scales on the dragon’s muscled haunch. The point bit into flesh, gray streaks of light writhing and surging like ocean waves on the flat of the sword. The dragon leaped to the side, and her tail whipped toward Zala like a viper.
Resisting the urge to skitter back, she ducked the sinuous appendage and darted in closer, attacking that thigh again. This time, she slashed, laying open scale to reveal blood and muscle. Though that must have hurt, the dragon wasn’t distracted. Her jaws snapped together, and Salena squawked.
With the wings battering the air, Zala couldn’t see her lieutenant and didn’t know whether she had been hit or only startled. The tail zipped toward her again, snapping at her like a whip. Ducking, Zala ran around the dragon’s back end and to the other side. She turned and slashed at that thigh, too, while debating if she could reach a more vulnerable target. Those wings stirred up a storm of air in the room and made advancing a difficult proposition.
This dragon was so large that Zala could not scramble up and find a way onto her back, not unless she could jump onto it from a higher position. She eyed the alcoves in the wall that held the nests, wondering if that slight elevation might be enough. Before she had taken a step toward them, movement at the back of the chamber caught her eye. A lurch of anxiety went through her gut as a second dragon thundered into view.
The big male had all of Talon’s size and musculature, though some of the scales around its snout had gone white, and old scars marked its chest, as if something with huge claws had once grabbed onto him while clenching a fist.
With fury burning in the yellow eyes, the male raced straight for Zala.
Was this the king? The dragon that she had come for?
She crouched near the female’s thigh, skittering from side to side to keep from being trampled. Her pride wanted her to run forward and meet the king for one-on-one combat, but she was reluctant to leave Salena to deal with his ally alone. Also, staying close to the first dragon would make it harder for the newcomer to attack without striking his kin.
Zala stabbed the female’s thigh again, then spun in a circle, using her momentum to swing the sword toward the joint on that back leg. Her blade cut in, sinking deep. The female screeched, finally whirling to face Zala. Her tail slapped the new dragon in the head. Against her instincts, Zala sprinted in close. The female’s bloody maw opened wide, as if to swallow her.
Seeing that blood made Zala falter—it could only belong to Salena.
Pushing aside her fear, she dove below that approaching head and skidded underneath the dragon’s belly. Her foe spun around, snapping at Zala. Zala jumped to her feet, using her upward momentum to help her thrust her blade into the vulnerable belly.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw both the male’s and the female’s heads biting for her, but she finished her slash, laying open the belly as if she were gutting a fish. Then she dove to the ground again, trying to roll between the female’s legs to escape.
Something clipped her shoulder. Fangs. Pain exploded as they cut in, but her momentum carried her away. The male would have had to stick his head through the female’s legs and out the other side to catch her.
“Got her,” came Salena’s cry from somewhere nearby.
Hearing her voice filled Zala with relief, but she knew they were not safe, not even close. Jaws snapped right behind her. She glimpsed those nests and thought she could make a stand inside of one with her back to the wall. She raced toward them, but something—a tail?—slammed into her back. It felt like a tree falling on her. The blow hurled her across the chamber. Even though she tried to roll, to protect herself from a hard landing, she slammed into the wall. Every bone in her body groaned, and she bit her tongue as her teeth snapped together.
Though dazed, she blinked and tried to find her feet. The dragons had to be right behind her.
You dare, the male dragon’s voice cried in her head, come into our chambers and attack us.
The words were more than communication; they were an attack. Power reverberated through Zala’s body, stealing her strength. She clawed her way up the wall, trying to st
and though her knees couldn’t firm up and her legs wouldn’t hold her weight. She managed to lift her sword, placing it between her and the male dragon that stomped over to her and stared into her soul.
You will die, and all those with you will die.
Zala’s only satisfaction was that the female dragon lay behind him, unmoving. But Salena seemed to be pinned under the body. Blood dripped down her face and saturated her shirt. Their eyes met across the chamber, Salena’s full of distress. She wouldn’t be able to help Zala.
Zala heaved with her body and her mind, trying to throw off the malaise, the power that was smothering her like a wet blanket. The male’s fang-filled snout opened, and hot breath washed over her. Zala kept her blade up, hoping vainly that the creature might impale itself.
A boom sounded somewhere nearby, and the dragon’s attack faltered. Tanoir?
Another boom followed after the first, this one farther away, more muted. Yet the power of the explosions rippled through the tunnels, and soon rocks crashed down. A snap came from the ceiling above them. The male dragon spun toward the exit, and the magic that had been snuffing out Zala’s strength disappeared.
She ran away from the wall, straight toward Salena. Her shoulder burned with agony where the fangs had cut into her, and she couldn’t feel the fingers on her left hand. She grabbed Salena with her good hand. Her lieutenant was buried to the waist under the dead dragon.
“Look out,” Salena barked.
The male had turned back toward them. To finish them off?
Dust flooded the tunnel behind him, and he hesitated. Then rocks started falling inside the chamber. A boulder larger than the dragon’s head slammed into his shoulder and bounced off. Even though the blow did nothing except make him grunt and step to the side, it seemed to alarm him. He fled, not toward the dust-filled tunnel and the screeches of his own kind that sounded in the distance, but toward the rear of the chamber. He disappeared through a passageway as more rocks plummeted down all around Zala.
“Leave me,” Salena gasped.
Ignoring her, Zala kept pulling. She shook her left arm, trying to force circulation into the fingers. When she flexed them, they obeyed, but clumsily. It probably wouldn’t matter even if she was pulling with both hands.
Growling, Zala released Salena and raised her sword. With all of her strength she slashed into the dragon’s side, trying to cut through the body, to somehow make it so she could extricate her lieutenant. As rocks slammed down all around her, she made a gory mess, but she managed to split the dragon open enough to lessen the weight on Salena. Finally, with her helping, Zala dragged her out.
“Can you stand?” she asked, gasping for air after the exertion.
Another explosion went off, under the floor somewhere. The men must have found that level underneath this one. She hoped that rocks were burying all those dragons in the audience chamber.
Boulders slammed down in the hallway, and her hope turned to worry. Would she and Salena find a way out of this? More dust flowed out of that passage, and she was sure it would now be impassable. There had better be another way out of these chambers.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Salena clawed herself to her feet, using her sword like a cane.
Zala wrapped her left arm around her lieutenant’s waist, gasping at the pain in her shoulder, but she couldn’t risk carrying her sword off-hand, not when the big male dragon might yet be waiting up there.
They staggered to the back of the chamber, stumbling when another explosion rocked the floor. Zala tried to keep from coughing as dust coated her throat, but she could not. She only hoped the dragons were too busy trying to stay alive to notice. Tandoir was outdoing himself.
When they reached the back of the chamber and peered through the passageway the king had escaped through, there was no sign of the dragon. A rubble-filled tunnel opened up, disappearing into darkness.
“Is that a way out?” Salena asked between coughs.
“I have no idea.” Zala’s memories were empty on the matter. “I guess Talon didn’t get invited into the king’s personal chambers that often.”
She hustled forward as quickly as they could manage. If she and Salena found a way back to their men, they might be able to escape the mountain alive, something she hadn’t expected.
Before they rounded the bend, she gave a long look back to the front of the chamber, to the tunnel where she had last seen Talon. Was there any way he could have survived? He had been involved in a battle of his own when the ceiling had come down. Even if the rubble didn’t kill him, wouldn’t his kind simply finish the job?
Her throat tightened from more than the dust as she and Salena limped off into the darkness. The king might have escaped, but at least her people had managed to do what she had hoped, to strike a mighty blow against the dragons and destroy their headquarters. Zala couldn’t have done that without Talon’s help, and she would forever be grateful to him.
Epilogue
One month later…
Zala climbed to a rocky outcropping above the camp where she had a clear view of the stars and the canyon walls that protected her people. Fifty tents and countless soldiers in sleeping rolls spread out on the rocky cactus-dotted ground behind her. Two guards walked the perimeter of the camp, their eyes also toward the sky, if for different reasons.
She inhaled deeply, unable to fight the sense of loss that followed her these days, one that was always stronger when she had these quiet moments alone at night. The air smelled of sagebrush and juniper, damp from an afternoon thunderstorm. Here and there, mosquitoes whined, drawn by the stream running down the center of the canyon. She should have retreated to her tent, but she kept feeling the pull to come out where she could see the sky, in the hope that a familiar figure would coast into view, wings outstretched.
Loose pebbles crunched behind her, and Zala spotted Lieutenant Salena making her way up the slope. A part of Zala wanted to slip off the other side of the outcropping and disappear into the sagebrush without talking to her or anyone else. Her unit had been marching all day, and she had been surrounded by people and questions. Time alone would have been welcome. But Salena wasn’t quite the same as the rest of Zala’s soldiers. The two of them had been through enough in the last couple of months, fighting together and nearly dying together, that Salena had become more of a friend than a subordinate.
They had been injured together, too, Zala silently added, watching the hitch to Salena’s step as she navigated the loose rocks on the slope. Her hip had been cracked when the dragon had fallen on her, and the wound hadn’t fully healed yet. It might never heal entirely, but her sword still glowed in her hand; it hadn’t rejected her as a wielder. The deep gouge in Zala’s own shoulder still ached, especially when the weather changed, and she had not regained her full range of motion in that arm yet. She hoped that would come back. Even if she wielded her storm sword with her right hand, she needed both arms to be strong when she was racing around, climbing up trees and trying to leap on dragons’ backs.
Zala refused to contemplate retirement and was relieved that King Norkan had not mentioned it when she and her bedraggled team had reported to him after escaping the bowels of Mount Slash. He had reprimanded her for undertaking such a dangerous mission without seeking permission from her superiors, but somehow, she had ended up in a public ceremony in the Broken Urns settlement, deep under the desert where the largest remaining population of humans on the continent lived. She hadn’t minded that his speech had implied that the idea had been his from the beginning, not when she had wondered if she would be forcibly discharged after making such a decision on her own. The king had deemed her reckless, but had considered the losses that had come as a result of her actions an acceptable tradeoff for such a blow against the dragons.
So much of their headquarters had collapsed that the dragons had been forced to move out of the mountain, and even though Zala and Salena had failed to kill their king, they had vanquished his sister, another leader in the community
. In addition, the explosives and subsequent rock falls had killed other high-ranking dragons. Unfortunately, many of her people had been unable to escape from the collapsing tunnels in time, and she felt guilty that she had once again survived when others in her command had fallen. Sandirr had been among those who hadn’t made it, and she felt a hollowness in her breast at his loss. Even if they hadn’t always seen eye-to-eye, he had been one of the few troops in her unit who was older—and perhaps wiser—than she. All of the young faces that looked toward her, expecting brilliance and expertise, made her feel alone. And old.
“There you are, ma’am,” Salena said, leaning her hip against a boulder.
“Here I am.”
“I saw the courier earlier. Did new orders come in?”
Zala nodded. They had been doing drills while waiting to hear what headquarters wanted them to do next, and her people were ready for something new. “Yes. Dragons have been flying over Burnt Bridge, scouting the area, maybe looking for something. We’re to find out why.”
“Maybe that’s where their new base is going to be. I heard they hadn’t found anything permanent yet.”
“Could be.” Zala turned her gaze back toward the sky, silently inviting Salena to leave her to brood alone.
“Ma’am, how long are you going to—I mean, I think if he was alive or able to come, he would have by now.”
“Perhaps.”
Thanks to their trip back to Broken Urns and her injury, Zala had been underground for more than two weeks, and they had come out a hundred miles away from the jungle valley. It was possible Talon was out there, that he was looking for her, and that he just hadn’t found her yet.
“I can’t give up on him yet. I... If he truly is dead, I regret that.” Zala spoke quietly, barely aware that the words were aloud rather than in her head. “There was no reason for him to risk himself for us, to choose death over freedom. I didn’t ask him to, and that kind of sacrifice... We barely knew each other. If it was for me, I’m hardly worth it.”
Dragon Bond Page 19