She studied the seven opposing dragons as they glided high above the Erymyran farm fields. Though broadly similar in design, with leathery wings, long trailing tails, and fierce maws at the end of serpentine necks, the colors and characteristics varied. Each carried at least three riders, and four dragons were long enough that five Naor sat in metal studded saddles upon their backs. They came on in a wedge, with perhaps a hundred feet of air separating each. The largest, of a faded yellow hue, was in the lead.
Only a little ways behind, on the distant ground, great black beasts longer than most houses advanced across the farm fields southeast of the city. Apart from a few hundred Naor riding horses, the rest of the enemy soldiers had packed upon platforms fastened to the backs of the beasts. There had to be forty or more soldiers on every one of the horned monstrosities, and there looked to be nearly three dozen of the beasts in all. Calculating quickly, she estimated there were no more than two thousand Naor. Not so large a number, if the walls held, but capable of wrecking havoc if the walls went down. Was this just some huge destructive raid?
The drum of immense hooves upon the plains thundered like an unending storm.
She bore in on the leftmost dragon, a green-scaled monster larger even than their own. The Naor riding it wore furred jackets and hats. Only the pilot was armored, complete with a heavy helm with cheekguards. He and the five arranged on the dragon behind him turned to look as Kyrkenall let loose a flurry of arrows
The pilot tore at the shaft sticking out of his shoulder plate, only to catch one right through his helmet cheek piece. As he shuddered in his death throes, the dragon sank from formation, and Elenai heard the screams of the warriors seated along its length. Nothing, though, got the monster beating its wings once more, and it dropped like a stone.
The remaining dragon pilots were swift to react. Two broke formation immediately, turning to flank Elenai’s dragon, and a smaller third one with pretty iridescent wings climbed.
Another flew straight on for the city, the domes of which gleamed in the light of the lowering sun.
Elenai glimpsed Rylin and Lelanc diving through the air above another monster, and then she was too busy turning her own animal to watch. Her stomach lurched during the speedy, winding drop. One of the pursuing beasts released its great roar as she swung out and away and their dragon shook beneath them. She’d hate to feel what a direct attack would do, and wondered how to command her own animal to roar.
Javelins fell from the beast above, and her team of weavers spread gusts of wind. The weapons dropped harmlessly to the right.
A blue beast swept in on their left, so close that its wing tip touched their dragon’s. One of their warriors proved a fine marksman, for an arrow point struck Elenai’s collar. It didn’t pierce the highly woven fabric, but it felt like she’d taken a fist punch to the side of her throat. Elenai struggled to stay upright, alarmed when she felt her dragon wing-beat seize up. Pain or no, she retained control, raking her gaze left. One spear stood out along her dragon’s wing, as Elenai detected a little of their dragon’s irritation there, like a splinter.
The blue’s pilot had whipped up a shield that now boasted several arrows, as did the warrior in back of him, slumped in his chair. One of the exalts must have attacked the Naor warriors to the rear, for they held motionless, hands clasping javelins they didn’t throw.
“Hold steady,” Kyrkenall shouted at her, even though she’d been doing exactly that. Then, with astonishing precision, he sent two arrows into the blue animal’s largest wing joint.
Almost immediately it fell away and into a spiral, one wing hanging useless.
“Two down!” Kyrkenall shouted.
“Three!” Thelar corrected. “Rylin got one!”
It was then that the agile dragon with the shimmering wings bore down on them from above, right out of the sun.
Kyrkenall launched arrows at its underside as it swooped past. Elenai dived, and it felt as though her heart and stomach both caught in her throat. The barbed tail that swung down missed her head by a sword length. Behind her came a masculine shout of pain cut off in mid-voice. She twisted in her seat.
The bald exalt, Folahn, had been torn from his chair. He now hurtled limply through the air, blood streaming after.
Gods, she prayed, let him already be dead. She could too well imagine the terror of being conscious during that long way down.
A huge yellow dragon with great black spikes along its spine and jaw swept on for them from the right, pale wings slapping the air. The spearmen along its back lifted weapons expectantly. Elenai struggled to turn her dragon but its spear-injured wing made it sluggish despite that it registered little pain. Behind her Kyrkenall fired and cursed, for a sorcerous red energy wave, like vaporous blood, rose before the scaly beast, sweeping every shaft away. This, the dragon that had been in the lead, carried more than one sorcerer.
Its maw opened and Elenai gritted her teeth, activated the hearthstone, desperate enough for the extra spell energy to risk it. She felt M’vai and Thelar whipping threads of attack toward the enemy beast’s pilot, only to be rebuffed.
She wasn’t sure if the pain or the gleeful voice came first. This time Chargan sent her the feel of fire surging through her veins, and he laughed. I had hoped we would meet again.
He was somewhere nearby, either on a dragon or below, and had been waiting for the chance to key into her hearthstone.
She cycled the stone closed, saw the yellow beast nearing to fifty feet, and struggled to get her dragon to swerve. Any moment, she knew, the enemy monster would roar.
A savage screech rang through the air—the piercing call of a ko’aye. Elenai saw the Naor dragon pilot look suddenly over his shoulder just as a javelin drove through his side.
A flock of five ko’aye struck from on high, claws gleaming. Foremost among them was one of blue and white, with a scarred neck, and astride her was a lean, dark-haired man in a blue khalat.
N’lahr and Drusa had dropped out of the clear blue to join the battle. Elenai laughed in delight and relief at sight of them both, not just for their timely arrival, but because the commander was alive and well. She’d feared their last conversation had rendered him permanently immobile.
As the wounded pilot flailed, the dragon’s wing-beats faltered and its deadly blast never came. The ko’aye ripped Naor warriors from their seats and sent them plunging, screaming as they dropped.
Elenai grinned in relief and heard Kyrkenall whoop with joy behind her. In moments the attack crippled the spiked yellow dragon and it followed its fellows to the earth.
Elenai scanned the sky and saw the other ko’aye racing to aid Lelanc and Rylin, locked in combat with a copper colored dragon. Below, the front rank of great black beasts had passed them by, and those that came after were half obscured by their dust.
Drusa and N’lahr glided in beside them. The ko’aye’s head turned and she let out a caw of greeting. “The travel was long. But it is good to send our enemies into the red!”
Elenai saw the saddle holding the commander in place was a slapdash affair with numerous buckles and ropes. A canister of javelins was strapped along his right leg.
“You’re late!” Kyrkenall called over the whipping wind. “But the stylish entrance makes up for it!”
N’lahr smiled, then pointed into the distance with his javelin. “We’ve got to catch those headed for Darassus! The walls have to hold.”
Two dragons were closer to the city every moment, one a huge silver, and the other, farther back, the lighter gray with iridescent wings that had slain Folahn. She felt her pulse rise and set her sights on the one closest to Darassus.
N’lahr saluted them with his weapon. Drusa screeched and bore him upward.
Elenai discovered she could still shout when she called to the mages behind her. “Conjure a wind at our back!”
The exalts did so in moments. She felt the push of it not only through her magical senses, but against the dragon’s wings. They picked up speed almost immediately.
Kyrkenall shouted to her, his voice almost lost by the roar of the wind. “I’m out of arrows—dropped a bunch on your last dive! Two javelins left!”
She didn’t bother shouting back that he’d better make them count. They passed over the front rank of the gigantic Naor beasts below, and she peered ahead at the shimmer of silver scales covering the dragon in the lead. What she’d first taken as blotches she now recognized as crimson hand-prints painted all along its serpentine body.
Thelar shouted something that sounded like a warning. She couldn’t understand him over the wind. Then she saw a bloodred spike of energy from below rip a jagged slash through their dragon’s left wing.
“What was that?” Kyrkenall shouted.
Elenai reached out with her senses and felt a second powerful sorcerous strike building below. She veered left, and her unnerving roll saved them from a strike against the dragon’s belly, though the red slash tore a gap through the other wing. She felt her control slipping. The creature didn’t seem to be capable of registering much pain, but it certainly was in distress. She forced their animal to fight on, beating its wings faster to compensate.
Ahead of them, the silver beast dropped altitude and speed as it closed on the outer wall, and Elenai knew with certainty they weren’t going to reach it in time.
She heard its great roar. A thirty-foot span beside the closed Darassan gate blew into rubble. Only a three-to-four-foot height of wall remained. Beyond it lay a tract of blasted masonry. The attack didn’t seem to have hurt many soldiers, who weren’t present in large numbers. Probably most had been sent on to reinforce Vedessus and Alantris.
The dragon swept on, low over the city. Elenai swallowed in dread, knowing when it passed the titanic statue of Darassa the pilot meant to blast the inner wall as well. She funneled all the magical energies left her to build the wind behind them. They shot forward, closing quickly.
“Get me beside it,” Kyrkenall shouted in her ear. “I’ve got this.”
Weak from the exertion, she turned to find him out of his seat, grasping the straps of her chair with one hand and holding a javelin in the other. She could scarce believe it. “What are you doing?”
“Our exalts have their hands full keeping you airborne. Get me in close. I’m going to drop over.”
“You’re insane!”
“I’ll be fine,” he said with a grin.
They soared beyond Darassa’s statue as the silver dragon passed over the spired dome of the temple of Kantahl, heading in a straight line for the wall about the palace grounds. Thousands still poured through the streets and into the inner city, and individual figures pointed up at them.
The dragon’s rearmost Naor pitched javelins at them, but Thelar and M’vai used dwindling energies to direct them harmlessly away. In moments Elenai had their beast above the silver. Without so much as a farewell, Kyrkenall leapt over the side.
He landed near a prominent dorsal spike, rocked unevenly for a heartbeat, then advanced to slice the head from one of the rearmost riders as the man raised a bow. He jammed a javelin into his companion with his off hand. Kyrkenall leapt onto the saddle, whipped free the javelin, then drove it through the neck of another archer, turning too late to fire. Two warriors rose to fight him but he crouched under one blow and bowled into the man so he tumbled over the side, then sliced through the next and advanced on the pilot. He put his sword to the man’s throat.
Elenai, flying above and aside, could only stare in amazement.
Kyrkenall’s dragon veered up and over the center of the city. Elenai tried to stay just above.
“Elenai,” Thelar shouted, his voice hoarse. “The little one’s come back!”
Too late she saw the smaller dragon that had slain Folahn diving at them from above, claws outstretched. Three other ko’aye trailed it, along with Drusa and N’lahr.
She swerved, and the legs of Elenai’s dragon struck Kyrkenall’s. The archer’s blade drove into his pilot’s neck and his dragon began to drop. The ground lay yet a killing distance below.
Elenai turned hard, chasing Kyrkenall’s dragon. The archer had latched onto the the pilot’s saddle and she saw his eerie black eyes swing up at her.
“Grab the rope!” Thelar shouted breathlessly. The exalt had sliced free some restraining straps and used sorcery to stretch them toward Kyrkenall.
He could make that, she thought. That was a shorter leap than up to the ledge of their ko’aye cave.
Kyrkenall met her eyes, stepped back. And then, instead of jumping for the rope on his right, he whirled and threw himself into empty space to the left.
She gaped, knowing sheer horror, knowing her friend had just fallen to his death. A heartbeat later the talons of the little dragon struck just back of where Thelar sat. Elenai’s dragon spun as she fought dizzily for control, the city a colorful blur below.
A smaller winged figure dove past, and as she righted their dragon she saw Lelanc snatch Kyrkenall’s shoulder. The ko’aye might as well have grabbed a lead weight, for she and Rylin and the archer plummeted like a stone. Lelanc beat her wings frantically to slow the drop, but it looked terribly swift even still.
Elenai fought her dragon back into the air. Its strength was almost finished. She swooped to the left, to avoid smashing into Vedessa’s temple bell. N’lahr and the flock of ko’aye climbed after the gray dragon. She didn’t think she could follow. Her attention was still diverted by Kyrkenall’s fate. Lelanc had angled left, and some twenty feet above a channel of the Idris she released her burden. Kyrkenall plunged and struck the water with a splash. The ko’aye’s own precipitous fall almost ended the same way, but Lelanc pulled out of the steep descent and skimmed the surface before rising once more. People hurrying over a nearby bridge cheered as Kyrkenall surfaced, and a group ran to help him from the river.
Elenai struggled for control, tasting blood through gritted teet, as her dragon shuddered beneath her. She’d managed to bite her lip. She saw Kyrkenall’s silver dragon smash into the cobblestone streets of the marketplace just back of the statue of Darassa. As Elenai flew past it looked as though the goddess had turned in sorrow to weep because the huge animal had fallen. A crash that would be her fate if she couldn’t guide her failing beast. Blood sprayed with every lift of its wings.
“Its wings are bleeding badly,” Thelar called up to her.
Behind her, N’lahr and the ko’aye still wove around the dragon with the iridescent wings. Elenai’s own dragon was dying; she could be no aid to them. She wasn’t sure she could be aid to herself. She managed a low path over the outer walls, thinking they’d done enough damage to the city already. Her gaze roved over the oncoming Naor, found them less than a half mile away.
“Help me steady the winds!” she cried. But there was nothing more to be done, and a moment later they met the ground at nearly fully speed.
32
The Army at the Wall
Rylin and Lelanc were only a few hundred yards behind Elenai’s dragon when the beast cleared the outer wall. It dropped too swiftly, slamming across the surface of the grass blades, rippling them for a brief moment before it struck and slid for a hundred feet, flinging up clods of dirt and grass and rattling its three remaining passengers in their seats.
Lelanc landed only a few heartbeats after, just to the right. Rylin unstrapped to fling himself forward, dreading what he might find. At least the pale dragon hadn’t rolled atop Elenai and the others.
Closing fast beyond the dragon were the horned, ebon Naor beasts, the front eight just visible in advance of their dust cloud. Somehow they were even larger from this angle. They’d picked up their pace, and Rylin guessed they had less than a few minutes before the first arrived. If any of his friends had survived he’d be hard-pressed to get them to the gate some fifty yards behind.
A glance over his shoulder showed him Exalt Meria rushing from the south gate with a handful of the city guard. From the walls, flaming bundles of pitch now arced out into the blue vault of the sk
y, trailing smoke.
As Rylin reached her, Elenai was struggling out of her seat. He’d been so distracted by first sight of her in the arena he’d completely failed to congratulate her on her promotion to the ring. Though she was leaner, locks and fly-aways escaped from her usually neat braid, and her stained clothing was well lived-in, the customarily tidy squire had changed in more startling ways. Gone was any trace of self-conscious awareness, replaced now with easy self-assurance, obvious not just in the way she carried herself, but in the keen-eyed certainty with which she approached challenges. There in the arena he’d noticed it in the way she held her shoulders while she moved; now he observed it in the way she checked on the welfare of the exalts as Rylin helped her down. A leader, ensuring the well-being of her followers.
Once, he’d found her attractive and full of youthful potential. Now, dirt and sweat-streaked and mussed, her confidence and capability had transformed her into an utterly beautiful woman and he’d have to have been dead not to notice.
Upon reaching the ground Elenai rocked unsteadily for a moment, blinking, then straightened, muttering thanks for his assistance. He helped Thelar and M’vai reach the ground soon after. Both looked pale and wobbly. Rylin felt Elenai draw power from her stone to send magic coursing into the nearest mages, including him. He grinned, feeling renewed. He turned to thank her, then saw her wince.
Even without watching from the inner world, he knew she’d shut off the hearthstone, just as he’d have known when someone closed the shutters on a window behind him on a breezy day.
“The Naor were trying to attack me through it,” she said to his unspoken question. Her gray eyes held his. “It’s their leader. Chargan.”
“The sorcerer grandson of Mazakan,” Rylin said. So he’d come here rather than Alantris. He wasn’t sure how Elenai knew his name. “We’d best get to the walls.”
Joined now by the guards, and Meria, they all hurried for the gate as the thunder of approaching hooves vibrated the air around them. Rylin waved for Lelanc to take the air, noting her wing-beats were labored. Small wonder, after the terrific fight she’d waged.
Upon the Flight of the Queen Page 51