Chapter 21
ATLAS STUMBLES IN THE BLOOD-SOAKED SAND below, staring in horror at Ignacia’s headless body as Cormac swings the Speerspitze around towards Krasimir.
The sky fills with shrieks and movement as several dragons streak back towards the sea.
For a moment I think they are flying out to meet another incoming Bolgorith assault, but that’s not what is happening.
Ignacia’s dragons are fleeing as fast as they arrived.
Krasimir drops the queen’s head into the water with a splash.
Where is Chumana?
Two Speerspitze shells almost find their target, but Krasimir deflects the first with his tail and the second ricochets off his scales.
He hangs over the battle, a stark, gigantic shadow, and leers as his troops maul a rebel dragon, its lifeless body crushing several humans when it falls.
I see Serena crawl out from behind it, dragging herself across the sand, a mere hair’s breadth from death.
I can’t breathe.
Marquis is loading a Speerspitze while Freddie fires. Atlas is still motionless, staring at the sky, his face red in the heat of the dragonfire. I follow his gaze. The clouds part suddenly, fat raindrops falling, and with them comes Chumana.
She’s in freefall, as straight as a pin, her wings tucked against her body as she picks up speed.
Krasimir doesn’t have time to look up. Her wings erupt at the last minute and she seizes him by the neck, shaking him like a terrier shakes a rat.
Three Bolgoriths attack her from the side and she’s forced to let go. They grapple in the air.
I see a snare of wings stretched and entangled at unnatural angles.
Then comes the crack of bone.
‘Chumana!’ I scream.
My heart hammers in my chest as I stare, trying to see through the flashes of taut tendons and floating feathers.
They’re going to rip her apart.
A screech.
The wyverns mob the Bolgoriths, diving like gulls. Blood streaks the sky as they bite into flesh and muscle and Aodahn’s tail twitches like a whip, blinding its victim. Chumana is free and she pivots to face Krasimir again as he veers across the sky, this time with less ferocity.
I taste iron and realise my face is splattered with blood. Krasimir’s neck is pulsing, the laceration left by Chumana’s teeth a mess of white sinew and bone. He drops, then rises, then sinks towards the waves.
‘Traitress,’ he roars as Chumana glides towards him. ‘You desert your own motherland.’
Bulgarians breathe a flurry of flames that don’t reach Chumana. Soresten and Addax are flying above, their own dragonfire redirecting the inferno.
‘Such a mother deserves desertion,’ Chumana snarls.
Krasimir lets out an enraged bellow as he drops even lower, his talons skimming the waves.
His neck convulses, like a muscle spasming of its own accord, and he lets out an anguished scream as he forces his head round to face Chumana.
She closes in on him, her jaws open, her tongue curled as if to administer a kiss of death.
A coup de grace.
A final blow.
‘Brasstongue!’
A black dragon is hurtling towards me. I jump out of the way of Goranov’s flame. The heat skims my face as it scorches the grass where I was standing.
‘Up, up, you’re nose-diving!’ I hear Ralph scream.
Goranov swoops upwards and as he flies along the curve of the cliff I see Ralph still sitting astride his back, his feet dug between the black scales and a Speerspitze across his lap.
Panic flares in my chest as I look out across the bare hilltop.
No matter which direction I choose, I have too far to run.
Another stream of fire will reach me before I find cover.
I force my legs to move, crashing blindly down the hillside as Goranov rises from below, his body parallel with mine.
I see Ralph’s face, small and pale in the wind as he clings to his master’s back.
My feet leave the ground as I stumble several feet down the hill and land so hard the breath leaves my body. Someone pulls me to my feet.
‘Dr Hollingsworth?’ I say. ‘I thought you went with Sophie?’
We both look up as Krasimir flies across the sea, still alive. Then Goranov veers, circling me.
Hollingsworth’s hand tightens around my arm as she flings back her head. ‘Take her!’ she bellows into the sky. ‘Take her now!’
What?
Time slows as Goranov’s jaws open. Orange flickers between his teeth. I feel the skin on my face peel.
A screech like a motorcar braking slices through the air and a wave of heat shoots by me.
Chumana’s huge frame skims the top of my head as she lands with a snarl, her wings outstretched in front of me like a shield.
Goranov is forced to double back and circle above us and as she reaches up her neck to snap at him, she lets out a deafening cry.
‘Touch her and you’ll burn,’ she spits.
I catch a glimpse of Ralph’s face, wincing as he struggles to keep his grasp on the Speerspitze. Goranov aims another blast of fire at me and Chumana deflects it with her tail.
‘Son of a bitch,’ I hear her mutter in Slavidraneishá.
She breathes her own cloud of fire, engulfing Goranov’s wing. The edges singe, the flames dangerously close to Ralph, and Goranov is forced to plummet towards the sea to douse them.
‘I cannot protect you here,’ Chumana says, turning to me. ‘You will have to fly.’
I nod, looking for Hollingsworth, but she’s gone. I climb Chumana’s tail, using the spikes to pull myself upwards and on to her back. My feet find the familiar holds between her scales and as I lie flat against her body, my face flush on her hot skin, I’m reminded of the very first time.
‘You should have killed Krasimir!’ I shout.
‘And let Goranov kill you?’ she snarls.
We lift into the air. Chumana flies across the sea, scouting Goranov and Ralph from above. The wind steals the breath from me and makes my eyes water. Goranov is still flying erratically, lopsided, and he only picks up speed when he realises we are above him.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ I scream.
We swerve sideways, Chumana on Goranov’s tail. ‘He has not drunk his fill,’ she says.
I look down at the beach and my heart sinks. Krasimir is fighting on land, his teeth sunk into the back of another dragon’s neck. I see Soresten and Addax attacking him from above, but his tail swipes Addax from the air, crushing her against the high cliffs.
‘No!’
Then I see Hollingsworth, running down the hillside towards the beach.
What happened back there? Who was she shouting at to take me?
Chumana . . . or Goranov? Further along the shore, Marquis, Freddie and Serena are still fighting alongside Wyvernmire’s Guardians and a shot brings another dragon down into the sea with a crash.
Marquis is grinning, wielding the Speerspitze like he was born to it.
This is what he wanted, where he’s felt he should be ever since those protests broke out in Fitzroy Square in what feels like a lifetime ago.
Marquis always knew which side he should be on and suddenly here he is, a trained rebel, making a difference in this war.
And here I am, sitting between Chumana’s wings as she fights, unable to help her.
I came to this island thinking I, the face of the rebellion, was going to save everyone.
But now, without my languages, without any sort of training, all I can do is hope to be saved.
‘Where is Atlas—’ I begin, but the breath is snatched from my lungs.
The cliffs fly by beneath us, each grey rock dotted with fire.
Battle writhes across Canna’s green arms and spills on to its beaches.
Chumana’s body seems to lengthen as she tucks in her wings and flies back along the coast, following Goranov’s volatile path through the sky.
She shoots towards the hillside, riding the wind like an arrow about to hit its mark.
There is Atlas on the top of Compass Hill.
Panic fills me. What is he doing up there?
He must be looking for me. I grip Chumana with my thighs as she snaps at Goranov’s tail, my hands frozen cold around her spikes.
Goranov swings around, hurtling back towards the battle again.
‘He knows he can’t fight you,’ I shout at Chumana. ‘He wants you to tire, to land.’
Chumana laughs. ‘I will land when I’m dead. But not while Bulgaria subjugates our skies.’
Goranov is dropping lower, shuddering mid-air.
‘Up!’ I hear Ralph scream as Goranov barrels through several warring dragons, then swoops upwards again, this time sluggishly slow.
Chumana lets out a roar as she follows him and I lose sight of Atlas, but see more movement across neighbouring hills – people on horseback.
Ruth sends her horse cantering down towards the beach, narrowly missing the snapping of jaws as she stoops to pick up an injured rebel.
Gideon rides a second horse, Sophie behind him. I take a deep breath.
For now, everyone I love is still alive.
My eyes settle on the scars between Chumana’s wings from where I cut two detonators out of her skin. Who was the girl who set a criminal dragon free from that library? I’m not her any more. And I’m not the girl who ventured into the wyvern tunnels, either.
As the sound of battle rings around me, the glacial wind strips me of everything else. My education, my reputation, every qualification and expectation and birch-rod scar. I’m not a Draconic translator or a codebreaker or the face of the rebellion.
Right now, flying free with Chumana, I’m a clean slate. As new as the day I took my first breath.
There’s a jolt as Chumana’s jaw closes on Goranov’s haunch. His body curves round to retaliate as he snaps at her front legs, his yellow eyes suddenly on me.
‘You have lost, brasstongue,’ he snarls.
‘She is no brasstongue, Goranov,’ Chumana hisses. ‘She is Vivien Featherswallow.’
Chumana pronounces the words with such finality, as if there is nothing more to me than my name. It feels terrifyingly ordinary. Mediocre.
Liberating.
I’m just Vivien Featherswallow.