Chapter 7 #5
“How can I possibly be expected to remember anything said after three jugs of mead? Be a little realistic here, my friend.”
I laughed. “Talk to Commander Rankin. I’m sure he can arrange something.”
“Or you could put a good word in for me first.”
“And you’re not taking advantage of our friendship at all .”
“Oh, totally am, and I have no shame in doing so. That’s what best friends are for.”
I laughed again. “Fine. I’ll put in a good word for you.”
“Brilliant. Thank you.”
“Not a problem,” I replied. “But you had best talk to both Wills and Bree about it first. Especially given you’ve been so adamant up until now about the whole marriage to one of them thing.”
“It’s the first thing on my to-do list for when we get back.”
You stop chatting, Kaia grumbled . Hurry more. We need go.
Be there in half an hour.
Need be faster.
I have feet, not wings, Kaia.
Feet need be faster.
I grinned and increased my pace. We got there a few minutes earlier than predicted, earning an amused rumble of approval from Kaia and an exuberant welcome from Gria.
After wasting too many minutes on providing her the demanded eye scratch, I grabbed the rest of Kaia’s harness from the hooks and headed over to her, quickly gearing her up.
“Right,” I said, raising my voice to ensure I was heard by all eight drakkons and kin. “Kele, Hannity, Rayka, Jassy, and Beth, you’re with me and Kaia. We’re flying over the Sheer to see what the gilded riders are up to.”
“Sounds like fun,” Kele said dryly. “Are we expecting much opposition?”
“Depends on numbers and what type of force they’ve stationed there, but yes.”
“Excellent.”
Amusement twitched my lips. “That you or Yara speaking?”
She laughed. “I will admit that a little of her bloodthirstiness has leached through our connection. She remains unhappy about being driven from her own aerie, even though she is content enough in Esan’s.”
I hoped that wasn’t an indication of future trouble. Kaia was in the prime of her life and would remain the overall queen for years yet, but as Yara matured, would she feel it necessary to challenge for the position?
Not way came Kaia’s thought.
Then what happens?
When I no longer breed or have young to care for, I leave.
Leave? You can’t do that.
Is way.
But where would you go? And what about me? I wanted to add, but resisted. This really wasn’t about me, even if our link now made it impossible for me to contemplate not having her in my life anymore.
Find warm cave , she said, seemingly unconcerned. Plenty in black mountains big enough for one.
Not sure I could live in a cave, Kaia.
No need. I still fly and meet.
You’d better, I grumbled, then continued the briefing. “Miri and Halka, you’re on duty here at Esan. Do not fly low enough for the Mareritt to attack you with their acid sprays and do not, under any circumstances, attack them unless it’s in self-defense.”
“Can I ask why not, Commander?” Miri asked. “What’s the point of being on a fire-breathing drakkon if we can’t burn the bastards?”
“Because Esan’s walls have not yet been fully strengthened against the acid, and we do not want to provoke them into a full attack.”
“The weather was looking pretty nasty up on the peaks,” Jassy said.
“You can thank our air mages for that,” I replied. “They’re covering our approach.”
“And when we get there?” Rayka and Beth asked as one.
I glanced at them. “That depends on what we find up there. Let’s go. Standard scouting formation.”
Kaia rolled forward, taking the lead, moving with speed toward the entrance.
Once she’d reached the edge of the tongue, she spread her wings and bellowed.
It was a greeting to the rising day and a war cry all in one, but as the sound echoed across the distant peaks, unease stirred through me. Darkness awaited us.
Darkness and death.
I shivered and thrust the thought away. As my parents had often said, fear and trepidation were natural when riding into a dangerous situation, and there was no doubt in my mind that today’s mission was more dangerous than usual.
Flying into the unknown was one thing; flying into it knowing it was quite possibly a trap edged toward insanity.
But how else were we to know what was up there?
Our only other option was to trek through the lava tubes, and while there’d once been openings near the Sheer’s flat peak, there was no guarantee they remained.
Not with all the seismic activity in the ten years since I’d last been in that area.
Besides, it would take days to traverse that system, and I seriously doubted we had that much time left.
Every move the Mareritt and the gilded riders were currently making suggested they were building up to something big.
Kaia leapt off the tongue, throwing me violently forward.
I had the packs in front of me as a cushion but nevertheless braced my hands against her spine to stop falling into it.
A laugh escaped, and for a few brief seconds, worry and fear were drowned in the sheer joy of being astride a drakkon diving hard and fast down a mountainside, the wind snapping at my hair and chilling my cheeks.
As the ground loomed toward us far too fast, she flicked her wings, and we soared upward again, this time throwing me back so sharply the rope holding me on snapped taut.
Another laugh escaped, and it seemed to echo almost as loudly across the peaks as her bellow had.
Maybe it was nothing more than imagination, but in the distant darkness, evil stirred in response.
I shivered and glanced behind me. The remaining drakkons had followed us down, their red and bronze scales glimmering in the silvery drizzle surrounding us.
We soared over the neighboring peak and formed a V as we swept down its broken slope and headed for the sea, angling away from the Beak and the watch stations that lay beyond it.
The rain eased the farther away we moved from the mountains, but the day remained bitterly cold, and the sea far below was dark, wild, and choppy.
I tugged my scarf over my nose to keep the wind off my face as much as practical and pushed a tiny bit of heat to my fingertips.
I might be wearing gloves, but they weren’t doing a whole lot to keep my extremities warm.
Maybe I needed to ask the seamstresses to work on some woolen ones to wear under the leather.
At least when wool got wet it remained warm, and while all of us had our own inner fires, it was better not to use them unnecessarily when we were flying into the unknown.
After a good half hour or so, we arced around to the left and began the long journey toward Mareritten.
The end of the Black Glass Mountains came into sight, though from this distance it was little more than a darkly shrouded blot on the horizon.
There was no sign of movement in the skies, either over those peaks or in the sea far below, and the inner unease strengthened.
While it was well after sunrise now and the majority of the birds would be tethered for the day, we had no idea how many “lead” birds they had.
While we hadn’t seen any roosting barges on our flight over, they probably wouldn’t be too far from the Sheer—presuming we were right about the birds not having the flight stamina of drakkons.
Those who bore the communication bands would likely be up and patrolling.
We see, we destroy.
If we see them, yes, but let’s not look for trouble. We need to uncover what lies on top of that mountain first.
Destroy what there, then find and destroy the barges , Kaia stated firmly. Safer.
And it would be a fitting payback for the damage they’d inflicted on Rua and Hannity. She didn’t say that, but it was uppermost in her thoughts.
Our next course of action has to depend on who or what awaits on that mountain. If it’s soldiers and mages, or even a flight or two of birds armed with acid weapons, we might be in trouble.
Storm stop them seeing us.
It also stops us seeing them.
She considered this for a moment. Where soldiers come from?
That is the great unknown.
Need know. If do, we destroy.
We’re working on it.
Amusement rumbled through her thoughts. Work harder .
I rolled my eyes. The much younger me would never have guessed the queen I’d admired for so damn long had a wicked sense of humor and tendency to tease.
We continued on for another hour, until the peaks gave way to the broken foothills, then the long black beaches I’d traversed after the white fin had saved my life by dragging me toward these shores.
There was nothing moving in the wastelands beyond the shores; no shadows or unusual fog clouding the horizon.
The Mareritt might be hauling new war weapons toward Esan, but they obviously weren’t planning a two-pronged attack.
Unless, of course, they simply didn’t want to get in the way of whatever the gilded riders and their soldiers on the peak had planned.
We swept around and followed the dark sands back into the foothills, keeping for as long as possible well under the storm that raged across the peaks.
But as the mountain rose, so did we, the angle of our flight sharpening as we neared the Sheer.
The rain was now so fierce it felt like ice, hitting exposed skin with such force that it drew blood.
I shivered and tightened the hood around my face, but it didn’t really help that much.
I checked the progress of the other drakkons, but they were little more than shadows, three on one side, two on the other.
Instinct twitched. It was a formation they’d seen us fly before, even if in smaller numbers.
Kaia , I said abruptly, tell Yara and Cansu to sweep to the right, keeping in the cloud as much as practical, and come in from Esan’s side of the range.
She did so. As the two drakkons peeled away, I added, Tell the remaining three to fly directly behind us. We’ll do a single file flame run the minute we spot them.
Damage more if spread , she commented.
We need to change tactics. We can always swing around for another run once we know what we’re facing.
She made a low rumbly sound; she wasn’t in agreement about our formation, but she was willing to trust my instincts for the first run and come back for a more intense second attack.
We flew on, into the heart of the storm. Electricity crackled all around us, and the wind was so damn fierce that even Kaia struggled to fly straight. The icy rain had become a sheer gray curtain through which nothing was visible, not even the ends of Kaia’s wings.
Are you able to see where you’re going in this muck ? I asked.
Is hard.
Meaning we could crash into a mountain?
Should see shadow before hit.
I am not entirely comforted by that statement.
Her amusement rumbled into my mind, and a smile briefly tugged at my lips.
The wind was buffeting us sideways now, and bright flashes of deadly light danced all around us.
Though none of the storm’s dangerous electricity had struck at us yet, I couldn’t help but pray for Túxn’s help getting us through.
Our witches might be behind this storm, and they might have made some sort of allowance for our presence within it, but air was not earth, and—if the many tales I’d heard over the years about storms gaining a life and a will of their own were to be believed—tended to be harder to tame.
Of course, those tales might be nothing more than stories told to trainees to instill a sense of caution, but the last thing we needed was a random lightning strike doing what the gilded riders had so far failed to do.
Eventually, the Sheer revealed itself through the gray.
We flew in its shadow, following its stark line upwards, but any hope its bulk would provide some sort of windbreak was quickly lost. If anything, the air seemed even more volatile.
As Kaia struggled to maintain an even flight path against the buffeting, I cranked up my inner heat and scanned the gray, looking for the riders and the soldiers.
If they were stationed on the plateau, then they would surely have watchers up here somewhere… .
But there was nothing except the wild gray storm and the occasional incandescent flash, and it just didn’t feel right.
We came up and over the top of the Sheer. The ice eased to rain, and the bleak gray shroud surrounding us slowly lifted.
As it did, the flat mountain peak gradually revealed itself.
On it was a sea of gold.
Gilded birds.
Lots and lots of gilded birds.