95. The Wyverns of Valtara
Chapter 95
The Wyverns of Valtara
25 th Day of the Blood Moon
Achyron’s Keep – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom
Roars and shouts rang out, flames flickering in Alina’s blurred vision. She shook her head, trying to loose the ringing. Beneath her, she felt Rynvar whine, and panic flared in her veins. She scrambled for the buckles and straps that held her in place on the wyvern’s back, ripping them free. She slid to the ground, her ribs groaning as her feet touched stone.
Alina sprinted around to Rynvar’s head, running her hands along his scales, his deep blue eyes searching hers.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” she whispered, staring into those eyes that had been her solace for so long. She looked down the length of his body to see one of his legs snapped and a broken spear shaft jutting from his shoulder. “You’re going to be all right.”
The wyvern hissed and whined, his chest wheezing.
“You fucking hold on, you understand me? You do not have permission to die. It’s my turn to keep you safe. By blade and by blood.” Alina slid her sword from its scabbard and pressed her head to the side of Rynvar’s snout. “Do not hesitate,” she whispered to herself, repeating the words she had heard Dayne speak every day. “Do not contemplate mercy.”
She moved around Rynvar’s flank to find eight warriors in bronzed cuirasses and white skirts standing with ordos and valynas in their hands, their backs to her. Aeson Virandr and three of his companions stood with them.
“Nothing gets past this line!” Savrin roared, beating his valyna against his ordo. Beyond him, over a hundred Koraklon warriors had broken away from the fighting and marched on them in a tight shield wall. “Protect your queen!”
Alina walked to join them, drawing in a long breath and letting it out slowly, her fingers tensing around the hilt of her sword. She slid her dardik shield from her back, small and light.
“How did you get to me so quickly?” Alina asked as she pushed between Savrin and Aeson, readying herself.
“He never let you out of his sight,” Aeson said, tilting his head at Savrin without turning his gaze from the approaching warriors.
Savrin shrugged his ordo from his shoulder and handed it to Alina, taking her smaller dardik in return.
Alina tried to refuse, pushing the man’s hand away, but he insisted.
“My purpose is to be your shield, my queen. Let me fulfil that purpose.” The man cracked his neck and turned back to face the Koraklon warriors. Alina looked down the line to see which of her guard were missing: Saralis and Ravan.
“May Achyron welcome you into his halls,” she whispered. She looked back at Rynvar, who had pulled himself upright, blood streaming from his shoulder, his weight on his right leg.
Streaks of purple lightning ripped down from a tower and were met by arcs of blue lightning that erupted from Verma Tallisair’s fingers, the light blazing against the grey stone of the Keep.
“Can you handle this?” Verma asked Aeson, gesturing at the Koraklon warriors.
He nodded.
“Pylvír, Andira, with me. Let’s go take down a tower.”
Alina looked up at the tower the mage ran towards. One of Achyron’s three peaks. Three hundred feet tall and crafted from solid mountain stone.
As the Koraklon warriors drew closer, they broke into a slow charge, and Aeson stepped forwards. The air seemed to shift around the man’s hands, hundreds of slivers of broken rock rising. A wave of air swept dust upwards and the slivers bolted forwards like loosed arrows, bouncing off shields and slicing through necks and legs. He charged and lifted his hand. A wave of concussive force tore a path through the Koraklon shield wall.
Alina snatched up a fallen spear and threw herself forwards. That shield wall could not be allowed to reform. Savrin, Glaukos, Olivian, and Alcon matched her stride for stride, two on the left, two on the right, while Vahir, Evrian, Baris, and Karilin took up the rear.
They smashed into the gap created by Aeson, scything down Koraklon soldiers as they tried to regain their footing. Alina dropped her shoulder, a spear slicing past her head, then rammed her spear up into the wielder’s throat, ripping it free in a spray of blood. She twisted, ducking low to avoid the next thrust, then swung her arm back and smashed the rim of her shield into a Koraklon face, the nose guard of his helmet collapsing, nose breaking, jaw snapping.
Savrin swept past her. The man moved like some sort of spirit, his feet barely seeming to touch the ground, his spear painting death with every stroke. Alina had never seen him fight when she was a child, when he’d been at the peak of his powers, but she trembled to think of how this man could have been any greater a warrior. Achyron himself would be jealous of the sight.
As the Koraklon soldiers closed in around them and Lorians pushed in from the outside, shrieks rose above.
Scores of wyverns swooped down, crashing into the Koraklon ranks, ripping them apart, but even as they did, lightning tore down from the towers and more of the Keep’s garrison poured into the main yard.
“Stay with me,” Savrin shouted, pressing his back to Alina, Aeson and the others surrounding them as they protected Rynvar.
A shiver ran up Alina’s spine as a voice thundered unnaturally across the sky. “Warriors of House Koraklon, your High Lord has turned tail and run! He leaves you to die while he flees like a coward. Ask yourselves, is this the leader you would follow? Or one who stands with you in the fires of battle?”
Alina lifted her head as a bright white light burst into existence atop the inner wall. Dayne stood on the crenelation, his chest bare and a glowing white spear in his hand.
Some of the Koraklon warriors looked from Dayne to Alina and the others. She could see the hesitation in their eyes. But it lasted only a moment before a streak of lightning tore upwards towards Dayne, collided against an invisible barrier, and smashed into an overlooking tower, and the fighting was ablaze once more.
The Koraklon soldiers pushed forwards, shields held high, spears stabbing.
“Warriors of Valtara!” Dayne roared again. “By blade and by blood, today is our day!”
A cry rose as, somewhere in the fighting, the Andurii answered. “AH-OOH, AH-OOH, AH-OOH!”
Dayne leapt from the wall, lightning streaking from his fingertips, that white spear glowing in his fist, and he vanished into the thick of the fighting.
A Koraklon spear stabbed at Alina’s head. She slammed the shaft upwards with her shield, twisted, and drove her own spear forwards. The steel tip glanced off the man’s cuirass and buried itself into the pit of his arm. Alina ripped the spear free and as she did, Rynvar craned his neck forwards and snapped his jaws shut around the man’s torso, razor teeth slicing through steel. The wyvern lifted the man from the ground and shook him side to side until his body tore in half, blood and guts spraying over the Koraklon warriors.
Alina slammed her spear off her shield and roared, “For Valtara! For Freedom!”
Belina sprinted through the archway and out onto the ramparts of the city’s inner wall, a spear gripped in her fist. She’d left Dayne’s nephew locked in a small granary store in the lower levels of the city’s keep. She strongly doubted anyone would go rushing for a snack in the midst of all this, and if worse came to worst, the young boy would never go hungry.
Koraklon and Lorian soldiers lined the ramparts, staring down at the fighting in the main plaza. Archers were lined along the gaps in the parapet, nocking and loosing in a neverending cycle.
She stuck her hand into the pouch at her side, feeling three more clay jars of Godfire. She hadn’t known there would be Narvonans here, and she didn’t look forward to explaining how she’d come across enough Godfire to blow open a city gate. She just hoped nobody told them anything about the port of Ankar. She might be Narvonan by birth, but those people really didn’t like finding Godfire anywhere but on their ships.
As Belina ran, the first soldier caught her out of the corner of his eye. He turned, and she slipped her left hand to her knife belt. A whir of steel and the man dropped backwards from the wall.
After leaving Arkin, Belina had run for the walls as quickly as her legs could carry her. And there she was. The only problem was that Belina hadn’t quite thought through what she would do when she actually got there.
Something big, plenty of fire. That tended to work well. Things also had a way of simply working themselves out. She was lucky like that.
The second soldier noticed her. Another flash of steel. Another dead body falling from the walls. Unfortunately, that drew the attention of even more. And within seconds, arrows were slicing through the air past her head and shoulders. She thanked the gods these warriors had worse aim than a one-legged, blind goat with cockrot.
Belina reached into her pouch, grabbed a jar of Godfire, and launched it. The jar soared over heads, then smashed against the ground.
She twisted, an arrow whooshing past her head, then snatched a flaming torch from a sconce attached to the wall and hurled it after the jar of Godfire. She took a breath, and then the wall erupted in flames.
A Koraklon soldier charged at her, screaming, fire consuming him.
Belina hurled the spear, watching as it smashed into the man’s face and sent him careening backwards.
The only problem now was that she was stuck on a wall covered in fire along with some very angry Valtarans. Shouts sounded behind her, and she turned to see Lorian soldiers charging through the arch, some kneeling and nocking arrows.
“Fuck.”
Something swooped past the wall, and Belina got the worst idea of her life. At least, one of the worst. Fourth worst. That time in Karvos was definitely the worst.
She sprinted forwards and leapt onto the crenelations, having only half a second to pick her target before launching herself from the walls.
She slid two knives from her belt, the world seeming to grow still around her. At that point, as she hung in the air, nothing but a freefall of a few hundred feet separating her from hard stone, Belina elevated the situation to the third worst idea she’d ever had. Behind Karvos and that stunt with the chickens.
She glanced at the wyvern that swooped low, its wings unmarked by the orange and white that Alina’s Wyndarii bore.
Belina slammed into the creature’s side so hard the wind fled her lungs like an Ardanian at a whorehouse. She drove her knives down through the creature’s hide, its wing slapping her in the face. The wyvern shrieked and howled, spinning in the air, Belina’s stomach churning.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Belina’s legs swung, and it was all she could do to keep hold of her knives. She was seriously considering raising this idea above the chickens on her ‘stupid list’.
When the wyvern levelled out, Belina pulled one knife free and slammed it back down, doing the same again as she hauled herself onto the creature’s back. She ripped the knives free and crouched behind the Wyndarii in the saddle. Before the creature could twist or turn or spin, she leapt forwards. Belina wrapped her legs around the Wyndarii’s waist, squeezing for dear life, and rammed her knives again and again into the woman’s neck, blood spurting.
When the Wyndarii slumped forwards, Belina sliced through the straps that buckled the woman to the saddle and tossed her aside, quickly lunging forwards and grabbing the saddle’s handles, leaving her knives to fall.
It took all of four heartbeats to realise why Wyndarii used straps and buckles. The wyvern dropped into a nosedive and Belina flopped upwards like a limp fish, legs flailing. Squeezing her stomach muscles as tight as she could, she pulled herself back into place and looked down at the battle below.
The Narvonans had fully joined the fray now, their monstrous tharnas crashing through the Lorian and Koraklon lines, their darvakin riders carving paths of blood. If these were the reinforcements Aeson had promised, he had delivered tenfold.
The wyvern jerked beneath Belina, twisting its neck back and trying to rip her from the saddle.
“Not food!” she roared, pulling another knife from her belt and slamming it down into the creature’s shoulder. “Not. Food!”
The wyvern shrieked and swooped right. As Belina held on with every shred of strength she had, she looked down to see a column of blue and gold marching from the inner city. Thousands upon thousands. If they passed through the gates and smashed into Alina’s flank, the battle would be a short one.
Belina reached back, relieved to still feel the two jars of Godfire firmly in her pouch.
“All right,” she said to herself, looking from the unrelenting flames on the walls to the column of marching Koraklons. “How the fuck do you fly these things?”
She reached forwards and slammed a second knife into the wyvern’s other shoulder. New handles. She yanked on the right, and the creature answered by swerving in the same direction. Delighted with herself, Belina steered the wyvern back towards the marching warriors.
The wind whipped past Belina’s face, her eyes watering. As the wyvern dropped low and swept over the soldiers below, she reached into her satchel and grabbed a jar of Godfire and launched it backwards, doing so again in quick succession, the knuckles on her other hand pale and white around the hilt of the knife.
She glanced back to see the soldiers parting where the jars landed, then grabbed the second knife and steered the wyvern towards the closest roof. Unsurprisingly, the beast was uncooperative and swept straight past the roof.
It appeared she should have thought about getting off the wyvern before leaping on.
As the wyvern plummeted towards the ground, blood streaming around the knives driven into its hide, its wings flapping uselessly at its side, Belina drew slow breaths and readied herself.
One heartbeat passed, the wind battering her, her lungs swelling. Two heartbeats. Three. Four.
The wyverns swept over the soldiers, spear tips clinking against its underbelly.
Five heartbeats. Dayne better fucking thank her for this.
Just before the wyvern crashed down into the street, Belina leapt from the saddle, an unsuspecting soldier softening her landing. She slammed into the man, then hit the ground hard, something snapping in her left arm. She rolled, skin tearing, stone beating against her.
When she finally stopped rolling, her head spun and she could barely feel her arm – except for the excruciating pain. That, she could feel.
Belina hauled herself upright, looking down to see a sliver of broken bone jutting from her arm. “Fuuuck.”
She grimaced, then looked up to see the entire column of Koraklon soldiers had stopped in their tracks, those at the rear now staring at her.
A torch sat in a sconce on the wall only a few feet away.
“Help!” she called out, glancing at the torch. “My arm’s broken. My wyvern… she’s gone.”
Belina limped towards the soldiers, who were still hesitant, approaching her with caution. As they should. When those closest to her relaxed for just a moment, Belina broke into a sprint, snatched the torch with her good arm, and hurled it into the thick of the soldiers. As it whirled through the air, Belina prayed to every god she could think of. And when her mind landed on Elyara, screams pierced the night and a blazing inferno ignited.
The soldiers closest to her turned back to their companions who were being swallowed by the Godfire, and as they did, Belina fled down a side street into the night.
“Andurii! Break!” Dayne surged forwards, the Andurii breaking from their shield wall as the Narvonans atop their monstrous tharnas mounts smashed into the back of the Koraklon forces, ripping them from formation. Dayne had first encountered the tharnas and darvakin when he’d sailed with Belina to Daris. The creatures were akin to living battering rams, with teeth and claws that could rend steel.
Everywhere Dayne moved, Koraklons died, his níthral spraying blood in wide arcs. Iloen and Dinekes fell in beside him, as well as Tarine of House Valanis and Juna of House Toradin. They carved a path towards Alina and the others as Dayne roared Marlin’s words. “Do not hesitate!”
“Do not contemplate mercy!” Dinekes answered, ripping his spear from a Koraklon throat.
“You are the Andurii of House Ateres!” he roared again, feeling the rush of battle overcome him, the thirst for blood. “You are death and deliverance! You are the darkness that all men fear!”
“AH-OOH!” came the reply.
Both pride and fervour swept through him. These men and women were Dayne’s Andurii. The stories of legend would know their names, written in the blood of their enemies. They would be the spears that set Valtara free, or they would die in the trying.
Dayne leapt forwards, side-stepping a spear lunge, and slammed his shield into a Koraklon brow, feeling the skull split beneath the force.
He should have had no strength in his body, no power to lift his shield or swing his spear. But hate fuelled him, rage refusing to let him die. Loren Koraklon and all of his name would be burned from this earth.
In the thick of the fighting, Dayne saw a face that brought joy to his heart. The face of a man he’d seen only days before: Gaimal, Loren’s eldest son.
Dayne charged forwards, deflecting a spear thrust with his shield, his eyes fixed on his target.
Gaimal turned just in time for Dayne’s níthral to miss the man’s chest and instead slice open the flesh on his upper arm. Gaimal twisted further and brought his shield down.
Dayne roared and planted a foot flat on the man’s shield, kicking with all his strength.
Gaimal crashed backwards, slamming into the ground.
Dayne leapt atop him. He swung his shield arm down, the heavy rim snapping Gaimal’s sword arm with a crunch, bone shredding skin, blood spurting. With a twist of his hip, Dayne drove his níthral into the man’s shield arm and ripped it through the muscle and flesh.
He placed his foot on the breast of Gaimal’s cuirass as the man screamed in agony. There was pity in Dayne’s heart, but the memory of Baren bleeding out in his arms set that pity on fire.
“You will be the first,” Dayne said, looking down at Gaimal. “The first to pay for your father’s sins. But you will not be the last. You die today because your father set your path. A man should know why he died.”
Dayne drove his níthral down into Gaimal’s chest and stared into the man’s eyes as his light vanished.
Around him, the battle was thinning. The Narvonans were in full force, sweeping through the yard in their gilded black plate, their monstrous steeds driving fear into Lorian and Koraklon hearts alike.
He watched as one of the Narvonan Isildans swung his massive glaive from the back of a darvakin, that glorious pearlescent plate of Atalus shell shimmering in the light of the blazing fires. Bolts of lightning and plumes of fire streaked towards him, only for the Atalus armour to drink them in. Dayne had seen the power of Atalus shell in Narvona, but only as a simple pendant. An entire suit of armour was something else entirely. It had been centuries since the last Narvonan invasion, and the Lorian mages had no answer to this kind of power.
“Andurii!” Dayne roared. “Tonight, the Wyvern of House Ateres will fly over Achyron’s Keep. Valtara’s freedom is here, will you take it?”
“AH-OOH.”
Dayne’s Andurii swept around him, carving through the Keep’s defenders, the wyvern glistening on their shields.
He drove his níthral into a woman’s throat, yanking it free, blood sluicing. As he did, he spotted Aeson weaving through the chaos, his blades ablur, bodies falling with every step he took. Verma charged with him, the pair moving as though intertwined.
Shouts rose to Dayne’s right, and a wyvern smashed into the ground, crushing Lorian soldiers beneath it. Three more wyverns crashed, followed by a chorus of shrieks and roars in the sky.
Hundreds of wyverns alighted on the walls and patches of rock, their wings painted with streaks of orange and white. Alina’s Wyndarii had secured the air.
The air hung thick with palpable tension, all eyes staring at the wyverns.
One by one, the defenders of Achyron’s Keep dropped their weapons and fell to their knees, the sound of clinking ordo shields ringing out through the yard.
A Lorian mage opened himself to the Spark, but before he could release anything, Mera and Audin launched themselves from atop the ramparts of the outer wall and the wyvern clamped its jaws around the mage’s head.
Audin tore the man’s head and neck from his body, crunched on his skull, then spat the remnants onto the ground and roared.
Any Lorians or Koraklons who had remained standing dropped to their knees.
A chill swept through Dayne, setting his hairs on end, his legs giving way beneath him, his knees cracking off the stone.
Both Dinekes and Iloen grabbed at his shoulders.
“Andurios?” Dinekes looked him over. “Where are you hurt?”
Dayne’s entire body ached and groaned, and scabs opened, blood trailing from a hundred cuts. Tears rolled from his eyes. Almost fourteen years since his parents had died. Years spent in exile, spent wandering and hoping.
He shook his head, wiping away the tears, fires blazing around him. “We’re free. We’re free.”
Alina stood by Rynvar’s side after the battle had calmed and the Keep’s defenders had laid down their weapons.
Verma Tallisair stood beneath the wyvern’s wing, doing all she could to mend the damage. Though she had warned Alina that Rynvar might never take to the sky again.
“You will always be by my side,” Alina whispered, resting a hand on Rynvar’s scales.
After a few moments, she turned and looked out over the aftermath of the fighting. Flames still raged on the walls and all about the yard, illuminating bodies everywhere.
“How is he?” Savrin asked, blood covering every inch of the man’s armour.
Alina didn’t answer with words. She had no words. It was her task to protect Rynvar as much as it was his to protect her. She had failed in that task. “Saralis and Ravan,” Alina said, changing the topic. “Any others?”
“Baris took a spear to the neck near the end.”
“They fought like gods,” Alina said, slowly walking past Savrin.
“That they did, Your Grace.”
“As did you, Savrin.” Alina paused and looked into the man’s eyes. “You earned that armour, and you earned your place amongst the heroes of Valtara. You are everything my father always said you were.”
“I am a shadow, Your Grace.”
“We are not our mistakes, Savrin. Not entirely. I am honoured to have you at my side.”
“The honour is mine and mine alone.” Savrin looked at something behind her. “And it is a privilege to stand here to see that.”
Alina followed Savrin’s gaze up towards the gates to the inner city. Audin was perched upon a high tower, his red scales gleaming. And on that tower two banners flapped in the wind. One bore the wyvern of House Ateres marked in orange on a white field. The other held two black wyverns coiled around a white spear on an orange field. The emblem of a free Valtara.
“The wyverns of Valtara fly again,” Savrin whispered, pressing a closed fist to his chest.
A shout rose behind Alina. “My queen!”
She turned to see a man pointing towards the inner gates.
Dayne walked towards her, battered and bloody. He stumbled, cradling someone in his arms. Belina was at his side, leading a young child with one hand, the other arm held tight to her abdomen.
Alina walked slowly towards her brother, slower with every step as she realised who he held.
Baren had used her like a tool, like a thing to be bargained. He had taken her son from her, taken her love. He had done so many things, and Alina hated him for them. She hated him. How could he have done those things to her? She was his sister, his little sister.
But even then, with all that hatred swirling in her, she felt her heart twist at the sight of Dayne holding their brother in his arms like a babe, blood smeared over Baren’s broken body.
She had not even reached Dayne when he collapsed to his knees, holding Baren close.
The sight of it broke her.
Alina dropped to the ground before her brothers and brushed the hair from Baren’s face. “We did it, big brother. We did it.” The tears that flowed came upon her like a broken dam. “I wish everything had been different. I wish with all my heart that I didn’t hate you and love you at the same time.” She leaned over her dead brother’s body and wrapped her arms around Dayne, pressing her cheek to his.
“We did it,” Dayne whispered, repeating her words. “Valtara is free.”
“Valtara is free,” Alina answered.
Dayne pulled away for a moment, tears and blood marring his face. “There is something else.”
Alina narrowed her eyes, but before Dayne could say a word, Belina came closer and she saw the child at the woman’s side.
Alina shook, every piece of her body trembling, every shred of her soul and her heart bleeding. “Arkin?”
“Who are you?” the boy responded, his voice soft and full of uncertainty.
Alina knew her son. He had those same blue eyes, that dark brown hair that curled a little to the left. And he bore that same mark on his cheek that he’d been born with.
Alina shuffled forwards on her knees until she reached Arkin. She wiped her bloodied hands on her skirts, then wrapped her arms so tightly around him that it pained her battered bones. “I’m your mother,” she said, drawing in a sniffling breath. “I’m your mother, Arkin. And I love you, and I’m never letting you go again.” She drew another long breath, closing her eyes as she held the son she had thought long lost. “I’m your mother,” she said again. The words were almost more for herself than for Arkin. “I’m yours.”