Chapter 3
RIA
Awater run? Isiridion sighs in Ria’s head. I just found a patch of actual sun, blood-bonded.
In exchange for early drift-cake that I can give Nissa before we join the dance? Ria grins, jogging along the track to where the dragon is coiled amongst the yellowed grass under the weak winter sun. C’mon, dragon. Up and at ‘em.
Isiridion blows out a smoky breath as Ria lopes into view. I’ll remind you that I am the one who is up and at ‘em, blood-bonded. You just do so much sitting around.
I keep watch! And when we need it, you know this axe of mine is worth something.
As if there’ll be any need for that axe of yours on a water run, Isiridion sneers.
That’s just the kind of carelessness that gets folks killed, Ria says, self-mockingly echoing the Warlord’s dour and repeated words.
Yeah yeah, blood-bonded. You’re just a lowly axe-wielder. Let’s not start getting delusions of grandeur. Fucking the warlord’s daughter is not the same as stepping into his shoes.
And thank fuck for that, Ria says as she swings into the saddle. Can you imagine me as a warlord? And it will be tender lovemaking, dragon. Not fucking.
I’d really rather not imagine either of these things, Isiridion sends back. I’m already forced to be privy to all of your fantasies as it is. Ready?
Before Ria can respond, the dragon gathers its massive strength and launches itself into the sky.
Ria tightens her grip on the saddle horn as together they battle gravity, the dragon’s enormous wings setting the golden grasses below to a chaos of dancing strands.
And then they level out, soaring above the mountains; it’s cold up here in the winds, so Ria ducks her nose down into her furred coat and blinks her streaming eyes.
They navigate the thick fog above the lake mostly by habit, and land in the soft mud beside the water. Isiridion complains about the cold. It makes me ache, human. You could never understand.
Poor Isiridion, Ria mocks as she unhooks the bags from the dragon’s spikes and fills them. It’s so old and worn thin, like the grandpappy who needs to sit closer to the fire and be wrapped in blankets lest his bones ache.
Please do try to remember that I could sit on you and that would be the end of all of your sass, child.
The trouble starts as soon as they burst through the fog and turn back towards the encampment.
You feel that? Ria asks, every nerve awakening. A split second later, Isiridion dives into a downward spiral to avoid the outstretched claws of the scarlet dragon reaching for them from above.
Ria swears, gripping at the saddle horn and tightening her thighs against Isiridion’s slippery scales. She hunches low and glances back over her shoulder just as an arrow whistles over her head. Fuck. Archers.
Isiridion pulls out of the dive, great wings heaving as it heads towards the encampment. We can’t lead them to the clan. Ria peers over her shoulder. There’s only one. We can take one. We just need to get them on the ground so I can use my axe, and their arrows aren’t so dangerous.
If you have ideas about how to do that, I’m all ears, Isiridion says grimly.
Ria stares towards the ground through bleary eyes, struggling to come up with a plan. What could they use to drive the dragon and its rider to the ground?
The answer, when it strikes her, strikes Isiridion too, and determination floods through them both. There’s nothing like this feeling, where she and the dragon are responding as one.
The waterfall that tumbles out of the high lake: it will be concealed by the fog, if their luck holds, and if the pursuing dragon behind them is flying a little too fast in Isiridion’s wake, it will be driven down by the tumble of water towards the lake.
It’s probably too much to hope that it will be pinned by the falling water, but it will be thrown out of its flight, surely.
Surely, Isiridion says, steel in its tone.
Not too fast, Ria warns. You need to be able to pull up.
Stop trying to teach me to suck eggs, child.
Ria crouches low and falls silent. This is Isiridion’s task now. The fog thickens over the surface of the water, and Ria grips at her spiraling fears, lest they overwhelm her. Yes, the enemy could be right behind her; yes, she wouldn’t be able to tell until too late. But it’s fog, and—
She peers over her shoulder and catches a glimpse of a pink tinge through the fog. Isiridion speeds up, still shooting as straight as an arrow towards the waterfall.
You’re sure you can do this, right? Ria tries not to imagine them both smashing hard into the rockface beyond the waterfall, knowing the dragon will see the picture in her mind, too.
Isiridion doesn’t deign to reply in words, but an air of disgust is clear.
Ria clutches the saddle horn tight. A moment later, Isiridion’s giant wings tilt and Ria is hanging on for her life as they shoot upwards, the roar of the waterfall echoing in her ears. There’s a loud trumpeting of surprise, and a shout, and an enormous splash behind them.
They land quickly on the shore and Ria narrows her eyes to try to make out what’s going on out on the water.
When the red dragon appears in the water, splashing towards them, Ria bares her teeth. The human is still on its back, but as the fog thins, she can make out that their bow is gone, the quiver on their back empty. Excellent.
Better ready that blade still, Isiridion warns. Whether it’s for the rider or the dragon.
Ria pulls her axe from her back and spins it in one hand, then in the other. Its familiar weight settles the anxiety roiling in her gut, and she bends into fighting stance, unable to keep a feral grin from breaking across her face.
“Have a wee accident, did you?” she bellows as the dragon hauls itself, exhausted, into the muddy shallows. “That’ll teach you to chase other dragons in less than stellar visibility.” She uses the Common tongue—rusty from disuse—but she’s pretty happy with her fighting words.
There’s a series of words that she has to assume are curses in whatever language this enemy speaks.
And then the human draws a sword, slides down the dragon’s shoulder and lands with a muddy splash in the shallows.
He flicks his long black hair back out of his slender brown eyes, revealing a scar that pulls at his forehead, brow and cheek.
“You will pay for that,” he says in Common between gritted teeth. He wears red lacquered armor, the kind the Rescalese wear, but it’s battered and patched. He’s no Rescalese soldier, but it looks like he’s taken a number of them in his time.
“Uh huh,” Ria says carelessly. “Guess we’ll see, hm?”
She steps towards him, willing to take the advantage of keeping him in the sucking mud of the bank. Behind her, Isiridion rises tall, moving in to her left to keep the red dragon from shifting to attack.
He raises his blade, and she bends her knees, watching him for a long moment, measuring.
When he doesn’t react, she shrugs and steps in, swinging once, twice, then again.
Each time, her axe clashes against his sword, just as she expects.
But when she feints left and swings right, he doesn’t respond, just catching her blade. He spotted the feint. Hmm.
She dances closer, the head of her axe spinning in her grip to let the chunky flat edge sail towards his head. He bats it away like a fly with his sword. Her eyes narrow.
And then he makes a strange flicker of a movement with his sword, and somehow, he’s gotten beyond her guard to cut into her shoulder, right where her leather pauldron ends. She bites back the cry and swears beneath her breath instead.
Don’t underestimate him, Isiridion tells her. The dragons are pacing slowly along the bank, watching each other and growling deep. Remember, you can’t rely on me to bring you back anymore. The revivification doesn’t work now.
We don’t know that.
We don’t know it does. And I’m not prepared to risk your stupid mortal life on the maybe.
Ria grits her teeth and swings into a series of swift maneuvers that ends with her kicking hard into his sword arm. She misses the muscle that would see him drop his blade, but he lurches sideways just as her axe whistles back towards his head.
He recoils, but the ever-sharp blade carves a slender line of budding scarlet along his jawline.
Joy shoots through her. His hand, clad in soaked leather gloves, reaches up to touch the cut and his face gets ugly with fury.
She almost crows inside. Anger is usually the end of any decent fighting from menfolk. They forget technique is vital to a win.
Beside her, Isiridion is stepping towards the red dragon, forcing it to decide between retreating into the water or shifting to the attack.
It dips its head, growling again. It bellows fire, a long golden stream which Isiridion dodges easily.
Fortunately, the fog has made the forest too damp to catch easily, though next time they may not be so lucky.
The enemy swordsman spins, his blade flashing high, then low, and Ria dodges back, then forward again to cut towards his side. She misses but twists her axe to catch his blade as she pulls back.
With most opponents, this would yank the weapon free of their hands and the fight would be over. But he moves, graceful and languid, and his sword is free.
She swings again.
He parries easily and then slides beyond her guard again to carve a swift, shallow line just below her collarbones.
She hisses in pain just as he hooks his blade against the straps keeping her pauldrons in place.
She jerks back against the pull, and it’s enough to make the blade cut through the leather, and she stumbles backwards before sprawling to the ground.
Ria!
He leaps towards her, blade outstretched.
Ria swears as he jabs his sword towards her lower belly.
It slides across her armor and stabs into her hip.
Isiridion spins fast, bellowing fire at him, making him stumble backwards into the sucking mud, then turning its head back to keep the red dragon at bay.
We need to get out of here.
Ria swears, hauling herself to her feet. They’re nothing. Scratches! He’s taken just as bad.
We don’t even know who they are! And the Warlord needs to know they’re out here.
She knows the dragon is right, so she reaches out and Isiridion slips rapidly under her hand until she can grip the saddle horn.
She jerks herself up and into the saddle, unable to keep back a bellow of pain as the wound in her hip pulls, and Isiridion pelts along the bank before lurching upward into the fog.
That seems clumsier than usual, dragon, Ria says, shoving her axe awkwardly into its holder on her back. Are you hurt?
I’m fine. We just need to get you out of here.
I was fine!
You were cut in three places—
So was he!
Ria swears aloud, a long series of curses. Isiridion! Is this because the revivification won’t work anymore? You can’t just pull us out of fights because you’re scared I’m going to die!
I can and I will, if it will keep you alive, Isiridion retorts, soaring higher still.
Fury boils over in Ria’s gut, and she thumps her fist down against Isiridion’s shoulder, knowing the dragon will barely feel the touch. I am a warrior! I can fight! Stop treating me like a child you need to coddle.
And if you’re back to having one fucking life, then what?
Isiridion rarely swears, unlike its rider, and it takes Ria aback.
You want some random attack by the waterfall to be the end of everything?
! Of us? Of you and Nissa? Of the clan, mostlike, without you?
Of… of me? The last is hesitant, like it’s a thought Isiridion can’t quite bring itself to fully form.
Ria swallows hard.
No one quite understands the mechanism, but dragons who are unbonded—especially those who lose their blood-bonded—are increasingly dangerous.
There are stories about them destroying entire cities—just bellowing down blue fire across a battlefield, then turning on the townsfolk and burning them up as well.
Bonded dragons said they couldn’t get sense out of these dragons, and Ria can’t tell if this is better or worse.
In one sense, perhaps it’s better that these unbonded dragons are incomprehensible to the bonded dragons, but it also means that what’s causing the dragons to utterly devastate the continent remains utterly beyond anyone’s reckoning, human or dragon.
There is, in other words, nothing that anyone can do about it.
Isiridion is not the only bonded dragon fearing that they are one human loss away from losing their minds completely.
Ria sends the dragon a gentle sense of query, and Isiridion seems to sigh, resigned, and releases a wave of worry and a bundle of interconnected thoughts, too rapid for Ria to be able to parse them in words.
There’s fear in there, a lot of fear, a sense of lonely confusion, and through it all, a thought like a spear: should I be making plans to be killed, if you die? I don’t want to be responsible for… And Isiridion sends a bleak vision of a city, charred, smoking and empty.
Tears prick at Ria’s eyes, but the wind is far too intense for them to linger. Oh Isi, she says in a soft, heartsore thought. I’m sorry. I wish we understood what is going on.
You cannot die, Isiridion replies, and its tone is somewhere between adamant and desperate and heartbroken. Ria can think of nothing to say in reply, and after a pause, Isiridion tries to lighten their conversation.
Besides. The Warlord’s daughter should not emerge from Longest Night unfucked, my friend. You have a night ahead of you, and you need to be whole and hale enough to be put through your paces by that young woman.
Ria smiles a little sadly, finally thinking to check over her wounds. A fine line below her collarbones, already sealing; a puncture oozing slowly at her hip, and a decent cut in her left upper arm, across her bicep.
A shame. You know how Nissa likes to stroke your arm just there, over that curve, the dragon teases.
I have two arms, dragon, Ria replies, deadpan. Two biceps. Two rather lovely shoulders, if I do say so myself. She squeezes her right bicep, making the muscle leap into shape, and kisses the curve with a noise of approval.
The dragon snorts a smoky breath out, entertained, just as Ria hoped.
Just as well, Isiridion laughs in her head. Just as well.
And as they ease back into their cheerful banter, the moment of dread is gone. For now.