Chapter 4 #2
Hatred, and beneath it something colder. The certainty that no one down there can stop him.
If a blade like that had been born on our side of the mountains—
The toddler wails again and beats his fist on my clavicle before resting his head against the crook of my neck. I shush him with meaningless whispered noise and bounce from foot to foot.
The necklace grows heavier, like the cursed thing knows where my thoughts have strayed. I shove the warrior from my head. He’s not a riddle to solve. He’s the thing killing us.
Thank goodness the rest of the enemy dragons are not as determined. The rider on the ground does their butchering for them, one man doing the work of an entire war band. Bile climbs my throat, and I clamp down on my teeth to keep it there.
I make myself keep watching. Someone up here should be able to say how our people fought. And someone needs to understand the thing that’s killing them.
He never overswings. Never hesitates, never leaves a gap. Even my mother, the best fighter I’ve ever known, doesn’t move the way he does. Someone spent years building him for exactly this.
The conclusion sits in my stomach like spoiled meat. Our village was never made to survive a weapon like him.
The hydras, the basilisk, are like carrion crows, coming in behind the warrior to finish off the riders he doesn’t immediately kill. He is merciless and steady.
Exactly the kind of enemy we do not need.
My heart hardens and my jaw locks. All of this, for what? Because we refused to give up the gold we don’t have? Because we refused to get on our knees for a ruler who barely knows we exist, who does not see our value outside of the taxes we pay?
Familiar resolve mingles with the even more familiar rage. It’s constant these days, exacerbated by life, by circumstances beyond my control.
My acceptance to DragonSpear… now, that’s something I should have been able to handle.
I’ve always been a great student.
Not anymore.
My gaze fixates on the dark warrior and the seamless way he cuts a trajectory of death through our herd.
His black dragon is a fraction of the size of the ones hovering above.
No fire, although it doesn’t make a difference.
The beast does enough damage with claws and fangs to make up for the lack of embers.
The warrior and his mount are unstoppable. Not fearless. Worse. Fear needs something left to lose, and he fights like a man who has nothing. The twin blades are part of him, steel extensions of his arms.
He’s practiced. On fields like this one. On people like mine.
Humans have no magic, but dread rolls off that man all the same, spreading across the field ahead of him. Our fighters feel it. I watch a knot of them break and scatter before he’s close enough to swing.
I shush the toddler again, and his grip on my braid decreases, although his pudgy fingers remain tangled in the strands. His face is turned away from the fighting, his nose to my skin, and I shield him with a hand to make sure he doesn’t inadvertently turn while I’m watching.
I barely blink.
“It’s all going to be okay.” Does the child believe me? “Everything is going to be okay. Your momma is going to return to you. And she will hold you in her arms exactly the way you want to be held. Much better than I can.”
So will mine.
I drag my eyes from the slaughter and again find Mother in the center of the fray. Her golden unicorn rears up, and his horn catches the light peeking through the blot of wings overhead. Worse than storm clouds, the dragons form a barrier between the ground and the open sky.
What are they waiting for?
Mother shouts out a warning and lunges again at the nearest hydra and its rider. She plunges her sword through the body of the creature before slicing at one of the three heads with a smaller dagger.
She twists out of the way seconds before the second head snaps at her wrist. If the creature had made contact, it would have bitten her arm clean off.
A flail might come in handy.
I analyze the fight, clinically, forcing a deeper detachment.
If I’d been allowed on the field, if I’d been chosen by a mount, I might have headed for the dark-haired warrior not only to take out the strongest threat but to prove a point. He’s clearly someone of importance, as he is the only one of the dragon riders fighting on foot.
He’s not welcome here. Him, nor the oppression of the government he serves without question.
And the truth is bitter. He’s more skilled than I am. More skilled than anyone we have. If I’d been down there, I’d already be dead in the mud, and the people in this cave would be waiting for a girl who was never coming back.
I bounce the toddler softly on my hip, and he settles further, yawning in my face. The sweet scent of his breath has no place in a world with such senseless carnage.
He’ll be able to grow up, if there is a force out there willing to protect the innocent and the good.
Will his mother actually return? I hope so. The settling feeling at the base of my spine only grows wider, and I wonder if it’s a warning for me to disabuse myself of hope before I cling too tightly.
Hope will only get you hurt. As will expectations. Those two things are the main ingredients in a recipe of pure disaster.
I lose my breath as the dark warrior comes up against my sister Elspeth. Oh, Ether, no.
I clamp down on the shouted warning that will give me away. Elspeth, please, run!
Turning away makes me weak. Hiding my eyes because I can’t bear to see who will be the victor in their head-to-head makes me as helpless as the farmers nestled at the very end wall of the cave with their spines turned to the light. They don’t want to see or know or hope.
And I’m joining them.
The seconds tick by but curiosity always wins out in the end, like an itch with the best intentions not to scratch only to eventually succumb.
I swivel back to the fight, and the warrior is off at a different part of the field. Elspeth is nowhere to be seen.
My throat constricts, and sickness bubbles up from the pit in my gut. No, no, what hap—
A roar blots out the beat of my pulse. A piece of clear sky separates from the rest with a flap of wings.
Every part of me goes still and chains clank around my heart. That’s not the sky. The dragon is larger than any I’ve ever seen before, its head more massive than our stables, and its rider invisible from this angle.
My blood goes cold. The dragon swoops lower through the clouds and scatters them.
Leave. Our herd has to get out, they have to disappear and try to find places to hide. They can’t allow themselves to be seen by this creature. My scream of warning is lost at the back of my tongue. I can’t.
The toddler wakes long enough to sniffle and hiccup out a groan that will certainly end in another round of sobbing. He’s not alone. The rest of the children fill the cave with the echoing laments of their fear and sorrow, like the sound will drill into the stone and remain trapped here.
The children are scared, and I can’t make it worse by screaming for help. I freeze from the outside in.
Please, no.
My traitorous body has never learned to listen to my demands. There’s nothing but horror left as the pale dragon tilts back its sinuous head, and its lower jaw drops. The inky hole of its mouth fills with a blinding glow. I’m useless.
And I’m alone.
The realization screams through me as I watch my mother, my family, and all the other unicorn riders disappear under a wave of flame, burning to ash in seconds. The heat scorches the field, and the world constricts to red and orange and black.
There was no time to cry out a warning.
No time to run.
Everyone on the field is dead.