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On the wall, Kitten replied to Wingstar with a trill that made Daine’s ears hurt. The crenelated granite walls of Legann had been capped with pale gray stones. These now shimmered and glowed, throwing off light, but no heat.
—She is so much more advanced than our young at home,—remarked Diamondflame as he rose onto his hindquarters. —Perhaps more of them should spend time here.— He launched himself, giant wings pulling him aloft. Daine, Kitten, and Tkaa followed his flight; the other two-leggers were staggering in his back draft, fighting to recover their balance.
“I wish we had a sign that this flaming dragon was part of an attack or something,” Imrah grumbled. “Those dung heaps might think it’s just one of their own monsters enjoying the sunrise.”
Diamondflame reached the sky over Legann harbor before he shed his cloaking spells. Before him lay the ships of the invading fleet, balked by the harbor’s defenders and the chain across its mouth. Daine couldn’t begin to imagine how the enemy—or even Legann’s friends—felt at the sight of eighty feet of dragon, overhead. Diamondflame snarled: Sails burst into flame. Wingstar too snarled. The sharpened logs in front of the trenches and the wooden towers behind the enemy’s earth wall began to burn.
“Is that enough sign of an attack for you, my lord?” the king asked.
Imrah of Legann was a deliberate man. He walked over to get a better view of the harbor and its blockaders. The sailors were scrambling to douse their flaming ships as first Diamondflame, then Wingstar, descended on them, howling with fury. Legann’s master returned to Jonathan’s side. “It’ll do,” he said, reseating his helmet on his armored hip. With a half-bow to the king, he began the climb from the watchtower to the ground.
Onua checked the fit of her arm guards and archer’s gloves, and strung her bow.
Daine shifted nervously; she hated waiting for an enemy to come at her. “You stay right there, and don’t move,” she warned the pale blue dragonet. “If you tumble out, your grandda will cook me—once he and your grandma finish with the enemy’s ships, anyway.” Kitten chuckled and rubbed her muzzle against the girl’s face. Leaf, who was coiled around Daine’s neck, squeaked a protest.
Her mind filled with a metallic roar, a shrill hum, and a rattling buzz. Damping her magical hearing as far as she dared, she told her companions, “They’re coming.”
The K’mir leaned out of the notch in front of her and waved her bow. From the wall below the tower, a familiar voice boomed, “That’s the signal, lambkins—string your bows! Wake up, Master Wooley! Stormwings don’t wait till you’ve finished your beauty sleep!” The hectoring voice faded as Sarge, the ex-slave who helped to train the Queen’s Riders—and who fought with them—urged Legann’s archers to prepare for the assault.
Daine, stretching the cramped muscles of her neck, smiled at the familiar roar that had woken her on so many days in the Rider barracks. She sent a prayer to the Goddess to shield him and his charges: Half of the archers on Legann’s walls were as young or younger than she was, teenagers chosen for their precise eye and ability to hit what they shot at.
They needed prayer. Winged legions rose from the second enemy camp to the northeast. Sunlight blazed from Stormwing feathers, and glinted on the silver bones of hurrok wings and claws. With them flew winged apes armed with lances or axes.
At least there were no wyverns. Diamondflame had already told the king that they had sensed the arrival of mature dragons and fled. Though they had been willing to fight on with only a single, very young, dragon to oppose them, they dared not try to challenge her grandparents.
“An ugly-looking crew, aren’t they?” Marielle, Imrah’s lady, joined them, recurved bow in hand, as the immortals came on. A tiny woman, she had lively brown eyes and kept her dark hair cropped short and close. She wore a leather jerkin studded with metal rings over a kilted-up dress; there were archer’s gloves on her hands. Unhooking a spyglass from her belt, she surveyed the winged attackers. “You know, these look like they’re running from something.”
“They are,” King Jonathan replied. “While Her Majesty’s main force attacked in the northwest, her second force hit the camp in the northeast.”
“What kind of force?” Marielle wanted to know.
“The badger god,” replied Onua.
“Stormwing friends,” piped Leaf. Jelly nodded.
Marielle raised her eyebrows. “If you say so, little ones,” she said wryly. “Strange friends that we get in wartime.”
Another darking stretched to put its eyeless head over Jonathan’s shoulder—it was tucked into the king’s belt purse. “Centaurs,” it squeaked to Marielle. “Forty-four.”
“Very true, Inkblot,” Jonathan told Ozorne’s onetime spy, now his companion and connection to other darkings. “Don’t forget Sir Raoul, the Knight Commander of the King’s Own. He mustered a hundred-odd ogres, as well as the centaurs. Those who chose to live with our laws are fighting for them.”
The noblewoman laughed. “Do you know, sire, I think that if we live to tell our grandchildren about this war, they will accuse us of making it up.”
Daine traded places with Tkaa, putting him at the king’s side and herself in front of a stone notch in the wall. Far below, she heard the grind of chains and wood: The portcullises on the north, east, and south gates were being raised, the drawbridges lowered. Imrah led mounted knights and men-at-arms from the north gate, to confront the soldiers who fled the queen’s forces. Another company of mixed horsemen, foot soldiers, and archers was leaving by the east gate, Daine knew, and two Rider Groups were trotting their ponies out of the southern gate. If it worked, Ozorne’s allies on land would be caught between the queen’s relief force and Legann’s defenders, just as his sea-going allies, the blockaders, would be pinched between the arriving ships and the harbor’s defenders.
Where is Slaughter? Daine wondered. She’ll have plenty of work today.
The noise level rose, fueled by the howls of winged immortals and the roar of enemy soldiers as they topped the rise between their camp and its outer defenses. Seeing the wooden towers that Wingstar had flamed blazing in front of them, some tried to turn back. Roots—belonging to trees long cut down to clear the battlefield—shot out of bare ground and twined around the ankles of the enemy. More runaways dodged the roots, only to meet Imrah and h
is knights. From the valley where the enemy had camped, magic fires erupted and died as Tortallan mages attacked those serving the invaders.
The king was pale and gleaming with perspiration. Marielle and Onua also began to sweat as fear—Stormwing war terror—billowed ahead of the oncoming immortals. No one moved. It affected Daine as it did the others, but all of them had fought under the pressure of that fear before: The choice was fight or die.
“How many Stormwings did you say followed Ozorne?” Jonathan asked, his normally even voice strained.
“Two hundred and forty-eight, Your Majesty—if this is all of them coming at us now.” The archers on wall and tower swung their bows up, choosing targets from among the oncoming immortals. Daine’s was a winged ape that flew with others of his kind, ahead of the Stormwings. He carried double-headed axes in feet that were as nimble as hands.
Taking a deep breath, the girl closed her eyes and thought of merlins, fast birds of prey, able to maneuver well in the air. The blanket dropped to the stone deck. Tkaa pulled its folds back, allowing her to take flight.
The air below filled with the snap of bowstrings and the whistle of arrows and bolts. Daine shot straight at the ax-bearing ape, striking him as the hurrok had struck her on the First Bridge, dragging her claws across his brow and scalp. He shrieked and grabbed for her as blood streamed into his eyes. Turning fast, she tore at his wings, ripping holes in them with talons and beak. He fell, dropping both axes as he tried to spin around in midair. When she saw a peaked tower roof loom up underneath, she released her prey. He struck the tower back first, and rolled limply into the city street below.
Swerving fast, she returned to the watchtower roof and the king. A hurrok was her next target; once more she went for eyes first, then wings. Blinded and crippled, the immortal careened into a Stormwing, dragging it down and into the curtain wall as the Stormwing’s feathers cut it to pieces. Daine glided back to a place next to the king, watching for a new target.
