‘Ottone?’ Cressyda cried, her eyes raking over the darkness below her.
Smoke curled, hanging low and thick, stinging her eyes and throat. She tried to spur the gelding forward, but the creature had gone rigid with terror. Its sides heaved with panicked breaths, eyes rolling so far back they showed white. Its hooves stamped and scraped at the ground, and thick foam streamed from the cornersof its mouth. The reins slipped through her fingers as it jerked its head wildly, nostrils flaring.
Tumbling from the saddle, Cressyda landed hard on her knees. Her hands hit the ground and scraped against loose gravel, but she did not pause. Grabbing the reins, she yanked at them, stumbling forward and dragging the poor, trembling animal behind her.
‘Ottone?’ she called again, her voice shrill and panicked in the stillness.
There was no answer. Only the echo of her call fading into the broken silence.
‘Ottone, where are you?’
She tried not to think of the figure dangling from the Great Dragon’s mouth just moments ago.
She scrambled through the gloom, her bare, injured feet slipping on scorched grass and scattered stones. She hardly noticed the pain, the sting of reopened cuts, the warm wetness of blood smeared across her soles.
Then she saw it: a dark shape sprawled on the ground.
She stumbled forward, crying out in giddy relief to see a chest rising and falling in shallow breaths.
Ottone lay crumpled on his side, one arm bent awkwardly beneath him. At the sound of her tread, he jerked back with a gasp.
‘It’s me!’ said Cressyda, kneeling beside him. ‘It’s all right, it’s just me.’
‘Cress?’ he wheezed, his bloodshot eyes widening. ‘You’re … alive?’ His face was purplish and swollen on one side, his left eyebrow split and bleeding.
Cressyda looked from his bruises to the blood matted into his dark curls. ‘Samsel did this to you?’ she asked, but her brother did not seem to be listening.
‘There was … there was a dragon …’ he rasped, his gaze turning skywards, his lips pulled back in a grimace that looked both awed and terrified. ‘It was the Great Dragon. All the guards ran, but I fell. Then Samsel …’
Cressyda nodded, hearing again that horrifying, squelching crunch sound. She did not think that she would ever forget it. ‘He’s gone,’ she whispered as much to herself as to her brother. ‘He’s dead.’
All around them, the Sanctuary bells rang on and on, a never-ending toll.
‘You need help.’ Cressyda gestured to her brother’s face. ‘I know someone we can ask.’
Ignoring his hoarse murmurs of protest, Cressyda looped Ottone’s arm around her shoulders and braced herself beneath his weight. She gritted her teeth and tried to lift him, but at almost double her size, he was heavier than she had realized. After three attempts, they finally managed to stumble upright together and stagger over to the horse.
‘This is when I wish I was as strong as Alinore,’ muttered Cressyda, shaking out her aching arms.
‘Alinore!’ gasped Ottone, his gaze sharpening into focus. ‘Where is she?’
Despite everything, Cressyda smiled. ‘Alinore’s safe.’
‘But is she all right?’
‘To be honest, I think she’s more worried about you.’
Cressyda had left Alinore and Maylie making their own way down the mountainside on foot, heading towards Maylie’s cottage. She had worried that Alinore’s injuries were too severe for the journey, but Maylie had insisted that they would be all right.
‘Samsel is … dead?’ asked Ottone suddenly. He rubbed his eyes,leaving smudges of ash in the hollows of his brow. ‘What I saw was real?’
Cressyda swallowed. ‘Yes.’
‘But how? They were escorting me to Tormale when the guards took a wrong turning in the dark. We were doubling back on ourselves when we heard the Sanctuary bells start ringing … What’s happened?’
‘I traded the life of the King of Calestra with the Great Dragon.’
It sounded so simple, nothing like the anxious, impossible task it had been.
