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The Copper limped through the sand ring, walking around so that he could look each dragon in the face.
“I need every fit dragon who can fly and fight. I’ve no idea what we may face in the coming battle. If we are to reclaim our place in the sun, every dragon must take his part.
“How many will fly with us?”
They looked at him, at each other. Scale grated against scale and weight shifted.
“My Tyr, there are hatchlings in the cave.”
“The thralls in my hill are restive. Suppose they should murder my mate while I am away?”
“I’ll return to find not a scrap of silver. Who will guard my hoard if not I?”
The Copper thought of his grandmother’s rant, on the last day she drew breath, when she alone hurled herself against the Dragonblade in a court of cowards. She’d called them a lot of backscratchers, and she’d been right.
“Ghioz is three days of hard flight,” an aged dragon said, the swirls of the old Aerial Host from the early days of Tyr FeHazathant faint on his sagging wings. “If we come at speed we will arrive exhausted, hardly able to stay in the air. If we take our time she will have warning and assemble those roc-riders.”
“I don’t propose a flight, until the end.”
“Then how shall we get there?” the old dragon asked.
“When the peak first glows tomorrow, meet me at the north river ring beneath the nests of the griffaran. It shall be a trip that will go into many a lifesong, I promise.”
There were grumblings and complaints, with not a few saying some variation of “you have to live through it to sing about it.”
Had such an assortment ever left the Lavadome by the river ring?
The Copper doubted it. It would have been in the battle stories he’d learned in the Drakwatch.
They’d wrecked flatbed dwarf carts and filled nets with the surprisingly buoyant mushrooms that were normally ground into cattle-feed. There were driftwood logs dried, bound together, and formed into rafts.
They’d made traces out of leather, chain, and rope. The dragons of the Aerial Host would drag the rafts and boats behind in the manner of horses pulling carts. But this time the horses would ride. Cattle and goats rode in the improvised armada, ready provision for eating along the journey. The riders of the Aerial Host sat along with the livestock in the boats, their armor and weapons tied down rather than worn in case the boat upset in rough water. From everything he heard of the Nor’flow, the ride would be treacherous.
Even unhappier than the most miserable, lowing cow was the griffaran guard. All but a bare minimum of griffaran stood perched on logs and gripping canoes in talons so tight-set that the sawdust dribbled from beneath their talons.
Aiy-Yip and his feathered warriors, usually as placid as statues until they exploded into fury, were white-eyed and losing feathers as they bobbed toward the river tunnel.
“Hate-hate-hate water!” Aiy-Yip said as his boat bounced in the current. “Bathing one thing, but this is yaaak! like drowning!”
Nilrasha watched them depart.
Her mate would have his own way. A Tyr shouldn’t leave the Lavadome to go into battle—it just wasn’t done. A tour of the Upholds, yes, but to lead dragons into battle . . .
If he died, how long would she last as Queen?
She climbed back up from the riverbank and into the tunnel to the Lavadome. She passed an alcove where a Firemaid should be standing watch—the Lavadome was emptying of dragons faster than they could breed.
Taking wing, she was back at the top of Imperial Rock before the smell of her mate had left her nostrils. She called for Ayafeeia and NoSohoth.
While she waited for them to arrive, her body-thralls attended her. She envied the thralls and their simple lives. Follow orders, do your job well, please the dragon you belong to. No doubt, no anxiety, transitory passions and heartbreaks forgotten in an hour.
If she lost RuGaard she would live with the pain for a thousand years.
“The Tyr told me to act according to my best judgment, Ayafeeia. My judgment rarely counsels caution.”
“How have circumstances changed, my Queen?”
“Simplicity itself. As Queen, I am now making decisions for the Lavadome, and the Queen wishes to lead her Firemaids into battle. Maidmother, prepare your daughters for a flight to Hypat!”
