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“Then I’m doubly sorry I can’t carry them.”
AuRon tried one more flight and found he could bear the weight creditably. If this was anything like flying with a coat of scale, his mate was ten times the dragon he was, to fly so far so fast under such a burden.
Without any complaints except an occasional groan. He didn’t deserve such a dragon-dame.
Naf’s picked band gathered their shields and spears.
“I’m sorry,” AuRon gasped, his wings aching. “The rest are too heavy to carry.”
“Shields and helms will have to do for a start. We can scavenge from the dead if we must.”
“They’ll laugh themselves to death, seeing loinclothed men attacking with nothing but spears, helms, and shields,” one of the warriors joked.
“Are you ready for your chance in a thousand?”
Naf laughed. “The spirits my men are in, I say it’s a chance in a hundred now. But if I’m to die, it’s best for my people if I do it under the walls of Ghioz. Better for me, too. If I’m to take up residence in the other world, I’d just as soon be near my beloved.”
They made their way into Ghioz in easy stages, taking old smuggling trails between Hypatia and Ghioz. AuRon walked most of the way with the men, though it galled him to crawl along at a foot pace after years of flying.
The borderlands were empty. Even the usual watch stations at the main mountain passes had only a handful of soldiers in them and a single messenger horse.
The scouts found a group of young men hiding in the woods, avoiding the Queen’s service. According to them, every pair of legs who could walk were either raiding in the southlands or aiding the Ironriders in their invasion of Hypatia.
“They’re risking being sold on the auction block by avoiding the Queen’s bondsmen,” Naf told AuRon. “When I rode with the Red Guard, we rounded up a score or two like those every year. They all said the same thing—better service in the fields under a taskmaster than facing arrows and cutthroats in the Queen’s garrison houses.”
They crossed over into Ghioz, and gradually the lands gave onto mountain pastures and terraced fields. The rivers and streams began to run off to the southeast—they’d made it across the flow divide and into Ghioz.
When they could see the lights of the city—amazing that you could see a city at night from a horizon away—they said their goodbyes.
Naf had his men divest themselves of their weapons and arms and rig AuRon’s netting in a tree so he could easily slip into it.
“We will travel faster if we go by road, as a labor levy.”
“We might even beg a meal or two at the Queen’s breadhouses,” one of the scouts, now dressed as a taskmaster, said.
They made arrangements to meet in the Queen’s woods outside the citadel, at moonrise three days hence.
“I feel naked without so much as a dagger on me,” Naf said, shivering in a bare loincloth, sandals, and a blanket wrapped about his shoulders and closed with a bit of twine.
“Let’s hope that the Citadel Guard has been stripped as completely as the border posts,” a captain said.
“See you at moonrise, three nights hence,” AuRon said.
“I hope so,” Naf replied, his usual smile absent. “I don’t care to spend the rest of my years knee-deep in the irrigation ditches or breaking road-gravel.”
After they moved on down the mountain trail through the high fields, AuRon stayed under tree-cover and waited, watching the skies and sniffing the wind and hoping for good weather three nights ahead. He was tempted to raid livestock, but satisfied himself with wild goats that had evidently escaped captivity and learned to live in the mountain forest. They were alert, and it was all he could to catch the old and the sick without using flame to aid his hunting.
Finally, the time came. The weather was cooperating in their endeavor at the moment—bluster but likely to rain. Depending on when the rain arrived it might be a good thing or a bad. He got into his harness of netted weapons and shields, climbed to a steep hill where he’d have a nice drop, and launched into the night air.
He stayed so low on the trip that he sometimes touched treetop on his downstrokes.
A light drizzle set in. He was glad he’d overflown the city in perfect weather and so had some idea of the land Naf selected for their meeting.
The river was in full flood, it being spring, and Naf and his men were waiting on a dry island surrounded by river. They were in a cold camp.
“In happier days Hieba and I walked these woods,” said Naf. “The view of the city and the sculpture on the mountain is incomparable.”
On the other side of the river were many wharves and built-up sections, and a few lights burned through the mist. The citadel itself.
