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“I did think the roof could hold my weight,” she said. “The columns looked so thick. But here I am. The columns are still standing and I’m not. I’ve just no luck with buildings, that’s all.”
Ayafeeia stood by her, sadly surveying a torn wing. Nothing but a bloody stump remained of her left. The rest of it was a flat, gory mess under a fallen pillar.
“Perhaps his next mate will lay down a string of eggs worthy of a Tyr.” She smiled.
“Yefkoa,” Ayafeeia said, “you’re our fastest dragonelle. If ever you flew for love of your Tyr, fly now and tell him his Queen needs him.”
Chapter 26
“Aerial Host,” the Copper bellowed, trying to summon the words from his hard-pumping heart and heaving lungs. “Dive!
“Griffaran guard, with me!” he called. “Keep the roc-riders off them.”
“Teach those coop-hatched fools the terror of a free wing and a loyal heart,” Aiy-Yip shrieked.
No dragon could keep up with fast-flying griffaran. The Copper found himself tailfeather-slacking, as Aiy-Yip might have styled it.
Roc-riders rose to meet them. For one instant, the formations, rising and falling angles, turned to meet, like the spearheads of opposing armies. Then it dissolved into a whirlwind of combat.
When roc-riders attacked the dragons, griffaran swooped and dove, knocking riders loose for a long fall or tearing at wings so the roc-riders spun earthward, their mounts keening and the men screaming.
But if the roc-riders tried to turn on the griffaran, the griffaran applied the same principles that served the roc-riders so well in their fights with dragonkind—they outturned and outclimbed the big, laden birds.
Scale against feather, flame against arrow, ball-and-chain against beak-and-talon, the two forces left feather, blood, and glittering scale falling to earth as they swooped and parried, a mad aerial dance of ever-changing partners.
The Copper watched one roc fall in a blaze of flame, leaving a dark smear of feathers.
“Behind you!” one of his two remaining guard said.
Two roc-riders swooped down. They must have been high up and far off when the encounter started and both the Copper and his guard over-attentive to the spectacle below.
The Copper turned to protect his bad wing. The fliers bored in on him, diving around the griffaran. Their men loosed arrows from curved bows and the Copper felt the missiles punch him.
One passed behind, one in front. If he’d had use of his flame he might have started a feathery blaze. As it was he had to settle for turning and a futile snap of teeth in the fast-flying birds’ wake.
A griffaran got the frontmost rider, as it turned out. Or part of it, anyway. The Copper doubted the legs left in the saddle would be of much use piloting the bird.
The Copper turned to meet the other. Perhaps he could distract it long enough for one of his griffaran guard to strike.
The other roc-riding warrior, watching the griffaran tearing toward him from behind, only turned to look at the Copper when his mount shrieked and shied. The Copper flapped hard and narrowed his wings, lowered his crest at the end of a ram-stiff neck.
They struck, the roc open-winged and evading, the Copper driving.
Messy pieces of roc fell away, spraying the sky. Or worse, clung to the Copper’s scale and horns and griff.
One of his guard dropped down to glide close beside. The Copper flinched from the sudden flutter of wing, hating his nerves. That was no way for a Tyr to act, startling at your own guard.
“All right?” a griffaran asked while the other circled above, searching for more enemies.
“I’m well. Follow,” the Copper said. He dared a glance back at where the arrows had struck. Two feathered souvenirs stuck into him, one high in his mass of wing-driving muscle, the other at the base of his tail.
Then there was the blood dripping and drying from his snout and crest. He must look a fright.
Dusk had settled into the arms of the valley. Dragonflame flashed bright as the Aerial Host spread terror across the tenting. The bats hadn’t mentioned that great sculpture looking out south toward the Lavadome.
The dragons who had no flame left picked up wagons and thatched roofs, coops and trees, anything that could be set aflame and carried a little way, there to have the process repeated.
So the flame spread from roof to warehouse to dock to boat. Flapping, diving griffaran attacked knots of men who gathered to fight either dragon or flame, or patrolled the outskirts of the city to look for reinforcements. Now and then a griffaran rose to report to HeBellereth, who circled above all with his dragons, looking at the wounded, sending members of the Aerial Host to protect downed dragons as they retreated toward the outskirts of town.
