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Her sword had not seen blood in decades. She had not truly fought since the raiders tried Iona a century ago. Though her mind and body were as skillful as any upon the Ward, Ridha froze atop the walls. She stared at the bleeding sky, terror coursing through her veins. This was not a wolf or a bear or even an army set against her.
This was a dragon. It roared again, and Ridha shuddered. The sound echoed off the cliffs of the fjord, surrounding them.
Down the wall, a Veder quailed. “Are there two of them?”
Ridha’s mouth went dry. “One is more than enough to kill us all,” she said, her low voice swallowed by another snarl across the sky.
Lenna shouted down from the Kovalinn walls, barking orders in Jydi. Her folk moved in unison, with archers climbing up to their chief, arrows bristling at their sides. Dyrian quailed. On his throne, he seemed imperious as any monarch, despite his youngage. Not so anymore. He went white as the snow, mouth moving without sound, as the same fear Ridha felt took over his small frame.
It was Lady Eyda who shouted orders instead, every inch a warrior queen in chain mail and fox fur. She raised a sword, pointing at the open gate. The carved bears stared back, locked in an endless snarl. Dyrian’s sleepy, lumbering pet looked like a cub next to them. He bellowed in fear, sniffing the air. He smelled the danger too.
“To the fjord!” Eyda’s voice boomed over the chaos in the gateyard. Between the Vedera of Kovalinn and Lenna’s clan, hundreds of bodies jostled together. “Leave the hall. We must make for water!”
“Yrla, to the fjord!” Lenna cried, turning to face her own below. She yelled in both Jydi and Paramount, so all could understand. Her raiders responded with a howl, thumping their chests in agreement. “Archers, stay! Keep the dragon with us!”
Eyda gave a short nod. “Bring up bows and arrows!” she roared, and her people rushed to obey.
Ridha’s stomach swooped, and she was nearly sick over the edge of the wall. She leaned, heavy, against the wooden rampart. Fear was a tiresome thing.
Whirling, Lenna touched her shoulder, barely a brush of her tattooed fingers against Ridha’s tunic.
“Breathe,” she said, gesturing for Ridha to inhale. The immortal did so, sucking down a bracing gasp of air. It helped, if only a little. “And run.”
Bone met bone as Ridha’s teeth gnashed together and she pushed herself to stand.
“I am a princess of Iona, daughter of the Monarch, blood of Glorian Lost.” Someone pressed a bow into her hand and she took it, rising to her full menacing height. Her green armor settled over her figure, fitted to her form. She felt the warrior she was trained to be. Her fear remained, tight as a rope around her throat, but she would not let it control her. “I will not run.”
Lenna’s mouth pulled into a half-crazy grin, her gold teeth winking with the brilliant sunset. The sight filled Ridha with a strange warmth, though she had no time to think about it.
She racked her brain, trying to remember how her mother and the others had killed the last dragon three hundred years ago. There were many stories, most of them more concerned with sorrow than strategy. Useless tales of noble sacrifice. That dragon had been as big as a thunderhead, gray in color, ten thousand years old at least. It made its den in the highest peaks of Calidon, along the coast, where the ocean met blistering peaks of stone. They thought it survived off whales. But it grew too hungry, or simply too cruel. So the Vedera of Iona and Kovalinn battled the monster on the northern shores of Calidon, at the edge of the Glorysea.It was spring, raining,she remembered.The storm helped quell the dragon’s fire, and allowed the army to get close enough.Ridha snatched an arrow from the quiver at her feet, one of dozens rushed up to the walls. She hissed out a breath, drawing her bow.They did something to its wings, forced it to land.
The shadow swooped through a cloud. A long tail lashedthrough the air, the first visible part of its body. Like the gold in Lenna’s mouth, the tail reflected the blazing sunset, its scales flashing so brightly it hurt her eyes.
Ridha squinted, her Vederan gaze sharp even from such a distance.
“The hide,” she murmured. Her memories took shape, the stories her mother used to tell her returning. “The hide is made of jewels,” she said, louder, shouting down the wall. “You won’t penetrate the hide with arrows or anything else. You must aim for the wings!”
Lenna didn’t argue. She snarled another command in Jydi, translating for her own folk.
Most scrambled to leave the high cliffs of the enclave, pressing through the gate and onto the steep, winding way down to the fjord. Lady Eyda and Dyrian led them, urging both peoples toward safety. Ridha peered over the wall, down the nearly sheer face of the mountain Kovalinn perched on. Her stomach swooped again. Heights did not bother her. Still, she did not enjoy the prospect of a dragon chasing her down the mountainside.
“I was not there in Calidon, when the last dragon fell,” Kesar said, falling in alongside Ridha. She still wore her courtly garb, a soft tunic. Hardly ready for battle.
Ridha was glad for her own armor. “Nor was I.”
Near a hundred Vedera mirrored Kesar, finding space among the raider folk, their own longbows at the ready, each one carrying as many arrows as they could. Any mistrust or discomfort melted away.
A common enemy unites like nothing else.
The light was dying, the last rays of the sun drawing back over the western mountains like fingers releasing their grip. The snow on the slopes lost its gleam, fading from pink to graying purple. Ridha shivered as Kovalinn began its descent into cold darkness. Night would only aid the dragon, and doom the rest.
“I never thought you were lying about the Spindles, but even so, I had my doubts,” Kesar said, lacing the collar of her tunic to cover the topaz skin of her exposed throat. She never took her eyes off the sky, and the danger in it. “Not anymore.”
Ridha felt as if the air had been pressed from her lungs.
“Taristan,” she growled, her fear giving over to rage. Suddenly she wanted the dragon to show itself so that she might have somewhere to turn her fury.
Kesar curled her lip, just as angry. She pulled back her locks, tying them together with a leather cord. “The Prince of Old Cor unleashed this monster upon the Ward, and left another Spindle torn open.” She shook her head. “To which realm, I don’t remember.”
