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Ridha was a future monarch, and her schooling had gone far beyond the training yard. Her mother’s advisor Cieran had painstakingly taught her Spindle lore when she was a child. Most of her time was spent dodging his lessons, but she remembered what he managed to teach.
“It’s called Irridas,” she hissed, thinking of the pages in some book older than the Ward. The drawings blurred in her memory, but she could never forget the spiky landscape of craggy gemstones,and great, scarlet eyes leering up at her. It was a world of unimaginable riches and insatiable dragons to guard it. “The Dazzling Realm.”
Shadows gathered in the darkening sky, making the dragon harder to spot. It roared, closer now, and every bow followed the noise, tracing a black shape across the deep blue heaven. One or two arrows fired, arcing away into nothing.
The raiders should escape with the others,Ridha thought, eyeing Lenna at her side.Mortals are so quick to die.
As if reading her mind, Lenna met her gaze, her jaw set hard, a muscle feathering in her pale cheek. Her bow was smaller than Ridha’s, meant for hunting rabbits and wolves.It will never bring down a dragon,Ridha wanted to tell her, but held her tongue. Truly, she doubted any of their bows would.
“Be strong,” Lenna said, clapping a fist to her chest, slapping the leather as her raiders had before. Her eyes gleamed, mad as her smile. “The Yrla are with you. And Yrla fight.”
Ridha straightened her spine. “So do we.”
Blackness bled across the sky, chasing off the last purple and blue. Torches crackled to life, a poor defense against the pressing dark, but enough for the raiders to see by. A wind blew down the fjord, shuddering through the pines and snow. The archers, mortal and immortal, waited without sound, as if they all held the same fearful breath. Below, the others echoed off the rocks, Eyda’s shouts of encouragement swallowed up by the thunder of boots over stone. And behind Kovalinn, farther up into the mountains, wolves howled, a dozen packs singing out the same warning.
The dragon answered, appearing at the mouth of the fjord. Itdropped out of the cloud bank, blotting out the newborn stars, a black mass of wings and claws, its eyes like a pair of flaming coals. They gleamed red, even at a distance. A ferocious, dancing light played between its teeth, begging to be loosed from lethal jaws. Its wings beat louder than any sound in the fjord, even the harried thump of Ridha’s own heart.
“The wings!” she tried to shout, but her voice died in her throat.
Lenna did it for her, calling out orders down the wall. The raiders trained their bows on the monster. It picked up speed as it began its run down the fjord, growing larger with every passing second. Kesar called commands in Vederan.Hold until it is nearly upon us. Save your arrows until you can wait no more, and tear those wings to shreds.
Loosing another breath, Ridha reached for the arrows at her feet and pulled three from the nearest quiver. She set them between her fingers and put them to the bowstring, drawing all at once. Her pulse rammed a chaotic rhythm, but she schooled her breathing, settling into her archer’s stance. Her muscles went taut. They knew what to do, even as fear paralyzed her mind.
This time, when the dragon roared, she felt the furious heat of its breath across her face. It blew back her hair, black strands coming loose from her long braid. The torches guttered but still burned, stubborn as the rest of them. A few of the archers quailed, breaking stance, but none abandoned the walls. They refused to cower, even the mortal raiders.
Ridha wished for her mother, for Domacridhan, for every warrior within the walls of Iona. And she cursed them too, hatingthem for leaving her here alone.If Domacridhan is even still alive.But that was a thread she could not afford to pull on, not now, while her own death careened down the fjord.
The arrows flew from her bow when the right moment came, the dragon close enough to devour them all. It passed overhead, wings spread so wide Ridha thought they might scrape both sides of the fjord. Its hide reflected the torchlight, countless precious stones winking red and black, ruby and onyx. Sweat trickled down Ridha’s neck, born of terror and the sudden, relentless heat of the dragon. Arrows sprang from every bow, aiming for the wing membrane, the only piece of its body not covered in jewels. Maybe a dozen hit home. They looked like needles in the dragon’s skin, small and useless.
Lenna let out a crow of excitement before firing another arrow.
The dragon banked hard, maneuvering out of their range in half a second, its wings beating tirelessly to climb straight into the sky again. It let out a snarl, either in pain or annoyance. Ridha hoped the former, putting three more arrows to the string.
“Again!” she heard herself shout. Her bow twanged, her arrows disappearing into the night. “It’s testing us!”
“Not for long,” Kesar ground out. “The creature will turn us to ash as soon as it realizes we’re no match.”
Ridha took her eyes off the dragon for only a moment, though every warrior instinct she had screamed otherwise. She glanced over the wall again, down the steep path, to the edge of the fjord. Raider folk and the Vedera clustered near the waterfall, the cliffs at their back. Even in the dim light, Ridha picked out Eyda and Dyrian among them, with their bear lumbering along.
“The others have reached the fjord,” she said, wrenching back.
Kesar nodded grimly. “So must we.”
Three hundred years ago, my mother and her warriors brought down a dragon. Hundreds of Vedera, armed to the teeth, prepared to fight and die to kill a Spindleborn monster.She looked over the walls around them, taking in the raider folk and the immortal archers both. They were certainly not the army Isibel of Iona had led to battle.But they could be so much worse.
The dragon wheeled in the sky, circling beyond the range of even the finest Vederan archer. Ridha knew the gods of Glorian could not hear their prayers in this realm, but perhaps the gods of the Ward did. The clouds were blowing away, and the bright face of the moon peeked over the mountains, illuminating white slopes and dragon hide. Moonlight flashed through the jewels like sunlight on fish scales.
“We need to get to water,” Ridha murmured, eying the river flowing through the gateyard. It plunged off the cliff to the fjord below. The icy waters would not be an escape, but they were certainly a shield. And a weapon, too, if they were lucky.
To her surprise, Lenna bumped her shoulder. She turned to see the smaller woman staring up at her with livid eyes. The blue and green were entrancing in the moonlight.
“The Yrla do not run,” the chief said through her gleaming teeth.
Ridha had half a mind to leave her on the walls, but raider folk were nothing to sneer at. They were good fighters, some of the best in the Ward. And the Jydi and the Vedera would certainly need each other to survive the long night of the dragon.
“It isn’t running,” she snapped, letting her frustration show. “We’ll be fighting every step of the way. And in case you haven’t noticed, Kovalinn is made of wood.” Indeed, only the foundations of the wall and the buildings were stone. The rest was pinewood, massive logs cut from the thick forests of the Jyd.Would that it were steelpine,Ridha thought,and we could simply weather the flames.“It’s a mercy we aren’t on fire already.”
Lenna bucked her chin, as if trying to frighten an animal away. “Run away, Elder,” she said. “And leave Yrla the glory.”
