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As a princess of Iona, Ridha was not accustomed to being ordered around by anyone but her mother. Especially not a mortal woman of the raider folk, who seemed better suited to a cave than a monarch’s throne room.
Ridha drew up to her full height, her armor reflecting the moon. She towered over Lenna, fixing her with the full weight of her immortal gaze.
“Move your raiders or I’ll move you,” she said, lowering her bow.
Lenna’s lip curled and Ridha braced for another brave but foolish display. Instead the dragon swooped low again, this time its four legs trailing, claws extended.
Chief and princess ducked together, firing off arrows as best they could. With a scream, two figures were dragged off the wall, one raider and one Veder. Their bodies launched into the air, hurtling through the cold sky to disappear against the mountainside. The raiders could not hear it, but Ridha flinched at the crack of bone on rock. Triumphant, the dragon roared its warning to the rest of them, in a scream to split iron.
“Yrla, to the ground!” Lenna shouted in Paramount, and then in Jydi, slinging her bow over her shoulder. Kesar followed, barking the same orders down the line of Vedera.
As one, they abandoned the walls of Kovalinn, leaping into the snowy gateyard to begin the dizzying run down to the fjord. Another blast of heat chased them down, and for a second Ridha feared the dragon itself was upon them. But it was only the great hall, a fireball tearing through its roof. Flames licked up, eating the pine building from the inside, as the dragon hovered over the collapsing roof, spitting fire, its wings stirring up a ferocious, scalding wind to feed the blaze. The many rooms branching off the hall caught too, and then the many houses, the barracks, the stables and storerooms—until the entire great enclave of Kovalinn was an inferno. Bears burned across the clifftop, the carved wood charring to embers.
Ridha skidded on the slick pathway but kept her balance. Vedera were quick and agile. The terrain would offer no trouble, even with the waterfall throwing icy mist over the stone. Some immortal archers leapt from path to path, climbing down the zigzagging way as if it were a ladder instead of a road. Ridha could not blame them. No one was immortal before a dragon’s flame. She would not ask them to hang back to protect the raiders, not if it meant sacrificing their own lives.
Her legs slowed.
But isn’t that the point of all this? To fight for everyone in the Ward, and not just ourselves? Isn’t that the only way we win?
Her boots skidded as she hung back, letting the rest of the immortals surge past, with the raiders fighting to keep up.
“Princess!” she heard Kesar call, but the dragon’s roar swallowed up anything else. Ridha dodged with all her Vederan swiftness, moving against the crowd streaming down the cliffside.
She spotted a blond braid and a wolf tattoo at their rear, holding the gate, refusing to leave anyone behind. Raiders streamed by her, smoke clinging to their furs, their eyes alight with pure terror.
Ridha took up the other side of the gate, holding position. Carved bears snarled over her head. She almost laughed at them. The gates would be ash by morning, the great bears of Kovalinn dust in a frozen wind.
Across the gate, Lenna offered the smallest nod of thanks. It was better than flowers heaped at Ridha’s feet. She replied with a nod of her own and glared into the fiery belly of the enclave, smoke and flame blowing with every beat of the dragon’s wings.
Two more raiders limped out of the destruction, coughing and choking. Lenna demanded something in Jydi, words Ridha could not understand. The reply was clearly not to her liking, and the chief paled, swallowing hard.
“There are more inside,” Lenna shouted across the din.
Ridha’s stomach twisted. She counted a hundred Vedera upon the walls, with twenty more mortal archers. Near that many were below now, fighting down the cliff bank before the dragon turned its wrath on them. The princess looked through the gates again. Smoke and flame had turned the enclave into an apocalypse, and she wondered if this was what Infyrna, the Burning Realm, looked like.Or Asunder itself, the kingdom of What Waits. The hell coming for us all.
Smoke stung her eyes and Ridha squinted, searching for anystragglers in the flames. Wood cracked and splintered, sending up a burst of embers. Ash began to fall in a blanket of wretched gray.
Lenna looked too, a hand raised to cut the glare of the fire. Another roar like a tear of metal sounded overhead. With a heaving breath, the chief abandoned the gate and plunged back into the burning enclave.
It took less than a second for Ridha to follow, the steel of her armor absorbing the heat, going hot against her skin.
The enclave smoldered, wooden beams and thatched roofs collapsing all around them. Lenna cupped her hands and shouted, calling for whoever might be left behind, but the hellish landscape swallowed up her voice. Not even Ridha could hear her. It was a foolish endeavor, no better than suicide. Again Ridha squinted into the fire, hunting for any sign of survivors. But she saw nothing, not even a shadow in the flames.
“We must go,” she screamed, grabbing Lenna by the collar, her lips nearly brushing the chief’s ear. “Or this will be your ending.”
Not mine,Ridha told herself, even as corrosive fear wore through her body, eating at her strength.I am a princess of Iona. I will not die this way.
Lenna shoved her off, teeth bared like an animal. She looked as fearsome as the dragon itself.
“Leave me,” she said, drawing a shortsword. The blade was wide and heavy, the tip pointed at Ridha. “I’ll die with them.”
“Dieforthem.” Swinging her arm, Ridha disarmed the raider chief with a simple maneuver she’d learned long ago. Lenna blanched, raising her fists to strike, but Ridha only tossed thesword into a snowbank. “The ones still living are the ones who need you to survive.”
Lenna sneered; then her gaze shifted, locking over Ridha’s shoulder, back toward the inferno.
“Theyneed us too,” Lenna hissed.
Three figures tumbled out of the blaze, their faces ashen, with rags or furs over their mouths. One fell to his knees, wheezing, before Lenna grabbed him by the arms and hauled him up, urging him toward the gate. Ridha took another, a tall woman with burned clothes and a wounded leg. They blinked at each other.
