AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Another low growl rises in the air, and I realize with a shock it’s coming from me. I clamp my mouth shut and turn back to the landscape passing beneath my claws, a patchwork of farmland dotted with the small, distant lights of fires and lanterns, and beyond, the great swell of the Iron Mountains.
I’ve never been near the Iron Mountains. They seem to have a scent, something cold and metallic with a hint of sulfur, although perhaps that’s just what air smells like this far off the ground. The civilized tapestry of farms fades away as Ensyvir and I approach the mountains, replaced by the dark spires of a pine forest. We’re following a road that winds through the forest, toward what appears to be a village nestled in the foothills of the mountains.
It’s a strange village, though. Its roads are painfully straight, so straight they look like they’ve been cut with a blade. And the lights of this village burn at even intervals, nothing like the chaotic jumble of lanterns and firelight I’d seen pouring out across the water from the harbor of Mynndar. I’m still staring at the oddly straight lines and matching rows of torches when a gust of wind buffets my wings, causing me to tilt.
I glance over my shoulder and see Ensyvir dropping toward the pines, his wings folded neatly into his body. For a moment, I hesitate, not sure if I should follow, and not sure if I can even emulate whatever he’s doing with his wings. Then his flight evens out, and Ensyvir lands on a craggy ledge above the road. He folds his wings back against his body and glares at me with those burning eyes.
I swallow hard. My throat still tastes like salt and the metallic sting of fear. I give the odd village of straight lines and clean angles another glance, then wobble through the air toward Ensyvir. I try to cushion my landing this time, to let my claws sink to the mountainside gracefully, but the stones don’t cooperate; they slide away from me, tumbling down the mountain in a riot of dust and noise.
Ensyvir’s growl cuts through whatever apologies I might have made. I pull my claws beneath me, fold my aching wings into my body, and wait. Finally he sighs, a sound that somehow conveys the depths of his disappointment with my poor performance, and some part of me burns in response. You think you’re disappointed, I want to scream at him. I expected to learn to fly on a beach!
“What do you think of them?” Ensyvir asks once he’s done shaking his head over my pathetic attempt at landing on a mountainside.
He tilts his snake-like neck toward the odd village below us as he speaks. I narrow my eyes, searching for clues to the kind of answer he’s hoping to receive. We’re lower now, and closer to the village, and it looks even stranger than it did from the air. All the houses appear to be almost identical, with unusually pale walls. Instead of individual stables, the livestock is quartered around the edges of the lines demarcating the village, and those lines themselves seem almost defensive. Dark pennants flap above some of the houses as if marking battle lines.
Oh. I pull back, my claws scratching the stone. I know what this is. I’ve seen it before, although never from above. And I was never allowed to be a part of it.
“It’s an encampment,” I whisper. “For an army.”
Ensyvir’s lips pull back from his teeth in what might be a grin.
“My army,” he growls.
Smoke rises from his snout and twirls around the stars. His eyes narrow as he watches the lights below us, the straight lines and the pale tents, the flags that denote rank and regiment. How many of them are from Valgros, I wonder. How many of those flags would I recognize? And which tent will I be in when it’s my time to join the front lines? I shiver, and my scales whisper against the wind.
“Valgros and Cassonia,” I say. Somehow, it seems more real once the words leave my lips.
“My army,” Ensyvir says again. His words are almost a growl, and there’s something hungry in the way he watches the tents of the soldiers that makes me feel like the cold wind off the Iron Mountains is cutting right through my skin.
His army. It’s true; he holds King Donovan’s signet ring. I’ve seen the papers myself, the orders commanding regiments to cross the straight and join Cassonia. But what I don’t understand is why.
Why are the soldiers of Valgros here? Why make an encampment this high in the foothills of the Iron Mountains, this far from any other roads or ports? Who is there to attack in this strange desolation?
My neck cranes back, and I lift my eyes to the mountains looming above the camp. There’s a little dip in the peaks just before us, and it’s got to be the Dragon’s Maw. That road leads to the heart of the Iron Mountains, to the realm of the dragons. In the orphanage, getting sent to the Dragon’s Maw was a common threat.
I frown. How do you defeat a , Ensyvir had asked me. How do you overcome a larger, more powerful enemy?
“You find another enemy,” I whisper.
Ensyvir laughs beside me. The sound is cold and brittle, like the snap of rusted metal.
“Exactly,” Ensyvir replies.
He turns toward me, moving slowly. His eyes burn like the torches of the army below us, and for a moment I feel frozen. Dragons can hypnotize their prey, can’t they? I try to breathe, but nothing moves.
“Child,” Ensyvir purrs. “You’re not as empty-headed as they say, are you?”
A frantic denial rises in my throat. No, I want to scream. I’m nothing to interest you. Ensyvir makes a sound in the back of his mouth, a sort of clicking, and then turns back to his army. I suck in a breath.
Because I think I know what enemy Ensyvir means to attack. I know where he’s going to point this weapon, this army at his command. There’s only one place, really. Kings above, Donovan’s Royal Advisor is a dragon, and he wants to defeat a powerful enemy. Well, what powerful enemy could a dragon possibly have?
Another dragon, of course. Many other dragons. My eyes lift slowly, as if they’re being pulled from the bright burning torches of the army below me, the encampment that’s probably filled with men I know, men I’ve trained with, men I’ve fought and bled with, toward the tiny little notch in the dark spires of the mountain range before me. The Dragon’s Maw.
Ensyvir means to send the armies of Valgros and Cassonia against the Iron Mountains.
He’s going to attack the dragons.
It’s madness. Humans don’t stand a chance against the forces of the Iron Mountains. Blessed kings above, taking down my mother cost Donovan a dozen men, and she was just one dragon. Even if Ensyvir’s forces somehow managed to surprise the dragons, even if they got into a favorable position and had every strategic advantage I can imagine, attacking the dragons would cost hundreds of human lives. Thousands, perhaps.
