Holt
Three days since arriving in Sidastra; two days since he burned his father’s body upon the pyre; hours at most until the swarm arrived. Even with all the activity surrounding him, Holt had stayed put, Cleansing every impurity and Forging every drop of magic into Ash’s core, standing now because there was nothing more he could do.
Ash’s core shone diamond bright, more silver-white than ever before. Holt thought it had become denser too, a result of his fastidious Forging over the last thirty-six hours. Especially at night.
If only the clouds would part to allow the moonlight to rain down, then there would really be a difference. No matter. For now, Holt had done all he could. He and Ash were as prepared for a war – magically speaking – as they could be under the circumstances.
Ash stirred from his nap. “Finally, you’re up.”
“It’s for your benefit you know,” Holt said. “Come. We need to pick up your food.”
After speaking with Talia he’d decided to wait until battle was upon them for Ash to eat his venison. He appreciated what she said about marginal gains, but he thought given the circumstances they should take every edge that they could.
She had taken her leave sometime around supper to continue preparations with Ealdor Harroway. Holt had feigned deep concentration at the time, still raw and a little ashamed from their heated conversation. He had not explained himself well.
As painful as her choice would be, she’d be welcomed by the party she chose to commit to. Whereas Ash and himself would be outcasts wherever they went. Still, he didn’t like how they had parted, especially before a battle. He’d try to find her and make things right before it began.
He and Ash walked across the palace grounds together, heading for the kitchens. Soldiers called to each other along the walls. Torches and braziers attempted to relieve the gathering night. A smell of potato and leek soup lingered in the clammy air. Holt told Ash to wait in the yard then entered, weaving through the staff as naturally as one of them. Most had their heads down and didn’t notice him, those who did betrayed the fear in their eyes. Had he looked that afraid when the scourge burned the Crag? He must have.
The kitchens were as vast as he’d envisioned: red brick arches held up a high ceiling, allowing air to breathe despite the great charcoal fires and ovens running down both walls. Every type of pot, pan and utensil hung above the long oak tables, their pristine copper reflecting a warm glow of their own.
And he had thought working in the Crag’s kitchens had been hectic.
The head Cook caught wind of Holt’s arrival and rushed to greet him. “Honored Rider—”
“Please just call me Holt. I’m a Cook, like you.”
“Forgive me, ye’honor, but old habits.” He bobbed on the spot and snapped his fingers at a group of kitchenhands. They brought a black roasting dish over and the Cook pulled off the lid, letting loose a strong, gamy smell tinted with licorice.
“This type of dragon is new to me,” said the Cook, “but I thought roasting the haunch with aniseed would be a nice starting point.”
That explains the smell, Holt thought. He’d have to remember to note down Ash’s reaction to it, if he got the chance.
“It’s been left to rest so it should be tender,” the Cook said.
“So long as it gives my dragon more power, he’ll wolf it down however it tastes,” Holt said. “We can’t be picky. Wrap it in linen and I’ll take it with me.”
Once he had the meat in hand, he found it awkward to leave. The other servants bowed to him, repeatedly, likely wondering why he hadn’t swept from the hot, noisy area yet. They must have heard of his story by now, or a rumor of it. Perhaps they admired him; one of their own who had elevated himself. Or did they secretly curse him too as a chaos bringer while smiling to his face? It was impossible to know, and whatever their feelings Holt didn’t think knowing would bring him much comfort nor cause further distress. He was an outsider now, even inside a kitchen which should have been his domain.
By the time he made it out to the yard horns were blowing.
“They have come,” Ash said. “Their stench is thick in the air; their shrieks pierce the night.”
Holt clambered onto Ash’s back, placing the meat in his lap. They weren’t going to waste a single mote from it.
“Time to show them what a lunar dragon can do.”
Talia
Pyra heard them first. A quiver ran across their bond. Talia heard them a few seconds later and leaned on the ramparts, squinting to get a glimpse of the enemy. The black clouds over the city might be thick, but miles beyond the boundaries of Sidastra a glimmer of the true night sky remained. A sliver of starlight lit the swarm as it closed in, and even under Silas’s storm the wet sheen of the bugs gleamed.
Talia checked Pyra’s core. The bonfire raged clearer than it had that morning although she hadn’t had the time to Cleanse all the smoke away. It would have to do. Pyra’s core was more mature and denser than Ash’s, and fire still hit the blighted filth hard if not as well as lunar magic.
They would burn many before falling.
And while Holt and Ash were powerful, they were limited in the ground they might cover. Ash needed Holt to fly, whereas she and Pyra could be apart and remain effective. Pyra covering the air, and she on the wall.
She drew back from the rampart and took a deep breath. Beside her, Ealdor Harroway sighed. It seemed a sigh of relief, and Talia too released the breath she’d been holding. There was something calming about the battle beginning, after all. Worse than the fight was the agonizing wait.
“I trust every siege team knows to shoot a gray dragon on sight?”
“They have been briefed,” said Harroway. “Have hope, Talia. We are not so reliant on the riders as many say.”
“Let us hope you are right.” She looked this great Ealdor of the realm up and down. She did not recall him from her youth; his father had held the title in those days. “You must have defended Sidastra during Feorlen’s last incursion.”
“I did.”
“I was only a young girl. I hid in the tower above my room.” “As children do.”
His gaze was all on the swarm. Clacking, shrieking, and buzzing grew ever louder.
“Are you ready to die, Ealdor Harroway?” Her tone was level.
He finally looked at her – right at her. “Yes.” He gulped and his jaw quivered. “I am. For what’s left of my honor. For you.”
She turned away. Already he treats me like his queen.
“Fight for our home instead,” she said. “No matter what they make me swear, this is still my home.”
“For our home. My only fear is rising again to be part of its destruction.”
Over on the shore, the front ranks of the swarm enveloped the waypoint beacons. They were in range.
“It begins, Master of War.”
She reached behind her head, grasped the ever-warm hilt of her rider’s blade, and drew it with purpose.
Harroway moved off, passing orders. Signal fires were lit, repeated back across the islands. Before long, the first flaming payloads from the trebuchets soared into the writhing darkness. The swarm passed another beacon; they were close enough now for catapults and to be seen.
Flayers sped ahead of the horde, their blade arms scything before them; huge hammer-headed beetles, the juggernauts, stampeded like bulls; swollen carriers and fast-moving stingers filled the skies. And of course, masses of ghouls.
The swarm passed the final beacon and met a hail of arrows. Ghouls fell. But more ghouls just ran over them while the juggernauts passed through unscathed.
The noise was incredible. That was something they never prepared you for: just how easy it is to lose sense of things when you can barely hear the person screaming next to you.
Talia focused inwards. “Stingers are the priority,” she said to Pyra.
“The carriers are easier targets for the ballistae.” “With pleasure.”
Pyra answered the swarm’s bellows with a roar of her own, loud enough, defiant enough, it caused the soldiers on the western wall to cheer.
“And where is Holt?” Talia demanded.
“Ash says they’re on their way.”
“They better be,” Talia said aloud. She gathered a Fireball and aimed for a flayer on the banks of the shore. Too fast for her, the flayer avoided the attack on its determined surge toward the bridge. A group of juggernauts led the scourge charge, their armored skulls lowered to ram against the gate. A ballista bolt hit the leading juggernaut but even that did not slow it down. Flayers followed close behind. They would attempt to scale the walls – their
uncanny agility and spiky bodies allowed for this, but while climbing they would be easy prey for the defenders.
Yet this was no ordinary incursion, and this no ordinary swarm.
Talia watched in horror as the first flayer leapt, right into the path of a second bolt heading for the lead juggernaut. It fell dead to the water, and the juggernaut slammed into the gate at full tilt. More flayers did the same.
All the usual strategies and expectations could not be relied upon.
Before Talia could think of a solution, the buzzing of wings rose to dominance. Low flying stingers raced above. Why are they flying so low? She drew from Pyra’s core, empowered her legs, and launched herself straight up, keeping her blade held high. She impaled one bug, ripped her sword free, plunged it into another on the way down, and kicked the corpse free of the wall so it wouldn’t crush soldiers beneath. She hit the battlements in a crouch, rose and ran for the gatehouse.
The gates had to hold. As long as possible. Retreat was inevitable but this would be too quick a defeat if the gates fell so soon.
Orders rang along the wall. “Swords!”
“Carriers inbound!”
Now the low flight path of the stingers made more sense. They were covering for the carriers. But carriers were supposed to fly high over the defenses as well, to land at weaker points within a city.
“Talia, they’re making straight for the walls.”
Pyra’s words had barely registered when sheer instinct brought Talia skidding to a halt. A fat carrier crashed down, crushing soldiers beneath and throwing others aside. Arrows had ruined its wings already, but the impact alone must have broken its body. Yet even as its death throes gurgled, ghouls loped out from under the raising carapace of its back.
The carriers too are being suicidal. All to take the walls quicker.
It was unlike anything Talia had heard of. But it made a grim sense. When the swarm won, many of the dead would rise to join the swarm. Sovereign could sacrifice a large portion of his existing swarm to ensure victory and swell his ranks afterwards.
Soldiers nearby looked as shocked as Talia felt, but the time for despair was still a long way off. She channeled fire into her blade, igniting the red metal.
“With me!” she cried, running to meet the enemy.
Holt
“We have to make for the walls,” Ash said.
“We will,” Holt said. “I just need to see this with my own eyes first.”
He willed Ash to head to the southern tip of the western quarter, where the quarantine zone could be glimpsed as a black shadow on the lake. Ash perched on the roof of a townhouse just behind the wall. Soldiers gawked and called to him, wishing his blessing. Holt only had eyes for the isle to the south.
“Pyra says we are needed now!”
“Tell her we’re on our way. I need to know.”
“What do you need to know?” Ash stiffened his neck, pointing forward like the needle on a compass. “There is more death than life there already.” Holt looked down to Ash, which given they were sense-sharing meant Ash was also looking down on Ash. Thinking it through just made him feel
dizzy.
“Why do you linger on this?” Ash asked, sounding impatient for the first time. A reasoned explanation was clearly demanded of Holt.
Yet that was it. Holt’s feelings weren’t wholly reasonable. It was all in his gut, his guilt-ridden squirmy gut. A philosopher might explain it, perhaps someone old and wise.
From his right, he heard the swarm close in on the city. On his left, came the swish and thrum of the trebuchets.
“I just…” Holt began, “wish things could have turned out differently.”
“I do too. One day we’ll make things right.”
A sudden thought entered Holt’s mind, one he had to get off his chest before the night was over. “I’m not sure I ever said I’m sorry to you, did I? I’m not sorry I saved you, but I am sorry for your blindness and how other dragons treat you.”
“Never worry about my eyes – I’m glad to experience the world as I do rather than not at all. And as for others of my kind, they can accept me or not as they choose. I will not allow my own worth to be determined by them.”
“You might be the bravest person I know,” Holt said.
Just then Ash’s ears pricked. Holt heard it too – lighter over their shared senses but still there. Screaming from the quarantine isle, and many buzzing
wings to the south. The squirming in Holt’s stomach boiled into cold fury. Ash roared so loud it caused the soldiers nearby to duck and clap their hands to their ears.
Holt started unwrapping the haunch of meat. “Whatever happens, I’m glad you’re my dragon.” “I’m glad you’re my boy.”
The dragon bond burned fiercely. Stingers whizzed overhead. Ballista bolts sailed into the night with great thunks and thwacks.
And Holt tossed the venison in a high arc.
Ash raised his long neck and snapped the meat out of the air. He munched greedily. The taste echoed on Holt’s own tongue from sense- sharing; the dragon’s pleasure flitted across the bond. Raw lunar motes poured into the orbit of Ash’s core.
“Pull them into a breath attack,” Holt said, as they took off for the western wall. “Hold it as long as you can!”
Talia
She entered the tower on her side of the gatehouse and took the stairs. Bodies clogged the stairwell; blood and bile flowed down the spiraling steps. She took the first exit onto the wall directly over the gate, leapt over fallen soldiers and blocked the strike of a ghoul hoping to make a corpse of another. Dispatching the ghoul, she pivoted and raced for the parapet.
From her right came the sound of breaking wood and screaming. She skidded to a halt and looked up to find another fat carrier where a ballista and its crew had been moments before. What soldiers remained on the gatehouse rushed to the stairwell of that tower, ready to engage the ghouls as they descended.
“Stay close to the remaining tower at the gate,” she said to Pyra before continuing to the parapet.
As she reached it, the gate shook. Below, the juggernauts withdrew from their latest assault. Another two were charging down the bridge. Other than the stingers and carriers, the full might of the swarm sat with chilling ease on the opposite bank, allowing the juggernauts and flayers to bring down the gate for them.
And Talia had hoped to hold here for hours at least.
Sheathing her blade, she brought both palms together and pulled power from Pyra’s core. Fire lashed forth in a searing, twisting line toward the closest juggernaut, striking it on its thick forehead. Talia poured power in, too much for one bug but she didn’t see another option. Her target fell.
She wrung her hands and took aim again. Fire lashed, and a flayer jumped into its path. She cut the attack and aimed again. A flock of squawking seagulls descended, soaking her flames. They swerved up and around, engulfing her in a storm of pecking and flapping wings. As a few sharpened beaks jabbed into her face and neck, Talia howled in rage, and slammed a foot into the hard stone. Her Flamewave ran low over the gatehouse, burning few of the birds but it drove the rest away.
She rose and made it to the rampart’s edge just in time to see a flash of writhing purple-black power. She ducked as the shadowy bolt of dark magic shattered against the battlements. Even their casters were providing cover from afar.
No regular swarm indeed.
Talia unsheathed her sword and rose again, ready this time. More bolts of black magic hissed from the shore. She dodged one and blocked another with her blade. Steel forged at Falcaer Fortress could handle the punishment. Now with just one hand she tried again to weaken the assaulting juggernauts, but it wasn’t enough.
We’re going to lose the gate.
“Look out!”
The call came from behind.
Talia spun only to be thrown back by the impact of another swollen carrier. Bony fists punched their way through the carapace shell, sending the carrier itself into fits of pain as whatever it bore ripped free.
Three giant skeletons emerged. The bones of these blight victims had mutated, growing larger but leaving the rest of their bodies behind. Muscle, sinew and ragged clothes hung from exposed yellowed bones. Oversized skulls swiveled on vertebrae the size of fists. Hollow sockets scanned for prey. Each bore a great two-handed weapon that looked small against their frames. Dark magic fueled them where nature could not.
Abominations. Talia had feared meeting these the most.
“Pyra, I need help here!” “Coming!”
Breathing hard, Talia raised her blade, and rocked on the balls of her feet. As large as they were, they were surely lumbering and slow. That would be her chance.
Every soldier left upon the gatehouse had rightly backed away. The abominations opened their wide jaws in rattling cries, raised their weapons
—
Then a blinding beam of white light hit the carrier. Another shock wave rushed out from the epicenter of the strike, cutting through the abominations like scythes through a meadow. And a white dragon came hurtling down.
Ash landed on the stone scorched by his lunar magic, roaring in triumph. Silver vapor spilled from his mouth like steam. Talia ran to him as Holt jumped down.
She shoved him roughly. “Where have you been?” Before he even opened his mouth, she carried on. “Never mind. What was that?”
“Marginal gains.”
She snorted, beamed at him, then started dragging him back to the ramparts. “Ash keep those ears trained above us. If anything even thinks about landing, I want you to blast it into oblivion.”
“Pyra, help Ash out. We’ll need the sky above us clear if we’re going to have a chance.”
“Many are getting past,” Pyra said.
“Much of the outer ring is empty. Let them waste their time there. If we don’t hold the gate now, we’ll be lost before we get a chance to fall back properly.”
The gatehouse shook again. More juggernauts had completed a run. “Come on,” she yelled to Holt, throwing him forward. To his credit he
didn’t protest, and pre-charged one of his Lunar Shocks. They reached the edge of the wall.
“Take the juggernauts,” she said. “I’ll keep the rest from interfering.”
Holt unleashed his Shock. It did a lot more damage to the armored juggernauts than her fire, but it still took him a good two or three blasts to kill one.
Talia scorched stingers as they flew in, just enough to chase them off; staggered flayers with fully charged Fireballs; cleared the way enough that a ballista bolt landed a clean strike into the softer side of a juggernaut while Holt took down another.
When the last juggernaut fell, she pulled Holt back from the edge. The slightest tremor shook the edges of her bond.
“Well done,” she gasped, more from nerves than exhaustion.
She watched as Ash aimed one of his beams of light at a carrier overhead. He missed initially but drew the beam after his victim and seared a hole through its bulbous body. Maintaining the attack like that was no small feat. Maybe they could buy more time than she thought.
“We should get ready for the next wave,” Holt said.
She caught his arm. “We can’t hold this spot on our own forever. Our bonds will fray.”
“We killed them—”
“We’ve bought time, that’s all. I want you and Ash to head down into the streets and find the choke point Harroway set up by the east gate – we need to get the troops off this island and you can hold the scourge at ground level better than me. Tell him to start the retreat to the inner ring. Go on,” she added, waving a hand. “Go before more juggernauts come.”
He looked like he had something to say but bit his lip and nodded. Then he ran to Ash, got on his back, and together they descended into the west quarter.
She called Pyra down and got onto her back. Soldiers appealed to her and she told them the same thing she cried to everyone as they flew circuits around the walls.
“To the inner ring! Fall back!”
