Kitiara understood instinctively how to help Skie, perhaps because she loved flying. When in the air, she and her dragon melded together. She felt almost as if she was the one who had wings. In battle, she knew Skie’s every move before he made it, just as he knew by the touch of her knees on his flanks or her hand upon his neck where she wanted to go—always to the fiercest part of the fighting.
A flight of blue dragons soared after them, each dragon leaping into the air, following Skie, their leader. This was always a proud moment for him, and for her, as he knew well.
“The reds will not be pleased to see us,” Skie shouted over the rush of cold air.
Kitiara remarked what the red dragons could do with themselves and added a few choice words about what they could do with Toede into the bargain.
“We are looking for an inn called the Red Dragon,” she told Skie.
“I think you’re a little late!” he called out.
They had just come in sight of Tarsis—or rather what had once been Tarsis.
Smoke and flame billowed into the air. Skie’s nostrils twitched and he shook his mane. He enjoyed the stench of destruction, but clouds of thick smoke would make seeing anything on the ground below damn difficult.
Kitiara had anticipated this, however, and had sent scouts into the city. She and Skie waited at some distance for the scouts to return, the dragon wheeling in easy circles just beyond the clouds of smoke. They had not been waiting long when a wyvern-rider came into view, emerging from the pall that covered the doomed city. Sighting the Highlord, the wyvern-rider changed course and flew over to them in haste.
“Slow down,” Kitiara commanded her dragon.
Skie’s lip curled in a sneer, but he did as he was ordered. Like most dragons, he detested wyverns. He considered them filthy beasts, a mockery of dragons, with their grotesque bird-legs, stunted, scaly bodies, and barbed tails. He glared at the wyvern as it approached, warning it not to come too near. Since the blue dragon could have snapped the wyvern in two with one bite, the wyvern heeded the blue’s warning, forcing the sivak rider to shout at the top of his lungs to make himself heard.
“The inn has been hit, my lord! Part of it has collapsed. The Red Wing’s troops have it surrounded.” The sivak draconian gestured. “That flight of reds you see is going to—”
Kitiara wasn’t about to wait to hear what the reds were planning to do. Skie understood her need, and he had altered course and was soaring after the reds before she had given him the command.
“Return to your post!” she shouted at the sivak, who saluted, and the wyvern sped thankfully away.
Blue dragons are smaller and more maneuverable than the hulking red dragons. Skie and his blues easily caught up with the reds, who were, as Skie had predicted, extremely displeased to see them. The reds glared balefully at the blues, who glared just as balefully back.
Kitiara and the leader of the Red Wing held a brief midair conference; the red shouting to Kit that he had orders from Toede to kill—not capture—the felons if he found them. Kit shouted back that he would be the one killed, not captured, unless he brought the assassins to her alive and well. The commander of the Red Wing knew Kitiara. He also knew Toede. He saluted Kit respectfully and flew off.
“Locate the inn,” Kit ordered Skie and the rest of the blues. “We’re searching for three people, remember, a half-elf, a human wizard, and his big, dumb-looking brother.”
The dragons flew into the smoke, blinking their eyes and keeping sharp watch to make certain no smoldering cinder landed on the vulnerable membranes of their wings. The blues had to be careful, for the reds, drunk with the joy of killing and burning, were heedless and reckless in their flight, swooping down on hapless people trying to escape, breathing flame on them, then watching them run, screaming, hair and clothes on fire, until they collapsed in the street.
Paying no attention to where they were going, the reds blundered into buildings, smashing them, knocking them down with their tails. They would also blunder into each other in the smoke and confusion, and Skie and the other blue dragons had to do some fancy maneuvering to avoid collisions. A few jolts of lightning breath helped drive away reds who flew too close.
The stench of burnt flesh, the screams of the dying, the rumble of falling towers, was nothing new to Kitiara. She paid little heed to anything going on around her, concentrating instead on peering through the smoke into the occasional patch of clear air created by the flapping of Skie’s wings.
She had scouted out the part of the city in which the inn was located and she soon spotted it, for it was—or had been—one of the larger buildings in the area. The inn was under attack by draconian forces, battling those inside.
Kit sucked in her breath. She knew perfectly well who was in there, fighting for his life and the lives of his friends. She imagined herself strolling into the inn amidst the smoke, climbing over the rubble, finding Tanis, reaching out her hand to him, and saying, “Come with me.” He’d be astonished, of course. She could picture the look on his face.
“Griffons!” Skie bellowed.
Kitiara blinked away her reverie and peered intently through the eyeslits of her helm, cursing the smoke, for she couldn’t see. Then there they were, a flight of griffons flying low beneath the smoke, coming to the rescue of those trapped in the inn.
Kitiara uttered an exclamation of anger. Griffons are ferocious creatures, afraid of nothing, and they fell on the draconians who surrounded the inn, snatching them up in their sharp talons, snapping off their heads with their beaks, as an eagle eats a rat.
“There are elves mixed up in this!” Skie snarled.
Griffons, though fiercely independent, revere elves, and bonded griffons will serve them if their need is great. Griffons on their own would have never flown into a raging battle, risking their lives to save humans. These griffons were here on orders from some elf lord. Those who had been trapped in the ruins of the inn could be seen clambering onto the backs of the griffons, who wasted no time. Having picked up their passengers, they took off, flying north.
“Who escaped?” Kit cried. “Could you see them?”
Skie was about to answer when a red dragon appeared, barreling through the smoke. Catching sight of the fleeing griffons, the red flew after them, intending to incinerate them.
“Cut him off!” Kitiara ordered.
Skie disapproved of Kit involving herself in this fight, but he did enjoy thwarting any red dragon, who, because they were bigger, considered themselves better. Skie swooped in front of the red’s nose, forcing the huge dragon to almost flip himself head over tail in order to avoid a crash.
“Are you mad?” the red roared furiously. “They’re escaping!”
Kitiara ordered the red to go kill people in some other part of the city and sent her blue dragons off in pursuit of the griffons, reminding them several times that the people the griffons carried were to be taken alive and brought straight back to her.
“Aren’t we going after them?” Skie demanded.
“I need to make sure who they were. I don’t want to leave until I find out they were the ones who escaped. I couldn’t see them. Could you?” she yelled at Skie.
Skie had been able to get a good look at them while Kit was arguing with the red dragon.
“Your wizard and a large human warrior, a human female with red hair and a man clad in leather. He could have been a half-breed. He looked to be the leader, for he was giving the orders. Oh, and a couple of barbarians.”
Kitiara asked him sharply, “There was no blonde elf woman?”
“No, lord,” said Skie, wondering what this had to do with anything.
“Good,” Kitiara said. “Maybe she’s dead.” Then she frowned. “What about Flint, Sturm and the kender? Tanis would never leave them behind… So maybe that wasn’t him on the griffon…”