“Are you all right?”
“Aye” Stanach said, though he wasn’t sure. The river crossing had sucked the warmth out of him.
Finn jerked a thumb toward the low, stony hills. Kem took the right point, and Tyorl insisted that Lehr accompany him on the left. Lavim, shaking himself like a soaked hound, scurried on ahead and quickly left the rangers behind.
The thick odor of burning forest followed them into the foothills. The ground on the eastern side of the river was rocky and rising. Low scrub growth huddled in widely spaced thickets. Hills and then tall fells marched eastward. Kelida, quiet with her own thoughts, matched her pace to Stanach’s. Each time they looked back over their shoulders they saw the crimson stain of fire in the sky.
“Guyll fyr,” Stanach whispered, stopping to watch the fire ignite the brush only a mile from the river cave. Despite the biting wind and the cold pre-dawn air, sweat trickled down the sides of his pale face, glittering along the edges of his moustache and clinging to his thick black beard. Kelida, seeing his need to rest and restore his failing strength, stopped with him.
She silently tried the words he’d used, then looked up and tried it aloud.
“Gueel fire?”
Stanach smiled crookedly. “Close enough. Wildfire.” The dwarf pointed southward along the line of the forest. “The brush is up, but most of the fire is in the treetops. If the wind changes, it will cross the river.”
“That’s wildfire?”
Stanach searched the dark ahead of them. Kembal waited at the foot of the first of a series of fells. “No,” he said, starting out again. “It will be guyll fyr when it hits the Plains of Death about thirty miles from here.”
If the wind’s right, he thought grimly, it will do that tomorrow. He said nothing further, about the fire or anything else. The task of walking needed all his attention now. Kelida went a little ahead of him, her eyes on the dark ground, always finding the rubble in the path, the dips and holes in the stony ground, in time to catch his arm before he stumbled.
His right hand hung at his side like iron stock, feelingless and heavy. Stanach remembered the fire that had burned remorselessly in that hand only hours ago. He didn’t remember it in his hand, he didn’t feel the echoes of recent pain there. He felt it cold in his chest, tightening in his stomach.
When, he wondered, would Kembal’s salves wear off?
Tyorl, on his heels at the top of the fell, searched the sky for signs of the dawn. He found none. The fading stars told him that the horizon should be graying, but the light of the fire had spread across the sky as the forest caught the flames and sent them speeding south and east, overwhelming the whisper of faint dawn.
Had the fire crossed the river yet? Tyorl didn’t think so. He got to his feet and stretched aching muscles. He couldn’t remember when he’d last slept. He didn’t know when he would sleep next.
Finn, his sharp eyes on the ground at the foot of the hill, nudged Tyorl. Kem jogged back down the slope to help Stanach and Kelida. “The dwarf is going to have to rest soon. Aye, and from the look of him, it’ll be at the foot of the hill, too.”
“We can’t stop here. The fire could jump the river.”
Finn snorted. “It will jump the river.”
They stood silently for a long moment. Tyorl searched west, wondering if the thirty rangers of their company had escaped the flames. He glanced at Finn and saw the same question in the rangerlord’s weathered face. And he saw the answer in his eyes.
They couldn’t have escaped. The river ran foaming in wild, treacherous white water six miles north and could not be forded. The fire looked to have started where Finn said the company had been camped. What had happened?
Gods, Tyorl, who did not do so often, prayed, grant some of them life if you can’t let them all live!
Kerrith. Bartt. Old G’Art. The names and faces of the thirty men and elves who had been his friends for so many years seemed to be written on the smoke. Tyorl shivered. That fast would they die, those friends, and as easily as wind scatters smoke.
Finn paced the top of the fell then returned. “I wonder where the kender’s got to?”
“Keeping out of my way, no doubt,” Tyorl said.
Finn grunted. “Will he return?”
“He’s a night rider, but he always comes back. Worse luck for me.”
“Aye?” Finn eyed the elf shrewdly. “I thought he was a friend of yours. Trouble between you two?”
“One doesn’t cancel out the other,” Tyorl said wearily.
The moons were long set. No starlight remained to cast a shadow. Still, Tyorl suddenly saw the shade of dread and danger in his heart as though he had seen it cutting along the ground.
Finn bellowed a curse. As an echo, Lehr’s cry of shock and alarm sounded from the foot of the hill as he roared a warning to his brother. A piece of midnight, shrieking like a banshee’s war cry, a black dragon arrowed from the sky.
The moment the dragon’s cry sounded was like a fragment separated from the line of time itself. Kelida’s heart crashed against her ribs, sickening her with the force of her fear. Cold to her bones, her muscles frozen, she watched, helpless to move, as the creature’s wings cut back along its glittering ebony sides, watched in horror as it touched the ground, its massive head reared high. With terrifying speed, the dragon’s forelegs shot out as though reaching for something.
Reaching for her!
Stanach’s howl of horror slashed the bonds of Kelida’s terror as though it were a hard-edged sword. She flung herself to the side. Stormblade!
She didn’t stop to think that she, untrained and without skill, would likely injure herself with the sword before she could ever wound the dragon. Dagger-sharp claws, black and curved, hung over her like a cage waiting to close. Kelida fumbled with the peace strings, trying to haul the sword from its scabbard. Red-hearted steel and ice blue sapphires, Stormblade’s weight would drag at her wrist muscles as she tried to raise it aloft. It didn’t matter. She had to try.
A hideous cry of triumph shivered the night before she could pull the sword free. The dragon bore a rider! Dark cloaked and hooded, a dwarf sat astride the beast.
Stanach roared, a sound like a wordless curse, and dove between Kelida and the beast. The dragon’s huge wing caught him hard and swept him to the ground. He rolled instinctively, came up staggering, and fell to one knee. Fast as lightning’s strike, the dragon’s long neck whipped to the side, its teeth bared and dripping, eyes murderously bright.
“No!” Kelida screamed. “No! Stanach!”
Heavy as a falling tree, a flying weight caught Kelida from behind. She hit the ground hard, all the breath flown from her, and tried to scream again. There was nothing in her with which to scream, no air, no voice. A hand clamped roughly on her arm, dragging, dragging, and Kelida came to her knees, sobbing and gasping. Lehr, unruly dark hair tangling in the wind from the dragon’s wings, stood between the beast and Kelida. Sword high, the ranger lunged, though he must have known that his blade would never pierce the dragon’s scaly armor.
Lehr’s steel struck and turned on ebony hide. The dragon rumbled deep in its great chest. The low thundering sounded horribly like amused laughter.
With a careless stroke of dagger claws, it’s eyes already on Kelida, the black tore heart and life from the ranger. Lehr’s blood, like hot rain, spattered Kelida’s face and hands. She screamed and heard only a moan. She tried to run and only fell.
Like a cage, she’d thought when she first saw the dragon’s claws. Like a cage they closed around her now, and then drew tight, scraping against each other as they captured her and dragged, then lifted her high. No! her mind screamed. No!
The dragonrider reached for her arm, yanked hard, and dragged her over the beast’s neck. Her head snapped back and her stomach lurched with sickening force.