Kelida had nothing of sense left, only the need to free herself. She kicked back hard, heaved herself to sitting, and clawed at the dwarf’s face.
Her fingers dragged the hood away and she saw that he had only one eye. As the dragon thrust hard against the ground and leaped for the sky, wings wide to catch the wind, Kelida struck at that eye with a mountain cat’s instinct. Dimly, she felt a hand close quickly, with desperate strength, on her ankle, then just as quickly loose her. Thick and strong, two arms wrapped around her waist. The right hand, wrapped in bandaging torn from her green cloak, slipped and then pressed hard against her ribs. Stanach!
Blood streamed down the dragonrider’s face, caught in his grizzled beard. He flung himself away from her hands. Kelida hardly recognized the high triumphant cry ringing in her ears as her own. The sky dove for her, then turned sickeningly at the wild thunder of wind under the dragon’s black wings.
Slim and light, still she was a farmer’s girl and stronger than she looked. Kelida balanced across the dragon’s slick, scaly neck the way she would on a horse. Again she lunged at the dragonrider and didn’t see his dagger until a forge-scarred hand clamped on the dwarf’s wrist. Stanach!
Kelida looked around wildly and found him clinging to the dragon’s ridged back behind the dark-cloaked dwarf.
Bones snapped, the dragonrider screamed. The dragon’s powerful muscles rippled under Kelida’s knees as it leaped high and wheeled again. As in a dream where there is no sound and everything moves slowly, Kelida felt her balance slip, saw the dragonrider slide down the long black slope of the beast’s shoulder, and saw his mouth stretch wide in a futile scream as he found no grip. Clawing at nothing but air, he fell away in a sprawl of rigid arms and legs to the ground far below.
Her hands were nerveless with reaction to the horror, her legs too weak now to keep their grip. Kelida doubled over the dragon’s neck and waited, helpless to move against the force of the rushing air. The dun-colored sweep of hills and stone would rush up at her, snatch her the way it had snatched the one-eyed dwarf.
It never did.
Stanach caught Kelida quickly around the waist, his arms shaking, his breath thin clouds in the icy air of the heights. He dragged her back and held her tightly against him. She felt his beard against her back, thick and warm. She watched, as from a distance, as he reached around her with his left hand and grasped the dragon’s spiny crest.
The beast thundered and soared high, cutting through the wispy, gray clouds of dawn. Kelida felt Stanach’s sigh ragged in his chest, heard him whisper something in a choked voice.
Lyt chwaer, it sounded like. Little sister.
She sagged a little, closed her eyes against the sickening pressure of the dragon’s speed, and marshaled all her strength to hold on until they reached whatever destination the dragon chose.
Lehr’s blood still stained Kelida’s gray hunting leathers, still speckled her hands and arms. She shuddered deeply. The shudder became a wrenching sob and she wept, her tears freezing to ice on her cheeks. Darknight roared, stretching for the sky. Far below it, Realgar’s mageling, called the Gray Herald, dropped like a stone from the cold blue height.
A flight of a different kind! The black dragon howled its laughter. It’d hated the mageling’s imperious commands, hated the sound of his thoughts, the smell of him. It craned its neck back to see the two who rode now where the Gray Herald had. Another dwarf, light as Agus had been, and a human girl. Sevristh narrowed its eyes against the wind. The dragon’s tongue, long and forked, flickered around dagger fangs. It scented their fear and it smelled sweet indeed.
Nothing was tougher to chew than a muscular, sinewy dwarf. Nothing was more tender than young human flesh. The girl carried the Kingsword, and Darknight looked forward to Realgar’s pleasure, if only for the chance to claim these two as a reward. As, it thought, dinner.
The black dragon made every effort to keep its riders on its back. Its flight was smooth, and it avoided the rougher wind pockets the way a ship’s captain would run his craft through the trough of the sea to keep the waves from broadsiding his hull.
Stanach felt nothing, not the exhaustion, not the terror, not Kelida’s violent sobs, until the dragon swept out across the Plains of Dergoth, the Plains of Death. Then, as the black climbed high to catch a favorable wind current, canted its flight to put the wind at its back and under its broad wings, he saw the carpet of flame advancing east.
Kelida shook against him, an aspen in a windstorm, and he had no words to soothe her.
High in the southeastern sky, the new sun glinted on what seemed a long crimson arrow. A second dragon, a fire-breathing red, shot through the rolling black smoke above the forest and, wings folded, dove for the high, dark spine of the southern mountains and Pax Tharkas. Stanach knew then what had set the forest aflame. He didn’t know why. If Verminaard’s troops and supplies were moving into the mountains, why would he risk firing the forest and destroying the lines of attack he had only recently set in place?
The dragon caught a lower current, dropping with stomach-wrenching speed, and Stanach pulled Kelida hard against him. Off to the side, Stanach saw the answer to his question. Broad, deep fire breaks, looking like plough scars from this height, scored the foothills in a straight, narrow channel right to the plains themselves.
Channels, he thought bitterly, protecting the forests to the north and south and leading the flames right out onto the Plains of Death. From there the fire—guyll fire!—would march on Thorbardin like the savage advance raiders of a raging army.
Stanach groaned aloud. No army’s hungry raiders could do more damage.
A hundred years ago, wildfire had swept across the boggy marshes of the Plains of Death. Then the dwarves had tried to stop it, tried to save the marshlands. Stark and ugly those marshes were, but they were part of the wilds of dwarven lands, the places where birds nested, beasts watered, and fishes dwelt. The marshes formed a large link in Thorbardin’s food chain. A century ago, the marshlands had not been saved. It was true that the farming warrens deep below the mountains were able to feed Thorbardin. True, too, was the real danger that should blight threaten the crops and disease take the stock, famine would result.
We are under siege!
Kelida, limp with exhaustion, half-turned and buried her face in Stanach’s shoulder. He shifted his grip on the dragon’s crest, hitched his bandaged and still nerveless right hand higher to assure his grip on the girl. She said nothing, but her weeping had stilled a few moments ago. Stanach tried to see her face, but could not.
The dragon dropped lower, slowing its speed. Thorbardin was below and to the southeast. The city lay within the high peaks of the mountain just now taking the sun’s gilding. Snow blushed rose on the highest peaks, where it was already winter. As the dragon slid along the currents, Stanach was able to make out the still shadowed defile that led to Northgate, shattered and ruined three hundred years before in the Dwarfgate Wars. Gaping wide, stones silently screaming of pain, the mouth of the gate itself opened onto a thin and treacherous ledge. In three hundred years, that gate had never been closed, its mechanism destroyed in the war. Northgate was guarded more heavily than the still operable Southgate.
Wind thundered around them as the dragon glided still lower, dropping below the defile, below the ledge, and finally descending into the last shadows of night at the mountain’s foot.
Cold fear crept through Stanach. Northgate was guarded, warded by strong and fierce Daewar warriors. However, the caverns below, secret holds the Theiwar called the Deep Warrens, lay far beneath the gate. Realgar had a dragon to do his bidding, likely to call him Highlord. Now, he waited in the Deep Warrens for Stormblade. The Kingsword would make him more than a Highlord; it would make him king regent of the dwarves and ruler of Thorbardin.