Chapter 11

Lessons continued for several months, giving some of the recruits hope the war would hold off long enough for them to finish training. Those hopes were destroyed by the first reports from the border scouts. There was an army of three thousand horsemen approaching Sarepta on the Moriahn border to the east. No one seemed worried because the city was heavily fortified with enormous walls defended by two thousand of the city’s own soldiers, each equipped with a bow. Horsemen had no way of taking such a city. They didn’t even have siege equipment.

The next day, another scout arrived with news from the north. Two armies of ten thousand men each, both with siege equipment, were marching on two of the border cities. The Moriahns readied a large force of their own, which headed that way. The Chayyoth waited.

Two days later, several scouts arrived. There were five other cities surrounded, though there were still no Shedim sightings. No dragons. The Moriahns didn’t have any more soldiers to spare from their main force in the capital in case Uru was attacked, too. On the fifth day came the first dragon sighting. Uru was in a panic, supporters of Tanas taking to the streets while the opposition readied their belongings in preparation for a journey to the safety of the mountains to the south.

“There is a force to the south made up of men and Shedim,” Corban said to their group of six. “And yes, they do have a dragon. Two groups of one hundred companions each are being sent that way, and we’re going with them.”

“To the south?” Neviah asked, confused. “I thought the dragon was spotted in the north.”

“I heard it was the east,” Enya said.

Corban nodded. “You are all correct. So far, there have been ten confirmed dragon sightings in Moriah.”

There was a collective intake of air.

“Why south, then?” Asa asked. “Aren’t there more cities being attacked in the other directions?”

“Yes, there are,” Corban said. “But we cannot let the stronghold at Daggers Pass be overrun. In the event Uru is taken, the people must be able to escape to Esdraelon, which is through the mountains.”

“Esdraelon?” Asa asked. “I haven’t seen it on any maps.”

“It is an ancient fortress built into an enormous plateau with tunnels vast enough to hold a million people. The Moriahns could hold those tunnels for years if they needed to.”

“Does the enemy know about it?” Asa asked.

“I doubt it. Daggers Pass is manned by a couple of hundred soldiers, and Tanas only sent a small force to subdue it. If he knew of its strategic value, he would have made securing it a top priority.”

“But if we send Chayyoth there but nowhere else, won’t he suspect it’s more important than he thought?” Asa asked.

“No doubt you are wise beyond your years, Asa,” Corban said with a nod toward the boy. “But our tacticians have already worked out several diversions, sending other troops to several of the smaller battles. Rest assured, they are brainstorming brilliant strategies.”

“Of course,” Asa said. “I tend to ask too many questions.”

“No such thing,” Corban said.

An hour later, they were among the largest group of Chayyoth Neviah had ever seen in one place. Armor was strapped onto humans and Chayyoth. The mounts received steel helmets, which covered their brow and snout, as well as thick leather breastplates, while the riders wore hardened leather armor and helmets.

“This will slow me down too much,” Enya complained over the bulky armor.

“But it will stop a spear from killing you,” one of the men from the armory said.

“If I wasn’t wearing this,” she countered, “no spear would be able to catch me.”

With Corban’s permission, Enya was fitted with a set of scout armor instead, which was hardened leather but thinner. The humans were given food, water, bows, arrows, and spears to carry along with their shields and swords. Each Chayya ended up with an extra hundred pounds of gear at least.

“Why don’t we have spears?” Neviah asked.

“Three reasons,” Corban said, adjusting his armor as she pulled on the straps. “One is that Enya and Rafal have not had a chance to become accustomed to the weight it adds. Two, you have swords that can cut through anything. Three, and most importantly, you do not know how to fight with a spear.”

She nodded. They hadn’t made it to spear training yet.

“Take these,” Corban said when the gear distributor walked up with three sets of goggles. “You were supposed to receive these during the mid-training races, but you need them now.”

It took three hours to get the groups ready for flight. Leaving Alya and orienting themselves to the land below, they hugged the ground in multiple tight V formations, not unlike a flock of birds. Neviah and her friends flew just behind the rear formation. They moved through valleys, rising no higher than the tallest trees. The goggles made seeing far easier.

Neviah didn’t allow herself to think about the coming fight. She preferred to remain as calm as possible and that meant thinking about other stuff. Asa, flying on Rafal to her right, was doing enough worrying for the both of them. She smiled. Asa always fretted so much while approaching danger, but once he was in the thick of it, he was the bravest person she knew. She was the opposite. As long as it didn’t deal with heights, she remained calm and confident until things went wrong. Then, she worried.

Victoria was unreadable. She was always quiet, no matter if they were going to war or to pick flowers. Enya and Rafal looked eager. Rafal had been to a battle before but had never done any fighting. Enya had only known how to be a servant most of her life.

Their excitement would fade the moment their ignorance of fighting did. Neviah smiled again at the way her thoughts were going. She was looking at it all as if she were some hardened veteran. She shook her head and leaned closer to Corban to reduce wind resistance.

Two hours passed before they landed on the side of an extremely large hill. A single scout pair was sent. They were near Daggers Pass, they were told. On the threshold of battle, the wait for the scouts was excruciatingly long.

One of the men crouching beside Asa tried to intimidate him with talk of fighting. “I once saw a Shedim spear three men off their horses with one throw. They’re twice as strong as a man, you know.”

Asa pulled down his collar to show the arrow wound in his chest before saying, “I believe it. I’ve met them before.”

The man blinked for a moment, his grin fading. The Chayya on his right leaned toward him and said in a whisper loud enough for several people to hear. “Those are the children who killed Ba’altose.” Quiet laughter followed until they were hushed by their squadron leaders. Moments later, the scout returned.

Corban relayed the report. “There are five hundred men and four hundred Shedim camped at the mouth of the pass. The dragon is spewing fire at the walls.”

“What’s the plan, then?” Asa asked.

“We are the plan,” Corban said. “Unless we take out that dragon, he’ll turn our entire unit to ash.”

Asa donned his determined look.

Corban continued, “We are going to try to take the dragon by surprise. I want to lead with arrows, but if they don’t do the trick, we’ll have to get close for sword work. Most importantly, follow my commands. We don’t know what will happen. The Sword of Re’u has not been tested against dragon scale.”

“The sword will hurt the dragon,” Neviah said, though she remembered Ba’altose wielding a sword that could block the Sword of Re’u. That had confused her at the time. She’d thought the Sword of Re’u was stronger than anything else. Maybe the weakness was on their part. Either way, the sword was their only chance.

“Let’s go,” Corban said.

Neviah and her friends mounted up. The wind was soon washing over them as they flew toward the stronghold.

When the monstrous, green-scaled dragon came into view, her heart nearly stopped. Time had lessened Nebo’s size in her memory. A wall formed a half circle around a small stone barracks. To the rear of the fortress was solid rock. Anyone passing through the narrow valley would have to move right past the defenses. It was perfectly protected from siege weapons, which couldn’t be brought against the walls due to its narrow passageway. Nothing could breach those walls. Nothing but a dragon.

The behemoth beast towered above the walls, its green scales dully reflecting the noonday sun. It spewed an endless stream of fire against the massive stone buttresses. Before their eyes, rock was turned to liquid as it melted and flowed down the valley like a river of lava. Within moments of their arrival, the wall was reduced to nothing but a melted waste, and the barracks had begun to succumb to the heat of the dragon’s breath. The fire never ceased or diminished. Neviah wondered if anyone inside was still alive or if the smoke had gotten to them.

Corban motioned for the others to flank the dragon while he and Neviah came from the rear. He made the bow sign with his paws, and Neviah let the Sword of Re’u turn into the silver bow. Wordlessly, she drew back an arrow and let it fly. Two more arrows flew at the large target from the sides.

Neviah had misjudged the distance. Her shot went wide and clipped a wing, spraying oily liquid all over the rocks as the dragon’s ancient blood was spilled. The dragon jerked back from its task, causing Victoria’s perfectly aimed headshot to miss. Asa’s arrow penetrated the mass of muscle in the creature’s back.

The dragon turned to face the first real threat it’d ever had. It roared in rage, a sound that sent a shudder through Neviah. Looking at Victoria, it let a jet of flame shoot from its mouth toward her. Even with Enya’s speed, they couldn’t dodge it in time. The Chayya tucked her head as Victoria’s shield grew larger than it had ever been before, covering both human and Chayya in a half-sphere. The fire engulfed them, passing around the sides of the shield until they looked like a falling meteorite. The fire suddenly stopped as another arrow pierced the dragon’s hide. Neviah remembered herself and joined Asa in raining arrows down at the dragon, giving their friends time to regain altitude and fall back. Every time she loosed an arrow, another would appear on her string, and she would let that fly, too. Free of the fire, Victoria shot again.

While the dragon was writhing from Asa’s and Neviah’s arrows, Victoria’s struck the monster square between the eyes. Its last roar was cut short as it collapsed to the ground. The molten stone flowed around the dragon’s body, half entombing its giant frame. They had defeated their second dragon.

Corban made the sign to regroup. They came together just as a company of Shedim crested the hill behind the dragon. The enemy formation broke apart as some continued toward the companions, and some stopped in shock at seeing the dead dragon.

“Fire!” Corban yelled at her over his shoulder.

Neviah rapidly fired as many arrows as she could. Combined with her friend’s arrows, Shedim began to fall from the sky. The Shedim were almost upon them when the other companions broke from cover and formed a counter-assault. A wall of spears crashed into the Shedim, slaying many. Then, the fighting began in earnest.

Neviah laid low to Corban as he came up under a Shedim. She twisted and shot the creature in the stomach with an arrow while her companion grabbed another. Corban raked his claws, cutting through leather armor, wing, and flesh, sending it screaming to a certain death below. Three came at them at once.

“Tuck left!” Neviah called out.

The wing moved out of the way just as her shield became a barrier one of the Shedim crashed into, nearly unseating her. The command saved Corban from a sliced wing as the Shedim tumbled away unconscious.

“Fly!” she yelled a split second later, letting him know his wings were safe while she simultaneously let her bow turn into a sword. She sliced through a second opponent’s blade, armor, and flesh. Corban killed the third.

Coming up behind two Shedim who were struggling with a single Chayya, Corban reached out and ripped a wing off of each, sending them spiraling to the ground far below. Neviah clipped a Shedim’s wing with her sword as Corban came upon the enemy flank.

“Hold!” she yelled as she had an idea. She let the sword turn back into a bow and shot an arrow down the enemy’s flank. It traveled through many Shedim before she lost sight of it. “Done!” she called to give control of their movement back to Corban.

An arrow suddenly thudded into Corban’s shoulder armor, causing him to backpedal a moment. “Mind the archers!” he yelled back to her.

Shedim archers had risen above the battle and were shooting into the fray, perhaps indiscriminately, since their own troops were struck too. She pulled back an arrow, intending to take out a few archers, but it wasn’t needed. Enya rushed in from above the clouds to pass down their line from behind. Victoria’s sword traveled down the Shedim like a terrible scythe clearing blades of grass.

That was when the enemy broke. Some of the companions attempted a pursuit, but the two group commanders called for a regroup. The human enemies were attempting to shoot arrows up at them from the ground, but they were too far away. The companions had gravity on their side, however, and loosed every arrow they carried into the men, who had nowhere to hide. At that moment, Neviah completely understood the phrase “like shooting fish in a barrel.”

It made her sick to shoot down at them. They seemed so helpless. She reminded herself that every enemy killed couldn’t then kill a friend later. The enemy had instigated the war, after all. She paused in her shooting to gasp as a wave of energy passed through her. Asa had healed her and was flying through the friendly lines on Rafal, healing everyone. Corban’s arrow had popped out of his shoulder, and Neviah didn’t feel any pain in her arm anymore. She hadn’t even realized she’d been wounded until Asa healed her.

When the enemy was eliminated, all except the few dozen or so Shedim who’d escaped, the Chayyoth landed to collect their dead. Fifteen companions lay dead, seven Chayyoth and eight humans. One Chayya lost a rider, and he stood protectively over his human’s broken body. An arrow protruded from the man’s neck. Tears flowed from the Chayya’s eyes.

Corban had to pause from helping move a fallen Chayya when Neviah put her arms around him and squeezed him tight. She knew he would be standing over her body like that one day. She hoped he would have the strength to go on. Corban patted her shoulder before continuing with their task.

There was cheering as men emerged from the melted ruins of the barracks. They had survived the dragon’s attack by hiding in a cellar deep in the rock, which had protected them from the heat. Soot covering their bodies showed the smoke had nearly gotten them. Using old cots and blankets, the human soldiers helped to make gurneys to carry the dead.

Thanks to Asa, there were no wounded. The dead Chayyoth were each carried by four others. Their companions were carried in the arms of a single Chayya. Corban carried one. So did Rafal and Enya since they didn’t have the extra weight in armor and weapons most of the wind warriors carried. The Chayya who’d lost his companion scooped him up ever so gently, tenderly pulling him to his chest and carrying him into the air.

The flight back to Alya was just as silent as the one that took them to battle, only this time it was out of respect for the fallen. They stopped often to switch bearers. Their homecoming was a mix of cheers and tears. The majority of the companions had returned, so the cheers won out over the cries. Neviah saw a female Chayya trying unsuccessfully to comfort her husband, the Chayya who’d lost his rider. Corban walked over to talk with them.

Adhira was there to greet them. “How’d things go?” he asked with arms crossed and eyebrows raised. How could someone look so cocky when they were just asking a question?

“Victoria got the big kill this time,” Neviah said. The other girl blushed.

“Arrow in the face for the win,” Adhira guessed, holding his hand up for a high five. Victoria gave him a weak one.

Neviah wondered how many questions he’d already asked without their knowing it.

“And I don’t see any wounded, so Asa gets one, too,” he said, and Asa gave him a high five. “Then there’s Neviah. What do we keep you around for again?”

She was just about to punch Adhira square in the face when Corban strode up in a hurry. “Come, Neviah. Other scouts have returned, and we need to be present at the briefing.”

Shaking her fist at Adhira, she followed her companion. When they got to the meeting, the scouts were already reporting. The blood drained from her face. Their victory in the south was nothing compared to the losses elsewhere.