Lette rode. She rode like she had never ridden before. Like the gates to the Hallows had opened up and spewed forth the spawn of her nightmares, setting them upon her tail, screaming for her life, and baying to bury their jaws in her guts.
And then they truly did.
Her horses streaked across the plains, over the rolling hills. The pay wagon smashed up and down, thrashing over the grasslands behind it. How she had not broken an axle, she had no idea, but she praised whichever misanthropic deity had decided to spit in the eye of all the others and keep her whole and hale this far.
Then the roar rose up behind her, and killed all her hope dead.
She glanced back. She shouldn’t. She knew that. All she would see back there would be all her possible futures narrowing down to the one that led to the Hallows and an eternity as Lawl’s puppet in that bleak underworld. But she still glanced back. She wanted to see that future rushing toward her on a dragon’s wings. She probably did it, she thought, because she was stupid. She had been, after all, stupid enough to get herself into this situation.
One by one, the dragons emerged from the cloud of smoke that wreathed Hallows’ Mouth. Five of them, wings spread, necks stretched out, spouting geysers of fire into the night air. Then, one by one, they dropped down, and plunged toward her.
At least, she thought, her death would be pretty fucking epic. Five dragons to take her down. They might sing a song about that.
Fire filled the world behind her. She heard it, a rushing, roaring crackle that turned grass to ash and split stones in half. She felt its heat licking at her even through the thickness of the wagon at her back. She felt it closing in.
She glanced over to where Will leaned forward in the seat of his wagon, desperately thrashing the reins, urging more speed from his panicking horses. But they had nothing left to give.
Then the heat was gone. A black shape roared over them. She felt the downdraft from its wings buffet her. It streaked up into the sky. Two more dragons raced past on either side. A sinuous yellow monster on the left, a red behemoth on the right.
All three wheeled in the air before her. They were going to come back round. She and Will were sitting ducks.
Will responded first, hauling on his reins. His wagon began to turn. She heaved the leather strips in her own hands to avoid crashing. He was turning them both away from the attack.
And then a vast green beast landed directly in their path. Her horses screamed, tried to run in different directions. The strain on the reins almost flung her from her seat. She yelled, heaved, forced the horses under control, tightened her turn. The wagon rose up on two wheels. She felt the heavy mass of gold in the wagon shift behind her.
“Fuck all the gods!” she screamed. “Fuck all of you!”
The cart crashed down, straightened. The roaring, snapping mouth of the dragon rushed past in her peripheral vision. She heard the clash of its teeth closing behind her.
She risked a look at Will. He was still there, still hanging desperately on.
Flame. Flame lighting up the world. It raced past to her left. Then to her right. And then a fresh stream, crossing directly in front of her, filling the world. Unavoidable.
She closed her eyes, felt the horses leap. The wheels smashed into a rise in the field, the wagon bucked into the air. Unbearable heat embraced her.
Then the moment was over. And she was still alive, still moving. She could smell her own smoldering hair. Dark shapes raced in the air above her.
She was pointed back at the Consortium army now. Back into the bulk of their enemies. She sought for a way to turn, hauled left.
A dragon—brown, broad, and ugly as a whore’s arsehole—tore through the night toward her. She pulled the horses up as short as she could. They reared. The wagon bucked again. Steel-gray claws raked the air in front of the horses’ noses. A frustrated roar filled the world around her.
Then the horses were running again, out of control now, dragging her along behind her. Smashing back the way she had tried to turn away from.
She could hear crackling from behind her, could smell burning wood. She risked another glance back.
The roof of her wagon was on fire.
“Oh fuck Lawl right in the arse.”
Another glimpse at Will. He was directly ahead of her, almost upon the Consortium camp now.
She saw the dragon the moment before it opened its jaws. She opened her own mouth to call out wordlessly, pointlessly as it dropped out of the sky, as fire filled its mouth.
She saw Will lost in flame.
And then, miraculously, incomprehensibly, he emerged from the jet of fire. He tore off his flaming jacket, and rode on, crashing through tents and smoldering fire pits, his wagon flaming along with hers, twin beacons in the night.
“Gods,” she breathed. And then she too was plunging into the chaos.