Ridha
Her sword had not seen blood in decades. She had not truly fought since the raiders tried Iona a century ago. Though her mind and body were as skillful as any upon the Ward, Ridha froze atop the walls. She stared at the bleeding sky, terror coursing through her veins. This was not a wolf or a bear or even an army set against her.
This was a dragon. It roared again, and Ridha shuddered. The sound echoed off the cliffs of the fjord, surrounding them.
Down the wall, a Veder quailed. “Are there two of them?”
Ridha’s mouth went dry. “One is more than enough to kill us all,” she said, her low voice swallowed by another snarl across the sky.
Lenna shouted down from the Kovalinn walls, barking orders in Jydi. Her folk moved in unison, with archers climbing up to their chief, arrows bristling at their sides. Dyrian quailed. On his throne, he seemed imperious as any monarch, despite his young age. Not so anymore. He went white as the snow, mouth moving without sound, as the same fear Ridha felt took over his small frame.
It was Lady Eyda who shouted orders instead, every inch a warrior queen in chain mail and fox fur. She raised a sword, pointing at the open gate. The carved bears stared back, locked in an endless snarl. Dyrian’s sleepy, lumbering pet looked like a cub next to them. He bellowed in fear, sniffing the air. He smelled the danger too.
“To the fjord!” Eyda’s voice boomed over the chaos in the gateyard. Between the Vedera of Kovalinn and Lenna’s clan, hundreds of bodies jostled together. “Leave the hall. We must make for water!”
“Yrla, to the fjord!” Lenna cried, turning to face her own below. She yelled in both Jydi and Paramount, so all could understand. Her raiders responded with a howl, thumping their chests in agreement. “Archers, stay! Keep the dragon with us!”
Eyda gave a short nod. “Bring up bows and arrows!” she roared, and her people rushed to obey.
Ridha’s stomach swooped, and she was nearly sick over the edge of the wall. She leaned, heavy, against the wooden rampart. Fear was a tiresome thing.
Whirling, Lenna touched her shoulder, barely a brush of her tattooed fingers against Ridha’s tunic.
“Breathe,” she said, gesturing for Ridha to inhale. The immortal did so, sucking down a bracing gasp of air. It helped, if only a little. “And run.”
Bone met bone as Ridha’s teeth gnashed together and she pushed herself to stand.
“I am a princess of Iona, daughter of the Monarch, blood of Glorian Lost.” Someone pressed a bow into her hand and she took it, rising to her full menacing height. Her green armor settled over her figure, fitted to her form. She felt the warrior she was trained to be. Her fear remained, tight as a rope around her throat, but she would not let it control her. “I will not run.”
Lenna’s mouth pulled into a half-crazy grin, her gold teeth winking with the brilliant sunset. The sight filled Ridha with a strange warmth, though she had no time to think about it.
She racked her brain, trying to remember how her mother and the others had killed the last dragon three hundred years ago. There were many stories, most of them more concerned with sorrow than strategy. Useless tales of noble sacrifice. That dragon had been as big as a thunderhead, gray in color, ten thousand years old at least. It made its den in the highest peaks of Calidon, along the coast, where the ocean met blistering peaks of stone. They thought it survived off whales. But it grew too hungry, or simply too cruel. So the Vedera of Iona and Kovalinn battled the monster on the northern shores of Calidon, at the edge of the Glorysea. It was spring, raining, she remembered. The storm helped quell the dragon’s fire, and allowed the army to get close enough. Ridha snatched an arrow from the quiver at her feet, one of dozens rushed up to the walls. She hissed out a breath, drawing her bow. They did something to its wings, forced it to land.
The shadow swooped through a cloud. A long tail lashed through the air, the first visible part of its body. Like the gold in Lenna’s mouth, the tail reflected the blazing sunset, its scales flashing so brightly it hurt her eyes.
Ridha squinted, her Vederan gaze sharp even from such a distance.
“The hide,” she murmured. Her memories took shape, the stories her mother used to tell her returning. “The hide is made of jewels,” she said, louder, shouting down the wall. “You won’t penetrate the hide with arrows or anything else. You must aim for the wings!”
Lenna didn’t argue. She snarled another command in Jydi, translating for her own folk.
Most scrambled to leave the high cliffs of the enclave, pressing through the gate and onto the steep, winding way down to the fjord. Lady Eyda and Dyrian led them, urging both peoples toward safety. Ridha peered over the wall, down the nearly sheer face of the mountain Kovalinn perched on. Her stomach swooped again. Heights did not bother her. Still, she did not enjoy the prospect of a dragon chasing her down the mountainside.
“I was not there in Calidon, when the last dragon fell,” Kesar said, falling in alongside Ridha. She still wore her courtly garb, a soft tunic. Hardly ready for battle.
Ridha was glad for her own armor. “Nor was I.”
Near a hundred Vedera mirrored Kesar, finding space among the raider folk, their own longbows at the ready, each one carrying as many arrows as they could. Any mistrust or discomfort melted away.
A common enemy unites like nothing else.
The light was dying, the last rays of the sun drawing back over the western mountains like fingers releasing their grip. The snow on the slopes lost its gleam, fading from pink to graying purple. Ridha shivered as Kovalinn began its descent into cold darkness. Night would only aid the dragon, and doom the rest.
“I never thought you were lying about the Spindles, but even so, I had my doubts,” Kesar said, lacing the collar of her tunic to cover the topaz skin of her exposed throat. She never took her eyes off the sky, and the danger in it. “Not anymore.”
Ridha felt as if the air had been pressed from her lungs.
“Taristan,” she growled, her fear giving over to rage. Suddenly she wanted the dragon to show itself so that she might have somewhere to turn her fury.
Kesar curled her lip, just as angry. She pulled back her locks, tying them together with a leather cord. “The Prince of Old Cor unleashed this monster upon the Ward, and left another Spindle torn open.” She shook her head. “To which realm, I don’t remember.”
Ridha was a future monarch, and her schooling had gone far beyond the training yard. Her mother’s advisor Cieran had painstakingly taught her Spindle lore when she was a child. Most of her time was spent dodging his lessons, but she remembered what he managed to teach.
“It’s called Irridas,” she hissed, thinking of the pages in some book older than the Ward. The drawings blurred in her memory, but she could never forget the spiky landscape of craggy gemstones, and great, scarlet eyes leering up at her. It was a world of unimaginable riches and insatiable dragons to guard it. “The Dazzling Realm.”
Shadows gathered in the darkening sky, making the dragon harder to spot. It roared, closer now, and every bow followed the noise, tracing a black shape across the deep blue heaven. One or two arrows fired, arcing away into nothing.
The raiders should escape with the others, Ridha thought, eyeing Lenna at her side. Mortals are so quick to die.
As if reading her mind, Lenna met her gaze, her jaw set hard, a muscle feathering in her pale cheek. Her bow was smaller than Ridha’s, meant for hunting rabbits and wolves. It will never bring down a dragon, Ridha wanted to tell her, but held her tongue. Truly, she doubted any of their bows would.
“Be strong,” Lenna said, clapping a fist to her chest, slapping the leather as her raiders had before. Her eyes gleamed, mad as her smile. “The Yrla are with you. And Yrla fight.”
Ridha straightened her spine. “So do we.”
Blackness bled across the sky, chasing off the last purple and blue. Torches crackled to life, a poor defense against the pressing dark, but enough for the raiders to see by. A wind blew down the fjord, shuddering through the pines and snow. The archers, mortal and immortal, waited without sound, as if they all held the same fearful breath. Below, the others echoed off the rocks, Eyda’s shouts of encouragement swallowed up by the thunder of boots over stone. And behind Kovalinn, farther up into the mountains, wolves howled, a dozen packs singing out the same warning.
The dragon answered, appearing at the mouth of the fjord. It dropped out of the cloud bank, blotting out the newborn stars, a black mass of wings and claws, its eyes like a pair of flaming coals. They gleamed red, even at a distance. A ferocious, dancing light played between its teeth, begging to be loosed from lethal jaws. Its wings beat louder than any sound in the fjord, even the harried thump of Ridha’s own heart.
“The wings!” she tried to shout, but her voice died in her throat.
Lenna did it for her, calling out orders down the wall. The raiders trained their bows on the monster. It picked up speed as it began its run down the fjord, growing larger with every passing second. Kesar called commands in Vederan. Hold until it is nearly upon us. Save your arrows until you can wait no more, and tear those wings to shreds.
Loosing another breath, Ridha reached for the arrows at her feet and pulled three from the nearest quiver. She set them between her fingers and put them to the bowstring, drawing all at once. Her pulse rammed a chaotic rhythm, but she schooled her breathing, settling into her archer’s stance. Her muscles went taut. They knew what to do, even as fear paralyzed her mind.
This time, when the dragon roared, she felt the furious heat of its breath across her face. It blew back her hair, black strands coming loose from her long braid. The torches guttered but still burned, stubborn as the rest of them. A few of the archers quailed, breaking stance, but none abandoned the walls. They refused to cower, even the mortal raiders.
Ridha wished for her mother, for Domacridhan, for every warrior within the walls of Iona. And she cursed them too, hating them for leaving her here alone. If Domacridhan is even still alive. But that was a thread she could not afford to pull on, not now, while her own death careened down the fjord.
The arrows flew from her bow when the right moment came, the dragon close enough to devour them all. It passed overhead, wings spread so wide Ridha thought they might scrape both sides of the fjord. Its hide reflected the torchlight, countless precious stones winking red and black, ruby and onyx. Sweat trickled down Ridha’s neck, born of terror and the sudden, relentless heat of the dragon. Arrows sprang from every bow, aiming for the wing membrane, the only piece of its body not covered in jewels. Maybe a dozen hit home. They looked like needles in the dragon’s skin, small and useless.
Lenna let out a crow of excitement before firing another arrow.
The dragon banked hard, maneuvering out of their range in half a second, its wings beating tirelessly to climb straight into the sky again. It let out a snarl, either in pain or annoyance. Ridha hoped the former, putting three more arrows to the string.
“Again!” she heard herself shout. Her bow twanged, her arrows disappearing into the night. “It’s testing us!”
“Not for long,” Kesar ground out. “The creature will turn us to ash as soon as it realizes we’re no match.”
Ridha took her eyes off the dragon for only a moment, though every warrior instinct she had screamed otherwise. She glanced over the wall again, down the steep path, to the edge of the fjord. Raider folk and the Vedera clustered near the waterfall, the cliffs at their back. Even in the dim light, Ridha picked out Eyda and Dyrian among them, with their bear lumbering along.
“The others have reached the fjord,” she said, wrenching back.
Kesar nodded grimly. “So must we.”
Three hundred years ago, my mother and her warriors brought down a dragon. Hundreds of Vedera, armed to the teeth, prepared to fight and die to kill a Spindleborn monster. She looked over the walls around them, taking in the raider folk and the immortal archers both. They were certainly not the army Isibel of Iona had led to battle. But they could be so much worse.
The dragon wheeled in the sky, circling beyond the range of even the finest Vederan archer. Ridha knew the gods of Glorian could not hear their prayers in this realm, but perhaps the gods of the Ward did. The clouds were blowing away, and the bright face of the moon peeked over the mountains, illuminating white slopes and dragon hide. Moonlight flashed through the jewels like sunlight on fish scales.
“We need to get to water,” Ridha murmured, eying the river flowing through the gateyard. It plunged off the cliff to the fjord below. The icy waters would not be an escape, but they were certainly a shield. And a weapon, too, if they were lucky.
To her surprise, Lenna bumped her shoulder. She turned to see the smaller woman staring up at her with livid eyes. The blue and green were entrancing in the moonlight.
“The Yrla do not run,” the chief said through her gleaming teeth.
Ridha had half a mind to leave her on the walls, but raider folk were nothing to sneer at. They were good fighters, some of the best in the Ward. And the Jydi and the Vedera would certainly need each other to survive the long night of the dragon.
“It isn’t running,” she snapped, letting her frustration show. “We’ll be fighting every step of the way. And in case you haven’t noticed, Kovalinn is made of wood.” Indeed, only the foundations of the wall and the buildings were stone. The rest was pinewood, massive logs cut from the thick forests of the Jyd. Would that it were steelpine, Ridha thought, and we could simply weather the flames. “It’s a mercy we aren’t on fire already.”
Lenna bucked her chin, as if trying to frighten an animal away. “Run away, Elder,” she said. “And leave Yrla the glory.”
As a princess of Iona, Ridha was not accustomed to being ordered around by anyone but her mother. Especially not a mortal woman of the raider folk, who seemed better suited to a cave than a monarch’s throne room.
Ridha drew up to her full height, her armor reflecting the moon. She towered over Lenna, fixing her with the full weight of her immortal gaze.
“Move your raiders or I’ll move you,” she said, lowering her bow.
Lenna’s lip curled and Ridha braced for another brave but foolish display. Instead the dragon swooped low again, this time its four legs trailing, claws extended.
Chief and princess ducked together, firing off arrows as best they could. With a scream, two figures were dragged off the wall, one raider and one Veder. Their bodies launched into the air, hurtling through the cold sky to disappear against the mountainside. The raiders could not hear it, but Ridha flinched at the crack of bone on rock. Triumphant, the dragon roared its warning to the rest of them, in a scream to split iron.
“Yrla, to the ground!” Lenna shouted in Paramount, and then in Jydi, slinging her bow over her shoulder. Kesar followed, barking the same orders down the line of Vedera.
As one, they abandoned the walls of Kovalinn, leaping into the snowy gateyard to begin the dizzying run down to the fjord. Another blast of heat chased them down, and for a second Ridha feared the dragon itself was upon them. But it was only the great hall, a fireball tearing through its roof. Flames licked up, eating the pine building from the inside, as the dragon hovered over the collapsing roof, spitting fire, its wings stirring up a ferocious, scalding wind to feed the blaze. The many rooms branching off the hall caught too, and then the many houses, the barracks, the stables and storerooms—until the entire great enclave of Kovalinn was an inferno. Bears burned across the clifftop, the carved wood charring to embers.
Ridha skidded on the slick pathway but kept her balance. Vedera were quick and agile. The terrain would offer no trouble, even with the waterfall throwing icy mist over the stone. Some immortal archers leapt from path to path, climbing down the zigzagging way as if it were a ladder instead of a road. Ridha could not blame them. No one was immortal before a dragon’s flame. She would not ask them to hang back to protect the raiders, not if it meant sacrificing their own lives.
Her legs slowed.
But isn’t that the point of all this? To fight for everyone in the Ward, and not just ourselves? Isn’t that the only way we win?
Her boots skidded as she hung back, letting the rest of the immortals surge past, with the raiders fighting to keep up.
“Princess!” she heard Kesar call, but the dragon’s roar swallowed up anything else. Ridha dodged with all her Vederan swiftness, moving against the crowd streaming down the cliffside.
She spotted a blond braid and a wolf tattoo at their rear, holding the gate, refusing to leave anyone behind. Raiders streamed by her, smoke clinging to their furs, their eyes alight with pure terror.
Ridha took up the other side of the gate, holding position. Carved bears snarled over her head. She almost laughed at them. The gates would be ash by morning, the great bears of Kovalinn dust in a frozen wind.
Across the gate, Lenna offered the smallest nod of thanks. It was better than flowers heaped at Ridha’s feet. She replied with a nod of her own and glared into the fiery belly of the enclave, smoke and flame blowing with every beat of the dragon’s wings.
Two more raiders limped out of the destruction, coughing and choking. Lenna demanded something in Jydi, words Ridha could not understand. The reply was clearly not to her liking, and the chief paled, swallowing hard.
“There are more inside,” Lenna shouted across the din.
Ridha’s stomach twisted. She counted a hundred Vedera upon the walls, with twenty more mortal archers. Near that many were below now, fighting down the cliff bank before the dragon turned its wrath on them. The princess looked through the gates again. Smoke and flame had turned the enclave into an apocalypse, and she wondered if this was what Infyrna, the Burning Realm, looked like. Or Asunder itself, the kingdom of What Waits. The hell coming for us all.
Smoke stung her eyes and Ridha squinted, searching for any stragglers in the flames. Wood cracked and splintered, sending up a burst of embers. Ash began to fall in a blanket of wretched gray.
Lenna looked too, a hand raised to cut the glare of the fire. Another roar like a tear of metal sounded overhead. With a heaving breath, the chief abandoned the gate and plunged back into the burning enclave.
It took less than a second for Ridha to follow, the steel of her armor absorbing the heat, going hot against her skin.
The enclave smoldered, wooden beams and thatched roofs collapsing all around them. Lenna cupped her hands and shouted, calling for whoever might be left behind, but the hellish landscape swallowed up her voice. Not even Ridha could hear her. It was a foolish endeavor, no better than suicide. Again Ridha squinted into the fire, hunting for any sign of survivors. But she saw nothing, not even a shadow in the flames.
“We must go,” she screamed, grabbing Lenna by the collar, her lips nearly brushing the chief’s ear. “Or this will be your ending.”
Not mine, Ridha told herself, even as corrosive fear wore through her body, eating at her strength. I am a princess of Iona. I will not die this way.
Lenna shoved her off, teeth bared like an animal. She looked as fearsome as the dragon itself.
“Leave me,” she said, drawing a shortsword. The blade was wide and heavy, the tip pointed at Ridha. “I’ll die with them.”
“Die for them.” Swinging her arm, Ridha disarmed the raider chief with a simple maneuver she’d learned long ago. Lenna blanched, raising her fists to strike, but Ridha only tossed the sword into a snowbank. “The ones still living are the ones who need you to survive.”
Lenna sneered; then her gaze shifted, locking over Ridha’s shoulder, back toward the inferno.
“They need us too,” Lenna hissed.
Three figures tumbled out of the blaze, their faces ashen, with rags or furs over their mouths. One fell to his knees, wheezing, before Lenna grabbed him by the arms and hauled him up, urging him toward the gate. Ridha took another, a tall woman with burned clothes and a wounded leg. They blinked at each other.
“Your Highness,” the woman muttered, and Ridha realized with a jolt that the woman was not raider, but Veder. Her own people.
They all were.
“To the gate,” she forced out, as shame crashed over her.
The third Veder was not harmed, and he helped the others to the gates, smoke blowing at their backs. The snow melted in the heat, turning the gateyard to mud. Ridha held firm to the other immortal, using all her skill to keep from falling, while sweat poured down her face and neck. All those centuries in the training yard, she thought, cursing, and I’m spent in a few moments. Weariness clawed at her limbs, threatening to pull her backward into the dragon’s jaws.
“Almost there!” she heard Lenna shout, and Ridha gave a mighty lunge toward the gate.
A tail swung like a battering ram, stirring the air inches from Ridha’s face. The Veder under her arm disappeared, swept from her grasp by the dragon’s pendulum of a tail. She caught a glimpse of the immortal’s face, her jaw wide in a soundless scream, as the dragon slammed her body into the gates. The sheer force smashed the carved bears and the walls apart, splintering the wooden palisade. The doors fell together, cracked in half, as the rest collapsed in a heap of burning rubble. Lenna shrieked as the embers rose in a spiral, burning against the starlight.
Ridha fell to her knees, staring at the flames where the gate used to be. Her fingers trailed through the melting snow and she closed her fist, holding on to the cold. The ice bit under her fingernails.
It might be the last thing I ever feel.
She stood rooted to the ground, numb, as another sweep of the dragon’s tail cut through the gateyard. Lenna leapt out of the way, landing face-first in the snow, but the other wounded Veder was not so lucky. The dragon’s tail launched him up and over the crumbling wall, the Veder howling as he plunged over the edge of the cliff.
“Move, Elder!”
This time it was Lenna screaming in her ear, close enough that Ridha could smell her hair. Smoke, blood, burning pine—and something sweeter beneath. Wildflowers. The chief hauled Ridha to her feet as best she could, forcing the princess to find her bearings. While the dragon rounded the enclave, its shrieks echoing off the mountains, Lenna ran to where the gate once stood, trying to clear a path through the burning ruins. The third Veder joined her, shouldering aside broken planks and logs.
Ridha flexed her hands, willing the feeling to return to her body. Her breath came in short, stinging gasps, the smoke threatening to suffocate them all. I will not die this way, she thought, throwing herself at the rubble. Her bare hands bled and burned as they worked, furious and desperate. Ridha winced, but every splinter pushed aside was one more gasp at life.
Lenna did not falter, mortal as she was. Tears ran down her face, from pain or the smoke or both, but she fought on, throwing aside debris.
“There’s a path. At the bottom of the fjord, behind the waterfall,” the chief forced out, stifling a cry as sparks rained down on them. Her coat caught flame and she shook it off, leaving it to burn. “The Yrla know the way.”
So will Eyda, Ridha thought, relieved. At least the Ward will not die with us. There is hope still, small as it may be.
“Here,” the other Veder said, getting his shoulder under one of the larger logs. Panting, he pushed with all his strength, dislodging a cascade of logs and planks. They rolled apart, spitting embers, and Lenna kicked through the shattered remains of the carved gates. Ridha nearly wept, her throat burning like the enclave.
The cliff road waited, the fjord beyond it, a knife of moonlight between the raging curls of smoke.
They made for the gap in the rubble, stumbling together, covered in ash. Lenna clutched at Ridha’s arm as they pulled each other along. A cold wind blew, a brief respite from the dragon’s onslaught, and Ridha drank it down gratefully, her lungs screaming for fresh air.
The dragon struck again, trying to bring the wall down on them. Ridha pulled Lenna with her, planks splintering over their heads and down the cliffside. The other Veder managed to dodge too, taking his first step onto the road down to the fjord, and safety.
Ridha’s heart hammered in her chest, and Lenna’s beat in time, singing out their fear. Another rhythm rumbled, beyond her own body, shaking up from the ground itself. It was almost familiar.
Hoofbeats? Ridha thought, a half second before the rider turned up the path, taking the sharp corners at a gallop not even an immortal rider would try.
The stallion snorted, blowing hard, almost roaring against its bridle, near to madness. He wore armor to match his rider, plates of onyx so dark they did not reflect the moon, or even dragonflame. The knight in the saddle urged him on, kicking with spurred boots, his face obscured by his simple helm. He wore no tunic and held no flag, his body covered from gauntleted fingers to booted toes. There was no insignia on him or his horse, no sign of any kingdom he might serve. Nothing but the black armor. It seemed made from precious, impossible stone instead of steel.
“Turn back!” the other Veder shouted, raising a hand to wave down the knight.
A sword passed through the air, cutting through his wrist in a clean, effortless line. The Veder fell to his knees, howling, as the stallion rode on, closing in on the broken gates—and Ridha.
“Do not stand in my way,” the knight hissed, his voice low and serpentine. The chaos should have drowned him out, but Ridha heard him clear as a bell, even from a dozen yards, over the thunder of hooves and a dragon’s rage.
She clutched at Lenna, gathering the chief to her body. There was no time to explain, no time to think. The dragon roared above, rearing up for another strike, as the knight ascended, his blade as black as his armor, dripping immortal blood. It seemed to swallow the world, and even the dragon receded from her mind.
Ridha ran, not for the gate, not for the winding path down the cliffside—but for the waterfall next to them.
The water was icy cold, a thousand knives stabbing at every inch of her skin. It was not the water Ridha feared, nor even the waterfall.
They went over the edge together, falling through open air. A single thought echoed in Ridha’s mind.
The dragon did not come through the Spindle alone.