come inside the Pinnacles and seen what it was really like. Even in chains she’d stared, lost in awe.
‘There’s shafts up and down like this all over,’ he said. ‘It’s like one of them cheeses we used to get from up on the moors.’
He reached an opening and levered himself out. Kataros felt his tension as he crouched, ready to drop Siff in an instant, but there was only darkness and silence to greet them.
‘Right. Quick now.’ He started to run, lumbering off. She followed, keeping close behind. Her heart beat faster, excitement and expectation bubbling together as if she was brewing some potion. Almost out. Almost out.
He turned a corner and light — a patch of slightly lighter darkness anyway — loomed ahead. The scorpion caves. Vishmir and the first Valmeyan had fought here in the War of Thorns. Afterwards, Prince Lai had built the scorpions. They were supposed to defend the Silver City, but it seemed to Kataros that they did the opposite. History said that when the scorpions fired, the Silver City burned. If you looked hard now, she supposed you might see it burning still.
She saw stars.
Almost out!
The Adamantine Man slowed as they reached the lip of the cave. He stopped a good ten feet short, lowered Siff to the floor and peered around him, looking for something. Kataros stared out of the sheer side of the Fortress of Watchfulness, down over the Silver City, which wasn’t still burning after all. They were high. She had no chance of climbing down, not from all the way up here.
‘How far up are we?’
‘Don’t know. A few hundred feet over the plains.’
‘And we fly like a bird?’ She’d supposed there might be a rope, or some sort of lift or crane, but there was nothing. ‘You bastard,’ she hissed, and reached through the blood-bond, ready to claw his mind apart. ‘What do we do? Flap our arms and pretend they’re wings?’
The Adamantine Man stopped. His hands fell limp. He looked almost surprised. ‘Yes,’ he said.
She almost killed him there and then, almost let the blood inside his brain boil and rupture every vessel. She could have stood there and watched him bleed from his eyes and his nose and his mouth, from his fingers and his toes and every place in between, and she wouldn’t have been sorry. But however hard she peered through the blood-bond, she saw no deceit. They were going to fly. He truly believed that.
‘How?’
He went back to peering around the cave. After a minute or two he stopped. ‘With these.’
It took a moment for Kataros to understand what she was seeing, simply because the lamps didn’t make enough light.
She was seeing wings. Dragon wings. Lashed together and with a harness between them.
8
Eight months before the Black Mausoleum
He found Vish easy enough. No doubt about how dead he was. His neck was broken, the back of his head was smashed in and he was lying in a pool of blood that was bigger than he was. The axe and shield on his back had been shattered. Skjorl stood for a moment. There wasn’t anything special to say. Adamantine Men weren’t long on rituals or on sentiment. When you fought dragons, you did what needed to be done, nothing more, nothing less. You did it fast and you did it without hesitation. Most of the time you died anyway.
He took Vish’s potions, his poisons, his firebox, the alchemist herbs that stopped the dragons from finding them and left the rest. The shield and the armour were useless and he already had an axe.
The other dragon had left, judging by the quiet, but it wouldn’t be gone for long. Looking for another way in, most likely. Back soon enough, one way or the other. He wondered if any of the others up top had survived. Didn’t seem likely. Which left him and Jasaan. Jasaan the cripple. Jasaan and his principles. Easier to leave him behind.
He was starting to notice that his hand hurt. He took a last look at Vish. Quiet Vish.
Wouldn’t have left you behind, would I?
No. He didn’t suppose he would, and what was good for one was good for another. That was the way it was. And then there were all these eggs, which could hatch any time, and the small matter of not being able to use his own axe properly with only one good hand. Couldn’t see how bad it was, but there was no getting around that it was bad. Bad enough it wouldn’t be all fine again in a few days.
He’d have to give his axe a name, he thought. Call her Vish maybe, but Vish was a man’s name and his axe was more his lady, his lover. Dragon-bane? He cringed at that. She deserved better.
‘You walk?’ he asked when got back to Jasaan. Jasaan shook his head.
‘Ankle’s done. I can hop.’
‘Not down here with no light. You can crawl, right?’
‘I can crawl.’
They shuffled along in the darkness, quiet as they could, Jasaan on his hands and knees, Skjorl inching his way beside him until they reached one of the cistern walls. Here and there they passed more eggs. With a bit of care, Skjorl could still swing his axe with one hand to smash them. It took Jasaan to cut off the unborn hatchlings’ heads. Skjorl tried but he couldn’t find a way to make his buggered hand work and he just made a mess. Quicker to prop Jasaan up to finish the job.
He didn’t know how long they’d been going when they finished the eggs. Long enough he wanted to sit down. Back where the roof had collapsed there was sunlight filtering down through the hole, giving a dim light so he could finally see. The dust had mostly settled except where the two of them kicked it up again. He put his back to a stone and rummaged in his pack for something to eat.
‘It just needs a hatchling small enough to squeeze through one of those tunnels and we’re finished,’ said Jasaan. Skjorl shrugged. Obvious really. Wasn’t sure why it needed to be said.
‘We’re finished anyway,’ he muttered. ‘Look at us.’ No place among the Adamantine Men for cripples.
‘We’ll heal.’
Skjorl took a deep breath and sighed. He passed Jasaan some of Vish’s herbs to mix with his water and took some himself. Something to numb the pain. ‘Sun’s up. We’ve smashed a good few eggs but not all of them. There’s others somewhere. As soon as one hatches, it’ll be small enough to come after us. We could barely face an angry old crone, never mind a dragon.’
Jasaan offered some of his bread. Brothers together. Sharing everything. Live together, die together. Old traditions like that stuck with you, even in places like this. ‘We did what we were asked to do.’
Skjorl shook his head and took his own bread instead. ‘Some of it. There’s no one left at Bloodsalt, but we won’t be getting back to tell anyone that. And there’s still dragons. We didn’t kill the dragons.’
‘We killed one of them.’
‘Vish and I killed it.’ Skjorl stood up. He was tired enough to drop and he had nothing he wanted to say. ‘I’m going to look around for a bit. Get some rest. When it’s dark we’ll see if we can find another way out.’ Which didn’t make any sense — no point spending the day hiding somewhere when the dragons already knew where you were — but Jasaan didn’t argue, and Skjorl left him sitting there, busy trying to make some sort of splint for his ankle. He walked on through the cisterns. Not really looking for a way out because he wasn’t expecting to find one, but just to be on his own.
After a bit he walked back to where the roof had come in, to where there was some light, and looked at his hand. Tried to take his gauntlet off, but that hurt too much, so he was left with poking and prodding. Half pulverised. Two fingers shattered, a third one broken. At least the burns on his palm weren’t too bad.
He stopped there, in a ray of sunlight, and listened. If the second dragon was anywhere nearby, there was no sign of it. No sounds, no tremors in the earth. It was almost a disappointment. Being eaten would have been easy, the quick way out, but when that didn’t happen he looked at the rubble instead. A man with two good hands and
