They danced together, Sakabian and his twenty-five against eight, wearing them down until everything was perfectly poised and the inevitable outcome was assured.
He never even saw the other dragons. They must have been lurking beyond the sheer walls of the Spur. They came from behind and from high above, and with such speed and in such numbers that half his riders were dead before he even knew he was under threat. One instant he was sizing up the moment, readying himself to commit to the attack. The next his mount was streaking down, while the air filled with shrieks and fire and howling wind. Dragons smashed together around him. Riders were crushed between them or else ripped from their saddles and tossed away to plunge the half-mile to the ground below. Half a man sailed past Sakabian's head, fragments of armour spinning lazily around him. Sometimes, when men and saddles were torn apart, it wasn't leather and metal that gave way but flesh and bone, and Zafir's harnesses were the finest.
With no idea how he was alive, he slowed his precipitous dive, signalling for a fighting retreat, but there was no one to rally. Dragons wheeled everywhere. Only six of his remained and they were scattering and badly outnumbered. He couldn't count how many dragons had attacked him. Dozens. They were all over the place now, most of them hunting down his own, some of them still circling above. Doing to him exactly what he'd been planning to do to the Red Riders.
He saw the hunters too, the ones he'd thought would be his. From underneath, the colours painted on their bellies and their tails cried of Evenspire. Of Almiri the traitor queen. They weren't the Red Riders after all. Almiri had lured him into a trap. He felt a surge of something. Of awe perhaps. This meant war, open bloody war. At least half the dragons of Evenspire were here, killing his men.
A rider never abandoned his dragon. That was the rule. Never, never, never. A rider always fought to the death rather than lose his mount because, in the end, dragons were more precious. Every prince knew that. And since when dragon-knights fought they fought in the air, in heavy harnesses and armour, it all seemed rather inevitable. But I am a prince! Dying hardly seemed fair. He was young, strong, virile. He didn't deserve to die. An hour earlier, in his mind at least, he'd almost become both a king and a lover.
Almiri's riders were around him now, slowly closing in, keeping their distance but forcing him towards the ground. Three still circled above, waiting lor him to flee. They were high enough, he judged. High enough to turn their height into speed and be sure to catch him no matter where he went.
Ancestors! Were they offering quarter?
Yes, he realised, that's exactly what they were doing. And why should he go down fighting? The end would be exactly the same, after all. Except if he fought, he would be dead.
And if I'm taken? Almiri will crow and Zafir will seethe. My brothers will pay the price for our humiliation. My father will pay my ransom and will never sit on the throne of the Pinnacles, and I will be sent into exile. The queen will spit in my face – if she can even bring herself to look at me. No. My life will be finished.
Except…
He plunged down, straight to the ground, tearing open the buckles on his harness as they fell. No cover for dragons among the stones and the dust and the thorn bushes but plenty enough for a man. As soon as he reached the ground, he slid down off the dragon's back and shouted at it to move away. Then he ran for the nearest shred of cover, covered himself in his dragon-scale as best he could and prayed.
Let me survive. Let me take the word back to my queen. Let her know from my lips of the traitor queen's outrage. Perhaps Zafir would give him dragons again, more dragons. Perhaps she'd let him burn Evenspire to ash. Perhaps she might be seduced by his bravery.
They burned him. More than once they caught him with their fire, but they never quite seemed to see him and his armour held off the flames. Luck. Sixty dragons and their riders and he'd escaped them! When the sun began to set and they finally flew away, all he felt was relief and a great deal of pain. He didn't care any more whether Zafir ever spoke to him again. He was alive, that was all. For a brief few hours he saw himself for what he was. A fool.
But not for long. He walked through the night until he was half dead from pain and exhaustion. His left his armour behind him, and then everything but his sword, and then even that, so that when he found his way to the Evenspire Road, he was reduced to common thievery. Still, he could barely contain himself. He slept in the day in what shade he could find until the wagons he'd come out here to protect rolled past. What was left of them, for Almiri's riders had already caught them and very politely stripped them of everything the alchemists carried. They gave him what he needed – water, food and a horse – and he was on his way, racing ahead of them.
It took him another four days to reach the Adamantine Palace. By then he'd traded his horse for a thoroughbred. He'd survived. He would be the one to tell the queen about Almiri's wickedness and give her the excuse for the war that she so clearly craved. He would be a hero. He would bring her victory, of a sort. And she would be grateful. Oh so grateful.
In the palace he dressed himself as a prince once more. He insisted on an audience with the speaker and he told her how he'd been surrounded on three sides by Almiri and the Red Riders. He spoke of how valiantly his men had fought and how many of the enemy had been slain. Of how he'd been ripped from his own mount as they'd skimmed the ground. Of how he'd been burned and left for dead and yet, by some miracle, had survived his fall. In broken whispers he told of how they'd hunted him for three days before he'd made his escape. He could see the glee in the speaker's face when he told her of Evenspire's treachery, the sparkle in her eyes, the burning heat of desire. He saw the slight hint of a smile, the licking of her lips as she sent him away with words full of promise and hints of reward.
It came that night. The Night Watchman brought it to him with a pair of heavy hammers. They smashed his ankles and his wrists and then broke his spine and cut out his tongue. Then they put him in a cage and hung him next to Shezira's rotting remains to die slowly in the sun. Speaker Zafir watched them hoist him up. She spat on the ground beneath him and then left. She didn't even say anything.
Luck.
34
The test, Kemir discovered, was not between the dragons to see who could stay in the air the longest. The test was between the riders. The test was to see who didn't mind pissing and shitting in their breeches, who didn't mind sleeping on the wing, who didn't mind not eating or drinking for day after day. The test was who could put up with more pain.
On even terms, Kemir could have lived with that. Dragon-riders were perfumed and pampered and had servants to do all their work for them. Outsiders, on the other hand, were as tough as nails, or at least that was how Kemir saw the world. Dragon-riders cried like babies if they got hungry. Outsiders didn't even think about going a few days without food. That was simply the way life was when you tried to live off the land in the mountains. He would be hungry and thirsty and stiff and sore, but nothing worse than he'd suffered a dozen times before and certainly nowhere near as bad as crossing the Worldspine had been. The dragon saddles were comfortable enough, designed for long days of flight. He even managed to doze on Snow's back in the freezing wind of their passage through the afternoon. When he woke up though, Valmeyan's riders were still there. It occurred to him then that they'd come prepared. That they probably had water and food for days of flight, and that he didn't.
Do not trouble yourself, Kemir. They pit their endurance against mine. They cannot win.
'Yes.' His head was already aching from the constant cold wind and a growing thirst and it was only going to get worse. His nose throbbed, but the wind was the worst, a relentless battering gale as the dragons raced for hour after hour, skimming the ground, zig-ging and zagging between hills and through valleys. Their pursuers took it in turns to follow Snow while one of them always stayed high, watching so that she could never slip away. Despite the wind, Kemir was sweating. Snow's scales were too hot to touch.
As the sun sank lower and the clouds on the horizon began to look like bruises, Valmeyan's riders closed in on Snow for one last charge, harrying her even closer to the ground with their scorpions. Kemir watched lakes and rivers and trees and empty meadows flash past beneath beneath them, sotlose that Snow's tail sometimes threw up clouds of spray or earth.
