“I’m also a dragon of the Lavadome. The Lavadome hasn’t surrendered to Ghioz.”
“If the dragons of the Lavadome attack, can we count on your support?”
“What will be left? The docks and the iron-quarter are burning.”
“I wonder if the Ironriders have ever had Hypatian wines and brandies?”
“If they haven’t, they will wish they’d lost their heads in battle.”
“The Ironriders wouldn’t be so foolish as to let all their riders pillage. There must be some force still keeping order.”
“I’m told there are chieftains and their personal guard squatting in on the Ziggurat and the Directory hall.”
“We’d best come in two waves, light/heavy,” Ayafeeia said. “Heavy wave will wait for the light to go to ground fighting, then fly in and support. We’ll grind them between ground and sky.”
“Opportunities for glory in the light wave, I think,” a dragonelle said.
“I shall lead it, my Queen—”
“No, Ayafeeia. You shall lead the heavy wave, to more judiciously direct their strength. You have the more experienced eye for that sort of thing.”
“No! The Tyr would never.”
“It’s a poor Queen who shouts ‘go’ and remains behind.”
“Yes, but a live one.”
“Oh, I’ve heard the whispers. ‘She does it for the bows.’ ‘She lives to humble those who once stood as her betters.’ ‘She murdered the Tyr’s first mate.’
“If the only proof they’ll accept is a corpse, so be it. My mate has said this is the beginning of an age of fire. I will put my flame where his words are.
“Are you coming, Essea, to represent the Imperial Line in this red dawn? Or were you only my friend these years to better pass around gossip about the private habits of the Tyr and his mate?”
Wistala had never seen such beautifully shaped claws on a dragon before. Her servants must have labored hard perfecting their shape. But they’d also perfected the points.
Essea looked doubtful. “I am your friend and loyalist, my Queen.” She stepped forward. “Admit me into the first wave.”
“Who else will fly with their Queen?”
Other Firemaids stepped forward, by tradition the oldest and toughest or the young seeking the glory of being named as the leader of the attack.
“That’s enough!” Ayafeeia cried, seeing old Verkeera step forward, her battered scales stitched together with Ironrider-rein and bound up in blood. “Verkeera, you have the biggest firebladder of any of us. Let me have it in my line to pour down on the enemy.”
“I would rather shield my Queen’s other flank with my body,” Verkeera said.
“I intend to move too fast to have much care for my flanks, Verkeera,” Nilrasha said. “The last time I led a line into battle against the Ghioz, we were trapped under walls and destroyed by Ghioz fighting from their fortifications. But this time our opponents are strangers to the city too! A house collapsed on me. I’ve been waiting years to return the experience to a few Ghioz.”
“Carry full bladders into battle,” Ayafeeia said. “We are matched against horsemen. But horses don’t care for the smell of dragons. Spray your water as carefully as you spray your fire, for once.”
The dragonelles chuckled at this and some made jokes about fighting with both ends. A few coarse jokes passed among the green ranks.
“What about you, Wistala?”
“I’m afraid to trust my wing to the air again. I will go in with the Hypatian horsemen.”
“We’ll count on you to come to the rescue of the first wave,” Ayafeeia said. “The sounds of fighting shouldn’t be hard to find.”
“Maidmother, would it not be better to let the Hypatians lead the attack? It’s their city. Let them keep their honor by winning it back.”
“It is an accepted rule of the battle art that air should pass ahead of ground, the way the rain strikes before the flood.”
The quote stirred Wistala’s hearts. She’d read an old battle-treatise of Rainfall’s grandsire. Strange that one of his maxims passed over to dragon-strategy in such a manner. Perhaps dragons had fought with the Hypatians in those ancient battles.
She brought herself back to the present.
“The Hypatians’ approach may draw the Ironriders out into battle.”
“Or it may send them to the walls and war-engines.”
“I’ve been in the city. The walls are old and ill-kept, and if they have any war-engines, they weren’t on display when I passed through. The Hypatian numbers are few. Would not their princes send their horses out to fight in the fields such as would be most familiar to them and their manner of fighting?”
“You argue like an Anklene, Wistala. Very well. We shall stay concealed in the marshes until you launch your attack.”
“I’ll leave it to you to best judge when to launch your fliers. Just do not leave us out there too long on our own.”
“For our gardens and our vineyards,” Sandwash shouted, leg hooked in perfect balance atop his strange sidesaddle, his enormous bow held with long, slipper-covered toes of one extended leg. The pose reminded Wistala of the dancers who’d traveled with the circus, who could hook ankle around behind ear like a ruin-cat.
“For our roofs and our hearths,” Ermet called, perched atop his thug on the horny ridge just above the eyes. A long-handled ax hung easily in one stout arm, a forked mancatcher in the other.
“For our fathers and our daughters,” Roff called.
“For our libraries and our courts,” Wistala said, finding her Hypatian again.
“For all this and all we hold dear,” an aged, bent elf in the shining armor of a Knight of the Directory called, just barely keeping his great, steel-shod warhorse under control.
“Let’s get to some stompin’ already,” the horse muttered.
“For all this, forward, Hypatia. Forward, the Last Host!”
“Forward, the Last Host!”
They came into the open fields beside the riverbank and passed through the vineyards, tearing away stakes and stalks as they went.
The advance wasn’t quite so splendid as a charge. The horses moved at a fast walk, having to keep behind the vanguard of thugs. But it allowed Wistala to keep up at an easy pace.
Yet there was something to be said for a slow advance. Wistala wondered how it would look to the bleary-eyed Ironriders as they woke to the drums of battle.
The thugs had been trained to go into battle in step, and their heavy footfalls shook the ground. Behind them one felt it rather than heard it, a boom . . . boom . . . boom . . . as the creatures swayed forward in their odd, sailorlike gait. What would such a noise sound like to the Ironriders, far from home in a strange city?
But for all that their pace was slow. The Ironriders had plenty of time to prepare and draw their plans.
The Ironriders, or some part of their number, rode out to meet them.
They rode out in three long columns, a trident of black emerging from three different points in the city. Wistala, peeking between the thugs and kicking up as much dust as she could as she walked to hide her presence, guessed the Hypatians were outnumbered ten to one or more.
She marked three tall banners drawn by horse-carts, as high as ship-masts. Bodies hung from them, arranged in frightful and gory poses. She recognized among them women and the black-and-white robes of the Directory.
So much for a peaceful surrender.
Ah, well, the center would make a fine aiming point for her leap.
“Do not take alarm at what I’m about to do,” Wistala said.
The thugs halted and lowered their heads. The men riding them dropped shutter-like shields down to cover their faces and forelimbs. A mobile wall had sprouted on the battlefield.
Arrows of the Ironriders struck the shields, sounding like hail on a metal-plate roof.
Wistala marked the approaching center banner. One of the Hypatians shot a flaming arrow into it, trying to burn it. But the bodies had been well coated with pitch to preserve them.
“I do so hate this sort of thing,” she muttered.
She gathered herself behind the line of thugs.
“Mossbell and Thallia!” she roared.
Even the thugs jumped.
Wistala tore forward, leaped, using the heavy hindquarters of the thugs as a vaulting-point. As she sailed into the air she extended body and wings, getting every dragonlength she could into her arc.
Arrows rose to meet her, but most passed behind or stuck into her tail, for she gathered speed as she fell, or so it seemed, for in battle all motion was slowed to a dreadful crawl.
She fell against the banner and its cart, knocking the totem down. Using wreckage to shield her breast, she lashed out with tail and spat fire across the ranks that faced the Hypatian right.
Horses screamed and scattered.
Wistala thought it best to keep moving. She trotted, tail lashing to keep them off, head held low where a sword-stroke couldn’t get behind her extended griff, and simply used her body as a sort of mobile linebreaker against the ranks of Ironriders.
