Page 26 of Of Steel and Scale

I rise. Will grip you.

My gaze darted back to those claws, and I swallowed heavily again. I’d seen what her weapons had done to capras and had no doubt they’d dispatch me just as easily.

Trust,she said. Need go now.

I sucked in another breath and then nodded.Let’s do this.

Her wing sweeps immediately increased in power, and the air swirled viciously around me. I braced my feet then lowered my head in an effort to keep the loose grit and sharp shards of stone out of my face and eyes.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she rose. Her blood rained around me, and her effort and pain swam through my mind, making my heart race in sympathy. Or maybe that was fear caused by the knowledge of what was about to happen.

Her claws reached head height. I held my breath, waiting. Fearing.

Then, with a gentleness that belied her great size, her claws enclosed me. I raised my arms at the last moment, wanting them free, needing to grip on to her top talon even if it was neither necessary nor practical. If she intended to drop me from a very great height, I doubted I’d be able to hold on for very long.

She continued to slowly rise. My feet left the stone, and I briefly closed my eyes, once again quelling fear. When I opened them, I was staring straight into the blue of Damon’s gaze. There was little emotion evident in his expression and yet their turbulence boiled through me. It was a whisper of possibilities that would never be explored if I didn’t survive this.

My mother was nowhere to be seen, but my father now stood beside Damon, staring up at me. They weren’t alone in that—the soldiers on the wall and those coming out into the courtyard all watched as the creature we’d once hunted to near extinction lifted me. Then, with a tip of a wing and a mighty roar, she turned and soared away from the city. And, possibly, safety.

As we rose ever higher, she tucked her talons closer to her body, shielding me as best she could from the turbulent air. That air soon became so cold and fierce it felt like I was inhaling icicles. I reached for the inner flame in an effort to keep warm; leather was a great insulator against the cold and icy winds that often blasted this area, but when it came to warmth, it definitely helped to be wearing one or more woolen or silk garments underneath to help with insulation. In my rush to get out into the courtyard, I’d skipped the latter.

Her grip remained tight but not crushingly so. I nevertheless kept a fierce hold of her scaly talon, not daring to look down, not wanting to see how far below us the ground was.

We swept around the Black Glass Mountains and then out over the wildlands that skimmed the foothills for hundreds of miles before sweeping down to the sea and the port of Hopetown. The area was sparse, and inhabited mainly by longhorns—large, hairy ruminants with horns that stretched at least three feet either side of their blunt heads. While they were by nature intractable, farmers had for centuries crossbred them with bovine to produce an animal that could be used for multiple purposes—neutered bulls to pull carts and plowing equipment, and cows for their fat-rich milk. I had no idea the drakkons hunted here, but it did make sense. If they continually fed in the valley, they would have wiped the capras out very quickly.

Drakkons were a whole lot smarter than many human hunters, it seemed.

Eventually, we left the hills and dropped toward the golden plains. A blob of red became visible in the distance and, as we drew closer, I realized it was the little male. He lay unmoving on his right side, one wing underneath him and the other covering his body. The odd angle at which it rested very much suggested it had been broken in several places. His neck lay stretched out on the ground, and he wasn’t moving; there were multiple open wounds across his body, and the nearby grass was stained black with blood.

His sister stood to one side, her bright chest slashed open, the cut seeming as thick as my fist. One golden wing trailed on the ground, shredded and broken. The other wasn’t in much better shape, even if the main phalanges looked whole. She whipped her head from side to side, the nubs of her still forming horns gleaming with golden fire in the early morning light. She keened, a sound so filled with anguish and pain that it lanced my heart and brought tears to my eyes.

The queen circled her drakklings, her movements unstable as we slowly dropped height and speed. My grip tightened instinctively on her claw, my pulse rate high as the ground swept toward us. A heartbeat before it appeared we were going to crash, she somehow banked and hovered ten or so feet above the ground.

Will release, she said.

I eased my death grip on her talon.Ready.

She opened her claw. I dropped into a crouch and remained there, never so grateful in my entire life to be on solid, unmoving ground. She swept over the top of me and landed next to her drakklings. Her neck briefly looped around that of the little female, and it looked for all the world like she was comforting her. Then she gently—carefully—nosed the little male. He was nowhere near the size of the queen—and males were always smaller than females, no matter what their age—but his angular head was still larger than Desta’s entire body.

He was also very dead. I knew that even before her keening joined that of the female. There was simply too much blood staining the ground for him to have survived.

I didn’t move. I wasn’t a fool. She was a mother who’d just lost one of her young, and I had no desire to risk instinct overriding her need for my help.

As they filled the air with their grief, I bowed my head and silently prayed for Vahree to take the little male’s soul and cherish it.

That’s when I saw the glimmer of gold.

Not just any old gold, but the tip of what looked to be a feather made of that precious metal.

I carefully dug it out of the ground. Though larger than the feather that had taken Oran’s life or the one I’d found in the young Mareritt’s treasure pouch, it was very definitely from the same type of creature.

I swore and looked up at the drakkons. Damon had suggested the attack on Eastmead might have been preemptive—a means of testing and perhaps destroying our defenses. Did that explain the attack on the drakkons? They might dominate our skies, but in reality, they had little in the way of defense other than their claws. They killed livestock and, in the bad days during our war with them, men with equal ease, but the ballistas had swiftly proven how easy they were to destroy. But against a flighted creature whose feathers were both a weapon and a shield, they’d have little chance. Not without getting dangerously close.

Was that what happened here? Was that why the queen bore so many wounds? Had she been desperately trying to shield her young against flighted beings unlike any seen before in our lands?

I very much suspected that was the case.

I slipped the feather into a pocket and then rose and took a careful step forward. The queen’s head snapped around and, just for an instant, murder filled her eyes and mind.

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