Page 11 of Of Scale and Blood

I hesitated.No. It’s just a bad feeling.

No like bad feelings.

Me neither.

We fly along wildlands not mountains. Safer.

Agreed.And at the very least, we’d have a good long time to spot any of the gilded riders before they ever got into attacking range.

I stopped the mare near the top of the hill, then slid off her back and gave her a good ear scratch. She snorted in soft appreciation and lowered her head to graze, but I caught her thoughts again and impressed the need for her to return to the city. She rather reluctantly did so, and only after I’d pointed out the presence of a drakkon.

Once she was a good distance away, Kaia swooped in, extending her rear legs so that she could land before lowering a front leg, providing a scaly ramp for me to climb. I scrambled up and across her shoulder, using the decidedly wicked-looking spur that jutted out from the wing’s thumb to steady myself before settling on her neck. After clipping my harness onto the ropes, I slung the bow back over my shoulders, then dragged the long viewer from my pack and focused it on that distant drakkon.

There was something about the way he was flying—an odd sort of desperation—that had that inner unease ramping up some more.

I tucked the long viewer back into the pack and tied it down again. “I think we need to fly over that way and see if he’s okay.”

Maybe hunting. Good eating there.

“He doesn’t look to be cruising for his next meal to me, Kaia.”

She studied him for a second and then hunkered down and launched hard into the air.We check.

She arced gracefully around, then flew upward at such a sharp angle that the ropes snapped taut. I couldn’t see the drakkon past her spines and head, but there was an odd sort of cloud now forming around one of the Black Glass Mountains’ ragged peaks.

Aerie, Kaia said.Roosted there last night.

And now it was surrounded by a strange cloud, and one of their males was winging his way toward us at a speed drakkons rarely use except when fleeing...Was there any sign of the gilded riders when you went in or left?

No. Checked.

Which was something, but still... I flexed my fingers, trying to ease the spiraling tension, sending tiny sparks of fire spinning into the air that were quickly caught by the sheer force of our speed and extinguished.

Kaia bugled, a long and demanding sound that was almost deafening. The male replied with a strange mix of bugles, growls, and whistles, and the anger that surged through Kaia just about fried my mind.

What?I immediately said.

Aerie attacked, she growled.Three gilded riders. Others melt rock and close entry. We help?

We help, I replied. And hoped like hell Túxn felt like throwing luck our way.

Because two against five were not at all good odds.

We’d already learnedthatthe hard way.

CHAPTER2

Kaia,can you ask the male where the gilded riders and their mages were positioned when he left?

She didn’t bugle this time, simply reached out and connected to his mind, probably because, with the speed she was now going, the distance between them had greatly decreased. Though I wasn’t part of their conversation, a backwash of images floated through my link with Kaia; the riders seemed to be using that odd cloud to hide their presence. One rider circled just below it, obviously acting as lookout, while two more had landed on the end of the cavern’s long tongue—a thick protrusion of rock that allowed the drakkons to land before entering the aerie proper. The mages were standing either side of the cavernous entrance, slowly melting the black volcanic rock and refashioning it into a wall, while the riders stood at the tongue’s end, spraying their birds’ acidic shit at any drakkon who tried to leave.Thatwas why the young male was flying strangely—he’d been leaving to hunt when the riders had arrived, and the riders had sprayed at him. Only the end of one wing had been hit, but the acid was slowly eating away at the rest of it.

What do?Kaia asked.

We need to take out those mages, first and foremost.

How?

Good damn question. I studied that ominous cloud for a second.Can you fly higher than that?

---