Page 74 of Of Scale and Blood

Damon’s working on it.

Needs hurry.

He’s worried about the danger.

Gilded ones danger. We need weapon.

The spell that gives you fire could bind our life forces.

What life force?

I hesitated again.It’s the spirit, the energy, that gives us both life. By combining our energies to give you flame, it might also pass on to me your resistance to magic and a longer life. But in doing that, it could shorten yours.

No want shorten.

Which is why we can’t proceed until we understand more about the risks for us both. Let’s fly home.

She passed on the new flight directions to Yara and Hannity, and we flew west, keeping in the lower streams of clouds so that I could still see the ground through the long viewer, but we weren’t as immediately obvious to a casual glance around. As the barren countryside gave way to long beaches lined by cliffs, the weather closed in again. We banked and headed south. The distant, rugged outline of the Black Glass Mountains was a barely visible blot in the rain, but gradually grew ever larger as the hours passed with unbearable slowness. Not even eating the few remaining chunks of now damp Hutzelbrot lifted my mood.

Dusk was closing in—though the only reason I could tell was thanks to the rain easing, allowing the faintest glimmer of warmth to stain the underbellies of the clouds—when I caught a soft flicker of light. It wasn’t coming from the formidable mountains to our right but from the deeper seas to our left. There were no major islands out there, and no reason for boats to be out. Not in this area, and definitely not this late in the afternoon, anyway. The Throat of Huskain might still be a good distance away, but the seas underneath us remained treacherous.

The pale light swept across the gathering darkness, then disappeared again.

Was it a signal? Or something else?

I had no idea, but we definitely needed to investigate. I asked Kaia to pass on our change of course to the other drakkons, then signaled to Kele and Hannity.

We swung right and flew toward the intermittent light, remaining high so there was less chance of anyone seeing us if that light was some kind of watch station. As the darkness grew deeper, the sweeping light grew brighter, and the closer we got to it, the more evident it became that there were shapes clustered around it. Not boats, more... barges? They were extremely long, but wide, and flat, and… my stomach sank. At least one was crowded with shadows that gleamed gold in each turn of that light.

As we drew closer, the barges became visible; only one was filled with gilded birds, while a second held the longer versions of the metal tents I’d seen before and obviously housed the riders. The other two barges were currently empty.

There were probably a good thirty to forty birds roosting on that one barge, though, and that many could certainly decimate Esan’s mighty walls. When the others arrived... perhaps from Ezu... well, they really could fill our skies with gold.

I wearily scrubbed a gloved hand across my wet face. There was nothing we could do right now. Not against so many birds. Not when the four barges had long tubes mounted at either end of them and guards at the ready. For our flames to be effective, we’d have to fly far too close to either of the barges, and even at full speed, would provide easy targets for those fucking tubes. The drakkons were just too big to miss at close range.

Why we need flames, Kaia commented.Could burn from height.

Damn it, Kaia, we’re fucking working on it!I sucked in a breath and released it slowly.Sorry, I’m not angry at you.

Just the situation, our impotency, and the escalation of a threat for which we seemed to have no answer.

Know, she said.Understand.

Thank you. Let’s go home before this lot gets wind of us and rise.

Would not be good.

No. We might have bested five of them, but we would never win against nearly tenfold that number.Tell the others we’re leaving.

I once again signaled as Kaia passed the order on. Kele, who was closer, sent an affirmative, but Hannity didn’t. Maybe, with the gathering darkness, she was simply too far away to see.

We really,reallyneeded to work on a better means of communication, though I was not entirely sure there was anything better than scribe quills and tablets at the moment, and at the speed the drakkons were often going, they were simply impractical.

Maybe Damon could work something into his spell. If all riders could talk to their drakkons, it would be a whole lot easier to pass messages around.

Yara rumbled unhappily as we looped around and flew once again toward the peaks we couldn’t see. There was no response from Rua.

I twisted around, caught the glint of red scales caught in the light as she swooped toward the barge holding the riders. The birds looked up and squawked sharply, the noise deafening in the stillness of the gathering night. Men scrambled out of metal tents in various stages of undress, most running across the various planks linking the barges while a few aimed smaller tubes at the descending drakkon.

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