A few days after Talia’s departure, the baby had grown to the size of a hunting hound. Holt could no longer sneak enough food away to keep it satiated for long. Small hillocks of meat were prepared in the kitchens and sent off to the hatchery and Holt could only look at the quantity in horror.
Still, he persisted. Until one night after he carefully got out of bed, got dressed, grabbed his sack of pilfered food, and climbed down from his loft, bells began to ring.
Rapid, high pitched bells, with bellowing voices alongside them. Holt had only heard similar alarms for fires, but this was much worse.
Some instinct sent a shiver up his spine. This wasn’t right.
His father awoke with a start. “What’s going on?” He looked to Holt, perplexed as to why his son was awake, dressed, and carrying a laden sack.
Still barefoot, Holt hastened for the door and stepped out into the street. People stumbled from their homes, some half-asleep and annoyed,
others with panicked expressions. Out here Holt heard the town criers call, “Attack! We’re under attack!”
Holt’s heart skipped a beat. His thoughts immediately turned to his dragon. Judging by the pace of the beat across the bond, the baby was still asleep although the noise would surely wake it.
A pained roar cut over the bells and drew everyone’s attention. Seemingly appearing from the night, Ysera beat her wings and hovered high over the center of town. The Matriarch of the Crag called to the tower. Distant roars answered her. The riders were being summoned.
At first, Holt’s heart leapt. If the Flight Commander had returned with Silverstrike then they would be saved from whatever attacked them. Yet something wasn’t right with her either. Another shiver ran up Holt’s spine. He noticed it a moment later in the way Ysera favored one side. Gouges had been torn in the sinew of her right wing, and there was another wound above the dragon’s front leg. Blood seeped from it, running down her pale green scales towards her belly.
“Put your shoes and cloak on,” Jonah said in a wavering voice. “Now, son. Quick!”
At that very moment, the baby woke up. Distressed by the bells, its panic reached Holt across the bond and mixed sourly with his own worry.
He had to fetch the dragon. He couldn’t leave him.
“Holt?” His father pulled him back inside. “Come on. I know it’s frightening, but we’ve got to go!”
Holt dropped the sack of meat, and mechanically found his shoes and traveling cloak, his fingers fumbling with the fastenings at his neck. He’d barely got it on when his father grabbed his arm and hauled him outside.
The situation had deteriorated. People ran terrified up the street towards the center of town where they might make for the grand stairs to the Order’s tower. Women screamed, children wailed, men roared orders to their families or else cried in terror themselves. And farther off in the distance, coming from the eastern town wall, was a sound more chilling than winter’s frost. A shrill, rattling cry like the braying of a dying horse mixed with cattle groans.
Before Holt could even think, his father, still holding his arm, yanked him into the rush of people surging up the dirt street.
Despite everything happening, all Holt could think about was the baby and how he would get to him. And what would happen even if he managed to? How could a blind dragon flee alongside them all?
The beat over their bond became a flutter of short pulses, as though the baby was breathing hard. Guilt filled Holt, and he would have turned around right there, but his father would notice and haul him back. He’d have every reason to do so. Turning back now would seem like insanity to everyone else, but if he didn’t go back then the dragon would surely die.
Guards barred the stairs to the tower and others ushered the townsfolk down the road toward the western gate instead, yelling all the while,
“Scourge!”
“The scourge have come!” “Flee to the west gate!”
Holt had barely registered the meaning of this when a buzzing arose from the east. Creatures with jagged wings glided over the town wall. Unresisted they dove into the streets below.
More roaring sounded, this time from behind and a second later two of the Crag’s dragon riders soared to meet the winged menaces with fire and ice.
There had only been eight riders left at the Crag, nine now that Commander Denna had returned. Yet she was injured and the riders scrambling to meet the enemy were the younger ones. Would it be enough? The fact that Commander Denna had ordered an evacuation suggested not.
Why was this happening? They said the scourge never dared come so close to the Order. This was an outright assault.
His mind numb, Holt was swept up along with the crowd and carried some distance before he realized his father was no longer at his side. He whipped around.
“Dad? Dad!”
He spotted his father some way back struggling to keep up. Jonah was bent over double, his chest heaving. Life as a Cook had ill-prepared him for such a run.
They were all unprepared for this.
Holt darted back through the throng of people and wrapped his father’s arm around his own shoulder.
“No,” Jonah protested. “You go on. Run as fast as you can.” “Not without you.”
Fleeing without the dragon was torture enough. He wasn’t going to leave his father too. As though the baby could sense his thoughts, that pitiful high voice entered his mind once more.
“Boy?”
Tears welled in Holt’s eyes. He had to go back. Somehow, he had to.
By the time they made it to the west gate, priority coaches and wagons were filling up. Mothers with young children, the old and the injured huddled in fear, rammed into any available spaces on board.
Jonah pushed Holt towards the closest wagon.
“You get on,” he said, still breathing hard. A soldier grabbed Holt’s arm and pulled him up onto the back of the wagon before he could say or do
anything in protest. Even as Holt turned around, the soldier raised the back board of the cart and slammed a bolt in place to secure it.
Holt gripped the edge of the wagon. “No. Wait.” He attempted to jump off, but the soldier shoved him back in.
“I’ll find you again,” Jonah said. “I lost your mother. I won’t lose you.”
Before anything more could be said a soldier called out to the wagon driver; the reins came down, and the wagon moved. Holt lurched forward, almost tumbling out over the side of the cart. Steadying himself, he froze in horror as he was taken away from his father. How would he get out?
Holt reached out a hand, and choked, “Dad—”
His words were silenced by another blood curdling shriek and intense buzzing. Shadows passed overhead and then the winged scourge creatures descended in the space between them.
It was Holt’s first close look at the monsters from all the stories; the whole reason the dragon riders existed. Seeing them now, the very warmth of his blood abandoned him. Brode had spoken true; the paintings made it all too pretty.
These creatures were the giant wasps twisted nightmarishly wrong, with black wings and two long antennae which swung like swords. Their mandible mouths frothed, their six legs were muscled and powerful; their bodies were armored in a dark-green carapace; their heavy stingers scored lines across the ground.
Soldiers rushed to meet them but were knocked aside like rag dolls. A spearman managed to strike one, but the blow didn’t stop the creature. Its frothing maw clamped down on the weapon’s shaft, gripped then yanked the spearhead out. With a sweep of its leg, it brought the soldier in close before crushing him.
Between the chaos, Holt could just make out a group of soldiers defending his father and the other civilians trapped on the wrong side of the scourge stingers. Then a new shadow loomed, and a green dragon landed to engage the enemy.
Holt was certain this emerald dragon’s magic manifested in control of the air, and sure enough, the stingers found themselves buffeted by conjured gales. Their wings crumpled and they could not move.
Wielding a lime-colored blade already shining with dark blood, the rider slid down from his dragon’s back to engage the enemy.
Holt almost forgot he’d been trying to escape from the wagon when panic enthralled him again. Across the bond, the baby’s terror was all consuming. For the briefest instant, he heard what the dragon could hear, feel what it could feel. When the moment passed it called out to him again.
“Boy?”
The west gate drew closer and soon he would be out beyond the town walls. Holt gripped the side of the wagon again and jumped.
People called out to him, but Holt ignored them. He hit the ground and the shock of the impact thrummed up his body before he dove into an ungraceful roll. Gasping from the pain of it, he darted into the nearest alley so no one would stop him and tried to weave his way back towards the base of the Crag.
He knew the town well, and the western side was largely clear with the attack coming from the east, but he sensed the fight was not going well. With every minute the roars of the dragons sounded weaker while the scourge cries only grew. The unmistakable smell of smoke reached him, and the dragon bond thrummed madly, thumping to every step upon the cobbled streets.
At one turning, he skidded to a halt to avoid a skirmish between beleaguered soldiers and dead-looking men with chitinous hides.
Holt’s world turned inward as he ran, until he could only feel the aches in his legs, the burn in his chest, the acrid taste in the air. A street away from the store house, the pulse of the bond dropped to an echo.
“No!” Holt screamed, driving his legs harder than ever. He’d rather have bloody stumps than lose the dragon.
He reached the store house and flew inside, braced for the worst.
“Boy! Boy!”
The knot of warmth that was the bond blazed into a fire in Holt’s chest. It pulsed painfully and grew within him – the kernel swelling to a walnut. The dragon burst out of a corner, running haphazardly. Holt met it halfway and crouched to embrace it.
“I’m here. I’m here.”
It licked him and yapped happily. “We have to go.”
But just how they’d make it, he wasn’t sure. The baby had been getting better at following his voice, but there was a world of difference between a peaceful night and a hellscape.
The dragon sensed his concerns. The bond flared and Holt glimpsed how it sensed the world right now. It was darkness, it was more noise than Holt could comprehend; it was smoke, and blood and death. There was no way it could follow him by his voice alone. Likely it only knew he was here because of their bond.
“I’ll carry you,” Holt said. He picked the dragon up, although its size didn’t make this easy.
Back on the street, Holt felt quite alone and quite defeated. Flames were spreading fast, jumping from thatch roof to thatch roof as the whole town burned. He glanced to the sky in the hopes of finding a rider to save them, but he only spotted four still up there and they were too far away to have a hope of hearing or seeing him.
His only choice was to run again but his legs were failing. His empty stomach twisted, his head pounded, his breath came harder as smoke gathered. The fires were so fierce that his way back to the western wall was completely blocked. As was the way towards the base of the grand stairs.
But not the servants’ stairway.
Holt took to it, knowing he might be trapped up in the Crag but what choice did he have? The riders would deal with the scourge or fall back to the higher defensive ground to hold out. If he couldn’t flee the town then the tower was the safest place he could go.
Yet he didn’t have the strength left to make the ascent while carrying the dragon. Just as he left the smoke behind, his legs turned to jelly and gave out.
“I don’t think I can make it,” he told the dragon.
Its blue eyes tried to meet his but were, as ever, a little off. Holt’s mouth turned bone dry. “I… don’t think I can…” The dragon blinked then scrambled to get out of his grasp. “Down.”
Holt understood its meaning. He let go. The dragon landed onto the step beside him and placed a determined foot forward.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“If you can’t keep up just tell me.”
Together they set off, the baby sticking close to his leg but somehow it managed the climb. It was the bond. Holt knew it. Yet he could feel the dragon’s energy wane as it strained to blindly find its way.
When they reached the servants’ courtyard, Holt paused to draw much- needed breath. When he got ahold of himself, he saw what was in the courtyard and nearly vomited.
Bodies. Everywhere. Dead servants, guards along with ghouls and great bugs. The ground was thick in green, black, and red blood.
The tower had already come under attack. Nowhere was safe. Holt wasn’t sure what to do.
Up here, the carnage below sounded distant and light. Then thunder boomed.
A fork of blue-silver light flashed across the sky.
“Silas,” Holt gasped. He bent to pull the dragon into a hug of relief. “Silverstrike has come to save us!” But the baby didn’t share his joy.
It yelped into his ear and tried to pull out of his embrace. Holt turned, expecting to find a stinger swooping down at them. What he found was a confusing sight.
Commander Denna, bent low over Ysera, hovered over the front courtyard of the Crag, just at the top of the grand stairs. She and her dragon faced another pair. Holt recognized Silas’ dragon Clesh, his dark gray scales almost black against the night.
Holt’s own dragon kept tugging at the leg of his trousers, trying to pull him back. It could sense something that Holt could not.
What could be wrong? Silas Silverstrike was one of the greatest heroes who had fought the scourge. Why was he just hovering there with Denna and not fighting?
It was then that Commander Denna raised her war hammer, the steel glinting red from the fires across the town she had failed. With a pained roar and a jolt forward, Ysera surged through the air toward Silverstrike.
Silas didn’t move. A swirling nimbus formed over his head and lightning struck down to meet his blade, just as Holt had seen him do before. Only this time the power he unleashed was directed at the Flight Commander. Clesh opened his jaws and crackling blue energy zapped forth to join Silas’ own attack.
Commander Denna and Ysera were consumed by the magic. For a moment they hung suspended in mid-air, the dragon’s wings and limbs bent at crooked angles. Then they fell. Denna’s smoking body parted from her dragon as they plummeted down.
Denna had been strong, a powerful rider at the limit of Champion rank. But Silas was already a Lord, and he may as well have swatted an untrained squire.
Holt’s world might have ended there. He was in such shock that he didn’t move a muscle, not even as scourge stingers flanked Silas Silverstrike, moving to take the tower of the Crag. And where was Mirk and his dragon Biter – they should have been at Denna’s side. Perhaps they were dead too.
Down at his knees, the dragon still tugged at his clothes.
“Boy. Come. Hide.”
A painful throb across the bond jolted Holt back to his senses. If the scourge had overrun the Crag, then nowhere would be safe. Nowhere above ground at any rate.
“The larder,” Holt thought aloud before sprinting across the courtyard, leaping over bodies of the fallen with the dragon close behind him.
At the bottom of the stairwell to the kitchens the dragon lost its footing and tumbled head over tail, slid across the floor and slammed against an upturned table. Holt ran to its side, but it seemed unharmed. The hatchling was sturdier than it looked.
The kitchens were a total mess. Pots, pans and knives lay strewn across the floor. Perhaps the few servants who had been here had tried to fight their way out. One of the great worktables had been upturned, and its location made Holt’s heart sink.
The table blocked the trap door to the larder.
Holt groaned. This wasn’t fair. He couldn’t move that on his own. Yet he had no choice but to try.
His first attempts were laughable. He could barely get a grip on the enormous table, never mind move it. Again, and again he tried to push, pull or lift it but his feeble limbs and exhausted body didn’t have the power.
The dragon started roaring squeakily. Panting, Holt looked over to the stairwell where the baby paced like a guard dog.
“They come. They come.”
The fight in Holt died. He flopped down, defeated. He couldn’t move this hunk of wood on his own and soon the scourge would finish him off.
“Boy,” the dragon bounded over to him. “Hide.”
“I can’t move it,” Holt wheezed. It felt painful just to speak. “It’s too heavy. We’re stuck.”
“Help you,” the dragon said. It took a second to get its bearings then approached the upturned table at speed only to smack its head off the wood. Undeterred, the dragon shook off the pain then stood on its hind legs and started pressing against the table with its front claws. It hardly helped but Holt felt shamed by the baby.
If it wouldn’t give up, then neither would he.
He got up and joined the dragon in pushing again. He cried out from the effort but still the table barely budged.
A clanking echoed from the staircase.
“Come on!” Holt yelled. The dragon roared as mightily as it could, and Holt felt the pulse of their bond intensify. Alongside the heartbeat, there seemed to be another sound—a sort of music.
Holt had never heard such music before, if that’s what it was. It was light, haunting, and powerful all at once. He caught only a few notes, but in that moment, his body changed.
His exhaustion vanished. His mind cleared. His muscles grew taut with newfound strength.
Feet braced, Holt pushed against the table again. This time, it moved. In fact, it skidded across the kitchen and crashed into the wall, snapping off one of its legs.
As quickly as the strength had come, it left him. The music across the dragon bond faded, but it didn’t matter. He lifted the trap door to the larder and ushered the dragon to his side. He had already placed one foot on the steps when something caught his eye.
On the ground by the great hearth, lay his family’s recipe book, open with a torn page. Despite the clanking from the stairs and knowing he had only moments, Holt dashed for it, picked it up, and hurried back, pulling the dragon down to the larder.
The trap door wouldn’t lock from this side, but he didn’t think those creatures would think to open it or know how.
Down here he would be safe.
A cold blackness enveloped him. There were no candles lit this time.
Now both he and his dragon were blind.
Holt staggered until he found a shelf to slump against, then slid to the floor. He put the recipe book beside him. Padding feet followed and then dragon pressed into him. Holt fumbled in the dark to give it an awkward hug.
Heavy footsteps trod across the kitchen and echoed through the stone. Holt drew in shallow breaths until the footsteps moved on. Once they were gone, he let out a shuddering sigh of relief.
“Tired,” the dragon told him.
“You can rest now. You did so well.”
“No. You’re tired,” the dragon insisted. Its voice wasn’t quite so high now, its words better formed, as though a toddler had matured to a young child in the blink of an eye.
Holt could only nod.
“Sleep, Holt,” the dragon said. “I will listen for them.”
“Thank you,” Holt said wearily.
Closing his eyes meant little in this darkness, but Holt fell asleep the very moment he did.
