Roland Green - Knights of the Crown

Hipparan screamed. The black dragon flinched. So did Fustiar.

“Only one man has any claim on Haimya now, and you can never be he!” Hipparan roared. It seemed that his fury echoed from the clouds to the mountains and back again.

He lunged at Fustiar, before the black dragon could lower his head to use either his fangs or his breath weapon-not that a stream of acid was all that useful, this high in the air. Fustiar not only flinched, he writhed, screamed-and tore himself loose from the black dragon’s claws.

Both dragons dived after the falling man. Hipparan was lower, and the black dragon had to stoop before he could see his master vanishing into the darkness.

Hipparan was the first to reach Fustiar, and after that it no longer mattered what the black dragon might do. The copper dragon’s jaws closed on Fustiar’s skull, and his teeth pierced to the man’s brain. Hipparan opened his mouth, and a corpse weighted with spellbooks tumbled away out of sight.

Then Hipparan had to swerve sharply to avoid colliding with the plummeting black dragon. He opened the distance and called, “Remember, my quarrel is with one who is about to make a hole in the mud, not with you, flying strong and free.”

The black dragon replied with his breath weapon. The acid sprayed wide on the wind, but even the few drops that struck Hipparan’s right wing burned as though he had thrust the wing into a fire. He changed from a right turn to a left turn, as the other would most likely expect him to turn into the damaged wing.

Such ruses kept the fight between the two dragons going so long that Hipparan lost all sense of time or place. He had to look down once, to find that they were almost directly over the lake in the summit crater of the extinct volcano.

That look reassured him, and also nearly ended the fight with the black dragon’s victory. The elder dragon lunged, teeth scraping across Hipparan’s neck, nearly piercing scales into flesh. Hipparan folded his wings, and his dead weight tore him free; he kept them folded until he had dived clear.

That gave the other the advantage of altitude, which Hipparan realized might not have been the safest gift. The black dragon was remarkably fit for his age, skilled in battle, and actually seemed to be enjoying the fight. Perhaps he had some thought of avenging his master, but even more of simply proving himself against a younger dragon.

Hipparan had nothing to prove, and no wish to kill the other if he had any choice-which it seemed he did not. That and fear of leading the other dragon to Pirvan and Haimya was all that kept Hipparan in the fight.

He tried twice to use his breath weapon, but the slowness gas blew away even more thoroughly than the acid stream. The black dragon did not miss a single beat of his vast wings, or strike less surely with teeth and claws.

Which of them would overreach himself first, only the gods could know. Hipparan dimly remembered the dangerous art of the wing-bite, which would cripple but not kill. The black dragon remembered that he had another weapon, a legacy from his dead master. Hipparan would display his skill; the black dragon his loyalty.

So Hipparan dived upon the black dragon, striking at a wing, and the other rolled on his back and swung the Frostreaver in both foreclaws. Hipparan’s teeth sank into the black dragon’s left wing as the Frostreaver’s edge sank into Hipparan’s skull.

Hipparan died without knowing that he was in danger, the Frostreaver’s embodied spells pierced all his own magic as easily as its physical being pierced his skull. The black dragon lived a trifle longer-long enough to realize that his dead foe’s teeth were locked in his wing, and that both of them were falling out of the sky into the lake.

The black dragon’s last sensation was of striking what had to be water but felt like stone-cold stone, as repulsive as it was painful to a creature of wet, warm forests.

Pirvan and Haimya had used most of their strength finding a hiding place. They had not realized that it gave them a good view across the river toward the extinct volcano. At least not until the aerial duel of dragons began, when they saw it clearly, then hurried out of cover to where they could watch.

Pirvan would have given an empire for Hipparan’s victory, a kingdom to be able to help their friend, and a respectable barony to spare Haimya the sight of the dragon’s death. The one person he loved ought to be spared more pain tonight.

The one person I love .

He repeated that in his mind so often that he began to fear he would say it out loud, which would break his promise to stand just where Haimya wished him. He had just clamped his lips shut when the battle reached its grisly climax.

Both dragons glowed in their death fall, so the watchers saw them plunge all the way down from the sky into the lake. Then they saw a glow from the lake that made the last light from the dragons seem as pitiful as a firefly’s. An eye-searing blue glare poured over the rim of the crater, and blue mist rose from it as if the crater were boiling. Then Pirvan felt a chill breeze that had not been there a heartbeat earlier, and he knew what was happening.

The lake was not boiling, but freezing. One of the dragons must have been carrying a Frostreaver, or perhaps Fustiar had cast a spell, and the crater lake was turning to ice.

Ice expanded. Expanding, the lake would push the crater walls outward. Pushed far enough-

Haimya threw back her head and hurled a death keen at the sky, the mountain, the jungle, perhaps the gods. A goddess mourning the death of a mortal lover might have uttered such a cry.

Pirvan stood silently and still. He could no more have touched or spoken to her now than he could have molested that goddess.

She nocked an arrow to her bow and shot it at the stars. To Pirvan’s eyes it seemed to rise out of sight before it began to fall-if it fell.

Haimya keened again-and this time she went on keening, until her last breath wheezed out of her throat and he finally had to hold her upright.

They were turning away from the volcano when they heard the mad god’s thunder of a mountain splitting apart and falling.

Pirvan climbed out of the stream and pulled on his rawhide loinguard.

“I need to splice the lines before I set them out,” he called to Haimya. “So you can bathe as long as you wish.”

“Thank you,” she called over her shoulder. “Do you think we can try making soap, after we finish the fish trap?”

Not waiting for an answer, she removed her clothing, which consisted of a loinguard similar to Pirvan’s and a rawhide strip tied around her torso, and ran down to the stream. Her hair was a chopped and raddled mess, her skin was nearly as dark as Jemar the Fair’s with sun, dirt, and grease, she was more thin-flanked than Pirvan had ever seen her, and he thought she as the most beautiful woman in the world.

As for himself, Pirvan had begun with darker skin and hair, so the near month they’d spent in the wilderness had not changed his looks as much. He had lost weight, though not having much to lose, his arm still ached in wet weather (which meant a good part of the time), and he had never felt better in his life.

He turned away from the stream as Haimya dived in, a graceful pale arc against the green water, ending in a silvery splash. Neither of them was self-conscious about “standing close” as they had to do to survive, but at times a veil would come down over Haimya’s eyes or even her whole face. Pirvan respected those moments and kept his eyes and thoughts in order.

Gerik had left a vacant spot in Haimya. It could well be that it would never be filled. This was because there had been a great and undying love between them, but because Haimya could not forgive herself for killing Gerik through carelessness. Gerik’s death had taken something from her sense of honor, and only time (if that) could put it back.