The Order of the Scales Deas - The Order of the Scales

He felt the dragon lever her way back into the air and glide away from the ruined eyrie, her thoughts fading as she flew. He didn’t have much of an answer to that. Didn’t have much of an answer to anything any more. No family, no friends, no Sollos, no Nadira, no reason for doing anything much any more except looking for Rider Rod so I can kill him, and then what? No hate, no revenge, no nothing.

No, that wasn’t right. He had pain, plenty of pain. In his arm. He sat up and wished he hadn’t. He could walk. That was something. He was breathing hard, not getting enough air. His chest hurt. Everything hurt. Down here smelled bad too. He got up. He needed to be out. He wasn’t sure whether Snow’s voice in his head had been real or a dream, but she was gone, he was sure. Gone into the deep mountains with her kin.

Why is it so dark? The alchemical lamps seemed dimmer than he remembered. He couldn’t see across the room any more. They were fading. Going out. Leaving him trapped down here in blank nothing.

The woman was awake, backing away from him. He ignored her, heading for the surface as fast as he dared, gasping for breath. Back to fresh air and the sky over his head. When she saw where he was going, her face changed. Scared. Afraid he was going to abandon her. Afraid of being alone.

I was going to kill you. The thought horrified him.

‘The dragons are gone.’ He stumbled down the passage as fast as he dared, over the mound of rubble, up the stairs and into the glorious freezing air, and never mind how much it all hurt to get there. Outside, the early morning sun had crept high enough to light up the eyrie. Most of the valley below was still in shadow. He stood amid the ruins, taking deep breaths, staring up at the sky. Better. Better to be outside. The cold took away the worst of the pain. Took the edge off it at least. He was right. The dragons had gone. He squatted among the broken stones, rocking back on his heels, wondering what to do. He’d lost his sword, lost his bow. When he looked, he didn’t even have a knife with him any more. Must have left it down with the woman. Didn’t matter. There’d be more lying about, if he looked hard enough.

I will take my sleeping brothers and sisters far away, where we will not be found until they awake. That is how long you have to run before I will come. And how long was that? Weeks? Maybe a month? Never mind swords and bows. He had a purse full of coin and a pouch full of Souldust. Should be able to have a lot of fun with that in a month. He could at least die with a smile on his face. Had a lot more appeal than spending his last days trying to dodge swords and arrows. Especially with a broken arm.

And then what? Roll over and burn just like everyone else?

A boat down the river to Furymouth then. Away on a Taiytakei ship by whatever bargain it took, to whatever lands lay beyond the Sea of Storms. The Taiytakei had to come from somewhere, right? They couldn’t just live on their ships. And Snow had found those islands. And if even if they did live on their ships, that had to be better than being burned and eaten, right? What did the Taiytakei want? He had money and Souldust, but somehow that didn’t seem enough. They traded in slaves, but that was too much like being a dragon-knight. Dragons. The Taiytakei wanted dragons. Everyone knew that. Or failing that, they wanted the secrets of the alchemists…

Alchemists. He couldn’t help but laugh. With one hand, the fates pissed on him, with the next they showered him with gold. The woman. He could make her up as an alchemist, even if she wasn’t. She had to know something to have been in those tunnels with the rest, right? He could trade her for passage. Or maybe there were other bits and pieces hidden under the ground. Potions. Recipes. Anything.

Dragon-riders, alchemists, same difference. There was that mantra again. Wasn’t really working.

Most likely he’d wind up a slave. But slavery was better than dead, wasn’t it? Slaves could always dream of breaking free.

He glanced up at the sky. The dragon was gone but she was up there somewhere, off into the lifeless glaciers at the heart of the Worldspine or the arid peaks of the Purple Spur. If I was a dragon, that’s where I’d go. Nothing there.

The start of the long road up to the ruins of the castle wasn’t much more than a track, a path wide enough enough for a man on a horse maybe but no bigger, certainly not wide enough for a wagon. It wound up the slope down which Snow had thrown him the day before, cutting though the black trees, gloomy and overhung. The snow was clean, unmarked. No one had come down here for days. There was probably a stair, somewhere underground. Or a shaft and a cage on pulleys for lifting loads up from the eyrie. No need for a road at all really. At least not until some passing dragon smashed your stairs and ate your slaves.

He sighed. On the one hand, he didn’t have the energy for climbing mountains. On the other, his arm wouldn’t stay that way for ever. Sooner or later he was going to need a sword and a bow again. Chances were he’d be good for that around about the same time that Snow came back to set fire to the world. Perfect. Still, he could always take his mind off how much his arm hurt by thinking about how much his ribs and spine hurt instead. Or his legs, or his knees, or the windburn on his neck or the creeping numbness in his toes. Plenty to choose from there.

By the time he reached the first bend in the road, he felt as though he’d spent the whole day running. He leaned against a tree, caught his breath and listened. Nothing. Not a sound. Not even a bird. Not even the rustle of the wind in the trees. Just a stillness. Silence, muffled up in a blanket of snow.

It really shouldn’t have taken him more than an hour to get to the castle, but instead it took half a day, wading through the snow and the scattered lumps of stonework that littered the road and the forest, tossed aside in the destruction of the castle. When he got to the top, his bow was right there where he’d dropped it, still in once piece. He gave a murmur of thanks to his ancestors for that. It was a nice bow, carved from the wing bone of some long-dead dragon. It was the kind of bow that a dragon-knight would have, and in fact had had, right up until Kemir had slit his throat. They’d had one each, him and his cousin Sollos. The second one was carefully wrapped and padded and, for all Kemir knew, still tied to Snow’s back. The bow that he’d taken from his dead cousin’s still-warm body on the same day that he’d first met Snow. The bow he’d sworn he’d use to kill the dragon-knight who murdered him. Or was that the one he was holding in his hand, and was it his own bow left on the back of the dragon?

Yeah. That was something else he could do. He could spend his last few months hunting down one last dragon-rider while around them the world burned.

He shook his head. He needed to rest, to lie down, to go back to sleep, preferably for days, but up here there was nowhere. Bright brilliant mountain sun, gleaming off the slopes around the ruins. Smashed blackened stone. Churned-up earth, ripped and and torn by dragon claws. The charred skeletons of a few trees, caught in Snow’s fire. All the snow for hundreds of yards had melted and then frozen again in the night. Everywhere hard and cold and bright and glistening and unforgiving. He sat down on a flat rock for a while and slumped into a doze, soaking up the feeble warmth of the sun until the shadows of the broken trees and stones started to grow long again. Then he forced himself up, forced himself to look through the ruins, even though all he wanted was to lie down and sleep. Didn’t find anything more either, so that was all a waste and in the end he trudged away, back down the road between the trees with just the bow. A sword could wait. Arrows he could find on the way. Make, if he had to. A knife, though. Couldn’t do without a good knife. Best get his old one back from the underground refuge. Best get as much food and whatever else they had down there too, since he wasn’t going to be doing much hunting for a while. Couldn’t stay up here for ever. Sooner or later, people would come. Wasn’t sure which was worse, people or dragons.