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

Or the spear, if he was feeling absurdly optimistic. Whatever that thing was, no one was going to say no to something that could turn live dragons into statues. That would be worth passage on a Taiytakei ship, wouldn’t it? Passage for two even.

‘Kat! Kat!’ What could turn a dragon into stone. There was a story about that, wasn’t there? Dragondale, pox-ridden ghost town on the edge of the Blackwind Dales on the Evenspire Road. A nothing place except for the statue there. A dragon, life-sized. He’d seen it once. Impossibly detailed. Turned to stone by Narammed, the locals said. Narammed the Dragonslayer, first Speaker of the Realms. Rubbish. Everyone who travelled the Evenspire Road knew that. Joked and laughed about the inbred peasant folk of Dragondale who never left their own villages.

Rubbish. Yeah. And what would Narammed’s Spear be doing out here anyway?

‘Kat!’ His heart was beating fast, still. She couldn’t be dead. He’d promised to look out for her. He stopped, opened his mouth, let out a roar. ‘I killed a dragon for you! Don’t you fucking dare be dead!’

No one answered. After an hour of looking, he finally gave up. The tears in his eyes were dry again by then, turned to salt. After that, as he wandered the riverbank, he was mostly looking for a boat. The town was dead, burning nicely. The villages and farms around it would fill up with refugees. There would be people begging for food and a place to sleep, people with money prepared to pay whatever it took and being charged everything they had. There would be thieving, mugging, probably the odd murder, maybe a lynch mob or two. And then there’d be him, a sell-sword from the mountains. A boat would take him away from all that. A boat would take him to Furymouth.

Alone.

Could have taken us both.

No. She couldn’t leave him alone. Not now. He wasn’t even looking properly any more, just wandering aimlessly, thinking about her. Wishing for something different.

‘Hey!’ The sound of another voice battered into his thoughts. When he turned, he saw a cluster of ragged ash-streaked men peering out from a copse of trees. There must have been about a dozen of them. Instantly his hand went to his knife, only to discover he’d lost it. They were unarmed as far he could tell, but there were quite enough to take him to the ground if they were desperate enough.

‘Hey.’ He’d lost his bow too. Pity. The nearest of the men, the one who’d come out into the open, was no more than thirty feet away, but that would still have been far enough to put a couple of arrows in him before he closed the distance.

The man lifted up his hand. Now, too late, Kemir saw the stone he was holding. ‘Dragon-rider!’ The man spat a curse, threw his stone and charged. Behind him, more townsfolk poured out of the trees. He saw enough of them to realise he’d been wrong: there were more like twenty, maybe even more than that. He turned and ran.

‘I’m not…’ Stupid armour. Should have dumped it. Should have

…

A hand caught his shoulder. He jabbed an elbow behind him. The hand let go, but it cost him a precious moment. A second later another hand clawed at him, missed, then another, and then something snatched his legs from under him and hurled him forward. He rolled, tried to pull away, but they were on him, far too many to stand and fight, raining down fists, punching and kicking him until finally he let go and everything went quiet and still.

The Speaker of the Realms

‘It was not the dragons that made me do what I did; it was the greed of men.’

Narammed Dragonslayer, first Speaker of the Realms

Dragons poured towards the Fury. Whatever riders Valmeyan had sent quickly turned and fled. Hyrkallan didn’t bother with subtleties but gave chase directly. Jehal supposed that when you had so many of the monsters that you could blot out the sun with them, stealth was a bit of a waste of time. They reached Gliding Dragon Gorge and the realm of the Harvest Queen, the realm of Queen Zafir, and Hyrkallan flew on. Jehal supposed he could have stopped, could have quietly dropped away, taken his handful of dragons back to the palace; but would it have made any difference if he had? Probably not, not to what mattered. I’m sorry, Lystra, but what else can I do? A trade perhaps? But what for what? You for the the Adamantine Palace? And then let Zafir send her assassins after both of us? The same Zafir he still hungered to hold. Yes, that Zafir.

Here and there, as they flew, Jehal saw palls of smoke dotting the landscape. Watersgate, Plag’s Bay. Maybe Valleyford, if he strained his eyes. Hyrkallan ignored them. Scorched earth, that was Zafir all over. Across the Fury, every town was burnt; when Jehal took Wraithwing down for a closer look, some were still smouldering, little coils of smoke twirling out of the ruins. The damage was a day or two old, no more. Jehal couldn’t think why Zafir would destroy her own realm, but then he couldn’t think of why she did lots of things. Slaughtering the cattle we would have taken to feed our dragons? And we would have done it too, taking whatever we need. A horde like this must spell death for any realm it passes. Even if we don’t burn it to ash, we’ll eat everything in our path. Behind us, all will fall into starvation and ruin. Ancestors, please let this war be quick.

Ancestors? Who am I praying to? The father I suffocated in his bed? He’d be laughing. Meteroa? Pouring derision on everything I do most likely. Distancing himself from all of this. Making sure none of the rest of our dead folk get the impression that this is somehow his fault. No, his ancestors weren’t going to be much use here. Never were really, even when they were alive. Made his lip curl, just thinking about them. You wanted to be Vishmir, and when that didn’t work, you demanded it from your sons. Well here I am, father, Speaker of the Realms. You know what? You’re all dead, so if you want any family honour out of this sorry mess, you might start trying to be a bit more constructive. Or did his ancestors think it better to watch the world burn than to admit they were wrong? To admit they’d made a mistake?

No. Don’t answer that. Don’t even think about it. Instead, he forced his way to the front of the horde, where he could fly his colours and be the first into the attack. King Jehal. Speaker Jehal, leading from the front. So, ancestors, what about that then? Vishmir would have been proud; Prince Lai would have called him an idiot, and he’d probably wind up dead because that was what usually happened to the man at the front. But what have I got to lose? Nothing much any more.

The Pinnacles were up ahead, three dark shadows on the distant plains, a hundred miles away. He had dragons around him, to either side, up and down, behind him as far as he could see. They were everywhere. Hyrkallan’s B’thannan. All the rest. Wings surging, necks straining with purpose. He could see the eyes of the closest, gleaming, teeth bared, riders grinning. They all knew. They all knew what was coming.

Zafir’s outriders must have seen them coming. Had to. There were no clouds today, no place to hide. Hyrkallan had no special trick to play; nor did he need one. Numbers. That would be enough. How many dragons did Valmeyan have? He had his own eyries, Zafir’s dragons that had escaped from Evenspire, a few dozen Meteroa had had at the Pinnacles, most of Narghon’s eyries. What was that? Pushing five hundred adult dragons? Against nearly half that many again. All the dragons in the realms, or as near as made no difference, all in once place. Did anyone have a strategy for this? He tried to think about Principles. Divide your enemy. Take them down piece by piece. Encircle them. Envelop them. Crash down on them from above. The Carpenter, the Falling Leaves, the Hammer and Anvil. Principles was good on how to destroy your enemies with few losses of your own once you’d established an advantage in numbers. For what was about to happen, Prince Lai had nothing to say. It wasn’t supposed to come to this.