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

The sky about the Pinnacles was swarming. His heart crept up his throat. Dragons. Hundreds of dragons, enough that they seemed like dark clouds slowly rising into the air. His spine tingled. The hairs on his skin burned. Valmeyan was going to make a fight of it. Both clouds of dragons were climbing, trying for the height advantage, but in the end it was all going to be much the same. As he started to make out the individual dragons ahead of him, as they filled the sky and filled his vision, Jehal urged Wraithwing on. Lead from the front. Show them how they make princes in Furymouth. For what it’s worth.. .

There were times, he thought, when you forgot how big a dragon was. How truly immense they were. You forgot when you rode them every day. When you took them for granted. When they weren’t anything more than a way to get from one place to another.

And then there were times when you remembered. Remembered they could swallow you whole and you wouldn’t even touch the sides.

The first rider he hit was still trying to climb, urging his dragon up. Wraithwing screamed over him and ripped everything off the dragon’s back. Riders, saddles, ropes everything, all strung together. He didn’t drop it though; instead Wraithwing swung the whole lot at another dragon, entangling its wings. It spiralled, crashed into another and the whole mess disappeared towards the ground. Jehal didn’t watch. The next dragon was right in front of him, had turned to meet him head to head. He flicked down his visor, pressed himself against Wraithwing’s scales and closed his eyes. Fire washed over him; a gale almost ripped him out of his saddle, and then he was still alive and that dragon was gone and now there was another, dropping on him from above. Black. They all looked black. Wraithwing rolled. For a second Jehal was upside down, the slabs of the Pinnacles hanging half a mile above his head. He lurched, helpless, as Wraithwing and the other dragon brushed past one another, and then it was gone, straight down, over his head, spreading its wings. Its tail curled like a whip as it passed to snap at him, but Wraithwing was still rolling, pulling him away from the danger. The tip missed him by about the span of a man’s arms, slapping Wraithwing’s side with enough force to jolt them both.

If that had been me… He’d seen men hit by the whip of a dragon’s tail before: sometimes in eyrie accidents, and Meteroa had always been fond of finding new ways of using his dragons to execute people. The result was… well, messy was about the only word for it.

Another dragon. A cloud of them. Everywhere. Moving so fast he couldn’t tell which was which. He caught glimpses of white streamers, some of them still tied to dragons, others fluttering uselessly in the air. Something huge and yellow shot over his head. Wraithwing twisted, but the dragon was one of their own. The yellow veered, bucking in the air. A dark brown hunter landed on its back, ripped its riders to pieces, then lunged away – but too slow. Wraithwing bathed it in fire, and as it flew away, saddle and harness disintegrated, flailing riders scattered into the air.

Why am I doing this? Jehal threw himself forward again as Wraithwing made a vicious half turn and swooped away from a pair of war-dragons. He plunged. For a moment, as they fell sideways, a severed head fell with them. Jehal had no idea whose it was.

Wraithwing levelled out for a moment. Jehal could feel the dragon’s joy, how it revelled in the fight.

Bits of someone’s saddle bounced off Wraithwing’s shoulders. Jehal risked a glance up, but all he saw was a seething, swarming mass of shapes, huge things that flashed and twisted and lit up with gouts of fire, while pieces of man and saddle and the occasional stricken beast rained down around him. Saw a flash of all that and then had his spine almost wrenched in half as Wraithwing arced into a tight loop and arrowed upside down into a gap between three other dragons, so close that the tip of a wing brushed Jehal’s head. He had no idea whether they were his or Zafir’s. Didn’t see if they had white streamers or painted bellies, Could hardly see a thing with the wind in his face unless he pulled his visor down, in which case he could hardly see a thing anyway. The sky everywhere was a roiling mass of dragons, the wind that roared at his ears warm with the heat of them.

A flash of fire. He pulled his visor down. Still alive a few seconds later, he lifted it up again. He looked for other dragons with white bellies, but looking for anything was almost impossible. He could barely lift his head off Wraithwing’s neck for long enough to work out which way up he was. The dragon looped and spiralled down, trading height for speed to keep him alive among a hundred other dragons doing just the same.

Should have ridden a hunter. They might be meant for chasing snappers, but those sharp manoeuvres are just the thing for piling into a cloud of, oh, how many enemy dragons? A few hundred, was it? Now won’t we all have a laugh if Hyrkallan has changed his mind at the last minute and broken off the attack, and it’s just me in here.

The tip of a wing swept overhead. Wraithwing pulled up short, crushing the air out of Jehal’s lungs, made another loop. Jehal caught a glimpse of six riders on the back of a huge war-dragon, three of them manning scorpions, before Wraithwing flipped over and almost landed on the back of it, obliterating them all with one savage sweep of his claws. Jehal didn’t even know they were there, didn’t even know whose side they were on. Didn’t have time to care. It was all Wraithwing now, picking and choosing. He was just a passenger now. Just keep me alive!

The war-dragon was plummeting towards the ground in forlorn pursuit of its riders. There. I’ve done my bit. Three of the enemy down. Play the numbers. Three for one and we’re bound to win, even if there aren’t really very many of us left to appreciate it. Can I go now? Play dead and leave?

Two white-bellied dragons arrowed down either side of him, one after the other. Riderless. Most of the battle was above him now. Not good to be down near the bottom. Death comes from above. The first rule of Principles.

A war-dragon came at them from the side, mouth open wide, fire building up inside its throat. Wraithwing rolled Jehal away, took the fire on his belly. That only put him in the path of a second dragon, which swung its head around and raked Wraithwing and Jehal alike with flames. Jehal snatched for his visor again. He snapped it down as the first blast of scorching air licked his face, then screamed in pain. His palm was on fire. He couldn’t see anything because of the visor. His good hand gripped Wraithwing’s scales. Burned. They’ve burned my hand off. Terror gripped him. If the fire had been hot enough to burn through the dragon-scale covering his gauntlets, what had it done to his saddle, to the ropes and straps that kept him on Wraithwing’s back?

He lifted the visor. A part of him, some little bit of murderous primitive, didn’t care a hoot about his hand. A part of him was loving every moment of this, almost singing out of sheer joy. This was a part that came from the dragons, from Wraithwing and all the other dragons around him. A battle madness. Principles had never mentioned that.

He managed to focus on his hand. His gauntlet was still there, the dragon-scale intact. The soft leather on the inside of his hand was black and crisped. He’d been still closing his visor when the fire came. Hadn’t closed his fist in time. Simple mistake, easily made, and that was that. He had no idea what his skin looked like underneath and no intention of finding out. Lobster-red with flakes of black most likely. He cursed. The pain was excruciating.

A moment to breathe. A moment of clear air. He tried to look, tried to see what was happening, who was winning, but everything was a whirlwind of madness. Dragons falling from the air, scores and scores of them, a rain of monsters in futile pursuit of their fallen riders. They all looked the same. Dark. Colours all lost in the wind and the blur, in sun and speed. The battle had become a swirling cloud, as high as a mountain, spread out over the three peaks of the Pinnacles. In some places the sky was almost empty. In others, dragons looped and snapped at each other in such tight circles and in such numbers that he couldn’t tell one apart from another. Overhead, three dragons slammed into each other, all their riders crushed and killed together. He watched the dragons plunge past him. Dark streaks flashed through the air. Scorpion bolts. The spent ones fell like a deadly rain on whatever lay below. Dragons, riders, the Silver City beneath. Thousands of them.