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

Legbreaker. They called it that for a reason. He screamed again. His whole back was roaring agony. His leg, the leg where Shezira had shot him, felt as though he’d almost ripped it out of its socket. He’d thought the wound was healed, at least as healed as it would ever get, but apparently not.

Wraithwing tucked in his wings and dived through the cloud of fighting dragons. The wind picked Jehal up and tossed him around like a doll, battering him against the dragon’s scales. Jehal yelled and screamed and shouted but he couldn’t hear himself over the storm of air, invisible fingers clenched around him like a giant hand, smashing him over and over against the dragon as though he was a nut and it was trying to crack him open, each blow slamming the life out of him piece by piece. Not for long, though. They’d get to the ground; Wraithwing would spread his wings and stop, and then either the rope would be too long and he’d be dashed to pieces on the ground, or else his leg would rip clean off and then he’d be dashed to pieces on the ground. He’d have found it ironic if he wasn’t too busy drowning in waves of pain and a wind that tore the air right out of his lungs.

As they plunged away from the roiling battle everything broke into pieces. He saw flashes of this, flashes of that, found himself lost in memories of far-off places with lovers now dead, then jerked back to pounding smashing roaring agony. Eventually he stopped screaming. He wasn’t sure when because the wind roared so loud he couldn’t hear anything else.

Wraithwing levelled out, circling towards the closest of the three monoliths that made up the Pinnacles, and the wind lost its will to shatter Jehal against the dragon’s side. Even the pain seemed to give up, reduced to agony that was merely like having his leg hacked at with a rusty saw. Which, compared to what it had been before, was as good as no pain at all.

He couldn’t see much of the battle any more. Didn’t matter. Hadn’t made much sense when he’d been the right way up, so it wasn’t going to make any now. They weren’t alone, that’s all he knew. Dragons were falling all around him. Riderless. Some with white bellies, some without. Half and half. Hard to tell who was winning. If you could count slaughtering almost an entire generation of dragon-riders in a single battle as winning at all. What if there aren’t enough riders left to collect all the fallen dragons, eh? Jeiros isn’t going to like that very much, is he, eh? Nothing like someone else’s misery to take your mind off your own. He watched with a dull interest. Still need to ask him why he can’t just make more of his bloody potions.

Yes. That helps. Let’s make a mental list of all the things I can crack on with once I’m on my feet again.

Nice try. But how exactly is that going to happen? Are we going to hover over the ground while I dangle helplessly, waiting for someone to come and cut me loose? Every dragon-rider was taught what you were supposed to do in this situation, but always with a twinkle in the eye from their teacher, as if to say, Don’t bother with this. Nothing ever gets this bad without you being already dead. First choice was to pull your knees into your chest, grab hold of the rope with your hands and pull yourself up hand over hand until you reached the place where the rope was tied around the dragon’s neck. Then haul yourself up onto the back of the dragon and ride it bareback to the ground. Jehal struggled to count how many things were wrong with that. Climbing a rope hanging from a beam in a nice sheltered learning hall is all very well, but not much like climbing one with a dragon and the wind both trying to knock you off. Not quite the same thing, uncle. Silvallan once said that they took his riders out to a bridge across a gorge in the worst storms of the year, tied a rope around them and threw them off. Seemed like idiocy at the time. And then there’s the bit about riding the dragon bareback all the way home. Has anyone ever actually done that? Because if they have, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it. How does that work, exactly? How do you stay on? And even if you can stay on when it’s flying, how do you stay on when you land, eh?

All of which would be interesting to find out about and a vast improvement over his current position. His main problem was the first bit, the bit about pulling your knees to your chest to get your hands on the rope. He simply couldn’t do it. He could get about halfway and then the pain was so much that even screaming wasn’t any relief any more and he thought he might pass out. After the third effort, he had to admit defeat.

Second choice. Wait until you’re almost down, then cut the rope with a knife to fall and land in something soft, water being the obvious option. Pity we’re over a hundred miles from the sea. A lake then or a river. The Fury wasn’t all that far away, was it? There were canals too, in the Silver City. Oh, but wait. I’m wearing dragon-scale armour, as a rider always does. So, let’s suppose for a moment that there is some water, what happens when I fall in it? Oh yes. I drown. Marvellous. Thank you for that one, uncle.

They were falling towards Zafir’s capital, the Silver City, which spread out between the three Pinnacles. Dragons still rained from the sky. Can’t be nice to be down there. First you get a few thousand scorpion bolts raining down. Then bits of rider and saddle and the scorpions themselves falling around your head, and then a couple of minutes later there’s dragons everywhere, stomping about looking for the remains of their riders, wailing and shrieking their heads off. How long do they keep looking? Hard to imagine they’re particularly careful about what they tread on either.

He didn’t know, and if anyone else did, they weren’t here to ask. Not that it made any difference. The Silver City hardly counted as a soft landing.

He checked his belt for a knife. He had that at least. And then it occurred to him that to cut the rope he’d have to reach it with his hands. Which meant pulling his knees to his chest, that thing he couldn’t do, and he was right back to where he started. Dead. He tried to be philosophical about it, but that turned out to be really hard when it felt like someone had beaten you from head to toe with a hammer and was now busy rubbing various ends of broken leg-bone against each other. Shouting and screaming didn’t really change anything. Cursing didn’t help either. Felt rather futile. A bit like shouting at a dragon.

He was a bit blurry on how the afterlife was supposed to work. Your ancestors supposedly hung around in some sort of limbo, keeping half an eye on you, offering a little guidance here and there, maybe making subtle adjustments to fate and destiny. This had always seemed to Jehal at best a hobby for a few of the newly dead who really needed to keep themselves busy for a while, and most likely something that would be neglected entirely. Wouldn’t the dead have better things to do? Although he’d never given much thought to what those things might be.

Zafir has probably murdered Lystra. This way maybe I get to see her again.

The ground came slowly closer. Wraithwing was now gliding in gentle circles and the wind had let go of him. It was almost quiet. Almost peaceful. Almost. If he ignored the distant falling dragons and the fires starting in the city below.

All the people I murdered, will they be waiting? Hyram, Aliphera, are you watching me now? My father. My brother, my sisters, my mother, my ever-loyal uncle, Meteroa. I’m sure he’s told you all that I was the one who played with Calzarin’s madness. Are you all waiting for me? What about all the people who died at Evenspire? The Red Riders? The people dying here and now? Are you there?

No. Maybe he didn’t want to die just yet. Prayers were for fools – he’d believed that for as long as he could remember – but he prayed now, prayed to any of his ancestors who might be in the mood to listen and forgive him. Prayed to the old gods that no one except the dragon-priests worshipped any more. Prayed to anyone who might listen.