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

He sighed. Part of what he had to do was to listen to Vioros. Vioros, whose errand to Valleyford had proved even more futile than either of them had expected. Vioros, who had reported that Valleyford and Arys Crossing and Hammerford were as good as dead, and yet had some absurd tale of dragons turned to stone spilling out of his mouth. ‘Tell me again. From the start.’ Vioros wasn’t one for flights of fancy, so he was probably telling him things that mattered, but still

… He tried to listen this time, but his mind simply wouldn’t sit still. A thousand dragons. And we can’t control them any more.

Vioros was keeping something back, Jeiros could tell that much. He waited patiently and then put a hand gently on his shoulder. ‘Dragons turned to stone? And how, old friend, with all that we know, is such a thing possible?’

Vioros shook the hand away. He was pacing. Fast and agitated. Not himself at all. ‘The Adamantine Men call the Speaker’s Spear the Dragonslayer. Why?’

Ah. So that’s what this is. Jeiros shook his head. Why does it have to all happen now? ‘It’s a story, Vioros. There’s no truth in it. The dragon Narammed slew was poisoned. The spear struck dead flesh. It was myth made by the likes of you and I to put Narammed on his throne.’

‘Then there are two vast statues newly built in Hammerford that I saw with my own eyes and that I cannot explain.’ Vioros took a deep breath. Jeiros watched him struggle with himself as he sat down again. ‘After I saw Valleyford, I thought for bit that I might not come back.’ He gestured at the sea of dragons scattered across the plains in the shadow of the Pinnacles. ‘There are woken dragons in the Worldspine. We can’t even control the ones we have. We’re torn apart by war. I thought I might go to Furymouth. I could sell myself to the Taiytakei. They’d pay for what I know, wouldn’t they? Or for what you know, for that matter.’

Jeiros nodded.

‘But we took an oath to protect the realms no matter what the cost. If not you and I, then who will do it? The Night Watchman? He has the courage and the will but not the means. The kings and queens of the realms? They have the means but not the will. The joke that passes for our speaker? If he has the will, I doubt he has the courage. So if not us, who? Who protects the little folk? That’s why I came back. That’s why I didn’t run away. Master, there is something in Hammerford that kills dragons. What can you do here that can’t wait another day?’

Jeiros got up. Nothing at all, that’s the honest answer. I’ve got nothing to look forward to except a day spent sitting around fretting, twiddling my thumbs. Waiting for the night to fall so that I can do what needs to be done when no one will see.

Given what he had in mind for the night, there was a good chance this would be his last day alive. One more flight on the back of a dragon might be nice. Even knowing what he did, they were still magnificent creatures, mastery of them the greatest achievement in the history of the realms. He might as well enjoy it while he still could. He let Vioros lead him out to the eyrie, where perhaps a hundred Scales were struggling to manage ten times their number of dragons and slowly failing. Jeiros could see the irritation beginning to creep into the beasts, the ones who hadn’t been fed. They could smell the slaughter in the air but there simply weren’t enough animals to feed them. No one was even bothering to try and save the city; it had been burning ever since the battle. Jeiros distantly wondered who’d set it on fire, whether it had been Hyrkallan’s dragons or Zafir’s. Zafir seemed to have been scorching the earth around her, so probably her then. To the people who lived there, he supposed, the who really didn’t matter. There were a lot of angry and homeless folk milling around the edges of the eyrie, raising their fists in mute hostility. They were probably getting hungry too. Jeiros looked down on them as he soared up into the air. Hundreds. Thousands. Half a city full of angry people congregating around a legion of hungry dragons. Stupidity like that made you want to shout at someone, but that probably meant he’d have to shout at himself.

He didn’t want to think about the other half. With luck they’d had the sense to melt away. More likely they’d burned in the fires. No, best not to think about that. He closed his eyes for a few long seconds and then looked at the sky and the sprinkled shreds of cloud. Flying could be so peaceful. Sometimes he could even forget what it was that was carrying him. It wasn’t far to Hammerford. Sixty or seventy miles in a straight line from the Pinnacles, a hundred miles by road. Half a twelvenight on foot or by cart, three or four days on the back of a horse, or a couple of hours on the back of a dragon. A couple of hours with nothing to do but savour the world, to feel what it was to be alive. He lifted his visor, then took off his helm and threw it away, let the wind tear at his hair and blow tears into his eyes. The sky was a deep blue, the sun bright and warm, the wind cold and fresh. From this height the world seemed so quiet and still, as long as he didn’t look back at the brown smudge of smoke that hung between the Pinnacles. The rolling fields of the Harvest Queen shone in vivid greens and yellows. Blotches of darker woodland sat scattered among them. Even from a dozen miles away, the valley of the Fury was clear, the wide waters gleaming in the sun. To the north the land rose towards the Gliding Dragon Gorge and the Hungry Mountain Plains beyond, all too far away and lost in the haze.

For those who travelled by land, the Fury was a vast obstacle. Jeiros stared at the river as they flew over it. On the ground it seemed enormous. From the back of a dragon it didn’t seem that big at all. Further north, where it came out of the Worldspine and carved its massive scar across the realms, it looked impressive. Here? Half a mile wide? Nothing. To the south the air seemed clearer. He fancied that with a Taiytakei farscope that actually worked, he would have been able to see the hill of Purkan more than a hundred miles away, maybe even Valin’s Fields beyond. Peaceful and quiet, all of it. For a while he chose to forget that most likely they would all soon burn.

Hammerford shattered all that. The town was worse than he’d imagined. The fires were out and the smoke was gone, but the air, even hundreds of feet above the ruins, still smelled of burned wood and ash. He could see the stone dragons, just about, after Vioros had done lots of pointing and shouting. They looked tiny, but as his dragon circled lower, Jeiros could see they were everything Vioros had said. One of a dragon rearing up on its back legs, tail coiled back over its head and around its neck, the last tip wrapped around in a circle as though it was holding something and had brought it closer to have a good look. The other dragon lay in the water at the edge of the river, wings outstretched. Its tail pointed up slightly while its head and neck disappeared into the water as though it had toppled forward. Shattered boats bobbed against it. All that was left of the waterfront was wreckage. Not burned, Jeiros noted. Pity you can’t say the same for the rest of the town.

Vioros brought his dragon in to land as close as he could to the edge of what was left of the town. Jeiros thought he saw a few people moving in the streets, but they quickly scurried for cover. The smell almost made him retch. Dead people. Burned. Bits of them, hundreds of them. Scattered everywhere.

Other dragons landed around him, the riders and soldiers that Vioros had brought as escort. Not to protect the townsfolk from anything, but to protect the alchemists from any angry mob that might form and demand to know who had destroyed their lives. Jeiros made himself take a good long look. This is what we swore to stop. These are the people we swore to protect, from exactly this. There were other towns like this, mercifully out of sight – Arys Crossing. Felporsford. Beeve’s Brook, Valleyford of course. All burned out. All towns as big as this or bigger.