By the Silver Wind (53 page)

Smoke poured from the mauled entrance to the cavern.

Thank Tor.

“Vanir to me!” Ragna called.

“Vanir!” Vidar echoed. “Fly high!”

Swooping and diving to avoid the lashing wyrms, the Vanir began to cluster higher, drawing the wyrms higher, far away from the tunnel.

Shrieking and roars thundered across the Sun Isle. The birch trees quivered from the wind and from fierceness of the battle. The wyrms began to close on the ranks of flying Vanir.

Then, with a cry like Tyr himself, golden Kjorn shoved from the tunnel and took to the sky. Behind him poured the fresh, rested warriors of the Winderost, seeming huge and impossibly strong in the sunlight.

Brynja, Dagny, and others followed, bearing torches.

“Drive them up!” Kjorn bellowed. “Drive them away!”

The wyrms fell back from the clustered flock of Vanir, taking in the new threat with surprised snarls. Not too dull to realize they were outnumbered, they scattered and lashed out at the fresh arrivals with the ferocity of cornered beasts.

But they did not flee.

Warriors from the river tunnel sprinted to open ground or shoved straight up from the forest floor. Wings sliced the air, talons slashing as they formed into groups and sought targets.

“My queen,” Vidar said to Ragna over the wind. They had soared off twenty leaps from the main fighting, and Toskil had left them to join Keta and Ilse, who had flown out with the rest of the Aesir. “I beg you go to safety now. We’ve already lost too many, and we don’t know if more wyrms will come.”

Flapping hard, Ragna let her gaze slash the battle. Her Vanir had peeled off from her, still fighting, falling in with the Aesir, and heeding Kjorn’s orders now.

She looked to Vidar. “Send the elders and the young back into the tunnels. And be sure we fetch the dead.”

“I’ll see it done,” Vidar said. His eyes locked on hers, and in them she saw loss the loss of Einarr, again.

Before she could thank him, another sound broke through the chaos. A musical, hard, grating roar.

Hikaru.

Ragna spied the young dragon as he soared fast over the forest several leagues downriver, flashing silver like a serpent in the sky. At first her heart lifted at the sight of him, but behind him flew two more large gray wyrms, fangs open and claws grasping for the kill. Undulating toward the gryfons with impossible, whipping speed, he dove to join the fray.

The new gray wyrms clashed with the ranks of Aesir, and shrieks and battle cries shattered the air.

Vidar gasped at the sight, then snarled. “Please, Ragna, go. For us, and for Shard.”

Ragna saw he was right. With Kjorn there, they had a leader. Her presence would only distract and worry the Vanir, and if she fled, it would give others leave to as well—the injured, old, and young.

With a final, grateful look, Ragna left Vidar. She angled wide around the battle and back the way she’d come, to the smaller tunnel entrance farther upstream, so as not to block the last of Kjorn’s warriors from joining the battle.

She flew, and by the sound the fighting, thought Kjorn meant to drive the wyrms all the way back to Pebble’s Throw.

She didn’t realize at first, as she crawled through the narrow, muddy tunnel, that no other gryfons followed.

The caves were eerily quiet and smoky.

Ragna rushed to the tunnels where the pregnant gryfesses had sheltered, trying to put the battle from her mind. She passed others who exclaimed in relief to see her and found Sigrun, who was huddled with Thyra.

Gryfesses with warrior spirits like Thyra, like Kenna, were furious.

“I can’t believe Halvden flew again, with me like this!” Kenna snapped at Sigrun, pacing restlessly. “I’ll whelp his kit and join him!”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Sigrun said, her voice low and steady. “Keep walking. It will help the cramps.”

“I’ve felt worse,” Kenna said, and flicked her tail dismissively before rounding a bend out of their sight.

Astri bemoaned the loss of Dagr at her side, and one of Sigrun’s apprentices comforted her and didn’t move from her side, assuring her the copper gryfon would return after the battle.

Ragna wished she could make such promises. She and Sigrun switched attention to Thyra.

“My lady,” Ragna said. “How fare you?”

“It will be any time,” she said tightly, her gaze trained on the entryway to her little niche. Sigrun didn’t look at Ragna, but fussed around her daughter, pressing gentle talons to her belly. “Any time now.”

Struck, Ragna sat down near the entryway, watching the younger gryfess, and watching Sigrun. “Sigrun, how can I help you?”

The healer barely looked her way. “You can call them all back from this fool’s errand. I can’t believe you let them go. I can’t believe you joined them.”

“Let them? What was I to do, stand in the exit tunnel and block the way of dozens of healthy Vanir and half-bloods and Aesir warriors hungry to fight?”

“Yes,” Sigrun said shortly. “Maybe you could have stricken some sense into them. But instead, you go off to war. I have only two apprentices, with a dozen gryfesses about to whelp and all their wingsisters and mates off to battle. This shall be the merriest, bloodiest Halflight of our time. The kits will be battle-born, ill-fated, cursed to war again all their lives.”

“Sigrun,” Ragna said sharply, wondering how many of the pregnant gryfesses could hear her. She knew the healer was not actually angry with her, but with the situation. “I don’t believe that. And you know there was nothing else we could have done. The wyrms were digging in. What were we all to do?”

Sigrun’s pale-brown eyes seared her, then, as if Sigrun realized the true target of her own anger, softened. She only shook her head once, and turned back to examining Thyra, who tolerated it because she seemed to know Sigrun needed to keep busy. “I know. But I wish this hadn’t happened. And where is Shard?”

Where indeed?
Ragna thought, afraid for him, frustrated with herself for always feeling afraid. He was so like Baldr, she saw it clearly. Off in his own dreams, seeing things no one else saw, drawing together purposes no one else perceived. She could not follow him on those winds, but she trusted that he had to fly them.

For the next long, stretch of time, Ragna remained with her wingsister, helping to tend the gryfesses. For a time, they heard the riotous clash of battle outside, muffled by distance and stone, but near enough to send chills down their backs.

Then it fell quieter, but no gryfons returned. Ragna wondered if Kjorn had truly continued the push, pursuing the wyrms to Pebble’s Throw. She distracted herself with Sigrun. She fetched herbs, moss soaked with water for the thirsty. She told any gryfess who would listen the tale of her own whelping, and assured them their kits would be born healthy, fat and strong.

Marks of the sun stretched on, in the dark, and foreboding closed cold wings on her heart.

Kjorn and his warriors should have returned. The Vanir should have returned.

“He’s pursued them,” Sigrun muttered darkly, coming up on Ragna’s side as she stood, staring toward the tunnel entrance. “He didn’t just want to drive them off, he wanted to fight them. I guarantee you, he’s taken every willing warrior and flown to Pebble’s Throw to fight them.”

“I should be with them,” Ragna whispered. “I shouldn’t have left them.”

Sigrun touched a wing to hers. “Ragna. My friend. I don’t doubt your skill in battle, but this is an enemy like no other. What good would it do the Vanir if you’d been slain?”

With that, she left quietly as the howl of a whelping gryfess cut the cool, smoky air. Ragna stood locked, wanting to stay and help, wanting to rejoin her warriors.

“My lady.” Caj’s voice relieved Ragna of staring into the dark. She turned to him as he approached down one of the tunnels.

“If you will,” Caj said quietly, “he asked to see you. He’s where we left him, in the cavern.”

She didn’t have to ask who
he
was. She drew a bracing breath, and nodding, walking past Caj, along the tunnels, through the great cavern where she and Kjorn had rallied the prides. Passing down another tunnel, at last she found him.

To all appearances, Sverin had not moved from the spot where he’d held his conversation with Kjorn. Through all the preparations, gryfons coming and going to make sturdy, sap torches, rallying whatever gryfons would fight the wyrms, the hours of battle, Sverin had remained in the small cavern, on his belly on the ground.

He looked up when Ragna entered. “You didn’t go to the battle.”

“I did,” she said. “And returned. The Vanir were only to harry the wyrms away from the entrance to give room for Kjorn to attack. Now, they have followed your son on to further glorious war.”

Some of Sigrun’s bitterness crept into her voice. She didn’t know if this battle was what Shard wanted. She didn’t think so, but she didn’t know if she should care anymore. For so long she had waited for him.

She had waited, waited.

“I see.” His gaze was too keen.

He was silent, laying there like a large, red stone, his gaze searching.

“Caj said you asked to see me.” Her tail ticked, back and forth, her talons flexed on the cold rock floor.

“Yes.”

Slowly, and ominously, Sverin pushed to his feet. He seemed taller to her, impossible in the cave, as if he wouldn’t have fit coming in. A trick of the light, the smoke in the air, her own nerves.

“You once told me that you admired the way I love my son.”

“I do.” She worked not to hold her breath, not to back away or flare her wings. She didn’t understand what he wanted from her. “I always will.”

“Now, he battles an enemy that I should have defeated in my youth, not fled from and caused a generation of misery.”

“Sverin,” she said, “speak plainly, and quickly, in this dark hour, I beg you.”

He lifted his wings a little, and they caught the faint light, stirred the smoke. “My son has exiled me from the Dawn Spire. I will not live the remainder of my life as a prideless rogue, and so, I ask to serve you. Let me live at the edge of your pride, as you lived at the edge of mine, but let me live, and serve.”

Ragna stared at him.

Then she laughed.

It was all she could manage. The bitter, hard sound cascaded up and down the rock, and Ragna barely managed to keep from flinging at him with beak and talon in a wash of angry disbelief. “You’re mocking me.”

“You saw me bow to Shard. I was not mocking him. I’m not mocking you now. Let me serve. And more, I ask your blessing to go to battle.”

“Battle.”

“Yes.” He spread his wings, and from tip to tip they nearly filled the cavern. He looked like the king he had never, ever been. “What good am I if, in these hours, I cannot practice my single, admirable quality for my queen? Let me go to battle, and protect my son.”

The tightness of regret, of anger, and of something else closed her throat for a moment. He watched her face, and for the first time since she had known him, the severity in his eyes was not cold, but hot, like the sun.

“You have my blessing,” she said, very softly. She didn’t remind him that he had fled the last time he had seen the wyrms. She saw something new and fierce shining through him. She saw love, and she thought it might be enough to help him remember who he was when he faced the wyrms.

Or, at the very least, who he wished to be.

“Sverin,” she said quietly. “I think, if we had met in another time . . . we might have been friends.”

“Oh, if.” His expression quirked. He mantled, then folded his great wings, and turned toward the exit tunnel. Ragna moved to follow and he stopped, swiveling his head to see her. “Where are you going?”

She growled low. “I have fled from a fight too many times in my life. I won’t do it again. I too will fight this battle.”

He watched her, sizing her up, looking as if he might object, and she waited for him to remember he had just pledged to serve her. “If there comes a choice,” he said, his voice so low and gravelly she barely heard, “in the battle, of who to help, I will choose Kjorn.”

“As it should be,” she said, meeting his gaze. “I have always chosen Shard.”

Behind them, a cry pierced the cave, another of the gryfesses to begin labor. Sverin’s gaze flickered, hardened.

Battle-born,
Ragna thought, though she disagreed with Sigrun that they would be ill-fated.
They will be stronger,
she decided, as if she could decide.
All their kits will be stronger than their parents, as we were stronger than ours, committed to peace because they were born in war. They will be better than us all.

For a moment they stood in the half darkness of the cavern, looking at each other, not saying more, then when another cry echoed their way, Sverin turned to the tunnel, and Ragna followed him up into the dark.

C
LAWING AT HIS DREAM-PRISON
, Shard battered at Rhydda with images of pity, with pleading, and with apology. He should not have reminded her of the wyrm’s horrible death in the Winderost. She remained obstinate, spiteful, and silent.

Then, after a stretch of time Shard could not perceive, something flicked at the edge of her awareness.