By the Silver Wind (55 page)

Her horned head swung back and forth, surveying the battle, as if she hunted. She didn’t notice him.

With a beat of his wings he was even with the underside of her neck, every muscle tense and every feather working to keep even and coordinated and silent.

Kjorn spied the paler, loose skin of her throat, flexing as she drew great gusts of air. He gathered his courage and timed his wing beats with hers. Then, he plunged forward along her underside, his wings flashing in the torchlight.

In that instant, she heard, or smelled, or saw him, and jerked her head in surprise. Kjorn hurtled under her neck and flipped upside down around to latch talons, beak, and hind-claws onto her throat.

She snapped her head back with a gut-curdling roar.

Kjorn’s talons pierced her skin, his beak tore, but he tasted no blood. Her throat was protected by layers and layers of loose, leathery, calloused hide.

He wrenched, latching on like a mountain cat as she whipped her head back and forth. She didn’t swipe claws at him—perhaps afraid of ripping her own throat to shreds. Kjorn held fast, certain this was his only chance, certain that letting go would mean death.

Someone was shouting at him.

Shard.

Relief at having backup, and terror for his friend’s safety swept him. Then shame. He had launched this losing battle, and now Shard was fighting too. He clenched his talons tighter on the iron hide, scrabbling his hind claws to seek some weak spot.

The wiry Vanir smashed into Rhydda’s shoulders and she jerked into a hard roll, and the force of it yanked Kjorn’s beak loose. Claws the length of his forelegs closed around him with eerie precision and yanked him loose, clutching him in a single paw like a fish. Kjorn bucked and tried to flare his wings, and she tightened her grip.

“Shard!” Kjorn shouted. “Get away!”

Shard snapped his beak, clinging to the monster’s wing joints as she hurtled through the air. “What were you thinking—”

The claws began to squeeze harder. Kjorn swore, gasping for breath. Pinprick pain began in his shoulders and his hind legs. She would crush him, and she would do it slowly.

“Shard—”

Shard scrabbled madly at the she-wyrm’s neck, then bounded along the length of her, swiping talons toward her eyes. She flared to a hard stop and flung up her claws, as if to warn Shard that she held Kjorn, and could break him.

She’s not stupid, she’s . . .

Red pulsed at Kjorn’s vision. He saw Shard drop free. Then the wyrm’s massive jaws opened before him, blaring hot, acrid breath, and baring bloody fangs.

Kjorn heard Shard shrieking. Begging, as if she could understand him.

She squeezed, and Kjorn coughed.
Live by war . . .

A feral, shrieking roar broke through Kjorn’s breathless dizziness. For one heartbeat, he thought he saw bright Tyr blazing above him, all blood and fire.

Then he shook his vision clear in time to watch Sverin slam into the she-wyrm’s horned head.

She dropped Kjorn with a thrashing snap of her entire body, trying to throw the red gryfon from her face. Kjorn fell away, gasping. Pain dazzled across his wings, but they were not broken. He flapped hard, righting himself, and Shard was there at his side.

“Kjorn, are you—”

“I’m sorry,” Kjorn breathed. “I had to, they attacked—”

“I know.”

Sverin’s second roar turned the focus of battle.

Gryfon heads raised, some torches dropped, the smaller, screaming wyrms gathered to flock up to their queen, now that they realized she was in danger.

Halvden, Asvander, Ketil, and Brynja screamed orders, and the gryfons formed a flying wall between the wyrms and Rhydda. Kjorn saw Nilsine soaring fast along the ranks of the Aesir, repeating Asvander’s orders, and watched as the gryfons flocked to form lines in her wake, a net of gryfons to stop the wyrms from rising any higher. Fraenir, flying close to Rok, broke formation and launched straight at a wyrm’s head.

Shard croaked in horror, and Kjorn whipped his head about to see his father, challenging the she-wyrm alone.

“Rhydda!” bellowed the red gryfon, and his voice had changed—clear, hard, and mighty. Kjorn had never, ever heard his voice sound so clear. “If I am the one you seek, let us end this!”

The stars edged Sverin’s wings in silver, and the torchlight shone on him and seemed to turn his scarlet wings to fire.

The dragon blessing, Kjorn thought wildly, stupidly. He beat his wings harder, meaning to join him.

“Kjorn, fly!” Sverin shouted. “Stay back!”

Shard was speaking to him, but Kjorn could only hover, catching his breath, trying to clear his head.

All that you are will be more so.

Rhydda bellowed and Sverin whipped around her, swiping his talons at her eyes. She ducked her head and lurched up over him, swinging her tail. Sverin fell deftly away, avoiding the deadly spade, but too slow to avoid her claws when she stooped and slashed at his wings, once, twice. Red feathers rained down.

Sverin smashed into her shoulders and she wrenched hard, whipping her head around and gnashing her jaws. Her fangs snapped closed just as Sverin jerked back, shoving up and slapping her eyes with his wings.

She screamed and shook her head. Sverin banked tightly to slash at her neck as Kjorn had done, but his talons left long, red marks. Rhydda shrieked and flapped over him again, swinging fore-claws and hind-claws to try knocking Sverin from the sky.

In turn he smashed into her again, again, slashing, his talons scoring her hide and leaving her bleeding as no other gryfon talons had done.

“Leave this place!
Your war is done!”

Rhydda swiped her claws through the air as Sverin dove again at her long, muscled neck. He dodged that swipe but she snagged him in her other forepaw just as she had Kjorn.

That brought Kjorn to his senses.

With a battle cry, Kjorn lunged up to help his father. He had lost all other track of the battle raging below.  Shard flew up shortly behind him.

Rhydda’s tail cut the air in front of them, and they were forced back. Kjorn tried to maneuver around while Shard split from him flew up, as if he might be able to distract her, but her flailing horns made that a dangerous task.

Kjorn dropped below the lashing tail and circled wide, planning to fly up and dive at her head from above.

Sverin thrashed in the clawed grip and shouted his rage. Rhydda squeezed. Kjorn flung caution aside and lunged high, talons raised. Sverin saw him. Then, with a terrible roar and a hard, whipping roll, Sverin shoved Rhydda’s claws apart.

As he fell loose, he yelled hoarsely, “Kjorn, no, flee!”

Kjorn hesitated, and spied Shard, circling fast above all of them. Rhydda’s jaws snapped forward and Sverin fell under her, wings thrashing and claws scrabbling, to cling to her throat as Kjorn had done. Kjorn’s heart crammed up to the back of his throat, and for a moment he thought his father would slay the giant beast.

But then Rhydda’s spade coiled up and lashed down, slicing clear from one red ear and down Sverin’s neck, under a wing to his hind leg.

His scream halted Kjorn’s heart.

His talons lashed up and out one last time, scouring four deep, red trails down Rhydda’s face. With a shocked, angry bellow, Rhydda grabbed Sverin in her claws, and flung him toward the sea.

Kjorn gasped a single, hard breath. Blinded to all else in the world, he dove.

S
VERIN PLUMMETED TOWARD THE
waves. Kjorn dropped from Shard’s sight like a rock, diving after his father.

Enraged, Shard filled his chest and bellowed a lion's roar.

“RHYDDA.”

Apparently stunned by Sverin’s ability to bloody her, at last her mind cracked open to Shard a fraction. It was enough.

Shard’s mind flashed around hers, dreaming together again, awake, as he had with the priestess of the Vanhar. His thoughts slipped over hers as they had in the Winderost, as they had in his dream earlier that evening.

He clung there, clung to her thoughts, to her mind.

She saw gryfons, gryfons, the enemy, all around.

“Rhydda!” His voice saying her name was like a crystal talon piercing through all else in her mind. It pierced through her triumph, through her anger.

Below them, the battle raged, with Hikaru leading Asvander and Kjorn’s main force of battle-seasoned Aesir against the largest of the wyrms to block them from coming to her aid.

“
You are Named,
” Shard called to Rhydda, whipping about her head to keep her attention on him. Perhaps, in the dark and the rising cold, he could even wear out the wyrm queen as he had Asvander, what felt like so long ago. “
Answer me!
”

Wrathful, she shook her head as if to fling Shard from her thoughts, and he dodged around, keeping close to her body, keeping just out of reach of her flashing claws and her whipping tail. If he lost her now, he knew he would lose her forever.

He stopped shouting, and flew hard, winging around her head. Focusing on his flight, he tried to see and grasp at the dream net, to weave something to get through to her. Claws swiped a talon’s breadth from his tail-feathers, and his focus disintegrated.

He tried again as he fell away, slapping together a dream of her landing peacefully on the shore of Pebble’s Throw. Her jaws snapped a single leap from his head. He ducked and soared beneath her long, leathery body, trying to piece together an image of Sverin, to make her regret. Her wings nearly knocked him from the black air, her hot breath rustled his wings, and he had to dodge back.

The dream net slipped away, away. He couldn’t craft a dream while dodging her swiping claws and snapping fangs.

At the risk of losing her attention, Shard flew high, higher into the frigid air, and to his amazement she didn’t follow. Perhaps she knew the freezing wind would tire her.

Her gaze dipped to the battle which now fell into disarray, gryfons in ragged, desperate clumps, and the wyrms gleefully scattered among them, lashing and fighting without order or apparent purpose.

Clear of physical danger, Shard fashioned dreams. With the cold wind in his face, he was able to focus, to draw strength and hope from the moon and the wind and the stars in the night.

He had one last chance, and he knew what to do, for he realized had shown Rhydda all the wrong things, before. With Kjorn’s scream of sorrow and Sverin’s blazing, heroic effort, Shard realized he had shown her injustice and death and anger.

He had shown her what they fought against, but hadn’t shown her what all of them fought
for
.

So he formed and image of Kjorn and himself as kits, playing under Sverin’s watchful eye.

Confusion, blood and stone pressed back at him in her mind. Shard took a long breath, feeling stronger, and dove to be nearer her again.

At the same time he flung memories of Kjorn standing proudly at his father’s side. He made up a vision of Sverin looking lovingly at his mate, and showing her death in the sea.

Rhydda lumbered about in the air, seeking him with eyes he knew now were actually weak in the dark. As Shard winged around her, the spade tail coiled and flipped out at him, nearly severing his head.

He drowned her in a vision of Sverin flying, mighty and bold, to protect his son, then showed her flying over her own brood in the same manner.

She slowed.

She did not strike.

Shard realized, panting hard, that he had shown her pain and loss, but not love.

Rhydda . . .

Confusion and anger stopped her from attacking. She tried to feel triumph at Sverin’s fall, and Shard swept it away, showing her Kjorn, diving toward the sea after his father.

Call them off.

A memory of one of her dreams came to him, of her brood full and sleeping all together in a warm, satisfied bunch. He painted that over the battle.
We can have this.

Safety, warmth, love. Full bellies and good hunting.

Or this.

He showed her more gryfons and more wyrms falling and dying in the sea. His own heart clutched at him.

His carefully crafted dream swirled among her chaotic, furious thoughts. He pressed it to her, showing again the years, the dragons, the generations of a grudge that should have been long done. Kajar. Per. Sverin. Sverin, falling to the sea. Her own wyrms drowning in the waves.

Or she could end it, and go home. Home, to those green, green hills that he’d seen in her dreams.

In a single, blazing moment, his offer and his images and his plea seared to comprehension in her mind. After so long of muddy, angry darkness, the sudden, crystal brightness of her understanding knocked Shard from her mind and he fell away in the sky, gasping.

Out of the dream net, under the stars, with fresh wind bringing him clarity, Shard realized that Rhydda was sinking. Her wing beats slowed, but not from cold.

End this.

Land.

Call them off.

He showed healthy wyrms, fleeing to the warm lava of Pebble’s Throw. Leaving. Waiting for his word to do anything else, touching nothing, killing nothing, making no noise.

A hot, steady rumbling met his ears, like a chant.

It was Rhydda, thrumming deep in her throat. She snapped her great wings and turned sharply from Shard. Her mind was a rush of understanding, anger and blood and gold.

Shard stabbed at her with feelings of regret, with pain.

But then, hope. Shining hope burned the rest away.

I understand all you lost.

Now you understand.

Wind rushed him, the heady wind of wings rushing all around him. Wyrms. The wyrms broke from the mass of exhausted gryfons and retreated, following their queen.

Shard beat his wings against the air, his mind whirling through Rhydda’s, until someone called his name.

Many gryfons called his name.

Ragna called his name. Brynja called to him.

He snapped back into awareness to hear broken cheers, to see that the wyrms were fully retreating toward Pebble’s Throw.

Stay there,
he thought, wrapping the words in iron in Rhydda’s mind. He didn’t feel that he held or controlled her, but only that she understood.