Pillars of Dragonfire (6 page)

Bim eyed the scrawny
rabbit in Til's hands. "If there are others."

"There are,"
Til promised. "We have to believe."

Because what else is
left to us?
she thought.
If not for this hint of hope, we might as well
doff our cloaks, lie down in the snow, and let the cold seize us. We have to
believe there are others. We have to keep moving.

They kept walking until
they found a valley, the canopy a thick latticework above, perhaps thick enough
to disperse the smoke of a fire. It was colder here in the shade, and Til could
not stop shivering, but she set camp near a fallen log. She and her brother
spent a few moments collecting firewood and arranging a small campfire. Ice
coated the branches; no tinderbox or kindling would ignite them, Til knew. She
glanced around, stood silently, and listened. She heard nothing. No seraphim.
No sounds of pursuit.

Finally she nodded,
inhaled deeply, and summoned her magic.

She rarely became a
dragon anymore. Dragons were large and loud. Flying above, they puffed out
smoke, visible for miles. Even walking through the forest, their scales
clattered, their large bodies rustled the trees, and the smoke from their
nostrils left a trail. Yet now she allowed the orange scales to flow across
her, allowed fire to fill her jaws. She spent a few moments puffing out weak
flames, melting the ice around the branches, until finally the campfire burned.
Then she became human again.

They sat on the fallen
log by the fire, warming their fingers, and cooked the rabbit. There was barely
any meat on the bones. Even the wildlife of Requiem was gaunt, struggling to
survive.

"On the southern
coast, the meat is rich and fatty," Til said, gnawing on a bone.
"There are plump bison and fish so large they can feed a family for a
week."

Bim snapped a rabbit
bone in two and sucked on it. "There will be seraphim there too."

"Not as
many." Til waved her hands over the campfire, trying to disperse the
smoke, to scatter a single plume that could rise and alert others to their presence.
"The Overlord lives here in the north, and most of the battles were fought
here. The south has always been the backwater of Requiem, even in the glory
days before the seraphim arrived. A quiet place. A few others survive there;
I'm sure of it. Warmth. Food. Safety."

"But not for
Father." Bim lowered his head. "He won't ever see the south."

Til tossed her rabbit
bone into the fire. She moved closer and sat beside Bim on the fallen log,
wrapped her arm around him, and rested her cheek on the top of his head. She
stroked his hair.

"Have you heard
the tales of Kyrie Eleison?" she asked him.

Bim nodded. "You
told them a million times."

"Then I'll tell
them a million and one times. He's our ancestor; we're directly descended of
his lineage. When he was a boy, he was lost here in this wilderness. He thought
he was the last Vir Requis, the only survivor of the griffins who had crushed
Requiem. Three thousand years ago, he traveled through these very forests,
seeking others. His family dead. His belly empty. The enemy flying
everywhere."

Bim sighed. "Your
story isn't making me feel better."

"But Kyrie found
others." Til squeezed her brother against her. "He found a new
family, new hope. In the darkness, he lit a new light, and Requiem rose again.
Now we are in darkness. Now we are alone. Now we struggle to find new life, new
hope. And I believe, Bim, that Requiem will rise again. That King's Column will
be cleansed and rededicated, that many other columns will rise around it, that
dragons will fly in the open again. Father believed too. That's why he wanted
us to go south. To seek others."

Bim lowered his head.
"But those are just old stories. What if there are no others? What if . .
. what if we're the last?"

"There are
others." Til took his head in her hands, turned it toward her, and stared
into his eyes. "Countless Vir Requis live across the southern sea, in the
heartland of Saraph, though they are chained and collared and cannot become
dragons. But they live too, and they pray. They pray to rebuild Requiem. Our
nation still lives, all over the world, and our prayers still rise to the
stars. We grieve. We hurt. We shiver in the cold. But we do not give up, Bim.
Not so long as our legs can walk and our hearts can beat."

Bim frowned. "I
hear something."

At first Til heard
nothing. She stiffened, cocked her head, listening . . . but heard only the
wind creaking the trees, the crackling fire, and—

There. She heard it.

The shuffling of snow.
Padding feet. A snort and heavy breathing. The sounds came from all sides, and
yet no light of halos or chariots filled the forest. The sun was dimming,
shadows falling. The sniffing rose louder.

Wolves?
she
thought, reaching for her bow.

Bim stiffened at her
side, drawing an arrow. Slowly, the siblings rose to their feet, weapons
raised, staring from side to side.

From the shadowy forest
they emerged, and Til cringed.

"Serpopards,"
she said.

The creatures were
vaguely feline, but larger than any cat Til had ever seen, larger even than
horses. Their fur was black and bristly, their paws tipped with claws. Their
necks coiled upward, longer than Til was tall, tipped with the heads of
lionesses. The creatures growled, baring their fangs, and slinked forward from
all sides. Til counted five of them, forming a ring around the camp.

"Seraph
pets," Bim said, moving his arrow from side to side.

Til had seen such
creatures before from a distance. Back during the uprising, the seraphim would
lead them through the forest on leashes, sniffing out the trails of Vir Requis
survivors. These ones wore no leashes, though collars still encircled their
necks, and their nostrils flared. Their masters could not be far behind.

Til did not hesitate
any longer.

She fired her arrow.

Before it could even
meet its target, the serpopards pounced.

Bim's arrow fired too
with a
twang
. Both arrows slammed into the creatures, digging through
the furred flesh, only enraging the beasts. Long necks stretched out, and jaws
opened wide to bite.

One creature slammed
into Til, and she fell, shouting. The lioness head snapped at her, lashing
fangs against her patches of rusted armor. At her side, Bim fell too, raising
his arms before his head, trying to ward off another serpopard.

Til growled, writhed
madly, and kicked hard. She managed to knock the creature off her, tossing it
into the campfire. The flames raged and showered sparks.

At once she leaped up
and grabbed her sword's hilt. Before she could draw the blade, another
serpopard leaped onto her, knocking her back down. The claws lashed at her,
reaching between her plates of armor, cutting her chest.

"Til!" her
brother screamed.

Panic rose in her. Her
blood spurted as her heart lashed. She tried to draw the sword, but the
creature's paws pinned down her right wrist. The campfire blazed at her side,
spraying sparks onto her clothes, drenching her with heat. The serpopard's neck
rose skyward, six feet long, and then the head plunged down, jaws opening to
rip out Til's throat.

With her left hand, Til
reached into the campfire and grabbed a burning log.

She screamed as the
flames burned her, but she wouldn't let go. She swung the torch into the
serpopard's striking head, knocking it aside an instant before the fangs tore
into her. Those fangs now scraped across her armor, and the head thumped into
the snow at her side, its fur kindled.

When Til leaped to her
feet, she saw Bim firing arrow after arrow, knocking back serpopards. Several
lay dead around the campfire, but more kept emerging from between the trees.
Their eyes gleamed in the shadows, and their growls rose all around. A hundred
or more were advancing.

Another one leaped at
Til's side. She swung her sword, knocking it back. At once she spun the other
way, thrusting the blade into another pouncing creature. Claws tore at her leg,
and she cried out and fell to one knee.

"Can we shift
now?" Bim cried as more serpopards raced among the trees. Their eyes and
growls filled the shadows, and the sun vanished behind the horizon, leaving
only the campfire to light the darkness.

Til cursed. She hated
shifting into a dragon. But any hope of remaining silent here was long gone,
and with the serpopard corpses burning, the smoke and light would be filling
the sky.

"Shift!" she
cried and summoned her magic.

With a clatter like the
armor of a racing army, their scales rose across them. Fangs and claws slammed
into the hardened plates. Two dragons moved in circles around the campfire,
blowing flames in a ring.

The dragonfire roared.
Ice melted across the trees, and the serpopards burned. Their fur and flesh
crackled, giving out a foul stench, but more kept racing forth. They leaped
between the trees, and three serpopards slammed into Til, clawing at her orange
scales. She spun around madly, struggling to shake them off. One managed to
tear off a scale, and its teeth sank into her, and she bellowed. Several more
of the creatures covered Bim—a black dragon, only half her size. Their claws
drove under his dark scales like splinters under fingernails, and he swung his
tail, struggling to knock them off. Their dragonfire kept spurting, but more
creatures kept racing through the forest.

"Fly, Bim!"
she cried.

"I can't!" He
fell, overcome with more serpopards, their weight pinning him down. As a young
dragon, he wasn't much larger than the bristly, long-necked felines.

Til roared, forsaking
all promises to remain silent in this forest. She rolled onto her back,
crushing a serpopard who clung to her. She spurted fire across the camp. The
trees blazed. She whipped her tail, knocking more beasts aside, then leaped up
toward her brother.

She grabbed one of the
creatures attacking him. She dug her teeth past fur and flesh, ripping out a
chunk of its back. She spat out its backbone and roared, then swiped her claws,
knocking another creature off her brother. With a lash of her tail, she sliced
through the necks of the last serpopards clinging to the black dragon.

"Now fly!"

They soared, blasting
fire, an inferno that washed across the forest and spurted into the sky. More
serpopards leaped at them from the treetops, clawing at their scales, falling
to the blazing forest. With a few more flaps of their wings, the two dragons
smashed through the canopy and rose into the night sky.

Smoke hid the sky, and
only Issari's Star still shone, the eye of the dragon, and then it too
vanished. The forest below swarmed with black felines leaping in the shadows,
and the trees below still burned. Black smoke, both of charred trees and flesh,
unfurled and washed across the dragons.

They flew through the
inferno, holding their breath, until they emerged from the smoke.

We're safe up here,
Til thought.
We're safe so long as no seraphim are near, and—

And then she saw them.

Chariots of fire.

The flaming horses
thundered across the sky, and seraphim raised bows in their chariots. The
missiles flew through the sky, and Til cried out and soared higher. An arrow
slammed into her horn and embedded there. Another grazed Bim's flank.

The enemy flew everywhere.
Dozens of the chariots circled in from all sides, firing their arrows, deadlier
by far than their pets.

And so we die here,
Til
thought.
Here, two days away from King's Column. So far from the warmth of
the southern coast. Here we die in snow and flame.

She looked at Bim and
saw the fear in his eyes. The chariots flew closer. He stared back, panting,
blood on his flanks, his wings churning the smoke.

No,
Til thought.
No, not yet. I promised him that there is always hope, that we will always
fight on. So long as our wings can beat. So long as we can breathe fire.

"Fly with
me," she said, giving him the slightest of smiles, and dived.

She plunged toward the
forest. Bim flew with her. They crashed through the canopy . . . then curved
their flight and flew forward.

They raced between the
trees, twenty feet aboveground. The canopy rose above. The snow melted below
under their heat. Between the trunks, the long-necked felines still growled and
pounced, leaping from below, desperate to catch the dragons flying above them.
Others leaped from the treetops, knocked aside with flaps of the dragons' spiky
tails.

Til tried to curve her
flight, to whip between the trees, but she was moving too fast, and the trees
were too close. She slammed into a birch, cried out in pain, and shattered the
trunk. The tree fell and she kept flying. Bim slammed into an oak, cracking the
bole. He fell to the snow, then rose and flew again, narrowly dodging the
serpopards that leaped.

They kept flying, so
fast the dark forest streaked around them. They blasted their fire, lighting
their way, slamming into birch after birch, uprooting the trees. Icicles hailed
down, stabbing their backs. Melted snow ran in rivulets.

And above the fire
still burned.

The chariots of fire
descended from above, casting down fire. Arrows rained, and Til yowled as one
tore through her wing. She blasted dragonfire, and the blaze crashed into the
canopy and spurted upward, washing across a chariot. More covered the sky.

The dragons kept racing
across the forest. The landscape now sloped downward. As much as they could,
they whipped between trees, but they couldn't avoid crashes. Splinters drove
into their scales and cut the thick skin on their underbellies. Trees fell and
burned. And still the fire streaked across the sky.