“Begin,” commanded Isora, and the only sound, for half a heartbeat, was wind in the valley.
Kagu whipped forward, head and horns down as if to simply butt Shard from the ring. Shard swallowed his first impulse, mind racing to the rings.
Defend.
He held his ground for two heartbeats, then leaped hard, flapping fast for height.
Evade.
Circling tightly in the ring, Shard hoped Kagu would simply barrel out by mistake, but the yellow dragon was no fledgling. Whipping around the very instant Shard leaped, Kagu circled the inner perimeter of the ring, eyeing Shard with a new spark.
Attack.
Shard took the dragon’s moment of curiosity and turned down, plummeting toward the shining target of Kagu’s eyes. Kagu stood his ground, offering his face. Shard ground his beak, forcing himself to hold the dive. Surely Kagu would dodge. Surely…when Shard was within striking distance, the dragon flung his jaws wide open.
With a yelp of surprise Shard threw himself to the side. Kagu caught him in the crook of his foreleg and surged up to throw him from the ring.
Flow.
Rather than try to fight free, Shard let the dragon toss him toward the border of stones. Head over tail, he flared upside down and halted short of the line, shut his wings and dropped to the ground, throwing himself onto his own back. Gasping once, he rolled as Kagu darted forward again, and scrambled directly under the yellow dragon’s belly, trying to dizzy him.
Kagu circled about, swiping for Shard’s tail.
With a surge of hope Shard quickly noted his advantages. If not speed, then size, in this ring at least. Kagu might lose track of him for brief seconds, or the stone border. If not strength, then strategy. Kagu had spars, Shard had fought battles, and had studied their fighting for days. With what Hikaru told him, he recognized each movement as Kagu used it.
As they circled, snapped, and tried to drive or outsmart each other from the ring, Shard’s mind spun with the sequence, and he realized Kagu met each of his attacks with a principle of the elements.
Defend, evade. Attack. Defend. Attack, flow, defend.
Ever aware of the stones at their heels, they grew more distracted by trying not to cross out of the ring than by trying to attack.
Unable to outwit each other on the ground, and with a low buzzing growing in his ears and an ache in his leg, Shard shoved from the earth into the air. Kagu followed. Shard realized the buzzing was a churring murmur among the dragons, the rustle of wings, audible tension.
They flew narrowly, twining around each other with swipes and shoves, Shard almost feeling choreographed as they matched movement to movement.
Spirals of yellow dazzled before Shard’s eyes as he looped through Kagu’s coils, trying to fool him into flying outside the now invisible but still real barrier of the fighting ring. They were allowed to fight in the air, but crossing beyond the stones still meant losing. Distracted, neither of them brought strong attacks, and Shard’s flight suffered from constantly checking down for the position of the stones.
Defend. Evade. Attack. Flow.
Defend, evade,
he looped under Kagu, leading him on an artful twist upwards. They pursued, looped, twisted, swiped, neither winning, both failing.
Defend, evade, attack, flow…what comes after flow? What great technique does a master have to fight with that I don’t?
Shard flapped higher, eyeing the ring below them as it seemed to shrink.
How have I won my greatest battles?
He thought of Sverin, of fighting in the storm, of plunging into the sea. He thought of fighting the wyrm. He thought of Stigr at his side, mad with laughter, remembered how he’d dived straight at the ground, straight, unwavering, certain that he could lead the wyrm to its death but stop his own dive in time.
Certain.
Defend, evade, attack flow…
he thought of the ring of stones. They’d flown, fought, circled. Shard realize now that he
felt
how far he could go to one side or the other. Without looking now, Shard
knew
the parameters of the circle around him. He knew. With certainty, he knew.
Shard flapped hard, and high, and Kagu chased.
Defend, evade, attack, flow.
Shard gasped into the cold, frost gathering on his face, chest tightening around dry, thin wind. He turned to face Kagu as the dragon leveled with him. The yellow dragon spiraled, flared—and glanced down to check his position.
Shard swept in toward his face, talons splayed. Kagu flapped back, once, and braced for Shard’s attack.
But Isora’s voice pierced the wind from far below.
“Kagu! You’ve broken the ring. The spar is won.”
The yellow dragon sucked in a breath, his serpent eyes white-ringed and furious. “How?” His breath sounded short. “How did you know, without looking?”
“I just knew,” Shard said. Kagu shook his head, unsatisfied. “And I
trusted
that I knew,” Shard added quietly.
Kagu gazed at him, eyes deadly pale, as if he might ask ten more questions—or attack. Then, mute, he turned to glide down. Shard followed, slowly spilling air and taking deep breaths.
When they landed on the ground outside of the rings, Kagu turned and bowed to Shard. Then he lifted his head to the see the training masters and the other dragons who flocked down to stare and to confirm that, indeed, a gryfon had just beaten one of their own, in their own highest ring.
“Thank you for the spar,” Kagu said, surprising Shard with a quiet, respectful tone. “You have proven your skill and perhaps I’ve learned something today.”
“From a
master,
” Hikaru said, drawing forward to coil around Shard. Kagu eyed him sidelong, and dipped his head again, the long muscle in his jaw flexed, biting back comment.
“Enough,” said Master Isora. “Well enough. Back to your spars. Hikaru, you are dismissed for the day, for your impudence. Go to the warrior shrine and reflect upon your disobedience, and how you might have better honored your mother’s memory.” Hikaru bowed and Isora looked to Kagu. “Kagu, you will groom the snow in the ring of sky.”
Kagu’s gaze flickered, his ears flattened, and Shard assumed this was the loser’s chore. “Yes, Master,” he murmured, dipping his head low. Isora stepped away to answer the eager questions of the younger dragons.
Kagu’s claws whipped out to grab Shard’s foreleg, though his head was still bowed, wings hunched to hide his movements from Isora. Shard hissed, ears flattening.
Kagu’s eyes burned molten. “I will not forget this humiliation.”
“Release me,” Shard growled, shaking his head once to warn Hikaru from interfering.
“You may fly well, but I will show everyone what you really are. I will show everyone that gryfons, like Kajar, are not to be trusted.” His gaze snapped to the side when Hikaru hissed, low. “And you, winterborn, stay away from me. I don’t need your ill luck.”
He backed away suddenly, as Isora’s shadow fell over them. “Now, Kagu. To your task.”
“Yes, Master.” He bowed low and slithered back to the ring of sky.
Isora watched him go, then looked at Shard. “You did spar honorably, and you proved your skill. The empress did not command that you couldn’t be here, but left it to our judgment. You may watch our practices and learn more.”
“Thank you,” Shard said, bowing deeply to him and draping his wings in a mantle. Then he straightened. “But I don’t think I need to.”
T
HOUGH
K
JORN AND
B
RYNJA
had resisted the urge to fly, the rest of their band had not. Kjorn heard Dagny shouting from above even as Nilsine barreled toward them from the opposite direction. The Vanhar, at least, had remained land bound as instructed. All had heard Fraenir’s frantic cries, all returned.
“Wyrms!” Dagny shouted. “I smell—”
“Get down,” Brynja commanded, running hard at Kjorn’s left, their small band behind her. “Land, now!”
A rush of unnatural wind struck them along with the scent of old meat and sour flesh. Kjorn fell rolling and realized Brynja had struck him from the side, shoving him from the path of a massive tail. The wyrm tail ended in a spade that struck the ground and gouged a trench before the wyrm flapped higher.
“Fraenir!” Kjorn shouted, regaining his feet and staring upward. “Where are you? Everyone, to me!”
“Be still,” Brynja panted, trotting up to him. The wyrms had flown impossibly fast to have caught them there. Or not all had returned to the Outlands, Kjorn realized, feeling foolish. They might be scattered everywhere. They could be anywhere, anywhere, hunting and waiting for gryfons.
Gradually, he better understood the terror they’d wrought.
Brynja shouldered him into the shadow of a hill, though he was certain the beasts saw in the dark, if that’s when they hunted. The rest of their two dozen gryfons gathered toward Brynja’s soft, urgent jay calls.
The wyrms circled, wing beats flattening the grass, roars soaring through Kjorn’s bones and sending the rest of the group pressing together with soft whimpers.
Kjorn sank to his belly in the low grass and crawled forward, ignoring Nilsine’s hissing to return, and peered up. Though the night laid dark on them, and the haze diffused any moonlight, he discerned the wyrm’s shape, and that there were only two.
Kjorn sucked a sharp breath, and held it, grasping to his courage.
Their leathery wings stretched taut to the wind, membranes dull and dark and blotting out the stars. Their heads were nearly as large as Kjorn’s entire body, with wide, wedged jaws, sprouting thick crests of horns around their faces and down the long necks. Limbs as thick as tree trunks hung down, bearing thick, curving claws, and the great heads swerved back and forth as they gusted great breaths in and out, smelling. Kjorn eyed the sharp, spade end of their tails.
His heart twisted into his throat, his ears twitched back. Their size could crush him. They could kill him with a blow. One claw could take his head. The tail could sever, the horrible roar deafen, and the hide looked thick enough to repel the sharpest talon, should he be stupid enough to fight.
Everything about them overpowered his natural senses and told the deepest, animal part of him to flee.
Kjorn forced himself to remain where he was. They were only flesh, blood and bone like him.
The vision he’d had in the underground pool rose before him and for a moment he closed his eyes. The vision, brought by the wolf seer and a raven. He saw the dark, shadow versions of the wyrms crowding around him, saw Tyr’s light spread from his own wings, letting him rise above them.
With slow, beating surety, Kjorn knew it was not the wyrms he was meant to overcome, after all, but his own fear. It could be done. He knew it, because Shard had done it.
He stood, not meaning to fly or attack, but only prove that he could, in their terrible presence, still be himself. To know that he could stand, as Shard had stood, and face them.
He knew now what terror haunted his own father’s nightmares, and he refused to inherit it.
Breathing slowly, he found that their scent could wash over him without instilling mindless terror, that he could stare hard at them without succumbing to mindlessness. Their size, their witless, savage rolling snarls plucked at the Nameless instinct in him, but he refused to give in.
Instead, he narrowed his eyes, watching their roving, circling flight, and saw that they drew gradually away. Brynja hissed at him to lie back down, but Kjorn remained still. He knew the wyrms saw him, and threatened him by gaping their jaws and roaring.
He stood still, and after a moment, was able to speak.
“They aren’t attacking,” he observed, and saying it out loud, was able to breathe normally again.
Brynja crept out beside him, still flat in the grass, and Nilsine joined her. Behind them, the rest of the group pressed to the hillside, watching.
“Threatening,” Brynja whispered in agreement, and Kjorn heard her swallow hard; her voice had cracked. “But not attacking. They’re leaving.”
Nilsine edged up on Kjorn’s other side, also staying low. “We scented a herd, just before Fraenir started his caterwauling. A pronghorn herd. Perhaps they mean to keep us from it.”
“If they want the herd,” Kjorn murmured, “then we need only remain here, still.” He had to force the words out, for it sounded like cowardice. “And they’ll continue away.”
“I don’t understand,” Brynja growled. “I don’t understand why they attacked so willfully at the Dawn Spire, as if they had a grudge, and now…I know they saw us. They tried to kill you. They see you even now.”
“Perhaps these are different,” Kjorn said. “Perhaps they weren’t part of the attack, and they’re only acting as witless beasts about their prey.”
“Doubtful,” Brynja said.
“Do you count them all as a single creature?” Nilsine asked, her voice cutting. “Not all gryfons act the same, why should all these?”
“They all hate gryfons,” Brynja insisted.
“How do you know?”
“Why don’t you go speak to them,” Brynja offered, “and see how you fare? You said yourself they sought out gryfons who fly at night.”
“Enough,” Kjorn murmured, gaze still following the strange, roving flight of the wyrms. And indeed, they were drawing further away, downwind, in the direction Nilsine and her hunters had returned from. “There, see. They’ve gone. No one take flight. We remain here, without hunting.”
“And Fraenir?” Nilsine asked.
Kjorn shook his head.
They rested through the night, posting a watch, and resumed a search for Fraenir in the daylight. They found no blood, no shed feathers, no sign of a fight or that he’d been injured or seen battle at all.
“He’s gone,” Kjorn confirmed after wasting a sunmark searching and calling.
“Fled,” Nilsine said. “As I told you he would.”
Kjorn couldn’t meet her gaze. He had so wanted to be right about the eager young rogue, to give him a chance. “He was alone when the wyrms came. None of us could say we wouldn’t have done the same.”