The clouds swept soft, and cold, and damp across her cheeks, a chill reversal of the steam in the hot springs beneath the palace of Aeres. She could see nothing save Alfie’s neck, the clouds shredding against the tips of her horns. But she could sense what Alfie sensed, and so she knew exactly where the Sel drake was overhead, and where Percy and Valgrind were. She knew when the move would come, and what it would be, and had time to warn Rune.
“Get ready,” she said over her shoulder. “We’re going to go up fast. Don’t hold me, hold the saddle.”
A testament to his craft, the saddler had retrofitted Alfie’s saddle in a jiff. Rune was tethered to it, just as she was, and extra handgrips had been stitched behind her thighs for him.
She missed the weight and warmth of his arms immediately when they withdrew, but Alfie said to hold tight, and she didn’t want to come dislodged and take Rune with her.
Alfie sent her one last warning.
“Now!” Tessa called.
Alfie snapped her wings shut and propelled herself into a tight twist that almost threw Tessa clear from the saddle. She gritted her teeth, and clung tight to the handgrips on the pommel. Her toes slipped out of her stirrups, and she clamped her legs tight to Alfie’s sides as the drake righted herself, and spread her wings again, traveling straight up this time.
The clouds swept over them, cold and slick, and then all at once were gone. Alfie burst back into the sunlight, and when Tessa craned her neck back, she glimpsed the enemy drake’s exposed, golden belly, gleaming like treasure save a single dark band behind the forelegs that looked like a girth.
Did this drake have a…?
Alfie opened her jaws with a roar, and shot freezing blue jets at the other drake.
Her breath was so cold that the blowback burned Tessa’s face. Before she closed her eyes and ducked to the side, she saw a thick rime of frost coat the Sel drake’s belly, and legs. Heard, once her eyes were shut, a furious, pained bellow.
Alfie swerved, and Tessa risked a glance in time to see the purple drake writhing in midair, its head ducked as it tried to see what had been done to it, and where the perpetrator had gone. Icicles clung to its claws, its legs, even the base of its tail. Percy and Valgrind swept in from either side of it, and hit it with twin blasts of ice breath. The drake roared and faltered in the air, its wings heavy and ineffective, sheathed as they were in ice.
Two things struck her about the icy tableau, before Alfie ducked again.
One: the drake was even more massive than she’d first thought, more than double Percy’s size. Valgrind looked like a child’s toy beside it.
Two: the drake had a rider.
He wore golden armor, just as the Sel foot soldiers did, and the horsetail plume on his helmet was dyed the same rich purple as his cloak, as the drake beneath him. He looked tiny perched above but his sword was long, and bright, and sharp, and Tessa didn’t want to be anywhere near it.
Alfie whipped them through another sharp turn that nearly slung them overboard, and then attacked the big drakefrom the rear. She jetted it with ice just as it struck toward Valgrind.
Valgrind wheeled back, an upside-down midair flip that sent Nali dangling from the handgrips on his saddle.
“Oh no!”
Alfie’s freezing breath sent skeins of ice up the drake’s back, nearly to its saddle, and when Valgrind righted, Náli landed back in the saddle. Thank the gods.
Rune let out a triumphant shout as Alfie swooped away and banked, preparing for another run. “It’s working! They’re freezing him!”
Tessa thought of the men encased in ice outside the walls of Aeres, frozen in place, swords, and spears, and bows upraised, mouths permanently open and eyes forever fixed wide in terror. She felt a smile threaten. They could do this! It didn’t matter how huge the other drake was: they had three on their side, and they were cleaver, and quick, and this could work!
Alfie smoothed through the end of the turn, and Tessa pushed upright so she could get a better glimpse of the purple drake.
Ice dripped from it, icicles long as its tail. It dropped lower in the clouds, almost brushing the clouds, wings hampered by the clinging mantle of ice that coated the delicate membrane between the bones. It sank lower, and lower, and lower…
The rider swung the sword around, a brilliant flash, and brought the flat of it down on the drake’s shoulder.
The drake let out a cry that made Percy, and Alfie, and Valgrind’s shrieks seem like whispers. It stabbed down deep into her ears, and she would have covered them if she dared release the reins and handgrips. She felt the cry in herstomach, all her insides shuddering against it. Rune’s chest vibrated against her back, and she thought he must have shouted something, thesound swallowed up in the awful, piercing wail of the purple drake.
Then the beast flung out its head and its tail, and shook all over, like a dog climbing out of a pond.
The sound of glass breaking rang out across the mountaintops.Icebreaking. The clear glaze encasing the drake shattered, turned white, and then flew in all directions.
Tessa shouted in alarm, in dismay. She shut her eyes, and ducked her head, and felt a shard of ice graze her cheek, a bright line of fire just to the side of her helmet’s chin strap.
The drake bellowed again, and this time it was distinctly triumphant.
