Isobelle and Gwen broke apart. Gwen sheathed her sword with a scrape of steel, reached for Achilles’s reins, and swung up into the saddle in one fluid movement. “Isobelle...”
“Go!” Isobelle shouted. “When the moment comes, I’ll be there!”
Gwen gazed down at her from atop her warhorse, the words that hung between them shimmering like a skyful of stars. All thethings they wanted to say but hadn’t time for. All the things they didn’t need to say at all.
For an instant, Isobelle pictured the smith’s daughter she’d first seen at the market, their eyes meeting across a table full of horseshoes.
How had they ended up here?
And then Gwen twitched Achilles’s reins, turning him toward the great beast. She leaned down to pull the spear from his saddle, touched her heels to his flanks, and, as brave as his rider, he launched himself forward.
Her spear at the ready, her black hair streaming behind her, the moonlight gleaming off her armor, she looked like she’d ridden straight out of legend. She wasmagnificent.
And she was so much more than a knight.
She was a hero.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Two wounded creatures, facing each other across the empty battlefield
The dragon had carved a ragged corridor through the strip of trees dividing the town from the fields on the other side, and it was along this path of devastation that Gwen guided Achilles. He was snorting with bloodlust, and she offered up a silent thanks to her mother for bringing her horse with her when she ran away with Gwen’s father. Any normal horse would have been halfway back to Darkhaven Castle by now, but Achilles was ready for a fight.
She guided him in an arc, sticking to the edge of the trees. She kept an eye on the dragon as it crouched, mantling its wings and curving its long head around to inspect the wound she’d dealt it inside the mine. The ancient dragonslaying spear was heavier than the lances she’d jousted with, requiring a tight grip to keep it planted against the stirrup platform.
Somewhere out there, hidden in the darkness, was Isobelle. Gwen could have cursed the dragon for coming back around before she got the details of Isobelle’s plan, but Isobelle was so much smarter and cleverer than anyone in Darkhaven Castle knew, and Gwen would not deny her her right to fight. Even though Gwen’s body was icy cold with the knowledge that, should the dragon get past her, Isobelle could be its next target.
Her mind tried to throw out reassurances. Mounted on Achilles, she could move much faster out in the open than she could in the mines. The spear had a much greater reach than her sword. The dragon was wounded, and surely slower and clumsier now.
But as the massive head swung toward her, weaving back and forth low enough to part the long grasses in huge, whispering furrows, Gwen knew the truth, deep in her heart. Even wounded, the dragon was far more dangerous than a single girl on horseback.
She shifted her weight, and Achilles, utterly responsive in his heightened state, broke into a trot, and then a run, gathering speed. The dragon let out a sullen roar, sparks flying up against the stars, and began clawing its way across the ground toward Gwen. The joints of the elongated front legs thrust upward, ungainly but undeniably powerful, the sheer size of the creature allowing it to eat up the distance between them in a few ground-shaking stomps.
The dragon lifted its head with a snarl, preparing to make a lunge for Gwen, and she leaned hard as she tugged at Achilles’s reins—the horse veered to the right in a perfect arc as the dragon’s jaws slammed home on empty air.
Gwen lifted the spear and felt a stab of pain shoot through her bad shoulder, the one the guards had worsened with their blows as they dragged her from the tournament grounds. She banished that pain, locking it away in some remote corner of her mind, and focused on leveling the spear and tucking it under her arm.
But before she could get the tip of the heavy weapon lowered toward a viable target—the neck, if it lifted its head again, or the eye if she could manage it—the dragon threw one of its arms out, forcing Achilles to leap over an outflung wing tip and land, snorting and staggering.
Together, they wheeled around. Gwen saw a massive black shape swinging at her through the darkness and threw herself flat against Achilles’s neck. The dragon’s tail whistled over her, so close she felt her hair billow in the disturbance of air that followed. Achilles was already lining himself up for another pass, and Gwen let him, focusing this time on the spear’s tip rather than directing her horse.
They dodged another snap of the dragon’s jaws, and this time Gwen got the spear leveled at the dragon’s chest. The tip struck with a screech that made Achilles’s gait falter, and slid until it stuck with an impact that nearly threw Gwen from her saddle. Her knees held on with the instinct of long practice, but she had to let go of the spear or be torn from her horse’s back.
As she and Achilles galloped away again, Gwen looked back over her shoulder and saw the spear wedged between two of the dragon’s armored plates. There was no blood—she hadn’t so much as scratched it.
Gwen swore and turned Achilles again. They paused there, each of them catching their breaths. The dragon reared back, spreading its wings and beating them down, turning the grasses beneath it into a surging, roiling storm—but it only lifted a few yards off the ground before thudding down again with a snarl of rage, tucking its injured wing against its body.
Gwen felt an answering throb of pain in her own shoulder—it was the same arm as the one she’d injured on the dragon. That much they had in common—two wounded creatures, facing each other across the empty battlefield. For a moment, Gwen could almost feel a grim sympathy for it—until it swung its head in her direction, the cruel intensity of its gaze forcing her to wrench hereyes away before it could snuff out her life as it had done to so many of the villagers of Aberfarthing.
Achilles leapt into movement again, ending the brief respite. Gwen thought, wildly, about drawing her sword—but it would be of no use, for if she was close enough to use the blade, she would probably already be dead. She needed the spear back.
Achilles charged directly at the dragon, which dropped its head low and began clawing its way across the field toward them, snarling a challenge and gathering speed. Again, Gwen tugged Achilles’s reins to the right—but then, abruptly, threw her weight left. Her horse responded instantly, with a whicker of effort, and dodged past the dragon’s snapping jaws close enough that Gwen heard a drop of its saliva land wetly on the shoulder of her armor. She leaned low as Achilles raced beneath the neck of the monster, and stretched out her arm as they neared the spot where the spear was wedged.
The jolt through her arm, up into her shoulder, as she grabbed the shaft of the weapon and tore it loose ripped a ragged cry of pain from Gwen’s throat—but she kept hold of the spear as, once again, Achilles raced away to a safe distance.
She was armed again. They would turn in a moment, regroup, think of some new way to run at it that might allow a better thrust of the spear between those armored plates....
A rush of air and a keening roar made Gwen look over her shoulder, confusion and dread sweeping in. The dragon was gone. But where— How...?
