(eng) Pauline Creeden & Melinda R. Cordell - Dragonriders of Skala 01 by The Flame of Battle

Author:The Flame of Battle [Battle, The Flame of]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

14

They Can’t Kill What They Can’t Catch

“You sit in front,” Rjupa said as soon as they came to the dragon.

“Are you sure?” Dyrfinna said, her heart low.

“Please. You lead today. I insist.”

So Dyrfinna, with great compunction, climbed up on the dragon and seated herself, and tied saddle straps around her waist. These were to hold her on if he had to bank suddenly.

Rjupa climbed up behind her. “Give the command,” she said when she’d secured herself.

“Up!” Dyrfinna said. The great wings opened, and the muscles flexed under her hands. She gripped the forward strap fastened around the dragon.

The wings, like living sails, cast a gigantic shadow on the ground below them. Then with a great thrust of those wings, the dragon sprang into the air in a dizzying rush.

Dyrfinna loved that gather and that sudden, thrilling leap.

She loved the wind in her face—the great lunges the dragon made every time those huge wings thrust the air down and let them sweep higher—the feel of gravity trying to pull them back—the trees and rocks and ground flying past, then growing smaller as they rose—how the world slowly opened around them like a flower as they climbed, revealing more lands, more forests, more rocky crags, and more ocean, the endless ocean. Dyrfinna could gaze at it endlessly.

The dragon leveled off, circled. Rjupa had her arms around Dyrfinna, leaning on her back, but now she opened her arms and sat up.

“I always love that takeoff,” Dyrfinna said.

“Me too.”

They were not that high up, as Dyrfinna could cover her ship with her hand and have a little sticking out at each end. She leaned right, and the dragon also leaned right and banked in that direction.

Dyrfinna was taking it all in—the whole world laid out like a King’s Table before her. She looked across the pine-forested land, the dark sea, the twisting coastline, the small islands scattered generously around the edges of the coast. Farther away, on the ocean, were the ships. Scraps of black twisted in the air above them – King Varinn’s black dragons, all in flight. From this distance they were no bigger than flies.

“There’s his fleet.”

“There’s a lot of them.”

“There’s a lot of us,” Dyrfinna said quietly.

Hakr was right, she thought. The fleet must have been pushed back by the storm. They were coming to find us, but couldn’t make any headway against the wind.

“So that must be where we need to join the battle,” she told Rjupa, pointing at the fleet. She started memorizing the lay of the land, the islands in the sea, trying to figure out what moves the king’s fleet would make, what kinds of moves the queen’s fleet needed to make the most effective attack possible. “Do you think Queen Saehildr would listen to me if I made suggestions about her movements in battle?”

Rjupa shrugged against Dyrfinna’s back. “I don’t know. You’ve never been in battle—”

“What are you talking about? I fought a skirmish on the water and a full engagement on land.”

“Cripes! I’m sorry. I missed all that.

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