Chapter 61: Wings of War - Part 2
ULF
Solo training. Midnight.
The sky belonged to me and Silverwing alone. No observers. No Hugh Hammer. No politics. Just us and the techniques I couldn't explain to anyone living.
"Sōvēs," I called. "Naejot."
She flew straight. Steady. The city went to a scatter of orange behind us, then to nothing, and there was only the black shoulder of the Kingswood under her wing.
I rose in the saddle. Boots braced against the thigh rolls, knees soft, weight over her spine.
Rankyaku. Aerial variant. Now.
My leg whipped forward. Air compressed, hardened, went—
The blade cut through the dark, invisible in it. A long moment later the crack of impact came back up off something solid.
Tomorrow I'd walk the target ground and see what I'd hit.
Good. Getting better.
But Rankyaku wasn't enough. Standing on a moving dragon meant the kick went where her shoulder let it go, and her shoulder had opinions. In a real battle I'd need mobility. Options.
"Kelītīs."
Silverwing hovered.
I stood in the saddle. Steadied myself. Counted three wingbeats.
Then I jumped.
Free fall. Wind screaming. Somewhere under all that black, the ground, coming.
Geppo.
I kicked against air and the air held. Changed direction.
Again.
Another kick. Rising now instead of falling, thighs already burning from the third one.
Again. Again.
I circled Silverwing in midair, walking on nothing, the impossible technique that no one in this world had ever seen. The fifth kick came a heartbeat late and I dropped twenty feet before I caught myself, and my calf knotted and stayed knotted.
She watched me with those ancient eyes. Curious. Unafraid.
"Trust me," I called.
I dove toward her. Timed the approach against the beat of her wing.
Landed on her back.
The impact went up through my knees into my hips, but I stuck the landing. Seated. Secure.
Dismount combat. Viable.
I laughed into the wind. Silverwing rumbled under me, which was her version of amusement.
"Again," I said. "Arlī."
We practiced until dawn crept over the horizon, and I came down the pit steps with a leg that wouldn't take the last three of them.
THE NEXT DAY
Otto's summons came at noon.
I found the war council already assembled in the small council chamber. Aemond stood by the window with Vhagar's shadow crossing the glass whenever she came round. Hugh lounged in a chair, feet on the table until Otto's glare forced them down.
And a new face. Young, golden-haired, with the Targaryen features of the direct line.
Prince Daeron. Arrived from Oldtown. His dragon, Tessarion the Blue Queen, had been spotted circling the city that morning, and half of Fishmonger's Square had stopped to watch.
He stood up when I came in. Nobody at that table had ever stood up for me.
"They tell me you have the silver one," he said.
"Silverwing."
"Good Queen Alysanne rode her." He said it carefully, and watched where it landed. "Nobody in Oldtown believed the raven."
"Now that we are all present," Otto began, "the situation."
Maps went across the table. Troop positions. Dragon sightings written in three hands, half of them a fortnight stale.
"Rhaenyra holds Duskendale." Otto's finger came down on the coast to the north-east. "Lord Gunthor Darklyn opened his gates to her garrison rather than see his town burn, and Lord Staunton commands in it. Every hull that has closed the Blackwater to grain since the spring anchors in that harbour."
"Bread was two coppers in the first moon of the year," he added. "It is nineteen now, when there is any. We take that harbour, or we starve inside the city we are defending. We must respond with overwhelming force."
"How many dragons do they have?" Daeron asked.
"Dragonstone lies thirty miles across the water from that harbour. Reports suggest one there able to answer quickly. The Lady Baela's, Moondancer. Perhaps others."
Moondancer. Pale as new milk, hardly bigger than a warhorse, and faster than anything that would ever get into the air against her. With a girl of fifteen on her back who had watched her mother die at Driftmark.
"Three of us against one?" Hugh snorted. "Hardly sporting."
"This isn't sport, you fool." Aemond's voice cut cold. "This is war. We use every advantage."
"Easy for you to say. You've got the biggest dragon."
"And I intend to use her. But strategic deployment matters." Aemond turned to me. "Ulf. Your assessment?"
Everyone looked at me. The bastard dragonrider. Called upon for tactical advice.
Progress.
"Rhaenyra won't leave that harbour uncovered. She'll have support: ground strength inside the walls, and dragons held back where our scouts can't count them." I traced the approach routes on the map, then put two fingers flat on the open water east of the town. "That is one hour's flying from Dragonstone. If we commit everything at the walls and anything at all comes off that island behind us, we are three dragons low over a town with the sea at our backs."
"What do you suggest?"
"Layered response. Vhagar as primary force. Silverwing and Vermithor as flankers. Tessarion held back as reserve." I met Aemond's eye. "If things go wrong, Daeron can intervene or retreat for reinforcements."
"I did not fly three hundred leagues to sit in a cloud and watch," Daeron said.
"You flew where you were sent, and you will sit where you are put." Aemond didn't turn from the map. "The reserve is the only piece on this table that can still surprise anybody."
Silence.
Then Aemond nodded slowly.
"Sound thinking. For a bastard."
"I prefer 'dragonrider.'"
"You'll earn that title at Duskendale." He looked around the table. "We deploy in three days. Prepare your mounts and your minds. This will be bloody."
"The port is to be taken whole if it can be," Otto said. "A burned quay ships no grain, and I would rather hang Staunton in this city than scrape him off a wall in his own."
"It will burn if it must," Aemond said, and rolled the map.
The council dispersed. Hugh went out ahead of the rest of us, talking about fire at a guardsman who kept his eyes front.
THE GODSWOOD
Helaena sat beneath the heart tree with her children.
Jaehaerys played with wooden dragons, new toys carved to resemble the Green mounts. Silverwing, Vermithor, Vhagar. He made roaring sounds and crashed them together.
Jaehaera sat beside her mother, reading quietly. Maelor napped in Helaena's lap with his fist shut around a fold of her sleeve.
A family. Almost. Pretending to be.
I approached slowly. Helaena's eyes found me before I was out of the trees.
"Three days," she said.
"How did you know?"
"Your face. And how you walk when you are preparing for something." She didn't smile. "And the dreams."
"What did you see?"
"Fire over water. Dragons falling. You standing in the center of it."
The same vision. Unchanged since the first time she'd said it to me.
"Do I survive?"
"I don't know. The dreams show moments, not outcomes."
I knelt beside her and took her hand. Her fingers were cold, needle-marked on two of them.
"I'll come back."
"You promised that before."
"I'll promise it again. As many times as you need."
She touched my face and traced the new lines in it, the ones the fortnight had put there.
"Come back to me," she whispered. "Come back to them."
Jaehaerys looked up from his dragons.
"Are you going to fight bad dragons?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Will you win?"
How do you answer that question to a six-year-old?
"I'll try my best."
"Mother says you always protect us."
"I do."
"Then you'll win." Simple logic. Absolute faith. "Because we need you to come back."
My throat tightened.
"I will. I promise."
Helaena pulled me close. Kissed me—brief, public, in front of the children and the watching servants and anyone else who cared to look.
"Three days," she said. "Make them count."
Behind her, Jaehaerys swung the bronze dragon into the silver one and knocked it flat in the moss, and made a noise for it, and laughed.
I held her until the sun came off the top of the heart tree.
Then I went back to my quarters, checked my weapons, went through the techniques with my leg propped on the chest.
Three days to prepare for war.
Three days until Duskendale.
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