Chapter 79: The Dragon's Dance - Part 1
DAEMON
He saw them coming.
Three shapes against the gray sky. Vhagar's bulk unmistakable, Vermithor's bronze gleaming, Silverwing's silver catching what light there was.
Finally.
Fifty years of war had taught him one thing worth keeping. A battle goes to whoever chooses its shape first. Three dragons meant they had chosen.
Caraxes shifted beneath him. The Blood Wyrm sensed his rider's anticipation. Tasted battle on the wind.
"Sōvēs."
The red dragon launched from Harrenhal's towers. No hesitation. No retreat.
Not today. Today we end it.
Daemon guided Caraxes straight toward the formation. Not all three. Just one.
Vhagar.
Aemond.
He went up through the gap between the bronze and the silver, close enough to smell the oil on their harness, and Caraxes opened Vermithor's shoulder in passing because the bronze was there and because he could.
Let the bastards watch. This is between blood.
ULF
Daemon didn't do what I expected.
Three to one odds. Any sane commander would have fled, drawn us into unfavorable terrain, used guerrilla tactics.
Instead, Caraxes screamed challenge and dove straight at Vhagar. He came up through us on the way and never slowed for it.
"He's attacking!" Hugh's voice carried across the wind. "Just Aemond!"
"He's ignoring us." I realized the strategy immediately. "He wants the duel. Wants it personal."
Aemond took the bait.
Of course he did. Pride won't let him refuse.
Vhagar banked to meet Caraxes. The two dragons collided over the God's Eye with an impact that shook the sky itself. Claws raked. Jaws snapped. Fire erupted from both throats and the air bucked under us.
They spiraled downward, locked together, ignoring everything else.
"We should help him." Hugh guided Vermithor toward the melee.
"Wait—"
But Hugh wasn't listening.
He banked.
Not toward Aemond's battle.
Toward me.
HUGH
Sorry, White. New order starts now.
Hugh smiled as Vermithor wheeled. The Bronze Fury understood his intent, or didn't care. Either way, the dragon responded to his commands.
Blood ran from the shoulder Caraxes had opened. Hugh looked at it once and dismissed it.
Fire built in Vermithor's throat.
Hugh aimed at Silverwing.
"Dracarys!"
ULF
Flame erupted from Vermithor's jaws.
I reacted on instinct. "Jikagon!"
Silverwing dove. The fire passed overhead, close enough to singe my hair and take the brow off the left side of my face.
Hugh. The bastard actually did it.
I'd known since the picket lines. Knowing it and wearing his fire were different animals.
"New order starts now!" His voice carried through the wind. "Nothing personal, White!"
"Then land and say it to my face!"
"I like it better from up here!"
Everything's personal. You just made it personal.
Silverwing leveled out. I assessed the situation.
Above: Aemond and Daemon locked in combat, spiraling toward the lake. Neither would break off to help.
Below: God's Eye, dark waters waiting to swallow whoever fell.
Around: Hugh on Vermithor, circling for another attack.
Three-way battle. Aemond versus Daemon. Hugh versus me. Chaos.
"Naejot." I guided Silverwing into an evasive pattern. "Sōvēs."
She responded with veteran precision. Sixty years of experience against Vermithor's brute force.
Hugh dove. Fire streamed.
Silverwing twisted. Dodged.
He's stronger. Larger. But she's smarter.
I kicked.
Rankyaku.
The air blade sliced through empty sky. Hugh had anticipated, pulled Vermithor aside.
"Going to have to do better than that!" His laugh was manic. "Vermithor's tougher than your old bitch!"
He's not wrong. Direct combat, he wins.
So don't fight direct.
"Geppo preparation. Weight: 1kg."
I became light. Impossibly light.
Silverwing felt the change. Understood.
"Sōvēs. Maximum speed."
She accelerated. Faster than Vermithor could match.
Hugh's eyes widened as the silver dragon shot away from his bronze pursuer.
"Running, bastard? Running won't save you!"
"You think she outruns him forever?" His voice chased me down the wind. "He's a hundred years bigger and he doesn't tire! Set her down and I'll make it quick!"
"You've never made anything quick in your life."
"I'll make an exception for you, White!"
Not running. Positioning.
THE GOD'S EYE
Below, Vhagar and Caraxes crashed into the lake.
Water erupted in columns. Steam billowed as dragon-fire met ancient waters.
Daemon and Aemond fought in the shallows, dragons and riders both, a tangled mass of scale and steel.
I caught glimpses between my own evasions. Caraxes's jaws closing on Vhagar's neck. Vhagar's claws raking the Blood Wyrm's belly. Aemond screaming commands. Daemon laughing.
Let them kill each other. I have my own problems.
Vermithor came again.
Hugh drove his dragon with whip and curse, brutal, effective, the same trade he'd trained at. The Bronze Fury was bleeding from where Caraxes had scored him in the first pass, but still fought hard.
"Dracarys!"
Fire erupted.
I dove beneath it.
Silverwing's claws raked Vermithor's underbelly as we passed. Not deep. Not fatal. But enough.
Hugh screamed with rage.
"Hold still and die!"
"Where's the fun in that?"
I guided Silverwing around for another pass.
He's stronger. But I'm faster. I'm smarter. I've been doing this longer.
Time to show him what the Dragonslayer really means.
DAEMON
The bastard was fighting.
Through the chaos of his own battle, Daemon glimpsed the silver dragon weaving around the bronze. The White, the man he'd promised to kill, was holding his own against the traitor dragonrider, and had opened him twice already.
Interesting. More interesting than I expected.
Vhagar's jaws closed on Caraxes's wing. Daemon felt his dragon scream up through the bones of his legs.
Focus. Kill the nephew first.
He drove Dark Sister toward Aemond's eye. The good one.
Aemond blocked. Countered.
Their blades met over thrashing dragons, water to their thighs.
"You killed my brother!" Aemond screamed. "You started all of this!"
"I killed a weakling. The realm is better for it." Daemon smiled. "You'll join him soon."
They fell together, dragons locked, riders fighting atop them.
The God's Eye swallowed them in spray and thunder.
ULF
Vermithor's claws caught Silverwing's flank.
I felt her pain, a tearing sensation that translated through our bond and landed behind my own ribs. Blood sprayed across my face, hot and copper-sharp.
"Steady. Umbas."
She held position despite the wound.
Not fatal. Not yet. But he's scoring hits.
Hugh drove Vermithor into another attack. His dragon's jaws snapped at Silverwing's neck.
She twisted aside. Barely.
"She's bleeding!" Hugh sounded delighted. "Bleeding's only the start of it! Go home, White! Go home to your queen and I'll tell them you flew well!"
"You'll tell them nothing. You'll be in the lake."
He's learning her patterns. Adapting.
So I reached for the thing I'd been reaching for since Rook's Rest. Both fists set. Everything I had wound inward to one point and driven out through the air between us.
Nothing came.
The shock turned back into me instead. My arms went dead to the elbow and my weight jumped without my telling it to, and Silverwing lurched under the change. I came off the saddle. I got an elbow through the shoulder strap I'd greased the night before and hauled myself back with fingers that wouldn't close.
Not yet. It's never yet.
Then stop waiting on it. Not now. Not with my arms dead to the elbow and her flank open to the wind.
"Sōvēs. Get above him."
Silverwing climbed. Every stroke pulled that hot ache under my ribs a little wider, and I made myself not flinch, because she would feel it and read it as fear.
Vermithor came up after us. Fast, for a thing that size.
"Running?" Hugh's voice came thin across the wind. "There's nothing up there, White! I own every foot of sky between here and the shore!"
Answering costs breath. I had a use for mine.
My fingers were coming back. Pins, then ache, then something near grip. I closed them on the saddle horn and they held.
Look at him. Not the dragon. Him.
So I looked. Hugh rode high and forward, the way a man sits when nobody in the history of the world has ever been taken off a dragon by hand. His left pauldron sat wrong. Bronze plate, rivets along the top edge, standing a finger's width proud every time he swung his arm across his chest.
Somebody measured a bastard for a lord's harness in a week and guessed at the rest.
There's a gap under that.
I filed it.
Vermithor's jaws came for her throat and I felt her turn before I saw it. Teeth closed on nothing. Bronze went past beneath us close enough that the heat off his back came up through my boots.
"Good girl," I told her. "Let him come again."
Below, the God's Eye had gone the colour of hammered lead. Daemon and Aemond were somewhere under it, still locked, still going down into water that would never give back an account of it.
I'm not going in there. Neither is she.
Hugh brought Vermithor round again, and on the turn he left that shoulder open to the sky for one breath.
Her wings folded a fraction. The straps changed pitch against the wind.
"Naejot." I drove my heels down into the stirrups. "Full attack."