Chapter 80: The Dragon's Dance - Part 2
ULF
Silverwing dove at Vermithor.
They met above the water and the sky came apart. Silver and bronze. Ancient intelligence against brute fury. Claws raked. Fire erupted between them, and the God's Eye threw the light back up in a white sheet that turned the whole grey afternoon into something I had to squint through.
He's stronger. But I'm faster. I've been doing this longer.
Except Hugh was adapting. Learning Silverwing's patterns. Each exchange brought his attacks closer to their mark.
"She's slowing!" He shouted it across the gap between the dragons. He sounded delighted. "Sixty years old, White. You brought a grandmother to a war."
"She's killed better men than you."
"Not today she hasn't!"
Vermithor came round again and his shadow slid over us, cold as a doorway.
"You want the truth of it, White? Aemond was never going to let either of us keep a dragon. Not past the war. You know that same as I do."
"So you shot at me. Not him."
"You're the one that would've seen it coming."
The wound on her flank still bled. I felt it through the bond as a hot dragging ache under my own ribs, and every beat of her wings pushed more of it out of her.
She was tiring.
Direct combat kills us both.
So change the rules.
"Kelītīs!"
Silverwing hovered. The world steadied around her.
I got my boots under me and stood in the saddle. Found my balance point. The wind shoved at my chest and I let it, dropping my weight until it nearly took me.
"Silverwing. Dracarys on Vermithor when I clear."
A questioning rumble. Her head came round, one gold eye finding me.
"Trust me."
I jumped.
GEPPO
Air solidified beneath my feet.
The technique I'd practiced a thousand times. Walking on nothing, defying gravity through sheer will and compressed force.
One step. Two. Three.
Hugh's head turned. His mouth opened.
"What the—"
Four steps. Five.
I landed on Vermithor's back. Behind Hugh.
The Bronze Fury thrashed beneath me. Scales shifted under my boots like roof slates in a gale. Wings beat in confusion.
Hugh spun, drawing steel.
"How are you standing on air?"
"Practice."
Soru.
I blurred.
His sword cut empty air where I'd been.
"Hold still, you mad bastard!"
Shigan.
My fingers, iron-hard, driven by technique and desperation, punched through the gap in his armor at the shoulder joint.
Hugh screamed. Blood sprayed and ran down into the seams between the scales.
"You fucking—"
Tekkai.
His sword bounced off my hardened forearm. The shock rang up to my elbow and stayed there.
I grabbed his harness. Pulled him in until I could see the broken veins in his eyes.
"You shouldn't have betrayed us."
"They dragged us out of a gutter to die for them." His good hand closed on my wrist and had nothing left in it. "Two dragons, White. Yours and mine. We could have ruled—"
"I don't want to rule. I want to go home."
I pushed.
Hugh Hammer fell.
He didn't shout on the way down. He turned over once, slowly, arms open, and the lake took him without any sound I could hear above the wind.
VERMITHOR
The Bronze Fury felt his rider vanish.
Confusion became rage. Rage became violence.
The dragon thrashed, twisted, tried to burn whatever had taken Hugh away. Fire erupted in all directions.
I kicked off. Geppo, Geppo, Geppo, barely ahead of the flames.
But Vermithor followed.
The riderless dragon screamed fury at the sky. At Silverwing. At me. At everything.
"Silverwing! Dracarys!"
Silver fire met bronze scales.
Vermithor turned. Charged.
He's gone berserk. Without Hugh there's no voice left in the world that can tell him to stop.
Silverwing dove aside. Vermithor pursued.
I can't kill him. He's too valuable. But I can't let him kill us either.
The dragons circled. Clashed. Separated. Three times I nearly lost the saddle, and three times her wing came up under me without being asked.
Vermithor's jaws snapped at Silverwing's neck.
She twisted. Not fast enough.
Teeth closed on her wing.
She screamed.
ROKUOGAN
I felt the bite in my own shoulder, and my hands went cold on the reins.
Not failure. Not defeat.
Release.
Every technique I'd learned. Every skill I'd practiced. Every hour of a Flea Bottom drunk beating his knuckles bloody against stone in the dark.
They stopped being separate.
Soru. Tekkai. Shigan. Rankyaku. Geppo. Kami-e.
Six powers. One purpose.
I landed on Vermithor's snout. Impossible, suicidal, necessary.
He tried to shake me off. I held, and then I went heavy, and his great head dipped under a weight that had no business being on a man.
My hands found the dragon's skull. Pressed against scale.
And everything came together.
Rokuogan.
The shockwave erupted from my palms. Not fire. Not blade. Pure force channeled through every technique simultaneously. It went out of me and it took something with it. Both forearms tore somewhere deep, in the meat, and my fingers stopped answering.
Vermithor's eyes rolled.
The dragon collapsed.
Not dead. I could see his chest still moving. But stunned. Down.
I kicked off. Found Silverwing. Got my arms round the saddle horn because my hands wouldn't close on it.
She was wounded, wing torn, blood streaming, but alive.
"Sōvēs. Gently."
We climbed away from the fallen dragon.
Below, Vermithor stirred. Groaned.
He'll recover. He'll be a problem for someone else.
But not for us. Not today.
THE PRINCES
I turned toward the God's Eye.
What I saw would haunt me forever.
Vhagar and Caraxes lay in the shallows, both dragons dying, tangled together, their battle ended in mutual destruction.
But Aemond and Daemon weren't on their mounts.
They were falling.
Two figures locked together in the air above the lake. Swords flashing. Even now, even dying, still fighting.
Daemon's Dark Sister caught the light.
Aemond's blade answered.
They hit the water together.
Neither surfaced.
AFTERMATH
I circled the lake three times.
Looking for survivors. Looking for bodies. Looking for anything.
Vhagar still breathed, barely. The ancient dragon's chest rose and fell in ragged rhythm. Steam came off the shallows where she lay. But her wounds were mortal.
Caraxes had stopped moving entirely.
Aemond. Daemon. Hugh.
All gone.
Three riders dead. Three dragons fallen or dying. And me.
Just me.
Silverwing's wing trembled with exhaustion. Blood still seeped from her wounds and went black along the trailing edge.
We need to go home.
"Naejot. Slowly."
She turned toward King's Landing.
We flew alone through empty sky.
KING'S LANDING
Dragonpit rose out of the afternoon haze, and the whole city stank of smoke and fish under it.
I guided Silverwing down. Careful, gentle, mindful of her injuries. She landed with a stumble that spoke of utter exhaustion, and the keepers scattered from the sand.
"Her wing," the oldest of them called, keeping his distance. "May we touch her, my lord?"
"Yes. Slowly. Speak to her before you put a hand on her, and say her name when you do it."
I slid from her back. My legs buckled.
Hands caught me.
"Easy. I've got you."
Helaena.
She was there. Of course she was there. She'd dreamed it, known it, waited for this moment while the rest of them argued about supper.
"You came back."
"I promised."
"The others?"
"Dead. All of them. Hugh. Aemond. Daemon." The words tasted like ash. "I'm the only one."
She didn't ask how. Didn't ask why.
"The lake is full of princes now," she said, past my shoulder, to something behind me that wasn't there. "It will be very quiet down there."
Then she just held me.
"Our child?"
"Safe. Waiting for you."
I collapsed into her arms.
I survived. For you. For our baby. For whatever comes next.
I survived.
Around us, guards and servants gathered. Whispers spread like fire through dry grass.
The Dragonslayer returned alone.
Four dragons fell at God's Eye. Three riders died.
He walked away.
A keeper near the doors said what all of them were thinking, and said it too loud.
"What is he?"
No one had an answer. Helaena got her shoulder under my arm, took my weight, and walked me up the steps past every one of them, and not a man there moved to help her.