Throne of Dragons

“We need to cross,” Erin said.

Odd nodded. “If that’s where your sister is, that’s where we have to go.”

Erin frowned at that. “No speech about how this is too dangerous, or about how angry the king will be if his knights start raiding across the bridges and start a war?”

“War is coming anyway,” Odd said. “And I… I have a poor record of listening to those I should.”

He set out over the bridge on foot, leading his by now exhausted mule. He paused by one of the slain guards, closing his staring eyes, but also lifting the man’s short bow and a quiver of arrows. Taking her cue from him, Erin did the same with a crossbow.

“A real bow is better,” Odd said. “Crossbows hit harder, but an archer with the skill to do it can send six arrows flying for every bolt they fire.”

“A crossbow is what’s here,” Erin pointed out. Did this strange man think he was her teacher now?

“True,” Odd said, and kept going across the bridge’s broad span.

Erin had never been across the Slate before. The bridge between its shores was wide enough that it seemed to take an age to walk it, its wooden slats creaking beneath her feet. She supposed that she should have felt some security in that instability, in the power of the Slate to keep the two kingdoms apart. Yet, from what Odd had said, even that wasn’t enough anymore.

Who was this man who was not a knight, or a monk, but both and less all at once?

There was no answer to that, so Erin kept leading her horse. She was most of the way across when she saw figures emerge from the trees on the far shore. There was a chasing cluster of horsemen, dressed in the colors of King Ravin, but Erin was more interested in the figure riding out in front of them, racing ahead of the chasing pack for her life.

“Lenore!” Erin called out. It was too far for her sister to hear her, but Erin shouted it anyway. She started forward toward her sister, horse moving at a flat run now, Odd following in her wake.

The distance between them closed quickly. Erin could see every detail of her sister’s face, see the fear there, but also the determination. She saw one of the chasing pack of riders getting closer, breaking from the pack. She raised her crossbow and fired it, saw the bolt arc out and slam into the man’s chest. He toppled, and Erin kept riding.

She reached Lenore and wheeled her horse, all three stopping for a second. Lenore was staring at her, in obvious shock that her sister was there, but where else in the world would Erin be when Lenore was in danger?

“Erin? How… how are you here?” Lenore asked.

“I’m here to help you,” Erin said.

Beside her, Odd raised his bow. He fired once, nocked another arrow, then fired again. Horses toppled among the chasing pack.

“We need to go,” he said. “Reunions later.”

“We could hold here,” Erin said. “Give Lenore time to—”

“No,” Lenore said. “That’s what Rodry did!”

“Rodry?” Erin said.

“Rodry…” Lenore looked pale, shaking her head in grief. “He came to save me. He fought to get me out, and… he’s dead, Erin. He’s dead.”

Grief hit Erin like a punch to the stomach. She felt as though she might fall from the saddle, the whole world starting to curl inward around her. She sat there blankly, not comprehending…

Then Odd slapped the side of her helmet, hard enough to make it ring. “There is no time for this,” he yelled at her. “No time for grief, no time for hesitation. No time even for me to ask why your entire family seems to have the names of King Godwin’s children! We need to go.”

Erin nodded, and wheeled her horse back toward the bridge, alongside Lenore and Odd. They galloped at full pelt, but a single glance back over her shoulder told her that the men there were closing, even though they were almost at the bridge. Erin could feel the slats of the bridge under her horse’s hooves now, but the men didn’t stop. One was ahead of the others, an axe raised…

Odd was there, sword in hand, intercepting it and knocking the man from his saddle, off into the waters below. Erin saw Odd leap down, letting his mule keep running.

“We need to face them,” he called. “We can’t run fast enough over the bridge. They’ll just cut us down.”

Erin dropped down beside him, onto the slats of the bridge, turning to face the onrush of enemies.

“At least you didn’t tell me to keep running,” Erin said, as she readied her spear.

“And face all those alone?” Odd countered, nodding to the horsemen approaching, slowing as they came to the bridge. “I might be called mad, but I’m not stupid.”

Erin looked at the group there. There had to be twenty of them, but the bridge was narrow enough that only a few of them would be able to fit onto the bridge side by side to fight.

“How do we do this?” Erin asked.

Odd frowned at her. “What’s to understand? We fight them, we kill them, we back away step by step until we cross this thrice damned bridge.”

Erin looked at the slow advance of the men there. “Why aren’t they coming faster?”

Odd shrugged. “No one wants to die first.”

That didn’t last long though. The riders came forward, the first of them obviously confident that they could ride down a girl and a monk with ease. He swung at Erin and she turned the blow away, thrusting up with her spear into his ribs and toppling him into the waters beyond the bridge.

Another was already striking at Odd. He swayed back from the cut, dragged the man from his saddle, and killed him with a downward thrust of his sword before backing away a few more paces.

They came on foot then, obviously realizing that without the advantage of space, horses wouldn’t work. They came in tight formation, three wide, thrusting and cutting with swords and spears while Erin and Odd gave ground.

Erin blocked one blow, kicked at a man’s knee and stepped back. Odd hacked a man’s head from his shoulders, pushed another by his shield into the water. Erin caught another blow that was aimed at his heart as he did it, and he grinned at her before cutting open a soldier’s throat.

Erin glanced back to see how Lenore was escaping. She saw her sister waiting at the far shore now, clear of the fight but making no move to keep moving further back. She clearly wasn’t going to just run and leave them—

Odd caught a sword blow just in front of her face. “Focus! Unless you want to lose your head?”

Erin stabbed another of the attacking troops in answer. It was getting worse now, because she could see a whole cluster of infantry coming in from the trees now, too many to ever fight. All she and Odd could do was keep killing, and keep giving ground.

Odd fought with speed and power, but also a seeming lack of care. He didn’t hide behind his defenses like many warriors, but threw himself into cuts like a whirlwind. Erin found herself fitting into the rhythm of his attacks, striking in the spaces that he left, trying to cover any openings. Her armor protected her as a sword glanced from it, her buckler took a blow from an axe. Both of them took wounds though. Erin felt the impact of every blow that landed, even if her armor stopped her from being cut in half. Odd seemed to be bleeding from a dozen places, even though at least that many men lay dead in his wake.

They both gave ground, step by step. They were running out of ground to give, though. It should have been a good thing that they were getting closer and closer to the Northern Kingdom’s shore, closer to home, and to safety. The problem was that, for now, the bridge was safety. The bridge was the thing that meant that the soldiers before Erin and Odd couldn’t surround them, couldn’t spread out and overwhelm them with their numbers.

“We’re running out of room,” Erin said, with a nervous glance back at the end of the bridge.

“So we hold them back at the edge of the bridge and kill all of them,” Odd said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. Did he actually believe that? Did he actually think that they could stand there and kill King Ravin’s armies one by one?

Erin didn’t. She knew that when they reached the end of the bridge, it would be done. She still fought, still killed. She slashed the head of her spear across a man’s leg, thrust the point up into another’s skull. The stroke of an axe jarred her as she blocked it, but she kept going.

They couldn’t hold, though. They would reach the end of the bridge, and then… then, no matter how hard they fought, the sheer weight of men would push them back another few steps. It would mean being surrounded, blades coming from every side…

That was when Erin heard the horns behind her. She thrust her spear into a man’s gut, swept it round to clear a space for her to glance round, and she dared to look…

Her father’s army stood there. There were knights there, and guardsmen, and more. There were archers, who even now were readying arrows to fire down into the ranks of the men on the bridge. There were horsemen standing by, ready to charge. Her father sat at the heart of it all, looking mighty in his armor, unconquerable. Erin couldn’t count the numbers compared to the force that had followed Lenore, and was now struggling to cross the bridge, but it was close, so close…