“All my life, people have told me how he was everything great and good.”

“The same people who said that every mage is evil at the core?”

Oraxes blinked. “I … Some of them, but it’s not the same thing.”

“It’s time you recognized a sad truth. You Chessentans are brave, and good at athletics, but not very bright.”

Oraxes bristled. “Tchazzar is good in his way. He truly did free us.”

“And if you want to live to enjoy it when this is over, stay away from him. Don’t accept an appointment at court, or any nonsense like that.”

“How would you know what goes on at court? You’ve been up here in the north.”

“I know a certain type of arrogance when I see it. I know how such lords behave.” Even when it endangered the lives of their sons.

“You just don’t like it that he likes Jhesrhi.”

“Nonsense. Since I seem to be in an advice-giving mood, let me advise you that one woman is much like another, and none of them is worth so much as the loss of your composure, let alone a drop of your blood. In other words, don’t go annoying the dragon-who also happens to be your sovereign-over a lass. By the Black Bow, you didn’t even like the wench a tenday ago.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Oraxes said.

“Good, because I have a job for you. I’m going out to scout, and with the enemy so near, I want a wizard with me. The outing can do double duty as your first flying lesson. We’ll borrow Queen Umara. She’s docile-well, for a griffon-and she’ll follow Eider’s lead.”

Oraxes blinked. “I didn’t ask to learn to ride a griffon.”

“That’s one of the advantages of military life. Your superiors provide you with interesting experiences you didn’t even know you wanted.”

Queen Umara was a trifle small for a griffon, with a hint of red in her plumage, a scarred, featherless spot on the side of her aquiline head, and a crooked hind leg. She’d sustained both injuries on the expedition into Thay, but fortunately neither rendered her unfit to fly or fight.

Oraxes seemed surprised and suspicious that Gaedynn gave him so few instructions. He thought there had to be more to riding a griffon than that. He was right, but he was also a child of Luthcheq’s slums. Gaedynn had a hunch he’d never even ridden a donkey, and didn’t want to confuse him with too much information. It was better to trust Queen Umara to handle what a novice rider couldn’t.

“Ready?” Gaedynn asked.

“Let’s go,” the wizard replied. His voice cracked, and Gaedynn grinned.

He brushed a fingertip up Eider’s neck. She trotted, lashed her wings, and rose into the air. Gaedynn glanced back and saw Queen Umara leave the ground with an awkward lurch. It might have tossed her rider out of the saddle if not for the straps and buckles holding him there. The problem wasn’t a lack of agility. Oraxes had thrown the griffon off her rhythm by repeating a command, or giving it too forcefully.

Eider found a column of warm, rising air and used it to lift her and her master high above the plain. Gaedynn looked down at the copses and the high ground the decoy force would occupy. At soldiers busy digging earthworks or constructing archers’ platforms in the trees, and others just arriving from the south and west, the unlucky fellows in the rear of a column eating the dust raised by their comrades in the front.

He wheeled Eider toward the north, and Oraxes and Queen Umara followed. After a while a griffon rider passed them heading the other way, for of course the Brotherhood had other scouts watching on the enemy. And Gaedynn trusted them-but, like Aoth, he still needed to see things for himself. That was how the elves had taught him to hunt.

He kept an eye on Oraxes. The mage’s anxiety revealed itself in his hunched, rigid posture and in the grim intensity of his expression. But after a while, the ruffled feathers on Queen Umara’s neck lay down, and she stopped screeching in annoyance. Because her rider wasn’t directing her in the needlessly frantic manner he had before.

Some time after that, some of the stony grimness left Oraxes’s face. He still didn’t look like he was enjoying his situation, but he might have been feeling some satisfaction that he was able to cope.

Gaedynn nodded. Truculence and all, the lad would do. If-

Abruptly angry with himself, he cut off that line of thought. Plainly it would be worthwhile to recruit Oraxes, but it would have been a good idea at any time and under any circumstances. There was no if involved, because Jhesrhi wasn’t leaving.

And if she did, to the Abyss with her.

Not long afterward, he spotted a blot on the green and brown earth ahead and felt glad of the need to focus on it. Attending to business would keep his mind from straying where he didn’t want it to go.

But the relief, if that was the proper word for it, only lasted until he noticed there were two blots. It was barely conceivable the column had simply split lengthwise for some reason, but he wasn’t optimistic enough to believe it.

At the moment just a crimson speck in the distance, one of the dragons was currently in the air. So were some smaller flying creatures, hanging over their comrades on the ground like a cloud of mosquitoes, perhaps to deter griffon-riding bowmen from getting too close. Still, Gaedynn would have to venture nearer to obtain a better look at the blots.

He needed to do it alone too. He didn’t want a fledgling rider like Oraxes going any nearer. He waved for the wizard to stay back, then urged Eider forward. She grunted like she was questioning his judgment, but obeyed as willingly as ever.

Making sure he’d notice if his flying foes moved to attack him, he divided his attention between them and the ones on the ground. At first, squinting, he couldn’t differentiate between the two columns. Points of yellow sunlight gleamed from each. But then he saw that in the larger one, it was reflecting from reptilian scales. In the smaller, it was glinting on steel.

A company of warriors-men, orcs, or goblinkin, he still couldn’t tell-had reinforced the dragons and the beasts they controlled. Wary of the brutes, they were maintaining some distance until such time as they all needed to fight as one.

It was bad news, but, as he made a rough count of the soldiers, worse arrived. Leathery wings beating, a second red dragon flew out of the north to join the one in the air.

Praying that he’d somehow lost track of a wyrm, that it had gotten up into the sky without him realizing it, Gaedynn peered back down at the ground. No, curse it, the dragon he’d seen there was still striding among the lesser reptiles. It was green too, a fact he’d apparently repressed to give himself an instant of false hope.

He peered at the second red, trying to decide how old, large, and accordingly formidable it might be, and then it snarled. Though he couldn’t speak the language of dragons, he could tell the sound was complex and patterned enough to have words inside it. Three of the lesser specks abruptly hurtled forward.

Gaedynn turned Eider as fast as he could, which was pretty fast. Yet in those few heartbeats the enemy flyers streaked close enough for him to make out the pale green of their hides, the long horns sweeping back from their almost birdlike heads, and their serpentine tails. They were the sort of reptile called spiretop drakes, and they shouldn’t have been able to close the distance as fast as they were. The red had apparently cast an enchantment to make their wings beat as quick as a hummingbird’s.

Hoping the magic would run out of power soon, Gaedynn kept glancing back as he fled, and each time the spiretop drakes were closer. But raw speed didn’t equate to skill and maneuverability. If he turned again and fought, he might be able to kill the wretched things. But what if other flying foes, maybe even the dragons themselves, caught up to him before he finished?