Sudden shrill whinnying caught their attention. Whirling, Ses saw one of the wyrmking’s bodyguards deserting, thrashing to break free of the attacking unicorns and make its escape. Scouts of Halla fell upon it as it rushed by. Frenetically, it shook them off. Several gave chase while the rest sprang after Tek, who now pressed forward in a fury, fighting toward Lynex as the sunset sky caught fire. The wyvern king and his ten surviving guards cursed their fleeing companion.
The enormous wyrm was coming straight toward her, Ses realized with a start. A day of battle had dulled her wits. She felt Calydor spring past her to intercept the wyrm, moving with a grassbuck’s strength and speed. Coming as it did from one who once so coolly championed flight over combat, his action caused her an instant’s surprise. Then she saw that pressed as the pair of them were, so close against the limestone cliff, no room remained for flight.
Ses sprang after the blue-and-silver stallion. She dived at the great wyvern’s tail, impaling its poison tip as it swung around toward Calydor. Her horn grated, sparking against the ground. It occurred to her what risk the singer had taken, venturing the battlefield in search of Lell, unprotected as he was from white wyrms’ stings. As the pale mare pinned the wyvern’s tail, the star-strewn stallion stabbed upward under its gaping jaw. Already the other of its two heads lay dead.
Once more realization came: Calydor did not possess fire-tempered hooves or horn, could not have pierced the bony breastplate protecting the monster’s heart if he had tried. She heard the wyrmking’s guardian give a high-pitched scream. It stiffened. Calydor shook free, sprang away from the dying creature’s flailing claws as it toppled. Ses braced herself, kept her horn firmly planted in the creature’s thrashing tail lest the Plainsdweller be struck by a reflexive sting.
“Look to your leader! Hie, Tek! Tek,” Calydor was shouting, sprinting suddenly toward the black-and-rose mare. Ses, too, leapt away, leaving the wyvern for others to finish. She had seen what Summer Stars had seen: Tek and her battlemates smashing through the ring of bodyguards at the weak point opened when the traitor fled. The Scouts formed a blunt wedge that shoved into the opening, forcing the guards farther and farther apart. The wedge then split, each half continuing to press outward, creating a corridor.
Down this corridor charged Tek. Bugling her warcry, she hurtled at Lynex like a striking hawk. The wyrmking caught sight of her, reared back, but with a mighty leap, the pied mare caught his third-smallest head in her teeth. She gave a savage shake, like a wolf pup snapping a rock squirrel’s neck, then let go and dropped to the ground. There she half crouched, stance ready, horn aimed. The king of the white wyrms convulsed. A cry sprang from six of his throats. The third-smallest head lay limp, slain. The Scouts of Halla strove gamely to keep Lynex’s remaining bodyguards from closing ranks and pinning Tek inside their ring. Ses pounded across the corpse-strewn field, hot on Calydor’s heels.
“Wretch! Wretch,” keened the wyvern king. “A hundred years and more have I tended that head.”
Tek’s words rang boldly over the din of battle. Ses made them out with ease.
“I’ll snap all seven like buds from a stalk,” the pied mare returned. “Four centuries have my folk suffered exile because of your treachery! Now we mean to put that wrong to rights and drive the last wyrm from our Hallow Hills.”
Another of the wyrmking’s bodyguards broke from its companions and strove to flee. The Scouts of Halla pressed to hem it in. It writhed and flailed across Ses’s path. Ahead of her, Calydor’s way was also blocked as he fought to reach the corridor and Tek.
“Hoofed grass-eater!” scarred Lynex shrieked. “Little whistling nit!”
“A warrior of the Ring am I,” Tek threw back at him. Ses’s ears pricked. The pied mare shouted on. “Mate to the prince and mother of his heirs. Regent in his absence, I am your fiercest enemy. Scheming, deceiving tyrant wyrm!”
Once more she sprang, from a standing start, with a vigor that astonished Ses. About the great wyvern’s central pate, his lesser crania darted, wove. The pied mare seized one of these in teeth, a nob larger than the first she had killed. It screamed and tore free. Tek landed, instantly sprang again. Lynex reared, lifting his faces above the reach of her teeth. Tucking her chin, she stabbed the injured head deep in its cheek. A sharp shake of her horn as she fell to earth reversed the slash into its eye. The wounded visage wailed, bleeding great streaks of near-colorless blood and entangling itself among the wyrmking’s other necks and heads.
Again he bellowed, so loudly the pale mare’s ears flinched. Ahead of her, Calydor had made his way around the knot of Scouts attacking the fleeing bodyguard. She strove to follow him. Now the star-strewn stallion fought forward through the throng of unicorns that had once formed the corridor allowing Tek in to reach Lynex. The crush of battle was closing that opening, warriors backing and sidling into one another. The blue-and-silver stallion hurled himself into their midst. Ses shouldered after him. Beyond them—not far, but almost unreachable because of the press—Tek faced the wyrm.
His rippling tail, like a mighty rapid, swept toward the pied mare, its seven-stinged tip brandished to flail at her. Tek overleapt it, slashing down in the same motion, and Lynex roared. One massive forepaw, broad as the mare’s ribcage, swung its saberclaws. Tek ducked, dodged, twisted, and ran it through. The bladelike claws of the other paw scored her shoulders. She pivoted and sprang free, laughing. Ses saw blood welling into the wounds Tek did not even seem to feel.
The pied mare speared the wyrmking through the side. With a snarl, his great head swooped, sank its splinter-fangs into her shoulder. Tek struck him off with one forehoof, slashing a long, shallow wound across his throat. Ses watched his torn gills begin to bleed. The pale mare flung herself against the mass of unicorns grappling with towering wyrms. Calydor still forged ahead. She sought to trail just behind, squeezing through what gaps he managed before the surge of battle closed them. Beyond the shifting, near-impassable wall of warriors, the pied mare taunted the wyrms’ seven-headed king.
“Surrender, Lynex,” Tek roared. “Give up this fight. Swear never to return, and I will let your folk depart.”
“Never!” the white wyrm shrieked. “Not while I live will I allow my people to retreat.” He struck at her again with one massive forepaw. Nimbly, she dodged away.
“Your bodyguards desert you! How long can you hold them to certain death?”
“Where is your mate?” the king of wyverns snarled, his huge, main head darting to snap at her. Tek ducked and sidestepped, avoiding the clash of needle-like teeth.
“On errands more pressing than pricking at you, wyrmking,” she answered. The unwounded maws of the great wyvern laughed. He slithered after her.
“Jan, who killed my queen—was he too great a coward to come himself, but must send his mate to face my wrath?”
“One warrior mare among my race is more than a match for you,” Tek spat, lunging after one of two midsized heads flanking the main one, champed it by the gill ruff.
She got one foreleg over it, compressing its windpipe in the crook of her knee. With a squall of terror, Lynex tried to wrest his second-most-ancient head from her grasp. The pied mare held on with teeth and limb, her other legs braced. Ses saw the wyvern’s near forepaw pinned against his body by the taut downward stretch of the captured pate’s neck. His free paw tore at Tek but, too stubby and short, it could not reach around his scarred and bony breast. Tek dragged the head down, bowing her own head and leaning all her weight onto the forelimb that pinned it.
“Surrender,” the pale mare heard Tek grate. “Yield, wyrmking, or you lose this head as well.”
The huge white wyrm began to scream. His massive body rocked, trying to shake the pied mare free. Ses saw Tek let her standing limbs buckle, setting her down hard on the ground. The wyrm’s secondary head remained pinned in her folded forelimb, gill ruff held fast in her strong, square teeth. Maddened with fear, the three auxiliary nobs as yet unscathed flung themselves high and wide, shrieking, while the main head swooped, attempting to catch Tek in its jaws. Teeth still clenched about the captured pate’s gill ruff, the pied mare pointed her horn at the main head, keeping it at bay.