If it did, the results could be devastating. Seeking a way for his earthbound comrades to withstand such an attack, Gaedynn looked around and found the genasi, fairly close at hand but standing idle. Despite Tchazzar’s threats, no one had attacked them yet, so they hadn’t abandoned hope of avoiding battle.
Guiding Eider with his knees, Gaedynn sent her streaking over his embattled allies, then plunged her down behind some of Brotherhood’s own archers. Startled, the nearest bowmen recoiled. Then three sellswords started jabbering at him at once.
Ignoring them, he cast around and found Son-liin. “Come here!” he called, shouting to make himself heard above the roaring, pounding clamor of battle. “Mount up behind me!” She scurried to obey. “Where are the mages?”
The stormsoul pointed. “That way.”
Gaedynn sent Eider bounding in that direction, and mercenaries scrambled out of the way. The young wizards gaped at him.
“Before,” Gaedynn said, “you made the riders in the air seem fewer than we were. Now Son-liin and I have to seem like more than we are.”
Oraxes frowned. “Well, if I-”
“Don’t explain it!” Gaedynn snapped. “Do it! Now!” Sweeping his left hand in a serpentine fashion, Oraxes murmured too softly for Gaedynn to make out the words. But perhaps Meralaine could, somehow, because she joined in at the end.
As soon as they finished, Gaedynn sent Eider leaping back into the air. “Now,” he said to the girl mounted behind him, “I need you to be the genasi-est genasi anybody ever saw, with sparks flying everywhere. The foe has to see what you are despite the dark.”
“All right,” she said. “But what are we doing?”
“Killing a dragon,” he said. “Well, just hurting it, probably. But do your best.”
He wheeled Eider over the Akanulan formation. A few of the genasi sensed them passing and looked up.
Then Eider was streaking across the stretch of ground that separated the genasi from the sapphire dragon and Tchazzar’s men. Trusting his safety straps to keep him in the saddle, Gaedynn leaned far to the left. It made archery more difficult, but it was necessary to give the enemy a good look at Son-liin and open up a line for her to shoot.
The foes ahead looked as if they were just about ready to resume their advance with the sapphire wyrm in the forefront. In a just world, that would mean they’d miss Eider hurtling out of the dark on their own flank.
But they didn’t, or at least not all of them did. The dragon’s head whipped around, then cocked back.
Gaedynn nudged Eider with his elbow, then realized he hadn’t needed to. Over the course of the past several tendays, the griffon had learned what a dragon looked like when it was about to spew its breath weapon, and she was already dodging. Dangling sideways as he was, the sudden motion whipped Gaedynn’s body, but the punishment was preferable to getting hit. And although he heard a shrill whine, nothing touched him.
He loosed arrows. One glanced off but the rest pierced the dragon’s neck and chest. Behind him, the discharge from Son-liin’s body popped and crackled. Eider’s muscles twitched when it stung her. The shafts the former firestormer shot flickered with lightning.
The sapphire dragon opened its jaws to spew another attack, and one such arrow streaked all the way to the back of its throat. The resulting flash made the creature flail its head and pound its tail on the ground in pain. The jolts sent its human allies staggering.
Gaedynn judged that that attack had likely accomplished their purpose if anything could. Besides, some of Tchazzar’s soldiers were raising their crossbows. He turned Eider and the griffon carried him and Son-liin back the way they’d come.
He glanced around and grinned to see the enraged dragon bound after them because that meant it was also charging the ranks of genasi. After a moment’s hesitation, its allies did the same.
Ripples of motion ran through the Akanulans’ formation as they hastily prepared to defend. Flame and lightning flickered. Windsouls rose into the air.
“Welcome to the party,” Gaedynn said.
Medrash stared in amazement. Maybe that was ironic, considering that it was his premonition that had persuaded him and his companions to make the final leg of their journey as fast as sorcery would allow. But his worries and imaginings had fallen short of the reality.
Though distance and darkness obscured some of the details, he could tell humans, genasi, and wyrms were fighting in and above the western portion of the city up ahead, in a battle at least as big and chaotic as any the dragonborn had fought against the giants. Shouts, screams, roars, and crashes blended into one huge, throbbing drone. Buildings burned and columns of gray smoke striped the sky. Wyrms wheeled over the rooftops, the glow of their breath weapons and the blasts of magic that came in response momentarily revealing the griffon riders who whirled around them like gnats.
“What is it?” asked Biri, perched behind him.
The question nudged him out of his astonishment, and he tried to order his thoughts. “War,” he said. “Though who exactly is fighting whom, I can’t yet tell.”
“So what do we do?” Praxasalandos asked.
“I came to free Tchazzar from the madness of the Great Game,” Medrash said. “That’s still worth doing, no matter what else is going on.”
“Then I’ll find him for you,” the quicksilver dragon said. Wings beating, he hurtled forward, and Khouryn and Balasar’s bats kept pace. Balasar shot his clan brother and the white-scaled wizard a grin.
As they reached the outskirts of the city and the fringe of the struggle, a dragon hurtled from the right. Medrash thought it was a black, although in the darkness he wasn’t sure. He shifted his lance and shield and prepared to channel Torm’s power. Biri took a deep breath and let it out again, centering herself to wield her own kind of magic.
But the dragon swooped right past Praxasalandos and Khouryn and Balasar as well. Either it had mistaken the quicksilver wyrm for one of its allies or, in the midst of the darting, wheeling struggle in the sky, hadn’t noticed him at all. The griffon riders it was actually diving at scattered before it.
“If we hit it while its back is turned-” said Prax.
“No,” Medrash answered. “Stick to the plan.”
They did and somehow avoided the hostile attentions of any other dragons or any of the archers and spellcasters on the ground. Then Khouryn made Iron dive. Medrash could only assume that, with his superior night vision, the dwarf had spotted something he thought needed his immediate attention.
Then fire exploded across the sky.
It was Tchazzar’s breath, and Aoth Fezim and his black griffon swooped beneath the flare. But instead of dying away for want of fuel, the streak of flame floated in the air, drew in on itself, and took on the shape of a dragon. The bright horror turned and, wings lashing, shot after the Thayan captain.
That would likely keep him from threatening Tchazzar for a little while at least, and ignoring the flyers who were simply loosing arrows at him, the Red Dragon glared at the action of the ground. There, to all appearances, two masses of Chessentan soldiers were fighting one another. One company was pushing the other back, and despite the height at which he was flying and the general cacophony, Medrash could make out what the humans who had the upper hand were chanting:
“Shala! Shala! Shala!”