"If I go back with you," Kirissa said, "my life is over. My only hope for survival is if you grant me endowments."
Rhianna studied her, eyes narrowing, showing the smallest worry lines. "Who would grant endowments to a wyrmling?" she asked. "Perhaps we can find another way…"
In the early afternoon, Rhianna paced through the camp. She felt so strong, so full of energy that she could not hold still. That was part of her problem. But more than anything else, she worried.
Sister Daughtry came and walked beside her. "You ve heard troubling news?"
Certainly Sister Daughtry had heard everything that Rhianna had. Still, it helped to have someone to talk with.
"If Kirissa is right, there is a new enemy leading the wyrmling horde, one that has gone by many names-the Great Wyrm, Despair, the One True Master of Evil.
"Daylan Hammer and the others need to know this. But there is no way that I can reach them."
Sister Daughtry s face was an unreadable mask. Rhianna suspected that she was trying hard to hide her own alarm.
"Your friends said that they would make their attack on Rugassa within three days, is that correct?"
"Yes," Rhianna said. "But I m worried that they will take too long. Rugassa s new master will need forcibles, thousands and thousands of them."
"And of course," Sister Daughtry said, "the wyrmlings will be out to impress their new master. You said that the wyrmlings can be expected to travel a hundred miles in a night. But your little Kirissa has shown us that a wyrmling can travel by daylight, if the need is strong enough."
"Exactly," Rhianna said. "Daylan Hammer, I m sure, imagined that the wyrmlings would travel only by night. He may be right. The blood metal is so precious, they ll want to have Death Lords and Knights Eternal to guard their caravan, and the Death Lords cannot abide the day.
"But for the sake of haste, the wyrmlings might elect to move the blood metal by air, using their giant graaks. Even a Knight Eternal might carry a few."
"If you re right," Sister Daughtry said, "it might well be that the wyrmlings have already moved some ore, flown it from Caer Luciare to Rugassa."
"I doubt it," Rhianna said. "The wyrmlings took the city at dawn two days ago. I saw no sign of them mining by daylight when we left. That means that they waited until sunset to begin. They would have started digging last night. But the refining process is easy, and it won t take long.
"Blood metal boils at a low heat. You must heat it, stir, let the impurities settle and cool a bit, then pour off the clean metal from the top. Several times, if I recall."
"Twenty times is best," Sister Daughtry said. "Though it can be done fewer."
"So refining it will still take more than a single night," Rhianna thought aloud.
Sister Daughtry said, "They would have taken the ore into the fortress and worked on it throughout the day."
"That means that their caravan probably did not get on the road until last night, at sunset, at the earliest."
"If the blood metal was sent by graak," Sister Daughtry said, "then it may have already reached Rugassa."
Rhianna fought back the urge to pace.
"You will not rest until you know where that shipment is," Sister Daughtry said, giving her a knowing look.
Rhianna did not hesitate. She leapt in the air and took off in a rush of wings, flying toward Rugassa. She was determined to go there first, then trace the route south as she searched for the wyrmling convoy.
With so many endowments of metabolism and brawn, she sped through the air like a bolt. In less than an hour she neared Rugassa. With her endowments of sight, she could see the roads well enough to recognize that there were no convoys traveling in the afternoon sun.
Her only hope was that the convoy was still farther south.
She veered, hurtling along. Her four endowments of metabolism made her swifter than a falcon.
Rhianna skirted above the trees and brush, staying nearly half a mile in the air. Much of the country was lush fields that had gone brown with the summer sun. The intermittent oaks were a dark green.
She found the convoy none too soon. The sun was falling in a red haze.
A giant black graak could be seen ahead, sleeping beside a rocky crag, in the shadows on the northern exposure of a wooded hill. It raised its snake-like neck and peered up into the trees. She could see perhaps a dozen wyrmling guards breaking their camp, some of them hauling chests to load onto the graak while others puttered around.
Rhianna was loath to do battle with so many wyrmlings, but she had no choice. If she left them to their own affairs, their load of forcibles would reach Rugassa tonight.
And if she did not attack now, she would lose the advantage of daylight.
She climbed high in the air, flying toward the sun, then folded her wings and dove toward the guards.
They never saw her coming. At the last instant she folded her wings, molding them to her body, and went hurtling just overhead of the huge graak-a sharpened sword snicking the neck of the graak, then taking the heads off of two guards.
The graak roared in panic and tried to lift into the air, but a great leather rope bound it to a tree, so that it flapped and roared and lurched about angrily as it died.
The wyrmlings were thrown into a panic. Their reaction surprised her. Six of the guards scattered, rushing blindly into the shadows of the trees, trying to escape. Two others threw down their weapons, hoping for mercy.
Only two of them prepared for battle.
Rhianna suddenly realized that she was moving so blindingly fast that the wyrmlings hadn t got a good look at her. They saw only the wings, and most of them seemed to believe that she was one of their own Knights Eternal. Perhaps they feared that they had displeased their masters somehow.
With a rush of insight, Rhianna realized that she would not need allies for this raid.
I am an army, she thought.
With that she dove into the wyrmlings, to take vengeance for the man she loved.
She swept into two defenders who had kept their wits. One of them hurled an iron war dart, but she easily dipped a wing, dodging the missile.
He raised his ax high, and Rhianna folded her wings at the last instant, letting her weight carry her under his guard. She cut him down at the knee, hurtled past him; then in a thunder of wings she slowed her course, flipped in the air, landed, and faced the next challenge.
The second guard roared and spun to meet her with such speed that Rhianna realized that he must have taken a few endowments himself, but she was endowed like one of the great Runelords of old, and he was no match for her. She plunged her blade into him three times before he could raise a shield to defend himself, and while he began to stagger from his death blow, she whirled and went after the surrendering guards, cutting them down even as they realized their error.
Then she flew into the woods, giving chase to those that had fled.
Two minutes later, not a wyrmling was left.
The giant graak lay on its belly, bleeding its life away, panting from exertion.
There were half a dozen chests on the ground. Rhianna lifted one, heard the clank of forcibles. By its heft, she figured that it weighed a hundred pounds, and held a thousand forcibles.
One by one, Rhianna lugged each chest into the sky, and then flew them to an abandoned well near an old farmhouse some twenty miles off.
There was no way to erase the signs of her battle. The enormous graak lay in a ruined heap, and Rhianna could not afford to waste time by trying to hide the body.
As a trophy of war, she carried a chest with a thousand forcibles back to the horse clans.