Chapter 15: The Pass

"That's not Drystan leading them," Wystan said.

He was right.

The bronze dragon wasn't in the sky.

At the front of the army, under a black and gold banner, sat an old man on a white horse in a fur hood.

Even from the keep I knew the way he sat.

I'd seen him bend over the King's ear in the Eyrie yard.

The Chancellor.

"Celandine's father," I said.

"Then it's not a war," Wystan said. "It's a family matter."

He was pulling on his breeches.

"Get your students on the wall," he said. "We'll need every voice you've got."

By the time the sun cleared the peaks, they were all up there.

Dorrit at the gate tower.

The cook and the smith's wife on the east wall, over the village.

The shepherd brothers and their wives on the west, over the lake.

The elder sat on an upturned bucket by the gate with his staff across his knees, because he said he'd stood long enough in his life.

The clan's drakes shifted in the yard, one after another, brown and grey and dun.

Bettris went up last, copper, glowing in the sun.

The Wing boys from the quarry stood by me.

"Are we flying?" the cowlick boy asked.

"Against your own Wing?"

He swallowed. "Against whoever shoots at us."

"Stay on the wall," I said. "You're going to sing."

A trumpet went down in the pass.

The great crossbows fired.

The noise was like a mountain cracking.

Iron bolts went up into the sky dragging their chains behind them, whirling.

One caught a brown clan drake across the wing.

The chain wrapped him.

He screamed and went down on the rocks of the pass.

The soldiers were on him before he stopped rolling.

Then the Wing came in over the wall.

Ten drakes in blue and silver, the ones Drystan had trained, diving at the Hold's towers.

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