Crown of Hidden Scales novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Emberfold

We reached Emberfold before the fire did its worst.

The village stood in a cleft of the northern hills, thirty stone houses stacked up a slope.

Half the thatch was burning.

Black smoke rolled up the valley, and over it I heard children screaming.

Rhain pulled his horse in beside mine at the ridge.

The boy who had ridden with us sat in front of him, white-knuckled on the mane.

"A raiding party," Rhain said. "Forty men, maybe. They've rammed the gate."

"Then we go through it."

"We could wait for dark."

"We could not," I said.

I put the crown on my head.

It settled there warm and heavy.

My scales rose to my collarbones.

I kicked my horse down the slope.

Rhain swore behind me and came after.

Twenty paces apart, we hit the broken gate together.

A soldier in the Dowager's grey stood over a villager with a torch, grinning.

He looked up and the grin dropped off his face.

"The Warden!" he shouted. "And the witch!"

"I'm not a witch," I said. "I'm in a bad mood."

I threw out my hand, and every torch in the lane went out at once.

It was not the wind.

The flames bent toward me and poured into the crown.

The soldiers' hands were suddenly empty and smoking.

Rhain was already off his horse.

He fought as he did everything, without waste.

In four breaths two soldiers were down and a third was running.

The rest of the raiders saw the crown glowing on my head and the gold on his bare forearms, and they broke.

The captain was the last, a heavy man with a scarred lip.

He stood his ground in the middle of the lane with his sword shaking in his hand.

"The Dowager pays double for your head," he told me. "And triple for his."

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