Obolon, growling, drew his.
And Matty, who had indeed been hiding a pair of knives, brought them spinning out.
A breath later the Ravenguard put arrows to string, Maladan Pike and his fur-clad northmen brandished axes, and Etna Doshi’s silk-clad pirates tore scimitars from their scabbards. The Sultana’s blond brutes levelled long spears and hard glares at everyone, including Clay and his bandmates, who were among the few people on the Isle left unarmed.
And thus stood the Lords and Ladies of Grandual as the shadow of a wyvern’s wings fell upon them all.
Chapter Thirteen
The Duke of Endland
Clay had once tried describing to his wife the difference between a wyvern and a dragon. They were each vaguely reptilian, he’d admitted, and covered with metallic scales. They shared commonalities like razor-sharp fangs and claws that could punch through an iron breastplate as though it were made of eggshell. They both had leathery wings and sinuous necks, and were equally capable of shearing a man in half with a snap of the tail. Ginny had stopped him there to point out what a piss-poor job he was doing of differentiating the two, whereupon Clay was forced to concede that there was essentially no difference between them whatsoever.
Although now, as a wyvern touched down on the hillside before him, a few notable distinctions sprung to mind. For starters, a wyvern’s front arms were built into its wings, with curved spines flaring from the elbow and a joint spiked with curling talons. On the ground, wyverns plodded along on their knuckles, like apes. Their long tails were barbed on the end, and could inject a poison strong enough to paralyse a plough horse in seconds flat.
Unlike dragons, they weren’t especially cognizant. A dragon could plan and plot; it could speak, although no one (not even Moog) could decipher their draconic tongue. A dragon could, if given sufficient reason, hate you—something Clay and his bandmates knew all too well.
A wyvern, on the other hand, was a predator, compelled by instinct to hunt and to kill. It was a beast, and like any beast its will could be broken, its instincts subverted by the understanding that it was not, after all, the most dangerous thing in the world.
At least that was Clay’s assumption, or else why in the Frost Mother’s Frozen Hell would a wyvern permit someone to ride on its fucking back?
The “someone” in question was a druin, as Moog had mentioned yesterday. He slid down the wyvern’s black scales with a grace that mirrored Obolon Han dismounting his pony.
The Duke of Endland wore a long leather coat that was either burnished brown or bloody crimson, and carried three distinct swords in three distinct scabbards across his back. He was tall, like many of his kind, and thin, with skin pale as cream. His hair was the colour of a late autumn leaf, or a freshly minted copper coin, and but for a few strays the wind had plucked loose it was swept back against his skull. His features were typically druin: severe, all hard angles and jutting lines. He had a strong, sylvan nose, thin lips, sharp teeth, and long ears tufted like a rabbit’s and sheathed in fine white fur.
An old scar sliced through his left brow. It wasn’t obvious from where Clay stood behind the bristling crowd of Matrick’s guards, but he knew it was there.
Because he’d met this particular druin before. Knew his name even before Matrick said it out loud.
“Lastleaf?”
Lastleaf, son of Vespian, from whom Gabriel had inherited Vellichor.
Lastleaf, who had tried and failed (hence the scar) to take the Archon’s sword from Gabriel many years ago.
Lastleaf, the Duke of Endland, master of the Heartwyld Horde.
Clay found himself wondering what the Council of Courts etiquette was regarding vomiting your breakfast onto your boots. He suddenly wished he were elsewhere, anywhere—or better yet, someone else entirely. A simple man doing simple things. A cobbler, maybe. Cobblers rarely, if ever, made enemies of vengeful immortals, or so he figured.
The druin stopped where he was. He didn’t appear to notice the king had spoken. The wyvern craned its neck and lowered its head so the druin could stroke the glossy scales along its jaw. Clay assumed the beast was a matriarch, since it was twice the size of most wyverns he’d seen, and he’d seen quite a few. The creature emitted a sound like ten thousand cats purring at once, and the ribbed fins along her neck and below her chin vibrated in pleasure.
Clay made a note to congratulate himself later for not shitting himself right then and there. The same could not be said for the horses, however. At a word from the king—and a gesture from the Han—the skittish mounts were led away, off the hill and into the babbling throng. The great good fortune of seeing a druin and a wyvern on the same day had created a fair bit of excitement down below. Clay saw one fellow setting up an easel and mixing water into a bowl of dry paint—no doubt he’d have the whole affair framed and hung on a brothel wall by tomorrow.
At last the druin turned and addressed the king of Agria in a measured voice. “Hello … Matrick, was it?”
The queen turned on her husband. “You know this creature?” she asked, which seemed to Clay like a piss-poor way to begin what was supposed to be a negotiation.
Though they were here at Lastleaf’s demand, Matrick had explained last night that the Council’s aim was to convince the self-proclaimed “Duke of Endland” to abandon his siege and disperse the Horde he claimed to lead. Though the kingdoms of Grandual had few—if any—ties to the faraway Republic of Castia, it seemed unwise (and somewhat callous) to sit by and do nothing while a horde of monsters wiped an entire city of humans off the face of the world.
“We’ve met before, yes,” Matrick told his wife. “It was a long time ago.”
“Not so long,” said Lastleaf, whose kind counted the turn of seasons as though they were hours in an endless day. “Not for me, anyhow, and yet I barely recognized you. You have grown old, and fat, and judging from the crown on your head it appears someone was foolish enough to make you a king.”
Obolon sniggered, and Matrick shot the Cartean ruler a glare before he replied. “I’m the king of Agria, yes.” The old rogue tried puffing out his chest but was forced to settle for thrusting out his gut. “And you look … exactly the same. Except the scar, of course,” he added with a decidedly undiplomatic wink. “That’s new.”
The scar had been dealt by Vellichor’s edge on the day Lastleaf, along with a few sylf henchmen, had ambushed Saga shortly after Gabriel had inherited Vespian’s fabled sword. The sylfs—druin-human halfbreeds most often shunned by everyone but their mortal mothers—were killed or driven off, and when Clay had last seen Lastleaf, the Archon’s son had been curled in agony around Ganelon’s boot, blinded by blood, heaping promises of retribution upon Gabe and his bandmates.
Just now the druin’s face remained impassive, which Clay found troubling for a number of reasons. Lastleaf touched his thumb to the pale scar beneath his left eye. “It suits me, don’t you think?”
Before the king could answer, Maladan Pike cut in. “Excuse me, Duke, but I didn’t come here—”
“We,” said Etna Doshi with a pointed look.
The First Shield of Kaskar sighed. “Fine. We didn’t come here to listen while you and Old King Matrick swap stories. We came because—”
“—you want me to lift the siege of Castia,” finished Lastleaf.
“Well, yes,” said Pike. The northern prince was still holding his axe. In fact, members of several delegations hadn’t bothered to resheathe their weapons since the wyvern landed. Clay had a moment to wonder if putting everyone on edge had been the Duke’s intention in the first place.