Fire - Kristin Cashore [31]
It all seemed to make sense in her mind as she turned to Archer, to assure him she didn’t want to shoot raptors from the wall after all; and then she swung away to Small’s stall to do something that had no logic whatsoever, except, perhaps hidden very deep.
SHEKNEWTHEentire enterprise would only take a few minutes. The raptors would dive as soon as they’d comprehended their own superior number. The greatest danger was to the men at the back of the line who would have to slow their pace as the horses entered the bottleneck of the nearest tunnel’s entrance. The soldiers who made it into the tunnel would be safe. Raptors didn’t like dark, cramped spaces, and they did not follow men into caves.
She understood from the talk she heard in the stables that Brigan had ordered the king to the front of the column and the best spear-men and swordsmen to the back, because in the moment of greatest crisis the raptors would be too close for bows. Brigan himself would bring up the rear.
The horses were filing out and gathering near the gates when she prepared Small, hooking her bow and a spear to the leather of his saddle. As she led him into the courtyard no one paid her much attention, partly because she monitored the minds around her and nudged them aside when they touched her. She led Small to the back of the courtyard, as far as she could get from the gates. She tried to express to Small how important this was, and how sorry she was, and how much she loved him. He dribbled against her neck.
Then Brigan gave the order. Servants swung the gates in and pulled the portcullis up, and the men burst into daylight. Fire pulled herself into her saddle and spurred Small forward behind them. The gates were closing again when she and Small galloped through, and rode alone, away from the soldiers, toward the empty rockiness east of Roen’s holding.
The soldiers’ focus was northward and up; they didn’t see her. Some of the raptors did, and, curious, broke off from the surge dropping down onto the soldiers, few enough that she shot them from her saddle, clenching her teeth through the pain. The archers on the wall most certainly saw her. She knew it from the shock and panic Archer was sending at her. I’ll be most likely to survive this if you stay on that wall and keep shooting, she thought to him fiercely, hoping it would be enough to keep him from coming out after her.
And now she was a good distance from the gates and the first soldiers had reached the tunnel, and she saw that a skirmish of monsters and men had begun at the back of the line. This was the time. She drew her brave horse up and turned him around. She yanked her scarf from her head. Her hair billowed down over her shoulders like a river of flame.
For an instant nothing happened, and she began to panic because it wasn’t working. She dropped her mind’s guard against their recognition. Still nothing. She reached out to grab at their attention.
Then one raptor high in the sky felt her, and then sighted her, and screamed a horrible sound, like metal screeching against metal. Fire knew what that sound meant, and so did the other raptors. Like a cloud of gnats they lifted from the soldiers. They shot into the sky, twirling desperately, searching for monster prey, finding it. The soldiers were forgotten. Every last raptor monster dove for her.
Now she had two jobs: to get herself and her horse back to the gates, if she could; and to stop the soldiers from doing something heroic and foolish when they saw what she’d done. She spurred Small forward. She slammed the thought at Brigan as hard as she could, not manipulation, which she knew would be futile - only a message. If you don’t continue onward to Grey Haven this instant, I will have done this for nothing.
She knew he hesitated. She couldn’t see him or sense his thoughts, but she could feel that his mind was still there, on his horse, not moving. She supposed she could manipulate his horse, if she had to.
Let me do this, she