On Fire's Wings - Christie Golden [143]
She had been clutching the Dragon’s spine ridge so tightly that her hands ached, but now she released her grip. She did not need to worry about balance. She was the Dragon, and it was her. There was no risk of falling.
Kevla lifted her hands, feeling the movement as sensuous and graceful, and for the first time understood on a primal level why the guardians of the worlds were called Dancers.
It is like a dance, she marveled. I know each step, but I don’t know that I know it—
Suddenly her mind was filled with images of Jashemi holding her, kissing her, making love to her. That fire that had burned in her, roused by his touch, smoldered inside her still. She could call on it, control it. Use it to protect her people.
Her eyes flew open. Her vision took on a clarity it had never had before. Her skin sensed the wind caressing it with vibrant intensity. Everything was heightened, sensitive—ready to accept Fire.
Attuned to her as he was, the Dragon sensed her readiness and swooped down toward the Sacred Mountain. Kevla stared at it, at the smoke that drifted upward. In her mind’s eye, she saw again the pool of red-orange liquid. She reached out toward it with her mind and her hands as if to embrace it.
“Not yet,” cautioned the Dragon. Kevla blinked as if emerging from a trance and saw the wisdom in his words. The army had only begun to come down the mountain. She looked over her shoulder at the tiny figures of the clans of Arukan.
“Dragon, they’re dying down there!”
“I know,” he said, gently. “But you must wait.”
Kevla kept the simmering energy bottled inside her. Wait. Wait.
The sun rose higher and more soldiers flooded down the mountainside. Tahmu, atop Swift-Over-Sand, tensed, but did not charge.
“Hold your ground!” he cried. His men, many from his own Clan but a greater number from the Star Clan and the Horserider Clan, shifted uneasily. He shared their feelings. He had sent his best archers up to the pass, and had watched them kill and be killed with pain and resignation. This was the first place where the Arukani army—strange, to think of it that way—had tried to dam the flood of warriors. They had slowed it, but not stopped it.
Now, it was Tahmu’s turn to try to hold them before they reached the open plains. His heart pounded in his chest and every sense was alert as he watched them come, some on foot, some on horses. Wait. Wait. Let them come to us, waste their energy in running.
“Now!” he cried, and kicked Swift. The warhorse charged, snorting. A hundred other mounted warriors did likewise. Scimitars glinted in the bright morning light as Tahmu’s men surged forward, greeting the enemy with naked steel and the resolve that can only come from defending one’s homeland.
Tahmu grunted as he swung his scimitar. The men were armed and armed well, and some of the men he led had already fallen beneath their blades, but they were not invincible. Their metal was vulnerable at the joints of neck and shoulder, and once he had spotted the weakness he did not hesitate to exploit it.
Suddenly, Swift screamed and collapsed beneath him. Tahmu barely leaped clear in time. Landing on his feet, he whirled to look at his mount. Swift had been eviscerated by a single long stroke. The blow had missed Tahmu’s leg by a hair’s breadth. Now the mighty beast churned up sand with its frantic kicking, his entrails spilling forth in a glistening red pool.
Pain sliced through Tahmu’s heart. He had ridden Swift for over two decades. Even as he mourned his fallen friend, his heightened senses alerted him to danger and he whirled, bringing up the scimitar just in time to block a sword stroke.
For the briefest span of time, he thought about allowing the enemy to take him. He would make a good end that way, dying in battle. The way he died would be more honorable, more respected, than the way he had lived. It would be sweet, to put down the burden of guilt he bore for all the wrong