“I’m not going to kil him,” Vigholf snarled. “I’m just going to teach the bastard a lesson.” Vigholf shoved the horse back and final y got to his feet.
There were cuts on his face and bruises on his neck, and he briefly rubbed his chest, which made her worry some of his human ribs may be broken.
Vigholf raised his fists and Rhona wondered if the dragon had any sense at al .
“You can’t fistfight him!”
“He started it!”
To ensure that Rhona understood that, the horse slammed his hoof into Vigholf’s head. The Lightning snarled and punched back with a double tap, striking the beast in the snout and throat. Unlike the Tribesman’s smal er horse, however, this one wasn’t knocked unconscious, but he was definitely more irritated.
“By the gods of forge fires,” Rhona laughed. “Do we real y have time for this?”
“If you want us to ride horses.”
“He’s never going to let you ride him now, you idiot!”
Vigholf lowered his bruised hands. “Why not?”
“Because he doesn’t like you. Can’t you tel ?” She held up her hand before he could answer. “You’re a hardheaded Lightning male. Of course you can’t tel .”
“What does that mean?”
A tal white mare stood by Rhona’s side now and the two females looked at each other, shook their heads.
“I know,” Rhona told her. “Pathetic.”
Vigholf’s eyes narrowed when he saw that damn stal ion sneer at him. He was sneering at him! At Vigholf ! A true Northlander and a commander of the Olgeirsson Horde Armies was being sneered at by a prey animal! The damn thing should be roasted by Vigholf’s lightning and torn to pieces by his comrades.
And what was the She-dragon doing? Chatting with the bloody stal ion’s female!
“I don’t know what you expect,” Rhona told Vigholf. “You’ve probably terrified the poor thing.”
“He ran me over! How terrified could he be?”
“Wel , you can stay here and fight if you like. I’ve got a ride.” She easily mounted the mare, using the mane as reins, and headed off.
“Can you believe those two?” Vigholf asked the stal ion. “It’s like we don’t even exist.” The horse shook his head, long mane tossed about.
“I’d let the ungrateful wench go off on her own, but she’s female and inherently weak. Who knows what wil happen to her if I’m not there to protect her. And we can’t expect that mare to watch out for her either. Two females together? Could anything be so useless?” Vigholf shrugged, sighed. “Guess we better fol ow them.”
The stal ion nodded and took off.
“Wait! This would be much easier if you let me ride on your back, you difficult bastard!” Once they had the horses, they made excel ent time. Cutting fast across the Western Plains and reaching the forests that would lead them to the Western Mountains.
It was late when they final y decided to stop by a freshwater stream. And while Vigholf built a smal pit fire and hunted down something to eat for dinner, Rhona found an apple tree and was able to feed the horses. When she returned to their campsite, Vigholf had already eaten his portion of the wild boar he’d slaughtered, but he’d left half of it for Rhona.
She walked over to the smal pit fire and sat down hard with a sigh, her back resting against her travel bag. “They’re settled for the night,” she told him of the horses.
“Think they’l take us as far as the Provinces?”
“Perhaps. They’re stil wild, so they could decide they’re done with us whenever they’d like. There’s no point in trying to tame them, we’l just hold on as long as we can.”
“How did you learn so much about horses?”
Rhona smiled, remembering. “My grandmother and grandfather. When you spend as much time as the Cadwaladrs do fighting as human, you need to learn how to ride and care for horses. My grandmother, Shalin, especial y had a way. She used to breed the most amazing war horses.” She frowned a bit. “Although al the males seemed to loathe my grandfather.”
Rhona motioned to the carcass. “That’s mine, yeah?” Vigholf nodded and Rhona blasted the carcass with her flame. When it was cooked to her taste, she began to eat.
“You don’t eat your food raw?”
“Sometimes. But I prefer cooked. Besides, at least my face isn’t covered with blood.” Vigholf touched his jaw, wincing when he felt the sticky remains of his meal. “Sorry.” Rhona shook her head. “Don’t apologize. I like a dragon who enjoys his food.”
After Vigholf finished cleaning off his face and clothes, he picked up his weapons and began examining them.
“You’re like the triplets,” she said with a laugh.
“Short, adorable, and vicious on the battlefield?”
“No. You check your weapons, I’m assuming, for any damage from recent battle.”
“Do it every night.”
“That’s how I taught my siblings,” she said. “To always check every night. Most do, too.”
“You raised them al , didn’t you?”
“What makes you say that?”
“I see how they treat you and how they treat your mother.”
“Which is?”
“She’s the general and you’re their mother. A mother they adore.”
She shrugged, pretending not to enjoy hearing that. Seemed a little disloyal to her mum.
“My father give you that?” Rhona asked rather than respond to Vigholf’s observation.
Vigholf held up the good-sized steel warhammer.“Yes.” He shook his head. “Your father . . .”
“My father what?”
“He does amazing work, Rhona. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
She smiled, feeling a daughter’s pride. “I know.”
Holding the weapon between his hands, Vigholf said, “I saw you yesterday. At your father’s forge.” She blinked. “Oh. Yeah. Wel ”—she shrugged—“it’s good to have some skil there in case you have to fix your weapon and there’s no blacksmith around.”
Vigholf gazed at her, smirked. “I saw you, Rhona.”
“You saw what?”
“You. Enjoying yourself.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw the gleam in your eye. The excitement. You want to do what your father does, don’t you?” The question struck her like a physical thing.
“Wait,” he said after a moment, “I didn’t mean to upset—”
“You didn’t. And you’re right. The first ninety years of my life, when I wasn’t raising my siblings, I was at my father’s side, working the smal forge he’d built me near his own. Without a doubt those were the best days of my life.”
“Why did you stop?”
She blew out a breath and replied, “Cadwaladrs fight. They join Her Majesty’s Army. They become Dragonwarriors. They do not spend their lives making weapons for Dragonwarriors.”
“I see no shame in it. Plus your father does it.”
“My father’s not a Cadwaladr. He’s not even a Southlander.”
Vigholf sat up, gazing at her across the pit fire. “That’s right. Keita mentioned something about that.”
“He was hatched and raised deep in the Black Mountains, near the southern Borderlands.” Vigholf thought a moment and asked, “The Black Mountains? Near the salt mines?”
“You’ve heard of them?”
“They’re volcanoes.”
“Aye.” She smiled. “Daddy doesn’t breathe fire, he spews lava.” She leaned in a bit and added, “So can I when I put me mind to it. But Mum hates when I do that. If I’m not careful, it sprays, ya see.”
“To be honest, I didn’t notice a difference between your father and any other Fire Breather.”
“The other dragon breeds can’t tel the difference either. Al you lot scent is heat and fire. That’s mostly what lava is made of. Wel , that and some melted rocks.” She smiled a little thinking of her father’s kin. “They’re not very friendly, my father’s kind. But they’ve built whole worlds under those mountains and are some of the best blacksmiths and glass blowers you’l ever know. It’s the alchemy, you see. They’ve mastered it.”
“Alchemy?”
“Aye. For the Volcano dragons, it’s in their blood. Those with the proper training can change one metal to another.”
“Can you?”
“Can I what?”
“Can you change one metal to another?”
“When I have to.”
He grinned. “Show me.”
“I’m not a dancing monkey.”
“Come on. Show me.”
She held her hand out. “Give me a coin.”
Vigholf tossed her a brass coin. Rhona placed it on the ground, cleared her throat, and unleashed a bit of lava at the coin.
“Ow!”
She cleared her throat again, but this time so she wouldn’t laugh. “Sorry, but I warned you it sprays,” she reminded him while he rubbed his eye.
Rhona held her hand over the coin and whispered the words only the best Dragonsmiths of the Black Mountains knew. The words her father had taught her before she could fly.
Grinning, she handed the coin back to Vigholf.
He stared at it. “That’s it?”
“What do you mean that’s it?” She snatched the coin and held it up for him to see. “I changed this from brass to glass.”
“Yeah . . . but I thought you’d change it into gold.”
She threw the coin at his head. “Glass is just as amazing.”
“Is glass even metal? I don’t think it is.”
“Look,” she cut in, annoyed, “I haven’t been taught how to change anything into gold. But I can do amazing things with steel and I can turn gold into
—”
“Not gold.”
“Choke on that coin,” she ordered him.
Vigholf chuckled. “You make it too easy. I could torture you with this al night.” Rhona tossed the bones of her meal out into the dark forest behind her for any animals that may have use of them and tried not to pout. “Daddy wanted to send me to one of his cousins for an apprenticeship where I could have learned al sorts of things like changing things into gold.”
“But your mother said no?”
“She figured it was a waste since clearly her eldest daughter would be a Dragonwarrior just like her mum.”
“You need to tel her.”
“Tel her? Tel her what?”
“That you want to be a blacksmith. That you want to fol ow in your father’s footsteps.” He held up the hammer, his appreciative gaze moving over every detail. “That you want to stay in the Northlands after the war is over and make me and mine steel weapons like this. That’s what you need to tel her. What you should tel her. As soon as we’re done with this current nightmare.” She fought hard not to smile, even biting her lip a bit before she said, “So this is al about you then, eh?”