Daybreak (40 page)

I couldn’t stop them, I couldn’t
—

“Cowards!” Brend roared, jabbing a thick finger at the sky. “You thin-blooded clods! Swooping in here while the Prince is away, murdering his guard, terrorizing his wife and babe? Do you feel powerful now, Your Majesty?”

“
Shhh
!” Nadine hissed, but his words brought Declan back. They dragged him from the pit and numbed his wounds with focus.

Brend stomped to crouch before Declan, and the determined edge in his stare steeled him. “What’d that yellow King want from us, eh? Or did he just come to shed blood?”

“He wants supplies. If we don’t send them, he’ll send his mages.”

Brend’s mouth went taut. They both knew what that meant.

But Nadine didn’t seem to understand. “We cannot fight them. It would be best to give the King what he wants for now, and perhaps with the help of our friends —”

“No, there’ll be no helping us, wee mot,” Brend grumbled. His hands twined into a single, trembling fist. “If we bow to his orders once, he’ll be back again. Things are going to be just like they were before — only this time, we’ll be slaving under
Crevan’s
whips.”

The realization tightened Declan’s chest. He thought of the home behind him and all of the little creatures living beneath its roof. There were so many lives balanced upon his shoulders, so many strings tied to his heart. They’d trusted in his strength.

And now, his strength had failed.

“We’ve got time to get the women and children out. Send them to the seas —”

“No! We are not giving up,” Nadine said vehemently, cutting over the top of him. “Send word to our friends. They cannot help us if we do not ask.”

“The pirates?” Brend sorted. “Their region’s so muddled I doubt they could find time to lace their boots, let alone fight with us. Besides, they wouldn’t be any good against the mages.”

Nadine ignored him. Her grip tightened upon Declan’s face and her brows fell in desperate lines. “The wildmen could help us. You have seen what they can do.”

“They’re on the other side of the Kingdom. We’d never reach them before —”

“Enough!” Nadine cried furiously. “Do not waste your breath with all of these reasons when it is clear that you mean to give in. If you want to labor for the King, then you are free to do so. Not even Fate can lead men who refuse to take a step.”

“She’s a blister, that one,” Brend muttered as he watched Nadine march away. “Small, but she knows just where to sting you.”

Declan said nothing. Nadine had Jake’s spectacles clenched in her hand. They glinted each time she swung her fists — a tiny spark of light just bright enough to make him blink.

Brend thumped onto the ground beside him, and the other giants followed suit. “What are you thinking, General? I can always tell when you’ve had a thought.”

Declan cast a glance around them. For so long, he’d seen nothing but their smiles and brightened eyes. He’d nearly forgotten how they used to be: hollowed and sunken in, their stares dulled with hunger — the mere husks of giants.

Now with the King’s command, some of those lines had begun to come back. Weary shadows stretched across their faces; their shoulders fell slack. The life they’d had under Gilderick was no life at all.

Declan would rather have his eyes closed for good than sunken in.

“
All men are mighty, when they know they’re bound to win. It’s when a man’s made small that you see him for what he truly is.
That’s something Callan used to tell me,” Declan said, thinking. “It took me a long while to figure out that he wasn’t talking about my
legs
— he was talking about the things in life that drive a man down, and whether or not he decides to get back onto his feet.

“Our lands were taken from us, our families torn apart and slain. There wasn’t a homestead left standing, by the time Titus finished his march. We were made small. We were driven low until we had dirt ground between our teeth. But we got back up, didn’t we?”

They grunted in agreement.

Brend thumped his chest.

Declan breathed deeply. “Now the King’s come to drive us back down. He means to make us small. I can’t taste the dirt again,” he whispered, grinding his teeth. “And I can’t run. I can’t stand the thought of my plains sitting empty any more than I could bear another lash … besides that, there’s a wee mage in Midlan who saved my life. I can’t have a debt like that stand between us.”

Declan dragged himself to his feet, grimacing as his flesh pulled against his wounds. “I’m marching to the gates of Midlan, to whatever death awaits me there.”

“And you won’t be alone,” Brend said, springing up beside him. “I’m coming along.”

Declan shoved him aside. “No, you won’t. The giants need you.”

“What do they need a Prince for if they’ve got no lands?” Brend said, shoving him back. “If all goes well for the plains and badly for me, then they’ll still have a wee Princess to look after them. That’s the grand thing about children,” he added with a wink. Then he waved at the other giants, who’d sprung to their feet behind him. “Gather your armor and sharpen your scythes. We’ll march at dawn.”

The shadows left their faces and their eyes grew bright once more. The giants followed Brend into the castle, beating their fists against their chests.

Declan turned and nearly stumbled backwards when he saw Nadine standing right behind him. She wore the fiercest smile. “I knew you would not give in — I knew you would fight.”

“Did you?” Declan said. “Because it sounded an awful lot like a scolding.”

She wound her fingers through the rags of his shirt, careful of his wounds. Her eyes shone as she spoke: “Sometimes I must speak harshly to get my words through your stone head … what is that?”
 

Drums boomed from the castle tower: one deep thump, two quick taps. 

Nadine let go of him and paced away, moving in the direction of the Red Spine.

It was an unlucky thing. Declan fully intended to pummel whichever soldier had decided to beat the drums. When he twisted to frown at the castle, a guard caught him with a wave: “General! Look!” 

He followed the tip of the guard’s scythe to the crack in the Red Spine — the one that led into the desert. A large number of tiny people were filtering their way through it. They wore red and carried silver spears. Declan didn’t even have a chance to be shocked before Nadine cried out.

She took a few rushed steps towards them, shouting at the tops of her lungs in strange, sing-song words. The man at the head of the line hollered back, hand raised in a fist.

Nadine gasped.

Declan rushed in beside her. “What is it? What are they saying?”

A fierce grin split her face. She grabbed him by the front of his tunic and her dark eyes shone brightly as she said: “Grandmot Hessa has sent her warriors to the plains. She has dreamed of a great light breaking across our realm — a banner carried by scythe and spear. The giants will break the shadows’ hold,” her hands tightened, “and the mots will fight beside them.”

The days in the Motherlands seemed to drag longer than anywhere else — and Kael quickly ran out of things to do.
 

It only took him a few hours to figure out how to tan the old bull’s hide into leather. He whispered his hands into a burning heat and worked until the skin was dried and flat. The trousers he’d made were a little lopsided, with one of the legs slightly longer than the other. But he thought it was a decent first try. In any case, he was glad to be able to peel off his stained clothes and heavy armor.

He couldn’t remember what had happened to his clothes to make them stained, or why he’d been wearing armor in the first place. There was a haze over his memories that made a cloud of everything. His head throbbed so viciously each time he tried to peer through it that he eventually gave up.

Even if he couldn’t remember everything, he didn’t worry about it. His head kept telling him that nothing beyond the haze was worth troubling himself over.

The mountains and valleys stretched so endlessly into the distance that Kael had begun to wonder if they touched the shores of another sea — one so far north that its waves were frozen in a shell of ice. But though his eyes couldn’t quite reach their ends, he would never get to see all the wonders the Motherlands kept hidden:
 

The dragons had far too many rules.

Kyleigh spent much of the day either hunting or flying about. Sometimes she would bring Kael along, but often times she didn’t. He wasn’t sure what she might have to do that he couldn’t be a part of — and anytime he asked, she would simply glare and say that her task was something she had to
figure out for herself
.

It was frustrating enough, not being able to help her. But Kyleigh’s absence meant that Kael was often stuck at the shore alone, trapped beneath Rua’s suffocating gaze.

The dragon had a near-endless list of things that Kael wasn’t allowed to do. Thus far he’d been scolded for traveling too far inland, and getting too close to the seas. He also got snapped at for just generally
wandering out of sight
.

That particular day, and after a particularly damp night, Kael pulled himself up the hills into the canopy of the forest — looking for someplace to start making camp. He didn’t know how long Kyleigh’s task would take her, but he knew for certain that he didn’t want to spend another dew-soaked night upon the ground.

Rua sprawled across the hill’s ledge while he searched, sunning his great crimson body atop the rocks. His scales only seemed to darken in the sun — as if the light dried the fresh red into a dull, crusted black. The dragon lay so still that Kael thought he’d gone to sleep. But the moment he found a promising place to start, Rua’s eyes snapped open.

His head snaked into the trees and he planted his wet, steaming nostrils in the middle of Kael’s bare chest.
I know what you’re doing, human. These are my lands, and I won’t have you building one of your human roosts in my woods. Your homes are nothing like the beauty of the trees — they are ugly little squares with pointy tops
.

“What if I give it a rounded top?” Kael said, turning his head from the damp heat of Rua’s breath.
 

The dragon didn’t seem to notice that Kael was inching away from him. In fact, he moved his snout up a bit — pressing its entire sticky front to the side of Kael’s face.
No
.
It isn’t polite to try to nest in another male’s lands. And by
it isn’t polite
, I mean that I would tear the cords from your throat, were you a dragon. The only reason you have even been allowed to set foot here is because I am generous.

“And the only reason I haven’t left is because I don’t have the wings to get away from you,” Kael muttered. Sweat had begun to bead up across his chest, and the curls of his hair were all but straightened out.

He held his breath when Rua said:
Hmm, even if you had wings, they would be too small to outpace me.
His eyes darted away and his voice crept into a whisper.
Why
don’t
humans have wings
?
You only have half the legs of other creatures, and the legs you do have are pitifully frail. It seems to me that you must always be getting chased down and eaten — and yet, there are so many of you
.

Kael had honestly never given it much thought. “I suppose we must taste horrible.”

Rua’s blasting laugh knocked him off his feet. Before he had a chance to sit up, the dragon stuck his nose against his middle — pinning him to the earth.
My mother used to tell me that humans are poisonous. Is that true
? he rasped, eyes narrowing upon Kael’s face.
Are you poisonous
?

“Yes. Very,” he said quickly. “One bite will kill you.”

You are not even a bite
… After a moment, Rua sighed.
Still, I do not think you would be worth the stomachache. No nests, human. If you do not wish to be rained on, you may sleep beneath the trees — and the earth is warm enough to shelter your skin from the cold.

The ground in the Motherlands
was
strangely warm. Kael would often lie awake while Kyleigh slept fitfully beside him, feeling for the ebb and flow of the heat. It was as if the land was a creature all its own — as if the peaks were its spines, the hills were its flesh, and the great mountain in the middle was its rearing head.

If all that were true, then the fires that churned beneath the earth had to be the island’s pulse. The pattern was too steady, the warmth too deep for it to have been anything else. But he still didn’t see why they should have to sleep out in the open.
 

He was about to argue when Rua raised his head above the trees and craned it to the south. He stared for such a long moment that Kael got curious. One of the trees had limbs that drooped down to his reach, and he climbed them quickly.

The valley danced before him. Its long bed of grass waved beneath the icy wind, like the feathers of some monstrous bird ruffled against the cold. There was only one large, rounded section of grass that didn’t move — a patch wedged beneath the body of a glittering purple dragon.

This dragon was quite a bit smaller than Rua. Its body was long and lean, and its horns grew straight from the top if its head. The spines across its face were so small at their points that they looked like needles.

Rua’s voice crackled over the trees and into the valley below. The purple dragon raised its head at the sound and answered in a softer groan.

Before Kael could ask, Rua stuck his wet nose against his knee — so roughly that he nearly toppled off the branch.
Once the halved one has done what we’ve asked, you will leave the Motherlands. And you will never return.

That was fine by Kael. He wasn’t at all interested in living in a place where he was forced to spend his nights crouching beneath the trees. Still, he was curious. “What have you asked Kyleigh to do, exactly? And who is
we
?”

I cannot tell you what she has been told to do. She asked in earnest that I keep it from you, and so I shall
.