The Broken Scale (The Dragon Riders of Arvain) (55 page)

             
As they cleared Celestial City, Hayden’s heart sank even more as he saw the thousands of soldiers marching in a line. There were still more pouring out of the city and joining the ranks. Mixed in with them were wagons and giant weapons being pulled by horses.

             
They flew further on and began ascending, Elizabeth wanted them flying above the clouds so that the dwarfs would not see their numbers. Right before they broke into the clouds Hayden saw another large number of horsemen ridding in the same direction that they were all going.

             
Hayden had heard their trainers boast about how quickly the cities army could be summoned and ready for war, but Hayden was still shocked to see it firsthand. All the soldiers seemed to move in together and become one giant army; it reminded Hayden of a bunch of small streams and creeks merging together to form a river.

             
This river just happened to be thousands of soldiers and dragons flowing straight for an unsuspecting dwarf army. Hayden did not want to fight, let alone kill any of the dwarfs, but it seemed that that choice had been taken from him.

             
It was quickly going to become a matter of kill or be killed.

Chapter 27

Hayden and Draek broke through the clouds and flew into the clear skies. Hayden looked down at the blanket of white underneath them. He watched as more people poked out of the clouds as their dragons rose up. He turned to watch Cass and Shane quickly fall in behind him and level out, just as they had done over and over again. Giles and Sebastian were slower to follow, but they were there nonetheless.

All the other riders got in their wings, and soon all the dragons were soaring smoothly like birds flying north before winter came. Elizabeth’s wing was made up of the Three Rulers and two of the biggest silver dragons Hayden had ever seen. As they started to make good distance, one of the silver dragons in Elizabeth’s wing broke off and circled back to Hayden’s wing.

As Hayden watched the giant dragon fly through the other wings, the dragons in its way had to move unless they wanted to get hit
. Draek slowed down to make more room between him and the wing in front of them.

The giant silver turned sharply and flew right in front of Draek, forcing
him to fall in behind. Their wing adjusted to the change and they flew with three on one side and two on the other. As they moved back into position, Hayden heard Cass’s voice over the winds.

He turned to face her and realized she was shouting
, but he could barely make out what she was saying. He couldn’t hear her clearly but he could see her yelling “no” over and over again.

What’s going on
, Draek, what’s wrong with Cass?
Hayden asked. Shane had the same confused look on his face that Hayden had.
Elizabeth has commanded that Cass go back to Celestial City. She says she is too valuable to risk in this battle.
Draek had no emotion as he spoke, his mind was still focused on the upcoming battle.

Hayden heard Shaylin roar in frustration as she turned around and made her way back the way they came. Cass was rubbing her eyes and Hayden guessed she was crying as he watched them dive into the clouds and disappear from his sight.

They are both upset,
Draek said. Hayden did not respond right away. He hated seeing Cass and Shaylin upset, but he also was glad that they were not going to be a part of what was coming. Hayden did not want to be part of what was coming.

Their new wing leader flew them faster than the other wings were going
, so they moved up closer to the front. They overtook all the wings except for Elizabeth’s, who stayed in front the whole time.

Hayden got more and more nervous as they continued to fly
. They were going very slow, so they wouldn’t get too far ahead of the ground troops, but Hayden felt like they were going too fast.

Draek stayed quie
t throughout most of the flight. Whenever Hayden tried to see what he was thinking about all he saw was difficult aerial moves that he was concentrating on. Hayden tried to think about everything he had learned over the past year, all the weapons training that had been drilled into him, but no matter how hard he tried to think about it, the only thing that popped into his head was the thoughts of death. His mind followed that path and he saw himself having to watch Shane get killed. He shook his head, trying to make the thoughts fall out.

He decided to watch the clouds pass underneath him as he settled for just being distracted. That’s when he noticed Elizabeth turning in her saddle and shouting at the other two Rulers. Hayden thought that maybe the dwarves had already given up and she was telling them it was time to turn around. His heart skipped a beat when she lowered the face guard on her helmet, grabbed a spear from the side of her saddle, and with her dragon roaring underneath her, they dove into the clouds.

The other dragons in her wing all performed the same maneuver: they flew up into the air a little higher, and then dove straight into the clouds. Before Hayden could finish making sure his helmet was on tight, Draek was lunging into the air and diving into the white mist bellow. It took everything Hayden had not to scream, it was just like his first flight all over again. Falling wasn’t all that bad, but falling when you can’t see anything around you was different.

Hayden did not know what to expect when they came through the other side of the clouds. He tried to clear his head as best he could as the clouds started to thin out and Hayden made sure his shield was on securely, and he grabbed a spear from the side of his saddle.

They broke through the cloud
s right behind Elizabeth’s wing. All of the dragons kept their wings in tightly so that they did not slow their fall just yet. The scene bellow Hayden was something that he had been told about, but nothing he had ever seen: thousands of armored men stood in lines with their weapons pointed in the air, Some of them carrying flags that flapped in the wind. The snow covered ground in front of them was pure and clean without a single footprint in it.

Behind the lines of soldiers were archers with dozens of arrows in the ground in front of them. The soldiers in front stood almost shoulder to shoulder so that their shields touched, but the archers left a few feet to move between each other.

The last row was made up of a few men on horses who had higher ground then everyone else; they were the leaders and they were obser
ving the approach of the dwarf army.

Hayden watched as the
dwarves poured in through a clearing on the other side of the field where the battle was about to take place. There was no order to the dwarves as they marched up, they did not even line up like the army in front of them. They had no archers as far as Hayden could tell, it seemed that their entire army was made up of foot soldiers that carried giant swords and axes that seemed too big for them to carry.

The dwarves stood their ground until they finished moving into position, then they started running at the awaiting army. Their disorder became more apparent as some dwarves got in the front of others and their lack of stamina became apparent as they made it halfway to their enemies.

Hayden and Draek had fallen from
a high altitude, so they could watch the dwarves’ arrival as they soared down to the upcoming battle. Draek and the other dragons opened their wings slightly and changed the direction of their fall so they would fly right over the dwarves without being too close to their own troops.

As the dragons got closer to the
dwarves, Hayden saw fear come over them as some tried to turn around and run from the oncoming dragons. Elizabeth gave the order to fight, and her gold dragon let loose its flame. The dwarves were not caught unawares as they hid behind their fire hardened shields. Elizabeth’s dragon’s flames washed over their shields as she passed over them. The other dragons in her wing were following her direction by trying to incinerate as many dwarves as they could while they passed over. Somewhere beneath them a dwarf blew two loud bleats on a horn, the sound echoing off the hills where the dwarves had come from

.

As Draek opened up his wings and prepared for his first pass over the dwarves, Hayden watched in horror as hundreds of red dragons took to the sky from somewhere behind the hills and made their way swiftly toward them.

Hayden was so surprised to see the number of red dragons that he almost
missed the dwarves moving giant cross bows onto the tops of every hill. The crossbows took four to five dwarves just to pull them back, and the bolts that were loaded into it were bigger than Hayden.

Draek reached the first line of
dwarves and released his fire just like the dragons had done before him. Hayden’s wing still flew in formation as they made their pass, and at the same time, Hayden saw the crossbows take aim and fire their bolts.

He could not hear the snap of the
giant ropes that help the crossbow bolt, but he could see them jump back as they sent
the bolts flying through the air. Hayden could not speak or even think as he watched the bolts heading straight for him and the dragons behind. Draek noticed them as he took a deep breath and prepared to release another stream of fire. Instead, he roared a warning as loud as he could, signaling to the dragons that the giant weapons were now a threat.

The first bolt struck the silver dragon that had been leading them in the side, right under the wing joint. The impact sent ripples across the dragon’s body and forced it to lean to the right. The first bolt was followed by another one that hit the dragon right over the left shoulder, killing the silver giant; though the dragon never made a sound because the two bolts hit so fast. Immediately following the second bolt, the dragon plummeted to the ground below. Draek dove down even lower to the ground, trying to avoid the bolts that were flying overhead.

As Hayden watched the silver dragon fall, he saw a bolt that had been fired low looking to strike the already dead dragon. Draek was still in his shallow dive when Hayden noticed that the silver dragon was almost completely turned to stone, a sure sign that they had already suffered a loss.

             
“Look out!” Hayden shouted as the bolt struck the stone dragon and shattered it in midair. Chunks of stone went flying in every direction and showered over the dwarves beneath them. Draek tried drastically to avoid being hit by any of the larger pieces, but one managed to fly right over Draek and strike Hayden.

             
Hayden saw it coming and he knew there was nothing he could do to stop it. He raised his shield and tried to use it to protect himself, but he doubted it was going to help. The force behind the stone that was once part of a dragon was more than anything Hayden had ever experienced. It knocked the wind out of him, pulled him out of the saddle and made the left side of his body go numb.

             
Draek had been flying low to avoid the rocks so the fall to the ground wasn’t enough to kill him. The army of angry dwarfs that he landed in the middle of, however, was enough to kill him.

             
Draek knew the second that Hayden had been hit that something was wrong. He turned his long neck around in time to see Hayden hit the ground underneath him, but he could not turn around on the spot, an army of metallic dragons were still flying behind him.

             
Hang, on I am coming back for you,
Draek said as he continued his pass and tried to find a way to turn around. Hayden got up slowly and struggled to get air back into his lungs. His body was tingly and sore all over, but breathing was the most important thing right at that moment.

             
Most of the dwarves around Hayden were hiding underneath their shields from both the dragons and falling projectiles. None of them noticed Hayden for a few seconds, which allowed him to catch his breath and slowly draw his sword.

             
The dwarfs nearest him heard the sound of his blade leaving its scabbard and peeked from under their shield to see what had made the noise. “Rider!” the nearest one to him yelled. All of a sudden the dwarves forgot about hiding under their shields and they quickly became focused on killing Hayden.

             
Hayden shook his left arm to speed up the blood flow, then moved his feet apart and took a comfortable stance in the middle of all the dwarf soldiers.

             
The first few ran at him wildly, swinging their axes or giant swords with metal rings through the back and yelling. The first one tried to chop Hayden in half with one arched blow. Hayden stepped to the side to avoid the axe and he jabbed his own blade into the neck of the dwarf, dropping him where he stood.