Soon after dark, Brynn felt the wind on her face as she and the dragon soared high and fast over the plateau divide and into To-gai, across a dis-tance and terrain that would have taken her army a week or two to traverse.
The dragon went up high in the sky, and the fires of many villages could be seen dotting the landscape.
And the fires of a great encampment, a huge glow, showed far in the north.
Brynn urged the dragon that way, and Agradeleous soared off at tremen-dous speed, the ground rolling along below them. The glow grew and grew as they neared, and only then, from that high vantage point, did Brynn truly appreciate the might that had been assembled against To-gai. And from the i the dragon slowed suddenly, and then went up even higher, she knew Agradeleous, too, had come to understand.
Tne dragon's head snaked around, his face moving close to Brynn. ?You ? h to attack?" he asked, and she sensed, for the first time, a bit of a in Agradeleous' great voice.
Brvnn shook her head, not even trying to shout loudly enough for the dragon to hear her in that deafening wind.
She spotted a second glow, then, farther to the north, and she prodded Aeradeleous, and when he looked back, she pointed it out.
Brvnn knew what the second encampment was before the dragon even flew past it. It was a band of To-gai-ru, likely a sizable chunk of the army she had left in the country. It all sorted out for Brynn at that moment. The Behrenese were in pursuit of the To-gai-ru, were hot on a trail they would not forsake.
Brynn scanned all the dark steppes, looking for some answers.
She got an idea from a third set of lights that she marked, not the fires of an encampment, but the smaller glows typical of a settlement. She banked Agradeleous down to that area, a few miles south and west of the Behrenese army, and did a low fly-over.
An outposter settlement, she recognized. Perhaps her army had been heading for it before the arrival of the Behrenese warriors.
On Brynn 's urging, the dragon set down some distance away, and the woman slipped from his back and stood staring at the lights of the out-poster settlement. She understood well the choices here before her, and didn't have to glance back at the mighty dragon to understand the horrors of those choices.
But she could not let her army be caught and destroyed, not if there was anything that she could possibly do to prevent it.
"You were angered that you were not involved in the last battle," she remarked.
Agradeleous' long neck snaked his head around, to come up right beside her, his eyes narrowing dangerously.
"The village," Brynn explained. ?Destroy it. Let the flames fly high so that the Behrenese army can see them."
The woman found her breath coming in short gasps as she finished, for she could hardly believe the command - no, not the command, but the permission - she had just given to this most terri-ble of weapons.
The dragon's great head swiveled about to regard the settlement, and he issued a low, horrible growl.
" You will ride?"
"I will stay here," the woman replied, and she felt as if she was acting the part of a coward. But what good would come of her accompanying Agradeleous on his rampage? Would she be able to save a single outposter? Would she wish to?
Any contemplation at that time was moot, anyway, for the dragon hadn't waited a second. He leaped up and his great wings beat the air, launching him away.
Within a couple of minutes, Brynn watched Agradeleous' first pass over the sleepy outposter settlement, a low strafing run, his fiery breath running a line of destruction the length of the settlement.
He did a series of stoops and fire-breathing runs, and the cries of the terrified, doomed outposters filled the night air. And then the dragon fell upon the village, dropping down, all claws and teeth, beating wings and smashing tail.
Brynn looked away and lowered her gaze, second-guessing herself with every heartbeat.
It went on and on, and then the sounds began to quiet, as more and more voices were forever stilled, and then Brynn noted another sound, that of running horses.
She turned around to see Agradeleous gliding down beside her. Past the dragon, the woman saw the high fires, burning bright - brightly enough so that the Behrenese army would have to take