“Thank you.” Rohan turned, called a group of archers forward, and bid them ready their arrows.
“What are you doing?” Chay hissed as flint was struck and a small fire made in the sand. “We need those bridges!”
“If we cross them now, we’ll be slaughtered. Roelstra’s troops are fresh, and we’re exhausted. If we leave the bridges, he’ll either use them or burn them himself to keep us from crossing. I would rather they went up with our fire, not his. Do you agree?”
The question was for form’s sake only, but Chay’s reaction surprised him. A small, hard smile touched his sweat-streaked face as he said, “It’s something Zehava would have done, you know. The grand gesture—and the warning.”
Clenching his fist around the two rings, Rohan glanced over at the archers. But before he could give the order, a cry went up from across the river, soon taken up by his own troops. Fire had spouted up from the bridges in fountains of flame.
Maarken, cheeks white beneath the dirt and sweat of battle, stood at the water’s edge, his arms held up and his hands balled into trembling fists. He called down Fire and it fed on the wooden bridges, sent dancing sparks into the reflecting water. As the sun dipped lower and shadows touched the river, the Fire blazed higher and the Desert cheered its young Sunrunner lord.
Chay whispered his son’s name, anguished. Rohan sat his horse in silence, feeling the heat of battle drain out of him, making him aware of his sore shoulder and weary muscles. There were other small hurts, shallow slices of sword and knife, insignificant in themselves. But they merged into the whole, augmented by a real grief for another foolish young princeling, and as the Fire flared he winced.
Maarken finished his work and with visible effort climbed the rise to where his prince and his father waited. “I killed no one, my lord,” he told Chay.
Seeing that the father was incapable of speech, the prince said, “You have our gratitude, and you’ve gained us Roelstra’s fear.
Look.” He pointed to the opposite shore, where atop the embankment the enemy had gathered to watch as Sunrunner’s Fire licked hungrily through the wood, glowing red-gold to create two blazing rivers of light across the cool one of dark water. He could easily pick out the figures he wished most to see: Roelstra in a deep violet robe, his head bare, black hair ruffling in the Fire-born breeze, and Pandsala, her eyes dark hollows.
“Archer,” he said softly, and a girl ran up. He gave her the gold-and-garnet ring. “For the High Prince, with my compliments.”
She grinned up at him, and beneath the bruises and the dirt he recognized the sentry he had scolded here along this same riverbank. “I’ll plant it right at his feet, your grace!”
She very nearly did. Rohan admired the consummate skill that adjusted the arrow’s flight for the weight attached to it and calculated to a nicety the desired distance. Blue-and-white fletching came to rest ten paces away from Roelstra. Pandsala darted forward. Drawing the arrow from the ground, she handed her father the ring.
Rohan held up the other one. “As I presented Princess Sioned with a token of my gratitude before she became my princess, thus I now give recognition to my beloved nephew of Radzyn.” Maarken’s eyes went wide before he bent his head and extended his left hand. “No,” Rohan said clearly. “The other hand, and the middle finger. This is the first of your faradhi rings.”
Filthy and exhausted as he was, yet Maarken’s face was shining as he raised his eyes to Rohan, man’s pride competing with boy’s excitement. Radzyn troops cheered their lord, and Maarken suddenly turned scarlet.
Rohan smiled, but as he counted up the survivors he knew how much this victory had cost him. A quarter and more of their strength had been spent in taking what they had owned to begin with. In doing so they had halved Roelstra’s forces, but they were essentially back where they had started. Chay had specified two battles, and the first was over.
A sudden instinct made him tense as a strange, familiar sensation fluttered in his chest. He looked up, breath strangling in his throat. Soaring through the sky were dragons, more than a hundred of them. The sires and she-dragons Feylin had so carefully counted had produced hatchlings, none of which had been slaughtered by a hunt. No bigger than young children, they beat their wings powerfully,