“Mistake?” said Lindír. “Trust me to know my own heart, if I can know nothing else.”

Razan shook her head, the grass crunching under her feet as she went to retrieve the brush which had been dropped in the shock of Lindír’s arrival. “I do not mean that you are mistaken,” she said softly. “I mean that loving me is a mistake. It will lead you only to pain.”

Razan’s words were a self-fulfilling prophecy. “How could that possibly be?” Lindír said. “Love can hurt, yes, but it is not always pain.”

“With me? You could no more love me than you could love a sharp blade. And unlike the blade, I will hurt your heart instead of your unmentionables.”

“You are not a blade,” Lindír said patiently. “Despite your title.”

“But I am a warrior. I know war, not love. Nothing about love.”

“Warriors can know love. People write and sing every day about the loves of warriors, it’s a constant preoccupation. I’m sure that even… my brother loves something.”

At the mention of Ásgeir, a shiver passed through Razan, worse even than the previous times they had discussed him. She went to her steed, who wickered and stamped the earth in fear of Lindír’s presence. With soft whispers in Namaric she soothed her, running the brush down her broad neck.

“There is something which I have never told you, Lindír, that I think I should now reveal. I am not a Namarlander, not by birth.”

Lindír reared up slightly, his crouch of respect disrupted by the oddity of her statement. “But you speak with a Namarlander accent,” he said. “And you fight in Namarlander fashion. Where are you from, then?”

Razan did not respond for several breaths, focused instead on her steed. Her tone was morose, her voice flat. “To the south of the fertile lands of Namar and the Olive Princedoms lies the Sea of Sand. It is a hostile place, pinprick oases amidst a desolate landscape that some scholars claim has no end. And yet there are people who dwell in that place, tribes of camel herders who flit from oasis to oasis like ghosts. One of those tribes is the Qatrathi, the people of my birth.”

“You never told me about them,” Lindír said. “When you were telling me about Namar. Never spoke a word about it.”

“Because there is little to say. I have not lived amongst the Qatrathi since I was nine years old, and my encounters with them since have been…” She made a dismissive gesture, like sand caught in a firm breeze. “…fleeting. You would be better off reading about them in a book. Assuming you could read Namaric script, which I doubt.”

“Why did you leave, then? Did you not like the Qatrathi?” Lindír paused, thinking about it. “But at nine years old…”

Razan muttered a few more words in Namaric, then went to set down the brush. There was a whole set of tools sitting on a low stool, no doubt placed there by one of the camp followers. “Those who call the Sea of Sand their home are a hardy folk. They are camel herders, as I said, and merchants, too, sometimes even bandits. But above all else they are warriors, for life is harsh in the Sea, and the battle over the oases, it never ends. You have seen my skill with the bow, have you not?”

Lindír nodded. “You shot a man in the throat from far enough away that his friends could not return the attack. I didn’t know it was even possible.”

Razan nodded, smirking slightly at the compliment. “That was easy, I can do much more than that if you press me. And the reason for that is that I was given my first bow—a child’s substitute for the real thing, but it could launch a stick—when I was six years old. The other children and I would take turns shooting at rocks and trees, and even then I was one of the best.”

Razan’s talk settled into a more steady pattern, more calm and more certain. Her accent grew stronger as well, and Lindír suddenly felt that she was retelling a story which she had told to herself countless times before.

“The desert tribes are said to be the greatest warriors in the world, such that even the great armies of Namar fear them. So, of course, the Zaiqa sultans could not help but possess that strength for themselves. When I was nine years old, they came, with their horses and long spears, and they took as many children as they could grab, boys or girls, they knew all would fight just as well.”

Lindír’s wings flared out and he hunched his shoulders, as though prepared to spring upon the memory of Razan’s attackers. “They dared take children as thralls? Why?”

Razan shrugged, pacing over to the edge where the camp met the open field “Because adult thralls can escape. Adult thralls remember home, and will seek it with every drop of fervor in their blood. A child thrall can be rebuilt from the ground up.”

Lindír was uncomfortably reminded of his own upbringing. Except that there was no “before” for him, no dividing line between freedom and captivity. He was not sure which was worse: to have never known freedom, or to have it and then lose it. “You were a thrall,” Lindír said. “How did you learn to fight, then?”

“They trained us,” Razan said. “We were not laborers; if the sultans wanted laborers they had all of Namar to find them. They took us because we had the blood of the oasis in us, and we were born to fight.”

“They… trained their thralls to fight? And I assume you were given weapons, too, and sent out onto the battlefield to fight for your masters. They might as well have taught you how to pick locks and handed you the whips while they were at it.”

Razan paced back and forth, sometimes looking at Lindír, other times staring out at Stokvöllur castle, always restless, with her fingers clutching at her belt or swiping dust off of the scabbard of her sword. “That is why they only took the children. Our teachers became our parents, the sultans our gods. We spoke Namaric, ate Namarlander food, prayed at Namarlander temples. We could not have fought against them because we did not know any other way than to fight for them.”

“And that is why you called yourself a Namarlander,” Lindír said. “But what does any of this have to do with love?”

“I know nothing but war,” Razan said. “They taught us to fight, but they did not teach us poetry or songs.” She could not bring herself to look into his eyes, only managing to glance at his chest. “Do not love me, Lindír, because I will not be able to love you in return; I will only ever be a knife in the hand of whoever will wield me.”

A brief gust of cool wind rattled the leaves in the North-west wood, sweeping Razan’s hair to the side, sending a few scattered tufts of grass flying between them. Lindír laughed, though it was a guttural, clawing sound coming from a dragon’s throat. “You really do know nothing of poetry, then. You think love needs be reciprocated? No. I will be by your side, your companion, your strength, and that will be enough.”

Razan nearly seemed to choke on the air, then, and was forced to cover her mouth with her elbow while she coughed. Muffled, she said, “By God, you really have drunk deep of that well, haven’t you?” After composing herself, she said, “But you know you cannot be by my side. You have pledged yourself already to the Countess.”

“Yes,” Lindír said. “And she has told me that I must rid her of this siege, or make an attempt at doing so, by the next dawn, or else be counted as her enemy. But there are other ways to fulfill that oath than by fighting. How many do you command, here?”

Razan frowned, as though prepared to raise objection. “Seven thousand, or thereabouts.”

“How loyal are they, to you specifically?”

“Quite. They’re no fanatics, but they’ll do as I command.”

Lindír stepped forward, lowering his voice conspiratorially, teeth bared. “And how many did you say that Ásgeir had under his command, that he was bringing here?”

“Sixty-score,” Razan said immediately. But in the moments that followed she had an opportunity to think. And when she thought, horror sank into her features. “No. No, you cannot seriously plan to—”

“Your army outnumbers his five to one,” Lindír said. He had constructed this plan during his flight back to the castle, and he grinned madly with pride over it. “Turn spear and bow upon him, instead of upon the castle, with my aid and perhaps even that of the Countess? Victory will be assured.”

“When was the last time you saw your brother?”

Lindír had to think about it quite seriously. Keeping track of time had never been a strong suit of his. “Five years ago? Perhaps six.”

“Ah, yes, then you do not have even the slightest idea what it is that you ask, when you ask me to turn my army against him,” Razan said, a venomous smile forced onto her face. “I am sure that he was much the same at fourteen as he is at twenty.”

“I have beaten him once,” Lindír growled, spreading his limbs and dropping low into a fighter’s stance. “And I will beat him again.”

“When?”

“When we were children,” Lindír said. “Did you never wonder why he does not dare to show his face? The scars I left him were terrible indeed.”

Razan’s breath was once again stolen from her, mouth agape, while her hands clenched in fury or shock. Lindír relaxed, aggression towards his brother replaced with sudden concern.

“You still believe that old story?” Razan said. “I knew your family did not care for you, but I… I thought they would have told you the truth.”

“What are you talking about?” Lindír said.

“It’s a story! A myth, created to cover up the truth, to explain the mask without revealing that Ásgeir is—”

“Or,” Lindír said, offended, “He was lying to you, because he did not want you to think that I had so thoroughly mauled him as an infant.”

“He was not lying!” Razan cried.

Lindír retreated a step before the suddenness of Razan’s outburst, his tail slapping against a tent behind him. He was not prepared for that degree of vehemence, and as he recoiled, he became viscerally aware that he had stumbled across a sore spot. And yet, as though pre-ordained by prophecy or curse, Lindír could not stop himself from speaking the obvious response.

“How do you know?”

At this, Razan rose. At first, Lindír thought that he had caught her, made her realize that she was in error. But instead of admitting anything, her eyes grew shiny with tears. Razan turned away, rested her arm upon her horse’s shoulders.

“I have seen what lies under the mask,” she said.

“Impossible!” Lindír cried. “Even I have not seen under that mask! Ásgeir does not even eat or drink, except within his own private chambers, so that none may see what lies beneath the mask! Why did he show it to you, of all people?”

For all that Lindír’s voice roared, Razan’s shrank, becoming quiet and soft. “Because, Lindír, there are some acts which are performed by a woman like me, with a man like him, for which it is not appropriate to be wearing a mask.”

And thus the truth was revealed.

Lindír’s body was transmogrified; no more was he steel and scale and sinew, but instead glass and crystal. The glass and crystal were shattering. Too much made sense. Razan’s defense of Hvalheim, the echoes of awe in her voice whenever she spoke Ásgeir’s name, her insistence that Lindír could not, should not love her. All at once, Lindír found himself unable to see the gentle Sir Razan who had spoken with him in the dungeons, whose kindness had set him free. Before him, in the dark of twilight, he saw only Al-Khanjar.

“Tell me, Razan,” he said, with a voice as calm as a sheathed blade, “what is the name of that horse?”

Razan turned about, brows furrowed. But her expression quickly slackened under the growing orange glow of the flames building within Lindír’s gut. “Blackberry. Her name is Blackberry.”

Lindír nodded. “Take your weapons, Captain of Hvalheim. Take your bow and your sword, your saddlebags and your armor, and get on Blackberry. Then ride. Ride as fast and as far as you can, ride back into Ásgeir’s arms if you must.”

“Lindír?” Razan said. “What are you about to do?” Her hand never approached her sword, and even as she moved to grab her horse-care supplies her gaze never left Lindír. 

“What I should have done from the beginning,” he said. Speaking the words felt like chewing on splinters. His eyes were luminous, and from between his scales emerged such light as would from a tremendous bonfire. His claws dug furrows into the earth, his tail whipped back and forth, and as the light of his flames caused the soldiers of Hvalheim to emerge from their tents, his jaws slavered with a hunger for fresh meat.

“I have grown, since last we met,” Lindír said, and the words were labored and rough. “In strength and in stature. They call you a dagger? Run, or else find out what happens to a dagger which is thrown back into the heat of the forge.”

Lindír turned his face away from her, for the sight of Razan dashing away was too much for him to bear. Instead he looked to the half-built manjaniq, and to the soldiers of Hvalheim feasting away around cooking pots or patrolling with their spears and bows and mail. Slowly, like a great cat of the jungle, he began to advance.

A soldier, spear in his hand and helmet on his head, saw Lindír approach with bent back and lowered head, and knew at once that something had gone wrong. He sent up a cry in the dark, a wordless cry of alarm which was instantly staunched as Lindír lunged forward, crushing his torso between dragon jaws. Lindír swallowed him, armor and all, and relished in the taste of blood and steel.

At once, the gentle sounds of supper and the background rattle of an army camp rose to a great clatter. Men threw aside bowls and spoons and reached for swords and bows, and orders were passed back and forth between the sergeants and knights in Namaric and Kojurlander alike. It was an easy feat for them to find the source of the alarm. Lindír was a great dark mass, red-black scales and ember-orange fire against the fast-falling twilight. And so they came for him, squads of ten or twenty with their spears and bows, and tried to slay him. They stood no chance.

No spear could stop four tons of furious muscle and bone, and many of the soldiers were crushed, flung aside with a sweep of claw, knocked to the ground by a beat of his wings and broken under his feet, shattered by swipes of his long tail. The hard-packed earth beneath the camp became sodden with blood, and Lindír was only beginning to fight. Packs of archers stood tall, aiming their bows at the weak point in his armor. But Lindír was canny, and he made an arrow-curtain of his wing, though the pain of arrows in the soft wing-skin pained him greatly. With a single burst of flame, barely a tongue compared to the roiling mass within him, he set their flesh and hair alight, and they fled. 

Arrows like pins bristled from his hide, and blood coated him, spilling from his jaws and dripping from his talons. The dragon, roaring and bellowing loudly enough to wake the city of Stokvöllur itself, charged to the center of the camp on all six limbs. A curtain of archers, defending the construction, were blown aside with contemptuous ease, leaving the manjaniq bare before him.

Lindír let loose his flame. It was a flame he had not had the strength to produce for quite some time, a flame much like the one he had unleashed during his escape from the Red Citadel. It billowed and spread as it burned, yellow-hot fog that set alight all it touched. Grass, rope, leather, skin, wood, all burst into flame before the onslaught of heat that lit up the night like the unexpected arrival of the midday sun. It burned and burned until Lindír’s throat grew raw and his teeth glowed red, an endless stream of fire vomiting out from forced-open jaws. He turned and spun, charged and leapt, and wherever his gaze fell the flame followed and incinerated all before him.

Then, still carried by a terrible momentum of rage, Lindír sprang up into the air. “Dogs of Hvalheim!” he roared. “Flee! Flee while you can! A dragon is upon you now, and all who stand before me shall burn!”

And he wheeled about in the air, turning once more upon the already-burning camp, and spewed forth a great jet of flame. Those archers who still held loyalty in their hearts loosed arrows upon him, but these he found and in the manner of a hunting hawk he swept down upon them in a terrible fury, slashing and crushing as he went.

Then he took off again, and swept to the next camp in the line, one which was still dark and awaiting the gift of fire. There the soldiers had had more time to prepare, forcing Lindír to arrive amidst a storm of arrows stinging at his heart and eyes. But so furious was he that he endured the barbs, and with more flame met them. Their tents burned just as easily, and their mail offered no more resistance to claw and tooth than any other.

Some minutes later, with two camps alight, plumes of smoke and tongues of flame reaching up toward the stars, Lindír returned to Stokvöllur castle. He was tired, though fury still burned within, and the wounds of arrows and spear-points bled slowly from a half-dozen spots where his armor was thin. Lindír expected to see knights and archers all arrayed for a counterattack. But instead, when he arrived at the wall of the castle, he saw only one.

The Countess stood atop the castle wall, gazing out into the distance, her face wan with terror. As Lindír landed, rearing up onto his hind legs so that he could see over the wall without placing his full weight upon it, he saw that the castle was not entirely empty. Behind the Countess there was a pell-mell rush to flight, servants and knights barricading windows and barring doors as they hid from view.

“I have upheld my oath,” Lindír announced. “Where are your soldiers? Do they flee in fear of me?”

“You damned fool,” the Countess said. “Have you any idea what you have done?”

The Countess raised her arm, a single finger pointing out in the direction of the Hvalheimer camp. Without changing position, Lindír followed that finger, and at first he did not understand. He saw only flames, collapsed tents, soldiers screaming in confusion and fear. But then, as he traced the outline of the flames, as he saw more pillars of smoke rising up to the dome of the sky, he realized his error, and all flame of fury went out in his belly.

“Look!” Halldis cried furiously. “The forest burns!”

SaffronDragon

I again point you to the "Tragedy" tag on this story. It's going to get worse before it gets better, and even then it's going to continue being pretty bad. Also, I bet you thought that the funny little man from a few chapters ago was just there for flavor, huh?
As always, if the cliffhanger ending is too much for you, you can click the link right below here and go to my Patreon, which currently has chapters 19, 20, and 21 available for $3 a month. If you can't make that donation, that's fine: I'll see you in two weeks for Chapter Nineteen: Aftermath.