The Broken Scale (The Dragon Riders of Arvain) (56 page)

             
Hayden’s mind went blank, his brain no longer told his body which moves to perform or where to go. His body seemed to have been taken over and was doing a good job of defending himself.

             
The other dwarves quickly met the same fate as the first one. This was nothing like practicing sword play, where you waited for your opponent to strike and tried to disarm him without hurting him.

             
A dwarf would swing at him, then Hayden would dodge or block the blow and then counter with a killing stroke. Only a few of the dwarves countered his first strike, and the ones that did succeed did not live through his second.

             
The dwarves continued to throw themselves at Hayden. One after the other he swiftly ended their lives, he left none lying in pain in the red stained snow.

             
Hayden was no longer cold, and all he could smell was the stench of the unwashed dwarves who had been at a hard march for some time now, and the metallic smell of blood that was building up around him.

             
The dwarves started backing away from him, trying to find his weakness before they would lunge in and strike. It was getting harder for Hayden to use his speed to his advantage, dwarf bodies were stacking up around his feet and Hayden almost tripped twice on them. The snow around them had also turned into a blood and mud mixed slosh that was as slippery as ice. The dwarves would run in at Hayden, but were unable to slow down or stop once they realized they were going to die.

              The dwarves continued to circle Hayden, growling and cursing at him, making feints to try and draw him out. Hayden dared a quick glance into the sky to see if Draek was near, but the red dragons had arrived and now the sky was full of chaos as the two armies met in the air.

The archers opened fire on the
dwarves, firing in organized volleys, one after the other. The arrows fell down on them like snow; blankets of arrows littered the ground and dwarf bodies. Hayden continued to fight as the arrows fell around him. He deflected a few with his shield by accident. The dwarfs backed further away from him, leaving a large circle around him open.

Hayden spun in circles, making sure none of the dwarves were trying to sneak up on him. He looked up for a second time and he caught a glimpse of Draek fighting off a red dragon and diving towards him. Hayden wasn’t sure how he was going to get back onto Draek’s back, but he was sure they would solve that problem.

GET DOWN!!
Draek’s voice echoed through Hayden’s head. He was about to turn around to see what he was supposed to be ducking from when something grabbed him by his cape and jerked him into the air.

The force of being snatched up by his cape almost dislocated his left shoulder. He watched the ground shrink away from under his feet when he realized that his shield had fallen off
and was now resting on the pile of dead dwarves that he had just fought.

Hayden looked up and found a large red scaled claw holding onto his cape. The red dragon dodged other dragons as he flew higher and higher into the air, zigzagging between flying projectiles.

The dragon lowered his head and snapped at Hayden. Hayden tried to slash his sword at the dragon’s maw, but neither of them seemed to be gaining ground. Hayden held onto his cape with his left hand, he wasn’t sure how long his cape would hold his weight.

Out of the corner of his eye
, Hayden saw a copper dragon diving at them. He tried to keep the red dragon’s attention by stabbing at his belly and slashing at his face. The red dragon continued trying to kill him and never saw the copper coming.

The copper slammed into the red dragon’s back, grabbing the red dragon’s shoulders and dragging it into a front flip. The red dragon roared with rage and let go of Hayden so that it could concentrate on fighting the copper dragon.

Hayden was relieved to be free from the red dragon, until he remembered that he was flying through the air.

DRAEK, HELP ME!!
He couldn’t make out which way was up or down as he spun helplessly through the air.

I got you,
Draek replied calmly as he swooped down and snatched Hayden out of the air, catching him in his claws. Draek turned upside down and threw Hayden into the air, then quickly corrected himself while Hayden was still in the air. Hayden fell onto his back and latched on to Draek’s wing joints. 

             
“Don’t you ever do that again!” he shouted out loud, completely forgetting that Draek could hear his thoughts.

             
Quit screaming and get back into the saddle, Rilora needs us.

Hayden did just as Draek suggested. He climbed back into the saddle
, but whenever he had gotten knocked off of Draek, he had broken every one of the safety harnesses. He had to hold on with his legs alone.

             
Hayden looked up and saw the dragons fighting everywhere, none of them caring if their battles caused them to fall into other dragons, sending them plummeting to the ground.

             
The red dragon that had grabbed Hayden had broken away from the copper it was fighting, which Hayden could now tell was Rilora. The red snapped at Rilora just as it had done with Hayden. Rilora fell for the red dragon’s tricks and became infuriated. She lashed out and snapped at the red dragon’s neck. The red dragon reared back and unleashed it’s lava like flame onto Rilora’s face.

                            Rilora made a noise that Hayden will never forget. It wasn’t a powerful roar and anything close to that. It was a dragon’s scream, crying out in pain. Draek and Hayden were close, but not close enough to stop the red dragon from attacking again. It pulled its neck back and got ready to hit Rilora with more of its liquid fire.

                            Hayden grabbed his bow from the side of his saddle and notched an arrow. He had fired arrows from on top of Draek many times before this, but none of them mattered as much as this shot did. Hayden let out his breath and, when his lungs were completely empty, he released the arrow.

             
The arrow flew right into the red dragon’s open mouth and stuck in the back of its throat. The red dragon let go of its grip on Rilora and slowly started to fall to the ground. It made no sound, went limp, and spots around the dragon’s neck started turning to stone.

             
The red dragon’s rider screamed and begged the dragon to answer him. It almost broke Hayden’s heart to see a rider torn from his dragon, but they had both just tried to kill him and had almost successfully killed Rilora.

             
The copper dragon was in a fit of rage, and even though she could see that the red dragon was dying, it wasn’t enough for her. She dove down at the red dragon, and right before they would have collided, she flipped forward and slammed her tail into the dragon’s neck.

             
The dragon’s neck had already started to turn to stone, so when Rilora’s tail struck, it shattered. The dragon turned to stone almost instantly and the rider’s cries were cut off. The dragon’s stone body and head fell on top of the dwarves underneath and crushed a few unlucky enough to not get away.

             
Hayden nodded at Shane as he flew back up to fly behind Hayden. They tried to avoid any fights, but it was impossible. Dwarf riders saw that their dragons were smaller and they knew that they were younger and less experienced then the other Metallic Riders. They thought that their youth meant weakness, but everyone that tried to attack them learned that they were wrong.

             
Do you hear that?
Draek asked as they flew underneath two dragons, a red and a copper, that were fighting as they fell out of the sky. They broke apart just before hitting the ground. They then flew back up into the air and did the whole thing over again.

             
Hear what? How can you hear anything with so much noise?
Hayden asked. He had his bow out and was firing arrows at dragons and riders alike.

             
There are drums somewhere.
Draek moved his head from side to side as he looked for the source of the drums.

             
It could just be the ground troop’s signals,
Hayden thought, and he looked around too, but his eyes were not nearly as good as Draek’s so he couldn’t make out any details on the ground.

             
No, they use horns not drums. It’s the dwarves. They are up to something.
Hayden watched the ground troops marching in an organized bunch, cutting down any lone dwarves as they moved towards the large mass of them.

             
Hayden saw their horsemen surge up from behind their lines; they had been hiding out of sight so the dwarves wouldn’t see them so they could flank them

             
The battle was over, the dwarves were outnumbered and were about to be over run. Their dragons were scattered and defeated, some were even trying to flee, but they were being chased down by full wings.

             
Hayden thought that the dwarves were trying to signal their retreat to the few that were alive. That’s when he saw the cloud of debris rising behind the dwarves.

             
The cloud had started in the nearby forests and was quickly moving to come behind the dwarfs. Hayden watched as trees fell around the cloud and a huge gouge was cut into the forest.

             
Do you see that?
he asked Draek. He was pointing from Draek’s back, but he lowered his hand when he realized that Draek couldn’t see where he was pointing.

             
I do, but what is it, some kind of dwarf weapon?
Draek slowed down his wing beats so that he was just going faster than gliding.

             
Or is it more of the horsemen coming to surround them?
Even as Hayden asked, he knew that was wrong. The ground troops had collided with dwarves, it looked like waves crashing against a stony cliff. The horsemen had seen the forest start to fall and something moving straight for them.

             
They pushed their horses faster, trying to reach the dwarves before They reached what they were trying to get to.

             
Can you get closer to it so we can see what it is?
Hayden asked. Draek pulled in his wings in response to Hayden’s question. They dove quietly through the frigid air as they made their way down to the battle.

             
They were flying over the horsemen, close enough to hear their horses complaining in protest to being so close to a dragon, when the last of the trees fell down and they got a good look at what was coming at them.

Chapter 28

            
 
Hayden had never seen any animal like the ones running at them. They looked like small dragons but without wings, they had almost no neck and they had three giant horns jutting out of their head: one on the end of their nose, one in between their eyes, and one on the top of their heads.

             
Their hides looked to be made out of grey plates of armor set on top of each other. They were a few feet taller than the giant battle horses and they were much broader and wider.

             
The beasts ran shoulder to shoulder and they continuously smacked their heads into the beast beside them, as if this was all some giant game. The dwarfs that rode them had saddles that they stood on and their reins were tied around the largest horn on the end of the beast’s noise.

             
The creatures’ front legs were thinner than the back legs, and the front feet had almost finger like appendages to grab things. The back legs were thick with corded muscles, and when they ran the back legs propelled them forward while tearing up the ground behind them.

             
Hayden was terrified when he saw the
se
animals. They were the things that had haunted his childhood dreams, he had thought that creatures like this were myth but now he was seeing them first hand.

             
The creatures were further away from the dwarfs then the horsemen were, but they were moving much faster. The dwarfs were locked in battle with the foot soldiers and it was unclear who was winning.

             
The metallic army had depended on their cavalry to overpower the dwarfs, but they were now faced with something of equal or greater force. The horsemen urged their mounts to go faster; if they were afraid of the beasts they didn’t show it.

             
The creatures and their riders made it to the dwarfs first, but they did not stop to fight, instead they divided into two groups and went around the fighting so they could face the horsemen head on.