Page 104 of Lady's Knight

“To me, you wicked thing!” called Jane, making up for her lack of conviction with sheer volume.

“We will rip your head off!” Hilde screeched, truly caught up in the blood of her ancestors now, on the verge of looking for a country to invade.

Gwen drew her sword, shifting her grip and letting the tip of the blade fall, her arm lax at her side. Isobelle’s heart squeezed. Gwen’s bad shoulder was in some kind of terrible pain, Isobelle could see that much. But before Isobelle could draw another breath, Gwen swung the sword, tightened her grip, and touched her heels to Achilles’s sides. Then came the drum of Achilles’s hooves as he pushed from a trot to a canter and up to a gallop.

“Fall back!” Isobelle cried, and as one the women began to retreat, the circle around the dragon growing once more.

Gwen had nearly won the Tournament of Dragonslayers, but even the best of knights only hit the other rider’s shield sometimes. Achilles had charged endlessly through that orchard under Madame Dupont’s eye, Gwen aiming for that dragonseye ring,missing more often than she hit.

Now, she had one chance, and one chance only, to finish the beast. For Gwen would have to ride close enough to the dragon to use her sword, and in doing so, she would give the dragon its opening to finish her with a single sweep of head or claw.

Gwen was lit by the moonlight, the pinpricks of the flaming torches reflected in her gleaming armor as though she were made of stars. She seemed to become part of the night sky itself, nature’s answer to this unnatural beast from beneath the earth that spewed fire and killed for the love of it.

She came flying across the open field, her black hair streaming like a banner, white skin smeared with blood and dirt, steel luminous in the silver light.

Facing her was the dragon itself, all browns and bronzes and lurking flame, the color of dried blood and darkness. It had heard the thunder of Achilles’s hooves and spread its wings wide, its head snaking toward her, swinging this way and that to pinpoint the origin of the sound.

Isobelle was vaguely aware she had stopped breathing—that she had lowered her torch until the tip rested on the cold earth at her feet. That she was whispering something, mouthing the words, her body rocking forward as if she were riding Achilles, too.

“Go, Gwen.Go.”

She whispered the words again and again, like a prayer—like a spell she was casting, one she knew the others were casting, too.

And then Gwen was there, and she was rising up in her saddle, perfectly balanced in her stirrups and moving with the rhythm of Achilles’s gait, both hands wrapped around the hilt of her sword.

The dragon roared and threw its head up, swiping at her withone great forefoot, tattered wing trailing as it raked its claws toward Achilles’s rump. The horse dodged with a breathtaking leap, and Gwen braced one foot against his saddle and thenthrewherself at the dragon’s throat.

For a moment she seemed to hang there, suspended in the darkness, her silver form lit by the moonlight as she flew at the great beast, its head thrown back to roar its fury to the sky.

And then she struck, the crash of her armor hitting scales thunderous even over the dragon’s roar. Her sword wedged between two of the armor plates protecting the dragon’s neck. The beast staggered in surprise, one of its arms crumpling beneath it and sending it crashing to the ground. Gwen threw her entire body weight onto the sword, and with a terrible, screeching crunch of blade on bone, the sword thrust home.

The dragon gave an awful, keening, bubbling roar as it thrashed once, wildly, threatening to toss Gwen aside—but she hung on, clinging grimly to the hilt of her sword, the blade buried in the armored throat. Then, with a terrible, gurgling spray of molten flame from the place where Gwen had driven her sword, the beast went still.

There was no sound at all except Isobelle’s heart slamming in her rib cage. Her vision swam, but she found she could not so much as breathe, as paralyzed as Gwen had been when the beast’s eye had found her.

Then a scream of pain rang out across the field, and before Isobelle’s mind had even registered that it was Gwen’s agony she was hearing, she broke into a run.

The burst of rolling liquid fire that had come from the dragon’s mortal wound had lit several patches of grass ablaze, but Isobellecould see something else, a reddish-orange glow on the crumpled form by the dragon’s body. Gwen wasn’t clutching her sword anymore—she was rolling, crying out in pain, the dragon’s death flames clinging like burning leeches to her armor.

Isobelle yanked off her cloak and threw herself down on top of Gwen, smothering the flames with the thick fabric, bunching it up to try to scrub some of the sticky, burning tar-like stuff away. Her fingers fumbled with the buckles of Gwen’s armor, tossing piece after piece away, and she was glad she had learned how to do this after so many of Gwen’s jousts.

Her fingertips encountered a patch of smoldering padding under the last piece, Gwen’s right vambrace. She cried out as the heat burned her skin, though she didn’t let go, grabbing the fabric and ripping it away. Some of the flame had gotten inside the joint of Gwen’s armor, and a long, reddened, blistered strip of skin along her forearm explained Gwen’s pained scream.

Now, shuddering and gasping for breath, Gwen lurched forward to wrap her good arm around Isobelle. Her grip was bruisingly tight, but Isobelle uttered not a word of protest. Instead, she wrapped her arms around Gwen’s neck, clinging and mumbling incoherently.

When she pulled back to meet Gwen’s eyes, she could see the other girl was half delirious with exhaustion, with pain—and with victory. Her face glowed in the moonlight.

“It’s—it’s dead, right?” Gwen panted, lips trembling, half trying to twist around to see.

Isobelle’s eyes burned with tears and with the smoke rising from the body of the dragon behind them. “Yes, it’s dead. You did it. It’s over.” She stroked Gwen’s cheeks, her scorched fingertips stinging.Isobelle pressed her lips to Gwen’s temple. “It’s okay, it’s over.”

Gwen shivered, pulling herself in against Isobelle, entirely unashamed to seek the comfort in her touch. “I couldn’t have, without you,” she murmured, her lips against Isobelle’s collarbone. “We did it together. You, and me, and all of them... how...?”

Isobelle stroked Gwen’s hair, trying not to look down at the awful burn on Gwen’s arm, which seemed redder and more brutally painful by the moment. “I told them where I was going. I don’t think anyone could have stopped them all from coming, Gwen. You were never alone.”

Gwen mumbled something into her skin. Isobelle caught only a few words, Gwen’s voice quaking too badly from pain and adrenaline. “...knew you were out there...” was one of the phrases Isobelle heard. “...wouldn’t let me... I was falling for so long... didn’t want to die alone...”

Isobelle’s heart squeezed, realizing Gwen was barely conscious, succumbing to the agony of her burned arm. Isobelle raised her head, desperate, about to cry out for help—when she realized the others were already coming toward them, a great circle of women who’d come to help defeat the dragon. Olivia was running, pulling her satchel of supplies off her back, Delia and a couple of the hedge witches on her heels.