Draxus Flameheart's Arc

Chapter 7 of 9

Draxus and Kerra crouched in a hunting blind below the raiders' keep. The little shelter of weathered wood and lashed branches blended into the snow. Through a slit in the boards, Draxus watched raiders cross the wall in pairs. He counted their turns. Then he tried a practice lunge in the cramped space and knocked Kerra's shoulder. She stumbled. "You swing like you fight alone," she said. He did. He always had. If they climbed inside like this, the raiders would split them and cut them down one by one. A gruff voice came from behind them. "You'll both die in there." A dwarf pushed through the blind's low door. Gray beard, iron-studded belt, a walking staff tipped like a spear. Draxus knew the face from his clan's old stories. Thorin Ironscale, the retired dragon knight who once flew beside Draxus's grandfather. Draxus had thought him long dead. "Your sister sent word," Thorin said. "Said her fool brother meant to storm a keep with a stranger at his back. So I came." "We don't have days," Draxus said. "The trap under the stair could spring any night." "Then we don't waste them." Thorin dragged them out onto flat ice behind the blind. He set Draxus and Kerra back to back. "You're a hammer man," he told Draxus. "Too slow for two fronts." He tossed a bundle at Draxus's feet. Two axes rolled out, black-bladed, wrapped in green flame. "Paired blades. Cover your own flank while she covers the other." Draxus took up the axes. They felt wrong, then right. Thorin barked commands. Kerra loosed a whistle, and a shape burst from the snow—a direwolf, gray fur crackling with lightning. It skidded to her side and bared its teeth. "My old hunting partner," Kerra said. "He guards the low side." Draxus swung. The wolf lunged past his hip and snapped at empty air where a foe would stand. Kerra ducked under his arc. For the first time, the three of them moved as one shape. They drilled until the light died. Thorin threw wooden dummies at them from the dark. Draxus stopped waiting to lead. When Kerra shifted left, he covered right without looking. The wolf filled every gap. Thorin finally lowered his staff. "Now you're a pack," he said. "Not three fools in a line." Draxus wiped sweat from his brow and looked up at the black wall of the keep. He was no longer a stranger to Kerra's rhythm, nor she to his. The wolf pressed warm against his leg. The green axes hummed in his grip. "The guard change comes at moonrise," he said. "We climb tonight." Thorin shook his head. "I hold the blind. Someone must cover your retreat." Draxus nodded and turned toward the cliff. The hoard was up there, past the trap that had killed better dragons than him.