Violet Stormwing's Arc

Chapter 40 of 46

Violet fed the wild dragon at first light. She had run out of false trails, and she knew what came next. Kael would send a rider whose dragon could smell her own. No smoke, no scattered meat, no covered ridge would fool a nose like that. A scent-hunter would follow the pink dragon straight to this valley. She was still turning the problem over when a shadow crossed the rim. A dragon dropped into the grass, and a broad man climbed down from its back. Light brown hair, blue eyes, an old bite scar on his forearm. Nick Coal. He rode out to check on her when he could spare the days. She had never been so glad and so afraid to see him at once. "You look tired," he said. He said nothing else. "Kael's sending a scent-hunter." Violet did not soften it. "A bonded dragon that can track mine. He'll smell the pink from a valley away." Nick looked at her dragon, then at his own. He crouched by the pink berry bushes at the pond's edge and pulled a handful of leaves. He crushed them between his fingers and held them under his mount's nose. The dragon huffed and turned its head away. "They hate this bush," he said. "Smell fills the whole nose. Blots the rest out." Violet understood at once. She could not hide the pink dragon's scent. But she could bury it. She stripped the nearest bushes bare, then more along the pond, until her arms were full of bruised pink leaves and berries. She rubbed them into the pink dragon's scales, over the wings, down the tail. The sweet, sharp smell hung thick in the grass. "It won't last," Nick said. "Rain will wash it. Days, not weeks." "Days is enough." Violet mounted the pink dragon and climbed above the valley. She flew east, toward the low pass, laying the berry-smell across the wind where a hunting dragon would cross it first. The scent would meet the tracker like a wall and stop its nose cold. By dusk she landed back at the pond. Nick waited by his dragon, ready to go. "They'll try again once it fades," he said. "I know." She looked at the empty bushes, the last of them stripped. "But not this time. This time the trail dies at the pass." Nick swung up onto his mount. He paused, one hand on the reins. "I'll bring more of the seed," he said. "Plant it thick on your rim. Grow your own wall." He did not say the rest, and she did not ask him to. He lifted off and turned north. Violet whistled once. The pale wolf slipped down from the ridge and lay in the grass. The wild dragon coiled over its crystal hoard, calm, hidden under a smell no hunter would push through. She had beaten the scent-hunter before it ever reached her. But Kael had a dozen more riders, and one plant would not stop them all.