“The path’s gone.” Sihar’s voice was flat, a statement of logistical fact that carried the weight of a death sentence.

  Gunther peered down the sheer rock face. The game trail they’d been following didn’t just end; it had been scoured away by the dragon’s passage or the shattering impact of Sihar’s ice-spear. Below, the Sorrow’s Run roared, a muddy brown fury two hundred feet down. Across the chasm, a ribbon of rock maybe twenty yards wide, Jacob lay on his ledge like a dropped doll.

  “He’s not moving.” Gunther’s knuckles were white against the rock.

  “He’s breathing. I can see the rise of his chest from here.”

  “That ledge is crumbling.” Gunther pointed. Dust and small stones trickled from its underside, dislodged by the dragon’s impact or the river’s constant vibration. “We need a bridge.”

  Sihar said nothing she was already moving. She slid the staff from her back, its ice-blue crystal dull in the overcast light. “Hold my belt. My anchor.”

  Gunther grabbed the heavy leather of her belt, bracing her boots against a protruding spur of granite. Sihar planted the base of her staff against the cliff face, closed her eyes, and began to chant. The air in the gorge grew sharp, the scent of ozone and frozen stone cutting through the damp river smell. Frost crackled from the staff, spreading across the rock in a glittering web.

  On the opposite side, the air above Jacob’s ledge shimmered. Particles of moisture froze, coalescing. A hazy, bluish-white line began to stretch from the ledge’s edge out into the void, reaching toward them. It thickened as it grew, forming a narrow, translucent arch of solid ice. It wasn’t smooth; it was a jagged, desperate thing, like a frozen lightning bolt captured mid-strike. Sihar’s breath came in ragged, steaming gasps. The ice-bridge extended, foot by agonizing foot, groaning with the strain of its own creation.

  It was ten feet short.

  Sihar sagged, the staff trembling in her hands. The bridge stopped, its ragged end hanging over nothingness. “I can’t… the focus… too far.”

  Gunther looked from the bridge to the river below. Her mind, usually a chaotic map of tavern routes and bad bets, became terrifyingly clear. She saw the angles, the distances, the flow of the current. “Don’t lose it. Hold the bridge.”

  Sihar’s face was pale with exertion and disbelief, but she was in no position to argue.

  Gunther was already shrugging out of her pack, pulling the coil of thin, tough rope from it. She tied one end around her waist in a crude harness. “I’m going to jump for it.”

  “You’ll miss. You’ll die.”

  “The current’s fast down there. If I hit the water, it’ll dash me on the rocks in three heartbeats. So I won’t miss.” She handed Sihar the other end of the rope. “Tie off. Give me slack. When I signal, pull like the Abyss is trying to reclaim me.”

  Sihar looped the rope around a sturdy rock protrusion, tying a quick sailor’s knot. “Your legs will shatter on the ice.”

  “Not if I roll.” Gunther inched to the very edge of their crumbled path. The ice-bridge glimmered, its surface a treacherous, slick blue. The gap yawned. She judged the drop, the arc. It wasn’t a jump to land on; it was a jump to catch.

  She ran two steps and launched.

  For a second, she was a bird. Then gravity remembered her. She fell, not out, but down and slightly across. The end of the ice-bridge rushed up to meet her. She twisted in the air, aiming not for her feet but for her chest and arms.

  She hit the jagged, frozen end. The impact drove the air from her lungs in a sickening whuff. Ice crystals shredded her tunic and scored her skin. Her arms scrabbled, grabbing at protruding spurs. She hooked an elbow over a thick chunk, her legs kicking over the void. She hung there, gasping, the cold of the ice seeping into her bones instantly.

  “Gunther!” Sihar’s shout was faint over the river’s roar.

  Gunther hauled herself up, her body shivering violently. She crawled onto the more solid, arched section of the bridge. It groaned under her weight, a deep, resonant sound that vibrated up through her knees. She didn’t look down. She got to her feet, arms spread wide for balance. The bridge was barely wider than her shoulders, slick as glass. She began to shuffle sideways, each step a deliberate, controlled act of defiance against the drop.

  Halfway across, a shape surged from the gorge below.

  A gout of molten orange fire erupted from the river, shooting skyward. It wasn’t an attack; it was a roar of pure, incandescent rage. Ignis hauled himself from the churning water, scaled hide steaming, one wing bent at a sickening angle. He clung to a massive mid-river boulder, his serpentine neck whipping around, baleful yellow eyes scanning the cliffs.

  They found the ice-bridge. Found Gunther.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  The dragon’s maw opened, not for a focused jet, but for a wide, sweeping cone of fire a broom to scour the cliff clean.

  “Sihar! Now!” Gunther screamed, abandoning all pretense of balance. She sprinted, her boots slipping, her arms pinwheeling.

  Sihar reacted without hesitation. She slammed her staff down on the cliff path. A wall of rock and earth, fifteen feet high and thick as a fortress battlement, erupted from the edge of their side of the gorge, curving to shield the base of her ice-bridge.

  The dragon’s fire washed over it. Stone blackened and cracked. The ice-bridge, now shielded from the direct blast, hissed as superheated air melted its surface. Water dripped from it in streams.

  Gunther reached the opposite ledge and threw herself onto it, rolling to a stop beside Jacob. She fumbled with the rope at her waist. “Jacob! Jacob, wake up!”

  The older man groaned. A nasty gash bled above his temple, and his left arm was twisted beneath him. His eyes fluttered open, dazed. “The… the spear?”

  “Later. Can you stand? We have to move!”

  Across the gorge, Gunther saw Sihar’s expression shift. She’d run out of options.

  The dragon, enraged by the obstinate rock shield, drew a deeper breath. This fire would be hotter, longer. It would turn the shield to slag and vaporize the bridge.

  Sihar raised her staff high, her voice rising to a scream that cut through the thunder of fire and water. She wasn’t defending. She was attacking.

  The sky above the gorge, already grey, darkened to the color of a bruise. The temperature plummeted. Gunther saw her own breath fog, then freeze into a sparkling mist. A sound like a mountain cracking split the air.

  And it began to rain ice.

  Not snow. Not hail. Sleet, sharp as glass shards, fell in a roaring, horizontal torrent aimed directly at the dragon on its rock. It wasn’t meant to kill it. It was meant to blind it, to overwhelm it. The fiery breath died in the dragon’s throat as a thousand freezing needles scoured its head and eyes. Ignis roared in frustrated pain, shaking his massive head, backing off the boulder into the raging water for cover.

  “The bridge won’t hold!” Sihar’s voice was a strained shout, carried on the frozen wind. “Go! South! I’ll find a way around!”

  Gunther didn’t argue. She hauled Jacob to his feet, draping the man’s good arm over her shoulders. Jacob hissed in pain but found his footing. Together, they stumbled along the narrow ledge, moving away from the dragon, away from the melting bridge.

  They had gone fifty yards when a final, seismic crack echoed through the gorge. Gunther risked a look back.

  The ice-bridge, undermined by meltwater and deprived of Sihar’s constant focus, shattered. It fell in great crystalline chunks, vanishing into the muddy roar below. On the opposite cliff, Sihar was a small, determined figure already scrambling upward, searching for a way down to cross the river.

  They were on their own.

  The ledge widened gradually, becoming a rugged slope that led down towards the riverbank. The roar of Sorrow’s Run was a physical pressure here. The air was thick with spray. They staggered onto a stretch of rocky shore, littered with boulders and deadwood.

  Jacob slumped against a large, flat stone, his face ashen. “My arm. Broken, I think.”

  Gunther knelt, using her dagger to cut a strip from her own cloak. She found two relatively straight pieces of driftwood. “This will hurt.”

  Jacob nodded, gritting his teeth as Gunther, with a quick, brutal motion, straightened the arm and lashed the splints into place. Jacob’s scream was swallowed by the river.

  “The dragon?” Jacob gasped afterwards.

  “Alive. Angry. Sihar drove it back with a hailstorm. She’s coming around.”

  “She’s a glacier-mage. In a river gorge. She has the advantage.” Jacob managed a pained smile. “Lucky for us.”

  “Luck had nothing to do with that jump,” Gunther muttered, scanning the far bank for any sign of movement. She saw none. The dragon was either licking his wounds or searching for an easier path to his prey.

  “We follow the river south,” Jacob said, pushing himself upright with a grunt. “The gorge will open into the lowlands. We find cover, wait for Sihar.”

  They moved, slower now, Gunther supporting Jacob over the uneven ground. The canyon walls began to lower, the sky opening above them from a slit to a strip. The character of the river changed; it grew wider, slightly less violent, carving a broader path through the foothills.

  An hour later, they found their cover: the skeletal remains of an ancient watchtower, built by some forgotten kingdom on a bluff overlooking a bend in the river. Three walls of rough-hewn stone remained, the fourth having long since tumbled into the water below. It was defensible, with a single narrow entrance and a view of the river approach.

  They stumbled inside. Gunther helped Jacob sit against the cool stone, then immediately began scouting the perimeter, checking sightlines. Old habits from a life spent avoiding city guards.

  She was at the crumbled edge, looking down at the river, when she saw it.

  Not the dragon.

  A shape moving against the current. A figure, cloaked and hooded, walking on the water. No not walking. The river was freezing solid beneath its feet with every step, creating a temporary, shifting pathway of ice that melted away three paces behind. It was Sihar, her staff glowing with a fierce, cold blue light. She moved with grim, relentless purpose, a bastion of winter in the watery chaos.

  She reached the bank directly below their bluff and began climbing, her fingers finding holds in the rock with unerring precision. Minutes later, she hauled herself over the edge and into the ruin. She was soaked from the waist down, her face drawn with exhaustion, but her eyes were sharp.

  “You’re alive,” she stated, looking at Jacob’s splint. “Good.”

  “The dragon?” Gunther asked.

  “Gone. For now. The wing injury is severe. He flew, but badly, heading west deeper into the mountains. He will heal. And he will remember.” She shrugged off her pack, pulling out a waxed pouch. She handed Gunther strips of dried meat and a hard biscuit. “Eat. We have perhaps two hours of daylight. We need to be far from this river by nightfall. Dragons have excellent night vision. We do not.”

  They ate in silence, the adrenaline crash leaving them hollow and shaky. The food tasted like dust.

  “We failed,” Jacob said finally, his voice low. “The village…”

  “We saved who we could,” Sihar said, not looking at him. “The cult’s tactic is clear. They are not sending dragons against fortified positions. They are using them as weapons of terror and eradication against the undefended. They burn the food, salt the earth, slaughter the people. They are not waging war. They are conducting a cull.”

  Gunther stared out at the widening river, the first hints of the grassy lowlands visible in the distance. “So where do we go? We can’t defend every village between here and the sea.”

  Sihar finished her biscuit, brushing the crumbs from her hands. “No. We cannot. So we do not try.” She met Gunther’s gaze, then Jacob’s. Her eyes were the colour of a deep winter lake. “We find where the dragons are coming from. And we stop them at the source.”