The gathering place in Chandan Village erupted in a violent spray of wood and burning thatch, blasting flaming embers over the first five rows of seats.
“Back, Jenny!”
Jenny grunted as Zyna’s clawed hands locked around her shoulders and yanked her under the eave of a hut. The brown-furred Josharon clutched her tightly, breath puffing in panicked gasps.
Yasira crouched in tense readiness, two white tails flicking as she gaped in shock at the uproar.
“Zyna, stop!” Jenny fought to dislodge the Nibe matron’s iron grip. “Let go!”
Alarmed cries and shrieks echoed in the milling chaos of fur and tails and white fabric as orange pulses of energy rained down on Chandan Village from the sky, hammering into the earth with enough force to shake it.
The hut next to them exploded in a cloud of shrapnel and fiery hunks of wood and clay. Jenny gasped as Yasira launched herself into both her and Zyna. Sandwiched between the two Josharons, Jenny see only their arms and kurti. Smoke washed over them with the scent of burnt fur and smoldering grass.
The deafening roar of a battle charge tore through the high-pitched panic in the village, the ground trembling with the brutal strike of hooves.
“Centaurs.” Zyna tightened her hold around Jenny.
“It’s an attack,” Jenny whispered into Yasira’s shoulder.
“Fire!” Yasira shrieked and leaped backward, dragging both Jenny and Zyna out of the path of the crumbling thatch roof of the hut behind them.
Zyna seized the back of Jenny’s neck and thrust her to the ground, covering her body with her own.
“Zyna, get off!”
“Be still, child.” Zyna pressed Jenny into the dirt and shouted something at Yasira.
Jenny squirmed beneath the Josharon’s hold. Chandan Village was on fire. The sandalwood grove burned, its fragrant aroma lost in the throat-constricting stink of burning fur and horseflesh.
Meg? Where is Meg?
Jenny’s eyes stung, and she blinked and blinked until the tears washed the dirt from her gaze, tears dripping into the dirt. Amid the ruins of the gathering place, Meg fought a Centaur. It towered over her, its height immense, its iron armor shining in the orange flames. Features twisted in rage, the Centaur reared back trying to smash Meg with its hooves, but she leaped away from it.
Meg hit with her shoulder and rolled to her knees, igniting her energy saber as she straightened and charged. Meg’s golden saber sparkled in the smoky gloom, like Meg held lightning in her hand as she swung at the Centaur. But the shimmering golden blade skidded off the Centaur’s chest plate without leaving so much as a scratch.
Stumbling, Meg gawked in alarm. The Centaur batted her aside with an armored elbow, knocking her through the wall of a burning hut.
“Jenny, hold still!” Zyna pinned her down again.
“But Meg!” Jenny bowed her back.
Another barrage of orange energy pulses hailed around them, like rocks cast from the clouds. Where were they coming from? Had the Centaurs climbed trees?
The ground shook. A Centaur charged at them, mouth open in a savage roar as it brandished a spear with a shaft as wide as Jenny’s arm.
“We’re going to run now,” Zyna hissed.
Jenny jumped up the moment Zyna released her and dashed for the smoking pit she and Yasira had dug earlier.
“Jenny, where are you going?”
The Centaur charging them didn’t pursue Zyna or Yasira as they tried to distract him, his yellowed gaze set firmly on Jenny. The grass and baripata leaves around the smoking pit slipped and slid beneath her feet, and Jenny pitched forward, scrambling on the dirt to put as much distance between her and the charging Centaur as she could.
The Centaur stabbed at her with the spear, and the blade punched through the thick layer of baripata leaves that covered the pit. The Centaur stopped and stared at the ground in confusion.
“Hope you like chicken, ugly.”
Jenny seized the end of the log that supported the framework of leaves over the pit and shoved it sideways with as much strength as she had. The leafy covering of the smoking pit tilted sideways, taking the Centaur’s spear with it. His four hooves slipped on the leaves, and he tumbled sideways, losing his balance. He fell face first into the pit of wood coals and baking chickens.
He yowled in pain, four legs flailing as he tried to right himself.
Jenny skittered to her feet and ran to the second pit and levered the leafy covering off. Wrapping her hands in the thick baripata leaves, she reached into the fiery coals and pulled out one of the clay-wrapped game hens.
Small enough she could hold with on hand but enrobed with several layers of spices, khataa leaves, coated in a thick layer of clay, miti muragi was a common communal meal among Josharon villages. Fortunately, while still covered in clay, each game hen was solid enough to hurt when thrown.
Jenny chucked the handful of clay-covered hen at the Centaur as it climbed out of the pit. With a loud crack, the hunk of clay smashed into the side of the Centaur’s head and knocked him sideways.
“Ha!” She reached down and scooped up another chicken. She took aim at a second Centaur as it was passing and lobbed the chicken at it.
The steaming hot wad of clay and baked meat cracked against the Centaur’s skull, and it collapsed in a heap of ungainly legs and clattering armor, skidding across the dirt.
Jenny thrust her arms into the air in victory and laughed.
Who said chicken was just for eating? She could develop an entirely new fighting style. Meg was learning Andaiku? Maybe she could master miti-muragi-ku. Or clay-chicken-ku.
So it needed a new name. But it sure was effective.
Jenny hurled another chicken at a passing Centaur, and the galloping soldier tilted sideways crumbling to its fore-knees.
“Clay-chicken-ku for the win!”
With an air trembling shout, three Centaurs charged at her together.
“More chicken.” Jenny yelped and snatched another bird from the pit. “More chicken!”
One of the three Centaurs collapsed at a loud series of popping explosions, and the other two stumbled in surprise. The second Centaur leaped backward with a cry of pain, cradling his arm which began spurting dark blood.
Barb rounded the corner of one of the standing huts, handgun flashing bright light with every pull of the trigger. Sparks ricocheted off the Centaur chest armor as she bore down on them, ash and dirt and blood streaked across her pale face.
“Jenny?” she shouted.
Jenny gathered up her chicken and ran to Barb’s side. “Great shot, Barb!”
Barb flicked the empty magazine out of her handgun and rammed a second one in. “What are you doing?”
“Throwing chickens at Centaurs.”
Barb stammered. “Why?”
Jenny shrugged. “Why not?”
Barb spun and opened fire on another Centaur that ran at them with a battle ax waving over its head. It collapsed on wounded legs, and Jenny wound up to hurl the chicken at it. But Barb stopped her.
“Save it, warrior princess.” Barb hooked her arm under Jenny’s elbow and dragged her away from the burning hut.
“Where did Jim go?”
“Hiding.” Barb pulled her to the edge of the forest and forced her to the ground while she took aim at another Centaur that got too close.
Jenny peered around her legs into the disaster that remained of the kendara of Chandan Village. It didn’t even look like a village anymore. More like the remnants of a burning hedgerow after harvest.
Jenny swallowed hard and wrapped her arms around the clay-coated chicken. A loud crash echoed behind them, and Jenny cast a glance over her shoulder into the darkness of the forest that surrounded the village and the sandalwood grove. Now she could see the other side of the battle—where the yodha in the forest were preventing the full force of the Centaur army from reaching the village.
Her mouth filled with cotton.
Hundreds of Centaurs. Why so many? Why now?
In the shadows a few dozen yards away, a Centaur in dull rusted armor barreled through the yodha blockade, tossing the armored fox warriors in every dimension. Face red and greasy black hair askew, the Centaur narrowed his beady-eyed gaze on Jenny and Barb and hurtled toward them with a bellowing roar.
“Barb!” Jenny squeaked, jerking on her friend’s sleeve.
Barb spun and fired the rest of her clip at the charging Centaur, but the bullets either skipped off his thick armor or buried uselessly in his bare arms without stopping him.
“Jenny.” Barb lowered her gun. “Chicken.”
“Chickeeeeen!” Jenny screamed and flung the mud-wrapped poultry as hard as she could at the Centaur.
Her aim was true. The chicken smashed into the Centaur’s face, and he stumbled and tripped with a wail of pain, holding his face and cheekbones.
“Nice aim,” Barb muttered, reloading her gun.
“Thanks.”
The Centaur dropped his hands, dark blood gushing from his mouth and nose, features crushed and contorted in agony as he released a deafening shriek and started charging again.
The Centaur was nearly within reach when a yodha soldier dropped from the branches overhead and collided with the Centaur’s back, sword drawn and stabbing into the beast’s spine. The Centaur went down, and the yodha flipped off its back, landing near them.
The yodha’s armor was stained dark with Centaur blood, the sash around his waist and chest dark with it, and the mottled brown of his fur and two tails stained.
Barb lowered her gun, staring at him, and he straightened, nodding his head at her.
Jenny bowed to him, still clutching the baripata leaves around her hand. “Thank you.”
He showed his teeth.
Barb went rigid and snapped her gun up again. The yodha whirled as another Centaur crashed through the trees wielding a long staff with a glowing end.
“Tehnyga!” Jenny gasped.
The Centaur caught the yodha warrior in the chest with the glowing end of its staff, and the weapon discharged in deafening blast of fiery power, a blinding orb of orange plasma streaking through the smoke-laden air.
“Any more poultry?” Barb took aim.
“Fresh out.”
The Centaur was close enough that Jenny could smell it, a rotten scent like sulfur and sour milk.
Barb waited.
The Centaur had flecks of spit around its bleeding mouth, and Josharon blood stained its hooves and armor.
Barb didn’t fire.
Why was she waiting?
“Barb?” Jenny whispered.
Barb fired.
The Centaur dropped like a stone and slid to a stop at their feet.
Jenny sagged into Barb’s shoulder, shaking with adrenaline. “A little close, don’t you think?”
“Had one bullet left.” Barb emptied the magazine again and checked the chamber of the handgun. “Didn’t want to miss.”
“I think he got drool on me.”
“You’ll live–Jenny!”
Jenny peeled away from Barb’s side and ran to where the yodha had fallen. His armor smoked and sizzled from where the energy pulse had blasted him. His tails, burned and blackened, lay in the darkened grass, and one of his ears was missing. And—two small nubs where his antlers should have been protruded from the crown of his—of her head.
This yodha warrior was female. A female Harna. And a young one at that.
The female hissed something incomprehensible as Jenny knelt at her side and carefully pulled the remains of the chest armor off. She redoubled her grip on the baripata leaf and pressed it into the wound.
“Sorry,” she said as the yodha moaned in pain. “It’s not the best option, but it’s better than nothing.”
Barb reached her and knelt at her side. “What are you doing?”
“Whatever I can.”
“We’re exposed.” Barb took her arm.
“So is she.”
“Jennifer!” Jenny looked over her shoulder as Zyna scurried toward them on all fours, leaping over burning tree trunks and piles of dead Centaurs.
“Zyna!” Jenny waved her free arm. “Hurry, we’ve got an injured yodha here.”
The brown Josharon medic skittered to a stop next Jenny and adjusted a canvas bag of medical supplies to where she could reach it easily.
“Leave her with me, Jennifer.” Zyna batted her arms away. “You must shelter beneath the stone bridge.”
Two more explosions rocked the village.
“What about you?” Jenny grabbed at her.
“Miss Taylor, if you would?” Zyna pulled back her dark mane and got to work on the fallen Yodha.
Barb pried Jenny’s hands off Zyna’s arm and pulled her away.
“Barb, stop!”
“Knock if off, Jenny.” Barb hauled her out of the forest of burning trees. “Stone bridge? I’m assuming it’s across the river.”
“Zyna needs help!”
“River it is.”
“Let me go!” Jenny squirmed.
“Jenny, if anything happens to you, your sister will skin me alive with a dull knife.” Barb whirled her around by the shoulders and stared into her face. “Do you want your sister to skin me alive with a dull knife?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. Knock it off.”
Jenny glanced at Zyna as the Josharon bent over the yodha and began to wrap her wounds. Hopefully she would be all right. Hopefully the young yodha would survive. She’d saved their lives. It seemed the least Jenny could do to stay and help save hers in return.
A black shadow sailed over them.
Barb didn’t stop pulling her.
The shadow came again.
“Barb?” Jenny looked up.
Her mouth fell open.
“Oh no.”
Overhead, the massive black outline of a gigantic winged creature with a neck like a column hung suspended in the sky. Its leathery wings stretched out thirty—maybe thirty-five feet. Its muscular tail was crowned with spikes and came to a blade-sharp point.
Jenny stopped moving, gawking at the dark beast above them.
“Jenny, what—” Barb started and followed her gaze. “What is that?”
The beast shook in the air and opened a mouth full of needles as long as Jenny’s forearm, an ear-splitting shriek bursting out of it, loud enough to rattle the inside of Jenny’s ears. She felt the scream in her brain and dropped to the dirt, hands clasped over her ears.
Barb fell beside her.
Across the open space of the village, Josharons all dropped to their knees, clawed hands clapped over their sensitive ears. Through the tears in her eyes, Jenny spotted Danny and Mickey on their knees on the other side of the village.
The shrieking stopped finally, but more of the creatures appeared over the tops of the trees. Jenny could see their riders now—Centaurs. Centaurs astride dragons? Now that was new.
“Are those—dragons?” Barb gasped, green eyes wide as saucers.
“Why are you asking me?”
“Because you live here!”
“Doesn’t mean I know, Barb. I’m not Velanna.”
Another shriek silenced them, and the dragon-riding Centaurs opened fire with a fresh barrage of energy pulse fire from their staff cannons.
“Get to cover.” Barb wrestled Jenny to her feet and dragged her toward the other end of the village as the earth shook with tehnyga blasts.
A feather floated into Jenny’s view, and she looked up and counted seven Avi Josharons sailing into the sky, armed with swords and bows and spears. As she watched, Badria—an Avi with gray fur and silver hair—lunged at a dragon with her sword shining in the fading light. Her blade bounced off the dragon’s tough skin as though it were made of balsa wood.
“They can’t fight them,” Jenny whispered. “They’re too strong.”
An earthquake rocked the ground under her feet, and she and barb both pitched forward. The dirt scraped the skin off Jenny’s palms.
“Holy. Crap.” Barb hissed.
Jenny looked up.
One of the dragons had landed in front of them. Up close it was even more terrifying. Saliva gleamed on its sharp teeth. Its mouth was big enough to swallow a Josharon whole. If it had a jaw like a snake, it could probably swallow Barb’s car whole. Now that would be something to see. Next time, Barb needed to bring her car so they could use it as a weapon.
If there were a next time.
Because, obviously, if the dragon ate them, they wouldn’t have a chance to try it.
“Barb!” Meg shouted.
From under Barb’s protective arm, Jenny glimpsed her big sister running toward them, energy saber brilliant in the gathering dark. Two more energy swords followed her—another yellow and one white. Tzaitel and Velanna.
The dragon spun and roared loud enough to shake Jenny’s lungs, but Meg didn’t stop. She charged straight at the beast, saber sparking against its hide and bouncing right off. The dragon screeched and whirled, its spike-laden tail catching Meg in the side and flinging her across the village into the falling-down remains of a flaming hut.
Her saber dropped to the dirt and rolled to a stop in a pile of burning leaves.
Velanna and Tzaitel were still running toward them.
The dragon loomed over them.
Jenny had no more chickens to throw.
And Barb was reloading her firearm with the magazine she’d somehow concealed in her robes.
Only one choice really.
Jenny surged forward out of Barb’s reach and snatched up the saber hilt that Meg had dropped. The weight of it in her hand was more solid than she imagined, and when she flicked the switch on, the blast of the blade igniting took her breath away.
The entire hilt vibrated and buzzed in her hand. She needed both hands to keep it steady. How did Meg fight with this thing? It jolted like the kerosene-powered tiller Tolan had tried to use to break the soil in the vegetable garden patch years ago.
They’d all hated it so much they’d locked it away in the barn never to be seen again.
That’s what needed to happen with this hateful magic sword.
The dragon lunged at her and Jenny leaped back, swinging with the saber. It was heavy and awkward and didn’t move like she expected it to. How did Meg even hit anything with this ridiculous weapon?
She swung again, and the Centaur riding the dragon laughed.
He threw his head back and roared with laughter.
Not that she blamed him.
But if she’d had a chicken, she’d have nailed him in the nose.
Jenny released the switch, and the energy blade dissipated. She took aim with the hilt. She might not have been able to fight with it like a sword, but she could still knock the Centaur’s block off at thirty paces.
A rumble like thunder washed across the sky, and darkness like a curtain spilled over the forest like liquid ink from a toppled well. Chills raced up and down her arms, digging cold points into her spine, catching in her lungs.
Air this cold wasn’t common at this time of year. Jenny turned away from the dragon as a wave of shadow raised over her, towering taller and taller in the black of the forest until the darkness was all around her.
Black and empty.
Jenny froze in place, her breath the only sound. Where was the fighting? Where were the screams? The burning of the village? The shriek of the horrible dragon creatures? Why had everything gone so silent—and cold?
The hairs on her arms stood up, tingling and tickling against her skin.
“Meg?” Jenny whispered.
Her voice rattled in her head.
The solid earth under her feet teetered, throwing her to her knees. The skin peeled off her palms as her hands dragged across the dirt, rocks tearing the flesh open.
A suffocating blanket of a million dull needles closed around her, stabbing her over and over again. Choking on the shadows trying to drown her, Jenny curled into herself, throwing her hands over her head.
The needles turned to knives, slicing away at her, piercing skin and flesh and bone, twisting daggers of agony plunging into her body.
Her eyes burned and watered, a pulsing spike of agony jabbing into both sides of her head, ants with razors for legs crawling over her scalp.
Strong fingers seized her shoulder and rolled her to her side. Blinking back tears like blood, Jenny peered through the black into Meg’s face.
“Meg.” It came out as a sob.
“Get up.”
“I can’t. It hurts.”
Meg’s face hardened like granite. Her eyes darkened. “Get. Up.”
Jenny clutched at her sister’s arm. “Help me.”
The stone-like features of Meg’s expression didn’t change. Her eyes were almost as black as the shadows around them.
Didn’t she feel the pain of the darkness too?
“You’re so weak.” Meg opened her mouth in a sneer. “I’ve always had to help you. You’ve never been able to fend for yourself.”
Jenny’s heart lurched in her chest, gawking at the figure that grasped her arm with bruising strength.
“I always have to take care of you,” Meg snarled. “Why can’t you do it on your own? Get up yourself.”
The world around them churned and boiled, as though the air itself had been poisoned, transformed into a bubbling mass of liquid shadow. Like being in the heard of a silent thunderhead, arcs of black lightning raking frenetic fingers of pain over every inch of her skin.
And Meg wouldn’t help her?
Well, that would never happen. Something solid and certain settled in the pit of Jenny’s stomach.
Meg was many things, but she had never been cruel. She had never left them behind. And she would always help them.
“Who are you?” Jenny whispered.
Shadow-Meg’s fierce expression darkened further, eyes like an abyss.
“You’re not my sister.”
The hand on her shoulder seized and melted into something black and tar-like, sticky threads of acid burning across her skin. Shadow-Meg lunged for her, breaking over her in a wave of the same stuff, smothering her in a quilt of inky darkness. Like drowning in molasses.
She couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe.
With a crack of thunder, the darkness peeled away, ripping itself away from her body. Jenny gasped for air, sprawled on the grass, vision blurry and spinning.
Blood in her mouth tasted coppery. Her raw chin burned, and the grit in her eyes stung.
She clutched Meg’s saber hilt to her chest, gasping for the hot smoky air churning in the forest.
What was that? What had happened?
Another shriek split the sky, and a weight like a castle turret collapsing on her crashed across her back, steel bands wrapping around her chest and pinning her arms down.
Jenny couldn’t even scream before the ground vanished out from under her.
“Jenny!”
Barb.
Jenny twisted and fought to get free, but the rigid talons were unyielding.
Talons? Like—dragon talons?
In a flash of dark red, Barb appeared at her side. How? What?
What is she doing?
The world shook again, the weight above her heavier than before, and then the ground was gone—grass disappearing—air turning cold and dry and windy. Her stomach in her throat. The singed earth disappearing as her body shot into the sky.
And Barb was still there.
Barb clung to the black leathery skin of the screaming dragon, bleeding hands pulling at the talons around Jenny’s chest.
Jenny couldn’t breathe.
Barb had to stop. She was in danger. She could die. And she shouldn’t die. Not Barb. Too many people had died already.
What was Barb trying to do?
Jenny tried to tell her. Tried to open her mouth and shout at her, but no sound came out. She had no air in her lungs.
They were too high now. Even if Barb could make the dragon let go, they’d both fall to their deaths.
The dragon’s long neck bent overhead and snapped at Barb as she clung to its talons, still trying to pry Jenny out of its hold. But the dragon didn’t stop and snapped at her again, knocking her loose.
Barb slipped.
Emerald eyes wide, mouth gaping in a silent scream, Barb plummeted toward the grass a hundred feet below them.