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woke later on in the small hours of the morning to find her pawing at him, he didn’t even think of turning her away.
     

5
     
    Drotan’s Top
     
    ‘We need a harness for the war-dragon.’ Hyrkallan’s face was a mask of stone. Semian watched him carefully. The other riders had been up late, celebrating or mourning or both. He couldn’t blame them for that; they’d all lost friends; brothers, fathers or lovers. Some of them were barely awake. Some had wept when they’d burned Hyrkallan’s brother, but as for Hyrkallan himself, his eyes had stayed dry then and they stayed dry now. That deserved respect, Semian thought, to lose a brother and still stay true to your purpose. In a way, Semian was glad that someone had died. Not that he had anything against Deremis; he barely knew the man’s name. But yesterday had mixed triumph and tragedy and spared him from more attention. He didn’t want that. Not yet.
     
    ‘We need ammunition for our scorpions and food for us. And potions,’ Hyrkallan continued.
     
    Semian glanced at the piles of barrels and crates that he’d brought from Almiri’s eyrie. Good for a week or two, perhaps, but they needed to fend for themselves.
     
    We need to fend for our selves, he reminded himself. He was one of them now. For better or for worse, he wasn’t sure. But he had to start somewhere. He was already slowly turning Nthandra. Others would follow.
     
    ‘Since none of these things are going to make themselves, we’re going to steal them. The Usurper owns a tiny eyrie on the edge of the Spur. Drotan’s Top. Understand this, though. There’s to be no burning, no slaughter unless there has to be.’
     
    Semian pursed his lips and clenched his toes at that. No burning?
     
    ‘We take what we want and we leave everyone alive when we go. We take their dragons, their weapons, their food, their potions, everything we can possibly use, but we do not take lives. Let the Usurper’s servants live to tell of us. Let them spread fear.’
     
    That, at least, Semian could agree with. The Great Flame was coming. Let them tell of us indeed.
     
    Hyrkallan had already turned his back, heading towards the monster B’thannan. Semian knew of Hyrkallan’s beast - every rider in the north had probably heard of it - but he’d never seen it until they’d reached King Valgar’s eyrie; then Deremis had come for his secret meeting with the queen, pledging Hyrkallan’s support to her if she would pledge hers to him, and B’thannan’s landing had shaken Evenspire to its roots. B’thannan was enormous, by far and away the biggest war-dragon Semian had ever seen, almost as long as a hunter but three times as massive. He felt small enough as it was, surrounded by a score of dragons that could crush him with a careless step.
     
    A pity it’s not white. The war-dragon he’d stolen from Speaker Zafir’s riders wasn’t white either. There weren’t any white dragons. Queen Shezira had managed to breed one as a present for the viper Jehal but somehow it had broken free. Eventually the Embers had killed it by poisoning themselves and then being eaten. Or at least that was what people believed. The white dragon flies free. The flames of destruction have come, and out of the flame, the red rider shall be born. It will come to me, somehow. Vengeance. And I will ride it.
     
    Any dragon was better than no dragon for now. He and Jostan had left Valgar’s eyrie without mounts of their own and fate or destiny or perhaps sheer blind luck had provided for them. Fate would provide again, when it was ready. He mounted his stolen dragon and launched into the air with the rest of the Red Riders. This one would be called Vengeance too.
     
    Hyrkallan led them straight to Drotan’s Top. They shot between the white-capped mountains of the Worldspine, among sharp narrow valleys filled with trees until they reached the Silver River, a dozen dazzling threads of water knotted and twisted together and gleaming in the