With the ballistae being drawn into position, most had disengaged from direct battle against the grounded dragons. Nets and the other ensnaring weapons were being traded for lances, as they set a perimeter to keep the beasties in place until they could be put down. From a distance, and safely, which was humanity’s favorite option. The Lady had not disengaged. The Lady’s left wing had been broken, in charming mirror of the dragon she currently fought, and it was not allowing her to disengage. She had experience on her side. But it was larger, and stronger, and significantly less worried about ending this fight alive. Perhaps it already knew that option was gone for it.

A second dragon was pushing itself out of the mud behind her. Its spine appeared to be broken somewhere before its hindquarters—likely the Lady’s own handiwork—but it held itself up on trembling forelegs, and began that ominous cough, its neck coiling back to spit fire even as it swayed.

Aaron dove. He’d not gotten enough height for a proper hunting dive, but a pounce to its back would do. He clamped the hatchling’s neck between his jaws, and if he failed to wrestle its aim away—if his grip was, in fact, doing more to steady the hatchling’s aim than to thwart it—well. It wasn’t as if anyone could prove he’d used a dragon as a flamethrower.

The tar hit her wing, near the base. Flash-broiled the water there, and exploded outwards, showering her in grease sparks from head to hindquarters. She leapt back, one wing dragging and one blazing, trying to put distance between herself and the dragons even as the one she’d been fighting directly pursued, even as the tar continued burning through her cloak, and soon it would reach—

She unclasped the thing, throwing its blazing tatters into the first dragon’s face. The fire flared. Not more than a temporary inconvenience to the dragon, who simply started pawing the burning cloak away from its eyes. It would have been the perfect distraction for her apprentice to swoop in to the rescue, but alas, the dragon under Aaron writhed so strongly he was flung off into the mud. In rather the opposite direction to where the Lady crouched, because she was not stupid enough to think a human could outrun a creature the size of a longhouse.

Aaron was winded. More than he’d planned, actually, but all the better. The dragon he’d pounced had collapsed back to the ground, its sides heaving. The one the Lady faced had its vision back. It coiled, coughing, and what a tragedy that he could never reach her in time as it—

Missed its shot. Because of course it did. The Lady danced out of the way at the last moment, in a rather more graceful version of the dodge her daughter had done up on the balcony earlier. It tried and missed again. And then, apparently growing as frustrated with this as Aaron was, it simply snapped down to bite her.

Tried to bite her. Missed. Maybe dragons weren’t as fireproof as advertised, because actual eye damage was the only excuse it could possibly have for misjudging that.

If Aaron had been sitting in the mud a little too long now, he’d claim incredulity as his excuse.

The Lady caught him staring. She smirked. And continued leading the dragon one extremely frustrating narrow miss at a time, until its broad side was fully turned to the nearest ballista. The operators did not miss. A lung shot, which was as close to a mercy kill as a giant arrow to the chest could be. Aaron spied Mabel aiming the thing. He’d wondered why she and her longbow hadn’t been with the rear guard; like mother like daughter, it seemed.

The battle was short from there, if it could even be called as such. Aaron landed outside the line of cavalry and ballistae. The Lady joined him a moment later, picking her way over muddy wagon trails and the long furrows where dragons had been downed with a hopping, well-pleased sort of gait. The cavalry worked to keep the dragons separate, and penned. The ballista crews moved from one target to the next, with practical efficiency.

The dragon with the broken spine was the last. It managed to lift itself up on its forepaws again, as it silently watched the operators ready their shot. Under the streaks of mud, colors rippled over its scales. Reds and oranges, pinks and purples. When it died, they settled into the dusky blue of twilight.

The rain had stopped, but the clouds remained. The day had gone without a sunset to herald it.

“How did you do that?” Aaron asked her, after the dragons’ Deaths had gone. “I’d thought you a goner.”

“You’ll figure it out when you’ve more training, Journeyman Aaron,” she replied, with that same smirk from before. “Though I imagine the technique wouldn’t be as effective for you.”

He gave her a side-eye. She gave him a perfectly innocent look, as she stood smelling of burned fur, with a significant amount of blood on her that was not her own. How had that even happened through the griffin cloak, unless she’d gotten so much on her it had seeped through—

Fortunately, the approach of Rose and Lochlann stopped him from continuing that thought.

“I’m glad to see you well, Lady,” the princess said, trying and failing to reign in Shenanigans before the red roan could affectionately headbutt the woman in question. Its coat, Aaron noted, very neatly hid any smears it may have just picked up.

“You as well, princess,” the Lady said, reaching up to rub behind the mare’s ears in a manner he associated more with dogs than horses. “That was fine work.”

“I had help,” the princess replied, quite modestly.

It was entirely unclear whether she referred to the lieutenant at her side, or the horse who carried her. The lieutenant sat his own borrowed horse with a certain wary stiffness he’d never shown on his own mount.

“How did that even happen?” Aaron asked, looking between the man and Seventh Down.

“They insisted,” Lochlann replied.

His sister was approaching, too, complete with her honor guard behind her. And the king, to whom she’d deigned to lend a horse. Aaron froze a moment, because Adelaide Junior was approaching her Senior, and that seemed a conversation he would give much to intercept.

“Excuse me,” Aaron said. And pulled on his hood. And made use of a griffin’s much longer legs to make that interception literal. He pulled up to a mud-splattering halt in front of her. Threw off his hood, and fell in next to her side. Her unarmed side, because it would take her an extra moment to get a blade leveled at him.

“Sister. Favorite sister. I won’t try to run off for a bit if you don’t tell her anything. Your mother is terrifying.”

“As if she’d care that Markus disappeared,” Adelaide said, her sword half-drawn. His face must have been doing something contradictory, because she watched him, and her own expression tightened. “But she’d care if you did, wouldn’t she?”

“I do not think she lets her feelings for someone much influence the lifespan she decides on for them,” Aaron said.

Which was the point that the others caught up to his little dash, and all the people Aaron didn’t want within speaking distance of each other—a good portion of them, anyway—were here.

“What’s going on?” Second Lieutenant Lochlann asked, looking back and forth between him and his sister. Rose was doing much the same. The Lady simply had one brow raised.

“I need to speak with my brother,” Adelaide said, at the same time Orin was saying:

“I require the presence of…”

But His Majesty’s eyes caught on something behind them, and his voice faltered. “Jessie?”

One of the ballista operators stiffened under her helm, her back to His Majesty. Which meant the king was recognizing her by the way she moved rather than how she looked.

The soldier turned. Took off her helmet, and smiled tightly. “Your Highness.”

“Majesty,” Orin corrected, and promptly flushed.

The woman’s smile turned to something real. “I can see that,” she said, pointedly looking at his face, rather than his rain-soaked and battle-weary self. “Very majestic, Your Majesty.”

“I thought, I was told…” the king said. And then began fumbling with the sword on his belt. “I have your…”

Which was what let Aaron place the name: Jessie, one of the soldiers from Orin’s old squad, the one who’d willed him her sword. One of those who the Duke had claimed to be dead.

“Keep it,” she said, interrupting His Majesty’s continued clumsiness.

And then the both of them were resolutely not meeting each other’s eyes, which was as much of that drama as Aaron ever wished to be present for.

“As you can see,” his sister said, “we all have much to discuss.”

“I’m glad you’re well, Adelaide,” the Lady said.

His sister’s scaled horse shifted under her. Aaron was pleased to see Seventh Down eyeing the flashy creature like a particularly unappetizing onion.

“I am extremely upset with you, mother,” Adelaide said. “But that was good fighting, out there.”

“I brought a tin of those tarts you like. They make a terrible breakfast.”

“Extremely upset,” his sister repeated.

“You could bring your brother,” the Lady said, as if this were some sort of peace offering.

Something pained crossed his sister’s face, just briefly. “I believe you require separate yelling sessions,” she said, not ratting him out.

“I’ll see you, then?”

“Yes, mother.”

The Lady smiled then, and though her golden hair was cut through with gray, it was difficult to tell which of them was the elder.

His Majesty could not yet enter the castle, of course; as the blood noble of highest rank, it was his place to wait. Until each of their casualties had been brought inside, to heal or to be watched over until their pyre tomorrow. Until each downed dragon had been checked, to ensure none were faking. The butchery would have to wait until sunrise. They were left where they’d fallen: their scales would keep out all but the scavengers no human should dispute.

When at last the final soldier had entered the plateau’s gates, behind the final wheeled ballista, their own little party turned to follow.

Both His Majesty and Adelaide were ensuring that Aaron did not leave their sight. They rode on either side of him, with Adelaide’s honor guard ringing them.

This put Lochlann and Princess Rose in the odd position of being the very last inside. The final post, where Lastrign’s ruler should be.