Cara raised her single throwing dagger, desperately trying to steady the hand that held it so that she might fend off their attack for as long as it took her to draw her sword—

—when the creatures blew past her. Their bodies undulated and wove in their wake as they aimed themselves directly for Dayton and the mare.

Drat. The wyverns had realized that while she was armed, the trembling human and horse behind her were not.

And so, they avoided the difficult prey to pursue easier ones.

“Gods save us!” Dayton shrieked, completely unhelpful as he dove into the chariot-wagon’s body to cower behind the boxes. The added weight in the chariot-wagon effectively anchored the mare, despite her desperate bucks. (She nearly clipped the cowering Acolyte in the head with her hooves.)

The horse’s rearing and iron shod hooves, however, did manage to force the wyverns to dodge and circle their prey, coiling closer as they searched for an opening.

Cara cursed and ran forward. It seemed the bay mare was doing a better job protecting her marque than she was at the moment, and she refused to be shown up by a horse.

Her sword in one hand and her throwing dagger in the other, she quickly struck at the serpentine body of the closest wyvern.

The monster raised its head with a hiss and a breath brimming with sulfur. Cara felt the heat of its warning sparks glow against her face.

She smiled, baring her own teeth.

The wyvern opened its mouth to release a great gout of flame, and Cara threw her last dagger straight down its maw.

The wyvern’s fire breath wasn’t so hot as to melt metal or do more than singe skin. After all, it had teeth and claws if it needed to wreak bloody havoc among its victims or would-be predators.

Its fire breath, so fearsome in its larger dragonkin, was good mostly for scaring its prey into making stupid mistakes and for cooking flesh after it had killed its dinner.

No, the fire breath was one of the few moments when the wyvern was vulnerable to attack, if someone were stupid enough to stand right in front of its fangs while it attempted to burn you to cinders with the magical equivalent of candle flame.

For when it breathed fire, the inner throat was exposed: Fleshy and pink and ripe for the piercing.

Cara’s arm didn’t fail her a second time. The wyvern’s fire breath blew only a moment before its face stiffened, an odd, muffled gurgle emerging from its throat.

It coughed, sparks blowing through its teeth, and toppled to the ground at Cara’s feet, sending up a choking cloud of dust.

The smell of burnt hair nearly made her gag. She swiped at the crisp, curly remains of her lashes while she ran forward again, dodging the mare’s sporadic, spastic kicks and swings of its head.

The second wyvern had made its way to the rear of the wagon, preparing to strike from its coils. A long hiss spat from its mouth as its forked tongue flicked out. The monster’s wings fluttered and flared.

The calm part of Cara’s mind admired the magnificent picture the wyvern made, its filmy membranes backlit by the autumnal afternoon light and its scales shining like a pile of buffed copper.

And then Cara was moving, striding, leaping, thrusting Dayton behind her once more as the wyvern dove.

She raised her sword, bracing herself for the impact.

Her sword point hit the scales of the dragonette, bouncing and reverberating through her arm and shoulder to the top of her head and the ends of her braid.

The wyvern screeched in rage at its temporarily diverted attack, wings stroking the air as it reared back to hover in front of her.

The monster’s jaws snapped. Smoke oozed from between its fangs.

It dove once more.

Cara’s left hand rose, grasped the hilt of the drooping sword, and thrust it up with all the strength of her sinister side.

The blade struck home.

Hot green ichor splashed down her blade, up her arm, soaking through her shirt.

The wyvern moaned, low and deep, and she could feel the echoes of its deathcall through her sword.

The monster’s momentum carried it forward, even as its wings remained tucked against its back, and the sword continued to slice through its exposed limb pit.

When the sword struck the scales on its side, the weight of the wyvern and the force of its final flight came fully to bear against the forged steel.

Cara’s blade bent, splintered, and shattered in two.

Metal shrapnel sliced through Cara’s cheek and ear and arm, and the chariot-wagon suddenly jerked beneath her feet as the mare shrieked in pain.

And suddenly there was sunlight again, as the doomed wyvern crashed into the trees on the other side of the road. Light filtered through the high branches of the trees over the road.

Cara shaded her eyes at the abrupt transition from wyvern shadow to exposed air, listening hard for the next attack.

All she could hear was the sound of her own ragged, gasping breath and Dayton’s teeth chattering from somewhere behind her. The mare pranced in her traces, causing Cara to feel as though she were on the deck of some tiny ship in the midst of a great gale.

She allowed her body to sway, and then her knees took advantage of her weakening resolve to turn to jelly.

Cara crumpled to the top of the baggage pile with a gasp, her left hand still clutching the hilt of her wrecked sword. She could feel Dayton’s trembling through the sacks that separated them, and she opened her eyes, preparing to comfort him in some way.

At that moment, she saw the prime wyvern, arrowing toward them with all the silent speed and strength of a raptor.

The monster struck the side of the chariot-wagon with a piercing cry of triumph that quickly turned to shrieking rage as the chariot-wagon was thrown completely from the road and toppled into the small wooded valley below.