“This is not our war.  This is not our fight.”

Del Tomas watched as yet another farmer pressed his dirtied hands to his brow. “It’s dangerous to go, but it’s more dangerous to stay.  My family will join.” The farmer’s shoulders sagged.

In the cellar, a single candle burned in the center of a rugged table.  Del counted seventeen faces hovering in the light. Seventeen simple men with farms and families to protect.

Those families were crammed against the cellar walls, wedged together in darkness.  Del was squeezed so tightly against his younger cousin, Aveen, he could feel her breathe.  He tried not to breathe.  The air tasted like mud.  He tried not to move, because it only burrowed Aveen’s elbow harder into his upper thigh.  But there was something else in the air of that room that made it hard to move and to breathe.  Del tasted that, too, and every time he pulled it through his nostrils, it took a little more of him.

Fear.  So raw it turned his pulse to hammer strikes.

And it was his father’s turn to speak.  The last of the seventeen.

“It was war that brought my grandfather to this land, a once-dead speck of earth.  Now it’s the Durance we all love.”  Del’s father patted a soiled handkerchief to his upper lip.  “I’m sure he was as torn to leave his homeland as I am, but he followed his convictions, and a village was born.”  His voice broke.  The wrinkled knuckles of Del’s mother gripped his father’s shoulder.

“Then it’s settled,” said Gil Diantus, the youngest father at the table.  “If any other families change their mind before dawn, we’ll bring them.  But we must leave at dawn.  The Esra dragons will be upon us if we don’t.”

“Yes.  Four hours,” said Del’s father.  He reached up to grip the hand on his shoulder.  “My family is packed and ready.  If anyone needs help—”

“If you could spare Del,” said Uncle Redrick, who raised a hand.  “I’ll need a hand hitching the cart.”

A sudden clap of thunder sent a ripple of panic through the cellar.  “Not rain,” someone cried.  “Not now.”

Bodies shivered and began to funnel up the stairs.  Del was swept into the crush.  His feet kicked against the bottom step, and he stumbled up.  Aveen clutched at his arm.  He managed to tug her onto his hip.

Just as he was about to make the final step up into Gil Diantus’s galley, he was stopped.  The mass of bodies that had dragged him up had become a wall of silence.  “Move on,” he said, and elbowed someone’s spine.

“Del?  Is it dawn already?” Aveen pointed through a tiny window.

In the distance, at the curve of the hill near Em Rode’s pig farm, Del saw a glowing arc of orange light.  But it wasn’t east.  Em’s pig farm was south.  “That’s not sunrise,” said Del.

The wall ahead of him broke into flailing arms and running legs.  He cut through the panic to lunge out into the night.  He fought the urge to run, and waited instead for his parents as Aveen clung to his side with a strength he didn’t think a six-year-old could have.

“Where’s Daddy?” she asked.  Del could see her wide, blue eyes even in the dark.

“He’ll be here,” said Del.

But the hand that gripped his elbow was his father’s.  “They’ve cut off the south exit,” he said.  “Take Aveen to the north oak.  I’ll help Drick with his cart.”

“But—”

“Tell everyone you see to go with you.  I’ll do the same.  I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”

Del would have argued, but his father was gone.

“Where’s Daddy?” Aveen asked again.

Del glanced around for Uncle Drick, but his eyes caught on the rage of red fire in the distance.  Two massive, dragon-shaped shadows swerved in and out of the light, spitting sparks into a grove of trees.

“I want Daddy.”  Aveen tried to wrestle out his arms.

“He’ll meet us at the north oak.  Come on, we’ve got to go.” He switched her to his other hip.  He wanted to see his father and mother, too, but he obeyed, and loped as fast as he could toward the high end of village.

He passed Gil Diantus, who was slinging a saddlebag over his horse.  His two boys straddled the mare.  His wife was clutching a small box and crying silently.  “My father said to meet at the north oak.”

“Right behind you,” he said.

Then came a deafening screech, like the swing of a giant, rusty door.  Aveen slapped her hands over her ears.  Del felt the earth rumble right through his boots.

“About time,” said Gil.  He glanced up at three more descending dragon shapes, and then tugged his horse northward.

The three Leland dragons glided in against gray cloud cover, and then swooped low, right over Del’s head.  They came so close he could have reached up to touch a scaled belly.  He felt the slam of air as wings beat hard.  He even smelled them.  Like farm dirt after a heavy rain.

“They want Daddy!” Aveen tried to wrench from his hands.

“No, they’re going to help us.”  He grabbed at her arms, but she was flailing.  “Stop it, Aveen! We have to meet him at the oak!”

She went limp, and Del couldn’t adjust quickly enough.  She slid down his leg like she was coated in bacon grease, and flopped to the ground.  Then she jumped to her feet and started running.  South.

Del chased.  “You’re going the wrong way!”

She was quick, but Del’s legs were long.  He reached, just about to grab the collar of her dress, when a shower of sparks blinded him.  His hair sizzled.  His bare arms stung.

Dragon cries turned to caterwauling.  A column of fire hit the path just feet away.  The once-quiet village erupted with screams, and people scattered, dragging children or yanking mule reins, or running to hide.

Del coughed on smoke.  His eyes watered.  He stumbled forward, his shoulder bumping people running the other way.  “Aveen!  Come back!”

“Del!”

A familiar voice.  He turned to find his father, arms open, with soot smeared across his forehead.  Del knew he was too old to cry, but he almost did, anyway.  “I can’t find Aveen.  She ran.”

“She what?”  His father’s arms dropped.

“She ran.  I tried to catch her, but I can’t see in all this smoke.”

“Come on.  We can’t let her get to her house.”  He grabbed Del’s arm and pushed him ahead.

“Why?  Where’s Uncle Redrick?”

He didn’t answer.

“Father?”

His father shook his head.  “The Leland dragons tried to pull the Esra pair further south, but they were determined.  They kept circling back.  They kept heading straight for Drick’s farm.”

“Why?”

Del looked over his shoulder to see his father staring south, his eyes wide.  He followed his father’s gaze.  Uncle Redrick’s house was an inferno, blazing so hot that even from several yards away, Del had to shield his face.

He heard his father moan.  “Aveen.”

“Here,” came a faint voice.  Del’s eyes were drawn toward the fence around Uncle Redrick’s goats.  There, stretched out and panting, lay a dragon so pale the flaming house turned it orange.  It wore a saddle of gray and red satin.  A Leland dragon.

Del and his father crept forward.  The dragon’s massive head lolled toward them, thick lashes closing against dull eyes.  A tear as big as Del’s fist splashed onto the ground.  And he smelled something new.  Something bitter, and even stronger than the creature’s dank scales.  Del’s foot slipped in wetness.  He looked down to find his boot in a puddle of oil.

“Blood,” whispered his father.  “She’s dying.”

The dragon wheezed through clenched teeth. “Take the child.”  She relaxed her wing, and it fell aside to reveal Aveen, crying and holding a gold disk in her little hands.

“Don’t go, Daddy!” she wailed at the disk.  “Don’t go!”

“Aveen.” His father’s voice came in a rush of breath, and he lunged forward.

“Mountains,” said the dragon.  “Go.”

“We can’t take the mountains,” said Del’s father.  Aveen clutched him, sobbing into his shoulder.  The disk dropped from her fingers and dangled on a silver chain.  “We’ll have to go east.”

“Fault.”  The dragon’s head sagged, and a froth of blood oozed from the corner of her mouth.  Then she was very still.

“No, old girl.  It wasn’t your fault.”  Del’s father patted the dead dragon’s head.

Aveen was still crying, and in the blaze of her burning home, her blue eyes were turned violet.  She stared at Del over his father’s shoulder.

A gout of flame erupted ahead of them.  Four dragons still grappled the sky, two diving toward the village, and two swooping around to blast fire in their path.  “Let’s go!” shouted Del’s father.

They ran past columns of smoke that were once trees or fences, past villagers staring out locked windows.  His father’s breathing turned ragged.  He slowed.  Del silently tugged Aveen to himself and urged his father on.

They reached the north oak.  Families grouped beneath the enormous limbs, full with green summer leaves.  There were 3 horses and 2 mules, and one cart full of straw and boxes.  Most people carried heavy packs on their backs, even some of the children.  Some were coughing.  All were staring into the sky.

Del’s mother was among them.  She saw the three coming, and clutched her hands to her stomach.  “Oh!  Oh, Jaynes.”  She hurried toward them, then looked past them toward the village.  “Where’s Redrick?”

Del couldn’t see his father’s face, but he could see his mother’s.  Tears welled, and she pressed wrinkled hands to her cheeks.  “Oh, my dear brother.”

“Daddy...” Aveen wailed in Del’s arms.

“We’ll have to go east,” said Del’s father.

“No!” cried Aveen.  “The mountains! The dragon said the mountains!”

Gil Diantus stepped forward.  “East is Murk Forest.  You aren’t suggesting we take the forest?”

Del’s father shook his head.  “We can trace it northeast, stay back from the border.”

Someone screamed.  Shouts broke out.

“Jaynes,” said Del’s mother, her voice trembling.  “They’re coming.”

Del spun.  Two pairs of dark wings pulled in against dark bodies and dove straight for the oak.  The Leland dragons threw themselves into those bodies and knocked them off course.

“Are they following us?  Hunting us?” asked Del’s mother.

“That doesn’t make sense.” Gil Diantus turned to grab the reins of his horse and led his boys north.  “But if we go east, we’re wide open for miles.  If we go north, we’ve got Durance Forest for cover, and then mountains for caves.  If the Esra dragons are following us, they won’t dare go as far as the mountains.”

“Go, Uncle Jaynes!” Aveen clutched at the air.  “To the mountains!”

With a screech of pain, a Leland dragon dropped from sky and landed hard.  It quaked the ground as though it was splitting open.  The rumble drowned any other sound, and if Del’s father was arguing, Del couldn’t hear it.

Sixteen families surged forward.  North, toward the mountains.