(Chapter Nineteen: Another Beginning, cont.)

  The group was well enough to strike out the next day, and the sour mood that had come with the rain and illness was left behind them. The next morning, they spotted the Black, a dark line on the horizon that grew larger and deeper as they approached. Ean found it sinister and alien against the green of the moor and the blue of the sky. Although they’d technically been in Nor’dell territory for some time, this was the only border that mattered. This was where Nor’dell had razed their country instead of surrendering.

  “We should stock up on food and water,” Chadwick said. “The Scholars said the rivers are clear, but we should prepare for the worst.”

  Everyone was quick to agree. The thought of running out of provisions in the wasteland was a disturbing one. They stopped at a large pond to top off their water skins. Asali and Leo went hunting and caught a half-dozen rabbits. Chadwick spent the afternoon preparing them for travel, wrapping the meat in greenwood leaves and burying them beside the fire to cook. The leaves would keep the meat good for weeks. They would also made it taste like grass.

  With nothing else to do while the rabbits cooked, Asali shot arrows for Ean.

  “How many trainees die doing this?” she asked him.

  “Not as many as you’d think.”

  Her arrow flew. Ean grabbed out, but his hand closed on nothing.

  “They won’t let you graduate without it?”

  “It’s a rather vital skill.”

  Another shot. Another miss.

  “What does your teacher say?”

  “About what?”

  “Did he give you advice? Any tips?”

  Ean mimicked Felix’s tone. “Stop flinching, Ean. I’m not going to shoot you.”

  She snorted. Ean laughed too as she loosed another arrow. He snatched his hand out and—

  His hand hit the bolt. His fingers couldn’t close around it, but he hit it. The arrow struck into the dirt, knocked off its course.

  Ean blinked at it, dumbfounded, then turned to Asali, who was staring at him, mouth dropped open.

  “Did you see that?” Ean demanded.

  “You hit it,” she said, astonishment in her voice.

  The others looked over, hearing their raised voices.

  “What happened?” Leo asked.

  “He hit my arrow,” Asali said.

  “He hit it?”

  “Shoot again,” Ean told Asali, settling back into place.

  The others crowded around, even though Ean told them not to watch. Asali shot another dozen arrows and, of course, he missed them all.

  “You’re jinxing me,” he told the group, but he wasn’t upset. He’d managed to hit an arrow. It was progress. For the first time in three years, he felt hope.

  *   *   *

  The next morning, they walked into the Black. The bright moor grass turned brown and patchy and finally faded into dirt. The dirt turned into soot and ash. The ground became spongy, like walking on sand but softer. Ean’s boots kicked up clouds of it as he walked. It was fresher than he expected, smelling strongly of smoke, but with something acrid and tangy underneath. They walked a full day before making camp. They did their best to clear the area before setting up the tent, but by morning, they were all covered in a layer of soot.

  The day was quick to warm, and a strong wind came in from the west. The ash lifted in rolling waves and spinning dust devils. They dampened their scarves and tied them over their faces to keep it out of their lungs, but Ean could still taste the soot on his tongue. His mouth dried; the back of his throat prickled.

  By the end second day, Ean started differentiating the various shades of black in the wasteland. There was the gray-black of burnt stone, the brown-black of a forest reduced to stumps, and the charcoal-black of old homesteads outlined in the burnt earth. His eyes ached to see real color. His gaze drifted to the red of Flora’s hair and the gold of Leo’s. Both dulled as the ash continued to settle over them.

  He discovered a new shade of black on the fourth day as they descended a dusty hill that sloped into a charred valley. Strange protruding shapes spiked upwards from the blanket of ash. At first, Ean thought it was another burnt forest, but then he realized the color was off. This wasn’t the brown-black of dead trees; it was a lighter taupe-black. And the shapes were too short and too spindly to be tree trunks.

  They stepped into the valley, looking about them in confusion.

  “What is this?” Flora wondered aloud.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Ean’s eyes landed on an object immediately recognizable, an ovoid dome above two gaping sockets, below which were two empty slits and then a ridge of teeth. A skull.

  A human skull.

  And now that his brain recognized it, his eyes shot to the valley at large, and he saw the landscape for what it was. A graveyard. Not with coffins buried neatly in rows, but the graveyard of an ancient battle. Hundreds of skeletons were strewn across the expanse, arm bones and leg bones poking up through the ash, some jumbled up in piles together. Bony hands still gripped pieces of destroyed weaponry. Swords and knives had melted into unrecognizable shapes; the staves of spears and halberds had burnt away, leaving their blackened tips littered across the battlefield.

  Ean’s initial shock turned to horror. He knew about the Dragon War, every child in Eastmere had been told of it, but it had always seemed more fiction than reality, a ghost story told late at night. Now, he stared at proof that the stories were true.

  Beside him, Asali froze, her eyes widening as she recognized the destruction. Further ahead, Leo sucked in a breath. Flora’s hands went to her mouth.

  “What battalion was this?” Asali asked quietly.

  Leo shook his head. “Too many were lost up here. It’s impossible to know without finding a banner or an insignia.”

  “Should we look for one?”

  It was an honorable idea, to identify the men who had died here in service of their kingdom. But judging by the state of the devastation, Ean doubted any sort of military pin or coat of arms would have survived.

  “It’s too badly decayed,” Leo said, echoing Ean’s thoughts.

  “We should leave,” Flora said, voice quavering. “We’re walking on their bodies.” She looked ill at the thought of it.

  “This way,” Chadwick said gently, taking her by the shoulder and guiding her back the way they’d come.

  Leo looked over to Asali. “When we return to Eastmere, we’ll speak with a cartographer and a historian. They’ll be able to identify what battalion was sent here.”

  Asali nodded. “They deserve to be known.”

  They joined Chadwick and Flora back at the hill. The route they’d been following was southwest, but that path would take them directly through the valley of bones. Chadwick diverted them west instead, hugging the base of hill and avoiding as much of the graveyard as possible. Even here, a few wayward skeletons dotted the ash, their posture indicating that they had tried to flee the battle.

  Up ahead, the valley curved, stretching further than Ean had expected. He changed his estimate. Not hundreds of dead. Thousands. And he could pick out the charred remains of battle wagons and chariots, of horses and other beasts of burden. Beside him, Asali murmured a prayer.

  “There.” Chadwick pointed ahead at a small ridge. It was a gentler slope than the other hills, and divot had been taken out of the top, flattening the passage out of the valley.

  They picked up their pace, all of them eager to leave the skeleton army behind. Halfway up the side of the valley, Chadwick paused at something taupe-black in the ash. It was large and bulbous at the edges. He knelt and brushed the soot away. Asali and Flora walked past him, and Ean followed. He wasn’t interested in excavating any remains. Leo paused for Chadwick, shifting uncomfortably as his side.

  Asali and Flora made it ten steps before a half-buried log stopped them in their path. Ean stopped with them, frowning in confusion. It couldn’t be a log. All the wood was burnt.

  “What is it?” Flora whispered.

  “Bone,” Ean said, his brain identifying the color before the shape of it. But now that he said it aloud, he could see it. It was a long bone, impossibly large, with knobs on the ends where it was supposed to fit into the socket of another.

  Now that he knew the scale of it, he could pick out the other bones lying before them, equally massive. He spotted another long bone, and something that looked like a claw, as long as his arm. Ahead of them, part of a ribcage stuck out of the ground, creating an arc so large he could walk through it. He pulled in a breath.

  A dragon, it had to be.

  They were walking on top of a dragon’s skeleton.

  His heart skipped a beat as a picture of the battle came to his mind. Dragon-fire had rained down from the sky. The soldiers in the valley had been trapped in formation, unable to escape. Those at the edges had tried to run. All of them had been caught by the flames, their flesh reduced to ash, their bones dropping into a pile where they’d once stood. The dragon had somehow been killed. It had careened to the earth with enough force to create a crater in the valley ridge.

  The horror returned three-fold. Prickles of sweat broke out over his skin.

  “By the Son,” Leo said, catching up to them. His eyes went from the log-like bone to the arc of the ribcage.

  “A dragon,” Chadwick breathed, coming up from behind Leo. He was carrying the strange hunk of bone that had caught his attention. He looked down at it now. “It’s a vertebrae.” His voice had the inflection of a man who had just solved a puzzle. He discarded the vertebrae and began digging out the leg bone, discovering what might have been a foot below it.

  “Leave it,” Leo said, his voice tight.

  “The whole skeleton must be here.” Chadwick cast around, spotted the rib cage, and ran over to it, exclaiming at the size and the number of ribs.

  “Chadwick,” Leo said.

  “We could dig it up and lay it out, see what it would have looked like. We could take some smaller pieces back to Eastmere.”

  “Chadwick.”

  “Has anyone found the skull?”

  “Chang-wook,” Leo said.

  The Suyon name made Chadwick pause. He looked at Leo, and then the rest of the group, and understanding crossed his face. He was the only one who didn’t find the dragon skeleton terrifying.

  “I’ll catch up later?” he offered.

  Leo’s silence was answer enough. Chadwick sighed and dusted off his hands, a futile gesture since all their exposed skin was stained with ash. He resumed the lead and took the group out of the valley. Ean wasn’t the only one who heaved a sigh of relief when the valley of bones was no longer visible.

  They spent the evening hiking up a gentle, but deceptively tall, hill. The climb was slow because the ash lay deeper here and the ground shifted beneath their feet, like a sand dune. Ean’s legs burned with the effort. Flora asked for a couple of breaks, and no one minded. They made it two thirds of the way up before stopping for the night.

  Ean took first watch. The wind picked up, somewhere beyond the ridge. It sounded fierce, angry. He could hear the others tossing in the tent, unable to sleep. It wasn’t just the howl of the wind keeping them up; it was the image of a valley of bone and ash. He put his hands to his mouth, the soot bitter on his lips, and played the first song that came to mind.

  Midnight bells, midnight bells, do you toll for me?

  I can’t sleep, I can’t dream, all alone I be.

  Midnight bells, midnight bells, would you toll for me?

  For I need, and I seek, a little company.

  Midnight bells, midnight bells, I would toll for you.

  And all will be, and all will bring, peaceful sleep to thee.

  The melody tempered the anger of the wind. He played until the tossing and turning stopped, and then pulled out his journal. He wrote about the black and the skeleton army and the dragon and smeared soot over half the page. Leo spelled him a few hours later. Ean turned in and dreamt of battle and fire.