The Erth Dragons Book 1: The Wearle Read Free

you clear about the rules?’
    Gabrial nodded. ‘I can flame and claw, but not stab or bite. Eyes and hearts must always be avoided.’
    ‘Good. What else?’
    ‘No phasing.’
    ‘None whatsoever,’ said Grogan. ‘Any movements through time, no matter how minor, will be seen as cheating. You’ll be back in Ki:mera before you can scrape your last meal off your teeth if Galarhade detects a change in the continuum. What else?’
    A second call went up from Grystina, the final call to battle. The assembled dragons burned the air in acknowledgement. All along the skyline now, more were arriving like a flock of giant birds. G’vard threw out another fierce roar.
    ‘What else ?’ per Grogan repeated harshly, lashing his tail across Gabrial’s chest to prevent the young dragon from launching too soon.
    Gabrial roiled his wings in frustration. ‘Only one i:mage.’
    Per Grogan nodded. ‘One. Don’t waste it.’ He pulled his tail away and Gabrial launched. ‘Stay low!’ the old dragon bellowed, adding to himself, ‘The less far you have to fall, the easier it will be to stand up tomorrow…’ And then he took to the rock that Gabrial had vacated and bellowed to per Gorst that his charge was in the air.
    Likewise, per Gorst let it be known that G’vard had launched.
    Two dragons, one theatre of air.
    The battle for Grystina had begun.

2
    Gabrial arrowed downward into the cloud, rolling once before levelling out and streaming with it toward the far mountains. He was following per Grogan’s advice to fly fast below the layers and tease the white dragon with glimpses of him, before disappearing at the point of a strike. On a day as bright as this, blues enjoyed the natural advantage of being able to lose themselves in the sky. It mattered that the angle of the sun was right, but for a brief and sometimes telling moment Gabrial knew he could effectively vanish. And a moment was all it took, at speed, to lash out and rip away a dragon’s scale. The first to deliver an opponent’s scale to Prime Galarhade would be Grystina’s champion.
    But G’vard was a dragon of no mean stealth, and his second, per Gorst, was a clever tactician. Between them, they’d concocted an unusual strategy, which also made use of the cloud. Gabrial’s first inkling of it came when it started to rain. He was confused, and rightly so. There had been no rain in the sky all morning and the cloud was too fine to produce the sort of wash spitting over his wings. Yet the droplets were definitely coming. Suddenly G’vard loomed up behind a semi-transparent wall of water and Gabrial realised what was happening. The white dragon was using bursts of cold flame to condense the cloud and drive the water across Gabrial’s flightpath. As Gabrial splashed into it, four huge claws punched through the torrent. Their sharp tips closed like a deadly flower, grazing the small scales under his jaw. A moment later, his lungs were almost turned to stone as the thwack of G’vard’s enormous tail fell across his breast. No scales worked loose, but the hit sent Gabrial spinning sideways. Every spiracle hissed in complaint. His fire sacs stuttered and temporarily went out. Dazed, he fell in a plummeting spiral. The gasp from the onlooking dragons suggested they feared for the young blue’s life. It would have been a simple matter at this point for G’vard to swoop down and flick a scale off Gabrial’s back or shear away the isoscele at the tip of his tail. (What humiliation that would have been: a sore stump instead of a sharp triangle.) Instead, the white swung round and waited for Gabrial to right himself, prepared to intervene if necessary and save his opponent from a fatal crash. For as per Grogan had rightly said, this was a test of worthiness, not a battle to the death. The Wearle could ill afford to lose any dragons.
    After a drop that measured some thirty wingspans, Gabrial recovered. His fire reignited and his ear stigs rattled out a fierce alarm: if