Young Writers Society

This was written in a rush again, apologies. Why do I always leave it until the last moment ;_;

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Einar listened to the shouting steadily grow louder and more unruly. He watched Soren place his hands on the damp floorboards, decaying Norweigan spruce logged in the Hallgindal mountains above Fjordheim. Mold and dust settled in the waves of his hair. He paused and turned to Einar.

"Are you okay? We need to help." Soren pushed the board, adding an afterthought, "we can continue later, and if --"

"Just go." Einar didn't meet Soren's eyes. Embarrassment clawed at him as a sense of urgency as concerning as the guards' shouting returned. He wanted more than anything to take the dragon and fly away. He turned his face away from Soren.

Soren climbed out of the hollow in the floorboards easily and threw a hand down to help Einar, who let himself be dragged onto the floor with the grace of a slaughtered pig carcass. He pulled on Soren's arm and clambered to his feet, pushing away from him as soon as he was steady.

The factory was an old reindeer meat processing plant - the herders lived North of the Hallingdal Mountains, on the Vadsø tundra that stretched out before the North Sea. Broken, rusting metal was strewn across the floor in a pattern that reminded Einar of ribcages picked clean by wolves, slicing shadows through the light like rusty fangs.

He crept to the side of the door, shrinking away from Soren as he joined him and they both peered through a crack in the iron-and-timber walls.

Outside the gaping claw-slash hole in the warehouse, the Guard gathered and shouted. The draft stallions - huge horses imported from temperate, low-lying lands better known for cocoa than heavy horses - reared and snorted, their spiked horseshoes clattering on the cobbles as they danced and tossed their heads. Their flanks and their eyes glittered as swathes of muscles rippled under their coats and spurs were dug into their stomachs.

Einar looked up, a few metres above the Guard, to where Kara clung to the dragon as it hovered. Its wings worked like a kestrel's, feverish and powerful, as it hung like an absurd painting against the wall of a Prussian blue banquet hall. The Guard shouted for her to come down, over and over, but she stayed clinging like a child to the dragon's back and staring around wildly.

"Well, shit. What do we do?" Soren asked, squinting up at the dragon.

"How am I supposed to know?" Einar hissed back, staring from the Guard to the dragon to the off-kilter, crumbling industrial flats that lay beyond the curls of barbed wire on top of the iron fence that ran the perimeter of the warehouse yards.

"So, we need the dragon... and that's the Guard...."

"And the princess," Soren added. "But you can fight, can't you? If I remember correctly, you're the phantom of Cross Fields?"

"I can fight in the dark, when people don't suspect it."

"It's getting light." Soren offered.

"There are at least seventeen of them. And they have the horses. I hate the horses." Einar shuddered. He'd been trampled by those horses before - he still had the marks from their shoes on his stomach.

Soren sighed.

"What?" Einar snapped, turning to face him again.

He slipped a hand into his coat, into a pocket lined with wolf's fur, and pulled out a slender pistol, holding it out for Einar to see.

"I didn't want to use this," Soren said, "I don't have a licence. But I'm already technically a criminal now, so I may as well. Do you have your knife?"

Einar nodded. "Of course."

"So, shall we?"

"I have a knife. You have a gun. They have guns and horses with knives strapped to their feet, as well as the Queen's royal damn blessing. You know what they'll do to us?"

"Yes. I'm know exactly that they'll do to us. What choice do we have?"

Einar nodded with gritted teeth. "We don't... This is your fault."

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. You have no idea how much I regret this. I promise when we get out of this --"

"If, Soren."

"When we get out of this I'll show you the real society."

"Let's just see if we can get out first."

Soren's gloved hand - gloves made of silk shipped from places with emperors and forests of vibrant patchwork green - tightened around the gun, and the other hand reached and squeezed Einar's. They nodded and Einar led the charge out into the grimy mid-morning dawn.

He flicked his knife out of his sleeve and locked the hooked blade in place as he pushed faster. His heart jumped to match the pace. Soren fired twice, knocking holes in the skulls of two Guardsmen. Their horses squealed and bolted as their bodes crumpled to the floor. Einar heard Soren apologise under his breath.

"Einar! Soren!" Kara shouted, leaning over the dragon's side and dragging the dragon leftwards with her weight.

The shuffling of rifles onto shoulders made Einar stumble and break his sprint into a jog. The pebble-dark of the guns' muzzles made his bones colder than any winter ever could. Beside him, Soren fired three more bullets, felling two men and a horse. Again, he offered an apology in a cracked whisper.

"Kara! Crash the dragon!" Einar shouted. His dizzying fear was making it hard to think. "Crash the dragon onto them! Do it! Now!"

"Princess, don't worry. Come down, please," the leader pleaded, and then turned to Einar and Soren with contempt. "Men, fire!"

As soon as the order was given, Soren dropped to the ground and pain exploded across Einar's thigh, sending him flailing onto the cobbles. Gunshots echoed on the warehouses and the iron and the dirty bricks.

"Surrender!" The leader shouted. The gunshots ceased.

Einar stole a glance at Soren and immediately wished he hadn't. His eyes were half-closed and vacant, his mouth hung open slightly, and a red patch was beginning to spread over his shoulder. Panic curled like a snake in Einar's stomach.

"Soren...! Are you --"

"Quiet! I hereby arrest you with the blessing of her majesty, the Queen of Fjordheim." The leader recited those awful lines as he approached, gun pointed at Einar's shaking body.

"Einar!" Kara screeched. "Don't hurt him! Kristoff! Don't!"

The leader - Kristoff - turned to her. "Come down, princess! Your mother is worried sick!"

Einar watched the expression on her face turn sour. She leaned over the dragon's neck and pointed its head down.

"Bastard. You know she doesn't care! Get away from them!" She shouted, fiddling with the controls as the dragon dipped like a diving falcon and the horse scattered, finally at their limit as they galloped away from the blood pools and the corpses. Kara pulled the wings up and the dragon slammed into Kristoff as he towered over Einar, sending him sprawling forwards. The dragon crashed through the warehouse walls and screamed to a halt on the broken machinery.

By some miracle, Kristoff staggered to his feet with little more than a limp, following Kara's shouting at the dragon with his gun poised to kill. Einar shook his head.

"Soren, don't die. I'll be back."

Soren gave a single, labored grunt in reply.

"Fuck!" Einar hissed as his leg threatened to give way under him and he trotted like a lame old mule after Kristoff. He launched himself at the man's back with a growl, locking an arm around his neck and sending both of them onto the ground just short of the warehouse. They both grabbed at the gun, kicking out at each other, spitting, and swearing. Each movement jarred the wound on Einar's thigh and drew agonized yelps from his gritted teeth.

"Let. Go." Kristoff snarled, kicking at Einar's wound.

"No!" Einar spat, yanking back on the gun barrel and writhing like a trapped ferret to try to escape.

Kristoff pushed the barrel down onto Einar's throat, pushing harder until Einar felt his eyes bulge and his throat almost close completely. Kristoff smiled like a mad dog.

"Scum. We'll take the dragon back after you die here."

He could only reply with was a sick gurgle as he pushed uselessly against the metal. Kristoff was going to kill him, and then Soren, and then Kara. Then he would leave the dragon crippled in the bowels of the Queen's castle, and there was nothing Einar could do about it. His vision was already starting to cave in, the night was returning but there was no industrial light to scare it away.