She kept good watch, carefully avoiding the easiest paths, skirting entire areas in their attempt to preserve speed and stealth, circling up the mountainside as they raced east to Voidbane's Lodge. The enemies' assault was soundless—at least Anna hadn't heard anything. It was Dagger who saved them from the initial attack, his preternatural reflexes somehow anticipating the aggressors' strike moments before they hit. "Let's go ahead and head back around—," she started. But Dagger collapsed his wings, rolled, and dropped straight down the cliff side, a near vertical dive, the intensity of the speed stopping her heart, her breath catching in her chest. An angry cry rang out above her. Anna glanced over her shoulder and saw three Tevéss riders—one on a red scout dragon that had crashed into the mountainside just where she'd ordered Dagger to turn. The red's rider was uninjured, but his dragon's shoulder was damaged. The red clung there to the rocks, immobilized and out of the action, but his rider's comrades were circling back, rolling, and diving after them.
