Dragonfang (5 page)
‘Distract it!’
Zimak stared at Daretor with a look he reserved only for the profoundly insane. Since the mantid was scuttling in his direction anyway he simply ran – or jumped – for his life. The mantid veered after him, slamming into the restraining wall of the stadium. The impact ripped out chunks of wall and pulverised dozens of pitchers. It also knocked two archers into the stadium. The mantid pounced on them, rending them to pieces and stuffing them into its twitching mandibles. The crowd roared.
Daretor launched himself through the air, landing on the
creature’s neck. Utter silence fell instantly. Even the King leaned forward, shocked by the sheer boldness of the move.
Before the mantid could react, Daretor leaned down and plunged his sword up its nostril, burying the blade to the hilt. The mantid reared up, screeching in mind-sawing agony. Daretor was flung off to land fifty feet away. Zimak hurried to his side and helped him up. Daretor was dazed, but there was no further danger from the mantid.
With an ear-splitting screech it pitched over backwards and lay with its massive legs twitching in the air, a green ichor pooling on the sand beneath its head.
Complete silence reigned for what seemed like an age. Then the crowd erupted, going berserk. Money, charms, food, and items of clothing – including women’s underwear – rained down into the arena.
Daretor and Zimak stumbled to the centre of the arena and saluted first the King and then the crowd. Pages ran out and escorted the heroes away amidst chanting adulation.
‘So let me get this right,’ Zimak said, addressing Osric. ‘Because we won the Games we get our freedom, but our freedom is really that we just get to live here for the rest of our lives as eunuchs. Is that it?’
Osric looked perplexed. ‘There is nothing better these people can offer.’
‘Gah,’ said Zimak. ‘Just tell me one thing. Who do we petition about this?’
Daretor took Osric by the arm and sat him down. ‘Osric,’ he said, sitting beside him, ‘we are not staying here. We plan to escape and we want your help.’
Osric stared at him. ‘I do not understand.’
‘I have learned many things from you. I have learned that King Amida and his people rule these lands because they control the dragons, and none can fight against them. Yet you have also said that your own people rear dragons. Why do you not fight back?’
‘Who can fight back? We have no female dragons of the warrior strain left; just sickly males. Only here are the crimson females to be found. Bazitian dragons have become weak, they do not breathe fire, and are small compared to these.’
‘What would happen,’ Daretor said, slowly, ‘if you stole the crimson female in your care and took it back to Bazite? It
is
female, is it not?’
Osric looked at him in frightened wonder. ‘S’cressling is female, yes. And I – I would be a hero, the saviour of my people. But –’
‘But what?’ Zimak asked, impatiently.
‘I am scared. I was brought here as a boy of eight years. Perhaps my people will not want me any more.’ His eyes brimmed with tears. An old pain had surfaced and Daretor saw that he must move carefully.
‘Is there no prophecy amongst your people of one who will rise to liberate them?’
Osric’s eyes suddenly shone. He looked thunderstruck. ‘Of course there is, and it is said that He will come on the back of a crimson dragon, breathing fire to shatter the bonds of His people!’
‘Well,’ said Daretor, ‘I think it’s time he came, don’t you?’
Later that night, as the castle slept, three figures lurked in the shadows of the Dragon Keepers’ quarters. One of them crept forward and stole silently through a door. A moment later there was
a sharp cry, and the figure emerged bearing a ring of keys that he took care to stop from jangling.
The three then crossed to the holding pens, moving to one in particular. They stopped in front of it. Osric whispered, ‘I must go in alone and speak to her. I will tell her we are going on a training flight. She will not care. Dragons do not think as we do.’
He vanished into the pen and there were a series of low growls, then a kind of odd purring noise. Osric returned and beckoned them in. The dragon, which was still an adolescent, was hunched on the floor. Osric had rigged a canopy on its back. He helped Daretor and Zimak to climb the dragon’s flank and buckle themselves in to the seating harness. Then he took the pilot’s seat and placing the palm of his hand on the dragon’s neck, whispered a soft command.
The dragon moved forward. It entered the hangar and had almost reached the launching area when the alarm was given. A squad of soldiers, roused from their sleep, charged onto the hangar floor just as Osric’s dragon sprang from the launching pad and sailed into the night air of the vast crater.
Picking up speed, it shot towards the canyon in the distant wall.
Daretor raised his voice above the hissing slipstream. ‘How soon can they launch a pursuit?’
Osric shook his head. ‘Bare moments, I fear, but dragons cannot navigate the canyon with any certainty at night when there are no moons in the sky. If we get that far, we are safe.’
‘Then what makes you think
we
can get through the canyon?’ Zimak asked.
‘This dragon is half the size of the adults. It will be easy.’
Zimak frowned. ‘S’cressling has three of us to carry and our pursuers will only have one.’
Daretor looked behind. ‘They’re coming!’
Spouts of flame lit up the face of the Tower Inviolate as a trio of adult dragons launched themselves in pursuit. The adults may have been too big to negotiate the narrow canyon in the dark, but they were also faster than the adolescent. With dismaying speed, they closed the gap.
‘We’re not going to make it!’ yelled Zimak, staring back.
‘What’s to stop them going
above
the canyons, over the rock wall?’ Daretor asked.
‘The air is too thin. The dragons cannot fly that high,’ Osric replied.
The dragons were coming into firing range. Suddenly, flames mushroomed towards them. ‘Fire!’ yelled Daretor.
Osric gave the dragon a command and it twisted aside, narrowly avoiding the swelling tongue of flame that would have incinerated them.
The three dragons now arranged themselves in a tight formation. ‘They will fire at once.’ said Osric. ‘We have only one chance. Grab on tightly.’
They had acquired a great deal of height in the race towards the canyon entrance, but it was still a good three miles away. Osric put the dragon into a steep dive, gaining speed. It half-folded its wings and almost fell towards the canyon opening, its adolescent body more streamlined than those behind it. It picked up speed and actually widened the distance between them and their pursuers.
‘They don’t dare put on too much speed,’ Osric said. ‘Because they are heavier they would not be able to pull up in time.’
The dragons spat flames again but it was clear they had lost the initiative. With a final frightening whoosh, the adolescent dragon speared into the canyon almost at ground level and came
close to crashing. It quickly gained height again and sped on over the canyon maze.
Zimak expelled a deep sigh of relief. ‘White Quell! We actually made it.’
J
elindel fumbled her way up out of a dark and confusing nightmare. A hissing sound filled her ears and she was numbingly cold. As her eyes opened she became aware that she was suspended by her arms. Her shoulders ached with a throbbing agony, threatening to push her back into that pit of unconsciousness from which she had emerged.
She moaned and tried to focus her eyes. It was dawn and the sun was just rising.
‘So you’re awake,’ said a harsh and strained voice above her.
Another voice, also from above, joined in. ‘Hope you’re enjoying the journey. We thought you might like to travel first class.’
The second voice was lighter than the first, as though sharing in a joke. Though any joke right now, Jelindel instinctively knew, must be at her expense.
As her eyesight cleared, she realised why she was so cold, and what the hissing noise was.
She was flying several leagues above the ground, and
hanging by her arms, which were lashed to the ankles of two levitating deadmoon warriors.
The wind whistled past as they flew at awesome speed. Gazing at the land far below, she thought she would throw up. She clenched her eyes shut and took several deep breaths, feeling the bile rise in the back of her throat. After a time, she opened her eyes a slit and peered down, trying to accustom herself by degrees to such great height. It wasn’t easy but she eventually calmed her tumultuous stomach.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she demanded, hoarsely.
Her captors exchanged a quick glance.
‘You will know soon enough. And do not try your blinding spell on us or we will all be doomed.’
Below she could see a large fast-moving river that looked familiar. It was the Marisa River and, judging by the sun, they were heading north-west.
‘You’re taking me to D’loom in Skelt.’
‘There is a price on your head, is there not?’ one of the warriors asked.
Jelindel snorted. ‘A deadmoon warrior bringing a hostage back for a mere thousand argents? I think not. Another hand directs you, and I believe it belongs to the merchant-mage Fa’red.’
‘We care not for your empty speculations,’ said the gruffer of the two. ‘The reward on your head is three hundred gold oriels, although not even that sum would turn us from our cause.’
After that brief exchange they would not answer any further questions.
For a while, despite the pain and the insidious cold, Jelindel dozed. Once, because of some other aerial denizen that even the deadmoon warriors seemed to fear, or at least respect, they
dropped to a mere dozen feet above the ground, hopping hedge-rows and haystacks and zooming above streams at unbelievable speed. She found this more frightening than the dizzying heights; the sense of speed more terrifying, as the ground rushed past in a blur that made her gasp for breath and clench her jaws till they ached almost as badly as her shoulders.
The storm burst minutes after they entered the air space above D’loom. Jelindel barely glimpsed the lights of the languishing port city before they were engulfed in wet grey clouds. The air filled with the blinding slash of lightning followed by massive detonations as thunder shook the earth and sky.
Within seconds, Jelindel was drenched, the cold intensifying until her teeth chattered uncontrollably. Great fists of air slammed into the deadmoon warriors, buffeting them back and forth, so that Jelindel swung like a pendulum. Her captors struggled to maintain their spell.
‘You’ll fly straight into a tower if you don’t land!’ she shouted through the wind and rain.
‘We are deadmoon warriors. We fear nothing,’ the gruff one answered in his rasping alto.
Jelindel craned her neck to stare at him. ‘That’s all very well, but I was looking forward to being tortured beside a nice
warm
fire, not smashed to pieces against some uncivil turret.’
Lightning jagged across their path, blinding them for a moment. Before they could recover they were being dragged into the vortex left in the lightning’s wake as air rushed to fill the vacuum.
A vast thunderclap sounded. They were torn in opposite directions, contorted and tumbled. One of the lashings came loose and Jelindel was hanging by one arm. She was still tied to the deadmoon warrior, and her weight pulled him down. He
cried out to his companion who was desperately battling the buffeting air currents to get back to the rapidly descending pair.
Then Jelindel was falling, her arm wrenched free of the remaining lashing. She fell and fell, through storm and wind and hail. And maybe she screamed, but her tiny voice could not be heard against the storm’s mighty fury.
Still she fell, and it was like a dream where time stretched out forever. But one wakes from dreams, she mused, and still she fell.
Then something slammed into her, expelling the breath from her body, and knocking her senseless.
Voices rose and fell as waves of consciousness broke upon Jelindel. She became aware of lights and movement and the smell of cooking. Most of all she was aware of being
warm
.
‘She’s coming round,’ a flat almost metallic voice said.
A dryer voice, more full of dark undercurrents, answered, ‘I see that, Kantor. Stimulate her.’
A blunt stick shoved against her ribs. She heard a loud click and a strange energy smashed through her. She screamed, her back arching, mouth gaping. The smell of burning flesh filled her nostrils. The evil energy departed almost as quickly as it came, leaving her gasping, but very much awake.
Even before Jelindel focused, she knew who stood before her. The Preceptor. Her family had been murdered by lindraks in the service of the King of Skelt and, possibly, at the behest of this man.
‘Good evening, Countess,’ said the Preceptor.
Jelindel gazed at him, trying to regain her composure. By anyone’s estimation, she had jumped from the frying pan and into the fire.
‘Preceptor, you do me an unwanted honour,’ she said, thickly. Her throat was still constricted with remnants of the dark energy. ‘I renounced my title when I joined the Temple of Verity.’
