Dragon Ultimate (23 page)

When it came to pairing, this was something best left to the dragons themselves, and Dragon Leader Hussey understood that. Hussey, himself, would be outranked by Cuzo, who was a Dragon Leader of First Rank. Hussey wore only the single oak leaf that designated Second Rank.

Fortunately, Hussey had gotten along perfectly well with the dragonboys of the 109th at Dalhousie. He was a thoughtful type, tall, gray-eyed, almost gaunt in feature. He and Cuzo knew each other from previous terms of service and shared a mutual degree of respect.

Jumble, the leatherback, selected Relkin. Vaunce took Curf, Swane was picked by Hep, a leatherback from Marneri. Kapper chose Endi and Rudder took Jak. The big brass Chepmat chose Manuel, but Mono promised to help since he was a brasshide dragonboy all his life and Manuel also had the Purple Green to tend, who was a handful.

Soon all the dragons were paired with 109th dragonboys, and the process of boy and dragon imprinting on each other began. They walked together up the beach, Relkin lugging some of Jumble's equipment while Jumble carried the rest, including the heavy items.

Jumble was a leatherback, like Bazil, but there the resemblance ended. Jumble was a little bigger all over than the Broketail, except in the heft of arms and shoulders, where Bazil was exceptionally built up for a leatherback.

"Has everything healed up tight?" said Relkin, thinking of all the stitches he'd put in this dragon back at Dalhousie.

"Think so, but stitches itch."

"Then they're ready to come out. You've healed quick. That's a great thing if you're a battledragon."

Jumble clacked his jaws. "This dragon think you know what you talk about. I know you been in Legions long time, ever since I was a sprat."

"It seems that way sometimes, to me, but it ain't true. Been seven years since Bazil and me joined up. Just seven years, we'll soon have served our term. And then we'll muster out."

"The Broketail is a legend."

"He's the best, you'll see. He hardly ever complains."

"This dragon will never complain."

Relkin chuckled. "You better, 'cause I might miss something otherwise." Relkin checked Jumble's left hand, where he'd cut the talon down to the quick. Everything was healing well.

"The Broketail is best dragon with sword in all the legions, they say."

Relkin nodded. "They're right. Only dragon that might beat him is old Burthong. You ever seen Burthong fight?"

"No, but this dragon hear of him. Brasshide, but very quick with the sword."

"That's him. He'd have been champion years back if it wasn't for Bazil."

The dragons chaffered merrily until the cornet blew for the resumption of work. Then they took up tools and worked the rest of the day together. A small boil-up at three was added to the schedule since the 145th had missed their lunch. With the aid of a passing fishing boat, the cooks came up with a hearty fish chowder and stacks of fresh-baked loaves that were dispensed to the hungry horde.

All too soon it was all gone, and they went back to digging and building fortifications. With the 145th added to their numbers things went very fast. Later, when the cornet blew to officially end the day's labors, they all tramped up together to the camp, set a mile back behind the new wall on the Neck. It was fortified with a ten-foot ditch and stockade.

The fires were already going and a huge dinner boil was soon under way. The dragons relaxed with a plunge in the lagoon, except for Jumble, who sat patiently while Relkin removed stitches from some of the wounds he'd stitched up at Dalhousie.

When the noodles started coming out, the dragons ate together in a big circle around the fire, while dragonboys gathered at a smaller fire to exchange thread and needles as they took up a long list of repair jobs. Cuzo and Hussey earned respect by rolling up their sleeves and tackling some of the worst joboquin work. Ralf, the sole boy from the 145th, had been trying to keep as much of the unit's kit from disintegration as possible, but ten dragons were too much for one pair of human hands to take care of, and the joboquins had frayed badly.

The dragons finished off their rations and took themselves to their tents. The 145th had no tents, but Kesepton had had the foresight to bring extra supplies. With a bit of ingenuity, they raised tents of some description for everyone. Relkin saw that Jumble was bedded down, then headed up to the tent he shared with Bazil.

The Broketail was already stretched out on a bower of branches and reeds gathered from the swamp.

"Jumble is a good wyvern. Young, but he willing to learn."

"I think so."

"Just hope he is good with sword."

"Yeah," sighed Relkin. "I hope so, too."

"Also hope boy can cope with two dragons."

"Likewise, my friend."

In the Baratan swamps, the hush of night lay over Gideon's Landing. A single light showed, from an office on the second floor, where many an officer had worried the night away poring over maps of the Lower Argo swamps. All around were set up Legion tents, rows of white rectangles, ghostly in the moonlight.

This night it was the Bea Third Regiment, under Commander Hugo Fesken, that was asleep in and around the inn and its outbuildings. The smaller boats had been pulled out onto the river-bank while the main ships were moored out in the stream. A guard of twelve men was on watch, two together on the dock, five on the south perimeter, and four on the north, plus one more perched on the roof of the stables. There was also the presence of Gideon's guard dogs, Fang and Brown, both young and keen of hearing. Sergeant Kemster placed the sentries himself and assured himself that the perimeter was tight before he turned in.

In the office on the second floor Commander Fesken and the pilot for the fleet, old Hundswide, were going over the charts together. Fesken, recently promoted because of the plagues, was young, ambitious, and somewhat anxious about his command. Old Hundswide wasn't a completely reassuring sort either. He'd seen too many young officers with arrogant airs and ignorant ways when it came to the river.

"No suh, the waters down to Pillow Creek, they be too dry for your bottoms. Those big bottoms got to go way around by Black Lake and come down to Strett's Channel, that's the only one deep enough now."

Fesken's heart sank. To go the route proposed by Hundswide would take them miles off to the north and west, where the swamp gave way to broader channels that looped around in a great circle before turning southwest.

"That's a terrible long way out of the way. Sure there's nothing better?"

"Sure. Unless you want to try Cracktree Reach."

"That's marked 'inadvisable' on the map."

" 'Xactly, my point, if'n you don't mind my sayin' so."

Fesken rubbed his chin. "What about keeping to the main channel?"

"Ah, young sir, you'll be digging your big boats off the bars before an hour is passed. After Gideon's Reach, the river splits again, and both streams are shallow. You get past the point above Crab Creek and water drops to a fathom this time of year."

Hundswide brushed the map with a weathered old hand. "I know you be in a hurry to get down there, Commander, but believe ol' Hundswide, you'll be a lot slower if'n you try any route other than Strett's Channel. Only place that's deep enough for those big boats."

Fesken gloomily foresaw that it would be another day before he could get his fleet to the landing below Fort Kenor.

Sublieutenant Gink stifled a yawn as Fesken ordered the purchase of an extra day's worth of supplies from Gideon. Gink had had a long day.

"Pay from the regimental account, sir?"

"Yes. On my seal."

"Yes, sir."

Gink produced the regimental account book and immediately began the process of writing out a promissory note to Gideon, to be drawn in gold pieces from the Marneri Legion accounts. He turned the page and detached a clean sheet of high-quality vellum. Then he took out his fountain pen, an ingenious invention from Cunfshon, which allowed for a pen stylus to be attached to a rubber balloon filled with ink by confining both to a stout tube of wood or horn. A small valve between balloon and pen nib ensured a slow, continuous flow of ink to the nib. While Gink wrote out the requisition Fesken looked out the window and prayed they didn't have any ships run aground the next day. This would be the trickiest part of the trip down the Argo, which at this season was shallow and prone to shifting sandbars from the position they'd last been charted.

Fesken's preoccupations with the morrow kept him from fully noticing the change in the swampscape out the window.

A faint green luminescence was spreading slowly across the surface of the bogs and pools of the swamp. At the main channel it slowed, then resumed its onward creep, slipping forward like a moving shadow beneath the moon.

The night was filled with the sounds of grasshoppers and field crickets. Far away a great bittern unleashed its cry. Occasionally a fish slapped the water out in the channel.

Burk and Hudge were in the final hour of their watch. They were awake, but not at their most alert. They didn't notice the eerie green sheen until it had reached the dock. The bittern boomed again.

"That be a big, randy cock bittern," said Burk, a country boy.

"I'll believe you, sounds very randy, to me," said Hudge, who'd grown up in Bea town itself and didn't know a bittern from a chicken, or even a pigeon.

Hudge raised his arms and stretched his legs, then his back muscles. Finally he moved his head from side to side while he kept his hands on his hips. At which point he noticed something funny about the water. There was a soft green glow over everything as if the whole swamp had been coated with pixie dust. It seemed alive almost.

"What's that?" he called out.

Burk looked up. On it came, a slow-flowing tide of that eerie sparkle. There were tiny gleams of brightness in the depths, sprites in motion, forever at the very edge of vision, like minuscule green lights in the water.

"Better tell the sergeant," said Burk.

"I think so," said Hudge backing up. Sergeant Kemster would bitch about being woken up, but he would also want to know about this. They were supposed to be on a high alert, even with only a modest watch being set.

"Yeah," said Burk, noticing that the weird glow was brightening. "Hurry!"

As Hudge ran up the dock, Brown and Fang started to bark from their sleeping places in the stables. Their barking soon became frenzied. Hudge looked back. The whole swamp was glowing, and there were yellow nodes of light darting about like insects above the water.

"What the hell?" said Burk. There was a sound like a buzzing, or the chirp of a million crickets. Something briefly stirred the surface of the water out in the river. More circles appeared. Movements, swift movements, were taking place beneath the surface.

"Sergeant!" called Hudge, knocking at the command post door. "Sergeant, come take a look!"

"What is it, Hudge?" Kemster stuck his head out the tent.

Sergeant Kemster was out of his cot and down on the dock a few moments later. The glow was brighter than before, and the noise had increased until it was as loud as a storm in full fury.

"What the hell is this?"

"Don't know, sir," muttered Burk. "It just came out of the swamp, just started to glow. And the crickets are going like mad."

"I never heard of lights like this in a river."

They looked over the edge into the waters. The dogs were insane up in the stables. Everyone in the camp was waking up by then.

"Something very strange about this. Go tell the captain, Hudge, at once!"

Hudge turned and started ashore.

"What's got into those dogs?" said Sergeant Kemster, pacing out onto the dock toward Burk.

The waters beside the dock suddenly seemed to explode. Huge shapes, a great many of them, erupted upward. Massive arms swept up Sergeant Kemster and Burk, whose screams rang out briefly as they were thrust headfirst into enormous red maws, gaping wide. In a moment only their legs till hung outside the champing jaws of the monstrous swamp beasts. In another moment their feet were sucked in and gone forever as the beasts swallowed them down.

The dogs had woken everyone within miles by then. Men poked their heads out of their tents and gaped at the unthinkable. The shore was suddenly filled by a herd of monstrous shapes, hulking things, shaped like huge frogs but with the habits of crocodiles, that had sprung from nowhere. They were coming out of the river in an endless flood.

Commander Fesken was one of the first to comprehend. He grabbed a cornet and blew the alarm.

Tents were going down under the things, men were being devoured, torn to pieces and the fragments flung high as the brutes came on. Panic set in. Some men bolted, and ran for their lives into the dark woods. A few ran straight into packs of the swamp beasts and were seized and devoured.

The dragons of the Bea 77th rose up with dragonsword, checking the tide of monstrous creatures. A mound of corpses soon grew across the dragons' front. Dragonboys held their positions behind the dragons, Cunfshon bows in hand.

Elsewhere the camp disintegrated; boats were smashed and men devoured. Here and there men held their ground, veterans whose training kept them alive. They grabbed their spears and shields and prepared to fight even these monstrous foes. The spears were enough to keep the things at a slight distance, but they continually edged forward, despite being jabbed. The men retreated, keeping the swamp beasts off, but only just. The brutes were simply too massive. The swelling chaos threatened to become total.