Dragonback 04 Dragon and Herdsman (14 page)

"Movement," Draycos murmured back, putting his snout right up
against Jack's ear. "The Malison Ring soldiers have arrived."

Jack's heart seemed to freeze in his chest. "Where?" he breathed.

"To the south," Draycos said, his tongue flicking out twice more.
"Twenty of them at least, including nonhumans. They are traveling north
in a sweep-line, fifty to one hundred yards back from our position."

Reflexively, Jack pressed his back harder against the tree. By
pure blind luck he'd sat himself down on the north side of a tree that
was wide enough to shield him from the view of the approaching
soldiers. But that would only protect him until they passed and someone
decided to take a look to the side.

"And," Draycos added, "there are three to five more already past
us to the north."

Jack frowned. Two separate waves? Could Colonel Frost have figured
out that he and Alison had split up?

"The lead group will be scouts," Draycos said, answering his
unspoken question. "The larger group is the main fighting force."

So Frost
didn't
know he and Alison had been separated.
Jack started breathing a little easier again. "Can you tell where
Alison and the others are?" he asked Draycos.

Again, the tongue flicked out. "No, but the lack of activity
implies they have not yet been attacked. Possibly not even spotted."

And in the meantime, Jack and Draycos were sitting between two
enemy waves, both of which were completely unaware of their presence.
There ought to be some seriously interesting ways to take advantage of
that. "Any idea how the bad guys are traveling?"

"Most likely in a similar formation to that which they used
earlier," Draycos said. "They will be in small groups of two to five
soldiers. All the members of a group will be in sight of each other,
but they will be spaced far enough apart to keep me from stopping all
of them before they can sound an alarm."

Jack grimaced. "Any ideas?"

"They will be expecting a K'da warrior," Draycos said, lowering
his voice even further. "But they will
not
be expecting a K'da
warrior with a tangler."

"Ok-a-a-ay," Jack said slowly, frowning as he handed over the
weapon. "And this is going to help us how?"

"You will see," Draycos said, taking the tangler and tucking it
under his left foreleg. "How many shots are left?"

"Eleven."

"Good," Draycos said. "Stay here and remain still. The tree and
its surrounding reeds should protect you from—"

And suddenly, without even a whisper of warning, Jack's head and
shoulders were shoved hard into the tree trunk behind him as the red
Phooka riding his skin suddenly leaped from the front of his shirt.

Reflexively, Jack opened his mouth to shout a warning, strangled
it down just in time.
Move
! he thought urgently toward the
Phooka, wiggling his fingers toward the creature as violently as he
dared. The soldiers could arrive at any second.
Get out of here
!

But the red dragon ignored him. He shook himself once, like a dog
just in out of the rain, and twisted his long neck around once to look
at Jack. Then, turning around again, he jabbed his tongue out a few
times and started casually loping northward.

He'd gotten perhaps ten paces when the forest exploded with the
brilliant light and the shattering noise of gunfire from behind him.

"No!" Jack howled, the sound of his voice swallowed up by the
stuttering thunderclaps.

But it was too late. Before the red Phooka could even react, his
scales were already bursting apart with multiple hits. He writhed once
in surprise and agony, collapsing to the ground.

An instant later he was gone.

Jack stared at the spot where the Phooka had been, his stomach
wanting to be sick. Draycos had told him how K'da simply vanished when
they died, going two-dimensional and fading away.

But to watch it happen right before his eyes was as eerie as it
was horrifying.

And still the gunfire continued to rake the area. Jack pressed his
hands tightly to his ears, trying to block out the noise hammering his
skull and wondering what in blazes the soldiers were doing. Did they
really think that poor, stupid animal could have escaped their attack?

And then, suddenly, he understood. Of course no mere animal could
have lived through that. But they weren't hunting animals. In fact,
odds were they didn't even know the Phooka herd existed.

They were hunting Draycos, poet-warrior of the K'da.

And they probably thought they had just killed him.

Jack looked around, squinting in the flickering light as he
searched for his partner. He finally spotted him, clinging upside down
to the tree trunk among the branches five feet above Jack's head. The
dragon's scales had gone black in K'da combat mode, and there was a
glint in his glowing green eyes that sent a fresh shiver down Jack's
spine.

With a final lingering burst, the gunfire ceased. Cautiously, Jack
eased his hands away from his throbbing ears.

Only to find there was an echo of the same sound coming from
somewhere in the distance in front of him.

Alison and the others were under attack.

"Draycos!" he whispered urgently.

"I know," the dragon whispered back, his voice deathly calm. "Stay
here. I will return for you."

There was no need for stealth now, not with the chattering gunfire
in the distance drowning out all other sounds. Draycos leaped upward
through the branches, ignoring the swishing leaves that otherwise would
have been a dead giveaway of his position.

But then, why would the mercenaries below him even care about
noises overhead? As far as they were concerned, he was dead. They had
just killed him.

He could feel a snarl of fury building within him. Ruthlessly, he
forced it back. Right now, the combat situation required his complete
attention. There would be time later to mourn the innocent Phooka the
mercenaries had slaughtered.

To mourn him, and perhaps bring him justice.

Fifteen feet above the ground, a particularly thick branch angled
out to the right. Changing direction, Draycos headed along it until it
began to bend beneath his weight. There, he crouched down, bringing
Jack's tangler out from carrying position and settling it into his paw.

He was just in time. With the battle begun, and the K'da
poet-warrior finally disposed of, the mercenaries had also abandoned
their efforts at stealth and were hurrying northward toward the distant
gunfire as quickly as the terrain and vegetation would allow. A group
of four passed almost directly beneath him, their guns held ready.

Smiling tightly to himself, Draycos fired.

Four shots. Four invisible bursts of thread instantly entangling
their victims. Four nearly invisible flickers of light as the
capacitors delivered a powerful electric jolt through the threads.

Four muffled thuds as unconscious soldiers hit the ground.

The next foursome was moving through the woods twenty feet farther
along the right flank. Tucking the tangler back under his foreleg,
Draycos dug his claws into the branch for traction and threw himself
toward them.

There was no convenient branch or tree trunk waiting at the far
end of his leap. But again, subtlety was no longer required. He landed
six feet behind the hurrying mercenaries, half-crushing
a—fortunately—thornless bush. Four more shots, and four more of the
enemy were out of action.

The tangler still had three shots left. With a little luck on his
part and a little carelessness on his enemies', Draycos knew he could
probably take out another foursome before the weapon ran dry.

But he didn't dare take the time. The gunfight ahead was growing
more intense by the minute, and if Alison wasn't already in serious
trouble she soon would be.

Meanwhile, Jack should be all right, provided he stayed put as
he'd been told. Tucking the tangler back under his foreleg, Draycos
leaped into the trees and headed north.

He had covered roughly half the distance when he spotted the
flickering light of the gunshots. He had covered nearly half of what
was left before the sound separated itself enough for him to realize
that there were, in fact, three distinct types of weapons involved.

Two were standard projectile weapons: the mercenaries' rapid-fire
machine guns and Alison's Corvine pistol. The third, from the soft
chuffing
noise it made, seemed to be a higher-powered version of Jack's own
tangler. Apparently, Colonel Frost really
was
serious about
taking Jack alive.

The light flashes were becoming more distinct, and Draycos could
now see where each group was coming from. He made one final leap to a
tree right on the edge of the battle and paused there to study the
situation.

And as he did so, he found himself raising his estimation of
Alison's warrior training, wherever that training had come from. Taken
by surprise, and at the low end of five-to-one odds, she was
nevertheless holding her own with remarkable skill.

Starting with her choice of combat position. She had taken refuge
behind a large tree, which had apparently survived some long-ago flood
that had washed away a good deal of the soil at its base. The result
was a shallow hollow in the ground filled with an exposed tangle of
thick roots. Lurking within the resulting cage, Alison could shoot at
her attackers all she wanted, while they in turn had little chance of
getting through with a tangler cartridge. Even as Draycos watched, yet
another spattering of white threads burst harmlessly against the roots.

But that didn't mean she was safe. From the pattern of fire, it
was clear the mercenaries were using their machine guns to pin her in
place while they waited for the main force to sweep in on both sides
and surround her. Once that happened, all they had to do was work
someone in close enough to get a clear shot, and the battle would be
over.

Or worse, they might realize it wasn't Jack in there and decide
they didn't need her alive. The tree roots might block tangler
cartridges, but they wouldn't protect her from the mercenaries' machine
guns. Draycos had to take them out before what was left of the main
force arrived.

Problem was, there were five soldiers pinning Alison down, and he
had only three shots left in his tangler.

Which meant he would have to do this the hard way. Maneuvering
around the side of the tree, he picked out the soldier farthest back
from the others. If he took out that one first, then did the same to
the next in line, he could use his remaining tangler cartridges on the
other three.

He was bracing himself to leap when, without warning, a line of
shots tore into the tree just below him.

He twisted back around the other side, barely making it before the
slugs shattered the spot where he'd been crouching. Tucking his legs in
close to his body, he pressed himself against the trunk, wincing as the
edges of the tree disintegrated around him. The soldiers below had
spotted him.

And unless he did something fast, he was going to die.

"Stay here," Draycos whispered, his voice barely audible over the
distant gunfire. "I will return for you."

And with that, he was gone. Jack pressed his back against his
tree, watching as the K'da's shadowy form headed upward and then
disappeared to the right. A minute later, from that same direction,
Jack thought he saw the flicker of a tangler charge. A few seconds
after that, he caught a glimpse of another flicker a little farther
away.

There was a whisper of movement to his left, and Jack turned just
as more shadowy figures hurried past. He pressed harder into his tree,
but as far as he could tell, none of the mercenaries even turned around.

And then they were gone.

Jack took a deep breath, feeling his heart pounding in his ears.
Stay
here
, the dragon had said. Stay here where it was safe, while he
and Alison dealt with the attack.

Like heck he would.

He found the first group of four soldiers barely ten feet away,
sprawled unconscious on the ground. Draycos had nearly missed one of
them, he noted: the tangler webbing only covered him from shoulders to
hips.

That could prove useful. Unstrapping the soldier's helmet, Jack
lifted it off and put it on.

"—not moving, and there's no response from any of them," Colonel
Frost's voice came tardy from the helmet's comm. "Morgan must have
gotten them."

"Copy," another clipped voice said. "What about the girl?"

"Caprizini has her pinned," Frost said. "We can take her any time
we want. The important thing is to find Morgan."

"Copy," the other said. "Circling back now."

"Make sure he's in the bag before you move," Frost warned. "And
remember: tanglers only. I want him alive
and
unharmed."

"Copy."

Jack grimaced. So they knew he was back here, and they were on
their way to get him. Meanwhile, Draycos had scampered off with his
only weapon.

But that was okay. It was time to trade up anyway.

The soldier had a small pistol belted at his right and a pair of
concussion grenades ready at his left. His main weapon, still cradled
in his slack grip, was a compact over/under weapon with a machine gun
on top and a long-barreled tangler underneath.

It took Jack a few seconds to dig the gun out from under the
tangler mesh. Folding its collapsible metal shoulder stock out of his
way, he headed back toward the tree where Draycos had left him.

He was halfway there when the background chatter on his helmet
comm abruptly changed tone. "Dumbarton, looks like Morgan's got
Hammerstein's gun," Frost said sharply. "We've got movement on
it—heading west."

Jack looked down at the weapon in his hands, his stomach suddenly
knotting. So there were trackers in the guns. Frost had been trickier
than he'd expected.