Dragonback 04 Dragon and Herdsman (28 page)

"He's right," Jack said, coming to his partner's defense. But it
was clear the boy wasn't any happier than Alison was. "At least it
gains us a little time."

"Only if the
Essenay
is hanging around somewhere nearby
and happens to be listening when we need it to," Alison countered.
"Otherwise we're no better off than we are right now."

"Fine," Jack said. "What do
you
suggest we do, then?"

"Only one thing
to
do," Alison said. "We pull back, dig
ourselves in as best we can, and wait for my friends."

"Who could still be ten days away?" Jack shook his head. "Not a
chance. Frost will nail us long before then."

"Unless there are more opponents to deal with than he expects,"
Taneem offered.

"What do you mean?" Draycos asked.

"You are a warrior of the K'da," she said. "Could you not train us
to fight alongside you?"

Draycos looked at Jack, saw his same surprise reflected in the
boy's face. That wasn't the kind of idea he would have expected Taneem
to come up with, certainly not this quickly. "In theory, yes," he
agreed, looking back at Taneem. "But it is not as simple as it sounds."

"On the other hand, I only had ten days of training in the
Whinyard's Edge," Jack reminded him.

"And we see the kind of results
that
produced," Alison
commented under her breath.

"My
point
," Jack continued, sending her a dark look, "is
that any training he could give her would be worth something."

Alison shook her head. "It's a point, but it's a pointless point,"
she said. "Even if he could bring her completely up to speed, two K'da
warriors aren't going to be enough to tip the balance here."

"Why must it be just two?" Taneem asked. "You woke me. Can you not
wake the others?"

Alison sighed. "The problem, Taneem—"

"Wait a second," Jack cut her off, a cautious excitement in his
voice. "That's not such a bad idea. Remember, they only need an hour on
a host for every six hours off. That means that if we can shake them
out of their sluggishness, you and I could handle ten to twelve K'da
between us. Draycos?"

Draycos gazed out at the dancing Phookas, a whisper of cautious
hope moving through him. If it were at all possible . . .

But it wasn't. It had taken Alison a full day to awaken Taneem,
and both of them had been effectively helpless the whole time. It would
take far too long to build up the kind of fighting force Taneem and
Jack were talking about. "In principle, you are correct," Draycos said
reluctantly. "But in actual practice, we simply do not have enough
time."

"Unless we can find a way to get Frost off our backs for a while,"
Alison said.

Draycos looked sideways at her. The girl was watching him, a
darkly suspicious look on her face. Had she guessed what he was
planning? "Indeed," he said, forcing himself to meet her gaze. "We
shall have to think about ways of doing that."

"Looks like they're done," Jack commented, nodding to the Phookas
as he got to his feet. "Time to be off."

"Draycos will have to stay up front with me today—he's the only
one who knows exactly where we're going," Alison reminded Jack. "Unless
you'd like to take point this morning and let me handle the Phookas?"

"No, you go ahead," Jack said. "Their day's going to be strange
enough without breaking the routine right out of the box."

"Okay," Alison said, standing up as well. "Taneem can stay with
you and help with rear guard. You'd better take the machine gun,
though."

"Fine by me," Jack said, scooping up his pack and the weapon. "Go
get Greenie, and I'll tell Hren we're breaking camp. Come on, Taneem."

Jack headed off, the gray K'da trotting alongside him. "We will be
going that way," Draycos told Alison, indicating the direction with a
flick of his tongue. "I will await you."

"Just a second," Alison said as he turned to go. "I want to know
what you and Jack are planning that you haven't seen fit to tell me
about."

"Jack and I have no private plans," Draycos said, choosing his
words carefully.

Alison snorted. "Fine; I'll rephrase. What are
you
planning that you haven't seen fit to tell me about?"

Draycos's first impulse was to again deflect the question. But if
he was going to leave Jack in her care, she deserved to know the entire
truth. "Unless we can make contact quickly with Uncle Virge, I intend
to take the comm clip and head downriver," he told her quietly. "With
luck, I will be able to draw the Malison Ring soldiers into pursuit
before they realize that Jack is not with me."

"And then what?"

"And then, as you suggested, you and he must try to hide until
your friends arrive."

"I meant what happens when your six hours are up."

Draycos turned to look at Jack, busily urging Hren to his feet. "I
will die."

For a moment Alison was silent. "I gather Jack doesn't know
anything about this," she said at last. "How were you planning to keep
him from finding out?"

Draycos grimaced. "I expect the Malison Ring to be gathered in
force by the time we reach the river," he said. "In the fury and
confusion of combat, I should be able to slip away unnoticed."

"Leaving us to fight them alone?"

"I will make sure you have made it to safety before I leave,"
Draycos said. "At that point, it will be up to you to lead."

"Terrific," Alison growled. "My first military command. That'll
look really impressive on my grave stone."

"Do not speak that way," Draycos said sternly. "You have had
military training. I can see that. You can do it."

She exhaled noisily. "Let's just hope it doesn't come to that."
She tapped her collar. "I presume you still want me to code my comm
clip to the
Essenay
's frequency?"

"With Jack's comm clip dangling from a tree, yours is now our only
way to contact Uncle Virge," Draycos reminded her.

"I'll take that as a yes," Alison said dryly. "Easy enough to do
while we're traveling—"

"Quiet." Draycos cut her off as the sound of distant lifters
caught his ears. "They are in the air."

"Where?"

"To the west," Draycos said. "Moving . . . southeast, I believe."

"South
east
?" Alison echoed, frowning. "Like they're
circling around behind us dropping troops?"

"That is the correct pattern," Draycos confirmed. "But they are
not dropping soldiers. The transport is moving too quickly and too
steadily for that."

"Which means Frost has something new planned," Alison said,
grabbing her pack and slipping it over her shoulders. "Great. Jack!
Hustle it!"

Jack looked quizzically up at her; and as he did so, Draycos's
straining ears caught a new sound. "Quiet," he warned Alison. "The
floater is coming this way."

"Good morning, Jack," a booming voice came faintly from the
direction of the floater. Frost's voice, amplified by a set of
loudspeakers. "I hope you had a good night's sleep. My men tell me
you're in this area somewhere, so I'm assuming you can hear me."

"Come on," Alison said, beckoning to Draycos.

"You've caused me a lot of trouble, Jack," Frost continued as they
scrambled down the hill and came alongside Jack and Taneem. "Way more
trouble than you should have. Almost more trouble than you're worth.
But that trouble ends right now."

"Any idea what he's up to?" Jack murmured, peering up at the trees
in the direction the voice was coming from.

"He's got the Kapstan circling around behind us," Alison said.
"But Draycos says it's going too fast to be dropping troops."

"So here's the deal," Frost said. "You've got ten minutes to
follow the sound of my voice and get to a big clearing right below the
floater. If you surrender there, I promise your girlfriend and the
Erassvas can go in peace."

Draycos frowned, flicking out his tongue. There was a new scent
suddenly drifting toward them, an odor he couldn't quite place.

"Option two is that you keep going until you reach the river,"
Frost went on. "Means more walking for you, but, hey, you're probably
used to that by now. If you want to do that, fine. We don't mind
waiting a little longer to pick you up."

"What is that smell?" Taneem asked, her tongue flicking out
rapidly as she tasted the air.

"What smell?" Jack asked, sniffing.

"I don't know what it is," Draycos said. "But it seems familiar."

"And then there's option number three," Frost said, a sudden dark
edge to his voice. "That's the one where you stay right where you are .
. . and you and all your buddies get to burn to death."

Alison inhaled sharply. "No," she breathed. "He
wouldn't
."

And suddenly the strange odor clicked. "He would, and he is,"
Draycos said tightly. "The transport is spraying a semicircle of
aviation fuel across the trees behind us.

"He is going to set this part of the forest on fire."

On their previous days the group had walked carefully and
deliberately through the forest. Jack and Alison and Draycos had tried
to watch all directions at once, watching for ambushes and traps.

Today, all that was forgotten.

They ran. All of them, even the Erassvas. They ran as fast as they
could, dodging trees and bushes, stumbling over roots and small hollows
hidden beneath the matting of dead leaves.

And as they ran, one by one the brightly colored Phookas faded to
black.

The rest of the forest animals were on the move, too. Small
animals scampered around them, and at least two herds of hornheads went
lumbering past in the distance. Large and small predators alike were
also on the move, ignoring potential prey as they fled from the fire
chewing its unstoppable way toward them through the trees.

And it was gaining. At first Jack had dared to hope that Frost was
bluffing. But after the first five minutes of their mad dash he was
able to hear the distant crackling of the flames whenever the group
paused for a minute's rest. Slowly but steadily the sound increased
until he was able to hear it even over the rapid swishing of their feet
and his own hoarse panting.

He could smell the smoke, too, as the wind generated by the fire
blew it ahead of the flames themselves. He had no idea how fast a
forest fire moved, but already he could tell that they would have
little margin for error. Clenching his teeth, blinking his eyes against
the tendrils of acrid smoke burning at them, he focused on his footing—

And nearly ran into Hren as the Erassva suddenly stopped in front
of him. "What?" he gasped as he managed to brake to a halt. "What is
it?"

"There," Hren said, panting even harder than Jack as he pointed
ahead. "The river."

Jack stepped around him. It was there, all right, glimpses of blue
water between the trees. At the front of the group he could see Alison
and Draycos talking together in low voices. "Stay here," he told Hren.
"Try to keep everyone together."

Jack maneuvered his way through the crowd, automatically patting
and stroking the heads of the more frightened Phookas as he passed
them. Off to the side, behind some bushes, he caught a glimpse of
Draycos's diversion tree, still bent over with the comm clip dangling
from it. "I hope you two have a plan," he said as he reached Draycos
and Alison.

"We must first see how the enemy is positioned," Draycos said,
keeping his voice low. His green eyes glittered unnaturally brightly
against his black scales.

"Then let's do it," Jack said. "Alison, stay here and watch the
others."

"Watch them what?" she retorted. "Panic? Hren and Taneem can watch
them do that. Give me the machine gun—we're wasting time."

Jack glared at her. But she was right, and the distant crackling
of the flames was getting louder. Unstrapping the gun from his
shoulder, he handed it over. "Now be quiet," she warned. She started
forward, Draycos moving into place beside her. Jack followed, hoping it
wouldn't be as bad as he feared.

It was. In fact, it was worse. A hundred yards north, the Kapstan
transport was hovering fifty feet above the river. Its stubby wings
were discolored from the smoke of the fire it had started, its nose and
weapons pointed vigilantly at the forest where Frost expected them to
emerge. Behind and above it, moving up and down the river like a roving
patrol, was the floater.

And that was it. There were no ground troops on the river-bank
that Draycos could ambush, no air or ground vehicles nearby they might
be able to grab, nothing at all within their reach. Frost and his men
would simply sit high up out of harm's way until their quarry came to
them.

Or else died in fiery agony.

Jack looked at Draycos, a hard lump in his throat. "I guess that's
it, then," he said as calmly as he could.

"Cork it, Morgan," Alison said tartly. "We're not finished yet.
Draycos, how high can you jump?"

"Not as high as the transport," Draycos said, his tail making
thoughtful circles. "But if we can lure it here, I won't have to. I can
use the bent tree as a launching platform."

"Oh, I can get it here," Alison promised, hefting the machine gun.
"The question is, once you're up there will you be able to disable it?"

"Probably not the transport itself," Draycos conceded. "The
lifters are on the underside, and the power and control mechanisms will
not be easily reached." He arched his crest. "But I do not expect the
pilot will be nearly so well protected."

"Wait a second," Jack cut in as he suddenly saw where they were
going with this. "You kill the pilot and the ship's going to drop like
a rock."

"As long as the transport remains at its current height, I will be
all right," Draycos assured him. "Especially if it stays over the
river."

"I thought hitting water was like hitting concrete."