Shadow Dragon (21 page)

Go burn the heavens, you overgrown chunk of soot.

“Light up, ladies,” she said, aloud.

Kylara, occupying the lead position in Ardan’s jury-rigged quadruple saddle, was doing the same. Three more Western Isles warriors lined up behind her, armed with bows and fire-arrows.

Ardan surged upward, climbing to gain the height advantage on Ignathion’s fleet. This provoked an immediate response. A dozen Dragonships immediately began to drift upward to guard against the assault from above. Aranya searched the land, the Cloudlands, the perfectly clear skies. Bar the gaggle of smaller Dragonships left behind to guard Jos, the First War-Hammer of Sylakia had committed his entire force to this battle. Or had he? But the mountains of central Jeradia lay serene, as if never trodden by the foot of man. That dramatic wilderness was the only possible hiding place.

Yolathion was wrong about his father. She did know him somewhat, having spent much of her first journey to Sylakia on board a Dragonship in his company. And if she understood the War-Hammer even in the smallest degree, his charming exterior concealed a shrewd, ever-calculating mind.

Fine. A blast of Dragon fire would soon reveal the devious plan conceived in that many-terraced brain of his.

Altering the angle of her wings, Aranya accelerated to attack speed.

Closer, closer came the upper echelon of Dragonships. Aranya filled her mind with thoughts of the storm spanning the south-western horizon, of grey, billowing cumulonimbus clouds and jagged streaks of lightning, and bared her fangs as a familiar pressure developed in her belly. Storm power.

First target, the uppermost Dragonship. Ardan would take the second, as agreed. Aranya drove herself forward to outpace him by several Dragon-lengths. Ready her fires, and …
huh?

The unexpectedly high-pitched whine of the meriatite furnace engines triggered her alarm. Aranya folded her wings to bank so sharply, one of the warriors on her back cried out in pain. Crossbow bolts! Faster than she had ever seen, they sprayed across her previous path. So many! Such fantastic speed. Only a Dragon’s reflexes saved her from being pinned like a trout feeling the sting of a fishing spear. As it was, a clutch of bolts passed through the membrane of her left wing so rapidly that a perfect pentagram of holes popped into being as if by magic.

Aranya swivelled instinctively, eluding the catapult engineers’ efforts as she searched for the source of the danger. From the corner of her eye, she saw Ardan pull off a herculean stalling manoeuvre. A deadly load passed through the space beneath his belly. With a bellow of wild, cruel laughter that shook Ignathion’s fleet, he released a bolt of concentrated flame. Three Dragonships detonated in rapid succession.

KA-KA-KAAABOOOOM!

Her secondary optic membranes cleared. Aranya realised that his firebolt had achieved what she had never imagined. White-hot, spear-shaped, it had passed straight through two Dragonships before expending itself on the third.

That Dragonship.
‘Ware the third on your port flank, Ardan!
Aranya called.

How did those tubes fire so many crossbow bolts at once? The engines howled. Aranya’s Dragon sight examined the teams of engineers frantically swivelling the strange new catapults on their bearings. They had improved the mechanism, making the weapons spin more freely. But the real danger lay inside those tubes. She muttered a caustic Remoyan word she had learned during her first fight with Zuziana, before they had become friends.

A blast of steam from the twin bow catapults warned her. Reflexively, Aranya coiled, protecting her Riders. Her forepaws blurred, swatting aside three bolts. A further two sparked off her scales as she sucked in her stomach.

“We’re going in,” she snarled. “Pick a target; destroy it.”

“Aye,” said her Riders.

A coil of smoke from their oil-pots whipped past her nose as the Amethyst Dragon flung herself into an all-out sprint. The change of velocity confused the engineers manning the traditional winch-operated catapults. Nets, six-foot bolts and loads of shrapnel flashed through the morning air, but only to slice through the wake of a furious Dragoness. Aranya pumped her stomach muscles. Eat this, Ignathion!

Pfft! Pfft!
Her tiny blue fireballs streaked across the swiftly closing gap between her and the Dragonships. She wheeled smoothly away from the hydrogen blast. One of her warriors cursed unhappily, but the other crowed, “First blood!”

A double thunderclap struck her eardrums as the Shadow Dragon’s attack also found its target. Aranya homed in on the source of her anger. New technology from Sylakia? They were proving all too creative when it came to fighting Dragons.
Pfft!
She placed a fireball perfectly into the stern catapult emplacement. But it did not explode as she expected. Not gas? Had they been clever enough to employ steam rather than hydrogen gas to power the new crossbows?

The note of the engines warned her again. “Hold on,” said Aranya, and spun her body on its axis. The tip of her tail sliced open the rear compartment of the hydrogen sack.

“One for our fallen!” screamed Cherya, making her shot count.

KAABOOM!

Through the pall of smoke, the Shadow Dragon resembled a vast wraith, blazing arrows speeding from the warriors on his back. Aranya threw herself into a somersault, coming up beneath the cabin of the new-technology Dragonship. She was not finished yet. Chuckling, she sank her claws into the metal and then ran up the side, ambushing the warriors on the side gantry, and their fellows atop the Dragonship seconds later. Ezziya cleaned up the man aiming his catapult tubes at them with a perfectly placed arrow to the throat.

“Nice shot,” said Aranya. “Now to the rear, Cherya.”

As they left the crippled Dragonship behind them, Cherya leaned out of her saddle to slot an arrow into the gaping hole Aranya had left.

“One less to bother King Beran,” she said. Aranya saw a flash of flame reflected in her eyes.

She chuckled. These were warriors after her three Dragon hearts.

If you’ve finished tidying up, Aranya, may I remind you that we’re in a battle?
growled Ardan.
Follow me. There’s more of those new-fangled Dragonships down there.

Then you’d better be careful, hadn’t you?

Me? Ha!

You’re so fat they can’t possibly miss,
said Aranya, archly.

Ardan’s thunder of fury stung every scale on her Dragon hide. What a predator! Ever so appetising. Flinging her treacherous thoughts to the winds, Aranya spiralled after Ardan.
What’s the plan, genius?

I’ll tease them. You go in through the smoke.

Fine.
Aranya batted her eyelids in his direction.
But remember, Ignathion is mine.

If he’s even up here.

Even at the speed of Dragon communication, this rapid-fire conversation was all they had time for. Ahead of her, Ardan flexed his jaw.
Chew on this, boys.

Dragon fire hosed out of his mouth. Rotating his neck, Ardan swept down on the Dragonships before jinking aside with a cunning flick of his wings. Still, Aranya saw a couple of crossbow bolts sprout in his right thigh as she whipped past him, through the smoking ruin of imploded Dragonships, and speared on into the heart of Ignathion’s fleet. Ezziya and Cherya released flaming arrows in perfect concert. The Amethyst Dragon beat her wings hard, slinging them over the converging firestorms and into the soft underbelly of a dirigible.

A dirigible without a cabin?

The thought, ‘Ignathion’s second trick’ had not even formed in her mind before Aranya folded her wings to drop away. Four enormous, clawed feet punched through the sack and clutched the air where she had been just a heartbeat before.

Dragon!

A Red Dragon tore the false Dragonship apart as though it were made of aged scrolleaf. He was more massive than Garthion had ever been, a hoary, ancient beast, with a muscled chest that rivalled a Dragonship in its stalwart breadth. His muzzle turned, and a rapacious eye raked the skies in search of his enemies.

There was so much of Garthion in his mien. Aranya skittered behind the nearest Dragonship, panting. She cast about, soul-lost, momentarily disoriented by the impact of memories stampeding through her mind. The battle was her canvas, a stitching together of lives against the iron-grey storm clouds, standing so still in the sky that they reminded her of nothing more than vast sentinels; of Ancient Dragons of tempest and bluster, gathered to pass judgement upon the deeds of an Amethyst Dragon.

The nearby Dragonships did not want to fire at one of their own. A hundred feet away, no less, tens of warriors bared their teeth at her, or gaped in open-mouthed amazement. Aranya ghosted over a Dragonship, keeping it between her and the Red.

“What now, Dragon?” asked Ezziya.

Aranya remembered Garthion, burning. Garthion, speared through the brain. The rage and sorrow of his father, condemning her to execution at the Last Walk. She had to find a way to release the burdens she had carried since.

Readiness quivered in her muscles. “Let’s take them,” she said, softly.

During her approach, she had missed the signs–two, no three fake Dragonships suspended between the others by hawsers. They split open like melons dropped from a height, releasing two more Dragons. Both were Reds, more than twice her size. The trap was sprung.

One sneered at her.
I am Baralior. Come lie with me, little one. I’ll show you what a real Dragon can do.

But a half-grown Amethyst Dragon had an advantage over these big, lumbering Reds, as long as Ignathion kept his fleet close together. She flitted between the looming vessels, playing a game of cat-seeks-mouse as she hunted for the War-Hammer. Where was he? His flagship, flying the rajal of Jeradia, hung to the rear of the fleet. A familiar, burly figure loomed on the forward gantry, in front of the crysglass windows. Ignathion.

The twang of a bowstring from her back galvanised her.

BOOM!
She rode the shockwave, quicksilver amongst the trio of Red Dragons stalking her. On her back, Cherya screamed obscenities at the Dragons. Many of these Dragonships were armoured, but their armour was not proof against the fireball of an incensed Red Dragon. Two of them spat fire with casual abandon.

Aranya spiralled upward, avoiding a fireball that scorched the scales of her tail. A Dragonship detonated behind her. She used the wild burst of superheated air to impel her between the Dragonships on an interception course with Ignathion’s vessel, but Baralior hove into view, heading her off.

He cried,
Come taste my fire, you little–oof!

This is for Naphtha!
Ardan roared, striking with all of his power. He sank his fangs into Baralior’s neck and shook the Red Dragon like a hapless rat.

D
Ragon blood spurted
into Ardan’s mouth. Despite Baralior’s thick armour, Ardan knew that his fangs had penetrated one of the treble jugular veins located deep beneath the neck muscles, close to the spinal column–a mortal wound. He tasted magic in that blood. With a low laugh that appalled Human-Ardan, he spat Baralior out of his mouth.

Die, lizard.

The Dragon faltered, staring stupidly about him as his lifeblood gushed out in golden streams.

Deliberately, Ardan turned his back on the stricken Dragon.
Thou most pleasing distraction,
he called over to Aranya, who shone so bright in the twin-suns’ light. She disappeared behind a Sylakian Dragonship with a pert flip of her wings.

Now, the battle exploded around him. Alarm gongs crashed. Engines howled. Soldiers barked orders, and Ignathion’s fleet began to break apart into pre-planned segments, fleeing the clash of Dragons. The flash-trail of Aranya’s fireballs streaked across his retinae. So beautiful. So deadly. Flame blossomed along his right flank as two Dragonships succumbed to her attack. He barrel-rolled, protecting his Riders from the blast. But a cry from his back almost stopped his hearts. Kylara!

Ardan wrenched his neck to check his Riders. The third-positioned Western Isles warrior dangled from the saddle, impaled through her chest by a six-foot metal quarrel, dead.

He felt ashamed at his relief upon realising that Kylara was unhurt.

“Cut her loose,” he growled. Kylara stared at him. “I’m sorry.”

The horror in her eyes cut him to the marrow.

He said, “I’m a Dragon!”

But Kylara’s hand began to lift in a gesture of warning. Sensing movement, Ardan had just begun to twist about when the bulk of a Red Dragon smashed into his hindquarters. Claws scrabbled against his hide, clutching his wing-bone near the shoulder. Ardan’s hind foot belted his jaw repeatedly, but the Red Dragon only snarled and clenched his talons the tighter, his weight slewing Ardan sideways into the path of his brother Red.

Screaming,
Hind talons! Hind talons!
Aranya flashed up from beneath the melee. She snarled and ripped at Dragon flesh, tearing huge rents in the flailing wings of the Dragon beneath his belly.

Ardan curled his hind paws, extended his talons, and made a running motion against the underbelly of his attacker. So vicious was his attack, that a shower of Dragon flesh and blood momentarily blinded Aranya and her Riders. But the second Red closed his mouth over the area of Ardan’s saddle. He had no interest in three screaming Riders. His jaw gaped wide, exposing every fang as he champed through scales and hide into the bone beneath, seeking the disabling bite that would damage or sever Ardan’s spinal column.

Groaning in pain, Ardan dug to the roots of his being. There was magic swelling in him, leaching throughout his body in cool, quicksilver tendrils, magic that he welcomed with no small surprise.

His body shimmered.

* * * *

Aranya shook herself. Two Red Dragons ruined within seconds–one bitten and falling like a limp red rag into the Cloudlands, the second disembowelled and trying, somehow, to glide back to Jeradia Island. His survival seemed unlikely.

The Shadow Dragon had a ghastly sheen of near-madness in his eye. Naphtha Cluster, he had cried. Had Immadia been razed, would she have gone feral, too?

But the Red on his back was chewing him up. Aranya hovered over them, trying to find an angle from which a forty-foot Amethyst Dragon could attack a ninety-foot Red. Magic! A strange, capricious magic she had never sensed before–where had that sprung from? On her back, Ezziya crowed as another shot from the sisters struck true, exploding one of the armoured Dragonships. Ardan’s entire body undulated like smoke in the breeze.

The Red Dragon’s jaws champed down on thin air, so hard that he bit his own tongue and a couple of bits of fangs popped out of his mouth. He coughed,
You … Shapeshifter?

Lost something?
Ardan laughed.

She could see right through him! And he had lost his saddle, his Riders, falling onto a Dragonship two hundred feet below–they would strike the soft part near the bow. The rising wind would take care of that.

The Red snapped at vapours.
Who are you, Dragon? What are you?

No time. Her calculations occupied but a fraction of a second. Aranya dove into the Red’s flaring wing and tried her utmost to rip it in half.

Ardan’s power made him resemble a semi-transparent anatomical experiment, Aranya decided, spitting out a mouthful of wing membrane and spiny struts. She could make out his skeletal structure, the striations of his flight muscles, even the remnants of his last meal winding their way through his gut. It all drifted into and out of the physical realm, shifting, coalescing, vanishing again.

Then his claws solidified, buried in the Red’s eyes.

The Red Dragon’s scream soared above the sounds of battle, a wrenching, desolate cry. He tore free and fled across the open Cloudlands, blind.

Ardan’s disembodied grin flashed at Aranya.
That was weird.

Don’t overstress the magic.

No.
And suddenly, a real, dark Dragon appeared before her goggling eyes.

Go get your Riders … Ardan.

Her voice betrayed too much. The Shadow Dragon’s eyes filled with dusky orange flame.
Aye. Here comes your father. We’ve an Island to win.

Aranya flitted between the dark oblongs of Ignathion’s Dragonships. The two fleets, reaching firing range, released clouds of crossbow bolts and grappling hooks and fire-arrows from the archers. Explosions rocked both sides. Smoke and grit lodged in her nostrils; the tang of burning oil and sweet meriatite upon her tongue made her want to gag and spit. Her hearts seemed as shadowed as her Dragon-companion. This was wrong. Beran and Ignathion should be allies, fighting Sylakia’s evil together. Instead, everywhere she looked, good men and women were burning, falling and dying. The new, powerful weapons were not installed on many Dragonships, but those that were, tore holes in Beran’s forces.

Battle was a filthy obscenity, yet the Amethyst Dragon revelled in it.

Pfft! Pfft!
Aranya’s fireballs set a Dragonship’s cabin alight.

She was curling, swooping, dodging, focussed entirely on the fray, when Ignathion’s third surprise ambushed her from the sky.

A flare of magic. A thunderous challenge:
PERISH, FIEND!

Aranya rolled with an instinct swifter than thought as Dragon fire splashed toward her left flank and hindquarters. But this was not only fire. It was molten rock, which stuck and burned. A three-foot foreclaw streaked her flank as a Dragon hurtled past, missing her killing blow by a rajal’s whisker.

The Amethyst Dragon whirled to track her assailant. She shook herself violently to shed the worst of the lava.

The Yellow Dragoness was so massive, she could not stop herself from plunging into a knot of Immadian and Jeradian Dragonships. She must have attacked from a height; from way, way up high where Aranya had not thought to look for her. Ignathion’s cunning once more. The Yellow snarled up in nets and hawsers, two crossbow quarrels jutting several feet out of her lower right ribs, but her molten rock-fire sprayed forth a second time. Aranya dodged again.

How many Shapeshifters did Thoralian have? All of them huge, adult Dragons …

A flick of her eyes. Kylara running along the top of a Dragonship, slicing up a troop of Sylakian Hammers, while Ardan lumbered along behind, bleating, “Get in the saddle, you stupid woman.”

No chance of that, if she knew Kylara. The other two women hung off his saddle straps, trying to get everything buckled up again.

“Cherya? Ezziya–alright?”

“Burned my elbow,” said Cherya. “I’m fine.”

“The multiple loader,” said Ezziya. “Get me there and that Yellow Dragon is chargrill.”

Aranya did not need to look to see where Ezziya was pointing. A new Dragonship was right in the middle of the snarl, its engineers struggling to orient the twin stern emplacements on Beran’s flagship while the Yellow Dragon’s struggles jerked them about. A man fell shrieking off the gantry, his thin cries trailing off long before he tumbled into the Cloudlands.

“Right. We’re going to sneak.”

“Sneak?”

Ezziya’s astonishment brought a soft, dangerous chuckle to her lips. Aye, an Amethyst Dragon could sneak. “Hit that Dragonship to port.”

Two shots, and,
KAARAABOOM!

Using the resulting fireball to mask her intent, Aranya whipped around the vessel shielding them from the Yellow Dragon, and then shrank into the cover it provided. Who was that Yellow–someone’s sweet old grandmother? Aranya gripped the starboard gantry, damping down the pain of her lava burns with a touch of healing magic. “Go, Ezziya. We’ll cover you. Cherya–”

“Got him.” Cherya’s arrow struck a Sylakian cleanly in the chest.

Ezziya leaped over to the gantry, drawing her scimitar. Archers whirled at the sound of her boots on the metal walkway, only to be confronted by a battle-hungry Western Isles warrior and a Dragon lurking behind. Slicing her way through, Ezziya took control of the catapult emplacement. The Yellow eyed her with lethal intent.

Over here, you bilious glob of ralti-sheep fat!

As Ezziya pawed at the controls, Aranya’s insult pricked the Dragoness as surely as if she had hooked a fish. Her neck curved to follow Aranya’s swaggering flight, exposing the underside of her neck. The engines howled. Ezziya’s hand slapped a lever.

From sixty feet out, the shot was almost impossible to miss. But the catapult was designed to spray the bolts slightly. Seven of the six-foot, barbed metal bolts sprouted in the Yellow Dragon’s neck. She choked immediately. Her eyes glazed over. But Aranya’s bugle of triumph was cut short by the faraway tinkling of crysglass. She jerked toward the sound.

“Father!”

Opposite, perfectly lined up for the shot, Beran’s flagship drifted on the fickle breeze. The forward crysglass windows were shattered. Several of the remaining bolts–oh no! Oh, Dad …

Wailing in abject misery, Aranya launched herself across that space. Every wingbeat demanded an impossible length of time. She reached out for a paw-hold, but here came the King, staggering, bleeding freely from his arm and head. Beran waved her off angrily. “Just glass cuts. Wretched Dragon-daughter.”

Aranya laughed with relief. “Dad, I–”

“Go do something useful, Sparky. Fetch Ignathion for me.”

A hundred Dragon fangs gleamed at him. “Sure, Dad. On a platter?”

“Shoo.”

Ignathion saw her coming. Aranya knew she should have concealed her intent, but she was so maddened–or frightened–by her father’s near escape, that she could hold nothing back. Storm powers boiled in her belly, demanding release. Aranya opened fire. White-hot fireballs burst out of her throat in rapid succession, four, five strikes, clearing a path into the heart of his fleet.

Cherya yelled as the series of explosions thumped them back and forth, but patted Aranya’s shoulder. “Something annoyed you, girl? Come on. Beran’s orders.”

She’d make a great Dragon Rider. Those words were pitched just right to refocus the Amethyst Dragon’s mind.

As the Amethyst Dragon swooped, Ignathion vanished inside his vessel. He thought to evade her? A maddened Dragoness? Dodging a hail of catapult-shot, Aranya twirled about to destroy the bow catapult emplacements with her tail. Then she swung down to the crysglass windows. Ignathion stood within, watching her alertly, war-hammer in hand. Aranya punched her forepaws through the crysglass. Reaching for the struts, she tore the windows asunder–just as a windroc had once attacked her and Ignathion, although she was the deadlier creature by far.

Aranya roared, “You’re mine!”

By way of answer, he hurled the war hammer at her. Dragon instincts sped her paw to swat the weapon aside.

Ignathion’s eyes widened. But he was an experienced warrior. Flinging himself through the doorway, he retreated into the interior of his vessel.

The Amethyst Dragon pushed her way within, mindful of Cherya on her back. But the Western Isles warrior had already unbuckled her saddle-straps. Leaping into the cabin, she drew her scimitar.

Aranya said, “Let’s go catch ourselves a War-Hammer.”

She punched the next interior wall. Unfortunately, this one was metal-reinforced and it drew an ugly growl of discontent from her as Aranya wrung her paw. A clutch of Sylakian Hammers raced into the room, but she swept them aside and shovelled them out of the open front of the cabin. They fell howling into space. She poked her head through the door. Ignathion’s hammer pounded her nose.

She could not reach him. But his follow-up blow brought his hammer into her reach. Aranya trapped it with her paw and drew a huge breath.

“No fireballs!” yelled Cherya.

Right. Stupid idea, right beneath the hydrogen sack. Ignathion fled down the corridor. Quicker than thought, Aranya transformed and ran after him.

He darted through a doorway into the common area of the Dragonship, where soldiers often had to manually work the turbines to save on expensive meriatite. Human-Aranya, hot on his tail, stormed into a room stuffed with massive Jeradian warriors. She skidded to a halt, pointed at him and demanded, “Surrender, Ignathion!”