The Onyx Dragon (15 page)

“And their friends,” said Pip. “I sense Dragons directly ahead. Behind those clouds.”

Grr!
Emblazon snarled.
When were you going to tell us, hatchling?

I-I only j-just–

Dragons burst through the heavy cloudbank ahead of them–Night-Reds, chillingly uniform of colour and demeanour, as indistinguishable from one another as pebbles on a terrace lake beach. Not one was less than a hundred-foot adult, sooty red-black in colour, with strangely ragged Dragon hide and widely-flared skull-spikes. Their eye-fires blazed balefully against the dull grey backdrop of clouds. Hot on their tails–literally–came a Dragonwing of Sylakian Reds and Greens in swift pursuit. Pip quickly lost count amidst suddenly crowded skies. Two dozen of each? No, an additional Dragonwing of Assassins slipped free of the clouds, orienting on the Academy Dragons.

“Help from Sylakian Dragons?” Emblazon spat.

Shimmerith said, “No mind, my flame-heart. Today, they are our friends.”

“I appreciate battle, but I don’t understand why we aren’t making a strategic retreat?” Maylin asked.

The Amber Dragon champed fire between his fangs. “Apart from the shame of turning tail like the most craven of ralti sheep, little one? With our younglings in tow, we cannot outfly those Dragons. Our only chance is to pick a battleground and fight. I hoped for caves or mountainous terrain. We enjoy neither of those, but we are less outnumbered than before. Now, prepare to engage!”

Maylin’s reply was a grim nod.

Four Dragonwings converged in the skies above Sylakia.

Nak said rapidly, “Chymasion, support Silver, Shimmerith and Jyoss. Oyda, Kaiatha, you’ve the most powerful Dragons. Engage the enemy Dragonwing head-on, but stick together. Blind them with flame; destroy them with augmented lightning attacks. Or, whatever works.”

“I like that bit of the plan,” Oyda laughed.

Emblazon filled his lungs.
GNNNNAAAARRRGGHH!!

Emmaraz called over,
I quarried holes in his hide, but Rambastion rises from the zoo. How’s that even possible?

No time. I need your strength. Fly with me,
Emblazon snapped.

The young Red swelled visibly.
Ay.

At the Dragons’ combined speed of approach, the time for dialogue was over. The Marshal’s forces clamoured together in deafening chorus, a mass-challenge that rumbled like ominous thunder across the low, wooded hills. Amber, Copper and Red responded in kind, their belly-fires roaring their rage as much as their throats. Shimmerith and Silver threw up shields. Pip exclaimed in disgust when she realised she had no weapons–but Silver reminded her she had two mighty weapons, heart and mind. At once, she offered herself to a mind-meld with her Dragon. Pip entered a world of glittering enchantment, a tracery of mystic potentials at once heart-wrenchingly beautiful and stronger than forged steel. Here was Silver, adamantine of purpose yet mellow toward her presence. She sensed the flexing of flight muscles and tasted the tension of powers coalescing behind controlling barriers, awaiting the ecstatic instant of release.

There was no hint of treachery in his inmost being.

She sighed, relinquishing her much gnawed-upon reservations. Now they were one, wing and mind, Shifter-souls roused to a pitch of harmony Pip had never experienced before. Dragonsong vibrated within her at a level far deeper than the conscious. Oh, sweet agony! She held her transformation just barely in check.

Roaring their battle-names, the colourful Academy Dragonwing collided with the Marshal’s dark hordes. Suddenly, all was instinct. Wingtip control. Talons rending. Silver’s white-hot lightning exploded through two Night-Reds. They were instantly slain, multiple smoking holes appeared as if by magic in their hides. Shimmerith stunned another; Emblazon finished a Dragoness with a mighty claw-stroke that penetrated the brain. She glimpsed Tazzaral flashing by, entangled with a hoary monster of a Dragon, while Jyoss cartwheeled beneath the fighting males to leave a bloody furrow scored forty feet long along the enemy Dragon’s belly. As the Night-Red arched in agony, Tazz executed a brutal bite behind the skull. The Dragon slumped instantly.

Thou lethal beauty!
thundered the Copper.

Thou, the right paw of wingéd justice!
Jyoss bugled back, side-slipping a Night-Red’s attack with great cunning. Silver rent the enemy Dragon’s wing in passing.

Four dark Dragon Assassins ganged up on Chymasion. Silver and Shimmerith scattered them with psychic blasts and chain lightning respectively. Tazzaral shook off a marauder and buried his fangs in the throat of another, while Emmaraz plunged like a red suns-beam through the fray, driving a pair of Dragon lances fifteen feet deep into his opponent’s flank.

Pip sensed Chymasion’s power slip over to boost the embattled Emblazon for a moment. The Amber Dragon, sleek as liquid flame, tussled with five enemy Dragons in a tight melee. The instant Chymasion’s power touched him, Emblazon’s reflexive bite crushed a Night-Red’s skull, the crunch of bone sounding like a nut crushed beneath a monstrous war-hammer. He whirled. With a hooked paw, he disembowelled another in the blink of an eye, tore free of two clawing backstabbers, seized them one in each paw, and slammed the Dragons together with terrible force. They fell unconscious from the sky.

Emblazon turned a bloody smile upon his mate.
Blasting these hapless lambs from the skies with chain lightning, thou peerless Blue enchantress?

My very first chain attack,
Shimmerith said, inclining her wingtip.
Thou ruthless, skull-crushing monster!

In-battle romance? Pip grinned fiercely.

Then, with a sky-shaking roar, the second Dragonwing of Assassins plunged into the fray.

Even Dragon senses were no longer enough. The battle flashed by Pip in minimal fractions of seconds, half-impressions of flying claws and flaying teeth, a wound that appeared to pop open in Silver’s flank of its own accord, hot Dragon blood scalding her neck, Shimmerith and Jyoss banding together to rend a Night-Red’s wings, Reds and Greens whizzing into the fray as the Sylakian Dragon contingent made their presence felt, the constant strobe-flash of lightning and fireballs blistering her retinae as if a localised storm expended all of its energies upon itself … the battle raged on, unending. Dragons fell, it seemed, every second.

Pain! Ah, gasping pain shooting into her from an external source! Glancing about, her gaze homed in on Emmaraz falling, helplessly entangled with an attacker, so far away …

She screamed,
Silver!

He saw what she saw. In that second the feisty Red wrenched himself free of the Night-Red’s dying throes, but Emmaraz had taken a ghastly bite to the left shoulder. Fractured wing-bone protruded from a flesh-canyon torn through his shoulder; the surrounding muscle had been shredded. He could not fly. Maylin looked little better. She pressed down on her thigh with both hands, holding something shut. Bright crimson arterial blood ran in rivulets down her left side and leg, mingling with Emmaraz’s golden blood.

Silver plummeted out of the fray, pumping his wings furiously. The left midsection of his wing membrane, between the first and second wing-struts, flapped freely as her Dragon accelerated hard, jamming Pip against his spine-spikes. She focussed their sight. Both knew at once that the Leeches closed in on the battle-site, still sprinting at that improbable speed, and here came Rambastion with Telisia as his Dragon Rider–Emblazon dashed out of the battle on a direct intercept course, with Chymasion shadowing his shell-father. Unholy windrocs, what was that crazy hatchling doing?

Though he strained every fibre of his being, Silver’s descent was still too slow. Emmaraz fell ahead of them, his one good wing beating uselessly. The ground below was unforgiving rock, a barren outcropping crowning a low hill. No mercy there.

Pip wanted to reach for them, to be with them, to catch them …

Silver cried out in shock as the sky shifted. Emmaraz landed on Pip’s head.

Had she been half a foot taller, Pip’s neck would have snapped like a twig. As it was, the crushing blow of the Red’s weight against Silver’s back drove the smaller Dragon into a spin. Yet both had been falling. The relative speed was close enough that Emmaraz did not impale himself on Silver’s spine-spikes, but settled upon them, his belly brushing Pip’s curls. Silver screamed at the pain in his muscles and joints as he tried to fly for both Dragons. Pip poured her strength into him instinctively; suddenly, a tumble smoothed into a rapid glide. The ground blurred upward.

Tuck in your legs, stupid,
Pip hissed.

WHAM!
The Silver Dragon crash-landed on his belly. Dragon-hide rasped over rock, kicking up sparks and dust and bits of bleached wood. Silver groaned as they juddered to a halt. Safe.

“I’ll help you, Maylin!” Pip shouted.

“You’ll do nothing–go fight! Get Shimmerith.” Her white-faced friend made a shooing motion with one arm. “Emmaraz. Emmaraz, my beauty. Up. Let Silver go.”

Pip could not believe it. Tears pricked her eyes as the young Red struggled off Silver’s back. She knew that such a wound likely meant he would never fly again–not only was the primary wing-bone splintered, but the socket within the shoulder was damaged too. Maylin’s left leg had been savaged.

“Go! Islands’ sakes, Pip, don’t worry about–oh no.”

Four grey creatures loped onto the open expanse of rock. As one, they oriented on the stricken Dragon–or on Pip, she could not tell which. More Leeches approached. Eight. Ten. They slowed, clearly relishing the prospect of attacking a downed Dragon. Pip read that expression clearly in each inhuman face.

Maylin drew her sword. “Take this. I’ve … got a …” She slumped sideways, unconscious.

Despite Silver’s anguished cry, Pip sprang out of her Dragon Rider seat. The ferocity within her chest was a cold, hard nugget of pain. Nobody did this to her friends. Not while she had breath left to fight. Snatching up the sword, Pip took her stance upon Emmaraz’s back.

She said, “Come on, Razzer. Where are those fires?”

Emmaraz answered with a low, throbbing growl. Despite his wounds, his three Dragon hearts still beat bravely. She dashed away tears that threatened to blur her vision.

Dragon fire roared over the Herimor creatures, but to the Dragons’ shock, they just blasted right through, sheeting flame from their bodies as they surrounded Silver, Emmaraz and Pip. One held out a net, presumably meant for her, because no sane person would dream of stuffing a Dragon into rope netting. Nor would a Pygmy girl suffer to be captured again, she reminded herself, holding the sword in a ready position.

Pause. Breathe.
Move!

Dragon sight and senses merged with Pygmy strength and warrior skills. Never had Pip moved as rapidly as now. Arching her back to dodge a crossbow bolt, a vertical block with the sword shattered her first opponent’s weapon. She drove the sword into its body and ripped upward, heaving the surprisingly slight creature off its feet with the force of that cleaving blow. Hurling the corpse to her left, Pip whispered to her right, disembowelling one Leech but feeling a blade bite into her left arm as its partner’s weapon struck true. Silver’s lightning crackled repeatedly. Never mind Dragon fire. He had a hotter fire, a cross between a Dragon’s standard fireball attack and lightning, only Silver’s efforts tracked their targets before detonating on impact.

Pip howled as the net slapped her face. Suddenly entangled, she slipped off Emmaraz’s back, bounced off Silver’s tail, and landed awkwardly on her right hipbone. Three Leeches pounced on her. “Get it. Tie it,” hissed one. With her free arm, Pip punched the creature’s sharp little teeth through the back of his throat. Great Islands! Every time she jarred that right wrist–evidently it wasn’t broken, but the repeated punishment was no help–the pain almost made her black out. A Leech slammed her head against the ground. Again. Pain darkened her vision. It lifted her one more time … and shot off her body with a whoosh of surprise, impaled by a ten-foot spear of ice.

Pip blinked.
Silver?

Ice way to die,
laughed Shimmerith, pounding the area around Pip and Emmaraz with flurries of ice shards. As fast as the Leeches were, there was no place to run.
Slice, slice, slice!

Nasty jokes. Green blood splattered the clumps of ice clustered upon her foes’ remains.

Silver roared, leaping over Emmaraz to clear his back of a Leech about to slit Maylin’s throat. One creature had hacked a fresh hole in the Red’s throat; Pip ambushed him from behind with a decapitating stroke. The Dragons swivelled, seeking additional foes–there were none.

Pip stared at her friends, stunned. Their wounds! The sight of bone in Emmaraz’s wrecked shoulder …

Oh, Emmaraz, Maylin, how thou art fallen,
Shimmerith bugled sorrowfully.
I’ll care for these younglings. Silver, Pip, check for more Leeches. Help Emblazon.

She did not even glance at the sky. Pip fled, unable to face more horror. Running up Silver’s wrist, she accepted a flick up onto his shoulder, skidded across his hide on the balls of her feet and used a spine-spike to help her swing into Dragon Rider position.

She whispered,
Silver, we’ve heavens to burn …