Thunder Run

by Daniel José Older

  Fubbafubbafubbafubbafubbba, the microdactyls sang in little high-pitched imitations of their larger ptero cousins.

  “Gotya!” Magdalys whispered, her mind clicking into that sharp synchronicity with theirs. Now go! she commanded. There was no time to request. No time for politeness. The swarm flitted out across the sky, suddenly silent and determined. They felt her urgency and moved with it along their wings.

  The first duckbills had probably reached the camp and caused some mild uproar, and the boys had taken it as their cue, Magdalys figured. They must’ve hurtled up into the sky on Grappler and Beans to get a good view of the camp. And Confederates probably spotted them, and … “Let’s go,” Magdalys said, standing on the branch and making her way back toward the trunk.

  Already, Dizz was flapping his wings, now hopping down toward them.

  “Ready,” Montez said, his rifle strapped snugly to his backpack. “Bijoux, we’ll meet you at the toads.”

  “Stay safe,” Bijoux said, climbing down the tree. Milo blinked up at them from his shoulder. Then hopped onto the tree and scrambled up. “Milo!”

  Magdalys yelped as the tiny raptor leapt onto her leg, his little claws piercing through her pants into her skin. “Hey!”

  Milo made his way right to her satchel and crawled in, tail disappearing last.

  Magdalys looked down at Bijoux. “I didn’t …” she said, shaking her head. “I swear I didn’t tell him to do that!”

  Bijoux blinked, then nodded. “It’s oh — it’s oh — it’s oh — it’s okay, M-Magdalys, I pr-pr-pr-promise.”

  “But —”

  “He goes wh-wh-wh-where he’s needed m-m-m-most. If he’s with you, it m-m-m-means, maybe I don’t need him as much.” He smiled shakily. “F-for now, anyway.”

  She was about to offer to bring Milo to him, but Bijoux just shrugged and made his way down the tree.

  “UP!” MAGDALYS SAID, the wind already whipping across her face as the swampy forest became a blur below. “Heeyah!” Dizz spun a slow circle as he climbed, showing them the miles and miles of Atchafalaya around them, the billowing clouds against the pale blue sky. Somewhere out there, way, way in the distance, was New Orleans — the city was a little bit of safety in a murderous world, but it wouldn’t be for long, the way things were going.

  Behind her, Montez was holding on for dear life. “Are you sure this isn’t too hi —”

  “Hold tight,” Magdalys said, and urged Dizz higher. He was the fastest ptero she’d ever ridden (although Grappler was the best at fighting). Dizz loved turning barrel rolls, which freaked out most riders. But who cared about barrel rolls when you were facing directly up and the only thing around you was sky, pure sky?

  The best way to get a look at an enemy encampment was to get as high above it as you could. That’s what Wolfgang had said, and it made perfect sense. Plus, the sinornith patrols probably couldn’t even make it this high. She leveled Dizz out and swooped down a little to get beneath a passing cloud.

  The shooting and shelling had stopped, but Magdalys wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or ominous. She scanned the forest below, caught sight of their winged shadow gliding over the treetops.

  “There!” Montez said. “The camp.”

  She followed his point to an open field that looked like it had become a living thing — dinos and soldiers swarmed across it amidst tents and supply wagons. “Guess the distraction worked. Do you see the others?”

  Something flickered over the trees near the camp: a sinornith rider, Magdalys realized. There was another. Where were they headed? “See what’s happening down there,” Magdalys yelled to her brother over the whipping wind. She swooped lower.

  Montez lifted his rifle and, blinking against the rush of air, peered through the sight. “Keep her steady.”

  “Him,” Magdalys said. “Don’t roll your eyes at me!”

  “I see one of ’em. Mapper, I think. North, northwest of the camp.”

  “Um …”

  Montez shook his head and pointed. “Over there. You’re gonna have to learn this stuff, sis.”

  “I just mustered in yesterday! Give me a break.” She narrowed her eyes, taking Dizz into a long downward swoop. Bad time to barrel roll, she advised him, feeling that familiar tug to one side. Montez would probably freak out.

  Dizz let out a curt fubba and grumpily stayed upright.

  Something blue moved in that sea of green and brown. Mapper! And Tom was beside him, looking through a spyglass at the Confederate camp. They both sat astride Beans, who was perched amidst the branches, glancing from side to side. Nervous probably.

  Sinoriding Bog Marauders swerved and dove nearby, hunting them, no doubt. Where were the others though?

  “What do we do?” Magdalys asked, grateful to be with someone who would actually have an answer to that question.

  “Stick to the plan,” Montez said. “We have a mission. Now see what you can make out of the camp. Then we’ll see what we can do about the others.”

  Magdalys swung into a curve, keeping them higher than the sinorniths, and tilted Dizz just enough to get a good view of the campsite below.

  Total disarray. That was about all she could say about it at first glance. Soldiers scattered every which way, some pulling on their gray uniforms as they went. Her family of microdactyls rushed through, picking at people and snatching up whatever small objects they could get their beaks around. The duckbills stomped back and forth, wrecking tents and kicking up ash from last night’s campfires. Half-dressed soldiers were trying to capture them, not having much luck. Off to the side, the sinorniths squawked and spooked a trio of artillery stegos.

  “I can’t make heads or tails of it,” she said. “Why did the corporal have me send in those dinos when it only made a mess of things?”

  “Look harder,” Montez said. “It’s all right there. That’s why he did that. First of all as a distraction, but second of all, if he hadn’t, all we’d have to look at would be row after row of tents. How many men in each tent?”

  “I don’t kno —”

  “Exactly!” Montez said. She’d forgotten what a know-it-all he could be when he got going. “This way, they’re all out and about. And we get to see how they react when they’re scrambling for battle. Invaluable information!”

  She took them in another wide loop over the camp. One of those larger tents had to be an armory, she realized. Even in the chaos, men were streaming into it and coming out with muskets in hand. The command brachy stomped impatiently at the far edge of the forest, swinging her long neck back and forth and hooting at the troops below. The brass would probably be congregating in there, Magdalys figured, discussing what to do next.

  But where was Grappler with Toussaint and Briggs? And where was — As if in answer to her thoughts, a flash of red caught her eye. Earl Shamus Dawson Drek came storming out of the small building mounted on the command brachy’s saddle. A large bald man hurried behind him — a general, Magdalys figured, or some high-ranking brass. He yelled something about deserting them in their hour of need, when they most required his talents, and then a slew of words that the orphanage matrons would’ve whupped Magdalys for even thinking.

  She flew lower as Drek stomped out of sight behind some trees. Magdalys craned her neck and then gasped as he came gliding out atop the crimson dactyl he’d become so famous for riding. They soared off into the woods. The officer stood there in the dispersing cloud of dust, glaring after Drek, and finally spat and hurried back to the brachy.

  “We have to go after him!” Magdalys said.

  “After who?” Montez had been looking off the other side, counting troops.

  “Drek, Montez! He’s there! And he just flew off!”

  “We follow the mission,” Montez said sharply. “Recon and meet back up where we left the toads. That’s it.”

  “This is recon,” Magdalys said. “And Drek is my mission.” She swung the dactyl out over the trees toward where Drek had rushed off.

  �
�You can’t just go on some wild hunt every time something pops off that you’re interested in,” Montez said.

  That stung. And he was wrong. “It’s not —”

  “This isn’t about you,” Montez said. Then softened. “It isn’t about me either. It’s about all of us, Mags. Don’t you see?”

  “Yes, I see,” Magdalys said, bringing Dizz down onto a branch and turning herself so she could look her brother in the eye. “And I’m trying to tell you —”

  “You can’t be so reckless!” Montez said.

  Magdalys felt her eyes go wide as blood rushed to her face. “Reckless! Me! You! You’re the —”

  He looked at her, suddenly calm, his shoulders rising and falling with each heavy breath. “The one who what?”

  “… You …” She shook her head. It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair. Not what had happened to Montez, not what was happening to them now, not this whole twisted, angry world. And she knew that. She’d given up expecting things to be fair a long time ago. But still …

  Montez’s whole horrible journey seemed to flash between them in that moment. But Magdalys had had a journey too, and they’d barely had a chance to learn about what the other had been through before things had started blowing up around them again.

  She pulled General Grant’s letter out of her pocket. “It’s never been about me,” she said, fighting off tears, trying to keep from yelling. “And this piece of paper says I can just go on some wild hunt every time something pops off that I’m interested in.” A gunshot sounded from back at the campsite. Magdalys kept her eyes steel and stuck on her brother’s. “And that’s exactly what I plan to do.”

  More shooting.

  “Fine,” Montez said through clenched teeth. “But we still gotta let the others know and make sure they’re not in a jam.”

  “Fine,” Magdalys said, eyes tight. “Let’s do it then and do it fast. I don’t plan on letting Drek get away again.”

  “AHOY!” MAPPER SHOUTED from the treetops where he and Tom were crouched beside Beans. Magdalys landed Dizz alongside them and the two dactyls pecked and snapped at each other’s faces affectionately.

  “What happened?” Montez asked. “Where the others?”

  “Toussaint and Briggs,” Tom said, rubbing his eyes.

  “Are they okay?” Magdalys asked, heart suddenly thumping in her ears.

  “What they are,” Mapper said, “is AMAZING!!”

  “That is not how we’re supposed to be doing things,” Tom said.

  “What happened?” Magdalys demanded. Drek was getting farther and farther away with each passing second. She had no idea how she’d find him at this point, but she had to try.

  “They stumbled on some unwatched trikes on the edge of camp,” Tom said. “Guess in the confusion, all their dino-wranglers went to help.”

  “And they snatched ’em!” Mapper said. “And rode off into the woods with ’em!”

  “So the Confederates gave chase, that was that first couple blasts you heard. They hate when we steal their stuff.” Tom chuckled, then sighed. “Anyway, I don’t know what that last barrage was. We were about to go check it out when you guys showed up.” He tightened the straps on Beans’s saddle and gave Mapper a hand climbing up.

  Magdalys was impressed at how fast Mapper had fallen in with the others — they were already working together like they went way back. She pushed down gently on Dizz to let him know they were about to take off. “We’re going after Drek,” Magdalys said. Dizz leaned into a squat, wings flapping. “He took off on that crimson dactyl and had an officer cursing at him to come back and everything.”

  “Whoa!” Mapper said.

  “I gotta find out where he went that was so important,” Magdalys said as they took off. “See you back at the toads!”

  It was a terrible plan, Magdalys realized as they soared westward over the treetops, shadow flickering beneath them. She’d thought maybe, maybe, she could somehow key into the thoughts of that red dactyl Drek was riding. Maybe she could even do it without the ptero knowing, and then follow along from above until he got wherever he was going, and then she could find out what it was he’d been in such a hurry to accomplish when his own army needed those dinomastery skills most.

  But of course, the swamp was full of creatures great and small, and no matter how hard she concentrated on the passing trees below, all she could glean from the smorgasbord of calls was that there were a lot of them. Far too many to be able to sort through and find the fubba fubba of one dactyl.

  She shouldn’t have let Montez convince her to go back and check in with Mapper and Tom. Those were precious minutes, gone. They’d made all the difference. And Mapper and Tom didn’t need their help!

  “Can’t believe you pulled rank on me,” Montez said. “My own sister.”

  “Yeah, well …” You let Drek get away, she almost said. She bit it back though. What was the point? Inside, a hundred different dinocalls surged in a dissonant symphony. It was giving her a headache.

  “What’s that?” Montez asked, stretching his arm past her to point at something way up ahead.

  Magdalys squinted, urging Dizz into a low dash. “What’s wha — whoa!” A plume of smoke rose into the sky. Could it be? “I think I’ve seen that smoke before,” she said as they skimmed across the treetops.

  “Look,” Montez said, “I know you’re probably mad at me. I get it.”

  “Montez.” She swung Dizz into a wide arc — probably wouldn’t be wise to just fly directly over whatever it was smoking — then felt another barrel roll coming. “Hold tight for a sec.”

  “Wait, whaaaaah!!” They turned upside down momentarily and then righted again. “Whewwww, man! Does he have to do that?”

  Magdalys smiled to herself. “I think it’s a nervous thing. But also he likes to mess with people, so there’s that. I try to catch him before he does it, but … it doesn’t always work.”

  “Anyway! I was saying, I get why you’d be mad. You came out of nowhere and saved all our lives and I’ll always be grateful for that …”

  “I sense a big but coming,” Magdalys said. “And I’m not really in the mood to hear it, Montez.”

  “I know, it’s just —”

  “There it is!” Magdalys yelled, veering Dizz off over the trees again before they were spotted. She’d only caught a glimpse out of the corner of her eye, but it was enough to know exactly what lay below: those rickety wooden houses rising on stilts from the murky swamp water — that same Bog Marauder headquarters they’d flown over on their way in to find Montez the day before.

  This had to be where Drek had run off to. But why come here when he’d realized the camp was being overrun by wild dinos? Magdalys tightened her face as she brought Dizz down to a landing.

  She’d just have to go in and find out.

  “WONDER WHERE EVERYONE went,” Magdalys whispered.

  They’d swept in a gradually shrinking spiral around the compound, careful to keep just out of view until they realized there was no one around to see them. Then Magdalys had brought Dizz down on a long branch reaching out over the swamp waters, and they’d dismounted to get a better look.

  “Some of them were at the Confederate camp,” Montez said. “How many did you see when you passed over yesterday?”

  Magdalys scrunched up her face. Numbers were not her thing, and Montez knew that. Still, she’d have to learn if she was going to be any good at this. “Maybe like twelve or …” She tried to picture the sinoriders clustered together. It had seemed like a lot at the time, but maybe that was fear distorting her view. “Thirty-something?”

  Montez sighed through a smile. “Okay, we’ll work on that counting thing. It takes some practice.” It wasn’t unkind — this was the patient, gentle Montez who Magdalys remembered teaching the others how to read in the orphanage library, not the battle-hardened sniper she’d found out here in the swamps. Both of those Montezes were real, and she’d simply have to learn to reconcile them with each other. Along wi
th learning how to estimate troop numbers. And whatever else this war would demand of her …

  “That bigger building,” Montez said, pointing to a ramshackle cabin at the far end of the site.

  Something fluttered and shrieked through the sky above them, and Magdalys ducked, glancing up, but it was just a passing family of microdactyls. She untensed the fingers that had wrapped themselves around her carbine grip, then looked back at the building. “You think that’s where Drek is?”

  “Wasn’t he riding a bright red ptero?”

  Magdalys followed Montez’s gaze along a rickety wooden stairway that led from the door to a small floating platform beside one of the support stilts. There, Drek’s crimson dactyl perched so perfectly still on a railing it looked like a statue.

  “Can I shoot it?” Montez asked.

  “What good would that do?” Magdalys whispered.

  “Then he’d come out to see what happened and I could shoot him too.”

  “Montez. We gotta find out what’s going on, man. And if he’s dead, we can’t do that. Whatever the Knights are up to, it’s bigger than this one man. But he might be the key to unraveling the whole thing.”

  “So …”

  “So we have to take him alive. That’s the only way we’ll find out what’s really going on.”

  “I guess.”

  “Plus, we don’t know who else is in there. But I’m about to find out. Stay here and cover me.”

  “Wait —”

  Magdalys didn’t wait. She turned and climbed onto Dizz, who was already flapping his wings eagerly, and together they soared across the camp. Montez would be mad, but he’d probably just shake his head and set up that sniper rifle of his to take whatever shot he’d need to.

  She slid sidewise down the saddle as Dizz approached, then gripped it with both hands and let herself hang down. “Easy, D. Easy.” He swooped down just a little farther, so the tips of her boots scraped the tin rooftop, and then she let go, landing in a crouch without too much noise, and waited as Dizz swung back around toward Montez.