Lee Estabis stood in the street, calling, “Rally! To me, men of Estabis!”
I looked at my dragon quivering, and I looked at him there making a stand. Every minute we fought we bought those poor children more time to flee. I clenched my jaw and ran, darting past fallen rubble and over fallen men – I didn’t want to know if they were dead or alive – and to his call.
Saboraak needed time to recover. That was all. She just wasn’t used to fighting for her life. It was enough to crumple anyone. Enough to freeze anyone for a few moments until they found whatever steel was inside them. And until then, I would fight with Lee.
I joined him in the center of the street – joined the other men who shoved the golems back.
“The eyes!” he called. “That’s their vulnerability! The eyes!”
We fought and jabbed at eyes, leaping over grasping paws and dodging snapping jaws. We fought as a howling, sweating pack of men, bound together by desperate determination.
I could feel the golem we were fighting. I could feel his eye on me. It was almost as if we were connected somehow. He snapped at me and I dodged back as one of the men of Estabis jammed a spear through his eye. He crumpled, the light fading out.
The next one was already upon us. I could feel it before it attacked. Its eyes were already boring through my skull.
“Close your mouth, dog!” I yelled, rushing forward with my spear to plunge it through its eye. I froze as it fell to the ground.
The golem had shut his mouth when I ordered him to.
What madness was this?
The next one leapt toward Lee Estabis from the right, jumping out of a gap between two buildings, growling and snapping. Lee was distracted, fighting a different golem. He didn’t see it as it plunged toward him.
“Stop!” I barked.
The golem slid to a stop.
I froze again. The blood draining from my face.
The golem had obeyed me.
“Stop!” I yelled at the golem Lee battled. It stopped, screeching to a halt.
A burst of hope shot through me as I stared at the still golem. If I could command one, I could command them all.
A heavy shoulder plowed into me, lifting me up from my feet and carrying me off the street with a howl of, “Clear! Clear the street!”
We fell to the side in a pile of rubble as a second Black dragon fell into the street beside us, rocking the street with its enormous impact. Dust and rock burst into the air as he landed, his head so close when it bounced against the skysteel street that I could see his glassy dead eye.
I gasped, horrified and disoriented. No wonder Saboraak was frozen in fear. No wonder she wanted to blend in. I wanted to blend in against the buildings, too. Anything that could fell such a massive dragon could kill me without even noticing.
Lee Estabis let go of me and this time I had the presence of mind to look up into the sky.
Chapter Seventeen
This was why Saboraak huddled against a building shaking. This was why Black dragons were falling from the sky like Mayflies.
The flying golems had arrived.
My breath was snatched away as I watched a dozen of them set into a Black dragon and his rider, ripping them to pieces like a sawyer cutting wood.
I knew my mouth was hanging open. I knew I still hadn’t thanked Lee for saving my life. I knew it was up to me to do something.
I felt like I couldn’t move. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
My mind stuttered and then thought came crashing back. With it came pain. I was battered and bruised and one of my ankles wasn’t bearing my weight quite right. I shoved the pain aside.
There wasn’t time for pain.
There wasn’t time for fear.
There was only action.
“Castelan Estabis!” I called. He was frozen, too, watching the battle above us – the battle we were losing.
“Lee!” I shook him until he looked at me, his eyes haunted with what I knew had been in mine only moments before – panic.
I clenched my jaw and narrowed my eyes. I would not panic.
“Lee.”
“Yes,” it was like a prayer.
“Sound the retreat. Pull your men back to the Castel. We can’t fight on two fronts out here. We need a central place to defend. By now, the citizens that can be saved have fled.”
“There hasn’t been time – ”
“We’ve had all the time we’re going to get. Do it.”
He still looked stunned. Who wouldn’t be? The dragons had been our only hope. I saw a flash of gold above and something inside me turned to steel.
My mimic stepped out from a shadow.
“Remember how I said I’d be here when you needed me? I think you could use a little help right now.”
He was right.
“I’m going up there to stop Eventen. He’s behind this,” I said.
Even Lee couldn’t deny that now. Not when the golems he claimed to control had attacked the city.
Lee nodded, rallying now. “Sound the retreat! All men to the Castel!”
He was moving as he spoke, rallying his men as they fled.
My mimic pumped his fist. “Come on, Tor! Let’s rub that golem-lover into the ground!”
I ran to Saboraak. The golems – unchecked now – were flooding into the city.
“Stop! Stay!” I yelled as I ran, stopping them one at a time. Even with that – how could one man stop an army?
“Saboraak!” I called as I skidded to a stop in front of her. “Look at me! Talk to me!”
Tor, I just can’t.
“Yes, you can.” If she didn’t, then we had no hope. “Come on. I know it’s scary. I’m scared, okay? I’m scared.” I turned to the golem plummeting toward us. “Stop, you metal dog! Would you cool it for a moment? We’re trying to have a conversation here!”
He stopped, screeching across the skysteel of the street.
“Now, listen to me, Saboraak. Pull yourself together! You’re a dragon. The finest jaw-snapping, fire-breathing creature on the planet!”
Those Black dragons were bigger than me, Tor. They were tougher than me. They are made for this. I’m not. If those things could shred them like that...
Her colors shifted one to another as she shook against the building beside her.
I grabbed her head in my hands.
“There’s a moment in every person’s life when they have to climb that mountain of fear and go over it whether they like it or not. It’s that or die, sometimes. This is one of those times, Saboraak. I’ll be here with you. I will not leave your side – well, more likely your back – but we can’t just sit here and hide while this golem army slaughters every human and dragon in sight. I have a plan, but it will only work with your help. I need you, old girl. I need you to be courageous. Come on! For your dragon city. For your wing of Greens. For me.”
She shook herself, her color settling on Red. Good. She wanted to fight, too.
I gave her my most confident grin. “We can do this. I’ll be right here with you.”
I climbed up onto her back, strapping myself in as she shook herself.
A golem lunged toward us and I threw up a hand. He stopped, the light in his eyes fading. But there were more on their way. We couldn’t wait here forever.
After all, as long as the source of power that directed them was out there, they couldn’t truly be stopped until he was.
It was time to hunt Eventen Shadereaver, or watch this city and my beloved dragon die before my eyes.
I was ready.
If he wasn’t trembling yet, he should be.
Dragon Chameleon: Golem Siege
Chapter One
“There! I think I see him there!” I said, pointing to a flare of gold in the clouds as we flew.
I can’t do this anymore, Tor. My beloved dragon Saboraak said as we plunged through the morning clouds, searching and scanning.
“This time it’s Eventen. All we have to do is get him!” I held on to certainty and
determination like twin ropes dangling me over an abyss.
That’s what you said the last three times. I am not a golem, Tor. Not a machine. I can’t fly forever. I need rest.
“She’s right,” my mimic said tiredly. “Even I think you’re going to kill yourself like this.”
I grimaced as Saboraak turned away from the glimmer in the clouds, plunging back toward the skycity below us, but I didn’t have long to flinch at her choice. I needed to work.
Every time we shot after Eventen, we lost time doing the one thing I could do: stop the golems.
We plummeted from the sky, looking for the hot points, the places where men had been forced back, where lines had been breached, where the fighting was the most intense.
There. Men fled from a stab of golems slicing through their ranks, crushing and tearing. I lifted my hands and we buzzed over their heads as I found the spark in each golem, one at a time, and demanded it stop.
“Stop!” I yelled, hand thrusting out in a ‘stop’ motion as the first one ground to a halt.
I repeated it again and again, feeling Saboraak drifting under me.
She really was exhausted. She was willing to push through when we were fighting golems, but she didn’t like my insistence that we also hunt Eventen.
If you want to fly us to exhaustion, it should at least be helping those giving their lives below. It shouldn’t be about a vendetta.
We’d only been doing this an hour. A single hour as the fighting men of Estabis were pushed ever backward toward the keep.
An hour where my wing of Green dragons has had to keep the flying golems from our backs.
As if drawn by her thoughts, another wave of flying golems spun from the city, cutting through the air toward us. I hated how their eyes burned bright with magic. Hated how their empty metal saddles gleamed in the light of the morning.
When we had seen them ridden by Apeq and Katlana, I had assumed that they would always be ridden. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions like that. After all, hadn’t those flying golems in Ko’Koren flown without riders?
But I’d never expected waves of them attacking like a brainless, leaderless army.
We spun, forming up to take the attack of the golems. As soon as they were close, Tachril darted forward, Nostar screaming a battle cry as he rushed toward the enemy. Tachril’s neck arched backward like a snake and then burst forward to bite down on the golem’s head and shake it.
I already had my hands up, looking down and back up again. I had to be careful how I did this. I’d done it wrong once before. I counted under my breath and then yelled: “Stop!”
The light in the golem’s eyes faded and he tumbled from the sky as I held my breath, watching. His trajectory still carried him forward a little even as he tumbled, powerless, through the air.
It was going to be close.
His tumbling body crashed into the city below, narrowly missing a group of humans fighting the creeping golems below. He knocked two other golems off their feet, smashing them to rumble and tumbling into a market, overturning carts and small buildings until he came to rest in a cloud of dust.
I breathed out.
Last time, I hadn’t thought about what was below.
Last time had been bad.
I turned my attention back to what we were doing. The Greens had cleaned up the other golems, carrying them away from the city in teeth or claws like birds lifting too-heavy coconuts. They fell, a directed fall, but still a fall, until they could bring the golems to a safe place outside the city perimeter and then they dropped them, soaring back up again.
We aren’t going to find Eventen like this, Tor. It’s too hard.
I owed the man a debt.
Revenge is a dangerous emotion. Even revenge with cause. It blinds a man. It rots his heart. He’ll do anything to get it, pay any price. And he’ll never even see the people who suffer on the sidelines. He’ll never see the rut of injustice he cuts through the world to get the justice he wanted in the first place. The price isn’t worth the prize, Tor.
“Revenge is a savory emotion,” my mimic argued. “Why deny yourself something you deserve?”
I swallowed. It was getting easy to know what to do in moral situations. Usually, if Saboraak was encouraging something and the mimic was discouraging it, it was the right thing to do.
“Okay. Let’s take a break. You and the Greens need to rest your wings. I can help the men fight while you recover.”
Hyoogan is nursing a bad wound and Elumans needs someone to flame his tail to stop the bleeding. That will take time. And we all need water. You are making the right decision, Tor.
Can you tell Nostar?
Tachril and the rest of my wing already agree.
Was there a name for their relationship with her?
Pledged. We are a Pledged Wing.
The wing turned, heading toward the Castel below and I steeled my jaw. I preferred it up here where we were insulated from the pain and fear below. I could already feel sweat forming under the scarf around my brow as we descended. I wasn’t ready to join them again. I wasn’t ready.
Take courage.
Chapter Two
It was strange how my mind turned to prophecies under stress. The ones I’d read and reread as we traveled came back whenever fear filled me. As we plummeted toward the Castel below, they rang in my ears.
Truth laid bare.
Souls spread out.
Clear the air.
Quell all doubt.
He comes to reign and rule.
He rakes us over fire.
Before him bend the fools.
They plummet from the spire.
Maybe they had never been about me. Maybe they hadn’t even been about Bataar despite the fact that they’d determined all his choices. Maybe they had been about Apeq.
After all, wasn’t he the one reigning Ko’Torenth now? Hadn’t he brought these golems here? And how had he done that? How much metal would you have to mine to make hundreds of these creatures? How much time would you have to have to craft them? How many artificers? How many metallurgists? How many blacksmiths and carters and servants? It seemed impossible.
And where were they all now? Where were the humans? All I’d seen now for hours were golems and occasional glimpses of Eventen, but he hadn’t even been in Ko’Torenth before. Where were the people? Where were the ones controlling these golems?
If we were going to get out ahead of this battle and not just defend ourselves, but attack back, we were going to need to know that. We were going to have to send someone out to find out these things.
Don’t get ahead of yourself. First, we regroup and tend the injured.
It’s good that Saboraak wanted to do that, but someone needed to do what I was doing. Someone needed to think about this from a dragon-height perspective. Someone needed to find where that soft spot in the weaving had gone. I could still see the future raveling out before me, but that spot had disappeared. Would there be another? If there was, I would be ready. And if there wasn’t, maybe I could make one.
One of the rhymes Savette wrote was stuck in my head. Catchy, if perhaps depressing. I’d never figured out if it was a prophecy or just how she felt in the moment. After all, hadn’t she died in a magical battle after weeks of fighting. Had her hands trembled as she returned to battle like mine were trembling now? Had she written these words for that pain or for another time?
Dance the wild battle,
Weep for the souls of man,
Behind the shadow’s rattle,
The dead will rise again.
In the pride of houses,
There lurks a deadly sting,
Under mountain rouses,
An old and ancient thing.
Weep for world breaking,
Weep for souls lost,
The key is in the taking,
The lesson from the cost.
Sing the song of graveyard,
Sing the song of death,
Sleep ye souls in ear
th hard,
Do not steal our breath.
We circled the Castel, looking for our opening between the dragons fighting in the skies and ascending and descending.
As soon as one appeared, we dove down through the black and red and green bodies of other dragons leaping up to fight again. Our wing dove toward one of the topless towers, landing easily on its skysteel frame.
We must attend to our needs. There is water here.
I clutched my makeshift spear as I slid down from her back.
“I’ll be back soon. Take care, okay?”
She shot me an affectionate glance, but she had her own work to do and as the other dragons landed, she crowded in to help with whatever dragons did to heal each other.
“Tor!” Nostar’s shout halted me.
“Nostar,” I acknowledged.
“Do you know what’s happening?” He asked, following me as I rushed toward the stairway.
“With the battle or the dragons?”
“Both,” he said, following me.
I glanced over my shoulder to see him signing to the other riders as he followed me.
“The dragons say they need water and to tend each other’s wounds.”
“What do they need to do for that?”
“Apparently Elumans’ wounds need cauterizing.”
He shivered.
“The battle is a different matter. I’m going to seek out Lee Estabis.”
Nostar shifted uncomfortably beside me and I stopped for a moment at the head of the staircase. “Yes?”
“There’s no general here. No Red Dragon Commander. The Castelan is a young man, newly raised to his role, and the Captain of the Castelan’s guard died with the older Castelan.”
“Your point?”
“Leadership here is thin. We are barely holding our own against the golems. We started with more than a hundred dragons in the city. Have you counted them lately?”
“I’ll admit I’ve been distracted,” I said, running my hand through my hair. I wanted to move again. I was wasting time.
Dragon Chameleon: Episodes 9-12 Page 7
