by Scott Meyer
The archer cried, “Much more of this, and the town will be destroyed!”
Martin agreed with this statement.
* * *
To Honor, it felt like she spent an eternity lying in the dirt, looking at Sonny and the bishop lying in the street, but in reality it took less than ten seconds for her to snap out of her shock. She scuttled out from under the cart. She grabbed Sonny by the feet and dragged him under. Then she did the same for Bishop Galbraith. They were both breathing, but completely unresponsive.
There, she thought. I’ve made them as safe as I can. Now I have to make myself as safe as I can, because if either of them wakes up and finds out that I let myself get killed, they’ll never let me hear the end of it.
The town was in chaos. The dragons had landed and were spewing fire in every direction. The sky buzzed with flying wizards, who seemed to be either egging the dragons on or casting spells on innocent people like her brother and Bishop Galbraith.
She asked herself, What building in this town is least apt to catch fire? and immediately answered herself: The lead church.
She was unaware of lead’s relatively low melting point.
Also, she thought, it’s God’s house. If any place is going to be safe from the wizards, it’ll be the church.
She picked up Runt, muttered a quick apology to the two unconscious men she couldn’t carry, and took off running for the church.
Honor’s journey to the church felt like a trek through hell. She witnessed horrors, evil, and cruelty beyond anything her young mind had ever imagined.
Fire seemed to be everywhere. The dragons produced gigantic plumes of flame every time they exhaled. Few buildings seemed to be burning yet, but she feared they all would catch fire in time. She thought about her brother and the bishop lying helpless under the cart, and cursed herself for not being strong enough to carry even one of them. She clutched Runt even tighter and kept moving.
She saw a large dragon with curved ram-like horns, and the enormous silver wizard, shining with eerie magical light, making no move to stop the dragons, instead shouting insults at some men cowering behind a water trough. Further down the street, a smaller dragon blocked most of the road, spreading fire over as much of the area as possible. A wizard dressed all in black stood on the dragon’s back, feet planted between its giant shoulders. There were countless strands of a stringy mass, like the webbing of an immense, unholy spider, extending from the back of the dragon’s head to the wizard’s white-knuckled fists. The wizard pulled on the strands with all of his might. Honor had been around animals all her life, and immediately recognized the webs, despite their unusual appearance, for what they were. They’re reins, she thought. He can steer the dragon, and aim its fire wherever he wants! Honor came to a corner. She looked toward the church, and saw only one dragon and one wizard in her way. Many other people seemed to have the same idea, because there were many more citizens visible along this street than on the previous one, all moving toward the church.
She looked the other way, hoping to avoid being surprised from behind by a dragon, or a wizard. Unfortunately, she saw both.
The dragon perched on a building, snarling down into the street, where several bystanders cowered behind a wizard. He had red-and-purple-striped robes, and the darkest skin she had ever seen. She paused to watch, confused. For a moment, it almost looked as if the wizard wanted to protect the people. Then, in a scene that haunted her nightmares for years to come, the wizard turned into a dragon himself. The people behind him screamed, understandably. Honor turned away. God knows what those two dragons are going to do, she thought. But I know I don’t want to watch them do it.
She ran for the church, despite the fact that it also meant running toward another dragon and another wizard, which she was beginning to think was even worse. She felt relieved when the wizard, an older man with a strange, dirt-colored robe and a hat with a wide brim, flew away, even though he did so with so much speed that she heard a crack and felt the wind he kicked up from far away.
The dragon seemed confused. The wizard was gone. The dragon’s nostrils twitched. The beast inhaled, shook its head furiously, then singled one man out.
Honor immediately recognized Hubert, the dung sifter.
The dragon saw Hubert, and Hubert saw that the dragon saw him. As the beast reared its head, preparing to incinerate him, Hubert crouched, curled into a ball, and extended one hand, holding a small idol shaped vaguely like a person, modeled out of some brown material. Honor only got a brief glimpse of it before Hubert disappeared from view, completely engulfed in flame. Honor kept running.
She had made it past the awful scene and behind the dragon before it ran out of breath and the flames subsided. She didn’t want to look, but did so in spite of herself when she heard Hubert laughing.
He stood in the same spot where she’d seen him last, completely unharmed, dancing for joy and holding his idol over his head, triumphantly.
In her confusion, Honor stopped and stared at Hubert, trying to make sense of what she saw. Runt barked, snapping Honor out of it just in time to see that the dragon had turned to face her, and was taking a deep breath.
“Little girl,” Hubert shouted, “Catch!” He drew back his hand to throw the idol, but he never followed through. A beige streak, followed by a deafening boom and a powerful shock wave blew through, knocking Hubert off his feet and Honor and Runt back into the wall behind them.
Honor dropped Runt to steady herself. The dragon had vanished.
The wizard must have magicked it away, to where it could do more damage, she thought.
Across the street, Hubert sat flat on his backside, looking dazed but still clutching his idol. Honor heard several staccato, insistent barks, and saw that Runt had run ahead toward the church and stopped, waiting for Honor to follow.
Hubert came to his senses and shouted, “I’m not hurt! I’m not hurt!”
Honor wanted to warn him about the she-wizard in dark blue robes and mask floating in the air above the building behind him. The she-wizard pointed a hand toward Hubert, as if preparing to cast a spell. She listened for a moment to him shouting that he was not hurt, shrugged, and withdrew her hand. Then the she-wizard winked at Honor, smiled, and flew away.
Honor ran as fast as she could all the way to the church. Runt ran ahead, yapping, as if telling everyone to stay out of Honor’s way. They found the door held open by a nun who shouted to everyone within hearing range to get inside, where they would be safe. Runt stopped shy of the door, as always, but the nun reached down and pulled Runt inside as Honor dashed in.
Almost half of the town seemed to be sheltered by the church’s lead cladding, and within the next few minutes, it seemed like the other half of the town joined them. While they were inside the church, the fire could not get to them, and the wizards would not dare try. Of course, thanks to the stained glass windows, all they could see of anything happening outside was the occasional red glow, but most of them were pretty sure they didn’t want to see anything beyond that.
8.
Martin tried to talk the archers out of shooting at the dragons again, but they didn’t find his insults persuasive. They each nocked another arrow and hastily held them over the torch to light them, then dove back behind the trough while another thick blanket of fire rolled toward them.
Of course, the fire breath stopped at the force field. Martin took this as a victory. He couldn’t stop the dragon from breathing fire, but he could stop the fire from hitting anyone. And, of course, the fire wouldn’t actually injure a person if it did hit them, and, so far, none of the people he had helped in this manner acted grateful, or even noticed his assistance. But on a day like today, any victory seemed good.
“You can stand up,” the giant floating image of Martin yelled. “I’m holding back the fire with my magic.”
The men didn’
t stand, or even move. From behind the trough, one of them yelled, “Then why don’t you use your magic to kill the dragon for us?”
“I can’t. Sorry.”
“Is your magic not strong enough?”
“I guess you could say that.”
“Then we’ll keep hiding, thanks.”
The dragon ran out of breath. Martin clearly caused it distress, but it held its ground. The archers stood, aiming their arrows.
“It’s a fire-breathing dragon,” Martin said, floating down closer to the men. “Why do you think flaming arrows will hurt it?”
“Flaming arrows are better than regular arrows,” one of the archers said.
“But fire won’t hurt it!”
“Won’t help it either, and there’s still the arrow. PULL!”
Martin flew between the men and the dragon. “Guys, stop! I can’t let you shoot those! You’re just setting your own town on fire. The dragons are harmless.”
The horned dragon behind Martin chose that moment to belch out another plume of fire, directly at his back. Martin’s world reduced to two sensations: bright orange light and searing pain. He screamed in agony, surprise, and frustration at having his last statement so quickly and succinctly refuted.
The force field between himself and the archers remained in place, so he knew the archers were being spared this pain. When the flames died away, he saw that they had once again hidden behind the trough, this time with their flaming arrowheads sticking up like antennae.
The archers sprung to their feet, nocked their bows again, and took aim.
Their leader said, “Out of the way, wizard.”
Martin said, “No!”
He had expected that they would wait for his next sentence, in which he’d explain yet again how what they were doing was counterproductive, but the leader said, “Suit yourself. Aim for between his legs, boys! Try to fire through the gap!”
Martin got out of the way, still shouting, “No, don’t do it!”
Again, the men loosed their arrows in unison. Again, they only flew a short distance before they struck Martin’s force field and bounced up and back, over the archers’ heads. This time, instead of watching, Martin acted. He quickly threw up another force field, between the archers and the building behind them.
The force field successfully protected the already-smoldering building. Unfortunately, quicker than Martin could react, the arrows bounced off of it, and fell limply back down onto the very men who had fired them. Not every man got hit, but they all shouted at Martin as if they did. Martin apologized profusely until Gwen swooped by, medevaced the lot of them, shook her head at Martin, and moved on.
Martin shouted, “It wasn’t all my fault!” Then he found himself again enveloped in flames from the horned dragon behind him.
Martin flew up, out of the fire and away from the dragon. He deactivated his macro, reducing again to his normal size. He took a second to survey the scene. He found far too much scene to survey quickly, and resorted to activating the battle comm and asking, “Phillip, what’s going on?”
Phillip floated high above the town, coordinating. “Actually, it’s a good time to make a general report. Pretty much the entire town has taken refuge in the church. My offensive power, Gary’s, and Martin’s seem pretty useless. The dragons aren’t running from us anymore. Roy has successfully pushed one dragon out of town. Where are you now, Roy?”
“I think about twenty miles out to sea, but it’s hard to tell. The flight path hasn’t been straight. I can’t hurt this thing, just push it around. Do we know how to kill them yet?”
Phillip said, “Jeff?”
“If I knew, I’d have said something when they first showed up.”
“Right,” Phillip said. “We’ll all discuss that later. Tyler’s also having some luck. He turned into a dragon, fought one of the real dragons, and if you look to the northeast, you’ll see that he’s now chasing it out of town.”
“Actually, it’s chasing me,” Tyler said. “But anything that works is fine. I just hope this isn’t a Pepé Le Pew situation.”
“Indeed,” Phillip said. “So, we have a house fire and three more dragons to get out of here. Ideas?”
Gary said, “They all followed the big one that likes Martin.”
Martin said, “It’s tried to kill me four times.”
Gwen said, “Well, some of us aren’t great at expressing our feelings.”
“My point,” Gary continued, “is that if we can get that one to go, the other two might follow.”
Phillip said, “Yes! Then, even if Roy and Tyler’s dragons return, they’ll follow it. Good idea, Gary!”
As if wanting to prove Gary’s point, the horned dragon had taken flight, and the two remaining dragons fell in behind it.
Gary said, “Thanks. Okay, so how do we get Horney to leave?”
“Please,” Phillip said, “Don’t call it that.”
“But it’s the only one with horns.”
“That’s just an excuse.”
“Yeah, but it’s a good one.”
Martin said, “Giant me just made it aggressive. Flashes of light scared it off, but it came right back.”
Brit said, “We’re almost done with the wounded. I don’t see anyone else out in the open. Maybe my macro would freak it out. Gwen, can you finish up without me?”
“Yeah, I just told some townsfolk that we’re putting the wounded to sleep so they can rest and recuperate. Now I’m going to pop back to my time and buy some infrared goggles so I can see if any wounded are hiding from us.”
Phillip said, “Sounds good. I say do it.”
Gwen said, “I’m glad, because I already did. I left right after I said I was going to go. Spent a week, saw some family, bought some fabric. Anyway, I’ll start the search.”
Phillip said, “Good. Yes, do.”
Gwen said, “I already have.”
Brit said, “All right, intercepting Horney. So I try to get him out into the countryside, then what? We don’t know how to kill them.”
Martin said, “If we can really run them off, great. If not, we can do like Gwen did. Go away, figure out how to deal with them, and come back to this moment.”
Brit flew quickly into the dragons’ flight path. She set a collision course with the lead dragon and triggered her macro, suddenly becoming a swarm of Brits, all flying straight down the dragons’ throats.
The horned dragon in the lead flew through the Brit cloud as if it didn’t exist. The second, which flew behind and a bit to the side of the leader, had seen the Brit cloud approaching as well, and followed the horned dragon through.
The third dragon’s view seemed to have been blocked by the two lead dragons. It panicked when it saw a cloud of countless fast-moving objects arcing around the other two dragons and into its path. It reared back, flapped its wings madly, dove, turned, and flew at top speed in the opposite direction, pursued by the Brits.
“Well done, love,” Phillip said. “Think you can keep at it until the dragon’s a few miles away?”
“No problem,” Brit said.
“Good. That leaves us with two. The leader seems stubborn, but let me try something.”
Martin landed in an abandoned street, and watched as a stream of Phillip’s missiles streaked down from on high. They tore through the air in a constant dotted line, far more of them than ever could have come from a real plane, hitting the tail of the horned dragon and exploding at a sustained rate of three or four a second.
The horned dragon flew much faster. The second dragon also flew much faster, in the opposite direction. From its point of view, its fellow dragon disappeared, replaced by a deafening, sustained explosion. As the smaller dragon fled from the noise and the fire and the smoke, the line of missiles split. Halfway up the str
eam, the missiles stopped pursuing the horned dragon and instead targeted the rear of the smaller dragon. When the missiles started to make contact, the dragon made for the horizon at top speed.
“Okay,” Phillip said, “I’ll keep the pressure on this one.”
Martin asked, “Why’d you switch targets to the other dragon? You left Gary and me with the biggest, meanest one, and now it’s angry. I just answered my own question, didn’t I?”
“Admirably,” Phillip said. “Now get to it, that scary dragon isn’t going to attack itself.”
Martin gritted his teeth and shook his head. Past experience gave him reason to fear that Gary’s assistance would make the task slightly harder than dealing with the dragon by himself.
“Gary, you got any ideas?” Martin turned and saw that Gary stood next to him in the middle of the road, holding Uzi submachine guns in both hands. Martin barely had time to cover his ears before Gary started firing them both at the dragon as it flew above the town, hundreds of yards away.
It seemed Gary had worked some programming magic to give the guns unlimited ammo, because he held both triggers down, dispensing lead as if he were holding two garden hoses.
It also seemed that his aim with the stub-barreled firearms wasn’t great, since instead of fleeing, the dragon turned gracefully and flew in low and close for a good look at what was making the noise.
Soon, it became painfully obvious that the bullets weren’t powerful enough to deter the dragon in the least since it landed down the street, spread its wings, and roared as Gary continued to fire both guns.
“Okay,” Gary shouted over the automatic gunfire. “I’ve got its attention. Now you do something.”
Martin, still covering his ears, again triggered his macro, transformed into his thirty-foot-tall silver form, and did the first thing he could think of. He kicked Gary.
