Storm of Wings

by Chris Bunch

  Certainly we haven't brought them anything but grief. Perhaps, when this war is over, if it ever is, we should free all the dragons, and let them fly to wherever they wish.

  I write this, but I know it's foolish, for many of the dragons are now thoroughly domesticated, and prefer our company. Also, those captured young could hardly be released into the wild, for they'd live but a few days, certainly less if they encountered wild dragons.

  And what of those who've been kept in zoos, thoroughly accustomed to having their sheep or whatever provided to them on a barrow?

  Once again it seems whatever Man touches he turns first to his own purposes, then to ruination.

  Sorry to end my letter on such a gloomy note, but that's how I'm feeling at this moment

  I do miss you

  Hal

  * * *

  Hal hadn't known what would happen between him and Khiri when he returned to the war, and was quite surprised to find he thought of her often.

  She wrote him daily, letters about the smallest, most normal things—what was going on with the sowing at Cayre a Carstares, the newest fripperies around the capital, what dinners she'd been invited to, and what she'd worn and eaten.

  All of these, things Hal might've thought irritating, took him away from the war.

  She was working at one of Rozen's hospitals, still living at Thom Lowess' city home, and missing him desperately.

  Hal, in return, missed her, and wrote back as often as he could.

  He was learning the loneliness of command, and, without Saslic, had no one to confide in, especially about his feelings about war, and about dragons.

  He wondered if he was falling in love with the beasts and also with Lady Khiri.

  He snorted. He had no time for such weaknesses, especially not now.

  But still, when he thought of her, at the strangest times, a smile came to him, and his mood lightened.

  Again, the troops were brought to full alert and, this time, told to be ready for an all-out attack.

  Hal, once again, overflew the city, looking for any signs of trouble.

  This time, he found them.

  He saw, not far from where the first mine had been dug, men suddenly explode out of carefully camouflaged tunnels, running as if there were demons at their heels.

  He expected to see smoke, once again, as the pit props were fired.

  But nothing came.

  Heavy cavalry and infantry moved forward, guarding the tunnels.

  Hal wondered what had happened. Something must have gone wrong.

  The tale didn't take long to reach the squadron.

  The miners had been within a day of undermining the second wall when suddenly—stories varied from nowhere or from a tiny, unnoticed crevice—monsters boiled on them. They were not men, all stories agreed, could not be men, being coal black, with a rigid carapace atop their head like a lizard's. They had sharp pinchers for hands, and tore at the miners as they panicked, tried to escape the trap.

  The monsters, whatever they were, feared sunlight or possibly open air, for none of them came out of the tunnel, either by day or night.

  Evidently the master spell of two months earlier hadn't gotten rid of all the Roche sorcerers.

  There matters rested for two days.

  Then magicians came up, staying well clear of the tunnel, and began chanting, dancing, weaving in steps as more magic was sent out.

  There was no smoke, no fire, but somehow the wizards' thaumaturgy worked upon the tunnel props.

  Cracking noises came, Hal was told later. Then, slowly, majestically, the inner wall began toppling, outward, just as the miners had intended.

  It leaned out at an impossible angle, but its stones never shattered. And then it stopped leaning, and held at that impossible angle.

  Hal shook his head. Wizardry confounded wizardry.

  Then he heard a squeal from one of the dragons, looked away from Aude.

  Hurtling toward the city, above Hal and the other dragon flight, came Ky Yasin's black dragons.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Hal had time for one warning trumpet blast, then had to concentrate on Storm, on trying to overcome Yasin's height advantage.

  The other, experienced fliers of the Eleventh were doing the same, but the other flight over Aude, and some of Hal's less-seasoned fliers did little more than gawp at the black death coming down on them.

  Yasin's fliers were experienced—they tried to avoid combat with their equals on the climb, and struck at the newer fliers.

  They'd stolen a lesson from Hal and their own experimenters, and all their fliers were armed with short recurve bows, harder to fire accurately than Kailas' crossbows, but with a much heavier weight. The Roche fliers had become adept in clinging to their dragons' backs with their knees, reins looped around the flier's neck while he was shooting.

  A Roche dragon veered away from Hal, but he launched a bolt, and hit the beast in its wing. It shrieked, and its rider fought the reins.

  Hal slid another bolt into his crossbow trough, and was just under the Roche's wing. He fired, this time at the flier, hit him in the leg. The man reflexively grabbed at the wound, and Hal fired again, this bolt taking the man in his chest.

  The black dragon, feeling no control at the reins, shrieked again, and flapped away to the west.

  Hal banked Storm sharply, looked down at disaster.

  Deraine dragons were falling, fleeing. He saw no more than half a dozen of his fliers still looking for a fight, dove down to support them.

  He put a bolt in a black dragon's neck, another in a second beast's tail, enough to make it coil in surprise, hurling its rider down toward Aude.

  A black dragon was flying at him from dead ahead, and Hal, dropping another bolt tray on to his crossbow, forced himself to hold his course.

  At the last minute, the black dragon turned aside, and Hal swore the flier was Yasin himself. He fired at the man, and missed.

  Then the blacks were gone, and it was time to limp home and count the losses.

  They were severe. Hal didn't know how many fliers the other flight had lost, but he'd lost four himself.

  One of them was Rai Garadice, who'd been seen trying to fight his crippled dragon across the river, into his lines.

  Hal and Sir Loren went back into the air, flying low along the river front, hoping and looking.

  It was just before dark when they saw the broken remains of a dragon, landed, and found Garadice's body a dozen yards away. It appeared as if he'd tried to jump for the leafy branches of a tree, hoping to cushion his fall. But he'd missed by feet.

  Another of the old guard was gone.

  It took Hal almost until midnight to find the right words for the letter to Garadice's father.

  They buried Rai, full ceremony, the next day.

  Then Hal found a horse, rode to command headquarters, and found Cantabri.

  He was less than properly military, angry and demanding, that he had less than half his fliers left, and no more than one spare dragon.

  As of this moment, he was standing down his flight, unable to accept any further assignments until his unit was properly rebuilt.

  Cantabri listened, didn't show signs of anger at the insubordination, said the matter would be taken care of.

  "When?" Hal half-snarled.

  "Before the week is out," Cantabri said.

  Hal stared at him, turned, remembered his courtesy, turned back, saluted the lord and stomped out.

  "Isn't it a bitch," Hal said, staring at the half-empty bottle of wine, "that not only are you the only one I can feel sorry for myself around, including Khiri, but I can't even let myself get drunk."

  Storm made what a serious dragon fanatic might have defined as a sympathetic noise, especially if no one considered his breath, palatable only to someone who likes the aroma of very dead sheep.

  "Troubles," Hal went on, leaning back against the dragon, and considering the empty, dark barn. "Not enough fliers, and the ones I've got are f
odder for that frigging Yasin. We're low on supplies, and nobody's answering Gart's requisitions for anything and everything from socks to crossbows.

  "Plus I can't find that… that person I'm looking for," he said, cautious even when alone.

  "I don't think we're fighting the Roche in the right way, but I'm just too damned tired keeping up with this minute's emergency to rethink matters.

  "If I could have a month or so to myself…" His voice trailed off, and he wished he could uncork and finish the bottle.

  "First, I'd go to Cayre a Carstares," he decided. "And I'd sleep for a week. Then I'd spend the next week in bed with Khiri. Then I'd eat for a week. Eat and drink.

  "After I got over my hangover, I'd sit down, in that tower, and get the mud out of my brain on some of those ideas I had that looked so promising."

  Storm made a noise.

  "All right," Hal allowed. "You can come too. And we'd go out flying every day, or, anyway, every other day. Flying west, and looking at some of your relatives as they sail toward us."

  Hal heard a flapping noise, looked out the open door of the barn, saw, not far distant, flying low, one of Yasin's black dragons.

  Storm made a keening sound.

  "You'd rather not go? You'd rather stay here and kill black dragons?"

  Hal pulled himself to his feet.

  "And me talking to dragons. There was more wine in that wine than I allowed for.

  "I'm for bed."

  At the far end of the barn, a canvas blocking a doorway moved, very slightly.

  Hal Kailas didn't notice.

  Cantabri's word was good. Three days after Hal had stormed his battlements, seven new dragon fliers appeared. They weren't nearly as trained as Hal's flight had been what seemed like a century ago. But they were present, didn't seem to have any significant flaws, and could be trained. Or else they'd die.

  "Now, yer see," Farren Mariah said to the seven replacements, "there's a gatillion an' three ways to fight a dragon.

  "And all of 'em's right, as long as it's you that comes home all heroic and shit, and not the Roche."

  "We don't need generalities," a dragon flier named Chincha said.

  "Hold on, woman," Mariah said. "You'll get statistics and such, if you want."

  Hal had happened by the open back door of the fliers' hut, heard Farren holding forth, listened, grinning.

  "We'll start-a-tart by comparin' our two grayt hee-roes, Lord Kailas, who I can call Hal but you can't until you've gotten your paws thorough blooded. The other is Sir Nanpean Tregony, who'll, thank you, prefer you use his title. Or you can simply call him a god.

  "He won't object't' that."

  "Clearly a friend of yours," Chincha said.

  Mariah turned serious.

  "I'll tell you someat that'll stand you in great standings as you wobble through thisyere life.

  "You don't got friends. Friends take yer heart with 'em when they die. Your friends are the people who can pull one of them friggin' black dragons off your arse, and who'll carry her, or his, end of a horrible dawn patrol wi'out snivelin' overmuch.

  "Anyways, to turn serious. You takes Lord Kailas for starters. Now, he ain't the best shot in th' world. Good enow, but he'll win no country rumpkin-bumpkin fairs for shootin'. Which is why he gets as close to his target as he can.

  "Ne'er shoot 'til you smells the reek of its breath, might be his motto in his grotto if he had a motto or a grotto.

  "So he's friends—if friends you can ever be—wi' his horrid beastie. And he uses th' dragon's flyin' to get right up a Roche's butt. You'll note he steers wi' his foots an knees as much as the reins, which gives him a better chance't' take aim. Not to mention hangin' on, since it's not considered respectickle to fall off yer mount while chasin' some other sod.

  "Also, he uses his wingmen, generally likes to have one't'either side, to keep th' Roche from tippytoein' up behint and arsassinatin' him, and in front to steer th' bad sorts into an intractabobble situation.

  "A nice thing, if you're one of those wot counts bodies, he'll share or even give up a win to you.

  "Now, Sir Nanpean, he's different. A dead shot. I mean that in earnest. He gets in 'til he's got a shot, and that's as he sees it, near or far, and then plonks 'em.

  "He don't care what he hits… Which brings up another matter about our Hal. He rather goes for the rider, not the dragon.

  "Got a soft spot for the beasties, he does.

  "Back to Sir Nanpean."

  Hal noted Farren's emphasis on the sir.

  "He don't have much use for a dragon. If he weren't scared of Lord Kailas finding him out, he'd prob'ly pack a whip.

  "I remember a flier, back in trainin', thought he was some kinda drover or shit, did that. Dragon went and killed him, it did.

  "Another thing about Sir Nanpean. He don't have use for wingmen, neither. He figures it's your place to help him make kills. Never'll be the day come when he shares credit."

  "What about you?" another replacement asked. "What's your secret, since you've been out for such a long time?"

  Hal could imagine Farren's sweet smile.

  "Why I gots none, other'n bein' a helladacious wizard on my mother's side, wit' charms and all kinds of shit. I just flies along, lookin' cute, and when somethin' moves, I shoot."

  "How many dragons have you killed?" Chincha asked skeptically.

  "Ours or theirs?"

  Hal buried laughter.

  "Dozens," Farren went on. "Hunnerds and hunnerds. Back of the Roche lines looks like a secret dragon graveyard."

  "Then why aren't you the darling of the taletellers?" Chincha asked.

  "That's a bit complicated," Farren went on. "Yer gots to start with me bein' the illygitymate daughter of King Asir, and—"

  Hal, not having time for the rest of the tale, went on about his business, his dark mood of the night before gone.

  * * *

  Now the war became static once again. But more men, horses, dragons died, on both sides, than ever before.

  There were more attacks against the walls of Aude, each time driven back. But each time, more of its defenders died.

  The city walls were pockmarked from the huge stones hurled by trebuchets, and unshriven and unburied bodies lay scattered across the barren landscape, the bloated bodies of horses and oxen among them.

  The soldiers were either entrenched or sheltered behind rocks, in gullies, folds in the ground. On the battlements of Aude were arrow-firing catapults, whose crews grew more and more deadly in their aim.

  There were demons brought forth and sent into battle by both sides. Sometimes they fought men, and the carnage was terrible, and sometimes each other. And sometimes the other side's magicians were quick enough, and the demons vanished harmlessly into the air. But not often.

  Neither Sagene's, Council of Barons nor King Asir would give up their foothold in Roche terrain, and Queen Norcia was only too aware if Aude fell and the River Comtal became an open waterway, her country was very much at risk.

  Hal took his dragons up over the city, against Yasin's black monsters day after day, trying to always choose the terms for combat: never less than three against one; never without the advantage of altitude; always with at least one other dragon flier in constant support.

  There were other Roche dragons in the air—evidently training the blacks was as hard as Garadice's father had said it would be.

  These other dragons Kailas wasn't as choosy about the fighting conditions for.

  But still, he lost fliers.

  Of the seven replacements, he lost four within two weeks. But the other three learned, and became as canny as the rest of the flight.

  Hal was amused to see the tall, blonde Chincha become more than friendly with the short, dark, stocky Farren Mariah. He said nothing, however, after the night Sir Nanpean made some crack, unheard by Kailas, about the woman, and Farren beat him so badly he couldn't fly for three days.

  Hal punished Mariah by making him fly Sir Nanpean's patrols in ad
dition to his own.

  Even though Hal refused to admit it, even to himself, a killing war began between him and Tregony. One day one would be up, the next the other.

  Since Kailas frequently forgot to put in a claim, or gave the kill to one of his fellow fliers to make, there was no question within the flight as to who was the real dragonmaster.

  It didn't matter to Hal. All he wanted to do was have more dead Roche dragon fliers than could be replaced.

  Very secretly he hoped one day to meet, in the air, the bastard who'd killed Saslic.

  That would be a victory he'd loudly claim.

  In the meantime, he concentrated on the hard targets—Yasin's black dragons. But they flew in close support of each other, and took a deal of killing.

  Then one day, Yasin's blacks vanished from the skies over Aude.

  They reappeared, two days following, along the River Comtal. Flying very low, in pairs, they attacked the small supply ships bringing replacements and materiel to the besiegers, tearing rigging, raining arrows down on helmsmen and boat commanders and, when they got a chance, ripping apart any unwary soldier or sailor.

  They also scouted for prepared ambushes, and forced Deraine to escort the boats with cavalry on the banks, which slowed progress.

  "We have new orders," Hal told his assembled fliers. "You won't be surprised.

  "We're to go after the black dragons, and at least make them stop harrying our ships."

  "Shows what happens," Sir Loren said, "when your flight is the best. You get sent to do the impossible and, by the way, don't get killed until you've done it."

  "Hell of a morale builder you are," Vad Feccia said.

  "If you can't stand the heat," Sir Nanpean put in, silkily.

  Feccia turned, glowered at Tregony. Hal lifted an eyebrow—he'd thought the two were the closest of—well, perhaps not friends, because he couldn't imagine either of them actually having a friend—but compatriots.

  "We'll do it in flights of four," he said. "Two pairs, the second pair back of the first by, say, a hundred yards or so.

  "If you spot a dragon, try to get height on him, and force him down into the water or riverbank. If you're seen by them first, and they've got height, get away from the river, and stay low. Maybe you can veer enough so the bastard that's diving on you'll eat rocks instead.