by Chris Bunch
“I know it wouldn’t,” Sir Loren said. “I’ve seen cavalry try to shoot a-horseback, and the results are miserable.”
Cantabri stood, frowning in thought.
“Kailas, stay after. We need to discuss this matter.”
“Yessir.”
“I don’t know,” Cantabri mused, “whether having you aboard is a bit of luck or not. You had success in killing dragon fliers or dragons, which I heartily approve of.
“I maintain this war will only be won when the Roche get tired of being killed, and either defang or depose Queen Norcia. All else is wishful thinking.
“So you and I agree on purpose. The question is, can you come up with any scheme to match our present circumstance, without crossbowmen? Which is why I wondered about my real luck in having you aboard.”
Hal thought of mentioning his crossbow a-building, still weeks from readiness, but determined to say nothing, since he had no idea whether his scheme would work. But perhaps his idea could be modified slightly, at least for this operation.
“Possibly, sir,” Hal said. “Is there any way we can get our hands on some crossbows? There’s eight of us fliers . . . maybe forty bows, and a thousand bolts?”
Cantabri considered.
“I can detach one of the corvettes, perhaps with one of Limingo’s aides, to one of the west coast fishing ports. Maybe he can contact one of our armories and have the necessary tools waiting here . . . in Deraine’s north.”
“Not good enough, sir,” Hal said. “We’ll need time to practice.”
“I do not like changing a plan,” Cantabri said. “But there’s no way around it, I suppose, if we wish to have weapons to face the Roche fliers. We’ll have to send the corvette, then lay off that port until the crossbows appear.
“That is, if the matter can be arranged at all.”
“Frigging dragons don’t get seasick,” Saslic moaned.
“Guess not,” Hal agreed. The wind had freshened, and the waves crashed over the bows of the Adventurer.
“But I do, godsdammit,” Saslic said, and bent over the railing once more.
Farren, who was distinctly greenish, looked away from her.
“This is the doom,” he muttered. “To be sick, sicker, an’ then freeze, an be et by black dragons.
“I don’t like this even a bit. I’ve got plans for after the war, I do.”
Saslic turned.
“Don’t fall in love with them,” she said, her voice harsh. “There won’t be any after the war for a dragon flier.”
The corvette was sent off to a medium-sized trading port, and the other ships sailed to and fro, well out of sight of land, away from the chart-marked trading routes and fishing grounds, waiting.
“Now, the question will be,” Sir Bab mused to Hal, “how many crossbows will we get?”
“We asked for forty, correct, sir?”
“Kailas, you might have been in the army for a time, and fancy yourself an old soldier. But there are things still for you to learn.”
“Not sure I want to learn them, sir.”
“Don’t think, Serjeant, you’ll be able to keep that nice civilian core you had before the war started, and when peace breaks out, you’ll be able to drop right back to doing whatever it was you were before being called to the colors.”
“I wasn’t called, sir, but taken. But you were teaching me about crossbows.”
“No. I was teaching you about the army and numbers. If you want, say, forty of anything, ask for 120. They’ll look at your requisition, and find reasons why of course you can’t get what you thought you needed.
“So, if we’re lucky, we get eighty.
“If we’re lucky.”
Three days later, the corvette returned with sixty crossbows, of which at least half were in sad shape. Fortunately Limingo’s aide had looked at them, realized their condition, and bought skeins for bowstrings and wood to repair the prods. There were enough peacetime carpenters among the crew and soldiery to be put to repair work.
With the other crossbows, Hal and a grizzled infantry serjeant set to, training the fliers how to shoot.
Sir Loren and Saslic became experts. Hal wasn’t surprised—Loren was instantly good at anything he undertook, and Hal had learned years ago that women were, generally, better than men with arms, once they decided not to listen to the railings from males.
Farren was an acceptable marksman, which he said, with a shrug, didn’t bother him, since “I don’t much like the idea of killin’ dragons, ’less they’re tryin’ to fang me, so I’ll just have to fly closer an’ shoot straighter at their riders.” He nudged Hal. “Or get the Master Murderer here to get them for me.”
Of the four fliers from the other flight, one was a decent shot, although he was hardly an eager warrior. Another was zealous enough, but was lucky to be able to hit the ship’s side, let alone the target pinned to it. The other two were sullen, not caring about much of anything. Hal decided Sir Bab had been right—they’d been stuck with the other unit’s cheese dongs.
They continued practicing while the ships sailed steadily north. Sir Bab didn’t want any dragons flown, so the handlers and fliers were hard put to keep their mounts happy in their cages, eager as always to get away from the earth and into their natural element.
“It’ll come, soon enough,” Hal told his monster, while the beast grunted contentedly, munching on a piglet Kailas had tossed into its cage.
“There’ll be one way to tell if we’re lucky,” Sir Bab told Hal. The two had gotten in the habit of exercising on the ship’s low poop after evening meal then, when Hal had been worn out by Cantabri’s grind, to lean on the stern rail, cooling off in the chill, near-arctic wind, and talk of most anything.
Cantabri was reluctant to talk of before the war, but Hal had learned he was married, had two children and had been a King’s Advocate, specializing in land claims.
“A good way to get rich,” he told Hal. “Or just make enemies if you’re stupid enough, as I was, to stand against the rich when they try to grab some peasant’s holdings.”
Then, one night, he’d brought up luck.
“What’s the way, sir?” Hal asked. “When we’re sitting in some bar in Rozen with all our fingers and toes and kits swarming around us like we’re their fathers?”
“That’s one,” Cantabri said. “Another one is if we don’t encounter a Roche flier named Yasin. A nobleman, with a brother who’s supposedly mounting Queen Norcia. He’s—”
“I know him, sir,” Hal said. “Ran into him before the war, when he had a flying show.”
“I hope he was luckier for you than me,” Cantabri said. He touched the livid scar on his face. “His damned dragons pointed me out to some heavy cavalrymen when I was wandering around behind their lines one time, just to see what I could see.
“Another time I was afoot, raiding a supply column, and his beasts caught me out and tore into my men. They weren’t as tough as I’d thought, and broke.
“Dragons have no trouble taking men from behind, you know.”
“I know,” Hal said.
“The first time I noted the black bannerlet he had tied to his dragon’s neck spikes. All of his fliers use that as a common emblem, I’ve been told, though only his has golden fringing. The second time, the same, and there was one more time when he, or at least some of his men, saw me on a diversion. Didn’t lose anybody, I’m glad to say, but we had to abort and skit back to our own lines before we got trapped.
“So I’m no fan of this Ky Yasin.
“I heard he’d moved north, to Paestum, and hope to hell the bastard—or whatever magicians he’s got working for him—hasn’t scented us out.
“I was told by one of the First Army’s intelligence sorts he—and his dragons—have become some sort of a fire brigade, sent wherever there’s trouble along the front.
“He also told me this Yasin was the one trying to train black dragons—I was told they’re supposedly untrainable, implacable enemies of man—and
having some success, which would explain why the Roche are capturing the monsters up on Black Island.
“Kailas, there are some people who scare me, and he’s one of them.”
There was a long silence, then: “If I were superstitious, I’d fear the man carries my doom.”
Again, stillness, then Cantabri laughed harshly, without humor.
“Talking like this is why soldiers should never be given time to themselves. They’re liable to try to teach themselves how to think, and all they manage is brooding.
“Night, Kailas.”
And he went to a companionway to his cabin.
Hal lingered on for a few minutes, thinking. How many million men under arms? And this damned Yasin kept cropping up.
At least, Kailas thought, he hadn’t encountered Yasin in the air. So far.
And if he were truly learning to ride black dragons, from all that Hal had heard, he certainly didn’t want to.
16
They’d been almost three weeks at sea, a few days to the fishing port, and a week waiting for the crossbows, then on north, when Hal went to Sir Bab, and told him the dragons had to be flown. If they were mewed up all the way to Black Island, they’d be lucky to be able to do more than flounder about in the air.
“You have your soldiers exercising,” he pointed out. “Dragons are no different.”
Cantabri didn’t argue, just told Hal not to fly farther north than the ships, for fear of being seen. And if they were sighted by any other dragon riders, they could assume they were Roche.
But Hal wasn’t quite ready to put his monster into the air. For openers, he had no idea on how to navigate over water, and the constantly changing weather could easily confuse a flier, and lose him in the sea mist.
He went to the Adventurer’s navigator, and asked for help.
The officer showed him astrolabe and chronometer, charts, and the rest of the apparatus he used to find their position. Hal had a bit of trouble envisioning himself standing on the back of his dragon, twiddling dials, a chart braced under one foot, and the chronometer hanging on a chain around his neck.
No.
Saslic said she was willing to take a chance, which made Hal think even harder.
He had an idea, then, and went to Limingo the magician.
“I need a spell that will let me find this ship, no matter what the weather,” he said. “A spell that you could lay on all of us.”
The magician thought, clucking his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
“An attraction,” he said. “For what? Canvas? Ropes? Other dragons? No. Those, especially as we close on Black Island, might lead you into the heart of the enemy.”
“What about an aversion spell?” Hal asked.
“To what?”
“Salt beef might do,” Hal said, thinking with a shudder of the barrels of meat that’d been boiled, then kept in salty water. Farren had spoken for them all when he said, “This’d be enow to turn me vegetarian. No wonder the poor friggin’ sailors spend so much time buggerin’ each other. On’y pleasure life gives ’em at sea.”
Limingo laughed, said that would certainly be an easy spell to build, and one that would surely take. He wanted an hour to prepare it, asked Hal to have all eight fliers in his cabin then.
The magician’s spacious cabin had its furniture pushed back against the bulkheads. Eight small braziers were set in twin arrows, both pointing to a hunk of salt beef. Around it, semi-circles in various colored chalks were drawn, and in each a symbol or letter of a tongue known to none of the fliers.
Farren whispered that if “any of them letters require speakint, I’ll never have a tongue snaky enough, despite what m’lady friends’ve said.”
Saslic jabbed him in the ribs, told him to shut up.
Limingo, flanked by his acolytes, explained what Hal had wanted, and what they’d come up with.
“Then I bethought myself a bit,” he went on. “An absolute aversion to salt beef, natural though it would be, might spell starvation while we’re still aboard. So rather than impregnate you all with this counterspell, we’ll give each of you an amulet.
“You can see them on the floor, next to that slab of what’s laughingly called beef, which I’ve linked to the meat aboard this ship. I’ll enchant them, and when you wish to know where this ship is, stroke your amulet, think of beef, and you’ll immediately know which way to turn your dragon.
“Now, each of you come forward, and take an amulet.”
“Strokin’ m’amulet, eh?” Farren whispered. “I thought you got toss’t out of the army for strokin’ it too much.”
This time, Hal was the one to kick him.
The amulets were tiny ovals of a variegated brown, each with a silver ring around it and mounting for chain or thong. Hal wondered how Limingo had been able to make these charms in such short order, decided he must have a pack somewhere, ready for various ensorcellments.
“My assistants are now putting various, efficacious herbs on the fire—adders tongue, hellebore, purslane, spurge. We ourselves are chewing bits of clove against the spell, since we don’t wish to have it take root among us.”
Evil-smelling smoke boiled that might have been pleasant if only one herb at a time was being burnt.
“Take your talisman in your right hand,” Limingo went on. “Touch it to your heart, then hold it out toward me.”
The fliers obeyed. Limingo began chanting:Beef of old
Covered with mold
We shun thee yet
Your odor set
We turn away
Our stomachs at bay
Protect us all
From your horrid pall.
He then chanted, in a monotone, words in an unknown language, nodded at his assistants, who capped the braziers, just as Hal was about to break into uncontrollable coughing.
Another assistant opened a vast port onto the seething ocean at the ship’s stern, and the chill wind quickly cleared the smoke out.
“I never thought,” Sir Loren said, “having a strong stomach is a perquisite for wizardry.”
Limingo heard him, grinned.
“It is an absolute necessity. I recall the first five years of my apprenticeship as being mostly nausea. I suppose that kept my master’s expenses for his larder down, though.
“Now, all of you, try your amulets out.”
Hal touched his, thought of salt beef, and instantly did not want to go in three directions. He asked Limingo about it, who had him indicate those directions.
“Very good,” he said. “One aversion, of course, is to that bit of beef on the deck there. The other would be to the hold where the provisions are kept. And the third would be to the galley, which suggests what we’re having for the evening meal.
“All of you? Did you feel the same?”
All did, but two had only a single response.
“Good enough,” Limingo said. “Each of you has his—or her, pardon milady—personal compass.
“So you can go flying now . . . and be content you’ll be back aboard before the cooks finish boiling our meal into submission.”
They started for the dragon deck.
Saslic noticed Farren Mariah had a long face. “’Smatter, small one? You don’t want to eat some fog?”
“’Tisn’t that,” Mariah said. “Just realizin’ what small beer I’d be as a wizard. Not only havin’ to pack-sack all that gear, and learn all kind of tongues, none of which anyone without a split tongue could ever speak aloud, but havin’ such pretty, pretty assistants.
“Not my cut of beef at all. Pardonin’ the expression.”
Hal and the others took their dragons high, circling in the sheer joy of flying after so long, swooping, making mock attacks on each other.
As the sun sank and it grew colder, the ship’s warmth called, and, one by one, they circled back to the Adventurer and its salt beef.
“That incantation Limingo was saying,” Saslic said to Farren as they groomed their dragons. “It was damned poor po
etry.”
“’Twas,” Mariah agreed.
“Since you’re supposed to have some talents as a witch, Farren,” she asked, “does it matter how good your poems are? Do demons—or whoever helps magic work out—like good poetry, or crappy stuff, like soldiers go for?”
“Don’t seem t’ matter,” Farren said. “M’ gran’sire said it just focused the mind an’ will on the spell.”
“So a magician could be going doobly, doobly, doobly, and it’d have the same effect?”
“Nope,” Farren said. “Best if you’ve got to slave some, writin’ the chant, and then, sayin’ it, keeps you payin’ attention.”
“And if you don’t pay attention,” Hal asked from his cage, “the spell won’t work, right?”
“Mayhap,” Farren said. “Or a demon eats you.”
“There goes one of my choices for an after-war career,” Hal said firmly.
Hal ordered all dragons to have their carapace scales pierced and smallish hooks installed that he’d had the ship’s artificer make, patterned after the pelican hooks used in the rigging. The dragons seemed to have no feelings in their scales, save where they were attached to the beast’s skin, and so did no more than growl when the handlers were at work with their bow-drills.
He assembled the dragon riders, gave instructions, and issued two crossbows and four bolts to each rider. The bolts were colored for each rider.
A small raft was tossed overboard from the Adventurer, with a block of wood covered with bright cloths in its center and a long towrope connecting it to the ship.
Each dragon rider flew off, then assembled, in a line, behind Hal.
In turn, each dragon swooped on the raft and its rider fired at the block, climbed away while the rider rehung his first crossbow and prepared the second. Four passes per dragon, which took almost three hours as riders aimed, lost their aim, pulled away to try again, and then dragons were landed, and the raft dragged aboard.
