by Marc Secchia
Take wing! the Marshal thundered.
There was a slight pause, as if the Island drew breath or gasped in dread. Thick torrents of Night-Red Dragons suddenly spat out of the hole, thirty Dragons emerging every two seconds, their intervals so regimented that Silver suspected the Marshal’s exacting mental control of this process. In a touch over a minute, a thousand Dragons fanned out across the sky. Fourteen minutes later, the staging was complete with the heavier, armoured Dragons taking slightly longer to deploy.
Silver knew what this must look like to the Academy. Night-Reds hovered above Eridoon in a dense cloud two miles high and five wide. Dragon upon Dragon upon Dragon, gleaming in the ruddy light of the suns-set as though their scales and talons already dripped crimson with the blood of Humans. Of course, the timing was deliberate. Marshal Re’akka was not above relishing a dramatic touch–the better to scare his enemies witless. Silver supposed it must work, although there was not much response from the Dragons above the Academy. Why not? There was a tingling deep in his bones. This was a stratagem. The wily old Brown, Kassik, was up to something. But what?
Death to the enemies of true-fires! Re’akka’s bellow rolled over the Dragonwings.
On cue, most of Silver’s family launched into the warm, still evening, spearing in a single colourful line to the battle-front, the Reds lining up in front of their heavily-armoured shockwave, the Greens and Blues commanding the second wave and reserves.
Silver stood alone.
Shaking Jeradia Island with the massed thunder of their challenge, two thousand heavily armoured Night-Red Dragons stormed across the league separating Eridoon Island from the Academy and its defenders, now ascending to face the challengers.
The Silver Dragon’s hearts thundered in his throat, chest and stomach as the shockwave closed with the Academy’s defenders. With perfect synchronisation, they blasted the defenders with two thousand combined fireballs, lighting the Academy volcano as though a new sun had risen overhead, and the report of that first detonation rolled back like distant thunder to the Marshal’s awesome Dragon army. The defensive line folded and scattered; the Marshal’s force raised a deafening roar of approbation.
Silver was not convinced. As the Night-Reds dived over the rim-wall to rake the Academy’s defences with fire, he thought it was simple. Far too simple.
Chapter 31: Dragons, Attack!
KASSIK SCRUTINISED THE incoming Dragonwing from the upper slopes of Roost Mountain, saying quietly to Casitha, strapped into his saddle, “We’ve one chance at this trick.”
Beside him, Pip stood in her Onyx Dragon form, her talons unconsciously furrowing the rocky ground as Dragon Assassins occluded the roseate evening sky, a total eclipse of hope. To her right flank Chymasion stiffened, quivering perceptibly as he channelled the efforts of thirty Blue Dragons including his shell-mother Shimmerith through his unique augmentation ‘filters’, as he called them. Pip shored up his strength with her Onyx power, husbanding her own resources carefully–Kassik’s fire-snorting, talon-wagging orders. The Jade Dragon spared a tiny mental nod of thanks for her help. Pip only hoped this would be enough to protect that crazy-brave, fragile first line of defenders. The bait in the jaws of Kassik’s trap.
GRRAAARRRGGGHH!!
Flames exploded across her field of vision, causing Pip’s secondary nictitating eye-membranes to cycle perceptibly, dimming a potentially damaging flare. The huge wave of fire, comprised of bright Dragon flame mixed with yellow-hot lava, washed over and around the Academy Dragons, drizzling with deceptive, glowing gentleness over the outlying Academy buildings and field. Flames smouldered despite earlier efforts to damp everything down with water.
The defenders broke and fled, making convincing cries of alarm and distress. She knew how much argument that action had cost Kassik! A tidal wave of wrathful Night-Reds chased them down into the caldera.
The Brown waited till they swooped toward the buildings … and gave his signal.
At once, concealed entrances to artificial caverns and tunnels riddling the upper sixth of the rim-wall cracked open. Camouflage netting ripped away. One hundred and ten massive twenty-foot Dragon crossbows, a weapon borrowed from the legendary rebels of Merx, fired a snarl of metal-reinforced netting and grapnels attached to cable-hawsers over the enemy Dragonwing. Snap! Crack! Snarled, hundreds of Dragons fell or slewed into their fellows. Lighter crossbows and catapults fired point-blank into the mass, using shrapnel for shredding wings and six-foot metal bolts designed for penetrating Dragon hide or downing Dragonships. An indescribable bellowing rose from the chaos. Pip flinched. Mercy, oh …
Courage, little ones, growled Kassik. Hold firm. This is battle-reality. Your Silver spoke true, Pip. Let us pray his hearts know love’s true-fires … or that you can turn him. Ready?
A third round of shot and nets crashed into the massed Night-Reds.
With a mighty roar, Kassik the Brown launched into the air with his slim Dragon Rider on his back, backed up by four Jeradian Hammers manning mobile crossbow emplacements strapped to his saddle-harness.
Academy Dragons erupted out of the rim-wall caves and the upper echelons of Roost Mountain to fall upon the Marshal’s beleaguered advance force. Hundreds of Assassins were already grounded on the field, their wings helplessly snarled in netting or ropes, but more than half remained unscathed. The clash made Pip recoil a second time. Why was she chary now? She was Dragonkind! Yet the slaughter grieved and angered her. So unnecessary. So wasteful. Driven into the crucible of the Marshal’s overweening ambition, many Dragonkind would join the eternal fires this evening. Kassik’s forces pounded the stricken Dragon Assassins, picking first on their Wing-Commanders, then the thronging Dragons. Melees formed at the speed of thought, wheeling and snapping through the air. Catapults and crossbows picked individual targets. On the ground, dense wedges of Jeradian Hammers supported by Academy fledglings and the older Dragons raced across the field, finishing off fallen Night-Reds.
The volcano became a living deathtrap.
Pip tracked Shimmerith with her eyes. She felt and saw Chymasion reaching out to help his shell-mother as she danced gracefully through the fracas, her amplified powers allowing her to shoot twenty-foot bolts of ice right through Dragon scale or armour. Shimmerith picked off three Wing-Commanders, while Emblazon finished two. Kassik tangled with a huge Night-Red, forcing him down toward the beautiful green lake now dotted with struggling Dragons and limp carcasses, its waters laced with gold and crimson.
Yet the carnage was terrible to behold, the casualties on both sides multiplying at a dizzying rate. Everywhere Pip looked, the white-fires of her vision focussed through Chymasion’s unique sight seemed to weep golden Dragon blood. Rivers of blood. She could not know laughter here. Pip knew only the inner storm of Dragon hearts moved to weep for her world, as though Fra’anior himself wept through her and in her, for the diminution of his original creation.
Quick as a flash of lightning, Pip turned to Chymasion.
He began to say, You promised … but then he, and Arosia with him, bowed their heads as though the force of her heartache robbed them of any right of refusal.
I’m sorry, said Pip. She had to be a promise-breaker.
* * * *
An invisible paw punched the air out of Silver’s lungs. He whirled, as did the Marshal, staring from the Island’s elevation of a mile higher than the volcano’s rim as the battle over the Academy changed character. It subsided.
Pip! Three hearts leaped like ungainly fish within him. What had she done?
Second wave, ordered the Marshal. Burn them all!
Winds generated by Dragons’ wings rocked the island slightly as the five thousand proclaimed their battle-readiness, roaring like an angry volcano in full spate. The suns burned into the western horizon, yet from Silver’s perspective were almost completely obscured by the onslaught of sooty black wings upon that gleaming beauty. There was something fearfully awesome about their collective purpose, the way the great wings beat a
nd the spiky reptilian muzzles faced the gleaming light, some passing through the volcano’s long shadow, some burnished as coals glowing in a fire. The massed growling which seemed to feed on itself, amplified by the collective gathering of Dragon powers and fires in such an enormous battle group; the suns bowing away as though unable to bear the onslaught of such a surfeit of draconic majesty.
Come, shell-son. The Marshal beckoned imperiously with his wingtip. This is the hour of our victory. Let us crush the Onyx . It shall require but one fell strike. Then, these miserable specimens of Dragon excrement will bow before my mastery.
Silver beat his wings, rising into the last suns-set upon the Dragonkind.
* * * *
Staggering to her paws, Pip eyed the confusion with inordinate satisfaction and a headache so almighty she imagined Leandrial had just cuffed her around the earhole. Her inner ears rang with a celestial song–tinkling, soul-penetrating laughter? Hot, aromatic Dragon blood filled her mouth. She sensed the magic in her body adjusting, already redressing the Balance and healing, for she was hypersensitive to everything within and without her body in the wake of that Island-shivering Word of Command.
Be changed! She shivered. Even the thought-echo of a Word seemed to exert magical influence.
Beside her, Chymasion groaned as he pushed up off his knees. Pip’s gaze fell on Arosia, standing between the two Dragons, hands on hips in a pose copied straight off Mya’adara’s scrolleaf, slim, handsome and madder than a nest of hornets shaken and tossed to the ground. She was so angry, she could barely speak.
“You … promised! We all did!” Arosia yelled. “What the volcanic hells … what’s the matter with you, Pip? One simple order. One!” Abruptly she laughed, even as she rubbed her temples with a groan. “Blazon and Kassik are going to shred us. Well. I’ll just have to defend you two rascals.”
Chymasion vented a pained snort of mirth. “Thank you, noble Rider.”
Defend a Dragon? Pip tried not to let her silly grin loose to aggravate Arosia, but failed. “We changed the Balance, didn’t we, my friend?”
The girl thumped her on the flank with her fist. “You are trouble with a Dragon-sized ‘T-rune’ picked out in gold-plated calligraphic script, as our Yaethi would say. No. This is–”
“Magnificent!” shouted Yaethi, riding Arrabon out of a nearby cave-mouth. “Stupendous work, Pip and Chymasion. Arosia, no teasing a scholar about calligraphy. Or have you been taking trouble- provoking lessons from our Pip?”
Arosia blushed fiercely. “No!”
“Blues!” Yaethi yelled, helped along by a low growl from Arrabon in Dragonish. “Pay attention. Healing over here for these two.” Shading her eyes, she gazed up at Kassik rapidly briefing the massed Night-Reds, milling about above the Academy buildings, evidently confused. “You un-imprinted what, five hundred Dragons, Pip? Changed their minds? No, Night-Reds exist in a state of Imbalance and you just set the scales right. Clever little Dragoness.”
Fire leaked from Pip’s nostrils, along with a trickle of blood. She shivered. Just for a second then, her Dragon brain had been roaring, ‘Kill the insolent Human,’ while her Human-brain shrilled a warning at this bloodthirstiness …
“Second attack-wave incoming,” said Chymasion. “Time to get under cover, Pip.”
Up above, Kassik said something to Casitha, who quickly pulled out two white signal flags and waved them in a wide circle around her head. Up on the rim-wall, Pip saw the signal repeated in five places.
Oh … mercy. If mercy existed on a battlefield littered with the dead and dying, and too many wounded Dragons to count.
The Marshal intended to finish them quickly. And now, she must face Silver.
A rushing of wind passed over the Academy. The skies darkened with draconic wings. There was a moment’s profound stillness, as though the world held its breath. Then, the hammer fell. Clouds of Dragons rained fire upon the defenders, blasting the rim-walls with such sustained aggression that it seemed to Pip that the volcano had erupted. Waves of searing heat rolled over the battlefield, shimmering and smoking. Sheets of flame roared into the sky, but the Dragons simply tore through, bathing in the conflagration, growling and snapping as they tangled with their adversaries. The awesome aerial bombardment shook the volcano concussively, echo building upon echo in that enclosed space, until the very Island-World seemed to be roaring in outrage at the slaughter developing over the Academy.
Yet she had eyes for one Dragon alone–for the Marshal, winging slowly and majestically into a position from which he could personally oversee the battle. She shifted her gaze fractionally to Silver, following meekly in his shell-father’s wake. How well he served that monster! How the son nosed his heels like a spineless lap-dog!
By now, the twin suns had dipped beneath the horizon, thus as the Marshal spiralled lazily upward to a height of four miles above the volcano, he became the lone actor on a golden stage, furnace-gilded to a resplendent sheen.
He gathers his power, said Chymasion. Through the Jade Dragon’s eyes, Pip saw feathery tendrils of fire reaching into the Marshal’s being from the suns and the skies and the earth and most especially, thick and beautiful, from the First Egg itself. Yet his power was not white-fires. As the magic coalesced in his breast it changed character, becoming dark and malign–a different darkness to an Onyx power, Pip realised, although she did not understand it. His wingtips flicked.
Here it came.
* * * *
Watching his shell-father narrowly, Silver was perfectly poised to anticipate his next move.
Shield me, Silver, ordered Re’akka. Add your strength to mine.
There was rage in his hearts. Anguish. The certainty that this special attack of his shell-father’s, the cold fireball which had so ravaged fortresses and cities, would sound the death-knell for all within the Academy. Yet Fra’anior had ordered him to stand firm, to withhold his paw when this moment came rather than striking prematurely. What did the Ancient Black Dragon intend, bidding him to strike Pip with all his strength? Silver did not understand. Twice already, he had tried to kill her. She would not stand for a third.
Ablaze with power, Re’akka dove.
Already, the five thousand-strong Dragonwing had silenced Kassik’s cunningly-placed defences. The Academy Dragons were scattered and dismayed, powerless to intervene–but they tried, bravely fluttering up in their droves to attempt to stop or sway the Marshal’s course. Silver slapped them aside with a cone-shaped shield as he dove parallel to his father and half a Dragon’s-length behind, protecting them both.
The Marshal’s voice rose, clearing their path of Night-Reds.
One mile. One and a half. The volcano blurred closer. Open magma cracks snaked along the caldera floor in places. The beautiful green lake beckoned him, the lake into which Pip had dumped him after crushing his attempted usurpation of the Academy and all its Dragons. That would have been a coup worthy of the son of a Herimor Marshal. Instead, it had provided the impetus for a meeting of souls which had rocked Silver’s life like storms battering the floating Island-flotillas of his native Herimor. Nor would he forget Telisia’s attempted assassination of Pip. The disbelief in her eyes as a crossbow bolt punched right through her body.
Now he would do worse.
Wind rushed over his scales, hot and foetid with the stench of destruction. Burning flesh. Charred buildings and vegetation. Soot and grit tingling in his nostrils. Silver’s hearts sang wild battle-Dragonsong, the bloodthirsty rage that primed his body, magic and reactions for the speed and ferocity of all-out Dragon warfare. Rend. Bite. Slay! These words were the trumpet-blasts of his hearts.
Yet he watched, and saw a petite black form rising through the melting-away mass of Night-Red and Academy Dragons to oppose them. Alone she came, of all the thousands of Dragons inside the volcano.
He saluted her courage. Pip! Dark Dragoness, arise!
Ay, Dragons of both sides instinctively shied away as Re’akka began to spin in his dive, the magic stea
ming coldly off his scales to gather around him and in his wake in a coruscating spiral, easily visible to Dragon sight. The cold his father generated was immense, a gripping, shattering chill that made Silver wonder how he even managed to fly in its grip. A low humming began in his body, a sonic vibration slowly climbing through the register. Silver pushed his power at the White Shapeshifter, who accepted it with a low chuckle.
Re’akka roared, Ay, you would face this? Then be it on your head, Dragoness!
The Pygmy Dragoness hovered a half-mile above the Academy buildings, looking up as though measuring the Marshal’s assault, undaunted. Silver narrowed his eyes. She was … humming, too? He saw the sound-waves fluctuating about her body. Her power was a dark, fantastically compressed nucleus, as though a star had turned its own existence inside out to expose the unimaginably dense core matter to an alert Dragon’s scrutiny.
The unstoppable force. The immovable obstruction.
Knowing crammed into Silver’s mind. Fra’anior was right. He must change the Balance. Much as it made his Dragon hearts convulse in pain, he must add to his father’s attack.
Silver power flared. Blue fire hissed from his father’s throat in a long streamer that billowed before him with the force of his charge, centring unerringly on the Onyx Dragoness’ upturned nose. The magical charge Re’akka generated was so immense that lightning began to spit around them, tearing the very fabric of the darkening evening air, lighting the tails, hindquarters and wings of the Dragons fleeing the inevitable destruction. An insane howling built in Re’akka’s throat. The legendary power called Shivers, Silver remembered, unable to tear his gaze off his unflinching, immobile girlfriend.
Why, Fra’anior?
As the blue-white thunderbolt capped with silver fire reached her, Pip rose in a whirl of black wings as if to greet their attack, making a circling gesture of her paws.
