by Mark Robson
‘Fat chance of that!’ he muttered. ‘The others are two continents away trying to coax a shred of bravery out of Nolita.’
For a moment he wondered how they were doing. The idea that Nolita might succeed in obtaining an orb while he faced failure did not bear thinking about. A sick feeling settled in the pit of his stomach.
No, he thought. Don’t even go there! Segun be damned! I’ll not give up so easily. There has to be a way out of here. There has to. It’s just a matter of finding it.
Chapter Nine
Like a Dark Angel
‘Is it dusk, or nearly dawn, Ra?’ Elian asked as he shook off the effects of the twisting wrench of emergence into the other world.
‘Nearly dawn,’ she answered immediately. ‘But I’m not sure whether that’s good, or bad.’
‘It’s a good thing, isn’t it?’ Elian said, confused by her response. ‘The less time we spend in this world, the better.’
‘You are right, Elian,’ Aurora said, her tone sounding tired. ‘But it means I have to make another gateway very soon and I will hardly have had time to recover from forming this one. You know how tiring it is. I’m sure you can feel it through the bond by now.’
He could. Aurora’s fatigue was not as deep as it had been during their recent journey to Racafi, but she was always tired immediately after forming a gateway. It was clear that there was an optimum time between jumps that allowed her a full recovery. Unless they waited another whole day for her to get her inner strength back, she would have to draw deep on her reserves to get them back to Areth.
‘Will you be all right?’ He asked the question, but he instinctively knew her answer before she replied.
‘Yes, Elian. I’ll be fine. I’ll be tired again for a while, but I will recover. I’m just not used to this. I’ve already formed more gateways since meeting you than I have in the rest of my life.’ She paused a moment then said, ‘That’s strange! It’s him again.’
‘Him? Who?’ Elian asked. ‘The man in the flying machine, you mean? Where?’
‘Below us,’ she answered. ‘It looks as if he’s going to land. He’s nervous. I sense that what he’s about to do is very dangerous. Ah! It appears we have emerged further east than before. We are deep into territory belonging to the man’s adversaries.’
‘Then what in Areth does he think he’s doing landing here?’ Elian exclaimed aloud. ‘Is he trying to get himself killed?’
‘On the contrary, Elian,’ Aurora replied. ‘He’s trying to save a compatriot. I can dimly sense his thoughts. He is here to recover one of his own people, but he’s flying into a trap.’
‘A trap? What sort of trap?’
‘There are many men hidden in the bushes along the edge of the field he is descending towards. They are waiting for him.’
Elian leaned first to his left and then his right, trying to see the area Aurora was talking about. He could just about make out the flying machine below them, circling a large field. The field had a thick hedge around it, studded with many large trees. The light was too poor to see more detail.
‘There is a man standing in the field waving to our flying friend, deliberately drawing him down, but he is also an enemy. I can sense the man he is looking for. He is scared and hiding in a ditch some distance away.’
Elian’s mind raced. The same man again. They had seen him during both their first visit to this world, and again during their second, when he had aided them against a group of hostile flying machines. This had gone way beyond coincidence. The man’s destiny must be tied with theirs, or why did they keep emerging near him? Unless they talked to him, they were unlikely to ever discover the reason. They could not let him be killed by this trap. The problem was: if they intervened this time, they would be seen by lots of people. What should they do?
Special Ops – the mission title covered a multitude of possibilities, but for Jack this had to be the worst. Picking up a member of the Secret Service from deep within enemy territory was fraught with danger. Just getting to the rendezvous required flying across enemy lines with no cover, navigating in the dark to a specific point, coping with ground fire and the possibility of enemy fighters without the benefit of a gunner in the front seat. Assuming he overcame these obstacles, and that the spy actually made it to the rendezvous point, there were a whole string of new problems to overcome to get home safely again. It was hardly a plum job.
Jack never liked getting up early, and missions didn’t get much earlier than this. Getting into the cockpit feeling grumpy was never a recipe for success, but he had done his best to shake off his bad mood.
The particularly fierce anti-aircraft fire as he crossed the lines earlier had helped him regain his focus. Why pilots had nicknamed anti-aircraft fire ‘Archie’ was beyond him. He supposed it was easier for some to face their fear by laughing at it. By giving something so terrifying a friendly name, it made talking about it easier. Flying through Archie was never fun, but today the gunners seemed to have homed in on him much more quickly than usual. Explosions rocked his aircraft with alarming proximity. Some small shrapnel holes appeared in the wings, but nothing serious enough to worry Jack unduly.
As per the briefing, he found and followed the narrow grey road eastwards until it split. The expected railway line was visible to the right and the two small villages to his left. He followed the left fork of the road and tracked it until he reached a point where he was directly between two villages -one visible beyond each wingtip. The field to the left of the road was the pick-up point. This was the place. In the dim light it seemed the right shape.
Looking down he spotted a figure waving enthusiastically. Jack felt his heart begin to race. On his previous two such missions his contact had failed to show up. He had never been told why, but he could guess. The reason was not pretty. Spies were shown no mercy, and he knew that if he were caught retrieving this one, he would share the same fate.
These undercover guys are either incredibly brave or totally without sense, he thought. Suddenly another movement caught his eye. An enemy patrol was closing in on the spy’s position. Jack could see the soldiers a couple of fields away, and more were moving along the road. If he was going to make the pick-up, he would have to be quick. He scanned the field again. There was no time for a thorough sweep. The enemy often set traps in known pick-up points. They dug trenches in the middle of fields and camouflaged them so that aircraft crashed into them on landing, or they strung wires across fields with similar results. He would have to risk it. There was no time for a close fly-by. With gritted teeth, he dipped the nose of the twin-seat FE2b into a descending turn.
‘Let’s get as close as we can, Jack my boy,’ he muttered to himself. ‘No point in making him run any further than he has to.’
The engine spluttered and popped at idle as he glided around the turn. He gave it a little burst of power as he levelled the wings, just to make sure it would respond. The throaty roar it gave as he momentarily pushed forwards the throttle was heart-warming, but it put him a little above the ideal approach path.
‘A touch of side-slip,’ he muttered, dipping the left wing and increasing his rate of descent by kicking the rudder to the right. ‘Perfect!’ He uncrossed the controls as he regained the perfect approach angle and eased the aircraft down until he was all but skimming the grass. Gently easing up the nose he allowed the wheels to gradually sink onto the surface with barely the whisper of a kiss. It was one of the best landings he had done in a while.
The surface was bumpy, but not terribly so. He trundled towards the waiting man, decelerating all the way. The shadowy figure had his hands up, as was the friendly protocol, but as Jack approached all hell broke loose. The spy took a spectacular dive to the ground even as the shadow of another figure seemed to fly down and hover next to him, hanging in the sky above him like a dark angel. At that same moment a barrage of rifle fire opened up from the hedgerow beyond.
‘Bloody hell!’ Jack swore. ‘Come on! Get up! Get up! Over here – quick
ly!’
The man did not move. Either he was dead, injured, or he was too scared to move. It took a moment for Jack to realise that despite the sound and multiple flashes of gunfire, the air was not full of bullets. Either the enemy are lousy shots, or they’re not shooting at me, he thought. As it turned out, neither assumption was correct. The hovering figure suddenly leaped down to earth and ran towards him. It took a moment for him to realise that it was a girl.
‘What the . . .’
‘Get ready to go!’ she yelled. ‘The man on the ground is not the person you’re looking for. My friend has found your ally and is bringing him for you now. He was hiding not far from here. That man back there is your enemy,’ she added, pointing to the man sprawled on the ground behind her.
Her accent was strange, but she spoke in English. Despite understanding her warning, Jack could make little sense of what was going on. A sudden whoosh of air drew his attention upwards. A great golden dragon swooped out of the dark blue sky and dropped a man onto the grass next to his aircraft. The man rolled over a couple of times and then sprang to his feet. He looked around, wild-eyed and poised to run. The dragon and rider did not stop. They powered back up into the pre-dawn sky.
It’s the flying creatures! Jack thought, unwilling to label the creature with its proper name, as he was not sure he really believed his eyes. They’re here again. But why? And where do they come from that they can appear so suddenly?
Whatever the girl had flown down on was completely invisible, yet the one that had dropped the spy showed no sign of disappearing. The horizon to the east was growing pale. Dawn was approaching fast. There was no time for speculation. He needed to get airborne and back across into friendly territory before the enemy fighters launched in force.
‘Follow me back to my base,’ Jack called out to the girl. ‘I want to talk with you – thank you for your help. Do you understand me?’
‘We can’t,’ she answered, looking anxiously eastwards towards the approaching dawn. ‘There’s no time. Take your friend and go! Go! Hurry! My dragon is taking a lot of hits from those foul weapons to shield you.’
So they are dragons, Jack thought. I’m not going mad.
The girl turned and leaped up into the air where she seemed to stick to and climb what appeared to be some sort of invisible staircase. A blast of fire lit the sky over the hedgerow where the enemy were concealed and another dragon swooped past. The fire from the dragon did not touch the hedgerow, but the rifle fire died to a brief shocked silence before resuming, this time directed at the departing dragon.
‘GO!’ she repeated over her shoulder again, anger lending her voice extra volume.
‘You heard the girl!’ Jack yelled at the spy, who was now staring with open-mouthed amazement at the departing silhouette. ‘Come on, man! Get in! Don’t ask questions. I’ve got no answers.’
The man scrambled into the front cockpit and began fumbling with the belts. Jack didn’t wait. He rammed the throttle forwards and began his take-off run. To his surprise the girl, now lying horizontal and still hanging in midair, matched his speed across the field next to him. He could see her out of the corner of his eye, maintaining position between him and the flashing muzzles of the enemy weapons. There was something else too. A sort of blurring under her body that nagged at his peripheral vision.
Jack knew better than to get distracted during a take-off run. Flying machines had a nasty habit of killing those who did not maintain their focus. He could no longer hear the reports of the enemy rifles above the roar of his engine, but he did not doubt he was still under fire. A sudden flare of dazzling bright light from behind him took Jack totally by surprise. It was like nothing he had ever experienced before. No man-made flare was that bright. For a moment it illuminated the countryside around his aircraft more clearly than full daylight and then it was gone, leaving him very glad that he had been facing away from the source. Even looking away from it there were after-effects. Greeny-yellow reflection spots danced before his eyes, making it difficult to see his instruments.
‘Just concentrate on flying west,’ he told himself. ‘You won’t go far wrong doing that.’
The seconds ticked by as he continued to climb. He squinted at the altimeter – four hundred feet and rising. The airspeed was stable. He was safely away from the ground. He looked down to his left and could see the road he had followed on his way into enemy territory snaking away to the south of his current course. He eased the aircraft left a few degrees to follow it before looking around to see where the girl was now. She was nowhere to be seen. Jack craned his neck, scanning the sky around him for any sign of movement. There was none.
The temptation was too great. He had to make one quick turn to see if he could catch another glimpse of her. Dipping the left wing slightly into a gentle climbing turn, he twisted as far as he could in order to scan the sky to the east. His immediate reward was a fantastic view of the first diamond rays of the sun, as it peeked its fiery head over the horizon. But there was something else as well: a strange swirling vortex like the one he had seen the first time he saw the dragons. It was behind him and lower, with a diameter barely larger than the dragons’ wingspans, yet there they were – two, no, three of them. The dragons were heading straight for the vortex. Then they were gone. Just like that. The vortex collapsed in on itself the instant the final dragon entered, leaving no trace of their existence. How did they do that and where did they go? he wondered.
One look at the expression on the spy’s face in the front cockpit and Jack knew for certain that he was not delusional. The dragons were real. It was a relief. With someone else to back up his account, the senior officers might believe him this time. The man was not really dressed for high altitude flying, but Jack had no intention of risking the agent’s life by flirting with ground fire. By flying higher they risked being engaged by enemy aircraft, but so long as they were quick about getting back across the lines . . .
‘Oh, Lord!’ he whispered suddenly, as realisation struck. ‘How the devil am I going to write up this jaunt?’
Chapter Ten
A Brief Respite
As they emerged into a deep valley in the midst of the mountain range, Elian was bathed in a sense of elation. He felt like a hero. They had saved the man in his flying machine from his enemies again, and they had done so as a team effort. If we can work together like that for the rest of the quest, then our chances of success have got to improve, he thought.
The only dampener to his feeling of triumph was the wave of fatigue he felt through his bond with Aurora. She was exhausted, and flying up here in the mountains would tax her further.
‘Looking at the sun, I’d say it’s about late morning, Ra,’ he said. ‘I sort of expected you to get us here as soon after we left Orupee as possible. Is it the same day, or have we lost more time?’
‘We arrived here no more than a few heartbeats after leaving Orupee, Elian,’ she replied. ‘I was most careful about that. But you must remember that we have travelled a long way east in the instant we were away. The sun rises much earlier here.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Elian said, feeling foolish. ‘Thanks, then . . . um, let’s see if we can find a suitable place to land,’ he continued quickly. ‘I can feel how tired you are. You need a rest after that effort. We’ve got plenty of time to find the night dragon enclave before nightfall.’
‘A rest would be welcome,’ Aurora replied. ‘I shall tell the others and we will start looking for a good place.’
The mountains of Isaa were very different from those they had seen in Central Orupee and Northern Cemaria. There was a sense of remoteness about them unlike anything Elian had ever experienced. The range appeared vast and Elian could feel by the shortness of his breath that even though they were in a valley, they were flying much higher than he was used to. The white caps of the mountaintops extended a long way down from the peaks despite it being summer.
Gods, those peaks must be high! he thought, momentarily awestruck.
Aurora sounded smug as she continued. ‘We are already within the range. My dragonsense brought us inside their domain. To my knowledge they have no further guard points short of the enclave. We should be able to get close without Segun’s people detecting us. The only problem I foresee is getting out again. I’ve drawn too deeply on my powers to form any more gateways for a while, so we will have to risk alerting the sentinels.’
‘Do you know how to get to the enclave from here?’ Elian asked, gasping as he struggled to speak aloud. The air burned cold inside his chest as his breathing automatically deepened and accelerated.
‘No, but Fang does. Do not fear. We shall find Pell and Shadow.’
Kira was pleased when her dragon Fang slid forwards into the lead position. Elian and Aurora had led them through the gateways and drawn them into a struggle that was none of their business. Through the bond she could feel that Fang had suffered a large number of stings from the unnatural weapons in the other world. Her first priority was to find a place to land as soon as possible and to have Firestorm breathe his healing fire over her dragon.
No more distractions, she thought, rubbing at her side. The sympathetic pains she was feeling made her more determined than ever to keep the group focused. They needed to find Pell and get him to the griffins so that he could learn more about the night orb, and that was exactly what she intended to do. The hunter who was easily sidetracked rarely brought home the meat.
