The Dragon lifted her paw a little reluctantly. “Sorry. Did I hurt you?”
“No,” Yolathion said, although he was clearly lying.
The sight of tiny Zip trying to help the giant Jeradian rise brought a snort of laughter from Aranya and smiles from many about them. Aranya curled her paw beneath him. “Arise, Third War-Hammer, and accept my humble apologies for pouncing upon you.”
“Ouch,” said Yolathion, but managed to gather his legs beneath him. “Aranya, are you always this deadly when riled?” He grinned wryly, running his hand through his hair.
Zuziana interrupted the Dragon’s tongue-tied embarrassment by demanding, “Someone, please explain before the Dragon explodes.”
Grimacing as he tested his side, Yolathion said, “We Jeradians would rather die than serve Sylakia any longer. But we were divided among the Sylakian forces until Garthion made the mistake of placing the Jeradian Dragonships under my direct command. I’m sorry it’s a twenty-eighth hour surprise, Aranya–and King Beran–but there was no opportunity to warn you beforehand. Garthion is as paranoid as he is mad.”
Aranya hung her head. “I also apologise to everyone who has a headache.”
“Or a burst eardrum,” said a voice from the soldiers who were slowly gathering around.
“Is this the same Dragon we chased down near Germodia Island, sir?” asked another soldier.
Yolathion nodded.
“Some power,” said the man. “She could sweep the Dragonships aside on her own.”
But she felt drained, Aranya realised. She would have to hold the storm power in reserve or face falling out of the sky.
“Storm powers, Aranya,” Ri’arion said softly, sliding down from his seat. “You’ve grown more powerful. You have to learn to control it.”
“It’s hard to control feelings,” said Aranya. What could she say to Yolathion? Even now, she sensed his trepidation. Who would love a woman who had just threatened to eat him for a snack–and was capable of doing exactly that?
Dong! Dong! Dong! The warning gong sounded.
“The Sylakian fleet is closing in,” cried the watch on the castle walls.
“I need my armour and weapons,” shouted Zuziana. “Meet you on Izariela’s Tower, Aranya.”
King Beran bellowed, “Ready the defences. Full alert. Dragonships aloft.” He whirled to face Yolathion. “What of our alliance, War-Hammer?”
“I’m a War-Hammer no longer,” said Yolathion, inclining his head as if to acknowledge a sorrow. “I am Yolathion of Jeradia. I lead these free men who chose to follow me. With your permission, King Beran, we will take the battle to the Sylakian horde at your shoulder.”
They clasped hands.
A flustered servant came running up to King Beran. “King, o King,” he cried. A hundred pairs of eyes fixed upon him. “We’ve run out of purple cloth for the Jeradian Dragonships.”
Evidently expecting a matter of consequence, Beran’s face broke into a wide grin. “Go to my cupboard and take my royal robes, and Queen Silha’s dresses if you can convince her to part with them. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of purple. Use it all, for the Islands’ sake. ”
The courtyard cleared in a matter of moments, leaving Aranya alone with Yolathion. The forty-foot Dragon shuffled her feet.
“You should go,” he said.
“I never meant to hurt you,” she replied.
Yolathion spread his hands. He would tower over anyone else, but Aranya had to duck to meet his eyes. “I barely know you, Aranya of Immadia. I feel like you’re considering making breakfast of me right now, which I find just a little intimidating.”
“If it helps,” said Aranya, wishing she could take back those words, “I deeply regret that I doubted you, Yolathion. And attacked you–”
“You were right to doubt me.” Yolathion looked to his boots now, swallowing hard. “There were two paths of honour, Aranya. The easier path would have been to hide behind Garthion and take my victory over Immadia Island, earning the honours of Sylakia. I would have regretted it evermore. I think I’m a bit moons-touched, but I chose what I would like to believe is the higher path. Even if I am to die in this overwhelmingly uneven battle, it will be with an honour that does not sicken the soul, but uplifts it. All fine words, Aranya. But I found that the choice tore me apart. I hate myself for finding this so difficult. I’m not a good man. How can you ever trust me again?”
“Yet, here we are,” she said softly, drawing closer to him.
“I’ve done hateful things to you,” he said.
“And I to you, in thought and in deed.”
Yolathion struck her as a man changed, one who had fought battles to come to terms with what he wanted out of life. It seemed to Aranya that this lull just before a battle they could not hope to win, was designed especially for the two of them. Was it just an awareness of mortality that made the moment so bittersweet?
The past loomed as a mountain between them. Aranya saw no way past it.
“Promise me one thing, Immadia,” said he.
“Anything,” said Aranya, before she could think the better of her reply. Her hearts pulsed powerfully, reminding her that she was also a woman; that she must dare to hope, for hope might turn to love.
“When we’ve defeated an enemy which outnumbers us six to one in the air, may I ask your father for permission to court the daughter of the realm?” Aranya searched his eyes, finding only sincerity. Yolathion’s grin suddenly tweaked the corners of his mouth upward. He said, “That is, in a situation where we are not trying to kill each other, invade each other’s Islands, or rush into an imminent battle, all of which tend to put a damper on any romance?”
“Like vomiting all over your boots?”
“I was avoiding that one,” he quipped. “Politeness–it’s the bane of our family.”
“Or tossing me off the nearest cliff?”
He had the grace to bow his head repentantly. “You’ve rather won that argument, wouldn’t you say, Dragon-lady?”
Aranya cocked her head to one side. “So, let me find this Island with you. You’re asking my permission to ask my father’s permission–”
“To get to know you, Aranya of Immadia, if you would still consider a disgraced War-Hammer worth knowing,” he said, with his most engaging smile.
Even a Dragon’s knees could grow weak, Aranya discovered.
“Yolathion!” One of the Dragonships which Aranya had blown away over the city, approached the square. A Jeradian warrior shouted from above, “It’s urgent!”
Before she could reply, Yolathion shrugged his shoulders, and fled.
* * * *
“He and I are just one unfinished conversation.” Aranya mooched on Izariela’s Tower, supposedly helping Zuziana prepare for battle, but in reality, just mooching.
Ri’arion helped Zuziana with her temporary saddle-straps–warriors’ belts filched from the stores–and helped her settle three quivers of arrows around her seat and two sacks of meriatite chunks.
Aranya snaked her head back to take a look. “Are you planning to win the war on your own, Zip?”
“I might need to if my Dragon’s thoughts don’t return from the clouds,” Zip said, adding to the acid in her tone with a grim smile. “Thanks, Ri’arion.” Zuziana intended to drop a kiss on his cheek, but her helm thwacked him near the eye instead. She giggled, “Oops.”
Ri’arion threw her a mock salute. “Go burn some Sylakian beards, Dragon and Rider.”
“I’m to smack him over the head and take him to my lair?”
Zip whacked Aranya on the flank. “Go.”
“Just learning my lessons,” Aranya teased, brightening. It was just fear, wasn’t it? Fear of the hundred and eighty-plus Dragonships beating over the Island toward the city, and a further forty still lurking up there in the mountains. Where was Sapphire? What was the dragonet doing? She clambered up onto the battlement, balancing on the edge. “They’re encircling the city, south and east, as my Dad said. Drawing our fo
rces out there.”
“Ooh, Aranya, I wish you wouldn’t teeter on the edge of nothing. It gives me the oooooaaah!”
They whizzed down from the castle before levelling out and powering southward, angling for Yolathion’s command Dragonship.
“You’re a Dragon. Learn to live with it.”
Zip tested the Pygmy bow and checked her oil pot and spark-stone. “Oh, let me give you as much sympathy,” she growled. “Aranya, that line you gave me, ‘I’m all done with Sylakians, but a tall, dark and handsome Jeradian could still light my belly-fires’–that’s just plain silly.”
“I said nothing of the sort!”
“Then stop dancing away from him and just say yes. What do you have to lose? Or shall I thrash you till you’re dizzy either in Dragon or Human form, your choice?”
Aranya winged on, hurrying over Immadia city. Whoops and cheers followed them. She had never been very popular as a Princess, she thought, too wrapped up in her own troubles and bitterness over her father’s remarriage. But a Dragon was popular. Maybe they thought she’d save them all.
She whispered, “It’s only my heart.” Quickly, to cover her vulnerability, she added, “Zip, I can’t get over that I made you a Dragon.”
“Aranya, if you apologise one more time I am going to thrash your scaly Dragon butt all over these mountains.”
Well, that sounded more like the Princess of Remoy she knew. Still, Aranya pressed, “Zip, are you … alright?”
“Petal, that’s the difference between us. You like to wrestle with fate until it screams and bends to your will. I accept it.” She shrugged. “I guess we just have different natures, Aranya. You believe. I don’t believe until … well, I turn into a Dragon.”
Aranya did not know how to respond to this.
Her friend smiled gently. “I’m not running away again. Absconding once for the skies is enough, wouldn’t you say? There, that’s Yolathion on the starboard gantry. Do I make it two of the Dragonships with the above-sack catapults?”
“I see him. Hmm–three of the big ones, Zip.”
“I know I imitated a dancing, moon-mad ralti sheep this morning, my friend,” said Zip, drawing a chuckle from her mount, “but I’m better now. You went a little crazy before your transformation too, acting as unpredictably as a volcano about to erupt. I will be a Rider today. Learning to be a Dragon can wait.”
Aranya drew in close to the Dragonship–as close as her wingspan allowed. Several of the burly Jeradian soldiers paled at the sight of a Dragon so near.
She called over to Yolathion, “We’ll start to the southwest, Yolathion. We count three Dragonships with catapults and nets.”
Yolathion put his fist over his heart. “A Jeradian salute for thee, fair comrades,” he called. “Watch for the signals back at the castle. Garthion will not wait long after the battle is joined. Go burn the heavens, Dragon and Rider.”
“You take care,” Aranya called back. “And, my answer is yes.”
Dragon and Rider shot skyward, taking advantage of the puffy cumulous clouds drifting over Immadia Island to mask their ascent, but Aranya did not miss the delighted smile that curved Yolathion’s lips before he focussed more grimly on the business of war.
“That’ll motivate him,” Zip said, drolly. “So, let’s take a quick hop over that cloud. How’s about actually landing on one of those catapult Dragonships? You disable the catapults while I shoot a couple of nearby targets?”
“Zip, you’re still mad, aren’t you?”
“Shut your trap and do the flying, you brainless lump of Dragon-flesh.”
“Just don’t shoot the Dragonship underneath us, Rider.”
“Don’t sneeze fire on it either, Dragon.”
Aranya rose into the clouds. She ghosted southward, keeping her ears tuned to the beat of meriatite furnace engines. Through a gap in the clouds they spied on the western end of the Sylakian Dragonship fleet, gathered like a cheerful flock of sheep around the comforting bulk of a large, catapult-toting Dragonship. Clearly, a Dragon’s arrival was not expected.
At her signal, Zuziana lit their oil canister. “Ready, Aranya.”
Dragon-Aranya folded her wings. Her stomach lurched toward her throat. Fire churned in her belly, locked up behind the special muscular valves she had read about. Small fireballs, she thought. Or … “Meriatite,” she said. “They’re bunched up.”
Zuziana flicked a couple of lumps into her mouth. Chomping away, Aranya broke free of the enveloping cloud. Her tail flicked to adjust her steep descent. She aimed directly for the largest Dragonship, braking at the last instant.
Dragon-Aranya growled, “Welcome to Immadia, boys.”
Warriors yelled as the Dragon smashed into the wooden gantry, sending chunks of wood flying in all directions. A burning arrow whizzed off to her left.
“Unarmoured,” said Zip. “What’re they–” WHOOOMP! “–thinking?”
Aranya thumped one of the catapults with her tail, splintering the tensioning mechanism. “Don’t know.” She snapped at a would-be archer lining up a shot at Zip. “Quick. Another.”
Zuziana’s following shot set off a chain reaction amidst the closely bunched Dragonships. Three, four explosions; a wave of heat rolled over them. Fearing that the large Dragonship would also ignite, Aranya ran over the side and dived downward, spiralling between the closely-packed Dragonships. She knew this would take them briefly into the line of fire for the catapults and war crossbows, which were usually located beneath the hydrogen sacks alongside the cabin. But it would also protect them as the Dragonships would not fire at each other.
Zip missed her next target, but a sudden fireball mushrooming above them announced her follow-up success. Aranya raced through the plume of smoke, darting around a Dragonship as she climbed toward the safety of the higher altitudes. She spat a stream of fire between her teeth, bathing the large Dragonship as she passed by.
“Too close,” yelled Zip.
Aranya peeled away at the same instant. Fire thundered behind them as the large Dragonship exploded. Multiple smaller detonations gave them a very bumpy ride. Aranya crashed into a cabin before recovering. Multiple quarrels hissed through the air toward her, but Aranya surged upward, throwing the Sylakians off their aim. Black smoke boiled behind them.
The once-confident group of Sylakian Dragonships drifted apart in the wind, gutted.
They punched up into the clouds. Aranya knew a thousand pairs of eyes would be looking for a Dragon behind every puff of cloud, now.
“Check the castle,” ordered Zip.
“Where’s Sapphire?”
“Investigating that magic in the mountains. She isn’t back yet?”
“No–and nothing at the castle, Zip.” She called in her mind, Sapphire? Where are you?
“Then it’s the next of those large Dragonships, Aranya. No chances. They’ve been alerted, now.”
Aranya flapped hard, crossing a half-league in a matter of moments. “The ground assault has started,” she informed Zip. “Several thousand warriors. They’re torching the villages.”
Zuziana told her to focus on the job at hand, probably well aware of the fires underlying Aranya’s words. After chewing more meriatite, she tilted her wings and sped out of cover several thousand feet shy of the Sylakian advance. A withering hail of quarrels and catapult-shot rose to greet them, winking deceptively in the sunlight, all deadly beauty. Aranya leaped skyward, then immediately flicked her wings to correct their course again as the shots passed fifty feet beneath them.
Zuziana raised the Pygmy bow. “Steady, girl. That thing’s armoured like a castle.”
“Let’s teach them where the chinks are.”
The Princess of Remoy grunted something unladylike as her first shot stuck in the Dragonship’s armour but did not penetrate. Aranya blew flame over the upper gantry, setting two of the four catapults alight, and burning a few Sylakian beards in the doing. She snaked through the air as more crossbow quarrels converged on their position. Zip sho
t twice more before they passed over the huge Dragonship. She scowled as Aranya glanced over her shoulder.
“Dratted armour. Warm up your fireballs, Aranya.”
Aranya ducked between two Dragonships and rolled through the narrow gap, furling her wings almost completely to make the cut-through. Seeing the side of a Dragonship right ahead, she curled on a sudden whim and made a side-on landing. Her lips puffed. Pfft! Pfft! Pfft! Three white-hot fireballs bombarded the Dragonship fleet.
Zip’s bowstring twanged. Sss! The smoking arrow hissed downward and sideways. Another Dragonship imploded, raining burning debris on the troops not far below. Her Rider already had another burning arrow nocked and ready. As the arrow sprang from the bowstring, so the Dragon sprang from the side of the Dragonship, rending it with her claws.
Through an opening between the Dragonships, Aranya saw that the Sylakian fleet was beginning to spread out. Engines coughed and roared. They were going to swarm the city, she realised. She and her Rider had probably succeeded only in accelerating the invasion.
They screamed upward, taking three shots at the largest Dragonship before leaping free of the throng like a fish flipping out of water ahead of a predator. Aranya briefly checked for movement over the mountains before pivoting on her wingtip. This time Zuziana took the shot perfectly. The largest Dragonship erupted in a sheet of flame, igniting the two ships nearest it. The air suddenly filled with quarrels and shot and she was jinking and dropping and firing fireballs with that characteristic Pfft! They worked along the frontline, taking down Dragonship after Dragonship in deadly concert before Aranya, in the thick of explosions all around them, suddenly had to knock half a spinning cabin aside with her neck to protect her Rider. She took a quarrel in her upper back at the same time. Zip screamed at her to climb.
“Damage check?” said Aranya. She scanned her wings. “A few superfluous holes.”
“What about that tree-trunk sticking out of your back?”
“Oddly, I don’t think it hit anything serious. Hurts. No sign of Garthion–oh, there’s Sapphire. Isn’t that … yes.”
Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) Page 40
