“Shoot!” Ri’arion shouted.
He meant to sacrifice himself. Sobbing, Zuziana fired her last arrow. It plugged in a chink in the ship’s armour, a perfect shot, but merely stood in place, blazing cheerfully.
I am alive!
With a deafening roar, the head of a Red Dragon broke through the mess of the forward cabin, directly opposite her position. A wall of Dragon fire raced toward Aranya. She ducked promptly. Roaring rajals, that thing was huge! His head had to be least twice the size of hers. The Red Dragon loosed another flood of fire. The Dragonship groaned and sank in the air.
Zuziana wailed a long, thin shriek of terror.
“Zip!” Aranya slapped healing power at her. “We have to get Ri’arion off that Dragonship.”
Her friend shook her head to clear it. Her jaw firmed; Aranya had never seen Zip fiercer or grimmer, nor had her courage ever blazed so clearly. Dragon-Aranya’s hearts thrilled within her. A new joy sang through the fear which had consumed her until this day.
“Come on, Aranya,” said the Remoyan. “Let’s finish this.”
The cabin peeled open like an overripe prekki fruit. Red wings unfurled, glistening like burning rubies in the bright suns-light. Now the Dragonship looked truly bizarre, with wings, legs, a head and a tail all protruding out of the armoured cabin walls. The Red Dragon struggled and writhed. His mighty strength was more than enough to tear the cabin apart, but the metal armour bent and buckled rather than snapping as wood might have. He was trapped–momentarily.
Her best chance was now.
Aranya flicked her wings. As she reached out for a massive red wing with her claws extended, Dragon fire exploded around her. Aranya wheeled, shielding Zip–and realised Ri’arion had somehow shielded them with his magic, too. Garthion’s wing-edge smashed into her head. She lost a hundred feet in seconds. Instinct alone took her beyond the quarrels buzzing on her tail. Nearly every Dragonship above her had a clear shot. Aranya doubled back twice, dodging the hail of quarrels and deadly catapult shot as best she could, before turning herself vertical as she climbed for the flagship. Landing beneath the monk’s position, she snaked her neck about and bit down on the Red Dragon’s claws with the fullest strength of her jaw. A bellow shook her. Suddenly, the paw retracted into the Dragonship, releasing Ri’arion.
“Grab on!” yelled Zuziana.
The monk had just steadied himself to leap when the Dragon’s paw punched out of the armour once more. Five clawed talons gasped Aranya’s right wing beside her second wing joint, curling right around her wing bone and piercing the sensitive membrane. Dragon-Aranya screamed as he shook her loose from the Dragonship. She hung by her wing! The Red Dragon pounded her against the Dragonship’s side, over and over again, using the awesome strength of his paw to swing her about like a child’s toy. She felt several wing struts snap. Her tail thrashed about helplessly. Aranya shrieked and clawed and flapped, but his talons only shredded more of her wing and his grip did not relent. She sank her fangs into his leg, tasting Dragon blood for the first time, but he did not let go. Instead, Garthion pulled her toward his head.
Trapped as he was inside the Dragonship, he could not reach her easily, but the Red Dragon squeezed his thick neck against the armour, which slowly gave way and peeled along its seams. Aranya saw his left eye, close up. It was milky and scarred, but still retained enough sight for Garthion to recognise her.
We meet again, Shapeshifter Princess, he rumbled. It’s time I finished killing you.
No, you’ll die! Aranya lashed out with her claws, striking him around the eye.
Garthion shook her violently. Aranya spat a fireball right in his face, but he laughed it off. His jaw yawned open. Not one of his fangs was shorter than two feet long. The Red Dragon tried to swing her toward that fatal trap, but Aranya, maddened by the pain, sank her teeth into his nose and hung on with all of her strength. She ground her jaw deliberately. Flame exploded out of the Red Dragon’s mouth as he roared with pain, burning two of his own Dragonships to cinders. One missed the castle, but the other vessel struck a catapult emplacement on the castle’s battlements.
Spying the incoming swipe of his other forepaw from the corner of her eye, Aranya was forced to jerk back and let go of his nose to prevent Garthion from decapitating Zuziana. She clawed at his face. The Red Dragon only laughed at her.
You’re so little, Amethyst Dragon. His free paw snagged her flailing left wing. Now, feel my strength. The great muscles bunched, stretching out her wings until the muscles in her shoulders were as taut as hawsers. Aranya fought him, but short of tearing off her own wings, there was little she could do. He growled, I’m going to rip you in half.
But he hadn’t reckoned on the Remoyan Princess. Zuziana flung one of Aranya’s Immadian forked daggers directly into Garthion’s left eye.
The Red Dragon went into a spasm. His entire body shuddered and his claws released involuntarily, flinging Aranya and her Rider loose. Bellow after bellow rolled over the battlefield. All four of his legs retracted into the Dragonship, and his wings too, careless of any damage against the sharp metal armour or gantries.
“Aranya!” cried Zip. “You’re bleeding–”
“Never mind that! Where’s your monk, Zip?”
Ri’arion was halfway up the side of the Dragonship, climbing toward the top gantry. Aranya saw that he was trying to calculate a jump to the nearest Dragonship. Crazy monk! He meant to carry on the battle. His right leg still dangled behind him. He couldn’t make that leap, surely? She could hardly believe the mammoth Dragonship was still in the air. Did it have multiple meriatite furnaces? Why had it not already exploded?
Aranya called, over her shoulder, “Go catch Ri’arion, Zip!”
Her Rider stared at her.
“Just do it. Go!”
Zuziana’s eyes widened. “You’re thinking …”
“I know. It’s our only chance.”
Drawing her second dagger, Zuziana hacked frantically at the belts holding her in place. Ri’arion saw her stand up on Aranya’s back. He smiled, dropping in a crouch.
Garthion smashed his way free of the cabin, tearing the armoured metal apart with his immense strength. He was gigantic–a blood-red, adult Dragon in the prime of his life. He forced his body out of where the navigation cabin would have been. The monstrous Red Dragon climbed the side of his flagship with impunity and terrible speed, closing in on the monk, who had his back to the Dragon.
The monk and the Princess of Remoy leaped toward each other. Zip transformed mid-leap. A single flap of her wings was all she managed before she caught Ri’arion four-pawed to her chest and folded her wings over him. Thundering his rage, Garthion lunged forward and slapped the Azure Dragon with his right forepaw, opening three gashes along her flank. Zip tumbled through the air.
The Amethyst Dragon howled in horror. Aranya was too far away to help. Zuziana collided with a Dragonship beneath them. She bounced into the open. Her wings flared, weakly, but Garthion’s terrible blow had broken one of her major wing bones. She smacked against the edge of the castle battlement with a fleshy slap that sent shivers up and down Aranya’s spine-spikes. From there Dragon-Zuziana plummeted into the courtyard, her body curled around Ri’arion’s. Her wings tried to flap, one more time, but their unevenness defeated Zip. She spun about as she crashed into a wooden side-building, where she lay unmoving amidst the wreckage.
Garthion’s head turned to track her. So, Princess. It’s you and me.
She hated the sound of his voice. She hated everything he stood for. And she hated what he had done to her friend. He must have a weakness. His sight was one. Perhaps his pride was another.
I didn’t finish burning you last time, snarled Aranya.
You’ll pay for ruining my sight, replied the Red Dragon. There was an assurance in his manner that chilled her to the bone. Yet, I rule the Island-World. You’re nothing. I’ll destroy Immadia and you with it.
Aranya expected Garthion to leap into the air and attack h
er. Instead, he seemed content to take his four-pawed stance atop his flagship, which had drifted over the middle of the castle toward the flagpole of Izariela’s Tower. He drew breath and began to pound the castle with fireball after fireball. Aranya could not believe what she was seeing. The Red Dragon was an endless fountain of fire. His fireballs were the size of boulders. There was no need for accuracy–if he could even see the catapults, it did not matter, for he simply hosed the battlements down with fireballs. If he missed, he was striking the town beyond or the soldiers down in the courtyard, Immadian and Sylakian alike. His fire did not evaporate on impact. Rather, it stuck and burned, running down the sides of buildings as though he shot burning oil.
Left alone, Garthion would devastate the castle and Immadia Town. Aranya surged through the air.
She had no plan but to distract or stop him. Dodging the sweep of his tail, Aranya pounded into Garthion’s back and dug in with all twenty claws. For the first time, she smelled him; the pungent reek of a male Dragon, a smell as arrogant and uncompromising as he was. He was armoured more thickly than the Dragonship itself. Aranya had expected to dig her claws in, but instead, they slid off his granite-hard scales. Stepping over his spine-spikes which were four feet long atop the densely muscled bulk of his shoulders, Aranya snapped at his neck with her teeth.
What’s this I feel, a gnat? Garthion laughed horribly.
Even at the widest gape of her jaws, Aranya could not close her fangs upon his thick neck. Garthion shook her as she gnawed at his brow-ridge instead. Concentrating on clawing at his right eye, Aranya did not sense his paw rising behind her. The Red Dragon punched her tail with his hind foot. She slewed loose. Garthion briefly caught her already damaged right knee between his teeth, but the force of her fall wrenched her limb free. Hot pain bloomed in her knee joint. Aranya thrust it away. She had to deal with him. She had to find a way before he destroyed them all.
Two direct fireball strikes did nothing but amuse him. They did not even make enough of an impact to damage his wing membranes. Aranya knew she had few magical reserves left–not enough to heal herself, and certainly not enough to summon her storm power. What could she do? She surveyed the Dragonship and its master from eighty feet away. If only she could destroy the Dragonship. Garthion was standing on a hydrogen bomb. Should she dive inside, sacrificing herself to blow up the meriatite furnace? She ducked a series of fireballs as Garthion tried to chase her away. He only succeeded in blowing up one of his Crimson Hammers Dragonships. Suddenly, Aranya’s gaze homed in on the overlarge exhaust pipe leading to the meriatite engines of Garthion’s flagship.
Every scale on her body prickled. Oh, yes! Her Dragon sight homed in on her target. The exhaust hole filled her vision. Aranya pursed her lips as if for a kiss; only, this would be the kiss of death.
Garthion’s neck turned. Do I sense King Beran down below? He took a huge breath, flaring his wings.
At the instant he spoke, three miniature fireballs hissed out of Aranya’s throat. The first two missed narrowly, passing between the Dragonship’s cabin and the armoured upper sack of hydrogen. The third, bluer than the two preceding it, vanished into the furnace exhaust pipe as though running home with glee.
Aranya shouted, That’s for Zuziana!
Garthion’s scales gleamed briefly in the inferno that blossomed around him, almost slowly, to Aranya’s perception. Her membranes flicked to protect her eyes from the white-hot blast, piped faithfully though the engine system into the hydrogen sacks. Superheated air stormed over her wings, but she rode the blast intuitively.
Fire could not burn a Dragon. Perhaps it could have roasted Garthion, given time. But his wings looked like sticks. The Red Dragon Shapeshifter had several seconds in which to flap his wing bones and dangling flight struts, which were all that remained of his hundred-foot wingspan after the detonation of an entire Dragonship’s worth of hydrogen right beneath his paws. Twisting in the air, he plummeted like an oversized boulder from the sky onto Izariela’s Tower. The tip of the flagpole speared cleanly though his throat and out through the top of his head.
The Red Dragon shuddered once, and slumped against the stone.
The beating of his three hearts stilled. Garthion’s lifeless weight uprooted the flagpole and avalanched down into the courtyard, over where Zip lay.
Aranya bugled her victory until the skies of Immadia Island rang.
Chapter 32: Aftermath
With Garthion’s fall and the destruction of his flagship, the Dragonships of his fleet began to scatter. Flags and signals flew. Engines slammed into reverse. Turbines whined at their top speed. The half-dozen remaining Immadian Dragonships shadowed them to the edge of the city, until it was clear that the retreat was in full spate. The Sylakian Hammers left on the ground laid down their war hammers and surrendered. Immadian and Jeradian warriors lowered their weapons and gazed about, dazed, hardly able to believe that the battle was over. Acrid smoke drifted over the city.
A Dragon landed in the castle courtyard.
Dragon-Aranya groaned as her landing jarred the quarrels stuck in her flank and belly. One of her ribs felt broken. She limped over to where Garthion lay, awed at his bulk.
He was dead. The flagpole had skewered his brain.
But three hearts beat beneath him–no, four. Aranya let out a heartfelt sigh of relief.
“Zip, oh Zip!” she pawed at the Dragon. She tried to shove her shoulder beneath that limp mass, but she might as well have tried to move a mountain. “Help! Dad, someone, help me.”
Commander Darron was the first person to her side. “Immadians! Lend a shoulder here. You Jeradians, help us.”
With a flurry of barked orders, he rounded up a hundred men or more. Yolathion brought his Jeradian soldiers at a run. Even King Beran fell to the task. Together with Aranya, they shouted and heaved and strained until they managed to roll the Red Dragon onto his side, revealing a rather flattened but still breathing Azure Dragon. Zuziana blinked. Her paws twitched.
“Zip?” Zip-Zap? Wake up.
“Ouch. Only being alive could hurt this much.”
Sweet relief made Aranya chuckle. “You’re fine, you just want sympathy. Where’s Ri’arion?” She nosed at Zuziana’s paws. “Let him out.”
“I have him safe next to my heart,” smiled the Azure Dragon, unclenching her grip. There was Ri’arion, looking battered, but his chest rose and fell steadily. “Oh, Aranya, my left wing kills–can you check it? I did it, Aranya. My very first landing.”
“Brilliant,” snorted Aranya. “Thank that building you destroyed. You’re lucky you didn’t break your neck.”
But she rubbed necks with her friend. Zuziana made a sound like a low purr.
King Beran marched up to his Dragon daughter and slapped her on the flank. “A decent morning’s work, Sparky.”
“Decent?” Yolathion scowled. “That’s all you have to say?”
“Down, rajal,” said Aranya, grinning at him. His warriors flinched, but the tall Jeradian did not move or change his scowl. “This would be an introduction to the art of Immadian understatement. Tell him what you meant, Dad.”
King Beran looked from Aranya to Yolathion with a grin that spoke volumes. Heat rushed to her cheeks. “Yolathion,” he said, pretending to hurt his neck as he looked up at the giant warrior, “for a puny wisp of a Jeradian, you sure managed to put your hammer in the right place a couple of times this morning. Now, my boy, let an old cliff fox teach you about Immadian culture.”
A slow grin replaced the scowl. “Aye, King Beran,” he rumbled, “I see now why my father wrapped you in ralti wool and fought you blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back.”
Beran clapped him on the shoulder. “He gets it, Aranya.”
Dragon-Aranya nosed between her father and Yolathion. “If you don’t mind, Dad, I’ll take it from here.”
“Gone are the days I put you over my knee, eh, daughter?”
“You can practice on Yolathion.”
Darron scra
tched his grizzled head. “Sire, what about these Sylakians? And the city?”
“Many will not be Sylakian,” Yolathion put in.
Beran nodded. “I know the Sylakian ways. Commander Darron, would you take charge of the city clean-up? Appoint as many marshals as you can find. Round up any stray soldiers who wish to surrender and bring them to this courtyard. I’ll address them as soon as I can. Give them water. Get our engineers working; get the fires put out and the rubble cleared. Release the women and children as soon as the city is safe. Organise shelters for the homeless and food distribution from the royal kitchens. Yolathion, round up our Dragonships. We need to scout the Island to make sure there are no bands of Sylakian Hammers still causing mischief out there.”
“With respect, Sire,” said Yolathion, “a Dragon could cover the entire Island in the time it would take you or I to walk to the gates.”
“Aye, pup, but that beast has more holes in her hide than I care to count.”
To her intense annoyance, Yolathion put his big hand on Aranya’s muzzle to quiet her hot response. She seethed as Yolathion said, “But this is a Princess of Immadia you’re talking about, you old fox, not some vain, useless creature who serves only to prettify a realm. Take it from me. I fought against this Dragon and her Rider and lost, even with the reserves of the entire southern Dragonship fleet at my command.”
“He tried very hard to kill Aranya and I, is what he’s saying,” Zip put in. “Sylakian Hammers, crossbow quarrels, the whole ralti sheep.”
Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) Page 43
