Alain hesitated, then nodded. “Your wisdom exceeds mine.” Then he frowned slightly, looking over to one side as if seeing through the walls between him and the outside.
That didn’t look good. Mari eyed the Senior Mechanics, thinking that no one with any brains would try anything while being covered by rifles and with the Guild Hall occupied by a hostile force. But these were Senior Mechanics, used to being able to do what they wanted with impunity. Overestimating their ability to judge the situation might be a mistake. “Bev, I want you in charge of watching these guys until we leave.” Mari addressed the Senior Mechanics again. “I’d be on my best behavior if I were you. As you have already seen, Mechanic Bev wouldn’t mind shooting any Senior Mechanic who gives her trouble.”
Mari turned to go, passing close by Bev. “Try not to actually shoot any of them, all right?” she muttered.
“Can’t I shoot just a few?” Bev asked loudly, her eyes glinting.
“If you have to,” Mari replied just as clearly.
“I can maim them if they make me shoot them, right?”
“If you want to.” Mari lowered her voice. “I hope you’re kidding.”
Bev nodded. “I think so. But I’m having fun scaring them.” She gave Mari a rueful look. “After this I need to be good, though. The last thing I want is to fall into the habit of being cruel to people who are at my mercy.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Mari agreed.
Beckoning to Alain and Professor S’san, Mari left the room, oddly deflated by what should have been a triumphal experience. At least none of the Senior Mechanics had noticed the promise rings she and Alain were wearing. She was getting tired of explaining them, especially to a hostile audience. “Did you sense something while we were in there, Alain?”
“A spell—” he began.
Mage Asha came running down the hall, long hair flowing behind her in a way that caused male Mechanics to stop and gape. “Fortunate that I could find you quickly,” she advised Mari. “Mechanic Dav says you must be told. We have sensed a mighty spell being cast. Mage Hiro and Mage Dav both believe the spell is one to create a dragon.”
Chapter Ten
Alain followed as Mari ran for the entry, Professor S’san and Mage Asha right behind him. He tried to order his thoughts despite his fears for Mari. “From the size of the spell I sensed, this dragon will be larger than the one we fought in Dorcastle,” Alain told her.
She glanced back. “How much larger? As big as the one in the Northern Ramparts?”
“No. But still large.”
Alain almost slid into Mari as she came to a sudden halt in the entry area. All of the other Mages were present and gazing out into the city. So were Mechanics Alli, Calu, and Dav, as well as a few other Mechanics wearing Mari’s armbands.
“Mari?” Alli said. “Just in time. There are some very agitated commons outside.”
Alain stayed close to Mari as she rushed to the massive main entrance door, which was ajar. Just outside, two common soldiers and another common waited. “Daughter! We need you!” one cried.
“There is a monster in the city!” another said. “A Mage dragon!”
Alain saw Mage Dav point. “It approaches from that direction.”
The commons shrank back as they saw Alain and Mage Dav.
“You can tell where it is?” Mari asked Mage Dav. “Then we can go out there and stop it.”
“Mari,” Alain said, “this is a very dangerous dragon.”
“Every dragon I’ve met has been very dangerous!”
Professor S’san was outside now as well, peering about. “If we have to deal with a threat from the Mages—”
“Other Mages,” Mari broke in. “My Mages will help us.”
“Very well, Mari. As I was saying,” S’san began once more, “we would be well advised to seal this Hall. We can shoot at it from the inside, and it shouldn’t be able to reach us.”
The commons looked stricken as S’san gave her advice.
“We can’t do that,” Mari said. “There’s a dragon out there, coming through the city, and it’s going to kill and destroy anything in its path. It’s there because of me. The Mage elders want me dead. I’m not going to sit safely inside this Guild Hall while others face death because of me!”
Alain did not want to back Mari in this. He wanted her safe. But he looked upon her and saw the woman who had insisted on saving him, a Mage, when every rule she had ever been taught would have justified leaving him to his fate. “Master Mechanic Mari speaks wisdom,” Alain said, wishing he did not have to say so.
“Then let her Mages deal with this problem!” Professor S’san insisted.
“We will confront the dragon if Master Mechanic Mari says wisdom dictates it,” Mage Dav said, his emotionless statement sounding totally calm. “We are unlikely to stop it.”
“And likely to die?” Mechanic Alli asked. “Mari, we can’t send Mage Dav and Mage Asha and the others out there alone.” She offered Mari a rifle.
“Mari!” S’san said, growing angry. “You have said yourself how critical you are to the success of your plan! How can you risk yourself like this?”
“How can I not?” Mari said, taking the weapon from Alli. “Professor, only two people here have ever fought a dragon. Me, and Alain.”
“I have fought one,” Mage Asha said.
“All right, three people. The point is, I know what I’m doing. No one else does. What kind of leader sends others out to do a job she knows how to do and they don’t? And there is another important factor. If a Mage monster attacks this Guild Hall, it might break apart the fragile coalition of Mechanics and Mages that I am building. The Mechanics who have just joined with me might turn on the Mages out of habitual suspicion. But if we defeat this threat with a band of Mechanics and Mages working together, it will be a powerful example of what cooperation can do.”
Calu nodded. “It will also show that Mages and Mechanics can risk their lives for each other.”
A sound drifted toward them across the city, an inhuman scream of anger that Mari remembered all too well.
One of the common soldiers looked pleadingly at her. “Lady…daughter, the monster must have encountered our forces. We will defend this city, but with only our weapons, our numbers will mean little.”
Alain felt something similar to what he had experienced when the Alexdrians had been ambushed by an Imperial legion. A sense of sadness and a resolve to do what he could. “Do not waste the lives of your people to no purpose. If the monster can be stopped, we will stop it.”
Shocked to be directly addressed by a Mage, the commons had trouble for a moment understanding what he had said. Then the one who wasn’t a soldier bowed his head to Alain. “The daughter’s Mage. We have heard of you. The Mage who stood between death and commons in the Northern Ramparts.”
Mari looked over her weapon. “Professor, you and Master Mechanic Lukas are in charge here until we get back. Alli, help arrange a defense of the Guild Hall—”
“Alli ain’t staying here,” she replied.
“Neither am I,” Calu said.
“If Mage Asha goes, then I’m going,” Mechanic Dav added.
Mari cast an aggravated look at Alain, who gestured at her friends. “It would be wise to accept their help, Mari.”
“Stop telling me I’m wise when I do what you want me to do,” Mari grumbled. “Mage Dav, you told me that only Alain can cast fire. None of you other Mages can create that kind of destruction? There’s no sense in all of you coming, then.”
Alain shook his head. “They must come.”
“Because…?” Mari demanded.
“The path of wisdom lies in following you,” Mage Dav said.
“The path of wisdom does not lie in risking your life for no reason,” Mari insisted.
“We must go with you,” Mage Hiro said, somehow sounding insistent despite the lack of emotion in his voice.
“I thought nothing mattered and nothing was real!” Mari said.
“Nothing is real,” Alain agreed.
“It’s been a while since you said that, and I haven’t missed it.”
“But this must be done,” Alain continued, not knowing how to explain it. “No Mage would stay behind. That would mean that shadows had forced a Mage to treat the shadows as real, that the illusion of the world had frightened a Mage from taking a course the Mage would have chosen. These things would mean leaving the path of wisdom.”
Mari stared at Alain, frustrated. “It’s a dragon, Alain!”
“It is the illusion of a dragon on the illusion of the world.”
She threw up her hands in surrender. “All right! All right! Let’s all go out and get killed so everyone will know how wise we are!”
“Mari!” Professor S’san cried in anger and despair as Mari ran down the steps accompanied by Alain, the commons, the other Mages, and her three Mechanic friends. “This matter requires more thought!”
“No time!” Mari called back.
“We will return,” Alain called to Professor S’san.
“Is this thing flying toward us?” Mechanic Dav asked.
Mage Asha gave him the slightest of puzzled frowns. “A dragon? How could a dragon fly?”
“Don’t they have wings?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Alli asked between breaths as they ran. “If you Mages make dragons, why can’t you make one any way you want?”
“Because dragons do not have wings,” Asha said. “And they are very heavy. Wings would not fit the illusion.”
“What about fire?” Calu said.
“Do Mechanics know of dragons that cast flame?” Alain asked. “Mari asked me this as well when we were in Dorcastle.”
“Real dragons don’t breathe fire,” Mari said.
“Nothing is real,” Asha and Mage Dav said in unison.
“I know!”
“So what do dragons do?” Alli pressed. “How do we stop it?”
Alain considered the question. “Dragons kill and destroy. It is all they do. They are very powerful. Their scales are very strong armor. They are swift and require much damage to stop. The weak spots on a dragon are the eyes,” he advised. “The eyes are well protected by heavy, armored brow ridges, but they are still the dragon’s most vulnerable feature. The other weak points are under the arms and the inner side of the thighs, where the armored scales are thinnest. The dragon-killer weapon that Mechanic Alli gave Mari killed a dragon with a blow to its chest, though.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t have any more shoulder-fired, fin-stabilized rockets with shaped-charge warheads on me at the moment,” Alli said. She held up something that filled her hand. “I do have some explosives with short fuses.”
“How many?” Mari asked.
“Two bombs. Hand-delivered.”
“Not ideal,” Calu said.
The commons who had pled for help were running with them, gesturing and calling commands to other commons. Cavalry was dashing ahead to carry word and to clear the streets. Bells were ringing from towers, sending warnings across the city. Alain could see commons running into buildings and barring doors and windows. It was odd to think that he had once been able to convince himself that he believed as he had been taught, that those commons, and the Mechanics with him, were shadows of no consequence. Perhaps when all was said and done they were only shadows, but Alain watched them with worry and knew that for him they would always have importance.
“Where do we want to meet this thing, Alain?” Mari asked. “In the middle of a street or in one of these courtyards where streets meet?”
He jerked his attention back to the current problem. “A courtyard,” Alain said. “Large but not too large. We must have enough room to move around the dragon, but the dragon must not have enough room to move as it desires.”
“How close is it, Mage Dav?” Before Mage Dav could answer the question, another dragon scream cut through the air like a knife.
“Pretty close,” Alli commented.
“We need a courtyard!” Mari yelled to one of the nearby cavalry.
The soldier appeared to be in her early thirties, with the look and bearing of a veteran. “About two hundred lances up ahead, Lady. The Court of Dyers. There’s a plaza another six hundred lances beyond that.”
The sound of fighting came to them as the street opened out into a court a few hundred lances across, substantial but much smaller than the plaza around the Mechanics Guild Hall. Streets entered the courtyard from all four sides, and the buildings surrounding it rose for three or four stories. As in the rest of Edinton, the buildings and galleries around the court combined the clean, straight lines of northern architecture with the curves and arches of the south. The railings and balconies were draped with drying fabrics in a rainbow of colors, and the air was filled with the smell of the makings of dyes, some pleasant and some pungent. Alain held out a hand. “This should be large enough. We should fight here.”
The Mechanics took deep breaths, looking around as they rested. “I love that purple, Mari,” Alli said. “See it up there?”
“It’s beautiful,” Mari agreed. “But it’s really expensive. What do you think of those reds?”
“Nice! Mage Asha, you’d look great in that one.”
The first thing Alain had done as they entered the courtyard was to look at the stone paving to see if it matched that in the frightening image his foresight had shown. Relieved to see that it did not, he reminded himself that the vision didn’t mean that Mari could not be badly hurt or die in a different place if her or others’ decisions led her there. “Mari,” Alain said, trying to understand why she and Alli were talking about fabrics and colors, “the dragon will try to choose one target to attack. If it is confused, it will keep trying to settle on one target.”
“There’s our tactic,” Mari said. “That’s the right word, isn’t it? Can dragons see color?”
Alain hesitated at the question, looking at the other Mages. All shook their heads very slightly to indicate ignorance. “I do not know,” Alain said. “Is that important?”
“We might have used some of the colored fabrics to distract the dragon,” Mari explained. “That’s why Alli and I were checking them out. But since we have no way of knowing whether it would work, we’ll have to depend on most of the Mechanics and the Mages hitting the dragon from all sides so that it is constantly having to deal with new threats. Based on the way my pistol’s bullets bounced off that smaller dragon in Dorcastle, I don’t think our rifles will be able to penetrate this one’s armor, but maybe the impacts will still raise a few bruises and shift that thing’s attention. Alain, Alli, you two have the best chance of really hurting the dragon, so the rest of us will support you by keeping it confused and hopefully in one place. We Mechanics will try to hit the eyes or maybe the underarms, you aim for whatever looks good, and the other Mages…how do you guys fight dragons?”
Asha and the other four Mages all produced their long knives from beneath their robes.
“Are you joking?” Mari asked in a shocked voice.
“Mages do not joke,” Alain reminded her. “They will use their concealment spells to get close to the monster. A well-delivered blow to the back of the knee joint can hamstring even a dragon.”
“It is not easily done,” Asha added, her face an emotionless mask. “But it is a worthy test of a Mage’s ability to focus, to concentrate on a spell while also aiming to strike the dragon and evade its blows.”
Mechanic Dav stared at her. “Please be careful.”
Asha said nothing, but one corner of her mouth twitched in a tiny Mage smile as she reached out one hand to touch his cheek.
Mari turned to Alain, but before she could say anything another dragon scream sounded close by, this time accompanied by shouts and yells. “Over there!” Mari cried, directing Alli to one side. “You stay on this side near me,” she told Alain. “But move back a little so you’ll be able to spot a good shot at the dragon and make it happen. Everybody else, disperse along these three sides of the courtyard so we’ll have that thing surrounded when it enters.”
Everyone was still moving into position when three cavalry bolted through the courtyard from the direction the dragon was coming, the soldiers making frantic and unsuccessful attempts to regain control of their terrified mounts.
The shouts were rapidly growing louder. Alain saw common soldiers racing into the courtyard as well, some running all out like the panicked horses and others supporting injured comrades. Some of the soldiers still carried crossbows, but many had lost theirs in the retreat.
Behind them came a larger group of soldiers still under the control of their officers, who were yelling commands as the soldiers fell back fast. The rear rank formed a line just inside the courtyard, the soldiers aiming and firing their crossbows as their comrades staggered back.
Mari waved her Mechanic weapon over her head, her shout carrying over the commands of the officers and the thudding sound of steps from something very large that was very close. “Get behind us! We’re going to stop that thing!”
The formation of soldiers paused in disbelief, then a quick-thinking officer began crying out commands to send them to the sides of the courtyard. “Fall back!” he called to the lone rank at the entrance to the courtyard, who were reloading their crossbows.
The rearguard loosed a final volley, then broke and ran for all they were worth.
Alain heard the dragon’s scream again at the same moment he caught sight of it. It towered high enough for its head to rise above the surrounding buildings, wicked rows of teeth as long as a person’s arm catching the light of the rising sun. Long claws gleamed on the end of its forearms. Crossbow bolts bounced off of the dragon’s scales with dull thuds as the monster bent to slash at the fleeing soldiers.
One small group of soldiers was flung in different directions as the dragon’s blow swept through them. Moving with amazing speed for something so large, the dragon entered the courtyard, one massive, clawed hind -leg raised to squash a wounded soldier who was lying stunned on the paving.
-->
