by Marc Secchia
The men began to turn, reacting with the instinct of professional soldiers. A bellow tore from his throat, freezing even these veterans for a vital half-second as he descended upon them with the might of a juggernaut in motion. He would not have believed he could cover that distance so rapidly. Mere fractions of seconds separated success in battle from failure, and thus it was that as he slammed into the first trio of soldiers amidships, he knew he had never struck a truer blow. Heavy as those soldiers were, the sheer tonnage and momentum of his attack took them down like stacked pins, one crashing into the next until he razed all eight Heavies in one victorious rush. But his ambuscade was not complete yet. The first soldiers were already squirming into standing positions when five blue boulders quarried out by the dragonets on the cliffs above the hut hammered down upon and around them. Three soldiers went down with cries truncated by the horrid, bone-crunching impacts, and stayed down.
Asturbar skidded and turned, his hand finding the haft of his battle-axe which he had secreted on the far side of the path, where he had calculated his charge might end. Still nine to one. Poor odds.
He hefted his axe. “You boys want to dance?”
Blur! He cried out as Iridiana, instead of making for the Lights as they had agreed, shot into her armoured form around him instead. Two darts clattered off his left bicep and thigh. Saved!
Smart girl.
The soldiers were still gaping at this suddenly armoured Azingloriax warrior when Asturbar hit them again, his body flying almost horizontally as he put the full heft of his shoulders into two of them who thought finding their feet was a good idea. The soldiers dropped as if poleaxed.
“Nice hit,” Nyahi chortled. “Fists, Boots?”
He lashed out with his left fist, which instantly swelled into a blue giant’s fist the size of a Dragon’s paw. BLAM! The soldier flew twelve feet backward and slammed into the side of the hut, where he slumped.
“Nice? You’re some weapon, girl!”
Rotating on his heel, Asturbar nearly tore Sub-Commander Samkutor’s head off his shoulders, albeit rotating his wrist at the last second to strike with the flat of his axe blade.
“Watch out!” she screeched.
He leaped to his left, dodging an exploding bolt. “They’re playing dirty.”
Well, so were the dragonets. One of the Lights, who had been creeping along the edge of the cliff, screamed as the Seven Scamps, in a concerted rush, shovelled him to his death. And he had warned them not to get involved in the battle. Oh well.
One Light was frantically signalling to the Dragonship to take off. One reloading. The other … where was he hiding?
“Head down!” snapped Nyahi, her contraction causing his knees to buckle.
BOOM! Hells, that had been too close. Had he worn any kind of hairstyle at all, the passing bolt might have snagged and led to a very different result. Asturbar charged the two remaining Heavies. Between his armour and his axe, he finished them both. It was gratifyingly unfair when one’s armour reached out to disarm a man before one walloped them senseless.
He patted his thigh. “You go, girl.”
“Insults!”
A blue river shot along the path to knock out the remaining Light soldiers; Asturbar found himself just a passenger on a bumpy ride. He did have the satisfaction, however, of reaching through his own torso to smack one of them headfirst into a handy boulder. Then, an Iridium Dragoness stalked about a battlefield littered with groaning and unconscious soldiers, gathering her booty. In short order, eleven soldiers were staring at their deaths. Well, a few might be dead already. He was not sure.
Iridiana gave them a hundred-fang smile, complete with sulphurous smoke and a few licks of fire out of the corners of her mouth. “So, boys, who wants to ogle my breasts now?”
Out there, beyond the end of the V of the main Island, the Dragonship was frantically reversing course, smoke billowing and a warning bell clanking with tinny futility.
Asturbar, of course, held up his hand and cried, “Me! Pick me!”
He bit his tongue furiously. What?
Nyahi bent her sinuous neck to nuzzle him so hard, he almost fell over. “Mmm, I like my man-snacks brawny like you!”
The Commander was still preoccupied with trying to figure out how and why that nonsense had popped out of his mouth, when the Chaos Shifter casually stepped upon five of the mercenaries and purred, “So, boys, who’s going to volunteer to tell me what’s going on?”
She really was stunning in her Dragoness form, Asturbar decided, folding his arms forbiddingly across his chest as he paused to enjoy the show. She was lean and lithe of figure, with that distinctive blue-chased silver quality to her scales that separated her from any ordinary Grey-Green at a glance. It screamed, ‘Shapeshifter!’ Illuminated by her personal patch of suns-shine, the colour evinced a mesmerising, ever-changing gleam as her muscles shifted beneath her supple yet powerfully-armoured Dragon hide. She had not acted surprised to be called a Dragoness – she had known for years, after all. The true surprise was her claim that she believed the Star Dragoness would heal her of this affliction. He did not think any Shapeshifter could be ‘healed’ of their magic, not even of Chaos Beast magic. The implication, plainly, was death. A Dragoness without fire? No Dragon at all.
Her thick talons pressed down harder on her captives. “Speak!”
One of the Lights, a younger and less inexperienced soldier judging by the stench arising from his nether regions, rattled, “It was Marshal Chanbar’s plan, ma’am, to distract the Iolite whilst we –”
“Shut it!” roared one of the other men. Iridiana promptly clobbered him.
That shut everyone up, however. Asturbar said, “I think it’s time we took our leave. Last Dragonship is sailing. Keep them quiet, would you, o deadly sweetness of my heart’s desire?”
Nyahi had the cheek to pinch his backside with her talons as he strode toward the hut. He yelped, “Hey! No flirting!”
She smiled. “Be quick, Big Boots.”
He was quick. They had hastily packed everything they needed, and while he would be very sad to leave the hut to these soldiers … well, he was not very sad. They’d survive. Maybe he’d find a way to rescue them at some point in the future. No rush.
Into his large, temporary backpack he had neatly folded all the spare clothing, and packed a raft of sentimental items of Nyahi’s over which he had made some argument before giving in, and his tools and certificate of origin. Everything else, they left. Shouldering the pack and hefting his axe, he departed the cabin, and almost ran straight into Flower.
He smiled at her. You sure you aren’t coming?
She shook her head. Here home.
Asturbar raised his arm; she landed upon it with four-pawed delicacy. Don’t be too hard on those soldiers, alright? They aren’t bad men, mostly. Just misguided.
She chuckled and nipped his forefinger.
We’ll come visit, alright? Have to see the kids … uh, baby dragonets, and all that.
Without warning, all seven Scamps mobbed him. He tried to hug them all. It was that kind of moment, one of zero such leave-takings he had ever experienced in his lifetime.
When he approached Nyahi again, she smiled as affectionately at him as a gleaming twenty-tonne predator could be said to smile. Her captives still looked extremely displeased with their lot in life. She was watching him in a way that introduced an instantaneous strut to his step.
He grunted, “Dratted grit in my eye. Carry on, Dragoness!”
Nyahi’s smile broadened.
“Good luck out here, soldiers,” Asturbar snarled, embarrassed by his behaviour. “Don’t wreck the place, alright? She might not like it.”
“Who’s she?” snorted the Dragoness.
“Righto, we’ve a Dragonship to catch. Away, o fiery chariot!”
She transformed into a flowering bush. “Oops.”
This particular silence could have been scribed upon a scroll and sold for a small fortune.
; Asturbar waved his axe under the soldiers’ noses as they shifted hopefully. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Not me, sah. Thinking nothing at all, sah,” gabbled the young soldier.
One of the others punched him on the shoulder. “Idiot!”
It took fourteen tries as Asturbar tried to restrain his impatience and the soldiers’ eyes grew wider and wider, but Nyahi eventually found her river-of-fire effect and they were off! She shot along the path like a comet, blasting through screens of foliage and curving around one dangling Islet before simply flying through another tangle – he had no idea how, but it was neither a comfortable nor a comforting experience – before her flight arced toward the departing Dragonship, already an eighth of a mile from the outermost fringe of the oasis and accelerating as hard as an unwieldy tan balloon could possibly achieve.
Asturbar stared ahead with one eyeball, which apparently sat upon his knee at that point. Who was that standing on the rear gantry? A familiar man, clad all in black? He was flanked by two of the soldiers Asturbar had expected to be left behind to protect the Dragonship.
As they soared closer, he recognised him, but he had the sense of mind to keep his jaw clamped shut. Marshal Chanbar!
At the very last instant, he realised something was wrong. They were a rushing stream of fire aimed like a flaming arrow toward a highly flammable, gas-filled Dragonship balloon. This could not possibly end well.
“Nyahi! Throw me and transform!”
“What?”
“You’re on fire!”
The Island-World flickered beneath and around him. Asturbar spun slowly through the air. He had wings. He had a tortoise growing out of his shoulder. A silver butterfly-dragonet. Then, his boots slammed into Marshal Chanbar’s black-shirted ribs, smashing the man backward through the flimsy partition wall behind him and into the stores area. Unfortunately for the Marshal, he cushioned the full weight of a flying Azingloriax soldier.
Crack!
Grimacing, Chanbar grabbed at his left shoulder. “Ah!”
Then, Asturbar felt Iridiana unbundle herself from his back. Peering past his shoulder at the pallid Marshal, she hissed, “Why, it’s you, dear Uncle. Remember me?”
Another new experience. Beneath his gaze, the Marshal completely lost the will to live. Asturbar knew how he felt. He would not have wanted to be the Marshal for all the platinum marks in the Island-World, in this moment, such was the tenor of her greeting.
This trip promised to be fun.
Chapter 15: Of Women and Dragonesses
THE GLORIOUS Golds of a spectacular Doldrums suns-set suffused the forward crysglass panels as Asturbar finished checking the navigation settings to the best of his ability, using the compass set in the binnacle beside the helm at the Steersman’s station – his prior station – and the extensive almanac and travel log which had taken some decoding, since the log was written in the Steersman’s personal shorthand. He had spread the charts out on a table in the navigation cabin, and laid the almanac open atop the Mesas to the West. They were not going in that direction. Not so far.
Now, he set the stops upon the helm and wondered if he should go check up on Nyahi. She was being awfully quiet back there. He was not worried for her sake, but for Chanbar with his broken collarbone and severely bruised or broken ribs. Why had she seemed so grim, even despondent as she left to interview her infamous Uncle, that sneaking smirch upon the family honour who had sloped off to build his own mercenary House?
Like the Steersman and the single remaining soldier aboard, Chanbar was manacled hand and foot. No danger. The Marshal was not a fighter, anyways, except in the political sense. In that sphere he had a well-deserved reputation for being a wily, worthy opponent. The expression, ‘honour of a gilded snake’ suited him exceedingly well.
What was the history between him and Iridiana?
Asturbar cracked his knuckles forcefully as he stared at the battered Steersman. He had been loath to reveal his secrets and the Azingloriax, regrettably impatient. Abruptly, he said, “Come, Rekhoil. A little water?”
The man spat aside.
Very well. He scragged the fellow, dragged him off and dumped him in the cabin alongside the Marshal’s. Still the low voices. He resisted the urge to eavesdrop. Dishonourable.
Thieves had honour?
That was worth a stop-start chuckle. Locking the door behind him, not that it mattered given the lightweight internal structures of the average Dragonship, he walked up to the prow and settled in to survey the prospects of the world before him. There was much to consider. Possibility. Life. Love. Could he protect a Chaos Shifter out there in a realm where magic, glamour, politics and power were so closely intertwined?
To the rear, the oasis receded steadily into the gathering darkness, the bronzed rays of a slightly eclipsed suns-set giving way at last to the deepening purples of night. Asturbar marvelled at the capricious winds of fate. Fate seemed unthinking. Destiny, that was closer to the mark in terms of his heart’s deepest cry. There was an inchoate sense of something … well, he felt somewhere out there was a task and a purpose for them both, and a path to restitution. Perhaps even honour. He did not just want a happy life. He wanted a purposeful one. Would it lie with the Mistral Fires – for what did one do with a stray Marshal, anyways – or farther afield in Nyahi’s homeland? Perhaps their destiny lay in another direction entirely, in service to a mighty Star Dragoness, scion of Fra’anior?
Rather too grand for a simple soldier.
Sweeping his gaze from the dying embers of the suns-set dipping behind the gilded summits in the West, lying on the very fringe of the horizon beneath a crescent Blue Moon, Asturbar turned again to face toward what had once been his home. The only home he had ever truly known. The Dragonship hummed over an endless terrain of amaranthine Cloudlands, from this height seemingly formless and uniform, that rippled from those western mountains into the boundless horizons, a slightly lighter purple line above which the true darkness of night began. As the Yellow Moon had not yet risen, the first half of the fourteen hours of night would be particularly dark and therefore the display of stars, accordingly the more magnificent. Almost directly overhead, the Jade Moon waxed in baleful half-light, while the pinprick brilliance of White would rise in an hour or two from behind the Mesas. What of the disturbances they had detected beneath the Cloudlands? What great and terrible events were afoot in the Island-World? One of their first tasks must surely be to stop on some civilised Isle and ask after the news of the day.
Not much happened in the Doldrums.
He did not want to dwell much upon the Marshal’s reasons for this personal visit. That seemed extreme, even if he knew about the contents of his former Commander’s gut – still unmoved, if he could phrase it that way. Unpassed and ostensibly unpassable. Nyahi had told him not to worry.
Oh no. His hands clenched upon the railing as a familiar feeling crept over him.
Sei –
With his utmost effort, he forced himself to topple backward.
* * * *
“Boots! You can’t … I’m never letting you out of my sight, ever again! Especially not … out here!”
“Urgh-hee,” he muttered, trying to sound remorseful.
His distraught girlfriend patted his face and forehead somewhat aimlessly with a cool cloth. “You silly, overgrown excuse for a lumpen soldier’s ration pack, can you not pound it into your dense-as-Dragon-armour cranium how much I love you?”
“Afflub …”
“If you had tumbled overboard, how would I ever find you? You’d just be gone! Vanished, and I would never have any idea where or when. You are not –” she smacked his chest with the flat of her hand “– not, not ever doing that again. Ever! Even if I have to make you eat stanchions for your metals. You are about to go on a diet.” She smiled wanly. “A ‘try everything and see if it helps’ diet, in lieu of … I don’t know what! Help me here, Boots.”
He kissed her knuckles. “Lurg-hoo.”
Excellent. This seizure was his worst yet in terms of actually having a working tongue afterward.
Iridiana seemed to understand, however, for she stroked his cheek with a hand that suddenly sprouted seven-inch talons, and to his rising alarm, growled, “I could just wring your lovely neck some – oh. That’s interesting, a partial transformation. Hmm. Let’s see if this helps.”
The night was fully dark, but not darker than the sable waterfall of her fine-stranded hair, which courtesy of the slight breeze their headway created, brushed lightly against his cheek and upper body as she kissed him tenderly. Asturbar had the odd impression that light and dark were bending about him as the gantry rippled like the suns-play upon rippling water, but that was either his imagination or the reality-bending excellence of her kisses. He was not sure why he was even asking such a question. Not when his lips and throat and tongue were tingling with the repercussions of her magic, and a growing luminescence beneath her skin betrayed her rising ardour.
Nyahi’s eyes popped open, lambent. “Oh no …”
Whoosh! Bang, whizz! “Wheeeeee … you’re awesome, Boots!” Her cry faded into the near distance as the light phenomenon curved in multiple overlapping streams out to a point five hundred feet from the bow, where she appeared to gather her poise. He could not have put it better himself. “Watch me!” Not quite her usual fireworks, but now she was some type of white-fire dragonet with sparkles skittering off its scales, shooting past him like a miniature, fizzing comet. Skiss!
Asturbar eased himself up onto one knee and rose with due care. Now was not the moment to pitch himself overboard, not even for the sheer excess of joy that toasted his innards when he saw her flying like that.
Tempestuous splendour seared the night.
Now she shot toward him and between heartbeats, changed into the form of a girl. He saw the moment shock set in. No wings. Flailing, arcing, starting to fall – leaning against the outer railing with one hand reflexively clutching at a safety strap, Asturbar snapped out a hand and caught her left ankle. The railing creaked horribly, but held.
