by Marc Secchia
He saw in snatches. The ridged backs of woodlice-type Dragons bobbling along behind him, with Yazina and Chanbar bending low to avoid the thick roof beams. The teen gave him a bright smile. He growled angrily, yanking at the chains. Still?
“Shh.” A slim blue hand smoothed his fevered forehead. “You’re sweating it out now. You pong like a town sewer, soldier.”
“Azzur … juju … blinking Drago-schurrmungles!”
“Ah … yes. If you say so.”
“Ish nonshins?”
“It’s complete verbal rot, Marshal sweet cheeks.”
“Shweet-shwat? Report, soli … ugh … solijja! Ya skarra-lishard muglehead! Charge! For da Mishralsh!”
“The Dragons did warn us about the hallucinations,” Nyahi said aside to someone else. “How much longer in these tunnels?”
Rekhoil said, “Couple more hours at least. It’s incredible. I never would have suspected that the Asjujuian root network extends so far beneath all of these different realms and Houses. A whole under-Cloudlands trading network up to forty leagues in radius, they told me. And, they really, really don’t like Drakes.” With a verbal shudder, he added, “Did you see those whip-net branches lashing up from beneath the Clouds? Remind me never to annoy any lurking dracoflora. Not pretty.”
“Probably took a few tens of thousands down,” the girl agreed. “Like swatting insects with whippy branches five miles long. Still, having dangled our handsome Marshal to the South, do you think we’ll make it far enough through the root system to avoid the sweep of Thoralian’s Dragonwings?”
“It’ll be a close-run thing, lady.”
“We should find cover with all the other refugees,” came Chanbar’s voice. “When the great Dragon Marshals move in power, the wise hide beneath the Islands.”
* * * *
Asturbar experienced snatches of lucidity between bouts of fever dreams. The tunnel narrowed toward its end. Soon the ridged, highly polished backs of the scuttling woodlice reflected bright suns-shine, and he felt a sense of lifting as a mist-swathed sylvan tendril bore them aloft, just a few hundreds of feet it seemed, to a shabby Trader Dragonship which had descended to a dangerous altitude skimming the toxic Cloudlands. How had they survived? Did the Asjujians have a system for purifying air in their tunnels, he wondered?
He wanted to ask Nyahi, but more gibberish spewed from his mouth.
They had to winch him aboard, given as he was struggling and shouting and then went into a spasm that almost caused the men above to drop him. His head cracked against a stanchion with a strange, resonant clang, as if a great gong had been struck inside his head, and the waves rippled in crimson and white streams throughout his body. He distinctly felt the Jewels vibrating inside his stomach – excitedly, he thought, before he blacked out.
* * * *
“WATER?” he roared, trying to sit up. Clank! “YOU THRICE-BLASTED … uh … oh. I do feel much better.”
“Oh, Boots!” cried Iridiana.
Wow. He was drenched, smelled of women’s soap, and was – well, if he could see past his lovely silver muse’s impassioned kisses – lying on the floor of a tiny cabin, sans clothing, still manacled with those Dragon-purposed shackles at the wrists, elbows, knees and ankles. He had a headache the size of an Island. A sizeable, throbbing Island. It was night, and the engines’ purring transferred gently through the planking to his body. They must still be underway.
She touched a lump behind his left ear. “Does this –”
“Ouch! Like the blazes! Where are we? What’s going on? Release me this instant.”
Cue a coy smile and one of those silences that this time, contrived to remind Asturbar precisely how naked he was. She said, “We’re aloft, safe, headed for the House, and I have you exactly where I want you.”
“Ah …”
“Exactly where I want you.”
Asturbar considered this. For some peculiar reason, his heart was walloping the inside of his chest as though he had been stung by fifty blacktail wasps all at once. “Chained like a criminal?”
“You’re a strong and dangerous man. I’m a helpless female, armed with nothing but a sponge and my scintillating wits.”
“Right …”
She made a mock-terrified face. “Oh, what am I to do?”
“Did you miss me, perchance?” He grinned at the buoyant note in his voice. “I take it we are fleeing for our lives from at least two if not three mortal enemies and their respective armies and the Island-World as we know it is about to end, but you have other ideas?”
“Other priorities,” Nyahi corrected definitively. “Didn’t you tell me that waiting for a battle is the worst part?”
“I did.”
“Well, I intend to make it the very best.”
About two hours later, Asturbar decided that he was starting to learn that Dragonesses, even the ostensibly shy ones, quite liked to have their own way. No complaints, soldier! Fragrant of cleanliness, returned to fully clothed state and finally unchained, he exited the cabin with Iridiana perched adeptly upon his shoulder in one of her silver-mauve dragonet forms, this one a cheekily beaming mite some fourteen inches in length, with wedge-shaped folding wings and a glossy, slim body that made her look as if she could dart across the suns at a hundred leagues per hour. He strolled around to the nose of the Dragonship, and gaped at the not-darkness upon their western aspect.
He rubbed the last muzziness out of his eyes. “What the …”
“Thoralian,” chirped the dragonet. “It started the day before yesterday.”
Eerie lights shimmered along the horizon, the colour of verdigris upon copper. It was not lightning, although the flickering did bring to mind the advent of a powerful storm front, but as he watched, majestic columns of greenish-turquoise fire gushed up toward the heavens in hundreds of locales, casting a garish light upon the Dragonship and the surrounding Islands. They appeared to dissipate, only to emerge again in different locations. Above and behind the phenomenon, bands of dark-winged clouds striated the sky like the highly defined muscle bands of a powerful Dragon, clouds that would have been the darkest copper save for the strobe lightning highlighting different aspects of their looming formations second by second.
Asturbar touched his stomach. “That’s Thoralian?”
“The First Egg, we think,” she said, pressing her body against his neck. “Its power charges the environment in strange ways. Changes it. That’s my best guess. I’m not any kind of expert in describing the ways of magic –”
“Neither of us is. What’s the impact on you?”
“Distant as yet, but I can definitely feel – the closer that disturbance approaches, the more my Chaos magic reacts. It’s stirring me at levels I don’t really understand. There’s a deep sensation I can only liken to the prickling of a heat rash, which I used to get when I first changed.” She chuckled uncomfortably. “Clever me, I thought it was teenage acne at first – couldn’t have been more wrong. I suppose Shapeshifters would say that’s the fire within. The Rising. I am apprehensive about all this, Boots, but much less so now that I have you with me. Although, I don’t think I’ll ever quite erase the picture of your infatuation with the Fragrant Overlord from my mind.”
“I was trying to forget that.”
What he would never forget, Asturbar knew, was this first true sighting of the legendary Marshal’s might. He must possess the First Egg. What did he purpose with it? Pit his power against the Star Dragoness’ storm of storms, and what would ensue? Were he and Iridiana nothing more than leaves destined to be tossed in the tempest between two unstoppable powers; in the destruction that was certain to come?
Just a handful of months ago, he had been worried about bones rising to life.
Now he was desperate not to lose the chance for a long life with the girl – the Dragoness, he corrected himself faintly – that he adored. Strange how life could dump one’s motivations upon their tailbones.
“What’s that, my Boots?” she whispered bes
ide his ear.
“Just reflecting upon the breathtaking impetuosity of fate,” he returned. “Not long ago, all I knew or cared for was soldiering. Now, I spend my days chasing your pretty tail.”
“Asturbar!” She jumped as he tweaked said tail with his fingers. In a moment, she flitted into a spiralling somersault, lost her orientation, and recovered with a wild squeak of annoyance. He caught her deftly between his palms, surprising himself with the gentle competence of his catch. Iridiana complained, “Drat this – every form is different. Different aerodynamics, weight distribution, capabilities … takes a dint of keeping straight in the mind, I’ll tell you. Anyways, I promised to let you know where we are. The answer is, almost back at the House. We should arrive by dawn, even at the speed of this rabid land snail of a Dragonship.”
Asturbar nodded pensively. And then they would see who or what had survived.
Catching her slender neck in his fingers, he said, “So, do I remember correctly someone calling me, ‘Marshal sweet cheeks?’ ”
“Wasn’t me.”
“Then why are you trembling like that?”
Lilies! Dragonet! Spiny-backed lizard-thing! Thorn bush!
“Ouch!” Asturbar said.
“Hmm,” mused the bush, waving its inch-long pink thorn-sprays in his general direction. “I guess this passes for ‘feeling prickly’ in Shapeshifter parlance?”
* * * *
From afar, they spied on the Mistral Fires. The House was located in an ordinarily quiet corner of the Fringe, so to speak, but not so quiet this week, Asturbar noted. As powerful Dragonwings scoured the skies to the South and Southwest, many, many persons and creatures were on the move. Dragonships scuttled from cover to cover before the advance of what he took for Thoralian’s forces, for they appeared to be giving no quarter as they scoured the dense, rocky thickets of this less fertile region. The Islands were ragion-supported black granite in the main, floating in dense northerly-pointing wedges two to four miles above the greyish-tan Cloudlands below, but this day, the backdrop was clear, azure dawn skies to every point of the compass save behind Thoralian’s advance. There, the sickly green haze topped by forbidding cupric clouds slowly swept behind dense clusters of grey and crimson dots – Dragons and Drakes, more numerous than he had ever seen gathered at one time. Drakes, smaller Dragonkind of lesser intelligence but famously vicious tempers, were normally voracious feeders. Especially when they swarmed in numbers, their behaviour changed to a feral-like pack mentality. But he saw no feeding behaviours. Instead, they laboured with uncharacteristically methodical patience, surrounding clusters of Islands in their hundreds if not thousands before rooting through every nook and cranny. He several times observed Lesser Dragons bursting from hiding, beset by the snapping, underslung jaws of these thirty-foot predators. In their swarms the smaller Dragonkind were deadly, overwhelming their larger cousins by sheer weight of numbers.
Yet what were they searching for? Azhukazi? Or the Jewels of Instashi, which daily seemed to weigh heavier in his stomach?
Either way, as his gaze returned to the flotillas of Islands further North, these laced with jade and antimony deposits to break up the relentless granite, he saw a different problem. Dozens of refugee Dragonships coursed northward in the main, for the principle of refuge in Houses was well established in law and custom and there were other primarily mercenary Houses in this region who would be keen to turn a quick profit from calamity, but they flew toward smoke. Best guess? Azhukazi had fired the House, broken the wards, and left it open to depredation. Classic draconic overlord behaviour. Don’t sully the paws with too much casual destruction. Leave the dirty work for others. The Iolite Blue Marshal would see this as his birthright. Likely raised in a Dragon nursery, he would have fought for survival from his hatchling days, and having triumphed and risen to power, now saw it as his right to boss and bully other Dragons about whilst he focused on higher matters, such as developing his grave-raiding magical skills.
The question was, where was Azhukazi in all this? Waiting for Asturbar and Iridiana to make their appearance? Ambush? Was the Dragonwing back at Mount Morgu-Zayê part of his forces? Furthermore, they must plan upon betrayal from inside the House from the minute Marshal Chanbar stepped foot over the portal. The Dragon would have laid his plans and his schemes.
Yet go they must. If there was any chance they could save some of the Mistral Fires, or many, then the duty to which Iridiana had bound him and he had willingly accepted, was crystal clear. Defend the innocent – indeed, and the guilty alike!
Pursing his lips grimly, he patted his stomach. “Guilty as charged.”
“Talking to ourselves, Marshal?”
Ooh, and the beautiful. Yes, he must protect the beautiful.
Turning to Nyahi, he said, “Yes, the first harbinger of madness, isn’t it? So, shall we discuss plans?”
Threading her arm through his, she kissed him upon the corner of his jaw. “I trust you. Moreover, I trust your experience.”
“Very good. So when I say I think we should place our necks beneath the Dragon’s paw, you’ll follow me, no questions asked?” Threading her relatively slender fingers into his as her melancholy giggle underscored his statement, Asturbar noted, “What we see around us is unprecedented in the history of Wyldaroon. The greater part of Herimor, beyond the Straits of Hordazar, has seen many a war sweeping across its Isles, but to date Wyldaroon has largely been spared. Not because we are better, but only because our forms of warfare are localised and formalised – the Gladiator Pits, the formality of mercenary Houses battling it out, the staged warfare between nation states and kingdoms and suchlike – and also due to sheer isolation. Frankly, Marshals have never been bothered when there are richer and easier pickings to be had elsewhere. Unlike your cosseted upbringing –”
“Ooh, Big Boots dares to provoke the Dragoness?”
“– in a comfy dungeon, I was about to add …”
“You are in so much trouble! Get off me! Don’t think you can kiss your way out of this one. I know my histories, you great big lug.”
“Mmm,” he said. “Now that I’m the Marshal, I really shall have to pop you in a nice dank cell –”
“Boots!”
“Oh, but I thought you’d feel right at home there.” Her eyes flashed with a storm’s worth of warnings. “Or, you could just work as a kitchen sweeper, say … and if you’re pleasingly amenable to my advances over an extended period of time, I might even consider a promotion to – ouch!”
Perhaps the bitten lip was worth it for her reaction.
Slipping in to the Mistral Fires Island cluster together with three other bedraggled Dragonships and a limping Lesser Dragon, they approached the large, fortified floating massif that housed the Mistral Fires. Its steep sides, three quarters of a mile tall, displayed signs of recent heavy damage by Dragon fire, with patches of ragions hanging limply, turning white with death. Already, fresh squadrons of the lavender and black creatures crept into the gaps. The renewal of life was always swift in such cases, as if the tens of thousands of animals acted with one mind to produce the ragion equivalent of a blood clot. The Island did hang noticeably lower in the sky than before, he observed, and furthermore, the landing field had been blackened by the assault to the point of the rock being fused into sheets of milky tan glass in places. Azhukazi’s rage?
Now, the field and dry fosses were a junkyard of abandoned, battered and burnt-out Dragonships. Seventy or eighty, minimum, and at least half a dozen dead Dragons scattered amidst the wreckage. Asturbar chewed unhappily on his lower lip. How many refugees?
The Steersman brought them in for an overly casual landing close up to the main protective bulwarks, a landing that would have caused the Commander Asturbar of old to deliver a swift kicking. He was pleased to see droves of people working to shore up temporary ramparts above and around the severely damaged main entrance. The V-shaped damaged section was a hundred feet tall and four hundred feet wide up top, leaving numerous floors of
the inner House dangerously exposed. A slight shimmer in the air above proclaimed that the Ward Workers had begun the work of re-establishing the protective shield, although it was clearly weak as yet and would not withstand any attack worthy of the name. Smoke still billowed out of the storage section further toward the middle of the Island, where from above they had seen a huge sinkhole driven through the upper levels. The fighting must have been intense, and part of the caverns below had evidently collapsed.
Beside him, Chanbar hissed, “Whatever was I thinking, leaving …”
To his own surprise, Asturbar found himself clasping Chanbar’s good shoulder with almost brotherly affection. “Not too many regrets. We’ve a mighty task ahead.”
The first of which would be to abandon work on the outermost layer of fortifications, and to start creating safe refuges deeper within the subterranean House. Asturbar bit his lip thoughtfully. When the Drakes arrived, these initial preparations would be overrun within minutes.
Then again …
He said, “Chanbar, it’s pointless trying to hide our presence here. You’ll announce the change in leadership. Then, I want all of this junk on the landing field to be shoved into that sinkhole to stop it up, and also to block this hole above the main gates. Get any Dragons who have taken refuge here to help shift the rubbish. They can tear up the Island for boulders to help block everything up.”
“But that’s –”
“Indefensible? I know.”
Asturbar surveyed the problem once more. A full frontal attack would blow through the temporary fortifications, and any rubbish they shoved into that gaping ruin above where the main blast doors used to be – perhaps half an hour. Maximum. Even the Dragon-sized sentry posts behind had been exposed. He said, “The point will be to slow down any assault. Back in there, we place our defensive catapults to knock off the Drakes as they crawl through the wreckage.”
“The underground tunnels?”
“Collapse and seal any that are not man-sized.” As Chanbar nodded, Asturbar added, “We’ll need to collapse some of the upper levels too. Get enough rubble together and then we ragion-cement it all in place to create a decent shell above and around our inner defence. Get all the people as low and far back as we can.”
