by Marc Secchia
Extraordinary! May it be so, Dragoness. The Brown turned to Asturbar. Deploy us, Marshal. Only in the fires of revenge shall my fire-soul know its first peace.
As he opened his mouth to reply, Asturbar heard a high-pitched, sibilant hissing followed by the first dull thuds of impacts. The catapults began to reply, with a breezy tzoig! as the cords snapped taut, and hopefully a sound like a hand slapping a rug, the report of a six-foot quarrel feathering in a Drake’s flank. Immediately, screeches of pain and fury arose, muffled by the debris but still spine-chilling in their intensity. Acrid smoke drifted down the corridor. Now a steadier patter of offensive fireballs began to rain into the gap blasted above the entryway, setting the debris afire, and the cries of the defenders took on a more organised pattern, pleasing to an ex-Infantry Commander’s ear. Good. Professionals, when they weren’t eating and drinking their way through his larder. Should he consider rationing the food supplies?
He raised his hand. Toward the front’s our biggest problem. Do you feel like accidentally entombing a few Drakes in the name of scientific experimentation, noble Yua’tak’tix?
Her grin flashed suddenly, all dagger-sharp fangs and bellicosity. I like your thinking, Marshal. Nothing would please me more.
* * * *
Drakes swarmed the entrance like maniacs, tearing into their own fallen to reach the debris, which the Brown Dragoness laboured to fuse together from behind and within. She worked by swirling bands of rock about her talons, fusing it like metal smelted in a furnace before tamping it into place by the paw-load or hurling it where she desired, but she was three times ambushed by cunning Drakes that worked their way through the wreckage and waited for an opportune moment to sink their fangs into the enemy. Asturbar himself led a charge to free her from an attacker which she could not reach. The Drake quarried a hole two feet deep in her neck before he put his axe blade through its left eye, and then severed its neck with a mighty follow-up blow.
Scum, Asturbar spat.
The Brown Dragoness’ eye gleamed at him. You’re more draconic than you give yourself credit for, Marshal.
Only his best parts, Iridiana quipped, and they chuckled as one.
With both weak points soon piled high with the dead and the dying, the siege slowed to a crawl. After four hours of battle and turmoil, Asturbar returned to the hole at the top to oversee matters there, before seeking out the Brown. He paced restively, watching her work. She was tired. Soon, she disappeared deeper into the wreckage and he turned, gritting his teeth.
“What’s bugging you, Asturbar?” asked Nyahi.
“It’s too quiet. I don’t like quiet.”
“Sing you a lullaby?”
“Hilarious. I’ll give the order to start standing down the defenders in shifts. This could be a long siege.”
Without warning, his armour popped off so fast that he was left with a weightless feeling, before Nyahi fizzed though seven or eight transformations in panicked sequence. No – this one – danger! Warning! Her luminous blue light seared through the semidarkness into the mouth of the tunnel where the Brown Dragoness laboured. Watch out! Attack! The gleam faded rapidly as she raced away.
KKAA-RAA-KABOOOM!!
Lightning smashed into the entryway in the form of an immense shaped charge, Asturbar realised belatedly from the afterimage burned on his retinae. He shook his head dazedly. The Shapeshifters! They must have regrouped and attacked once the Drakes had withdrawn; his battle-axe leaped into his hand as if by magic, but he was forced to dive for cover as two further blue-white explosive bolts lit up the entryway. Why had the Watch not alerted them? A suns-bright electrical discharge ran along the walls and twisted stanchions, highlighting each individually as an enormous concussion battered his unprotected ears, and he heard a girlish scream intermingled with the Brown Dragoness’ roar of pain, and then all went silent again, and dark.
ATTACK!! thundered a Dragon without.
All he could imagine was Nyahi’s body lying broken in there, a curl of smoke expiring from her lips … and for the first time since he remembered, his cool under fire evaporated.
“DEFEND THE ENTRANCE!” he roared brokenly. “Amuzkayne, with me! For the Mistrals!”
They charged over the rubble strewn by the blasts, so hot that it was still smoking, searching for the Dragonesses. This area was newly opened to the skies; the Brown must have thought to take advantage of the quiet to try to sneak closer to the enemy and stop up the gaps. Asturbar cried out, “A foot! Here!” Suddenly there were Dragons at his shoulder, levering aside the rubble with care, while Amuzkayne threw himself bodily at a struggling Drake, crushing the lesser beast beneath his paw. One bite. They were landing in numbers now, above, and wriggling in through the burning wreckage, seeking fresh blood.
The enemy Shapeshifter, cussing and spitting, drove the Drakes to the attack. Destroy them! Pull out that rubble there – lazy null-fire idiots, I’ve done all the hard work for you! He cried out in fury, however, as a speculative catapult shot pinned him between the talons of his left hind paw.
GNARRR! The Blue sprayed the arrow slots indiscriminately with fire. The Marshal saw in his mind’s eye men diving for cover up there; he hoped they had been quick enough, and maybe smart enough to start shifting the positions of the catapults.
One of Asturbar’s Dragon contingent called, It’s the Brown in her Human form! Where’s the other …
Here? What’s this? called another.
A dragonet?
How did they survive that gigantic lightning bolt?
The Brown Shapeshifter in her Human manifestation was a striking brunette of middling height and perhaps forty-five years of age; blood seeped from the corner of her mouth as the Dragons extracted her from beneath the wreckage. She must have been struck squarely by at least one blast, or simply been concussed by the powerful lightning strike. Nyahi was a scrap borne upon another talon, seven or eight inches of her characteristic silver-mauve colour, her wings unmoving.
“Nyahi …” he whispered.
Echoes faded upon his hearing. Impressions blurred. Nothing seemed to matter, only the life hanging as it were by a thread upon that Dragon’s talon. He could not think. His fingers were numb upon his battle-axe. Amuzkayne boomed his battle challenge. There was thrashing about in the dangling mess of stanchions and shattered boulders as he wrestled briefly with a Drake, and then the attackers multiplied as they found ingress. The Lesser Dragon scrapped mightily, but he was hampered by the close quarters, while the Drakes had by far the better going. In moments he disappeared beneath a press of bodies, so thick and heavy that Asturbar dully wondered if the piled-up Drakes had not just ended up protecting him from further damage!
The other Shapeshifter shifted slightly, then groaned, She … protected …
“Back. Back!” Asturbar roared. “Take them to the infirmary!”
“The Mistral Fires!” Bantukor shouted, leading a charge in exactly the opposite direction, toward the Marshal, who in his moment’s distraction, found himself the unwelcome recipient of a Drake’s hug – a snaffling paw, and a jaw trying to champ his head off his shoulders to crown the creature’s friendly intent. Reversing his axe automatically, he jabbed the pointed haft at the beast’s eye. Again! Hot ichor splattered over his gambeson. The Drake shuddered as the fires of its eyes faded. That was unexpected. A nerve centre, or even the brain?
“Gaah, you stink,” he snorted, tearing himself free of the paw as it relaxed. He gave it a parting chop in the neck. “And stay dead!”
Joining up with Bantukor, he tried to fight through to Amuzkayne, but the press of dead, dying and living Drakes was too great. The Lesser Dragon was well and truly buried, and the catapult engineers were shouting that they could no longer gain clean shots because of the infantry in their line of fire. Asturbar did not want to leave him. He could not.
Suddenly, a much gruffer, more powerful roar resounded and a massively heavy body landed atop the pile, juddering them all. Out of my way, fools!
This time, Asturbar knew clarity. “ALL CATAPULTS, FIRE!”
Bantukor’s Command responded to his simultaneous hand signal with absolute precision, peeling apart as every man and woman dived for their lives. Swish! WHAP! Swish-swish! A dozen bolts peppered the Shapeshifter’s head, some sticking against the bone, but one or two penetrated deeply. After all, those were armour-piercing bolts. Asturbar felt his limbs contract once, agonisingly, as an electrical shock ran away beneath his prone body, and then the infantry unit began to raise a weak cheer.
From his angle, the soldier could see through the crook of a Drake’s elbow to Amuzkayne’s fire-eye, clouding now as his life guttered.
Thou noble son of Fra’anior, he whispered to the Dragon.
At the last, Amuzkayne seemed to nod.
“Victory!” Bantukor cheered. His men and the catapult crews began to shout the same.
He could not believe his ears. That Dragon had just given his eternal fires … “Victory?” Asturbar heard himself scream. “Victory, you spavined sons of ragion faeces? This is just the beginning!”
“Sah!”
“Get your filthy hands off me. Get off!”
“You should go put on your armour, sah,” Bantukor said.
Asturbar just stared at his Commander. At the silent, shocked faces surrounding him. Then, he staggered stiff-legged down the corridor, throwing over his shoulder, “Get that entrance sealed! And keep a better watch on those Shifters from now on!”
* * * *
After donning his full battle armour, save his helmet which he clipped to his belt, Asturbar walked the halls of the House for a long time, giving his mind time and space to process recent events. His House. What an incongruous notion! At this hour people should have been sleeping, but almost none were, save the children. Runners supplied the lines with food and water, and recovered bolts or shrapnel where they could. Messenger girls and boys dashed between the levels, carrying vital intelligence. Down in the kitchen stores the staff were taking an inventory of supplies as he had requested, and Asturbar stopped to encourage an apprentice cook he heard crying behind a stack of mohili flour sacks. The boy leaped to his feet as soon as he recognised the Marshal.
“Sorry, sah! I was just –”
“It’s alright, son.” Son? The boy was past his first growth of beard, and Asturbar was no old-timer himself! Gruffly, he said, “It’s my first day on the job. People are dying and I could dearly do with a hug right now, but I’ve got to look strong, you see. Rally the troops and all that. Be the indestructible Marshal.”
“Ha, you need a hug, sah?”
Asturbar just bobbed his head. “Yes. Been rough out there. My girlfriend’s in the infirmary, struck down by a Shapeshifter… you got a girl here, Byzamkin? I have your name right, don’t I?”
“Right, sah. Yes. I confess I got one fiery eye on Silomé, a nurse – you won’t tell, sah? Will you?”
“Nope. One hug’s all it takes, and I’ll keep your secret to the grave.” They embraced. “You’ll be alright, Byzamkin?”
“You should go to your girl, sah. No shame in that.”
He bit his lip. Now the teenagers were giving him advice – and sage advice at that! Asturbar realised that although he had been receiving messages about Nyahi’s condition every half-hour, he had been wanting to avoid the appearance of weakness. Stupid soldier. Was love ever weakness? Or was it strength?
Clapping the boy upon the shoulder, he said, “I’ll take your counsel right away. But you don’t let your Silomé get away either, alright? Gird up your courage and ask her to walk out with you.”
“Yes …”
“Do I need to make that an order?” He tilted an eyebrow at the lad.
“No sah! I mean, I’ll do it, sah.”
He walked up via the underground cisterns to tell the staff to keep an eye on the incoming supply. He would not put it past Thoralian to try to poison them all. Honour could mean nothing to that vile cannibal. Then he walked on past the forges, engineering rooms and ward-working departments, finding them all busily humming along, and up one level past the armouries, fletching, weapons maintenance, and military clothing areas, toward the infirmary. No shame. So much to learn about battling for those he loved. Perhaps devotion to the House and his comrades had always underpinned his duty, but this relationship with Nyahi threw his past into sharp relief. How did soldiers continue to fight when their heart was on the line?
A man his size could not easily slip into any room, especially not when he was clanking about in half a tonne of plate armour. Therefore, he decided, he would thumpity-thump his way in and make directly for the bed where Iridiana was supposed to be recuperating. He understood she had set two beds alight with inadvertent transformations before settling into her Human form, and that the infirmary staff were terrified of her as a result. Marvellous.
Squeezing in through the doorway, His Mighty Marshal-ness prowled into the infirmary with intentions that were summarily expunged from his mind by the brilliance of a silver-blue smile down toward the end of the long ward. Gaah, how did she do that to him every time? The suns could not possibly shine underground, yet there she sat in a section of the room that was noticeably brighter than the rest.
Another day, another Chaotic impossibility.
No mind. He thudded with due majesty down the narrow aisle between the parallel rows of beds, bumping into frames here, “Sorry,” and medical supplies there, “Oops,” at least six times as he approached her station. A young nurse was busy working around her back, carefully sponging an area behind her right shoulder blade with a herbal wash. Oh. Silomé, perhaps? Byzamkin had described her as having a vivid birthmark on the right side of her face, which she kept hidden by brushing her long black curls over in that direction, and he saw by the angle of her glance that she was indeed trying to present only the left side to his view. She seemed sweet but painfully self-conscious.
Nyahi lay on her left side beneath dark blue sallowool blankets. She must have been speaking to Yuaki, who perched on the next bed, clearly favouring her left leg or hip.
The older Shapeshifter said, “I was just conversing with this fledgling. Quite the conundrum with her magical abilities, it seems.” Her accent was unfamiliar to Asturbar, gruff and clipped. “But you’re right. She’s Shapeshifter through and through, just a right peculiar one. Smell. Magic. Aura. Everything about her fire-life cries Shifter, only one possessing a unique manifestation of the sacred magic – so unique, that it appears even in her Human form her skin colour mimics her iridium powers, and who knows what those are? I wonder if she might not have been poisoned in her youth or even in the womb by one of the mythomaxorydial family of compounds, which contain high dosages of iridium. They are used in some cultures to … to terminate unwanted egglings, Marshal.”
Asturbar took a moment to process this flood of information. “For Dragon abortions?” he blurted out. “Sorry, Nyahi, but … are you alright?”
“Fine on all counts. Well, a bit sore. Got burned under the rubble, but nothing serious.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Nurse?”
“Fine, apart from the sight of bone under here,” the nurse whispered.
Iridiana smiled sheepishly. “Erm …”
He crinkled his eyes at her. “Silomé, anything else I should know before I start swatting her behind for telling lies?”
“She recovers from injuries with Dragon speed, Marshal,” said the girl, still in the breathiest of whispers. “The wound is already showing signs of closing up. Would you wish to … ah, see it?”
Asturbar reminded himself that to lean upon the bed might just collapse the frame. He edged around, mindful of his oversized footwear for once, and checked the shallow burn wound on the lower shoulder blade. He said, “Huh, isn’t that droll? The part number is burned on the skin beside the wound.”
The girl tilted her head. “Yes. Apparently she lay upon a D-Shift Type 7.”
“Dragon Shifter type seven?” said Asturbar, wilfully mistranslating what he knew for a part from the gearshift of a Dragonship turbine. “Interesting. Does that come with a price?”
“Cheap,” Yuaki teased. “A mark a dozen.”
He paddled Iridiana upon her blanket-draped behind, drawing a cross squeal from his girlfriend. “Cheapest deal I ever swindled out of a battle.”
“Don’t touch what you can’t afford, Marshal,” his girl mock-growled.
“So, nurse, when can I take this one off your hands?”
“Five minutes,” stammered the youngster.
“How’s it going up there, Marshal?” asked the Brown Shapeshifter.
“Attritional,” he said quietly, cursing himself inwardly for unnecessarily alarming the nurse. “They are really focussing on trying to open the top hole at the moment. We’ve already had to collapse several vulnerable levels in preparation, but by dawn I think we are going to have to take more drastic measures – unless you are feeling well enough to shift more rock, noble Dragoness? Before you ask, the main entrance is faring better due to the coverage of the fields of fire. We’ve knocked out so many Drakes they’re having trouble removing the carcasses.”
“Sweet purring in my ear canals,” growled the Shifter. “I’ve had my fill of rest, Marshal. Show me to the stones.”
Asturbar grinned at Nyahi. “Shall I wait for you?”
