Freedom Fire, page 18
Somewhere nearby, Drek lurked.
Just a little down the hill, the spinosaur snarls grew louder.
Magdalys glanced around, fear rising up within her amidst the sizzle of a newly birthed flame.
JUHjuhJUHjuhJUHjuhJUHjuhJUHjuhJUH
Images of her own death, of Mapper’s, flashed through her mind. She tried to shake them away but it was all she could see. Those sinorniths, their gnashing teeth and glinting eyes — all it would take was one bite. And they had almost reached the hill where Magdalys stood now; she could make out the striations along their dank feathered wings, those claws. They would all be under Drek’s powerful dinomastery by now — it was no use trying to get at them.
But maybe … if she could reach some other dino.
Beyond the panic, a sorrow rose up in her. She’d barely been able to keep her promise more than a couple days.
It came to survival. That was all there was to it, really. They’d forced her hand. She passed Mapper her carbine. “Just try and buy me a little time,” she said, and he nodded, face tense, frown severe. As she closed her eyes, the last thing she saw was Mapper turning both barrels toward the sky.
KaBLAM kaBLAM!! Blam! Blamblamblam!
With everything she had, Magdalys reached. She imagined hundreds and hundreds of reptiles clambering through the woods toward them.
JUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUH
More dinos than she could even grasp. She reached out even further with her mind than she had before, linking with that ever-rising murmur that had been growing inside her since they’d approached New Orleans.
And then she reached further, felt herself coming unmoored from her own body as the JUHJUHJUHs rose around her, within her, and then the soil itself seemed to take a breath and cede away, welcoming the tendrils of her mind that burrowed through them, uprooting ancient, forgotten relics and impossible shapes amidst the churn of swamp water and tree roots and all that life …
JUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUH
It became everything: sight sound feel smell.
All that power — there had to be dinos all around them, surely. And they’d poke their heads between the trees and then flush down the hillside and out into the sky and overwhelm the spinosaurs below and sinorniths above.
But when she opened her eyes, the surrounding forest was still empty. They were all alone.
Then the ground beneath them began to shake.
JUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUH
The murmur grew to a yell; it seemed to open up inside her, carve a whole new sparkling expanse within her.
“What’s happening?” Mapper yelled.
JUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUHJUH
Magdalys tried to steady herself against a tree but the whole thing uprooted and went crashing down the hillside. The sinorniths pulled back in a scattered panic, suddenly without a safe landing area.
Beans and Dizz were huddled together while Grappler, still strapped to Dizz’s back, glanced around nervously. Great chunks of soil dislodged themselves on either side of them and cascaded off the hill, taking trees and bushes down with them and splashing into the bayou along with a rumbling pile of boulders.
“Hold on!” Magdalys called, finding another, larger tree and pulling Mapper over to it. A family of herons took flight, shrieking as they lifted off. Then the whole front part of the hill gave way before them and Magdalys and Mapper stared out at the open sky.
JUH!!!!
The murmuring burst into a sudden fierce blast that seemed to echo out across the swamp around them.
“Uh, Mags,” Mapper said.
Magdalys looked around. “I think …” The hill had taken on a moist, dark green shine where the soil had fallen away. It sloped down around them in lumpy, shining mounds. “I think this isn’t a hill,” she finally blurted out.
Two enormous yellow eyes opened on either side of where they stood.
“No kidding!” Mapper yelled. “What tipped you off?”
JUH!!!! the gigantic toad insisted inside Magdalys. From far away, another call responded: juhjuhjuhjuh
“Whatever it is,” Magdalys said, “there are more of them.”
“Look!” Mapper called. The next hill over wasn’t a hill either — the swamp water churned beneath it as trees and soil billowed off to reveal a huge mouth and two long folded-up legs. Slime-covered vines and tendrils dangled from its dripping neck folds.
JuhJUHjuhJUHjuhJUHjuhJUH
In the sky above, the sinorniths were already regrouping. Magdalys spied a figure riding a crimson dactyl of all things, that long red beard visible from the hill where Magdalys stood. Drek waved his hands around him, directing the sinos like a frenzied flying conductor.
“Are you …” Mapper asked. “I mean, can you … ?”
“I … I think so,” Magdalys said.
JuhJUHjuhJUHjuhJUHjuhJUH
“You should probably do it now, if you can,” Mapper said. “Those guys are coming our way again.” Drek was browbeating the sinorniths into a tight formation up above.
Attack! she thought to the toad. Smash them!
juhJUHjuhjuhjuhJUHjuhjuhJUH came the warbled reply.
“Mags …”
“I know,” she growled. “And I don’t know … I don’t know what’s happening!”
juhjuhjuhJUHjuhjuhJUHjuhjuh
“STOP JUHING AND DO SOMETHING!” Magdalys yelled. The toad nodded its head slightly but otherwise: nothing. Despair curled around her heart. She had done everything — broken her own promise even — and they were still there, trapped and doomed on top of some giant warty amphibian in the middle of a swamp. The growls of the spinosaurs sounded in the forest around them.
JUH!!! A resounding call, a wide-open space within her.
Magdalys hurled a desperate plea at the toad: We need your help! And in the stillness that followed, Hannibal’s words echoed back to her: They need your help. Magdalys blinked. Montez needed her, if he was still alive even, but it wasn’t just about Montez anymore. We all got brothers and sisters in danger right now, he’d said. And he was right: They needed her help. And she had wanted, still wanted, with everything inside of her just to run away. But she couldn’t. There was no away to run to, not really. She was bound to the destiny of her people, no matter what she did or where she went. And her people were in chains. And the whole Confederacy was to blame. As long as it existed, was armed and organized, she would never be safe.
The Confederacy must fall, she thought, stomping her foot, and the idea seemed to ricochet through that cavern inside her and then, suddenly, explode.
Fire.
She had suppressed it, that fire. Shoved it away. Back in Tennessee, flying over that plantation. Then again and again since. The worry she felt every time she thought about what might’ve happened to Montez. Big Jack’s torn back.
FIRE.
These horrible, jeering men closing in on her and Mapper. On the mansion across the lake. On Chattanooga, where Two Step and Sabeen were probably preparing for another onslaught with the Native Guard, with Hannibal, waiting for General Grant.
The flames roared to life within her, crackled and shrieked and rose.
How would you like the full weight of the US Army at your back? The general’s words rumbled through her. Alone, she could rain down some havoc and probably get destroyed in the process. But with an army … with an army, she could win, crush the Confederacy forever.
FIRE.
She could win. The thought was terrifying somehow — what that would really mean, the destruction it would entail. She’d forced it away from her mind. Refused to even consider it. Mapper was right: She hadn’t just been afraid of losing. It was winning she feared most, her own strength. The true ferocity of her power unleashed.
But no more.
“Give me your knife,” Magdalys said.
Mapper passed it over handle first without a word.
She reached back, grabbed her bun with one hand, pulled the blade hard along her head just where the hair was tied, felt the whole thing come free and whoosh away in the wind.
Fire.
“Mags!” Mapper yelled, and then his carbine burst to life again and a sinornith went careening out of the sky with a sharp caw.
As the spinosaur growls drew nearer around them and Mapper let off shot after shot at the sinorniths above, she narrowed her eyes and reached outward with her mind. Men and dinos would die. But she would not.
She found the spinos — there were four — felt that now-familiar shield that had kept her out of their minds. She shook her head, reached further. Resistance, resistance, the pressure built within her, but the fire raged stronger.
She grunted as sweat broke out across her forehead, glimpsed the four long snouts emerge from the underbrush around them. That fire: she released it, felt it hurl along the pathways she’d opened, shred through the blocks that had been holding her back and then with a snap, all four spinosaurs stood at attention, blinking rapidly.
Awaiting her command.
She waved her arm once and they turned and fled.
“What the — ?” Mapper gasped.
Magdalys didn’t have time to explain. She whirled around, faced the army of sinorniths descending from above. Magdalys held up one open hand as Mapper’s carbine blasts picked off a few here and there.
Fire.
She stretched her mind across the length of that plummeting horde, felt the grim determination, the need to bite, to kill, that Drek had driven into them. She clenched her fist, obliterating it all, and the horde scattered, sinos spinning off course, bumping into each other with caws and squawks, suddenly confounded and lost.
Fire.
Magdalys let out a long breath of air and stepped back. Mapper blinked at her, then they both glanced upward: Many of the sinos had fled, but plenty remained and the Marauders who’d been approaching from behind weren’t far off now.
JuhjuhjuhJUHjuhJUHjuhjuhjuhJUH, the toad sang.
Magdalys was out of breath but she wasn’t done yet.
“Impressive,” a voice yelled from above. Drek. He was a ways up, the coward, and further than she’d ever been able to reach with her mind, but maybe … “But you can’t keep breaking through all of my mastered dinos, girl.”
“Watch me,” Magdalys whispered, but already she felt her energy waning.
“We have you surrounded, you know. And we’ll give you a chance to be taken alive, whoever you are.”
Something big thrashed in the underbrush to Magdalys’s right. She spun around, arms and mind outstretched just as an alligator the size of a train car lumbered forward, jaws open.
No! she thought, pinpricks of fire exploding inside. The gator’s mouth slammed shut and it looked around, confused. Breaking Drek’s hold on dinos was getting easier and easier, but still, she couldn’t hold out forever.
“Up above!” Mapper yelled, letting off one shot then another. The sky had darkened; twenty more sinorniths converged above them and dove.
She unleashed, sending the imaginary sword of her mind dancing in wild loops across the sky, smashing easily through Drek’s hold on them as dinos scattered and spiraled away in confusion.
That crimson dactyl.
Magdalys reached her burning thoughts toward it, but the rebuff was stronger than with the others. It wasn’t just Drek’s dinomastery that was driving that creature: The thing was there by choice. It was his companion.
JuhJUHjuhJUHjuhJUHjuhJUH
The woods around them rustled again and a bristling, screeching pack of microraptors leapt out of the underbrush. Magdalys sent a few scrambling and Dizz and Beans snapped and whacked away the rest with their wings.
Up above, another pack of sinorniths clouded out the sun, preparing to dive.
Out across the lake, a sudden barrage of musket fire erupted.
Montez! The pulse of his name clamored suddenly louder, ferocious amidst all those flames within her. His face flashed through her, squinting even with glasses, reading his books late into the night by candlelight. Everything that had happened to him since he left. He had to still be alive.
And she had to get to that mansion before it was too late.
With a roar of her own, Magdalys sent half of the sinos colliding into the other half, causing enough confusion to throw off the attack for at least a few moments. Then she directed her mind back to the humongous toad beneath them.
juhjuhjuhjuhjuhjuhjuh
This thing was very, very old. It wasn’t like any dino she’d ever made contact with. That croaking murmur within her felt like a murky bottomless pit, something slippery and almost beyond this world. But it had heard her when she reached out, had answered her call, even if it had then ignored her when she needed it most. And now … now she’d opened up something new inside herself. If she could break through Drek’s control, maybe she could get through to this humongous beast.
juhjuhJUHjuhJUHjuhjuhjuhJUHjuhJUH
She knelt. Placed her hands on its slimy, lumpy skin. Reached. Felt the tendrils of her thoughts slide into that dank and gargantuan consciousness below, felt its ambivalence and beneath that, a grudging curiosity, felt that curiosity grow as the toad recognized the fire she wielded her thoughts with. And then Magdalys felt the full, ragged attention of the ancient creature focus on her.
Help us, Magdalys thought, hearing again the echo of Hannibal’s plea to her a few days earlier.
A pause, then a murmured reply: Juh.
Take us across the lake. Smash their armies.
Something inside the toad seemed to light up.
For my brother. For all our brothers and sisters.
The juhs resolved into a deep, burbling growl.
“Might wanna hold on to someth —” Magdalys started to say, but the toad cut her off with a final, ferocious JUH!!!
And then it leapt.
THE WIND WHIPPED through Magdalys so suddenly she didn’t even realize they’d launched into the air until she caught her breath and saw the swamp recede and the lake passing beneath them.
JUHHH!!!!
For a moment the whole world seemed silent.
Then gunfire rang out up ahead, and Magdalys could make out the tiny flashes from the muzzles and then, as she sped closer, the terrified expressions of the Bog Marauders.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!” Mapper yelled.
“Brace for impact!” Magdalys called as the ground rushed up to meet them.
KAFWOOOM!!! They landed at the far shore of the lake with a tremendous boom, sending dust and debris and a few Marauders flying to either side.
“Rally!” someone yelled from below as Rebel yells shrieked into the sky. “Take down that thing!”
Magdalys and Mapper peered over the edge of the toad’s gigantic mouth. The Marauders swarmed over the now demolished shoreline, taking up positions with their backs to the mansion and aiming their muskets at the toad.
“Get down!” Mapper yelled, but then the sound of breaking glass sounded from one of the high-up windows.
A voice called out: “Hit ’em with everything ya got, boys!” and the whole front of the house seemed to burst with flashing muzzles.
The Marauders didn’t know where to turn. Several screamed and collapsed; others turned their guns back toward the mansion; a few took potshots up toward where Magdalys and Mapper watched in awe.
A dactyl caw sounded from behind them. Drek.
Do something, Magdalys insisted again to the toad as she stood and whirled around. The sinoriding Marauders had caught up with the free-flying ones now, and the whole swarm of them were just reaching the far side of the lake. Drek fluttered along on his crimson dactyl in their midst. Magdalys ran between the two bony, wart-covered ridges over the toad’s eyes to its lumpy back.
But those two other toads were still there, staring expectantly at Magdalys from across the lake. Their immense bellies pulsed, sending ripples of dark water out around them.
She narrowed her eyes.
Break them.
One of the toads seemed to cock its head slightly, then looked away. The other glanced once at the pack of smaller dinos screeching past, then leaned forward and opened its humongous mouth. Something pink unfurled and flashed out across the sky, sending the cloud of sinos scattering. It was gone again in barely a second’s time: slurping back into the toad’s gaping jaws with a squawking sino in its grasp.
The other toad looked up now, blinked, and released its tongue with a croak, blasting two sinos out of the sky and snagging a third for a meal.
Magdalys gaped, then nodded her thanks and ran back between the eye ridges to where Mapper was crouched, aiming his carbine at the fighting below. She peered over his shoulder. “How we looking?”
“Getting there,” Mapper said. Caught between a giant toad and an onslaught of fire from the mansion, the Marauders had all but dispersed entirely. Only a small group remained holed up behind a makeshift trench, and it looked like they were setting up some kind of cannon. “But they’ll be regrouping before long.”
He was right, and those toads behind them had probably only put a small dent in the sino brigade. Plus, Drek was still out there somewhere.
Magdalys growled at the massive creature beneath them. “Can you just for once —” she started to say out loud, but then the toad lurched forward, knocking her and Mapper on their butts. That giant tongue flitted out, shattered the trench, and sent the cannon hurtling through the air in an explosion of dirt and debris.
“Aiiii!” the last Marauders yelled as they booked it triple-time into the underbrush.
“Whoa!” Magdalys and Mapper said at the same time. Then they looked up as the dust cloud cleared. Faces appeared in the smashed windows of the dilapidated old mansion. Most of them were various shades of brown and wore blue caps. One had a mustache and an eyepatch and a wide grin. “Ahoy! Who goes there?” the man yelled with a chuckle. “I’m Corporal Wolfgang Hands, commanding officer of the Louisiana 9th, Mounted Triceratops Division, United States Army, although we’re fresh out of trikes I’m afraid, and ammo too, after that last barrage. And whoever you are, we owe you some whiskey and a night on the town!”
