“YOU GUYS!” Magdalys exploded. She climbed into the saddle between them. “You guys! That was … I mean …” She waved her hands around, trying to snatch the words that wouldn’t come out of thin air. “I just …”

  “Come to think of it,” Jack said, “he did say he was Cuban. You Cuban?”

  “Mentioned he had a sister too,” Hannibal added. “Three, now that I think about it.”

  From behind them, Mapper let out a sigh.

  “It’s just,” Magdalys said, and then, before she could even try to get another word out, she was crying. The tears didn’t give her any warning and when they showed up she didn’t even bother trying to stop them; she just leaned against Big Jack’s big arm and sobbed into it as Hannibal patted her shoulder.

  “She okay?” Mapper said, poking his head up.

  “Sorry, little lady,” Jack said. “We didn’t mean to get you worked up.”

  “It’s okay,” Magdalys sniffled. “I didn’t see it coming either.” Something yellow appeared in front of her face — a handkerchief. Hannibal was holding it out to her. She took it and unloaded a whole nasty ton of snot into it. “Thank you.”

  “We got separated right after the battle,” Hannibal said. He gingerly accepted his sullied handkerchief back, inspected it, and then just tossed it into the wilderness with a shake of his head. “Our crew got loaded onto the two ironclads that had shown up to shell the enemy for us. Didn’t get a chance to see what happened to the boys from the 9th but I know it was a rough one for ’em.”

  “He was wounded,” Magdalys said, sitting up. “Knocked unconscious with a rifle butt. Another soldier sent me a gram saying they were being transported down to New Orleans for treatment but … that’s the last I heard.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Mapper said. “We’re trying to get to him and make sure he’s alright.”

  For a few minutes, the sounds of creaks of metal dinoarmor and heavy trod of a dozen trikes filled the air. Somewhere out in the forest, birds twittered and squawked at each other, and the sun cast dazzling lightworks along a tiny stream meandering beside the dusty road.

  “Wow,” Hannibal said. “We’d all been wondering what a bunch of kids was doing out here in the middle of the war. I mean … I’m a kid, but you guys are kid kids.”

  “And y’all came all the way out here,” Big Jack added, “knowing at any moment you could be captured, killed, or enslaved, all to make sure your brother’s okay.”

  It hadn’t really felt like a choice, Magdalys realized, and certainly not heroic — just the most obvious thing to do. But when he put it like that, it did sound pretty wild.

  “I hope you find him,” Jack said, as something out in the woods started rustling toward them.

  Jack and Hannibal pulled carbines from their saddle holsters. Magdalys stood, her mind already casting around for some sense of an approaching dino. Before she could figure it out, the proudly crested head of a parasaurolophus emerged from the trees, followed by Card’s stern, scarred face.

  “Air cavalry,” he yelled, pulling his mount into a quick canter alongside them. “Haven’t had time to alert the officers yet. Don’t wait for orders. They’ll be on us any minute.” He galloped on ahead. “Get into battle formation. Now!”

  “LOAD THE BULL pups!” Big Jack hollered as Hannibal yanked on the reins, pulling the trike into a sharp turn so it blocked the dirt road. The squeals of dinos and iron clanking into place rose around them.

  Magdalys couldn’t be sure, but it looked like some of the other mounts had pulled into position without anyone guiding them. She wondered if they’d been trained to follow what the other dinos did around them or …

  “Sol, we need shells and powder!” Jack yelled. “Mason, get ready to mount these up. Someone pass word to the back that things are about to get hot.”

  “What can I do?” Magdalys asked.

  “Take cover,” Hannibal said, hopping down onto the road and rummaging through one of the saddlebags. “Stay alive so you can find your brother.”

  Magdalys didn’t like that answer, but he had a point: The dinos had all been wrangled and there was no way she or Mapper could help set anything up. Plus, the Native Guard clearly had that under control. They moved with sparkling efficiency, barely saying a word between them as they fell into action, each soldier playing his part.

  “Shells!” Sol pulled up beside them on a long, low to the ground creature with a huge fin cresting along its scaly back. A dimetrodon, Magdalys realized. She’d never seen one before. Munitions cases had been slung along its flanks with leather straps, and Sol hopped off and immediately began heaving them up on the trike with some effort.

  “Where’s that bull pup?” Big Jack yelled, easily grasping one of the cases in a single hand.

  “Here!” another soldier yelled, riding up on another finback, this one with a cannon strapped to either side of it. “Sorry, this one didn’t want to get moving.”

  Big Jack and Hannibal hopped down and unstrapped one of the cannons.

  “Bull pups?” Magdalys asked, trying to stay out of the way.

  “Mountain howitzers,” Hannibal said as he and Jack lifted one. “Oof! That’s just what we call ’em.”

  “Shouldn’t you be taking cover?” Big Jack asked, grabbing up the other cannon in his free hand while he helped Hannibal with the first one.

  “I told her to!” Hannibal said between pants.

  “Aim for the sun, boys!” Jack called. Around them, troops were mounting the howitzers on either side of their trikes’ iron armor plates.

  “Why the sun?” Mapper asked.

  “Take cover, we said!” Jack snapped.

  “Because,” Hannibal said, heaving one of the cannons into position on the trike’s armor and securing it in with a series of clicks and clacks, “air cavalry always try to attack from wherever the sun is, that way they get a clear shot and we have the sun in our eyes.”

  “Smart,” Mapper said.

  “DACTYL HILL SQUAD!” a voice thundered. “TAKE COVER IN THE SURROUNDING FOREST IMMEDIATELY!” It was Cailloux, the middle-aged corporal with the excellent mustache who had been calling the shots at the campfire the night before. He stood on a saddle a few trikes away and bellowed into a megaphone cone as Two Step, Amaya, and Sabeen dashed toward Magdalys and Mapper.

  “We better get moving,” Mapper said, pulling Magdalys toward the woods.

  “We said to take cover how many times?” Big Jack grumbled, securing the second howitzer.

  “You didn’t call ’em out by their squad name,” Hannibal pointed out with a grin.

  Magdalys was just backing to the tree line when she saw the first shadow flicker over the troops. She was safely beneath the forest canopy a moment later when the second and third shadows passed, but Amaya, Sabeen, and Two Step were still sprinting toward her. “Run!” Magdalys yelled, but her voice was swallowed up by a rising murmur of commands and then the urgent pop-pop-pop of muskets all around her.

  Sabeen reached the trees first, then Amaya. Two Step seemed to be running in slow motion, but Magdalys knew he was doing his best. Behind him, Hannibal swung the trike into position while Sol placed an iron ball into the mouth of the cannon and shoved it home with a ramrod.

  Musket fire plinked against the iron trike armor and thunked into the dirt around Two Step as he ran. Up above, a half dozen dactyls flapped in an unruly cluster in front of the sun. Magdalys tried not to imagine Two Step getting hit, but the image kept coming anyway, his wounded body dropping just shy of the tree line, Magdalys helpless to do anything without getting torn up by enemy fire herself.

  “Made it!” Two Step yelled, bursting into the woods past Magdalys and collapsing in a panting, sweaty heap just as Cailloux screamed “FIRE!” and the Louisiana Native Guard’s bull pups burst to life one by one.

  A series of deep booms sounded from down the road and then Magdalys saw Big Jack turn away from his cannon as he whipped a cord away from it and ka-FWOOMbraaahhh!! So much smoke poured out around him that at first Magdalys wasn’t sure if he’d fired or been hit. Then the wind swept away most of it, and there was Big Jack, already setting up his next shot as Hannibal swabbed the inside of the cannon with a rag on a long stick.

  “Sol!” a soldier called from the next trike up. “We need another round!” Sol was already back on his dimetrodon and guiding it gingerly along the dirt road.

  The dactylriders had dispersed above them but were already swooping back into formation as they sent random bursts of musket fire in all directions. Most of them didn’t seem to have much control over their mounts, Magdalys realized. Now that she could see them in the daylight, the Confederate Air Cavalry seemed like a desperate, chaotic mishmash of untrained riders, with only a few exceptions.

  Magdalys closed her eyes, reaching out, and immediately a wave of frantic, irritated fubba-fubbas rolled over her. These were the enemy dactyls, but Magdalys could sense her own too, and they were coming up fast from somewhere nearby.

  More gunfire erupted from above and Cailloux yelled “FIRE!” again and the cannons shredded the sky, sending dactyls tumbling and screeching away.

  Except one, Magdalys noted. One rider seemed to know exactly what he was doing, and he maneuvered his dactyl deftly out of the way and then swung back over the Native Guard, firing shot after shot. The first three ricocheted off a trike’s armor but the fourth and fifth hit the dirt near where Sol’s finback was hauling the munitions cases.

  The munitions cases! Magdalys realized. Panicked, she cast her mind out for the dactyl’s and for the first time since she’d learned she could connect to these giant reptiles, she found herself rebuffed. No fubba-fubba, nothing at all. Magdalys stood, fists clenched, and watched in horror as the rider let off two more shots and then a sharp blast went off and with an ear-shattering kaTHWOOM, the whole world seemed to rip apart at the seams.

  MAGDALYS LOOKED UP, the blast still echoing like a ghost cackling through a canyon in her ears. A charred crater smoldered in the road where Sol and his dimetrodon had been. The nearest trike had been knocked over by the blast, but it looked to be otherwise unhurt. Soldiers were staggering to their feet, shaking their heads and wiping dust out of their eyes.

  “You guys okay?” Magdalys asked, looking around. Amaya, Sabeen, Two Step, and Mapper all nodded solemnly.

  “Solomon?” Sabeen asked, peering past Magdalys.

  She shook her head. “Don’t look.”

  “There’s nothing to even … see,” Mapper blurted out, tears welling up. “There’s nothing left.”

  Sabeen hugged Amaya, who just patted her head and frowned.

  Magdalys glanced at Two Step. That look on his face — the wide-open broken one he’d had when he’d shot that trikerider back at the Penitentiary — it was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Two Step’s brow was creased, his eyes narrowed to furious, fast-blinking slits.

  “Easy,” Magdalys said, putting her hands on his shoulders as they heaved up and down with each breath. “Easy, man.”

  More shots rang out. Disaster had struck and the battle wasn’t even over. Magdalys whirled around just as another ka-FWOOMshaaa burst out from Hannibal and Jack’s cannon. The smoke cleared, revealing them, covered in cuts and bruises, their blue uniforms in tatters as they frantically worked to clear the cannon mouth and reload it.

  Then more shadows rippled over the trikes and troops and bullet-battered road: the Dactyl Hill dactyls. Magdalys gave a shout of joy and looked up just in time to see them smashing into what was left of the enemy cavalry, scattering them every which way.

  “I want to …” Two Step seethed. Magdalys turned back to him. Tears streamed down his face. “I just want to …” He shook his head and she closed with him, pulling him into a hug that he didn’t return. “I just …”

  “I know,” she said, although he hadn’t finished his sentence. It was all over his face: Two Step wanted to kill. He had gone from a scared little boy, heartbroken at having been forced to take a life, to … this: an overflowing volcano of rage. She squeezed him harder as his shoulders heaved with silent sobs.

  “They’re dispersing,” Card yelled, riding up on his para. He didn’t sound happy about it though.

  “Keep firing, men,” Cailloux hollered. “We can’t let them get away!”

  “What is it?” Sabeen asked, stepping out of the woods. “What’s happening?”

  Magdalys squeezed Two Step one more time and then took his hand and walked out toward the road with him behind Amaya and Mapper.

  “They’ve learned our position,” Card said, pulling his mount to a halt. “If one gets back to Braxton Bragg’s camp they’ll hurl the full weight of his army at us.”

  “And the way we’re spread out over the next twelve miles,” Cailloux said as he hopped down from his trike, “it’ll be nothing for him to outflank and smash us.” Magdalys saw him glance at the crater where Sol and the finback had been and shake his head, eyes closed.

  “I can …” Magdalys said, already quickening her pace as the fubba-fubba-fooo sound of the Brooklyn dactyls diving grew louder inside her. “Let me take a dactyl. Put a gunner on the back and we’ll catch them.”

  Card swung his para around and squinted at her, his face somehow sharp and forlorn. He traded a glance with Cailloux, nodded. “Corporal Cailloux, send a squad into the woods beneath them to capture any survivors.” Then he leaned forward and yelled, “Heeyah!” urging his mount off the road and back into the woods.

  “Where are you going?” Cailloux yelled.

  “Scout out the enemy position,” Card called over his shoulder. “So we can smash them instead!” And then he was gone.

  Magdalys watched him disappear into the trees and then turned to Cailloux as the others came up behind her. “Amaya,” she said, “stay with Sabeen and Two Step.”

  Dactyls landed on the trikes nearby: one, two, three.

  “I can —” Two Step started, but Magdalys spun on him.

  “No. You have to stay,” she said. “Don’t fight me on this.” Some kind of fire flashed in Two Step’s eyes — a look Magdalys had never seen in him before, and for a second she thought he might lash out and take a swing. Then he seemed to crumple into himself as Amaya swooped in with her long arms and he put his face into her shoulder.

  “Mapper,” Magdalys said, breaking into a run toward the trikes. “You take the tall gray one.”

  “On it.”

  “Private Hannibal,” Cailloux said, “go with Magda Lee. Private Rey!”

  “Sir!” Octave Rey ran up from the still-downed trike and saluted just as Hannibal dusted himself off and headed toward Magdalys.

  “Ride with the one they call Mapper. Stop those dactylriders!”

  “Sir yes sir!” the two men shouted as Magdalys grasped the shoulder of the smaller blue dactyl and heaved herself onto its back.

  “The one they call Mapper,” Mapper said. “I like that.”

  This would be just like hopping rooftop to rooftop back in Dactyl Hill … except with no rooftops … and Rebel Air Cavalry trying to snipe them down … and nowhere safe to go if they got separated and stranded. Hannibal climbed on behind her just as the dactyl stretched to full height, flapping her wings and letting out a fierce caw.

  “Go!” Hannibal yelled, already loading cartridges into his carbine. The dactyl began to climb. “Go!” Magdalys leaned forward, felt the dactyl’s mind sharpen along with her own toward their singular purpose. And then they lifted into the air above the miles of marching troops and hurtled out over the treetops.

  GRAPPLER, MAGDALYS DECIDED to call her new mount.

  Up Grappler, she thought, clenching her jaw and leaning forward. Up!

  The dactyl cawed and flapped once and then again with her long, graceful wings, taking them higher and higher in an arc so steep they were almost vertical to the ground. The Confederates wouldn’t be expecting any pursuit by air. Magdalys wanted to see what she was up against before they had a chance to get away. In the corner of her eye, she saw Mapper following close behind them and a little off to the side as Octave prepped his weapon.

  “Alright, I get it!” Hannibal yelled against the shrieking wind. “You’re one of those dinotalking freaks from the days of old or whatever!”

  Magdalys growled. “Oh, we’re freaks, are we?” Grappler steepened her climb even more.

  “I mean! In a good way!”

  Magdalys allowed herself a slight chuckle and kept climbing. “Don’t tell me you’re scared, Private Hannibal.”

  “Never, Miss Roca!”

  Up they sped.

  “Okay, maybe occasionally,” Hannibal allowed, but Magdalys was already tilting Grappler back into an open soar. Below, Mapper had leveled out too and was scanning the treetops for enemy flyers.

  There.

  Three pteros flapped in a triangle formation off to one side while two more fled in the opposite direction. Magdalys recognized the one she’d seen wield his mount better than all the others to take out Sol. She grimaced at the memory — the shredding, impossible boom of that blast; the crater — then tried to shake it away. “Mapper!” she called, then pointed three fingers at the retreating trio. He nodded, veered his mount after them.

  “Why give them all the glory of taking out three?” Hannibal said as Magdalys took Grappler into a long-ranging dive toward the other two cavalrymen.

  “This all a game to you, huh?” she said, still fighting back the sheer, impossible emptiness of the space Sol had once been in. Sure, the men they were talking about probably killing would kill them first in a heartbeat but … she didn’t know how he could be so lighthearted about it.

  Hannibal was quiet for a few moments, and all Magdalys heard were the clicks and clacks of metal over the whispering wind as he unfolded a portable shaft and placed it on Grappler’s back to steady his aim.

  “No,” he finally said quietly. “None of it is. It’s life and death, but when that’s all there is, every day, and maybe all there ever will be, the only thing you can do to keep going is make peace with it or it’ll eat you alive.”

 

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