Magick and Lead: Dragons and Aces Book 2, page 2
There was little to see. Stone walls bent inward and came to a point above us, forming a low, vaulted ceiling. A floor of hard-packed earth scuffed under our boots. All sounds of our passage died immediately, falling into a tense, heavy silence, like a stone dropping into a well.
Rohree. Ollie… please be here, I begged into the darkness. But the darkness was the void. And the void was the domain of my enemy. Prelate Kortoi. If I were truly lucky, I’d find him at the end of this passageway—trickster, traitor, dark priest. I’d find him, and I’d carve him up like a roast pig.
Torchlight flickered ahead, and with it came the mutter of low voices. Pocha and I exchanged a glance and moved ahead, quick and silent. We rounded a corner to find three men seated around a table. At the sight of us, they gave a cry and sprang to their feet. Two were dead before they even got their swords drawn, one with my blade in his belly and the other with Pocha’s knife across his throat. The third drew his sword and retreated. As I came at him, all the anger and heartbreak of the past few weeks flared up in me. My blade clashed against his once, twice, thrice. On the fourth blow, I gave a roar of fury and swung so hard my blade snapped his, its momentum carrying through until it buried itself in his neck. He went down heavily, his blood already spreading out on the floor.
I turned, catching my breath, to find my friends staring at me.
“What?” I demanded.
“I don’t know, maybe leave somebody alive next time?” Lure arched an eyebrow. “We might have gotten information from one of them.”
“Too late now…” Dagar nudged one of the already-dead men with his foot.
“Are you okay, Essa?” Pocha asked me.
At the tenderness of her question, tears almost rose to my eyes.
Was I okay? Ha.
I’d lost everything. I’d lost my mother. I’d lost Ollie, my Torouman—councilor, defender, loyal eunuch and friend. Ollie, who’d been bound to me since I was a girl and who was closer to me than a brother. I’d lost Rohree, my sprite handmaiden and dear friend. I’d lost my home. My kingdom. My identity. And I’d lost—I’d lost—
Kit—Charlie. A traitorous, lying man who had deceived me. A man I was far better off without. A man who, if I ever saw him again, would be far worse off than the one now lying at my feet.
And I would find him.
“Essa?” Pocha said again, concern in her voice.
“I’m fine,” I told her. “You want to check on someone, check on him.”
I gave a casual kick to the dead man at my feet. And I really looked at him for the first time. A glance at his rusty chainmail and his worn boots told me he was no Lacuna, nor was he a knight or a defected royal guard. He looked like a commoner… but that didn’t make any sense. The people were supposed to be loyal to me. Sure, some of the commoners were bound to have loyalty to their local lords, but… something about the scene gave me an uneasy feeling, but I couldn’t put my finger on what was bothering me so much.
A sound behind me made me jump, and I spun, my sword at the ready. Just beyond where the dead man lay, something square sat covered by a canvas tarp. From within it there came a low growl.
We all glanced at one another.
“A golena?” Dagar wondered aloud.
I crept forward, tightening my grip on my sword.
Careful, Othura said in my mind. I sense hunger.
Slowly, I hooked the cloth with the tip of my blade and pulled it aside. It was a cage. And inside the cage…
“A baby dragon,” Pocha gasped.
But it wasn’t just any dragon. I recognized him. And when he spoke in my mind, my hunch was confirmed.
Parthar, he said.
Parthar… It was his name.
“Not just any dragon,” I whispered. “This is the one that was bonded to…”
“To Kit,” Pocha said—sparing me from saying his name. Or rather, the alias he’d used to woo and deceive me.
“Look, he’s hurt,” Dagar said, rushing to the cage and kneeling before it. Sure enough, I could see blood on the little dragon’s talons where it had been clawing at the bars. His eyes looked dim, too. He was sick. And sad.
My heart swelled with hurt as well as anger. No creature should be treated like this, especially such a beautiful little dragon.
“We should kill him quickly,” I said, looking away.
“Essa!” Pocha scolded, shouldering past me to kneel with Dagar at the edge of the cage. She reached out, and the little dragon licked her fingers with his forked tongue.
Lure came to stand beside me, considering the cage with crossed arms.
“Essa is right,” Lure said. “I’m sorry to say it, but if he’s bonded to an enemy, he’s a threat. And a dragon that young with his bonded rider gone… he’s probably going to go mad anyway.”
Pocha glared at Lure. “Maybe. But let me remind you: we’ve lost control of the hatchery. There aren’t exactly a lot of spare dragons lying around. We can ill afford to throw one away, especially a beautiful little fellow like this. And some riders have lost their dragons.” Her eyes widened for emphasis, and we all knew what she was talking about. Dagar’s dragon, Barnard, had been killed in the attack on Charcain. He’d put on a brave face, masking his pain with his usual humor, but we all knew that a part of him was in agony.
“What if this little dragon could be rebonded?” Pocha pressed, appealing to me now.
It was rare for a dragon to be successfully rebonded, even one as young as Parthar. Still, Pocha was right. We’d need every dragon we could get to win back my kingdom.
But Lure was right, too. There was a risk to keeping Parthar alive. A full-grown dragon bonded to one of our enemies, especially one as treacherous as Kit—Charlie—was almost too terrible to contemplate.
The little dragon was giving Dagar’s fingers little licks through the bars. Dagar glanced back at me with a hopeful expression. It was the first genuine smile I’d seen on his face in months.
I sighed. “Fine. We’ll give the little dragon a chance to rebond to Dagar. If it doesn’t work, he dies. Now get him and let’s move. We’re losing daylight.”
3
CHARLIE
The land stretched out below me like a tapestry woven with a hundred shades of green. As many times as I’d flown over Maethalia, I’d never get used to the wondrous beauty of it. The emerald-hued grass on the hills. The waterfalls glinting as they fell from the cliffs. And at night, the supernatural glow of wisps and fey lights in the woods, mirroring the stars above.
And then there was the thing I searched for. The most beautiful wonder of all. Essa.
Two months of searching and I hadn’t found her—hadn’t gotten so much as a clue about where she might be. Every trip across the sea was more of the same. A countryside ravaged by those soulless clay monsters—the golenae—and their Lacunae knight handlers. A capital city and palace reduced to rubble. And a thousand small villages where the residents stared up at me as I passed. In the beginning, they hid or shouted and fired arrows. Now, perhaps because they’d seen me gunning down the golenae that terrorized them, most just watched me with upturned faces.
But it was becoming increasingly clear that simply skimming over the hills and valleys wasn’t going to be enough to find Essa. Dangerous as it might be, I needed to land, venture out on foot, and speak with the people.
And so, today as I passed over the rocky coast and made my way inland, I located one of the villages I’d passed over most often. I had no idea what it was actually called, but I always referred to it in my mind as “Church Town” because of the big, gray stone temple in its center. Aside from that edifice, the village was modest, just a few dozen thatched-roofed houses arranged in meandering rows amid ancient trees and a patchwork of fields. It looked picturesque from the air, a place that ought to be on a postcard, and I picked it because it was somewhere I imagined Essa and I visiting on a trip through the country. That, and because of its small number of residents. If they all decided to attack me, I’d have at least some chance of holding them off and escaping.
Landing my biplane in the middle of their village would have been a recipe for panic, so the plan was to land in a meadow about two miles north of town and head in on foot. But as I descended in my approach, I spotted a column of thick, black smoke billowing up in the distance.
“Dammit. It’s always something,” I grumbled, banking toward the village.
I saw the golenae when I was still a half mile out, their gray, misshapen forms swarming over the rooftops and across fields like a swarm of ravenous ants. Damn, I hated golenae. They were created by the void magick of the Gray Brothers—those creepy bastards—and consisted of the dead bodies of animals covered in clay and reanimated with burning, magical coals for eyes. They came in all shapes and sizes, some huge, some tiny. Some were faithful replicas of real animals. Others were chimeras combining elements from different beasts into new, unnatural combinations. And all of them were a pain in my ass.
The screams of villagers rose on the air, and I soon saw why. The men of the village stood in a crescent in front of the temple, brandishing pitchforks, axes, and scythes. Vicious golenae rampaged all around the defenders, picking them off one by one.
The elderly and the children, I guessed, must have been holed up in the temple. And the place was on fire.
My teeth on edge, I banked, dove, and clicked the safety off on my machine gun. I squinted as the sight of the gun passed over the landscape… past houses, a haystack, the road… and onto the golenae.
I squeezed the trigger and felt the whole plane jitter as the guns engaged, blasting lead at the monsters below. Two of them exploded immediately from the high-caliber rounds. The others scattered or crouched, hissing as I came around for another pass. But before I could reengage with the enemy on the ground, two winged golenae took flight, screeching and snarling as they came toward me. One looked like a massive bat, the other like an oversized eagle with the horns of a bull.
I took aim at the bird.
“Eat lead, Polly,” I said, and opened fire. The thing evaded, my bullets only nicking off a few clay tailfeathers as it dipped and climbed again. But I’d lost sight of the bat. I craned my head, looking for it, then felt a thud on the biplane’s top wing. I looked up to see the bat clinging onto it. Its jagged teeth flashed as it hissed, climbing down the wing toward me.
I shoved the throttle forward and hit a few tight barrel rolls, trying to shake the bastard off. But the increased RPMs left the engine rattling.
This damned hunk of junk, I thought. Why did the plane I’d stolen have to be the worst one in the entire blasted air force? What I wouldn’t give to have my old Silver Wraith back…
But there was no time for nostalgia. The bat monster was climbing closer, shredding the top fabric of the wing as it came. It craned its neck toward me, its head as big as a man’s, and snapped at me with its bladelike teeth. I went for my sidearm, but it stuck in my holster. The bat crawled closer, closer, then it was leaping down onto me from the wing above—just as my .45 jerked free. I brought it up, pulled the trigger—and the clay monster’s head exploded, its body breaking and melting to dust.
I finally breathed again and looked forward just in time to see the bird monster coming straight at me with its bull horns. With a shout, I yanked my stick right and hit my flaps, banking and diving out of the way at the last second. I looked over my shoulder, making eye contact with the bird to make sure it was following me, then I reversed course, banking back the other way. The g-force made my stomach clench, but the maneuver worked. In an instant, the eagle was in front of me—and I opened fire. One round caught it in the head, taking out one of its burning-coal eyes, and it plummeted toward the ground.
With a laugh of triumph, I banked again and dove, once more assessing the situation on the ground. The golenae had the men of the village surrounded and backed against the doors of the burning temple. The good news was, the golenae were all in a clump. I took aim and strafed them, sending clay body parts flying.
The remaining monsters scattered, taking cover in homes and barns or darting into the woods.
I would have loved to declare victory, to bug out and let the infantry take over to flush them out and play cleanup. That’s what would have happened if this were a normal Air Force mission back at the Front. Only there was no infantry here. There was just me. And if I left now, these monsters would just creep out of hiding and begin slaughtering villagers again.
With a sigh, I came around, dropping altitude, slowing, and coming in for a landing in the village’s main square. The road—just a farm lane, really—was rutted and full of rocks, and it jounced me until my teeth clacked together, but I somehow managed to make the landing. As soon as I’d stopped, I yanked the brake, grabbed my rifle and officer’s saber from behind the seat, and leapt out of the cockpit.
The villagers remained huddled against the burning temple, some of them struggling to get the doors open, others watching me approach and brandishing their weapons with distrust. But my attention was on the golenae. The first one broke from the cover of a stable. I couldn’t even tell what animal the thing was based on; it was like a huge, six-legged hyena with two rows of teeth, and it snarled like a buzz-saw as it galloped toward me.
I raised the rifle to my shoulder, sighted down the barrel, and squeezed the trigger. The shot hit the thing in the side of the head, spinning it halfway around, but in a second, it was sprinting toward me again. I heard the murmurs and gasps of the villagers behind me as I worked the bolt action and sighted again. This time, the shot caught the thing in one of its burning eyes, and it went down hard. It kept trying to pull itself toward me, dragging its hideous body across the dirt road and gnashing its teeth, but its left side, the one with the destroyed eye, was paralyzed. I turned my attention to the next attacker, a mad-looking horse creature with goat horns. I dropped it the same way I’d dropped the first one, with a single shot to the eye. I took out a golenae ape, a bull, and a stag in similar fashion, the report of each shot rolling through the village like a peal of thunder.
When my rifle was empty, I slung it over my shoulder and drew my .45. I used it to take out two small golenae and four Lacunae knights who appeared on their huge, black horses. Then, at last, the field was cleared of enemies. And I lowered my weapon with a sigh of relief.
But the wails and shouts of the villagers continued behind me. When I turned, I saw the problem. A large statue of a dragon lay against the doors of the church. I understood in an instant what must have happened. When the attack came, the vulnerable members of the community hid inside the temple. Then the golenae—or the Lacunae, perhaps—had barricaded the doors and set the place on fire.
Now, six or seven strong men were straining to move the statue without success.
I jammed the gun in my holster, pulling up the sleeves of my leather flight jacket, and shouldered my way in among the men. The one nearest me gave me a wide-eyed look and seemed for a second as if he might run—or attack me. But I only squatted, shifting my hands until they found a grip beneath the statue.
“On three!” I shouted. “One!”
The villagers joined in. “Two… three!”
With a mighty effort, we all heaved. For a second, the statue didn’t move at all, and I was suddenly aware of the sounds from within the temple. Screams. Shouts. The wail of a baby. Desperate banging on the door.
I gritted my teeth and strained harder, every joint and every muscle fiber crying out with effort. The man next to me, a stout, bald-headed fellow, gave a roar, the veins standing out on his forehead. And at last, the statue budged. Together, we lifted it, stumbled a few paces, and dropped it again with a thud that shook the earth. A woman threw down her ax and pulled open the doors. Dozens of people began pouring out, coughing, weeping, embracing loved ones.
A hiss sounded behind me, and I wheeled around.
A snake golenae was slithering toward us.
I drew my .45 and fired at it. Miss. I fired again. Missed again—its damned gyrations made it hard to hit. And two more golenae were emerging from the woods behind it. I squeezed one eye shut, steadying the pistol with both hands. The monster was only a dozen yards from me. Ten yards… five… I squeezed the trigger, and the beast’s head burst into dust, its body falling at my feet.
A golenae lion and a panther stalked toward me next. I fired at the lion first. I caught the thing in the left front leg, barely slowing it.
I fired again. Click. Empty.
And no time to reload. Cursing, I holstered the gun and drew my saber.
Fighting these monsters hand-to-hand was not my idea of a smart tactic, but I was out of options. The lion ran toward me—and sprang. For a second, all I could see was a streak of teeth and claws, but then the feeling I got during a dogfight came over me, a slowing down of time, a sharpening of my senses that made every leaf on every tree, every wrinkle in every cloud, every movement of every enemy around me perfectly clear. I watched the lion streak toward me, focused on its left eye, and brought up my sword.
The lion leaped, its massive jaws open wide. The force of its motion drove its head—and its burning coal of a left eye—directly into my blade. But it wasn’t dead yet.
Its momentum carried into me, knocking me off my feet. I felt its claws raking my flight jacket, felt its jaws clamp down on my shoulder. Its body had the sword pinned flat between us—I couldn’t use it. And if I didn’t kill the thing in the next two seconds, it was going to devour me.
I groped for the last weapon I had left in the pocket of my flight coat—a jackknife. But it wasn’t there—no, there it was! I pulled it out and snapped the blade open with a flick of my wrist. But the monster was worrying me now, shaking me in its jaws like a ragdoll as it growled.
