Aranya Treasury - The Complete Shapeshifter Dragons Series, page 49
“How do you plan to fight Dragonships?” he blurted out.
“Shut your trap and march, slave,” said Kylara.
“Watch and learn,” said Rocia.
Kylara’s Leopards, who numbered ninety-three fighting-fit women, marched until the early hours to reach the next village. Either the Sylakian Dragonships had vanished, or they were hiding in a ravine somewhere. Ardan sensed the latter. They had tracked down just one survivor from the previous village – a girl of thirteen summers. She had agreed to join the Leopards and would be sent to their secret base for training. Kylara looked after her with an expression on her proud face that he could not place. Had this been her story, once, he wondered?
The Sylakians were softening up the far Western Isles. Ardan wondered if they would bother to invade. Perhaps this was just population subjugation, or entertainment for the troops. The Isles had gold mines, which might interest the Sylakians. But they had little meriatite, the expensive rock which was burned inside the meriatite furnace engines to produce the hydrogen which both floated and propelled their Dragonships.
Compounding his humiliation, Kylara had him chained to a tree outside the village while her troops evacuated the villagers. He watched Kylara gently boosting an elderly woman onto a pony, before taking three mischievous children in hand and leading the small procession out of the village. So, the Warlord was not half as heartless as she pretended.
Ardan sat with his back against the prekki tree and considered how exactly Kylara had not succeeded in halving his stupid skull. Right now, windrocs and vultures should have finished picking his bones clean, beneath the cliff-edge tree. Something was wrong. Only a fool would think otherwise, for hers had been a killing stroke.
To his surprise, his eyelids drooped shut. Ardan dreamed.
* * * *
Slit eyes glowered at him from a pit of darkness. They spit titian flames at him, bathing his body in flame. He ran. And though he lifted his knees and sprinted until the wind whipped past his ears, there was no escaping the flames, which pursued him with the resolve of an animate, rational being. But he did not burn up. The everlasting combustion played across his ebony skin, cracking it in crazy patterns like clay baked beneath the dry season suns. Ardan opened his mouth and breathed in the flames. The sizzling of fire filled his ears.
At some dim, subconscious level, Ardan realised that the sound was real.
He leaped to his feet, ready to fight. The chain binding him to the gnarled prekki-fruit tree jerked him up short.
Panting, he stared down at the village from his vantage-point on a small, mossy hillock crowned by the tree. Five Dragonships surrounded the cluster of two or three dozen wood-frame huts which comprised the village. The sound he had heard was burning oil being dumped on the first few rooftops down at the lower end, furthest from his position, multiple bonfires roaring into life as the bundled rushes ignited like torches. He saw the red-plumed helmets of Sylakian ground troops storming between the huts, flinging burning brands this way and that. The heads of their war hammers gleamed in the early suns-shine. They kicked down doors and bellowed their war-cries. But this time, there were no villagers left for them to slay.
Kylara whirled out of a doorway, swinging her scimitar in a flat, vicious arc. Blood sprayed into the air as a man’s body and head parted ways. Bizarrely, his legs and torso kept running for several steps before the inevitable collapse.
Ardan’s eyes jumped. Three Leopards, one with a short metal tube on her back, crouched between the huts. As he watched, the warrior with the tube – Rocia – held up a piece of thick elastic cord. She locked her arms at full stretch, about two feet apart. The warriors behind her loaded a crossbow quarrel into the tube, and then stretched the cord until they formed a Human catapult. They aimed carefully, adjusting Rocia’s position. A spark-stone clipped sparks onto the quarrel, which must have been primed beforehand, because it caught fire instantly. The quarrel shot upward.
KAARAABOOM!
The explosion echoed off the nearby hills as the Dragonship vaporised in a massive ball of flame.
For the first time in days, Ardan smiled.
A second quarrel from the far side of the village narrowly missed its target, pinging into the cabin slung on thick hawsers beneath the dirigible’s multi-segmented hydrogen sack. Men rushed along the gantries to put out the blaze, while a Sylakian trumpet sounded the alarm, carrying with clarion sweetness up to his position.
He never wanted to fly in a Dragonship. That much highly volatile hydrogen right above his head? It required a special type of madness. One spark in the wrong place, even a touch of static … better to jump into a Cloudlands volcano.
The Dragonships rose at once, turbines whining as they spread out. Additional Sylakian troops boiled out of concealed positions east and west of the village. Now Kylara’s troops would face a true test, he saw – the Sylakian War-Hammer in charge knew what he was doing. The ambushers had just been ambushed.
The Dragonship nearest his position imploded, the sound ripping through an otherwise tranquil dawn. Ardan winced at the concussion. But the remaining three vessels rose out of range. A violent, running fight developed between the huts. The Sylakian dirigibles patrolled either end of the village, ensuring that any enemy warrior who stood still for more than a few seconds received the gift of a swift quarrel between the shoulders from the Dragonships’ massive war catapults, set on gantries fore and aft of their cabins. The Sylakian troops were first-rate. Crimson Hammers – the name leaped into his mind as though it were a bloody flag waving a warning. Sylakia’s crack troops. Killers.
The Sylakians favoured stout, two-handed war hammers over the scimitars wielded by Kylara’s warriors. They worked in groups of four, protecting each other’s backs. Kylara and her women faced them with round shields and their deadly scimitars, supported by archers hidden among the village huts. Corpses piled up faster than he could count. Ardan jerked his chains one more time, hating being left out, hating to watch the Sylakians pick off Kylara’s troops, penning them in steadily from all sides. With a high-pitched whine of its meriatite turbines, a Dragonship pressed forward, angling for a position overhead of a knot of Kylara’s warriors, including the matchless Warlord herself.
Burning oil would follow.
Kylara was even deadlier seen from afar than when she was beating his head in, Ardan decided. But fear seared his throat. She led a charge to try to break free of the Sylakian troops, but they held firm and pressed the women back – outnumbering them two to one on the ground, working with the taut discipline of veteran troops. Kylara struck out ferociously, slicing off a Sylakian’s arm and catching her blade in the ironwood haft of another warrior’s war-hammer. No mind. She grasped the hammer in both hands and swung a high-kick up beneath it, breaking the man’s neck with the heel of her boot.
“Roaring rajals,” he breathed.
The terrible hammers beat back Kylara and her troops. The women gathered amidst the huts, darting quick glances at the Dragonship menacing them from above.
Another memory seized him. Ardan remembered watching Dragonships from beneath the eaves of his hut, the world burning, sobbing over a fallen woman, screaming and shaking his fist at the sky as the cowardly Sylakians continued their assault from out of range of the warriors trapped on the ground while huge, winged shadows soared over his Island. Vengeful fires filled him up to his throat. He tore at the chains.
Ardan screamed, “Burn these manacles in a Cloudlands volcano!”
The metal slipped off his wrists. He barely noticed. All he knew was the sweet savour of freedom. Ardan sprinted down toward the village on the wings of his inner blaze, listening only to the song of wailing madness in his mind, not even hearing the cries of the warriors as he slammed, weaponless, into the back of a squad of Sylakian Hammers. He smashed two helmeted heads together. Ardan kneed a warrior in the gut and stole his hammer. Spinning from a blow to his shoulder, he struck out, crushing a hapless Sylakian’s skull.
Ardan snatched up a second war hammer. One for each hand. Fiery laughter roared out of his madness. Spinning the hammers about his head, Ardan waded into the fray. Twenty, thirty Sylakians? Who cared? They would fall. He smashed a warrior through the wall of the nearest house. He took a direct hammer-blow to his chest and guffawed at the surprised warrior as he head-butted him sharply, breaking his nose. Ardan lashed out with both hammers at once, staving in the warrior’s helmet so that it crushed his skull. A hammer ricocheted off his head. Ardan spun smoothly on his heel, using the force generated by his turn to unleash a mighty blow that launched the unfortunate Sylakian over the nearest hut.
By the Islands, he could do that? Ardan ignored the warning gongs sounding in his head. No time to think. He jabbed backward with the haft of his right-hand hammer. A breastplate crunched four inches inward. Ignoring the strangled cry behind him, he waded through a knot of Crimson Hammers, crushing them as though he were a dark boulder hurtling down a cliff.
Suddenly, there were no more Sylakians left standing in his path.
Kylara caught his arm. “What’re you doing here?”
“Saving you, my beauty.” Ardan panted, before thumping her on the shoulder. “Don’t leave me in the cold when there are Sylakians to be killed.”
“You’re mad.” She shook her head as though she had a wasp in her ear. When his gaze lingered on her eyes to puzzle over their unreadable expression, her palm impacted his cheek. Whack! “Mind on the battle, man. What’s wrong with you?”
Ardan champed his jaw, hating the man emerging from the trackless mists of his past, feeling as shallow as a puddle left after rain. Maybe he needed a fresh start beneath another prekki tree. But having started at a gallop down this particular animal-trail, how could he find another? He felt driven by passions beyond his understanding and thoughts not his own. If he truly wanted to be the honourable Western Isles warrior the praise-songs of his people extolled to the heavens, then he had better start behaving like one.
She said, “Follow me. Rocia – another shot at that Dragonship.”
“Too high, Chief.” But the warrior bent to her task.
With Ardan at her side, Kylara almost broke the Sylakian line before a barrage of blazing oil splashing from the heavens forced them to turn back. The Dragonship crews fired each hut as it passed by, reducing the available cover. They ignited their own troops without a qualm. Smoke and fire billowed up, forcing Kylara to order the retreat.
“This is bad,” she muttered.
Ardan followed the upward-bound quarrel with his eyes. Rocia’s method didn’t have enough power. That dirigible would be overhead in seconds.
“Down!” Ardan’s shoulder knocked Kylara sprawling. A quarrel bit the earth right between her legs. Another sliced a chunk of skin out of his thigh. “Nice,” he grinned, yanking the burning quarrel out of the ground. “You boys want to play?”
Ardan hefted the six-foot quarrel over his shoulder, testing its balance. He slid his grip a handspan backward on the shaft. Taking a short run-up, he slammed down on his injured leg, using the jarring pain to fuel his scream of effort as he hurled the quarrel like a javelin, an impossible distance, over four hundred vertical feet into the sky.
KAARAABOOM!
Ardan danced and screamed his defiance as bits of Dragonship spiralled down – cabin struts and crysglass portholes and burning bits of warriors caught in the conflagration. Kylara yanked him beneath her shield, deflecting a large piece of metal away from his head.
“You’re moons-mad. Are you a berserker?”
Ardan showed his teeth in a smile that was more a grimace. “I don’t like Sylakians, my lady. You can thank me later. We need to move.” His finger jabbed upward. “Catapults.”
The Dragonship hovering at the northern end of the village was readying her catapults with a load of what looked to be naphtha, Ardan realised. A Sylakian trumpet sounded the retreat. The Hammers withdrew steadily, covering their backs with archers.
“Two left,” said Kylara, thrusting a quarrel into his hand. “Think you can repeat that throw, slave? We’ll cut you a path.”
A dense wedge of Kylara’s Leopards trotted out of cover, coming under a withering hail of crossbow quarrels and arrows. Most were caught on shields, but three warriors fell as they closed with the Sylakian Hammers. Ardan calculated the distance with his eyes. Two more paces … he bounced lightly on his toes and broke into a sprint, raising the quarrel behind his head. Ardan poured all of his fury and pain into the throw. The burning quarrel reached for the noon skies before whistling down and plugging diagonally atop the cabin of the Dragonship, right beneath the hydrogen sack. Flames licked up the shaft.
Ardan cursed. But the Sylakians up there were scrambling up the netting encasing their hydrogen sack, desperate to reach the quarrel before the fire leaped the small gap between the blazing feathers and the bottom of the hydrogen sack. It licked. It lapped. It caught …
KAABOOM!
The blast pounded Ardan to his knees. Heat rolled over his back. Kylara and her troops slammed into the Sylakians at a full run, with their Warlord right at the spearhead of that tight, well-organised wedge of warriors. Scimitars flicked hungrily, like the many claws of a ravening metal monster. They sliced through the Sylakian line. Ardan sprinted to catch up. Almost as an afterthought, he snatched up a war hammer to brain a couple of Sylakian troops on the way past.
Now, this was the type of work he enjoyed.
Chapter 4: Dragon Fear
Aranya’s thunderous roar reverberated over the tan hills of Yar’ola Island. Below her, all activity in the Sylakian outpost ceased. She could almost smell the Dragon fear drifting up on the breeze. King Beran’s Dragonships, which had approached the Island low over the sickly yellow Cloudlands, now raced their engines to a full-throated growl as they rose rapidly above the fortress walls. One Dragonship peeled off to the south, aiming to intercept any message hawks that might be despatched in a twenty-eighth hour attempt to warn the Islands further south.
“Stop where you are!” shouted Yolathion, waving his large bow aloft. “Ground the Dragonships!”
When there was no immediate response, Aranya boomed, “Surrender or die!”
Her Rider rubbed his ears. “Islands’ sakes, girl, it sounded as though I was sitting on top of a thunderclap, there.”
“It’s storm power, so the thunder’s real enough,” she said over her shoulder. Down on the ground, the Sylakian troops fell to their faces in abject surrender. “I’d thought of getting Zip ear-plugs. What do you think?”
“Can’t hear you.”
Yolathion smiled at his joke, but Aranya wondered if she could genuinely hurt her Rider with power of that magnitude. Dragon ears adjusted automatically, unlike Human ears.
Dragon and Rider had prepared for battle by shooting arrows and fireballs at passing clouds as they crossed between the Islands, making two or three flights each day, so that Yolathion could familiarise himself with buckling the Dragon Rider saddle in place, mounting or dismounting rapidly, and the mechanics of fighting Dragonback. The Jeradian warrior was a fair archer, but not as skilful as Zip. Aranya had not realised how close she and the Remoyan Princess had come in understanding one another until she tried to line Yolathion up following a roll or a dive. He took many seconds longer than Zuziana to orient himself, which in battle, would likely as not spell a crossbow quarrel between the teeth.
Well, he was new. She had to grant him a little grace.
“Set me down, Aranya,” said Yolathion. “I’ll help your father round them up. You keep a Dragon’s eye out for trouble.”
“Four’s a good haul,” said Aranya.
But the Dragoness was left drifting on the winds as the men negotiated the peace and freed the King of Yar’ola Island, locking up the Sylakian contingent and their Third-War Hammer instead. Aranya turned lazy and she hoped menacing circles over the fortress at the edge of a small town of perhaps two or three thousand citizens. She compared Yar’ola unfavourably to Immadia in her mind. Tan hills and wide pasturelands compared to soaring mountains and forests? Grr. She knew which Island she preferred. Aranya spotted a fleet of small, swift trader Dragonships moored at the far end of town. They could be useful.
She should hunt. She wondered what Yolathion would think of his girlfriend tearing into a ralti sheep or better still, a deer. Raw venison was so much tastier than mutton. On cue, a blob of drool escaped the corner of her lip. Aranya grimaced. Perhaps Dragon manners were not for princesses.
Later, having transformed, King Beran introduced her to King Urdagal, a dark, dapper man who took possession of her proffered hand and kissed her palm sixteen times, once for each summer of her life, he declared with an oily smile. Aranya found herself grateful for Yolathion’s dark glower which she caught from the corner of her eye. She even forgave Yolathion a jest about women taking part in strategy discussions, but smouldered as he patted her hand patronisingly when King Beran asked her opinion about which Island they should invade next.
Urdagal suggested she might go sit with his wife and five children.
Aranya countered by politely asking him where she could hunt and kill a wild sheep or spiral-horned buck for her dinner. Ha. These men had better wish they did not end up on the wrong end of an irascible Dragoness’ claws.
After her private dinner, however, the giant Jeradian appeared to escort Human-Aranya on a walk around the royal lodge’s gardens. They tarried in an arbour covered in the last climbing roses of the season, the fragrant bouquet drifting around them on the barest hint of a breeze, and together watched the Mystic moon as it sailed above the Cloudlands like a stately Dragonship. Yolathion caressed her cheek with his thumb until she tilted her head upward to meet his deep, consuming gaze. Aranya’s inner fires simmered and morphed into a different form. But just as they were on the cusp of kissing, a messenger appeared to request that they board the Immadian Dragonships, for Beran planned to fly overnight and surprise the Island-Cluster of Haffal at dawn.
