City in the Sky (39 page)

“What?” Dekker asked, perplexed.

“Even the inner forts have enough firepower to take on the entire invasion force,” Erik said slowly, “but the Draconans
know
that, and won't enter range of the guns. Sky Fleet, even just the squadron here, can pin them against the forts once they're
in
range, but we have to get them into range. We need bait,” he repeated.

“They'll just bring dragons in on the ground for us,” Dekker objected. “That won't lure them into range of the guns.”

“We need a ship,” Erik said quietly. “But the shipyards are gone, I don't think we can reach the civilian docks, and the military docks are empty.”

“A ship?” Dekker said slowly.

“Yes.”

“There's one,” the Wind Guard told him. “The
Tarverro
.”

“The
what?
” Erik demanded, turning to look at the other man.

“The royal yacht,” Dekker explained. “It's old, they named her for the first ruling clan – your ancestors. But she’s got crys-bows, and she can fly.”

“The crew?”

Dekker shook his head. “They live outside the Palace. They may be alive, but we won't be able to find them.”

Erik nodded, and turned to one of his messengers. “Torin, fetch Harmon
hept
Ikeras,” he instructed the man.

“Yes, sir!” the messenger replied and took off.

“What are you thinking?” Dekker asked.

“Most of the militia have day jobs as crew or marines on merchant ships,” Erik told him. “If we can find enough...”

Ikeras's arrival cut off Dekker's answer. He wasn't even out of breath, but then, the Square wasn't big enough for him to have been too far away.

“What is it?” the non-com asked.

“Harmon, can we pull together enough men to man a skyship?” Erik asked simply.

“Just fly her or fight her?” Ikeras asked.

“Fight her.”

“Maybe,” the non-com said slowly. “I can find ten, maybe twelve, men I know can help me
fly
it, but fighting it... we sent everyone with artillery experience to the forts.”

“I didn't,” Dekker said flatly. “If you can find the men to fly it, I can find the men to man the 'bows.”

“I think we may just have a plan,” Erik agreed.

“To do what?” Ikeras asked cautiously.

The Newport Royal Yacht
Tarverro
floated in what would have been a decorative pond in the grounds of any other palace. Nearly two hundred feet from bow to stern, she was even larger than a war frigate, though not nearly as large as most battleships. She lacked the
weapons
of even a frigate, but the ones she did have would be enough. Should be enough.

The palace grounds around her were eerily quiet. Every time Erik had been here before, the place had bustled with servants and people, living the life of court. Now, the only people within sight were the sixty soldiers they'd pulled from the militia and the Wind Guard.

“You're sure you can fly her with fifteen men?” Erik asked Ikeras, eyeing the length of the ship.

“She can be flown entirely by changing crystal power levels,” the non-com told him quietly. “It puts a lot of strain on the crystals, but it takes only a handful. I wouldn't want to make any long voyages with this few, but we can fight her for a short while.”

“Good,” Erik said flatly, and turned to Dekker. “What about you?”

The Wind Guard captain shrugged. “We have forty-five men for forty crys-bows,” he replied. “They're older 'bows too. We'll get a shot from all of them to start, but we're only going to be able to keep nine, maybe ten, of them firing at a time.”

Erik considered. “It should be enough,” he said “We're not planning to fight the entire Draconan host on our own.”

“No,” Ikeras agreed morosely. “Just piss them off on our own.”

Pointedly ignoring his
kep
's complaint, Erik stepped onto the ramp leading up to the ship, carefully balancing as the wood sprung under him. A few steps and he stood on the deck of the ship named for his clan.

He didn't stay at the top of the ramp for long, as the rest of the
Tarverro
's impromptu crew came surging up it. They didn't have a great deal of time.

“Get her ready to fly as quickly as possible,” he instructed curtly. “We'll only have one shot at this.”

Discipline was fraying among the Skyborne portion of the Draconan attack force. Kolanis could
feel
it. Skyborne warriors were the elite of Dracona's armies; they were
far
from used to impotence, and impotent was what they were today.

Hundreds of dragons clustered in the sky, providing 'air cover' that couldn't extend to where they were truly needed. Resistance on the perimeter of the city had been effectively crushed. Stands by a platoon of Regulars here, a company of militia there, had been burnt to death by dragons or crushed by Claws.

Outside the reach of the forts, the Draconan’s controlled Newport – but whenever a dragon strayed too close to the forts, a cannon ball or a bolt of lightning reminded them of the limits to their ability.

The dragons didn't even need to get into actual range of the forts, either. The gunners were perfectly prepared to take risk long shots at targets outside their normal range. Every so often, they got lucky, swatting a dragon from the sky.

Kolanis felt control slipping from the fingers of the men who commanded the host. The Skyborne were linked with the minds of their dragons, and much of the dragons’ impatient and hungry nature entered the men who rode them. If they didn't find something for them to kill soon, the commanders were going to lose control.

The only question that remained was would they lose control of the men – or of themselves?

Apparently the
Tarverro
was kept ready in case in case the King needed to be evacuated on short or no notice. It took the sixty soldiers barely ten minutes to ready the ship for flight. With everything set, Erik joined Ikeras and Dekker on the bridge.

“Are we ready?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” Ikeras replied, his eyes firmly locked on the pattern of crystals before him, the central control matrix. He couldn't fly the ship from
just
here, but combined with hand gestures to the men positioned at central links, he could fly it almost as well as someone with a full crew to back them up. For a little while, anyway.

“Let's go,” Erik told him.

Nodding abstractly, the older Aeraid thrust his gloved hands into the crystals, twisting them into contact in a certain pattern. Raising his hands, he gestured, and two of his helpers moved larger crystals into alignment.

Shuddering with the effort, the old yacht slowly lifted out of the water, shedding droplets and pondweed across the gardens like rain. She gained speed, picking up energy as the crystal pathways energized.

“We're good,” Ikeras said softly, his eyes still on the matrix. “How do we want to do this?”

“Loop us around to the east and bring us in from the north,” Erik instructed. “Most of them are concentrated on the southwest side, where they came from.”

The non-com said nothing, but the ship curved around and began to pick up speed, curving away from the Square of the Gods and the host of dragons watching it.

From the sky above Newport, the extent of the damage the Draconan invasion had wreaked was clear. The outer fortifications, dozens of mighty stone bastions built of solid stone, were now merely debris. The shipyards that had churned out dozens of sky ships a year were a smoldering ruin. The city streets were empty, and a fire flickered its way through one of the outer neighborhoods with no one attempting to stop it.

The Draconans had apparently spread out a network of scouts, though how those scouts were communicating with their leaders was beyond Erik, and they were barely clear of inner city before the encountered the first one.

One of Ikeras' helpers was halfway up the main mast, focusing one of the lift crystals from there. He spotted the dragon, a brown, before its rider spotted the
Tarverro
, and shouted down.

“Dragon!”

Erik jerked around at the shout, and then followed the soldier's pointing arm. The either the brown dragon's rider or the dragon itself had heard something, quite possibly the warning shout, as the dragon began to turn toward the
Tarverro
.

“Gunners!” Erik bellowed. “
Take him
!”

While all the crys-bows on the ship had been charged and aligned, they'd only manned a handful in each broadside to begin with. The three manned 'bows in the broadside facing the dragon rotated and fired.

Perhaps two seconds elapsed between the first bow firing and the last, but the third bolt passed through empty air. The first two had converged on the beast and scattered its remains across the sky.

Erik breathed a sigh of relief. Unless there'd been a mage on the dragon with its rider, he couldn't have informed his commanders. Even if there had been, the dragon had been killed too fast for
any
communication.

“We're probably at their scout perimeter,” he said quietly, and Dekker nodded in agreement. “We should probably swing in now and head for their main body.”

“All right,” Ikeras replied, shifting crystals and making the gestures.

As the ship began to swing towards the southwest, Erik turned to Dekker. “It only takes one of your men to fire the 'bow if it’s charged, right?”

“Aiming might be an issue, but yeah,” the Wind Guard officer agreed. “Why?”

“Split them up,” Erik told him. “Put one man on each 'bow. We'll get one good salvo in from all of them that way. Then we can man whichever broadside faces toward the enemy as we run.”

“Makes sense,” Dekker acknowledged with a small nod. He crossed the deck to his own men and started to give orders.

Kolanis felt Lalen tense under him, the dragon reacting to his own emotions as he watched the Claws attempt to assault the Square of the Gods again. His own feelings of impotence and rage were transmitting to the great beast, fueling her own fury, which she transmitted back. Their emotions were in a feedback loop, and only years of discipline allowed the Draconan officer to maintain control of himself and his dragon.

Beneath them, the Claws doggedly advanced into an unending storm of arrows and cannon-fire, rending formations and leaving bodies scattered behind them. Finally, the soldiers managed to close and charge the crude fortifications.

They may as well have charged the stone walls behind the Square. The Claws of the Dragon were universally acknowledged as the best
regular
troops around, but the Wind Guard was an
elite
unit. No regular troops, however, good, had any business charging them in prepared positions, but that was just what the Claws had to do.

The Wind Guardsmen's armor shrugged aside all but the strongest or luckiest of blows, and their own weapons ripped through the Claws' armor like it wasn't even there. Wind Guards died, but far more Draconans died. The Claws were paying easily five or ten to one to take down their more heavily armored opponents.

Kolanis almost
felt
his own impotent fury spread through the Skyborne force as the Claws were forced to stubbornly retreat, leaving almost a third of their numbers behind. The dragons shifted, moving towards the Square.

The sky-major almost lost control himself, but a flash of heat grabbed his attention and he picked up the crystal tablet strapped to his leg as the heat faded. The command was simple, and yet edging towards impossible:

“All Skyborne,” it read, “Control your men!”

Kolanis focused on the message, using its importance to help him control his own emotions. Once his rage was quelled, he turned his attention to Lalen, calming her down. Finally, with his dragon and himself both under control, he turned to give orders to his men. Orders that, no matter how far they'd gone, he
knew
they would obey.

His turn meant he was looking out to the sea to the northwest, and was in a perfect position to see the skyship arrive. The back of his mind acknowledged the intelligence of the maneuver, but his forebrain simply went into shock as the ship, clearly a battleship from its size, came swooping up from under the level of the city, emerging almost directly into the rear of the dragon host.

For a moment, he thought he was wrong, and it was simply an unarmed merchantman trying to rattle the Skyborne host. Then the ship passed into the dragon formations and its crys-bows fired.

Forty separate bolts of lightning lashed out at forty separate dragons, and the war-dragons died under the skyship's fire. Any chance of controlling the host was lost as the psychic shock of their deaths rippled between the dragons and into their already antsy riders.