Dragonlance 03 - Dragons of Spring Dawning (17 page)

Why not? he wondered suddenly. Clinging to the saddle with his knees and thighs, the kender let go of Flint and began rummaging around in his pouches. Dragging out a sheet of parchment, he rested it firmly against the dwarf’s back and began to draw on it with a piece of charcoal.

“Quit wiggling!” he shouted at Flint, who was still trying to grab the reins.

“What’re you doing, you doorknob?” the dwarf yelled, pawing frantically at Tas behind his back like an itch he couldn’t scratch.

“I’m making a map!” Tas yelled in ecstasy. “The
perfect
map! I’ll be famous. Look! There are our own troops, like little ants. And there’s Vingaard Keep! Stop moving! You made me mess up.”

Groaning, Flint gave up trying to either grasp the reins or brush away the kender. He decided he had better concentrate on keeping a firm grip on both the dragon and his breakfast. He had made the mistake of looking down. Now he stared straight ahead, shivering, his body rigid. The hair from the mane of a griffon that decorated his helm whipped about his face wildly in the rushing wind. Birds wheeled in the skies
beneath
him. Flint decided then and there that dragons were going on his list with boats and horses as Things to Avoid at All Costs.

“Oh!” Tas gasped in excitement. “There are the dragonarmies! It’s a battle! And I can see the whole thing!” The
kender leaned over in the saddle, peering down. Now and again, through the rushing eddies of air, he thought he could hear the clash of armor and cries and shouts. “Say, could we fly a bit closer? I—whoops! Oh, no! My map!”

Khirsah had made a sudden, swooping dive. The force ripped the parchment from Tas’s hands. Forlornly he watched it flutter away from him like a leaf. But he hadn’t time to feel sad, for suddenly he felt Flint’s body go even more rigid than before.

“What? What is it?” Tas yelled.

Flint was shouting something and pointing. Tas tried desperately to see and hear, but at that moment they flew into a low-hanging cloud and the kender couldn’t see his nose in front of his face, as the gully dwarves said.

Then Khirsah emerged from the cloud bank and Tas saw.

“Oh my!” said the kender in awe. Below them, bearing down on the small antlike troops of men, flew line after line of dragons. Their red and blue leathery wings spread like evil banners as they dove down upon the helpless armies of the Golden General.

Tasslehoff could see the solid lines of men waver and break as the terrible dragonfear swept over them. But there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide on the broad grasslands. This is why the dragons had waited, Tas realized, sick with the thought of the fire and lightning breath exploding among the unprotected troops.

“We’ve got to stop them—oof!”

Khirsah wheeled so suddenly that Tas nearly swallowed his tongue. The sky flipped over on its side and for an instant the kender had the most interesting sensation of falling
up
. More by instinct than conscious thought, Tas grabbed hold of Flint’s belt, remembering suddenly that he was supposed to have strapped himself in as Flint had done. Well, he would do so next time.

If there was a next time. The wind roared around him, the ground spun below him as the dragon spiraled downward. Kenders were fond of new experiences, and this was certainly one of the most exciting, but Tas
did
wish the ground wasn’t rushing up to meet them quite so
fast!

“I didn’t mean we had to stop them
right now!”
Tas shouted to Flint. Glancing up—or was it down?—he could see the other dragons far above them, no, below them. Things
were getting all muddled. Now the dragons were
behind
them! They were out here in front! Alone! What was Flint doing?

“Not so fast! Slow this thing down!” he yelled at Flint. “You’ve gotten ahead of everybody! Even Laurana!”

The dwarf would have liked nothing better than to slow the dragon down. That last swoop had tossed the reins within his reach and now he was tugging with all his might, shouting “Whoah, beast, whoah!” which he dimly remembered was supposed to work with horses. But it wasn’t working with the dragon.

It was no comfort to the terrified dwarf to notice that he wasn’t the only one having trouble managing the dragons. Behind him, the delicate line of bronze and silver broke as if by some silent signal, as the dragons veered off into small groups—flights—of twos and threes.

Frantically the knights jerked on the reins, endeavoring to pull the dragons back into straight and orderly cavalry rows. But the dragons knew better, the sky was their domain. Fighting in the air was far different from fighting on the ground. They would show these horse riders how to fight on dragonback.

Spinning gracefully, Khirsah dove into another cloud, and Tas instantly lost all sense of up or down as the thick fog enveloped him. Then the sunlit sky exploded before his eyes as the dragon burst out. Now he knew which way was up and which was down.
Down
was, in fact, getting uncomfortably close!

Then Flint roared. Startled, Tas looked up and saw that they were heading straight into a flight of blue dragons who, intent upon pursuing a group of panic-stricken foot soldiers, hadn’t seen them yet.

“The lance! The lance!” Tas shouted.

Flint grappled with the lance, but he didn’t have time to adjust it or set it properly against his shoulder. Not that it mattered. The blue dragons still hadn’t seen them. Gliding out of the cloud, Khirsah fell in behind them. Then, like a bronze flame, the young dragon flashed over the group of blues, aiming for their leader, a big blue dragon with a blue-helmed rider. Diving swiftly and silently, Khirsah struck the lead dragon with all four murderously sharp talons.

The force of the impact threw Flint forward in his harness. Tas landed on top of him, flattening the dwarf. Frantically, Flint struggled to sit up, but Tas had one arm wrapped around
him tightly. Beating the dwarf on the helm with the other, Tas was shouting encouragement to the dragon.

“That was great! Hit him again!” shrieked the kender, wild with excitement, pounding Flint on the head.

Swearing loudly in dwarven, Flint flung Tas off him. At that moment, Khirsah soared upward, darting into another cloud before the flight of blues could react to his attack.

Khirsah waited for an instant, perhaps to give his shaken riders time to pull themselves together. Flint sat up and Tas clasped his arms around the dwarf tightly. He thought Flint looked strange, sort of gray-colored and oddly preoccupied. But then this certainly wasn’t a normal experience, Tas reminded himself. Before he could ask Flint if he felt all right, Khirsah dove out of the cloud once more.

Tas could see the blue dragons below them. The lead dragon had pulled up in mid-air, hovering on his great wings. The blue was shaken and wounded slightly; there was blood on the rear flanks where Khirsah’s sharp talons had punctured the dragon’s tough, scaly hide. The dragon and his blue-helmed rider were both scanning the skies, searching for their attacker. Suddenly the rider pointed.

Risking a quick glance behind him, Tas caught his breath. The sight was magnificent. Bronze and silver flashed in the sun as the Whitestone Dragons broke out of the cloud cover and descended screaming upon the flight of blues. Instantly the flight broke as the blues fought to gain altitude and keep their pursuers from attacking them from behind. Here and there battles broke out. Lightning cracked and flared, nearly blinding the kender, as a great bronze dragon to his right screamed in pain and fell from the air, its head blackened and burning. Tas saw its rider helplessly grasping the reins, his mouth opened in a scream the kender could see but not hear as dragon and rider plunged to the ground below.

Tas stared at the ground rushing closer and closer and wondered in a dreamlike haze what it would be like to smash into the grass. But he didn’t have time to wonder long, because suddenly Khirsah let out a roar.

The blue leader spotted Khirsah and heard his ringing challenge. Ignoring the other dragons fighting in the skies around him, the blue leader and his rider flew up to continue their duel with the bronze.

“Now it is your turn, dwarf! Set the lance!” Khirsah yelled. Lifting his great wings, the bronze soared up and up, gaining altitude for maneuvering and also giving the dwarf time to prepare.

“I’ll hold the reins!” Tas shouted.

But the kender couldn’t tell if Flint heard him or not. The dwarf’s face was rigid and he was moving slowly and mechanically. Wild with impatience, Tas could do nothing but hang onto the reins and watch while Flint fumbled with gray fingers until he finally managed to fix the hilt of the lance beneath his shoulder and brace it as he had been taught. Then he just stared straight ahead, his face empty of all expression.

Khirsah continued rising, then leveled off, and Tas looked around, wondering where their enemies were. He had completely lost sight of the blue and its rider. Then Khirsah suddenly leaped upward and Tas gasped.
There
was their enemy, right ahead of them!

He saw the blue open his hideous fanged mouth. Remembering the lightning, Tas ducked behind the shield. Then he saw that Flint was still sitting straight-backed, staring grimly out over the shield at the approaching dragon! Reaching around Flint’s waist, Tas grabbed hold of the dwarf’s beard and yanked his head downward, behind the shield.

Lightning flared and crackled around them. The instant booming thunder nearly knocked both kender and dwarf senseless. Khirsah roared in pain but held true upon his course.

The dragons struck, head-on, and the dragonlance speared its victim.

For an instant all Tas could see were blurs of blue and red. The world spun round and round. Once a dragon’s hideous, fiery eyes stared at him balefully. Claws flashed. Khirsah shrieked, the blue screamed. Wings beat upon the air. The ground spiraled round and round as the struggling dragons fell.

Why doesn’t Fireflash let go? Tas thought frantically. Then he could see,

We’re locked together! Tasslehoff realized numbly.

The dragonlance had missed its mark. Striking the wing-bone joint of the blue dragon, the lance had bent into his shoulder and was now lodged tight. Desperately the blue fought to free himself, but Khirsah, now filled with battle rage, lashed out at the blue with his sharp fangs and ripping taloned front feet.

Intent upon their own battle, both dragons had completely forgotten their riders. Tas had forgotten the other rider, too, until, glancing up helplessly, he saw the blue-helmed dragon officer clinging precariously to his saddle only a few feet away.

Then sky and ground became a blur once more as the dragons whirled and fought. Tas watched in a haze as the blue helm of the officer fell from his head, and the officer’s blonde hair whipped in the wind. His eyes were cold and bright and not the least afraid. He stared straight into Tasslehoff’s eyes.

He looks familiar, thought Tas with an odd sort of detachment, as if this were happening to some other kender while he watched. Where could I have seen him before? Thoughts of Sturm came to his mind.

The dragon officer freed himself from his harness and stood up in the stirrups. One arm—his right arm—hung limply at his side, but his other hand was reaching forward—

Everything became very clear to Tas suddenly. He knew exactly what the officer intended to do. It was as if the man spoke to him, telling him his plans.

“Flint!” cried Tas frantically. “Release the lance! Release it!”

But the dwarf held onto the lance fast, that strange faraway look on his face. The dragons fought and clawed and bit in mid-air; the blue twisting, trying to free himself from the lance as well as fend off its attacker. Tas saw the blue’s rider shout something, and the blue broke off its attack for an instant, holding himself steady in the air.

With remarkable agility, the officer leaped from one dragon to the other. Grasping Khirsah around the neck with his good arm, the dragon officer pulled himself upright, his strong legs and thighs clamping themselves firmly onto the struggling dragon’s neck.

Khirsah paid the human no attention. His thoughts were fixed totally on his enemy.

The officer cast one quick glance back at the kender and the dwarf behind him and saw that neither was likely to be a threat, strapped, as they must be, into place. Coolly the officer drew his longsword and, leaning down, began to slash at the bronze dragon’s harness straps where they crossed across the beast’s chest, ahead of the great wings.

“Flint!” pleaded Tas. “Release the lance! Look!” The kender shook the dwarf. “If that officer cuts through the harness, our saddle will fall off! The lance will fall off!
We’ll
fall off!”

Flint turned his head slowly, suddenly understanding. Still moving with agonizing slowness, his shaking hand fumbled at the mechanism that would release the lance and free the dragons from their deadly embrace. But would it be in time?

Tas saw the longsword flash in the air. He saw one of the harness straps sag and flutter free. There wasn’t time to think or plan. While Flint grappled with the release, Tas, rising up precariously, wrapped the reins around his waist. Then, hanging onto the edge of the saddle, the kender crawled around the dwarf until he was in front of him. Here he lay down flat along the dragon’s neck and, wrapping his legs around the dragon’s spiny mane, he wormed his way forward and came up silently behind the officer.

The man wasn’t paying any attention to the riders behind him, assuming both were safely locked in their harnesses. Intent upon his work—the harness was nearly free—he never knew what hit him.

Rising up, Tasslehoff leaped onto the officer’s back. Startled, scrabbling wildly to keep himself balanced, the officer let his sword fall as he clung desperately to the dragon’s neck.

Snarling in rage, the officer tried to see what had struck him when suddenly everything went dark! Small arms wrapped themselves around his head, blinding him. Frantically the officer let go of his hold on the dragon in an effort to free himself of what seemed to his enraged mind to be a creature with six legs and arms, all of them clinging to him with a buglike tenacity. But he felt himself start to slide off the dragon and was forced to grab hold of the mane.