The Onyx Dragon (12 page)

The Brown snarled,
Faster, fledglings. Attack speed.

Hurtling on and on, she began to question if Kassik had misjudged the distance. He jinked upward, taking them above the arch’s mile-wide horizontal join. Sleepy, troubled bird-chatter rose from the birds roosting alongside the six upper levels of terrace lakes as the Dragons’ wash disturbed the waters. Then, the battle appeared to rise over the Island’s bulging flank. That much was illusion. The skirmish was not. The five trader Dragonships scrapped with–Pip counted rapidly–eight heavily-armed pirate Dragonships, a further massive airship which boasted ten war-catapult and crossbow emplacements she could make out, and two Green Dragons who crawled over one of the trader Dragonships, efficiently stripping it of weapons and defenders. Where was the other Green?

Alright Tazz,
snarled Kassik.
Time to roast those flying slugs!

Four full-throated Dragon challenges rumbled over the battle, shaking the Greens as if they were pebbles in a gourd-rattle. A moment before, those red-rajal pirate pennants had looked so brave, waving in the breeze. Now they resembled scraps of bloody meat waved in front of irate Dragons’ noses.

Where were Shimmerith and her battle group? Pip glanced below, realising how Kassik’s angle of assault from several hundred yards above the pirates had drawn every eye upward. The Greens were already disentangling themselves from the Dragonships, throats swelling to voice their enmity. A pleasant morning’s pillaging and looting, interrupted. There–oh yes! Anticipation punched her breathless. She saw a slight shimmer of air like the play of heat above an open volcanic vent, perfectly in keeping with Shimmerith’s name. Chymasion and Emmaraz broke free of the shield a scant fifty yards beneath the trailing Green’s belly. The Red Emmaraz aimed for the belly region, Chymasion took the throat. Maylin somehow picked off a pirate Steersman with an intrepid arrow-shot an instant before her Dragon slammed into the Green, ramming his talons so deep into its hide that his knuckles completely disappeared. Chymasion seized the Green by the skull-spikes at high speed and threw his full weight into a slingshot manoeuvre, twisting the Green’s head right off his neck!

What?
Kassik gasped an involuntary fireball.

Roaring,
Death to all pirates!
Tazzaral pummelled the largest Dragonship, blasting war crossbows off the bow with a series of explosive fireballs while Jyoss spiralled a bare foot above her companion’s arched spine-spikes to attack two catapult emplacements on a gantry above the main air sack. So fast! Pip struggled to follow the action as two delicate blades of white fire appeared to spear from … her eyes? Jyoss wielded her magical weapons with surgical precision. The emplacements and their attendant engineers peeled off the gantry and tumbled into the Cloudlands.

Suddenly, catapult-shot and arrows filled the sky. Pip yelled something nonsensical and ferocious as she drew to shoot. Pain lanced into her wounded shoulder; the shot went awry. Quick. Another! A pirate lining up Durithion with a six-foot metal crossbow bolt folded over an arrow buried in his right flank. Kaiatha deafened her right ear with a wild yell. She saw Kassik twisting metal into useless sculptures with his Brown power, while Emblazon had the biggest Green locked in a death-grip, all talons bared as he quarried great chunks of Dragonflesh off his adversary. A six-foot quarrel sprouted in her Silver’s side! Pip flinched as a matching spear-point of pain seemed to shoot into her ribs, too. Nothing. No blood.

Ignore the pain. Pip flung up an arm to deflect a normal-sized arrow whizzing toward Kaia; her answering shot made the archer duck. Shimmerith ambushed him from behind, merely a blur of sapphire scales as she cleared the lower gantry of a pirate Dragonship with an extended swipe of her left forepaw. Each airship was a large oblong balloon with a cabin suspended beneath it by hawsers, with light metal gantries around and above the cabins to double as fighting platforms and repair access for engineers. Dragonship design often included crysglass-enclosed Navigator cabins at the bow, but these pirate ships were built for combat–their Steersmen stood in the open. Unlucky.

Emmaraz slammed into a Dragonship above and ahead of them, ripping the entire bow-gantry off its moorings in a fit of pique. Maylin’s laughter egged him on. Opposite, Pip spied Silver lashing out with his hind foot, leaving an imprint of a Steersman on a cabin wall. He shook his paw to clean–well, Pip did not want to think what exactly–off the underside.

Oyda’s in trouble!

Pip could not tell which Dragon had cried out. Somehow, the third and last Green Dragon had wriggled free of a melee, only to impale himself on Emblazon’s spine-spikes in the region of the huge Amber Dragon’s hindquarters. She knew that feeling all too well. But the injured Green pressed his paws down to lift himself clear. Now he clawed his way toward Oyda, disregarding the war crossbow emplacements positioned to either side. The Green was just six feet behind her position. Had Oyda realised? Meantime, Emblazon wrestled with his quarry, trying to execute a killing bite.

Roaring! Rushing! Tazzaral sprang off the pirate mothership at Kaiatha’s sharp command. Duri and Jyoss speared across the fray, but came under heavy fire from catapults belonging to both friend and foe. Somehow Kassik was in the thick of it all, above Emblazon, holding Hunagu against his belly with one paw while he reached out with the other, only to be rebuffed by an unfortunate swoop from Chymasion, intent on dodging a catapult-load of razor-sharp shrapnel.

Go, Silver! On my mark!
Pip heard herself yell. She slapped her saddle-harness buckles, freeing the spring-loaded mechanism.

She saw Oyda speared through the back by a talon. No, Oyda was fine, riding high. The Green, golden Dragon blood dripping between his fangs, coiled his thigh-muscles in anticipation of the fatal blow. Oyda tumbled lifeless into the Cloudlands, Emblazon bugled in wild, unrestrained grief … she could not tell what was real anymore. Silver swerved at her call … seeing what
she saw … now Pip looked through his eyes, making a desperate correction of course as she crouched. She tried to shake her head to clear the intruding images. Ready. Judge the distance. She sprang upward, clasping a sword in her weaker left hand. Snagging the outermost edge of Silver’s wingtip, she flew in an arc over a trader Dragonship as it slowly ascended into the gap between her and Emblazon. Her shoulder burned. Pip disregarded the pain. The Silver Dragon crashed into the soft air sack and rolled over it, keeping his wing perfectly extended, one with her in crazy-slow motion.

Bolts, fired by double crossbow emplacements on a nearby pirate airship! But before Pip could blink, Jyoss’ eye-beam attack cut the pair of six-foot ‘Dragon killer’ crossbow bolts in half. She arced rapidly toward Oyda, muscles screaming at the strain.

The Green heaved himself forward.

Pip released Silver’s wingtip, bringing her sword up from behind her left shoulder in a fluid blur. She hurled it overhand with all of her strength into the space between that fatal grey talon and the small of Oyda’s back … and it kept right on cartwheeling, flying so fast that it struck the side of the Island hundreds of feet distant. The claw struck home. Pip screamed! But the steely talon never penetrated her armour, for it had no foundation. Sheared clean off. Oyda had a second’s grace to slice her final saddle-strap free and leap for safety before the stunned Green jerked ahead to complete his attempted backstab. That was his last living accomplishment, for Silver embellished his manoeuvre with a shaped fireball he had been trying to teach the other Dragons. Flame crackled above Pip’s head, spearing into the Green Dragon’s wounded neck. Silver sparks exploded throughout the Green’s flesh. That was Silver’s special power, what he called a kinship-power between a Silver Dragon and a Star Dragon’s signature star-fire attack.

The enemy Green’s eye-fires ebbed and flickered out.

She tumbled out of the fray. Down, down forever, heart crammed into her throat. Amidst the smoke and chaos above, Pip caught flashes of fangs and wings. Flame blossomed lazily from one of the Dragonships …
Silver!

I come, my Rider.
He upended and clipped his wings sharply, diving in pursuit of the falling Humans. Below Pip, Oyda fell with peculiar calm, as if she were lying on a bed of air. Silver’s rapid acceleration brought him down to the Dragon Riders within seconds, whereupon he produced a stunning piece of aerial acrobatics, snagging both women simultaneously at high speed, yet his catches were so perfectly timed, Pip experienced only the gentlest of bumps against her ribs.

Oyda chuckled,
Silver, Pip–you’re awesome together. Wow!

Silver’s doing, really,
Pip protested.

Let’s argue properly later,
suggested the Dragon, lacing his words with nuances that made Oyda shout with laughter and Pip blush up a firestorm.

She huffed,
Mind on the battle, young Shapeshifter!

Silver only produced a fiery chuckle while diving out of the way of a Green Dragon corpse tumbling away into the Cloudlands. Emblazon had defeated his foe. With that, the pirates were effectively doomed. Eight battle-maddened Dragons crawled all over the enemy Dragonships. Those pirates who did not surrender were summarily invited to a quick flight from a great height. Smoke drifted away on the breeze, and with it, the blood-scents and debris of battle.

Nak grandly ‘negotiated’ with the trader Dragonship Captain for disposal of the proceeds. Thereafter, the Dragonwing flew up to one of the terrace lakes, scattering ten thousand birds to the winds, while the trader manned the empty pirate vessels and flew them off with a smile plastered upon his bearded face that could likely be seen from ten leagues away. He was rich, and alive.

* * * *

The terrace lake rippled golden-orange in the early suns-shine as Tazzaral and Jyoss sported in the narrow but deep band of water, chasing terrace-lake trout more for fun than food. Everyone else gathered on a beach shaded by jiista-berry bushes growing horizontally out of the granite cliff face just behind this level of lake, licking their wounds, sorting and fixing equipment and discussing the brief but intense battle. At a safe distance, hundreds of herons and blackwing storks perched on the lake’s curved retaining wall and proclaimed their annoyance at the Dragons’ intrusion with a constant chatter of grating caws.

“What need for Dragonships when we have Dragons?” Nak pontificated, striking a trademark Nak pose, arms folded and legs akimbo. His forehead and left eye were heavily bruised, the eye already almost swollen shut.

“The Captain thanked us a hundred times,” Kaiatha said mildly.

“Jolly right he should,” said Maylin. “Ouch, Oyda. Easy on the bandages there. It feels as if you’re roping my ribs together.”

“Broken ribs need firm treatment,” Oyda said. “Nak. Having trouble with that eye?”

“Still lets me ogle your utterly charming behind, o lily of Yelegoy,” he opined, trying to wink and failing.

“Hmm.” Oyda stalked past him, whirled on a sudden whim, delivered a prolonged kiss that literally brought Nak to his knees, and marched right on to Emmaraz. Nak looked as if a Dragon had cuffed his head.

Oyda barked, “Arosia, stitches on a wing-membrane need to be closer together. No more than an eighth of an inch. You can redo the entire section between the fifth and sixth struts beyond the elbow joint.”

“Ay, Dragon Rider,” said Arosia, mopping her forehead. “Right away.”

“I’ll inspect your work afterward.” The Yelegoy Islander grinned. “Pip says I should set your father on you if your work is inadequate in any way.”

“Huh,” snorted Master Balthion.

“Silver, let’s see to that crossbow quarrel.”

“I’m fine.”

“Ooh, you’re such a
male
,” snorted Oyda. “You’ve six feet of metal buried up to the fletching behind your third rib. Lucky it missed your lungs. Pip, Shimmerith–over here. This looks like the worst of our wounds. Arosia, make sure to check Chymasion over thoroughly once you’re done with Emmaraz. Dragons have a dreadful habit of lying about their wounds.”

“Ay,” said Casitha, giving Kassik the proverbial flaming eyeball.

“Blasted lucky shot,” grumbled the Brown Dragon, covering the split webbing of his left forepaw with his right. “Deflected off a stanchion.”

Emblazon had many acid burns courtesy of the Green Dragon’s death-throes, but had already treated those by swimming in the lake. Barrion’s upper left thigh sported a fresh bandage–an arrow had plugged in the muscle. Shimmerith had plucked it out for him while the warrior bit a piece of leather.

“Your shoulder’s bleeding again, Pip,” Silver pointed out.

“That was some crazy manoeuvre,” Duri enthused, apparently not as preoccupied with picking bits of catapult shrapnel out of his right arm as everyone thought. “You two acted as if you had one mind. Wasn’t that what Master Ga’am tried to teach us? And Pip, how did you get a sword to shear off a Dragon’s talon when a talon is harder even than tempered steel?”

“Desperation?” Pip quipped. Or, strength-magic?

Oyda, her arm buried up to the armpit inside Silver’s flank as she felt about for the crossbow bolt’s flanges, said, “Pip, that’s the second time you’ve rescued me. Actually, twice in one battle–how can I ever thank you? Perhaps our native Yelegoy beliefs in guardian spirits are true. How you ever coordinated that stunt with Silver is beyond me.”