Balanced on the Blade's Edge (Dragon Blood, Book 1) (30 page)

With visions of it tangling in his propeller,
he swerved at the last moment. The creature clipped his wing, and
the flier shimmied like a top spinning on an old cobblestone drive.
The nose of the craft dipped, and the rocks and snow of the
hillside below filled Ridge’s vision. He forced himself to keep a
loose grip on the controls, though his instincts cried for him to
yank on them, to pull the flier up before he crashed. Instead he
waited for the wings to find equilibrium again, then eased the nose
up. He swooped so low to the ground that snow sprayed in his wake,
but he started climbing once more. An intermittent kerchunk-clink
joined the engine’s regular noise.

“A little longer,” he murmured to it. “Hold
out a little longer.”

He searched all around for the owl, hoping he
had injured it enough that it couldn’t continue to fly, but not
daring to believe that was the case. Nothing streaked out of the
sky at him. Maybe, just maybe, luck had favored him.

Before he could think to celebrate, he
spotted the Cofah hovering directly over the fort. Cannonballs
blasted upward at the wooden hull, but impossibly they bounced off.
The sky burned beneath the airship, lit up like an inferno as it
spat a hailstorm of flames down onto the courtyard and walls.

“What the—” Ridge shook his head. Whatever
weapon that was, he couldn’t identify it. All he knew was that his
people were in trouble.

Sardelle crept down the hallway toward the
front door of the prison building. She had left the young guard
slumped on the floor outside her cell, snoozing in a deep slumber.
It would take a cannon going off in his ear to wake him. Making him
drowsy had taken time, but it had been a better alternative than
giving him a rash.

Missing Jaxi’s usual commentary on the
subject, Sardelle cracked open the door to peer into the courtyard.
It was surprisingly empty.

A cannon boomed from atop the wall, and she
had her answer as to why. The fort was under attack.

Usually, she wouldn’t root for that, but it
gave her the opportunity she needed. She didn’t have to throw
illusions around or camouflage herself to trot unnoticed to the
headquarters building. She did falter for a moment when she
realized the dragon flier wasn’t perched near the creek as it had
been for days. A hasty sweep of the fort revealed that Ridge wasn’t
around either. The buzz of a flier’s propellers drifted on the
breeze, and she spotted the craft near the mountains south of the
fort, a dark shadow against the snowy peaks. At first, she couldn’t
guess why he was there when the airship was floating in from the
north. Then she spotted a second shadow. That shaman’s overgrown
owl.

Sardelle chomped on her lip, torn between
going for her sword and trying to help Ridge from there. Seeing a
soldier jogging down the stairs from the wall and turning in her
direction made up her mind. He was heading toward the armory, but
he would see her if she didn’t duck inside. She pushed through the
door, vowing to return shortly. With Jaxi’s help, she would be able
to do more damage, maybe even stop that shaman, not just his pet.
She prayed Ridge could survive against the owl for a few minutes on
his own.

Sardelle jogged straight up to Ridge’s—now
the general’s—office without seeing anyone. It was so easy that she
paused with her hand on the knob, half suspecting a trap. No, she
didn’t believe Ridge would do that to her. It was more that she
worried she would open the door and find Jaxi had been moved. What
if the general, knowing the soulblade’s value, had taken it with
him when he ran out to command the fort defense?

“Look first
before
worrying,” Sardelle grumbled, and tried to turn the knob. It was
locked. Well, someone must have had her in mind.

An explosion sounded. It hadn’t come from the
cannons on the wall but from somewhere above, and she sensed the
approach of dozens of people—and one shaman. He wasn’t talking to
her this time. Maybe he was up to something more important. Like
planning how to raze the fortress, destroy her, and take Jaxi.

“Not happening.”

Another boom rang out. The floor quaked
beneath her feet, and for a moment, she clutched her chest,
remembering the disaster in the tunnels below. Something clanked to
the floor on the other side of the door. The sword case? That
brought her back to the moment, filled her with urgency.

Sardelle’s first thought had been to
carefully disable the lock, but with the Cofah floating ever
closer, she simply blasted the hinges off the door. Let the general
scratch his head over that later.

The office hadn’t changed much, and she
spotted the out-of-place iron box on top of a bookcase right away.
Several books and a filing cabinet drawer had been dumped to the
floor from the quakes, but the long box remained in place. When she
climbed on the desk to reach it, it reminded her of the day she had
walked in on Ridge cleaning, and another twinge of worry for him
ran through her. She tugged the box down, hardly caring that it was
too heavy for her. She let it clank to the floor, jumped down, and
tried to tug it open. Of course it was locked. She hissed in
frustration at all the delays and tore off another set of hinges.
The general wouldn’t know if a sorceress or a tornado had swept
into his office.

Sardelle yanked open the lid on the box.

It’s about time.

She sank to her knees on the floor in relief.
After three hundred years of being trapped,
that half hour shouldn’t have fazed you.

It was well over an hour,
thank you
.

There was a piece of paper tied around the
blade. Sardelle yanked it free, opened it, and found an address.
She snorted. Nax had the blade all ready to ship off to some
military research facility, did he?

Cannons boomed outside the window. Reminded
that Ridge and the rest of the fort were in trouble, Sardelle
stuffed the paper in her pocket, grabbed the soulblade, and raced
back into the hallway. At the bottom of the stairs, she thrust open
the front door and almost ran into a rain of fire.

The air sizzled with heat—and magic. Screams
of pain erupted on the ramparts.

“Cover,” someone cried, “find cover!”

“Stay where you are, soldier!” That was
General Nax. Bastard.

Sardelle backed into the doorway to give
herself a moment to think. A shield. That was what they needed.
Yes.

Around the whole
fort?

It has to be.
Sardelle took a deep breath and concentrated. She created a
translucent dome, so subtle that the fiery rain continued through
it at first, slowed down but not extinguished. Gradually, she added
more energy until the burning pellets bounced off instead of
falling through.

Someone cheered from the wall. She doubted
the soldier had any idea what was going on, other than the fact
that fire wasn’t falling onto his head, but Sardelle let herself
feel bolstered—
appreciated
—nonetheless.

They’re going to want to
shoot through your shield. In fact, they’re about to try
now.

Sardelle grimaced. Ricocheting cannonballs
would not be good.
Let me see if I can tinker
with it and—

I’ll handle it. You look
for a way to deal with the shaman. He’ll know right where we are
now.

Understood.

She would have preferred to search for Ridge
and see how he was doing with that owl, but the shaman had to be
the priority.

He found her first. With a mental attack.
Something like a harpoon blasted into her mind. Pressure erupted
from it, until her eyeballs felt like they would burst from her
head. Sardelle dropped to a knee, pressing her fist into the cold
earth for support. If not for Jaxi, the shield would have fallen.
For a moment, all Sardelle could focus on was building her own
shield, one around herself, one that could repel his attack. She
gathered the strength to thrust him away, to return the assault,
but paused before deploying it.

What if she played dead? Lured him down? She
couldn’t physically touch him as long as he was up on that ship,
but if he came down, looking for Jaxi…

Yes, use me as bait. We
invaluable swords love that.

Sardelle’s head was still throbbing—if she
fought him off completely, he would get a feel for how much power
she had, and he wouldn’t come down—but she managed a quick
response.
Who told you that you were
invaluable?

All of the truly wise
people who have known me. Go on. Crumple to the ground with
theatrical flair. I won’t give you away.

Sardelle opted for slumping against the
doorjamb. She quieted her mind, as if she were unconscious. The
attack continued to batter at her, but she gritted her teeth and
endured it. If this didn’t work in the next few seconds, though,
she was going to get angry and start looking for ways to rip
his
hinges off, whether he was a hundred
meters above her or not.

The flames have
stopped
, Jaxi reported.
Should I drop the
shield?

Yes, he’ll be distracted
with me for the moment.
She hoped. Besides, to further the
illusion, she had to stop doing anything that showed off her power.
Just be prepared to raise it again.

Got it.

Then the shaman was probing her, the mental
equivalent of checking her pulse at her throat. Neither she nor
Jaxi thought a word lest he feel it. The sensation of letting him
investigate without putting up defensive shields was like having
ants crawling all over her skin, but she endured it, as she had the
pain.

Eventually, he withdrew. The cannons were
firing again—both from the fort and the ship—but Sardelle and the
shaman had other concerns.

He’s coming.

Flying?
Sardelle had
never heard of a sorcerer who could, at least not without the help
of some sort of apparatus.
Or did someone drop
a rope?
Was the airship close enough for that? Surely the
soldiers would object…

He’s bringing down a hot
air balloon
.
Must be the airship
equivalent of a lifeboat.

Are our soldiers
attacking it?

Jaxi paused.
Yes, but the
shaman is shielding it, just as you did, and he’s protecting the
airship, too, though it looks like your flying friend did some
damage before the shaman was prepared.

Ridge? Good.
Sardelle felt a swell of pride for him. Though it quickly turned to
worry. Would the shaman sense it if she stretched out, trying to
locate him?

Stay still. He’s landed.
And he’s walking this way.

Sardelle cracked an eyelid. She was surprised
there weren’t any soldiers racing down from the walls to attack the
shaman.

Ah, but he wasn’t alone. The bronze-skinned
man who strode toward her in a cloak of black fur, his long white
hair startling in contrast, was surrounded by no less than two
dozen other men, shaven-headed Cofah warriors wielding short-swords
and long double-barreled firearms that they shot one-handed from
their hips. The soldiers inside the fort
were
shooting at them, but the shaman was shielding
them.

Jaxi’s hilt grew warm, ready for a fight.
You drew them in. Do you have a plan? I don’t
think he’ll be bothered by a rash.

Sardelle’s plan had been to throw everything
she had at the shaman and hope to take him by surprise, but if she
could force his shield down, that might be enough. A sorcerer was
as susceptible to bullets as the next person.

The Cofah warriors smiled as bullets bounced
away from them and grew confident enough to launch their own
attacks. They started shooting at the men on the walls. The shaman
raised a hand toward the mountainside, and the doors Ridge had
ordered built over the tram shafts flew open amongst squeals of
metal.

Sardelle cursed at herself. Inviting the
bastard down hadn’t been a good idea after all. If all those miners
streamed out and started attacking their captors…

Time for her own attack. The shaman was less
than ten meters away. Sardelle summoned her energy and blasted it
at him, targeting his mind, just as he had done to her. She could
only hope it was enough.

* * *

At first, Ridge had the airship in sight as
he streaked across the sky, the wind tearing his eyes and scraping
his cheeks raw. Then he saw the smaller balloon on the ground
inside the fort, the bald Cofah troops striding across the
courtyard in their crimson uniforms and cloaks. One distinctive
white-haired figure at the center of their formation stood out.
Ridge didn’t know who he was—or why his own people weren’t shooting
those intruders—but had a feeling he was responsible for that fire
that had been raining from the sky. Another sorcerer.

“Would have been nice if headquarters had had
a clue about this ship,” he muttered, tipping the flier’s nose down
to dive for that formation.

He fired, but realized the problem
immediately. The bullets bounced off before striking the men. He
adjusted his targeting, thinking he would blast a few holes in the
ground next to the Cofah and see how well their invisible shielding
protected them from heaving earth at their feet, but his finger
froze on the trigger. Someone was crumpled on the ground in the
doorway of the admin building. Sardelle.

Ridge swallowed—had she been shot retrieving
that sword? Or had the shaman done something to her?

Necessity made him pull up, and she
disappeared from his sight. Rage and fear formed a lump in his
throat, and he almost missed the significance of a blast from
overhead, a cannon firing. At him. It blazed past the cockpit,
missing his wing by inches.

Ridge turned away from the fort, knowing he
was all-too-well-lit by the fire and lanterns below. He aimed for
high sky, though he kept the airship in the corner of his eye. If
their sorcerer protector was on the ground… maybe they would be
more vulnerable to attack now. He had already done
some
damage. If he could bring the ship down, the
Cofah would be stranded, sorcerer or not. As much as he wanted to
tear into the fort to protect Sardelle, he never should have fired
into the courtyard to start with. He risked hitting his own men
that way. This was the more logical attack.