Dragonfriend (49 page)

“Why don’t we let these people loose?” asked Ja’al.

“Too noisy right now. Once the King starts his assault, I’d like to–if we can get the keys from the guardroom.”

Flicker’s voice sounded in her head.
All clear to the guardroom, but it’s locked.

Keys?

Can’t see them. Twenty Human soldiers; only five awake.

“Flicker says it’s clear but he can’t see the keys,” Hualiama whispered. “Let’s go up and take care of any patrolling soldiers. Then, wait for the signal.”

Lia called mentally,
Flicker, please give us an estimate of the Dragonship’s arrival.
The dragonet darted away.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Lia’s group fanned out, keeping well clear of the stairs up to the guardroom. Hualiama heard a tiny scuffle downstairs, and then silence. Nearby, a snick of metal against metal. Again, silence. She smiled bleakly. Each of those noises represented a patrolling guard being taken out of action.

She and Ja’al trotted down to the last corridor of cells on the southern side. They paused for a minute for a patrolling soldier to reach them, before Ja’al ghosted forth and struck the base of his skull with a fist clasped around a weighted baton. The soldier slumped; Lia seized his weapons before they clanged on the floor. Her ears identified a tiny scuffing sound. ‘Another,’ she signed. Ja’al nodded, pointing at himself. He slipped away, returning after an interminably long time with a grim smile and a nod.

Checking the final corridor, Ja’al jerked back hurriedly. Lia could not understand his smile. ‘Look,’ he signed. Gingerly, she peered around the corner. Her hand flew to her mouth. Two cells down on the opposite side, a hulking guard and a female prisoner were locked in a passionate embrace, despite the metal bars separating them.

With a tiny flutter of wings, Flicker returned to her shoulder.
They’re early. I saw the King’s forces already approaching the Palace grounds. The Dragonship is less than five minutes away–by my wings, what are those two doing?

Kissing,
said Lia.

Flicker gurgled softly, a dragonet laugh of disbelief.
That’s revolting. They look like they’re eating each other’s faces.

Lia clucked crossly.
It’s just a kiss.
An unabashed, endless, world-stopping kiss.
Actually, it’s a good opportunity for us, because our naughty boy Chago there has the keys.

I’m glad you never kissed me like that,
Flicker snickered.

“Wait here,” said Lia, enflamed of cheek as she remembered her kiss with Ja’al. She darted across to the pair. Putting as much gruff and bark into her voice as possible, Lia snapped, “Report, soldier!”

They parted as though a Dragon had charged between them.

“S-Sir,” Chago said, before his brow beetled. “Who the–Princess! What are you doing here?”

Lia glanced at Inniora, dumbfounded and immobile in the middle of her cell. “Is this how the Royal Guard takes care of its prisoners, Chago?”

The giant Western Isles warrior, fully a head and a half taller than Lia, crashed to his knee and bowed his head. He rasped, “Your Highness, words fail me. We heard you were dead. Ra’aba celebrated; it was awful, and then Inniora whispered to me …” Poor man, tears rolled down his scarified cheeks! Even kneeling, she noticed with a tiny flare of annoyance, he was nearly as tall as her.

“Lia?” Inniora gasped. “It’s really you?”

With a wicked grin, Lia said, “Maybe I should just leave you here with Chago. You seem to like the dungeons.”

“I’d rather join in whatever nasty designs you have on Ra’aba’s fate.”

That was the Inniora she knew! Hualiama turned to Chago. “Unlock Inniora’s cell and please, don’t kneel. It’s not necessary.”

“Right now, you are the twin suns rising above the Onyx Throne,” rumbled Chago, rushing to do Lia’s bidding, “and I am at your command, my lady. We have other Palace soldiers ready to rise against Ra’aba. Only say the word. We will stand with you.”

“Rebellion is evidently catching,” said Ja’al.

“It’s always the little ones that cause the most trouble,” said Inniora.

Suddenly, from an unexpected quarter, formality slipped into Lia’s manner. Drawing herself up to every one of her five feet and two inches, she declared, “The true King of Fra’anior is at hand, Chago. Rouse your men and follow me.”

“And women,” said Inniora.

“And women,” said Lia, laughing softly as the tall Islander grabbed her into a rib-crushing embrace. “Glad to see you too. We brought you a present–your favourite sword.”

Inniora nodded. “Thank you. I hope I can hold it.” Showing Lia her left hand, she said, “I lost two fingers to Ra’aba’s men, but they did not torture me much once they realised they had the wrong person, and knew nothing of your plans.”

“Not much? Oh, Inniora.”

“You’ll be weeping like Chago in a minute,” said Inniora, with a discomfited growl. “Lead on.”

The dragonet said,
You should send monks with Chago, or there’ll be confusion, Lia.

Good idea, Flicker,
she replied. “Brother Ja’al, will you detail ten of your men to accompany Chago and his Guards?”

Ja’al’s lips twitched at the stress she placed on the word ‘brother’. “Aye. Second squad. See to it.”

Lia explained, “Some of them can try to get the servants to safety and let these people out. The rest of us need to concentrate on finding our way to the Great Hall.”

Chago’s appearance in the guardroom with a female prisoner caused an eruption of hilarity amongst his fellows. Their uncouth laughter lasted less than two seconds as a group of grim-faced monks crowded in right behind him, with Hualiama in their midst. Curses! Weapons slipping from sheaths! Sleepy men leaped from the pillow-roll, scrabbling for their weapons and armour.

“Silence!” Chago bellowed.

Lia stepped forward. With more than a crackle of Dragonish fire in her voice, she said, “Men, I am the Princess Hualiama of Fra’anior.” Her title did occasionally come in useful, she thought ruefully. “If you stand with the true King, then stand with us. Today, the traitor Ra’aba will fall.”

With a flick of her Nuyallith blade, she deflected a thrown dagger onto the floor. The room exploded in violence. Soldiers grappled with each other. Monks raced forward, deadly shadows on the move. Hualiama found herself facing three sword-waving soldiers, with Ja’al at her side and Flicker above them. The dragonet scratched one man’s eyes out. Lia finished him with a straight thrust to the chest. Her hands blurred into a series of parries as a second swordsman took her on, only to be ambushed by Flicker. She glanced around to see Hallon and Rallon charging the stairs to the upper levels of the palace, where a group of soldiers tried to shut and bolt the dungeon door.

“To me!” bellowed Chago. “Take them!”

The metal door stood on strong ratchet hinges designed to halt egress from the dungeons. Behind it, Hualiama saw two or three dozen men wearing unfamiliar livery and wielding large war hammers, perhaps the mercenaries from Yaya Loop. The three big men charged the door. Rallon threw himself bodily into the gap, groaning as the door slammed against his chest and shoulder. Hallon hacked away above his brother, trying to stop the blades and war hammers homing in on the trapped monk’s head. Above them, the dragonet whizzed through the gap, turning side-on to fit his wings through.

Having picked up a war hammer, Chago attacked the hinges with mighty overhand blows. Lia jerked forward. Arrows! Rapidly, almost falling on top of Rallon in her haste, Lia swung the Haozi hunting bow off her shoulder and began to place arrows through the gap, not caring what she hit as long as she drove the mercenaries back.

Suddenly, an image flowered in her mind, taking over all else. She was in a different place. From afar, Lia saw a Dragonship slewing toward the pink quartz and black granite Palace building. Dragons lounged all over the Receiving Balcony, a flat, paved area where the King of Fra’anior traditionally met with the Dragon Elders. Sleeping, a watching mind told her, from what felt a great distance. Lia’s body shivered, but she realised her spirit was not there. It watched with one who powered through the first flames of dawn’s sky, driving his body to the utmost speed to reach the Human Island.

A Green Dragon sat up. Her vision zeroed in on the Dragonship, magnifying the scene to an incredible degree. Men appeared on the Dragonship’s gantries, yelling and milling about in an obvious panic. They leaped over the side. Ha, she thought. Monks with the ability to levitate. But the Greens did not know that.

Bellowing in shock and anger, the Green Dragons began to leap into the air, flapping, diving over the edges of the wide balcony. Too late. Less than five seconds separated their first warning from the Dragonship’s arrival, targeting the bunched Dragons perfectly.

KAAAABOOM!

White light flared, brilliant. Dark smoke mushroomed from the point of impact. Immolation in fire was no great danger for a Dragon, for they were armoured against it and even bathed in lava for sport, at least for short periods of time. But the force of a hydrogen blast did pose a danger for outstretched wing membranes. Two Dragons right in the centre of the blast fell immediately, howling in mortal agony. A third somersaulted off the balcony, crashing headfirst into the palace gardens. The others, smart enough to tuck in their wings or roll away, survived, but not unscathed.

Lia shuddered, sensing the shockwave through her knees. For a second she felt disoriented by being back in her own body.

Ra’aba must be awake now!

Scrambling to her feet, Lia squeezed her petite frame through the gap, even as Chago’s prodigious blows made the door shudder and sag on its hinges. She rolled beneath a half-seen blow and stabbed her swords into the nearest mercenary’s gut. Monks crowded behind her, but Inniora beat them all, her long sword flashing in a huge overhand blow that cut down a mercenary to Lia’s left, who had been lining Rallon up for a fatal hammer strike.

The bearded mercenaries gave no quarter. Again and again, Lia found herself having to curtail her flowing Nuyallith forms for lack of space. This was a problem she had not envisaged. The style was not only useful for single combat, was it, or combat against Dragons?

Outside, a rousing roar similar to the onset of storm winds and rain announced the arrival of the King’s forces, the third prong of the attack. But above the rumbling sounds of battle, Lia heard the thundering challenges of Ra’aba’s Dragons. That was her concern. Even given Master Jo’el’s idea of mobile war crossbows on carts, any ground force battling Dragons had to be at a severe disadvantage. However, King Chalcion would have it no other way. No sneaking about for him. He intended to lead a glorious frontal assault on the palace gates.

The monastery forces spread out through the below-ground servant quarters, securing them despite the mercenaries’ fatalistic, last-man-standing attitude to defence. Bloody hand-to-hand fights developed, with the outnumbered monks slowly prevailing by superior skill and passion. Gaining a few seconds’ space, Hualiama surveyed the battle from an alcove just within a large hallway, hung with ten-foot tall artworks depicting common scenes of Fra’aniorian life, which housed the only two staircases leading to the upper palace levels. The Royal Palace had been designed this way for security.

Around her, knots of monks and Chago’s warriors of the Fra’aniorian Royal Guard led servants and families down to the safety of the dungeons, while the battle on the two wide, parallel staircases raged without ceasing, neither side gaining an advantage. The mercenaries were well armed and shielded their archers at the top of the stairs with tall oval shields. Any unarmoured monks attacking across the open areas leading to the base of the stairs, were vulnerable. Scores already lay injured or dead. Lia knew they needed to change the balance. Their dwindling force would pose little threat to Ra’aba otherwise.

A Grandion-sized fireball would have been useful in this situation.

Racking her brains for ideas, Hualiama’s gaze fell on Flicker flying overhead, dive-bombing mercenaries. Aye. That was it.

“Chago. Inniora,” she rapped. “Get every water gourd you can find in the slave quarters and empty them. Ask those families downstairs. Ja’al, there are stores at the back of the Palace. We need oil. Fast. Get five of the small barrels. Hallon, Rallon, tear up cloth for fuses.”

Ja’al’s eyes widened. “You’re going to burn them.”

“Got any better ideas?”

Shortly, out of sight of the mercenaries, oil began to glug into gourds. They stuffed the mouths of the gourds with oiled cloth and prepared braziers with fire.

Lia handed out gourds. “On my mark, we light the fuses, charge out there and throw these at their heads. Flicker, you take a few and drop them from above. Then, we break for the Great Hall. Chago, you and Inniora will lead a force upstairs and try to break through to the Great Hall–but you’ll be the diversion, so please don’t risk too many lives. Ja’al, I need a dozen monks to come with me. We’re going another way. Maybe we’ll surprise Ra’aba.”

They lined up in the rooms opposite the stairs, dozens of monks and Fra’aniorian soldiers grimly clutching their oil gourds.

Lia nodded, remembering their battle cry from Ya’arriol Island. “For the Dragon!”

The monks all shouted as one, “For the Dragon!”

“Light up … go!”

Shouting their battle cries, Lia and her group burst through the doorway and across the twenty feet of open space leading to the stairway. Flicker shot ahead, already above the mercenaries. He dropped his deadly load. Lia flung her own gourd, scoring a direct hit on their shields. Flame sheeted toward the ceiling. Black smoke and terrible screams filled the hallways.

Oh well. King Chalcion would have to put up with a few of the kingdom’s treasures being burned.

“Go!” she screamed.

Crying, “For the Dragon!” the mixed group of soldiers and monks charged the stairs.

A few arrows winged their way, but mostly the mercenaries were rolling on the ground, helplessly trying to put out the oil fires as they burned alive. Lia knew that she would hear their agonised shrieks in her nightmares forever after. The monks dived through the leaping flames, charging into the halls beyond, clashing violently with the squads of Ra’aba’s mercenaries waiting there. More gourds flew. More treasures burned, but Lia cared little for them. Each life lost wounded her afresh.