“Jumpy, Ardan?” asked Kylara.
He eyeballed his Rider, resplendent in her new Dragon Rider armour, which was on loan from Fra’anior’s less official stores–those which had never featured on a Sylakian manifest. Amazing how many hiding places a twenty-seven Island volcanic cone could boast, he chortled privately. King Cha’arlla had fifty blacksmiths working night and day to modify a suit of Dragon armour for him. It would not be ready for this battle. The mass of metal was so bulky, it would probably need a Dragonship all of its own to lug it to Yorbik Island.
Kylara flexed her new bow. “Love this thing,” she smiled. “It’s a beast.”
“Takes a woman like you to draw it,” said Ardan, admiring the flexion of her forearm muscles.
“You love someone else.”
The Warlord had a shadow in her eyes that made him feel a rotten traitor to the one with whom he had shared his soul-fire, who had inhabited his dreams ever since. Would he ever have the chance to right the wrongs he had done to Aranya, he wondered? What would become of Kylara if he admitted her accusation was accurate–but were his feelings for the Princess of Immadia truly love? Or just the magic? He shook his head slowly. How could he ever be certain? All that was clear to him now, was that part of his soul lived hundreds of leagues distant, and that he would stop at nothing to cross those leagues and assault the very heart of Sylakia, just for the chance to hold her again.
He said, “So you’ve decided, lady. Right now, this is pure, Dragonish lust.”
“Save your energy for those Dragons,” said Kylara. “Have you seen the craftsmanship of these arrows? Amazing.”
“Nak said they were designed to penetrate Dragon hide,” he replied.
“Can I test one on you?” She was not entirely joking. “There’s Beran’s signal. Let’s go burn the heavens, Dragon.”
Ardan dropped off the edge of Fra’anior’s league-and-a-half tall cliffs, spreading his wings to catch a thermal. The ground receded rapidly. Beran’s Dragonships rose more sedately, their engines whining with the effort. King Cha’arlla had ordered an evacuation of the outlying villages, but did not want the city to descend into chaos. Ardan hoped the people would be sensible enough to hide in their cellars, usually used to store the Fra’aniorians’ much-loved berry wines. A dozen Dragonships hung back over the city. The rest broke into four groups and trailed behind him as he powered skyward.
His hearts swelled with strength. A Shadow Dragon was made for this.
As they passed over the southerly tip of Fra’anior Island, two of the incoming Dragons swooped low enough to casually drop a fireball each onto the tiny village there. Smoke and flame billowed into the sky. A second pair of Dragons peeled off to the east, making for another village, also close to the cliff-edge.
“They’re dividing our defences,” Kylara said.
Signals rippled across the Dragonship groups as they changed orientation to engage the Dragons.
“Let’s make our presence felt,” Ardan growled, letting the image of Naphtha Cluster’s barren, Dragon-scorched earth fill his mind.
With a terrible roar, the Shadow Dragon swung into the attack. At once, the incoming trio of Red Dragons sounded their own challenges, accelerating as they rushed toward him, tons of fire-filled Dragon flesh bent on mutual obliteration. Fireballs volleyed across the intervening space. Ardan presented his flank, holding his wings well out of harm’s way, while his target Red was forced to duck the Shadow Dragon’s twenty-foot wide fireball. Molten fire engulfed his lower body. Ardan’s magic rippled as he surged onward without pause. He knew the Reds would have learned from the last battle. Sliding beneath the foremost Red Dragon’s slashing claws and rolling simultaneously, Ardan reared his head for a bite, nipping a sizeable chunk out of the Dragon’s tail.
Kylara buried her second arrow up to the feathers in the Dragon’s flank, right in the armpit beneath the primary wing joint. “Strike!” she yelled.
“One out of two,” grunted Ardan, annoyed at having done so little damage. He back-winged abruptly, presenting all four paws to an incoming Red. They grappled, snarling and snapping at each other. Ardan howled as fangs punctured his right hind paw. He kicked a ten-foot, three-toed trench into the Dragon’s underbelly in response.
From his back, Kylara could find no clear shot. Ardan heard an arrow zing off to his right. He swivelled by instinct, tossing his attacker into the path of his fellow-Red. Another arrow dived into a Red’s knee-joint. Ardan began to brake–too late. Two Red Dragons smashed into his chest. Hugging them together with his fullest strength, Ardan hinged open his jaw and savaged one of the Dragons’ muzzles. Kylara shouted as she loosed an arrow. It skittered off the scale-armour covering his flight muscles and deflected, by good fortune, into the second Red’s left nostril. His sneeze of Dragon fire came accompanied by a spurt of golden blood.
That surprised sneeze was his last. Ardan’s foreclaws punched spear-like into his right eyeball and through to the brain.
“One out of seven,” called Kylara.
Dragon-Ardan howled as the other Dragon’s jaws clamped down on his right wing-bone, between the second and third joints of the wing. Fire splashed inadvertently across the sky.
“Use the shadow,” yelled his Rider.
Split-second Dragon reactions took over. Ardan’s wing rippled before the idea registered consciously in his brain, effectively saving him from a crippling bite. He fired a fireball full into the Dragon’s face, following up with series of punches from his forepaws, so fast that they blurred before his eyes, quarrying holes in the other Dragon’s neck.
The third Dragon, who he had savaged first, tore into him from below. Ardan bellowed in pain, thrashing about to try to throw off his attacker. The Dragon gripped the Shadow Dragon’s right wing with both forepaws, clutching it close to his chest, and hung on with the grim certitude of death.
Deprived of the use of one wing, Ardan discovered that he had all the flying prowess of a very large boulder. He bugled in panic as they plummeted toward the rocky shore of Fra’anior Island.
Stupid flying monkey, you’ll kill us both,
he roared, contorting himself into nigh-impossible positions to claw at his attacker, but the best he could do was gash his leg open. That was not about to stop a Dragon who had gone feral. Kylara pelted him with arrows, but without shooting right through Ardan’s wing, could not do enough damage–and most of the Dragon dangled around beneath his flank anyway. She tore at the buckles fastening her legs and waist to the saddle.
“Kylara, what are you doing?”
“Saving your scaly behind,” she retorted.
Ardan knew she had a wire-reinforced safety rope, part of her new equipment, but she had never trained to fight Dragonback as she intended. There had not been enough time. Now, his Rider stood up gingerly on the ridge of his spine-spikes.
“I’ll try to hold steady,” he offered.
“Concentrate on missing the Island,” she said, drawing her scimitar. “He’s mine.”
With a wild yell, the Warlord of Yanga ran down Ardan’s flank and slashed at the other Dragon’s elbow. He would not relent. Kylara fell to hacking at that limb like a demented woodsman, spraying bits of Dragon scales in all directions, putting the full force of her back and shoulders into every blow. The Red Dragon let out a hiss of pain. His muzzle appeared beneath Ardan’s wing.
“Jump, Kylara!”
Fire raced along Ardan’s flank. Kylara leaped outward, over the licking orange flames. Twenty feet on, her rope pulled her up with a sharp jerk. She crashed onto the Dragon’s head. Struggling to her knees, Kylara immediately laid about her with her scimitar, but his tough skull defied her efforts.
Ardan shouted something about the eyes, flapping his free wing, desperately trying to manufacture some margin of safety from the rock and bushes rushing up to meet them. Stowing her blade, Kylara drew an arrow from the quiver strapped to her back, reversed it in her hands, and plunged it as hard as she could into the top of the Dragon’s head. He roared in a mad rage, but she was not finished yet. Kylara smashed her armoured fist down on the arrow, driving it into the Dragon’s skull. She struck again and again with her fullest force, filled with a madness of her own, ignoring or perhaps not even feeling the blood running between her fingers. Ardan could not tear his eyes off the spectacle.
Suddenly, the arrow broke through into the brain. Convulsing once, the Red Dragon’s body went flaccid, his paws sliding limply off Ardan’s wing. The Shadow Dragon threw himself into such a sharp turn, he felt the blood drain from his head. Blackness crowded in around his vision.
Foliage slapped his wingtip as he zipped along the cliff, dangling Kylara like a kite on a string.
Ardan slowed deliberately, catching his Rider in his forepaws as he watched the Red smash into the near-vertical cliff face, bounce off, and careen toward the Cloudlands. For a moment, he and Kylara simply breathed. Alive.
She kicked his wrist with her boot. “Get me in the saddle, Dragon. We’ve a job to do.”
A minute later, a Shadow Dragon and his Rider rushed up from the depths, into a new battlefield.
Monks soared across the darkling sky threes and fours, attacking the Red Dragons as they lumbered about in pursuit of the Dragonships. Mosquitoes attacking ralti sheep, Ardan thought, although they were having some effect. Quick spikes of flame spurted from the clusters of monks, some keeping their shape and whirling about as if they were thirty-foot swords, while others pursued the Red Dragons with the animate purpose of the minds guiding them. The return fire did not touch many, but those it did, were consumed instantly. More deadly were the Dragons’ claws and fangs. They shattered the groups of warrior monks or struck them spinning away from the battle, some to crash into Dragonships or fall unconscious to the Island below.
Blinding flashes marked the demise of two Dragonships.
I am Furion!
Roaring his name, the jag-toothed Red hurtled toward Ardan.
Fight me, you putrid whelp of a windroc. Or will you flee again?
Anger ignited the fires of Ardan’s belly, but he fought to keep his cool–literally. He could not serve Fra’anior if he went mad. Rather, he should use Furion’s insults to fuel his powers. Aranya had explained the idea to him; now he felt its effect. A painful tightness akin to cramp developed in his belly. Dragon blood gushed from his three hearts to feed the needs of his body. Ardan turned to face Furion’s charge.
“Ardan, what are you doing?” Kylara asked.
“I’m fine.”
“What’s the plan?”
He knew without looking that she had an arrow to the bowstring. Closer and closer came the massive Red, filling his vision. His build was all jagged edges, right down to his scales which resembled splinters of crimson granite. Ardan’s Dragon sight focussed in on the flames fluttering inside his nostrils, the magic condensing within the other Dragon, judging the moment he would attack. Now! Flame rocketed across the space between them. The Dragons fired simultaneously, but Ardan’s shaped bolt sliced through Furion’s blob of molten rock, making it fall harmlessly beneath him and to either side. Magic and Dragon fire detonated together against the other Dragon’s chest.
It was far from enough to stop him. The Red Dragon’s momentum drove him on to ram Ardan with terrible force, but the sound was unexpected, not fleshy, but rather as if two rocks had slammed together. Kylara shouted as the impact rattled her. Ardan wrestled the burning Red with his forepaws. A ten-foot hole had been blasted front and centre in his chest, exposing the ribcage and burning away half of his second heart, but he still possessed the strength to fight on. The scent of burning flesh made him slaver as he clashed fangs with his enemy.
The Red shouted,
Curse you, you monster! Die!
The Shadow Dragon was in no mood to comply. Hooking the two opposable thumbs of either forepaw into the Dragon’s chest, Ardan summoned his utmost strength. He poured magic into his muscles. A monstrous bellow shook them both as he ripped the Dragon’s ribcage open, splintering the bones and exposing his innards.
Ardan reached in, and plucked the Dragon’s triple jugular veins with his claws, severing the vital flow of blood from the second and third hearts to the brain.
Ha ha ha!
His unbridled joy resounded off the cliffs of Fra’anior. Another Dragon fell.
“Three out of seven,” he said, grinning at Kylara.
“Four,” she said. “The monks forced one to the ground. But the Dragonships are taking a beating, Ardan. That Red, Karathion. He’s a killer.”
“Right. Let’s take him.”
“Where’s the Azure Dragon?”
Dragon-Ardan peered across to the north-western rim-wall of Fra’anior. More Dragonships, a dozen, speeding across the caldera on their way to Fra’anior. “Up at–ah, Gi’ishior, I think that Island was called. Last two stops there.”
“She’ll miss all the fun.”
Ardan managed to swagger a little in the air. “Aye, I love shredding Dragons with my paws.”
Sha’aldior …
The faraway cry arrested his posturing.
Aranya? Are you alive?
She sounded so faint.
Beware, Thoralian is coming, and he brings …
Silence. The weak connection vanished. Ardan’s three hearts galloped in wildly differing directions. He knew his return cry had fallen upon deaf ears. His great, dark head swivelled this way and that. Thoralian. Where was he? What was he bringing?