“But two more of our Dragons,” he countered. “And four enemy Dragons. Our force should pull away now.”
East and west, the Academy Dragons peeled away and retreated to the protection of the clouds. The two central Dragonwings did not. Kassik cursed softly as the fight intensified. “Fools,” he muttered. Another Dragonship erupted in flame, but the main battle was between Dragons now. Several clumps fell, Dragons snarled together, tearing scales off each other all the way down into the Cloudlands. Only three of the ten Jeradian Dragons managed to escape. The rest perished.
“It is hard for a Dragon to change its scales,” he said. “Do you know your part, Pip? Will you wait for the opportune moment?”
“I will, Kassik.”
“Then let us go below and partake in the agony of waiting.”
* * * *
Dragon Riders sharpened their Dragons’ claws for the twentieth time. Dragons snapped at each other. Soldiers stamped their feet and fiddled with their weapons. Yaethi, Arrabon and Pip all looked on unhappily.
“Have I told you how much this stinks?” said Yaethi.
“Ten times,” said Dragon-Pip.
“Thirteen,” said Arrabon, but he nuzzled his Rider gently. “Rider-heart, you are wounded.”
“I have a left hand which works perfectly well, thank you very much.”
Arrabon did not have to say that she had lost too much blood. They stood together, watching the pre-dawn sky, waiting for the signal. Word was that most of the Dragonships had stopped to deploy the ground troops around the volcano. They would seek ways inside, ways which for days had been checked by teams of Dragons and engineers and blocked or collapsed. But the volcano was vast. Kassik was under no illusions that they would find ingress, eventually. That was why he had also arranged false entrances with booby traps laid within, and several real entrances rigged to collapse. A force of one hundred archers lay concealed within the forest outside the main entrance.
But the first surprise was already upon them. Dragon fire erupted on the volcano’s rim. Signals flew above, waved by a team of Dragon Rider lookouts Kassik had stationed above the volcano at strategic locations.
“First wave,” called Nak, marshalling the Dragonwings–a position he had been openly unhappy with, but Kassik insisted he needed a battle-seasoned Rider for the task. “It’s Heripedes. Second wave, mount up.”
The Herimor beasts came under heavy Dragon fire from above, but hundreds arrived in that first rush, too many to count. Some inevitably escaped the conflagration. Pip realised that the Dragonships must have been loaded not only with Human troops, but also a deadly insect cargo. Her claws flexed instinctively. Silvery grey in the dawn light, the huge insects skittered down vertical cliffs with the ease of a man running on flat ground, their flexible segments pouring onward with rippling, deadly grace.
The battle was already joined, Dragons wheeling through the sky, and dawn had not yet broken. Thunder sounded in the sky. No, that was the roar of battling Dragons. Three Dragons limped over the rim, the first casualties. Nak immediately signalled the infirmary.
Fifty Dragons lifted off simultaneously from the huge field outside the dining hall, whipping up a brief gale. The second wave readied themselves, checking girth straps for the umpteenth time, before mounting up and strapping in. Pip tracked Tazzaral, Jyoss and Emmaraz with her eyes as they quartered their assigned territory, the south-eastern eighth of the volcano. Orange fire splashed and flared repeatedly, reminding her so forcibly of the attack on her village that she closed her eyes, feeling dizzy and sweaty all at once.
“Pip?” Yaethi touched her flank at once.
“I’m … sorry, Yaethi.” A message monkey scampered up with a scrap of scroll and pressed it into her friend’s hand. At her raised eyebrow, Pip explained, “I remembered the attack on my village; the colours of the fire …”
Arrabon nuzzled her neck. “Strength, my friend.”
“Oh, Pip, I’m so sorry.” Her friend held her awkwardly with her bandaged arm, but as tightly as she could manage. “It’s a message from Kassik, um, modified by Nak, it seems.” She shook with laughter. “I quote: ‘Get your scaly but undeniably cute Pygmy butt in the sky and find me that Silver Dragon. Stay out of trouble’. That’s in large letters. You can guess which part Nak wrote. Right. You go burn some sky, girl–Dragon. We’re assigned to ground patrol outside the infirmary.”
“Glorious ground patrol,” said Arrabon.
Yaethi winced at her Dragon’s tone. “Sorry, Arrabon.”
Mostly to cheer her friend up, Pip said, “What I want to do is burn some cute Silver Dragon butt.”
To this, Yaethi replied in a broad Western Isles accent, “Ah’m having none of that butt-grabbing business in mah school, young lady.”
“You’re bad, Yaethi.” Chuckling, Pip waved a paw to her escort. “Let’s ride!”
Pip and her escort of five of the recent graduates from Fra’anior rose into the dawn, until the bloody fingers of the twin suns, gleaming between two layers of cloud, stroked their wings with warmth. As they rose over the dark rim, the Riders caught their breath as one. Dense wedges of Academy Dragons roared, swooping and wheeling over the main Night-Red Dragon advance. The enemy were trying to protect a core of Dragonships in tight formation, Pip saw, and the troops on the ground climbing the volcano. What was in those Dragonships?
She assessed the battle, her head buzzing with all the Dragon lore and battle craft Kassik and Blazon and Verox had imparted on the Riders and Dragons over the past days.
Why did she feel she was missing something crucial? Something was wrong about this scene.
Terribly wrong.
K
assik THe BROWN
Shapeshifter and his twenty-strong Dragonwing dive-bombed the incoming Dragonships from a height of several thousand feet. Pip did not see them at first, her eyes filled with images of thrashing, clawing, fire-breathing, lightning-wielding Dragons. But when the Academy forces peeled aside like a suddenly-blossoming flower, the blur of Kassik’s Dragonwing spearing down from the heavens captured her gaze.
Nak had labelled them ‘Kassik’s heavies’–not to his face, of course.
The Academy force struck in a succession of percussive hammer-blows. Pip could hear and feel the impacts from her position half a mile away, collisions so powerful that several Night-Red Dragons flopped like broken dolls, their spines snapped or necks broken.
Pip flinched. Every Rider and Dragon nearby did the same.
Having shattered the protective shell of enemy Dragons, Kassik’s force rushed on to launch a volley of fireballs and lightning at the hydrogen-filled Dragonships.
KAARAABOOM!
Pip’s secondary optic membranes flicked through dark to light again, protecting her eyes. Her ear canals rang with the concussion. The Dragon Riders clapped their hands to their ears. Thunder echoed back from the far rim wall. Where the Dragonships had been, was–nothing. Smoke dissipating on the breeze. Dragons dropping, reeling, wings torn, Riders unconscious in the middle of it all.
The Night-Red Dragons swarmed Kassik’s force in numbers. Oyda was in there, riding Emblazon, and Casitha, but she could barely see them amidst the tidal wave of bodies. Another Dragonwing of Academy Dragons stormed in, ripping with their talons and rending with their fangs, spraying gouts of golden Dragon blood across the rosy morning sky. The awfulness–the sheer magnitude of the destruction–gripped Pip by the throat. Before she could stop herself, a tiny coil of magic whispered into the open.
“
Be free.
”
Pip gulped as if she could swallow the word back–it was a single syllable in the ancient tongue–but it was too late. Something within her twinged as though the strings of her soul had been plucked by a mischievous claw. Kassik would thrash her–but, oh! Confusion reigned as Night-Reds turned viciously against each other, some released, some still under the Marshal’s sway. Dragons clashed. The tide turned. The remaining Night-Red Dragons retreated; Kassik’s forces bugling and hooting their victory.
She had been instructed to save her magic. Already, Pip felt her weakness. And that was just the two dozen or so Night-Reds who now milled about in confusion, unwilling to continue the battle. Emblazon was talking to them. He knew, if any Dragon did …
Pip’s neck twizzled. Here came another, exactly similar attack, striking out of the blaze of suns to the east. Dragons herding Dragonships? It made no sense. It was … too simple. Too basic. She shook her head in frustration.
What was going on? What couldn’t she see?
She reached out with every sense she had. Master Ga’am had been working on this technique with her, honing her awareness. Spiderweb awareness, he called it. A good image, Pip thought, building her mental web carefully. Her jungle home had spiders the size of a man’s head. A bite could paralyse a Pygmy child, but it was rarely fatal. She listened for the slightest vibration, the slightest inkling of something amiss. Nothing. Exasperating silence.
A silence which could only be artificial.
Pip had nothing but her intuition to rely on, but as the Pygmy elders of her tribe would say, she smelled bush meat gone bad. Where were the brains? Why the mindless, repetitive attack? Kassik had placed too much trust in her, she feared. The responsibility was a terrible burden. Dragons were dying everywhere, every few seconds …
Unless this was all a diversion. Every scale on her body tingled.
“Harras,” she called over to a Red Dragon Rider. “Go to signals. Tell them I suspect a sneak attack, apart from this.” She pointed with her wing at the second line of attack; the Academy forces massing, the group of Night-Red Dragons being ushered down into the volcano by Emblazon and Oyda. “Get a backup group to scour the volcano, make them turn every rock over …”
She eyeballed the group of Night-Red Dragons suspiciously. Nothing there. Ten, twenty, twenty-nine Dragons who looked as sheepish as, well, any Dragon was ever capable of appearing. What would stop Silver from recapturing their minds? Was this his trap, Silver anticipating she’d try to free some Dragons, as before? Impulsively, Pip spiralled higher, scanning the volcano with all the power and magnification of her Dragon sight. Nothing by the lake. Near the hatchling cave, nothing. Around the school buildings, no sign of movement. The students were in lockdown, but armed in case the Herimor ground assault broke through.
All of the Heripedes had been swept up. Maylin and Emmaraz and Duri with Jyoss were helping drop boulders on the Herimor troops toiling up the volcanic slopes. Pip briefly caught sight of several men in their distinctive black plate armour, waving their swords at Tazzaral as he swooped and plucked them up with his forepaws, unbelievably deft. A hundred yards on, he dropped them off the side of the volcano, probably aiming for their comrades on the slope. That was brutal. More Dragons pounced. Thin screams wailed above the roar of battle.
Hissing her annoyance, Pip scanned the terrain one more time. She had to be imagining things. There was nobody down there but Prince Ulldari, climbing the path just fifty feet or so shy of Shimmerith and Nak’s roost.
Prince Ulldari?
Pip gaped. Heavens above and Islands below, what did that idiot Prince think he was doing, heading for the cave of a brooding Dragoness? And then a thunderbolt of realisation stupefied her.
No!
She hurled herself earthward.
Huh?
chorused the Dragons left behind in her escort.
Pip threw over her shoulder,
Get me Kassik and Emblazon at Nak’s roost! Order all other Dragons to stay clear.
No, no, no … she screamed in her mind as the half-league flight seemed to take her an endless time, despite the help of both gravity and a following wind, and the utmost power of every muscle fibre in her body. The Prince-apparent glanced about before he entered the cave.
Dragon-Pip shot down to the roost, braking so hard that a tearing pain burst into her chest. Her four paws smashed against the ledge outside her cave. Pip listened. All was silent. Shimmerith had not killed him. That fact alone spoke volumes. She stilled her panting and strained her hearing to its utmost. Did she hear hatchlings? Separate the sounds, identify the beating hearts–so many–calculate them. How many? The crysglass windows were covered inside with thick drapes. No sneaking a glance inside.
Noiselessly, dangerously, primed for instant action, Pip slipped into the roost she knew so well.
A rustle of cloth! Pip ducked a mighty sword-stroke. Her twisting vertical leap took her upside-down onto the cavern roof, over Prince Ulldari’s head, and around the curve of the entrance into the main chamber. The Prince came after at a smooth lope. The awkward boy-Prince had been replaced by a menacing hunter. He even held his sword differently, crosswise across his body, an attacking style she had never seen before.
In a flash she saw Shimmerith lying in her bowl, curled around one remaining egg and two small hatchlings, a Blue of her unique colouration and an Amber hatchling just like Emblazon, who were so freshly hatched that their skin was damp and slick with juices from inside the egg. The third egg lay unhatched, as yet, but the three Dragons hissed viciously at her.
She knew it. Silver was here.
Pip dodged, sinuously, watching Prince Ulldari from the corner of her eye. So fast. So sure. He was suddenly the most dangerous swordsman in existence.
You can come out now, Silver,
she taunted him.
He made no reply. Instead, the blank-faced Prince tried to hack off her head. Pip pressed back against the crysglass, and then sprang for him. Bad mistake. Ulldari was faster than any Human had a right to be. Switching hands mid-swing, he pierced her left shoulder deeply with the point of his sword. Before she could even gasp from the pain, he transferred into a reverse stroke. She ducked, feeling the blade ping off the back of her head-spikes. Mercy. Ulldari pressed her Dragon reactions to the limit as he forced her backward, step by step, toward the waiting, glowering Shimmerith. The Dragoness felt wrong. The Silver Dragon had enslaved her, too. Pip sprang for the roof. Laughing, the Prince sprang after and pricked her tail with the blade.
“I’ll kill you, even if it takes a thousand cuts,” he said.
Pip lashed out with her tail. The Prince was faster. The sword skittered off her scales, sparking. She blasted fire at him. Ulldari somersaulted over her fireball and opened a cut on her muzzle.
Thoughts raced through her head as Pip feinted this way and that, trying to keep a respectable distance between herself and Shimmerith, and still avoid that incredible dancing blade. His mind pulsed with power. Ulldari’s eyes glowed with magic. Something had been done to him; she did not know what or how, but the boy-Prince was gone. He had to be Silver in disguise.
How could she defeat this beast and keep Shimmerith safe?
With a shout, the Prince attacked her, driving his body to greater and greater feats of speed and strength. The blade whistled through the air, seeming to come at her from every angle at once. Cuts multiplied on her neck and shoulders. Pip concentrated. One step back. Another. She focused through the mesmeric, metallic blur, and, with the sharp snap of her limb Balthion had taught her, punched him directly in the jaw. The Prince dropped as though she had severed his legs at the knee.
Shimmerith struck her from behind.
The full force of Shimmerith’s charge, unseen and undetected, flipped Pip over in the air and slammed her onto her back. That alone would have been enough to fell her, but the mass of Shimmerith’s body followed, pinning her beneath a Dragon five times her size.
A Word swam hazily into Pip’s mind. She rejected it.
Shimmerith, sweet friend, it’s me, Pip. The Silver Dragon is gone.
Well, he was unconscious, but that was good enough for her. Pip did not know how he had assumed Ulldari’s form, but the magic had burned too brightly in him. Now it was spent.
Shimmerith bared her fangs.
Silver and I are friends, little one. And you’re trespassing in my roost. I’m going to kill you.
I’ll leave quietly. You and your beautiful hatchlings can remain undisturbed.
Pip could scarcely breathe. There was a roaring in her ears, a lack of air. She saw a blue paw rise. It pinned her neck to the ground. Yawning until she displayed every fang in her mouth, Shimmerith lowered her jaw to the vulnerable underside of Pip’s throat. She took her time. The female Dragon used her superior strength to pull Pip’s head away from her body, her knuckles pressing into the base of her jaw, stretching her captive’s neck until the vertebrae popped with the strain. She gazed closely at Pip’s throat scales, as if the patterns fascinated her.
I hear your lifeblood pulsing within,
Shimmerith said.
I will taste of this fountain, and drink deep of your power. Then I will possess all you have, little one. All your magic.
Madness!
Shimmerith, please.
Pip tried to grapple with her mind, but it shone as inviolate as a diamond egg. She could find no chink, no way inside. She pawed at Shimmerith with her free forepaw, but the Blue Dragon merely captured her limb and pressed it to the stone floor of her cavern.
Any last words, Pygmy Dragon?
Pip heard something. Not a Dragon’s triple heartbeat, nor the slow, comatose drumbeat of Prince Ulldari’s heart, but another sound. A Human heartbeat. Silver–the real Silver, this time. She had been wrong. Ulldari was only a tool; Silver had been more subtle than she imagined.
There was one way. Ga’am had talked of a theoretical possibility, but Pip had never put his idea to the test.
She triggered the shift.
She transformed
toward
where she had heard that heartbeat, around the corner of Nak’s nook, where his bed stood. Had she appeared beneath Shimmerith’s bulk, that would have made an instant Pygmy pancake. Instead, Pip moved instantly from having a Dragon’s paw at her throat to having a sword tickling the underside of her chin.
“Oh, very resourceful, Pygmy pest,” said Silver, right behind her. The tone of his welcome was as chilly as his blade. “Warm applause for teaching me a new trick.”
Pip tried to struggle, but he gripped her arm cruelly. His blade bit her neck as she swallowed. Warm blood trickled down to her clavicle, apart from the cuts Prince Ulldari had already dealt her. She was surprised to see them replicated on her body.
Right. Courage, Pygmy warrior. She had to think her way out of this bind. “Grabbing me again, Silver? This is becoming quite the habit with you.”
“Banter all you like, little Pygmy. You’re deluded, mistaking irritation for attraction.”
Despite the thudding of her heart, Pip tried for a coquettish tone. “Why are you out of breath? I really must remember to wear clothes around you. Oops.”
By way of reply, he squeezed her throat with the flat of the blade. “I’m sick of your yapping, girl.” His fingers dug into her left bicep. “You made this roost very comfortable, I see. I’ve been making friends with Shimmerith for a few days–haven’t I, Dragon-heart? And her hatchlings.”