Dragon Strike

The Copper doubted it. It would have been in the battle stories he’d learned in the Drakwatch.



They’d wrecked flatbed dwarf carts and filled nets with the surprisingly buoyant mushrooms that were normally ground into cattle-feed. There were driftwood logs dried, bound together, and formed into rafts.



They’d made traces out of leather, chain, and rope. The dragons of the Aerial Host would drag the rafts and boats behind in the manner of horses pulling carts. But this time the horses would ride. Cattle and goats rode in the improvised armada, ready provision for eating along the journey. The riders of the Aerial Host sat along with the livestock in the boats, their armor and weapons tied down rather than worn in case the boat upset in rough water. From everything he heard of the Nor’flow, the ride would be treacherous.



Even unhappier than the most miserable, lowing cow was the griffaran guard. All but a bare minimum of griffaran stood perched on logs and gripping canoes in talons so tight-set that the sawdust dribbled from beneath their talons.



Aiy-Yip and his feathered warriors, usually as placid as statues until they exploded into fury, were white-eyed and losing feathers as they bobbed toward the river tunnel.



“Hate-hate-hate water!” Aiy-Yip said as his boat bounced in the current. “Bathing one thing, but this is yaaak! like drowning!”



Nilrasha watched them depart.



Her mate would have his own way. A Tyr shouldn’t leave the Lavadome to go into battle—it just wasn’t done. A tour of the Upholds, yes, but to lead dragons into battle . . .



If he died, how long would she last as Queen?



She climbed back up from the riverbank and into the tunnel to the Lavadome. She passed an alcove where a Firemaid should be standing watch—the Lavadome was emptying of dragons faster than they could breed.



Taking wing, she was back at the top of Imperial Rock before the smell of her mate had left her nostrils. She called for Ayafeeia and NoSohoth.



While she waited for them to arrive, her body-thralls attended her. She envied the thralls and their simple lives. Follow orders, do your job well, please the dragon you belong to. No doubt, no anxiety, transitory passions and heartbreaks forgotten in an hour.



If she lost RuGaard she would live with the pain for a thousand years.



“The Tyr told me to act according to my best judgment, Ayafeeia. My judgment rarely counsels caution.”



“How have circumstances changed, my Queen?”



“Simplicity itself. As Queen, I am now making decisions for the Lavadome, and the Queen wishes to lead her Firemaids into battle. Maidmother, prepare your daughters for a flight to Hypat!”



Paskinix showed them where to leave the river.



It wasn’t so much a landing as a gap in the ceiling, ringed with the shells of long-dead water-creatures. The demen had some difficulty with ropes and so on until LaDibar suggested that they just ride up one by one, clinging to the crests of the bigger dragons.



The griffaran still had a terrible time of it. They didn’t like walking and the tunnels were far too small for flight. The water-carved tunnels improved by the demen gave way to the old dwarf-mines.



In the end, the Copper convinced his dragons to drag the griffaran, each riding on a dragon-tail with beak hooked on the trailing edge of folded dragonwing.



So they went, the bats foremost, echo-sounding off the walls as they flew back and forth between the demen, who came next, and the darkness ahead. Then the dragons, with the Copper in front keeping in touch with the demen. And finally, what was left of the livestock, being driven by the men of the Aerial Host.



There was hard work at blockages. The dwarves, in their ancient fights with the demen, had walled up parts of the mines. While the demen had long since broken through these, they’d opened them only wide enough for demen to crawl through, not dragons. The demen, men, and the smaller drakes sweated and cursed in three different tongues doing the hard labor to break down the iron-reinforced masonry and open the passages further.



“I came to fight, not to dig. This is thrall-work,” HeBellereth complained.



“Would you rather dig or fight roc-riders?” LaDibar asked.



Chapter 23



Natasatch had a grueling flight south. She’d not had AuRon’s recent exercise in distance flying, and though she struggled with a dragon’s heart and AuRon did their journey with frequent stops for food and rest, she arrived at Naf’s warrior camp utterly exhausted, her skin loose and sagging and her eyes glazed with fatigue.



“I’ve . . . never . . . flown . . . such distances,” she said.



“A few days on a good diet is what you need,” AuRon said.



Naf misunderstood the reason for her exhaustion and thought she was dying for want of metal. He sent word through the camp that every piece of scrap and old coin or trade token be gathered at once.



The soldiers made them presents of food and the gathered metal. Old belt buckles and scabbard caps, broken tools and worn-down knives, as well as a smattering of coin lay in a heap the size of Natasatch’s head.



“I thank you,” she said in her rough Parl.



She ate two roast pigs, seasoned and softened with the simmering spices popular in these foothills. When AuRon saw his mate sleeping comfortably at last, breathing easy and with a full belly, he joined Naf and two of his most trusted captains over mugs of spruce ale.



Naf told them how all Ghioz seemed to be coursing through Hypatia with only the briefest show of resistance.



What forces Hypatia had not engaged in the border thanedoms hurried toward their rallying points along the coast or the Falnges River.



“All the more reason to try my plan,” AuRon said.



Naf shook his head. “Impossible.”



“Impossible why?” AuRon asked.



“No body of armed men could get into the city. The gates are too well guarded. The only large groups of men who move together are Ghioz soldiers, and we could never imitate them. The others are slaves, who wear the barest kinds of clothing. There would be nowhere to hide our arms.”



“Suppose you weren’t armed.”



“A hundred loinclothed men against the Citadel Guard? It couldn’t be done.”



“Suppose I could provide you with arms and armor.”



“Our own? My men’s own bows and blades?”



“Yes.”



“We would have a chance. Just a chance. Could I count on your help at the citadel gate?”



“Of course.”



“It could be for nothing. Hieba is probably dead.”



“Then we will avenge ourselves upon the Queen.”



“And kill one of her doubles as you die.”



“I’ve thought much about that,” AuRon said. “I cannot help but think there is some deep mystery to the Queen. The being I’ve spoken to is no double, no matter how well trained. I spoke to the Queen herself. I’m sure of it. So she is either speaking through her doubles, as she did with me in the Lavadome, or . . .”



“Or what?” one of Naf’s captains asked.



“Or there is a deeper enigma still to the Red Queen.”



Paskinix sent a messenger-bat back, with a report that there’d been “a fight and a capture” in one of the upper chambers while the dragons dined and waited for the drakes and demen to clear a blockage.



The Copper went to see the results himself.



Three dead demen lay together, facedown with their arms linked according to the custom of the hominids.



The chamber the bat led him to must have been near the surface. Old bones, flat bits of dried hide, thin as leaf and held together by a coat of hair and mud, droppings, and mushrooms and lichens feeding on the rest dirtied the floor of what looked like a dwarven sleep-hall, judging from the many notches in the wall. He’d seen old dwarven cells. When away from their homes they liked to sleep in little chambers reminiscent of the partitions in honeycombs.



The Copper found himself face-to-face with his old friend NiVom.



The demen had multiple lines around his neck, his limbs, climbing hooks through his wings and buried painfully into his spine and tail.



“Tell me one thing. How does she know of our movements?”



“She didn’t know dragons were coming, just demen, otherwise I suspect you’d have met more than just myself and my mate.”



“Your—mate?”



“Imfamnia. Your mate-sister.”



“You would mate with such a traitor to her kind?” the Copper asked.



“Says a dragon who had a tooth in the destruction of his family.”



The Copper did not want to have that conversation again. “Where’s your mate now?”



“She ran as soon as the demen attacked. Valor in combat is not one of her charms.”



“May we bleed him, my lord?” one of the demen asked, sharpening his knife against the cavern floor.



The Copper sniffed at his old Drakwatch leader’s wounds. “And you were always so bright, NiVom.”



He heard rumblings of the Jade Queen from the Aerial Host. Imfamnia would pass into history through some very creatively-worded songs centered around her alleged deeds with various temporary mates.



“I’d forgotten how quietly demen could move rock,” NiVom said. “If you’re going to kill me, do it. I have no heart for talking.”