by A. C. Cobble
One of the circling lizards craned its long, sinuous neck down and belched a billow of scalding flame. The main sail caught fire.
“Cut the sail,” she snarled to a handful of crewmen near her.
Duke Wellesley came staggering up beside her. “I have this, Captain.”
“Do you even—”
“Deal with that!” he said, pointing at the burning sail. “Then get the men to fire those damned cannons. We’re not going to kill a dragon with a pistol!”
The lizards above were circling, warm glows emanating from their open jaws. Another whoosh of jetted flame came down across the sails of the airship as one of them swooped close. One of the two, three… Was that a fourth? Hells, she couldn’t tell how many of the damned things there were.
Ainsley reached the mast and began slashing lines. Crewmen scrambled to help her. They had to put the fires out, or the whole ship would go up in flame.
Those who weren’t dealing with the fires were aiming their blunderbusses and rifles skyward, taking shots at the creatures above. From belowdecks, she heard Pettybone yelling the cannon were primed and the duke offering a muffled response.
Suddenly, they lurched higher again, rising rapidly through the air.
The lizards, squawking startled cries, weaved out of the way as the masts of the airship suddenly rose in their midst, threatening to spear them. Their bodies undulated like snakes as they twisted out of the way, and for the first time, she saw the massive wings spread out from their backs.
The Cloud Serpent ascended through the middle of them, and the starboard bank of cannon erupted. At point-blank range, unloading the entire starboard artillery at once, they couldn’t miss. A terrible, pained roar tore from the throat of one of the creatures, and it flapped weakly and then plummeted.
From the aft side of the airship, a billow of flame blasted along the gunwale. Several crewmen fell away screaming as they were roasted by the searing, orange fire.
A man crashed into her, his skin charred black on one half, bright red on the other. He was unrecognizable. A low moan escaped his lips, and she pushed him away, steeling herself to ignore his torment. She stomped across the ruined canvass of their main sail, shouting for men to bring down the rest of the sails and use them to smother the licking flames that were growing along the railing of the airship.
They jerked again, spinning unnaturally in midair like a dancer on the stage, causing her to stumble like she’d just finished her second bottle of grog.
She made it to the rail, falling against it. Half of it was char. The other half was licking with merry flames.
A man, gripping his leg with one hand where an arrow was stuck into his thigh, was trying to lift a water bucket with his other hand. After taking the bucket from him, she splashed the contents along the rail and then lunged for another of the containers that had been placed near a deck gun.
Below her feet, the cannon roared again, and another of the lizards screeched in agony.
Two down. A quick look above showed there were two left. Maybe three? Had there been four or five of them? Was that it, or were there more? Glancing around the flame-scarred side of her airship, she didn’t think they could survive more.
They twisted again, and she stumbled, cursing. The airship was moving in ways she could not explain, but the jerky rises, falls, and spins were clearly distracting and flummoxing the flying lizards. It was the only thing that had kept the beasts from training their fire on them and dealing a fatal blow.
But it took time to reload their cannon, and no matter how nimble they were, the flying lizards moved with the ease of snakes in water. They’d acted stunned when the Cloud Serpent first bit back, as if they hadn’t anticipated the cannon, but already she could see their flight was coordinated. It was evident the creatures had never faced an airship before, but they were adjusting. The lizards were circling above them, out of range of the cannon, the tiny pinpoints of fae light trailing them like phosphorescence on a night sea. If the things got smart, it would be nearly impossible to defeat them. The airship couldn’t take many more blasts of that furnace-like flame before the fires grew out of control.
They needed something more maneuverable than their cannon. They needed—
“Spirits bless you, Mister Samuels,” she cried.
The Cartographer XI
Captain Ainsley rushed to deal with the burning canvass sails, or at least Oliver hoped she was doing that. Flame was the worst nightmare for any sailor on an airship. With limited supplies of water, blazes quickly became incredibly difficult to battle.
Well, flame had been the worst nightmare. Based on the last few moments, Oliver amended that. Giant, flying, flame-breathing dragons were the worst nightmare.
The creatures were swirling around them, building the heat in open mouths then breathing it down on the airship. Sails caught fire easily, and the masts smoldered and sputtered.
On the backs of the lizards, Oliver could see figures somehow steering the massive reptiles and firing arrows down on the defenseless crew of the Cloud Serpent. In the swirling light of the fae and hidden by the huge bodies of the dragons, the figures were difficult to see and impossible to aim a blunderbuss or a pistol at. He wondered if it would do any good if they did manage to kill one of the riders. Would the dragon keep attacking or fly away?
Their cannon, when in position, could tear massive holes in the creatures just like it had on Imbon. The problem was that the heavy brass was impossible to aim fast enough to catch the darting monsters, but there might be another way.
He let his senses drop, tried to control his breathing, and felt for the warmth he’d sensed when he’d placed his hand on the globe of fae light earlier. He tried to feel for the spirits he knew inhabited the levitating stones deep in the hold of the airship. Instinctively, he closed his eyes and reached with his mind.
“We’re ready!” called First Mate Pettybone from somewhere down below.
Oliver willed the life spirits in the stones to rise, and they did. He opened his eyes and saw they were ascending into the center of the swirling mass of dragons. He shouted, “Now!”
The airship surged upward, his stomach seeming to fall from his body. It felt like he was lifting a mechanical carriage onto his shoulders. He fell to his knees beneath the invisible weight.
Cannon roared from one side of the airship, a deafening cacophony of exploding powder and crashing brass and wood. A creature cried in pain and anger, but on the other side of the airship, flame raked across their gunwales, catching several crewmen, wreaking terrible destruction while the dragon responsible swirled away into the night.
Snarling, Oliver twisted, his hand following the flight path of the dragon.
Beneath his feet, the airship twisted as well, the levitating stones moving, pressing the wooden superstructure of the airship in ways they were not meant to. His hand trembled and a wave of dizziness washed over him. Teeth gritted, he kept them moving, kept the spirits below turning to follow the lizard.
The cannon erupted again.
The lizard jerked in mid-air, its back punctured by the flying iron shot.
Oliver’s arm was shaking, and for a moment, he lost the connection with the spirts. The airship slowed its spin, and he could see above them, the lizards were circling cautiously, as if preparing to dive. Two or three of them were left. He couldn’t tell. If they all struck at once…
“A taper, someone bring me a taper!” cried a muffled voice.
Oliver turned and saw Mister Samuels with an arm full of yard-long, paper-wrapped tubes. A dowel and a wick stuck out the rear of them.
Oliver’s eyes widened. The rockets, of course!
“Spirits bless you, Mister Samuels!” cried Captain Ainsley from across the deck. Then, she added, “Frozen hell, you fool, don’t walk into the fire.”
Surprised, Mister Samuels peered around the bundle of rockets to where half-a-dozen crewmen were frantically stamping out burning canvass.
Oliver struggle
d to his feet. “Samuels, give me one of those rockets.”
Ainsley and Sam appeared beside the startled sailor, and each collected their own munitions.
“How do these work?” asked Oliver.
“Light the wick. Wait for the kick. When it ignites, it’s about three seconds until it explodes,” said Ainsley, peering up at the dragons above them. “That doesn’t sound like much, but they move fast. In three seconds, they’ll fly well past those lizards.”
Oliver winced. Each of the creatures had their mouths open, and even from below, he could see the building glow in their throats where they would capture it until they were ready to release an inferno. Three of them at once…
“Got it,” said Oliver.
“We need to hold onto the rocket after ignition for about a second and a half, I think,” said Ainsley. “And we’ve got to make the first launch count. Also, we don’t have the racks set up, so we’re going to have to actually hold them.”
“Hold…”
A sailor appeared with sets of the thick leather gloves they used to climb down the ropes when disembarking. In his other hand, he held three of the smoldering tapers they used to light the deck guns.
The three of them quickly pulled the gloves on, and Ainsley asked, “Ready?”
“Not really,” muttered Sam, staring nervously at the dragons circling above them. “But I don’t think we have time to wait.”
Oliver nodded to Ainsley.
The crewman with the tapers passed them out and instructed, “Light ‘em all at once. Best if we don’t give ‘em a chance to learn to evade the rockets.”
“All right,” said Oliver. “We’ll do it—”
“Now!” shouted Sam, wide eyes peering above where the three dragons had started to spiral down toward them.
Oliver held his taper to the wick, and a sizzling sparkle began burning up the cord. He looked up and cursed. The dragons were swooping down, their mouths trailing flickers of fire.
In his hand, the back of the rocket blasted with a screaming shower of sparks that roared over his leather gloves and the sleeve of his jacket. It jerked with the ignition, and he barely held onto it. He looked away from the blinding motes of light and glanced up where a dragon was twenty yards above their mast, flame already roaring out of its mouth.
Oliver tilted the rocket and let go. It screeched into the sky, joining two others in streaks of white-orange as they raced toward the lead dragon.
Within the space of a breath, three distinct bone-jarring thumps, and the dragon was knocked off its flight path like it’d taken a punch to the head from a giant. Flames leaked out the side of its face and its neck where the impact from the rockets had torn its flesh open.
The dragon called, loud and high-pitched, and then fell within yards of the airship, flashing out of view to where, Oliver offered a hope to the spirits, it crashed on the dry earth and died.
Above them, one of the dragons had pulled up and was circling again far above them. The other had veered away but was now banking back toward them, its maw open like the door to a forge.
“Another rocket!” yelled Ainsley, holding her hand out.
Mister Samuels ignored her and dropped all of the rockets but two. He held them wide, one in each hand.
The dragon had completed its turn and was flying straight at them.
“We don’t have time!” screamed Sam. “Everyone, take cover!”
Samuels ran, his bare feet slapping against the wood of the deck.
Oliver dove onto his knees, scrambling to collect another rocket, but he knew it was too late. By the time the wick burned and the rocket ignited…
The dragon cried out, flames pouring out of its mouth. On its back, Oliver saw a hooded rider, eyes gleaming in the light of the flame, and then Samuels’ silhouette covered Oliver’s vision of the figure.
The sailor had run to the side of the airship, put a foot on the gunwale, and launched himself into the open air. Flames encircled him, embracing him in a scorching inferno.
Ainsley screamed, Sam gasped, and Oliver was speechless, kneeling beside the pile of rockets. Samuels, arms pointed directly ahead like spears, rockets in his fists, disappeared in a billowing cloud of flame.
The dragon swept closer, disgorging devastation toward the side of the Cloud Serpent, strafing the deck with its deadly blast.
The rockets Samuels carried exploded.
The dragon’s head burst. A shower of flame and gore flew against the side of the airship and blasted the startled rider from between the dragon’s shoulder blades.
Headless, the creature continued its momentum and slammed into the side of the Cloud Serpent, rocking the airship with the impact, shattering boards, and knocking Oliver onto his back. Wood creaked and nails popped from the blow as the wooden structure absorbed the jolt from the massive beast, which punched the airship a dozen yards to the side.
“Frozen hell!” yelled Captain Ainsley.
Oliver sat up, stunned. The dragon was gone. They were still floating in the air, but flames were growing all around them.
“Samuels,” said First Mate Pettybone, staggering out of the stairwell from the cannon deck. “Was that Mister Samuels?”
“The fires!” roared Ainsley, stabbing her finger toward crewmen. “You, you, you, get more water. You, throw that canvass over the flames. Try to smother it.”
Oliver ignored Ainsley’s frantic instructions and Pettybone’s charge to gather handfuls of unburned canvass. Instead, Oliver found another rocket and collected the taper he’d dropped. He looked up to where a swirling cloud of fae light illuminated the final dragon. It was moving in an irregular pattern a hundred yards above them. Oliver was estimating the range and how long he’d need to hold the rocket, when the dragon banked and soared on spread swings, heading due south.
“Mister Samuels,” muttered the captain, coming to stand beside him to watch the departing dragon. “Who would have thought?”
The Priestess VIII
When the sun rose, Sam was still poking around the flesh and blood that had been splattered across the deck with the explosion of the final lizard’s head. Thick blood, the same crimson as any human or animal, and chunks of flesh that were covered in tough, hide-like skin. There were bits of bone amongst the gore as well, white like hers but porous, lighter. It made sense, she supposed, as the things flew.
She wondered if a naturalist would have determined the dragons were closer to birds or lizards. None of the crew had any sort of expertise in those matters, and after a brief consideration, she decided that she didn’t care.
Sam stood, stretching her back and glaring at the mess in disgust. For two hours, she’d been assembling every bit and piece she could that might have belonged to the dragons, but she was no nearer to discovering any truths about the creatures. Bird or lizard, natural or sorcery, she didn’t know. Most importantly, she hadn’t discovered anything that may help them if they encountered another one.
She kicked a hunk of muscle and skin and cursed as the piece miraculously sailed through the gap where a post had been destroyed on the gunwale. The chunk of meat vanished over the side of the airship. Grumbling, she walked over and looked down.
Three hundred yards below were several massive stains on the dirt marking where the other dragons had fallen. The problem was, they were not there. They were gone, somehow removed in the middle of the night while the crew of the Cloud Serpent had been recovering from the battle. Who had snuck below them? Who had taken so much flesh without raising any alarm from the airship above?
Not that the crew had been paying attention to anything on the ground for the last several hours. They’d been either elbow deep in triage treatments for the wounded or posted on watch, firearms in hand, eyes hopelessly scanning the dark sky. It was only in the last hour that enough crewmen had broken free long enough to begin clearing the deck.
Sam had already arranged all of the pieces of dragon in a horrific pile and surreptitiously tossed several pieces of h
uman over the railing. The former owners weren’t going to need those bits, and she meant to spare the crew from having to decide if they needed to match severed limbs with the charred corpses in some macabre puzzle on the way to deciding proper burial wasn’t an option anyway. Still, she wasn’t sure the rest of the crew would appreciate her so casually disposing of their mates.
Around her now, the crew was hard at work. It wasn’t just the bodies and the blood they had to clean up. There were wide swathes of the deck charred black from the dragon’s flame. All of the sails had been cut down in a panic and either burned where they lay or rolled into disorganized heaps.
Blood soaked the planks of the deck, both reptile and human. Arrows were studded in random places. Heavy iron shot was scattered where piles had been kicked over, and empty buckets of water were everywhere. She hoped that in the heat of battle, they hadn’t used so much of their water that they could no longer descend.
First Mate Pettybone, his eyes sunken, his knit cap pushed back and showing half of his scraggly, gray hair, was morosely walking about, directing the crew in their efforts to straighten up the deck. There was little they could do for the charred wood and bloodstains outside of days’ worth of scrubbing or replacement, but they could clear a path to walk, and they had to do something about the sails.
Sam approached him. “How are the tanks?”
He blinked at her, as if confused, then finally answered, “Full enough. Ainsley probably would have dumped the whole lot of it if your duke hadn’t taken over and done… done what he done.”
Sam nodded.
“Any insight into, ah, what those things were?” asked the first mate, looking out of the corner of his eyes at the grisly pile of mutilated lizard flesh she’d assembled.
“Without a chance to examine a whole one, I don’t quite know what to think,” admitted Sam. “One thing struck me, though. They moved like the ones in Imbon, didn’t they?”
He frowned at her. “These were flying…”