Fury of a Demon

by Brian Naslund

  Nola left the women to suffer through another one of Jakell’s shoe monologues, which were far less interesting than Bershad’s cock.

  * * *

  Three hours later, Dervis—their last customer—stumbled out the door, looking very much like he was going to vomit up his belly of rain ale in some alley on the way home.

  Nola locked up, then lit her last dragon-fat candle and started to count the night’s proceeds while Grittle cleaned up. Her sister knew the weight of tonight’s balance, too. Nola could tell that she was nervous because she wiped the countertop down three times.

  When the tally was done, Nola closed her ledger and breathed out a heavy sigh of relief.

  “Did we make it?” Grittle asked, her voice so earnest and hopeful it made Nola feel like she might cry.

  “Yeah, Grittle. We made it.”

  Between the rain ale, the crickets, and that little boon with the rice wine, she had enough for the pig. Just barely enough.

  Grittle smiled. “I knew we would! Everything’s going to be okay now, right?”

  “Yes. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Just like Nola’s knowledge of an ideal cock size, that was a theoretical assurance, not a certain one. Because now that she had the coin, she’d need to take it down to the pens and use it to buy the pig from the Ghost Cat Gang. They were the only ones left selling swine to lowborn.

  “Can I come with you tomorrow?” Grittle asked.

  “Definitely not.”

  “Why?”

  The truth was that the Ghost Cats were just as likely to stab her as sell her one of their swine, but she wasn’t going to tell Grittle that.

  “Because I need you to watch the tavern while I’m gone, little sister.”

  Grittle frowned, but eventually nodded, her face determined. “You can count on me.”

  And again, Nola felt like she was going to cry.

  14

  BERSHAD

  Dainwood Jungle

  The Blackjacks’ territory smelled like dead monkeys and dragonshit.

  He and Ashlyn had climbed a ridge to get a look at the terrain. The Nomad circled overhead, giving Bershad a clear sense of the valleys ahead.

  There were thousands of Blackjacks stretched across the treetops, resting lazily amongst the strong Daintree branches. About thirty leagues ahead, Bershad could feel a buzzing noise. When the Nomad got near it, the sound got far worse and she darted away. Bershad checked his ear, half expecting to come back with blood.

  “I think the skyship’s out there,” he said to Ashlyn, pointing to the source of the sound.

  “Good,” Ashlyn said.

  “Speak for yourself, you can’t hear the noise it’s making,” Bershad said, wincing. “But at least it’ll be easy to find.”

  He and Ashlyn made their way down the ridge, where everyone was waiting. Jolan, Kerrigan, Simeon, Felgor, Cabbage, and Oromir’s crew. The donkeys were grouped behind them.

  “We ready?” Bershad asked.

  Everyone nodded. Even Cabbage.

  Bershad reached out to the Nomad and called her down. “Let’s get on with it, then.”

  * * *

  The Nomad led the way through the jungle, swooping ahead of them and scaring off the Blackjacks with a series of snarls and screams and cries. Given her size, none of the Blackjacks seemed eager to make a pass at her.

  Bershad stayed twenty paces in front of the first donkey, keeping his attention rooted on his connection to the Nomad. They passed steaming, chin-high piles of dragonshit that were full of monkey bones and mango cores.

  “That is a powerful odor,” Felgor said as they passed an especially watery and putrid pile. He walked by with a hand over his nose, but as soon as he took it away he vomited in the bushes.

  “When are you gonna get yourself a stronger stomach?” Bershad asked him.

  “Well, I can’t grow new ones like you, so I’m stuck with what I got.”

  Bershad grunted. “Just try not to do it again. It upsets the donkeys.”

  “Pretty sure the trek through a dragon-infested wilderness is the primary cause of their agitation.”

  Around midday, they reached a section of the forest that was carpeted by uneaten monkey carcasses.

  “This seems a little unnatural, doesn’t it?” Cabbage asked. “They didn’t even eat these ones. Just killed ’em for no reason.”

  “It can happen when a group of males join together and take control of a territory,” said Ashlyn. “Each predator fuels the aggression of the other, and their behavior becomes erratic and violent.”

  “In my experience, most erratic and violent situations are caused by a group of swinging dicks getting stuck in close proximity to each other,” said Kerrigan as she stepped around a half-rotten monkey.

  “Women cause trouble, too,” said Simeon.

  “Oh? Name a time that a woman’s sown swaths of death and destruction across some battlefield over some idiot dispute.”

  Simeon laughed. Waved at Ashlyn. “You’re forgetting who you’re walking next to, Kerri.”

  Kerrigan made a face. “Some Almiran warlord started that fight.”

  “Wallace started it,” Ashlyn said. “I finished it.”

  Ashlyn turned to Bershad. “Well? What’s up ahead?”

  He reached out. Sure enough, there was a trio of males up ahead. Their blood was hot and their senses alert. They could feel the Nomad coming.

  “Three of them,” Bershad confirmed. “They’re looking for a fight.”

  “Think Smokey can take ’em?” Felgor asked.

  Bershad shrugged, then sent a questioning twitch to the dragon.

  She gave back her version of a middle finger, then leapt from the rafters of the canopy, heading straight for the Blackjacks.

  15

  VERA

  Dainwood Jungle, Sector Thirteen

  “Well, I can see why Osyrus Ward didn’t want to bother with this,” said Decimar. “There are more dragons directly ahead of us than I’ve seen in my whole damn life.”

  “Yeah,” Vera agreed, looking out at the swarm of Blackjacks that swooped and whirled through the air like a horde of enormous starlings. Others were perched in the Daintrees below, grazing along the canopy.

  She turned back to Garwin. He and two of his men were fiddling with Ward’s machine, which looked like a bunch of dragon-slaying horns that had been melted together.

  “Is that ready?”

  “Fuck if I know,” Garwin said. “All the engineers did was tell us how to turn it on.”

  Vera turned back to the dragons. They were less than a league from them.

  “Then do it.”

  One soldier moved to the side of the machine and took hold of a long crank made from dragon bone. Tried to pull it backward with a grunt. Failed. “Uh. Seems stuck.”

  “Pull harder,” said Garwin.

  “Don’t wanna break the thing, sir.”

  “Well, seeing as it’s made from dragon bone, I don’t think that’s very fucking likely.”

  The soldier tried again. When he still failed, Garwin shoved him out of the way, planted his feet, and leaned down on the crank. After a moment of strained muscles and struggle, it shifted backward with a rumble and a click.

  Dragon oil poured into the machine through a series of tubes. It began to vibrate on the deck, emitting a low hum.

  “That’s it?” Vera asked when nothing else happened.

  “Supposed to be,” said Garwin.

  Vera turned to the wall of dragons, which was unchanged.

  “Should I turn us around?” Entras asked from the pilot’s seat. “’Cause they don’t seem to be—”

  Entras cut himself off when the impenetrable wall suddenly broke apart, giving them a narrow but clear tunnel leading into the jungle on the far side.

  “Put us in a full burn, Entras. I don’t want to be in the thick of things any longer than necessary.”

  “Full burn.”

  They roared ahead, moving tow
ard the gap. The shadows of the dragons plunged them into wild darkness as they moved through the tunnel. Nobody spoke. Just watched the horde around them.

  When they were halfway through, the horns of the machine started billowing black smoke.

  “Uh, that can’t be good,” said the soldier who’d been too weak to work the crank. He peered down at the machine. Screwed up his nose. “Smells like burning hair all of a sudden. I wonder if it’s still working?”

  Before anyone could answer, a Blackjack swooped alongside the ship and snapped its tail across the gunwale, decapitating ten soldiers in one sweep.

  “Everyone down!” Vera shouted, hitting the deck.

  Garret was already on his belly. Everyone else followed a heartbeat later.

  Dragons started closing in around them. Snapping at the sides of the ship with their jaws and tail. Two latched onto the levitation sack with their claws, then darted away again when the gas started hissing at them.

  Vera crawled to Entras. “No matter what happens, you keep this ship moving forward.”

  Entras nodded, eyes focused on the gap ahead, which was getting smaller with each passing second.

  All around them, things descended into a nightmare of gnashing dragon jaws, screaming men, and utter chaos. Vera stayed down, tucked into as small of a ball as she could manage, wondering if this was how she was going to die.

  And then, without warning, it all stopped.

  Vera waited another moment before she stood up. Looked around. There was nothing but clear sky ahead. The Blackjacks behind them weren’t giving chase.

  “We made it,” she said.

  “Most of us, anyway,” said Decimar, coming over.

  Vera looked around. The men were brushing themselves off and dealing with wounds. There were blood and limbs all over the deck.

  “We lose any of ours?” Vera asked Decimar.

  He shook his head. “Just minor injuries. Can’t say the same for the Ghalamarians, though. Looks like they lost almost a score. Those idiots need to learn how to duck.”

  Vera nodded. That was a good thing. Their numbers were almost even.

  Overhead, the levitation sack was hissing as the gas leaked from a dozen punctures, but they could patch those once they landed.

  “Vera, I got something!” Entras called, pointing ahead. She went over and followed his finger to a big swath of jungle where the entire canopy was missing. She pulled out her lens and glassed the area. Saw the wing of a skyship jutting up from the trees.

  She smiled. “Make a course, Entras. We’ve found the Eternity.”

  16

  CABBAGE

  Dainwood Jungle, Blackjack Territory

  Bershad’s dragon rose high in the sky, until she appeared to be no bigger than a crow, then dove into the canopy with a feral scream, attacking the Blackjacks. There was a violent series of cries and snarls that made Cabbage’s toes clench. The leaves thrashed and writhed. Cabbage could see flashes of gray scales. Then black. A geyser of blood sprayed up and out across the canopy.

  And then there was silence.

  “We’re good,” Bershad said, starting to walk forward. “Keep the donkeys calm as we pass through. The blood will spook them.”

  Bershad led them through the undergrowth. For half a league, there wasn’t much to look at aside from more piles of dragonshit.

  Then they reached the first dead Blackjack.

  It was hanging from the limb of a Daintree—wings spread out across a few trees. Its head was gone. Just a neck stump remained, which was pouring blood onto the forest floor at a rate that a waterfall would struggle to match.

  “That is deeply unpleasant,” Cabbage muttered.

  “I prefer dead dragons to those wretched mushroom people from your island,” said Felgor.

  Cabbage just shrugged. He didn’t have the energy to decide which was worse.

  Bershad guided them disconcertingly close to the whole mess, despite there being a nice little path around it to the right.

  “Think maybe we should divert that way?” Cabbage asked.

  “There are seventeen vipers over there,” Bershad said without turning around or slowing his pace.

  “Oh.”

  “Just keep the donkeys calm.”

  Bershad stepped less than a pace to the left of the pooling dragon blood, but the first donkey froze up and dug his heels in, refusing to budge. Cabbage tried to calm the beast down and coax him forward, but he refused.

  Felgor’s donkey was frozen, too.

  “Uh, Silas?” Felgor said. “Think we’re a little beyond muzzle rubs, given the circumstances.”

  Bershad turned around. The look on his face wasn’t impatience or anger. It was sadness. Something he’d never seen on the Flawless Bershad’s face.

  He swallowed, then walked back to Cabbage’s donkey and placed a scarred hand on the beast’s forehead.

  “It’s all right,” he whispered. “Everything’s going to be all right. You have to trust me. I’ll protect you.”

  The donkey kept his heels frozen in the blood-soaked ground.

  “I promise,” Bershad continued. “Only way you get hurt is if I’m already dead.”

  Cabbage didn’t know much about donkeys other than they were strong-backed and stubborn as hell. So it was with great surprise that he saw the donkey flip back his straightened ears and relax his tensed hide. When Bershad continued past the waterfall of dragon blood again, the donkey followed.

  “He commands donkeys and dragons both?” Cabbage whispered to Felgor.

  “Silas would say that he doesn’t command either,” said Felgor. “But he’s a bit of a prick in that regard.”

  They moved past the bleeding dragon corpse in a single-file line. For a few dozen paces the sound of the blood spattering on the leaves was all that Cabbage could hear. But once they cleared enough distance, a far more disturbing sound arose.

  The Nomad was eating a Blackjack.

  Back in Burz-al-dun, the clockmaker that Cabbage was apprenticed to kept a dog in the workshop named Iro. He was a black mutt with powerful jaws and a mean look in his eye. Something to dissuade thieves. The clockmaker had given Iro a fresh bone each night as they were sitting by the fire and going over the next day’s work. Cabbage had always had trouble focusing on the clock schematics while the sound of cartilage and bone popping in the dog’s mouth echoed around the small workshop.

  Listening to one dragon eat another was far more distracting.

  They came around a Daintree to find the Nomad with her maw buried in the stomach cavity of the second Blackjack. She came up with her muzzle drizzled in gore and looked at Bershad with an expression that was alarmingly similar to one you’d give when silently offering someone a sip of your ale.

  Bershad waved it off.

  They kept walking.

  * * *

  The good news was that after Smokey killed the three Blackjacks, the dragons ahead of them cleared out real quick, and without a fight. The bad news was that Cabbage started paying attention to their back trail, which was constantly being closed off by the Blackjacks who returned to their roosts as soon as the Nomad moved on.

  “Guess we’re not camping for the night,” Cabbage muttered to himself. “We’d be totally surrounded.”

  “We’re surrounded either way,” Simeon said happily. “But if we camp, we’ll be eaten.”

  “Why do you sound so happy when you say that?”

  He shrugged. “I like it when things are simple. Ghost Moth Island was simple. Walking through a nest of dragons is simple. This war, though? All the magic and skyships are just a complicated pain in my ass.”

  “Things can be simple and wretched at the same time.”

  “Life’s generally wretched one way or another, Cabbage. Simple and wretched is better than wretched and complicated.”

  “I guess.”

  Simeon slapped Cabbage on the back, which nearly sent him headfirst into a pile of Blackjack shit.

  “If I can keep yo
u alive long enough, maybe you’ll find yourself a stretch of something simple and wonderful.”

  “Letting me stay behind with the Jaguar Army would have been a good way to preserve my life.”

  “Doesn’t work like that.”

  “Why not?”

  Simeon just smiled at him. Kept moving.

  Sometime after nightfall—Cabbage couldn’t tell exactly when, just that it was dark enough so that all he could see was the donkey’s ass that was directly in front of him—the Nomad stopped her leapfrogging cycle and landed in a tree above Bershad.

  Then she retched.

  “Is she sick?” Cabbage asked.

  “Naw, I’m sure she’s puking all over the forest for the fun of it,” said Simeon.

  When they reached Bershad, the Nomad had dropped into a little clearing, and was drooping her head like a sick dog. The pile of vomit was full of Blackjack meat and scales.

  “What’s wrong with her, ate a bad dragon?” Simeon asked.

  “The vibration is getting stronger,” Bershad said, gritting his teeth. “Feels like a massive dragon horn that won’t stop ringing. Feels like … like…”

  Bershad puked, too.

  “Ha, who’s got the weak stomach now?” Felgor asked.

  Bershad spat. Glared at him.

  “We’re getting closer to the crashed skyship,” Ashlyn said.

  “Yeah,” Bershad agreed, then turned to Smokey. “And this is as far as she can take us.”

  Bershad went over to the dragon and put a hand on her snout, then rested his forehead against her nose for a moment. Then Smokey lifted herself into the night sky and disappeared.

  Once she was gone, Bershad seemed to relax.

  “Aren’t we pretty exposed without her?” Cabbage asked, already looking around for Blackjacks.

  “The Blackjacks are having the same problem she is,” said Bershad. “We’re safe enough, long as we keep moving forward.”

  “How’re we gonna get back out, though?” Cabbage asked.

  “She’ll come back when we need her to. Trust me.”

  That seemed to be good enough for everyone else, so Cabbage had no choice but for it to be good enough for him, even though it seemed thinner than Papyrian silk. They crossed the clearing and headed farther into the jungle that was now devoid of dragons. And it wasn’t just the dragons who seemed scared off. The branches were empty of monkeys and birds. The ground clear of rodents and snails and snakes. The only thing that seemed alive was an alarming number of worms, which were fleeing the earth as if it was on fire.