Dragonseers and Airships

by Chris Behrsin

  “See, that’s it again. Travast works for King Cini, Taka, and he got you addicted to that drug. What makes you think you can trust him?”

  “Auntie, please. I know what I’m doing. Now, I need to concentrate.” Taka put his hands to his temples, meaning he had nothing but his thighs to keep his grip on his dragon.

  I clenched my teeth even tighter so much I worried that I might break the bit. But we had no choice. I couldn’t knock Taka off his perch, and I didn’t have the strength of mind right then to overpower his song.

  This wasn’t Taka’s doing, anyway, but the drug that was making him act this way. And I worried that it might have allowed Finesia to rein control of his mind.

  “Taka, this is stupid,” I said again – I had to at least try. “We must return home so we can regroup with a larger force.” And lock Taka up in the cells until the battle was over, hopefully teaching him a lesson.

  “But we’ll get there soon, Auntie. Have you not noticed how fast we’re going?”

  That was true. I’d flown so many times on Velos that I knew how quickly the secicao usually whizzed by beneath us. Taka had something in his song, it seemed, that could hypnotise the Greys into performing far beyond their apparent capabilities. So, while we’d been flying only several minutes, it would probably take General Sako and his forces at least fifteen to reach our current location.

  I’d seen an entire flock knocked out in that time.

  I didn’t quite have my normal connection to Velos and felt a little clumsy flying him. He wasn’t heeding my commands all the time either, sometimes flying off to the left or swooping down as if following a mind of his own. But soon after, he’d latch on to something – presumably Taka’s dragonsong – and correct himself back on course.

  “We’re close,” Taka said after a couple of minutes. “You might want to augment.”

  I shrugged, and I took hold of the golden flask at my hip, surprised by how much I shook as I tipped some of it into my mouth. The world soon lit up in speckled green, the outlines of the secicao branches visible below, despite the speed they whizzed by. Though, admittedly, the effect was more muted than usual.

  But it was strong enough for the automatons to soon come into view. There were Rocs, war automatons, Hummingbirds, and mechanical hornets. There wasn’t a massive amount of them, admittedly, but enough to pose a challenge.

  I took hold of a field glass from my bandolier and looked through the eyepiece.

  There was a man in the centre of the mechanical battalion, standing on top of a floating platform. He wore a purple bandana over his lower face and had long brown hair that blew behind him in the wind. The platform itself was a mishmash of cogs and gears and floated on two down-turned rapidly whirring propellers. As we sped forwards, the entire battalion of flying and ground-based automatons rotated together around the platform, as if one.

  The man cocked his head, almost as if he could see me looking at him through the telescope. He raised a loudspeaker to where his lips would be behind the bandana and spoke into it. The air became laced with a raspy voice.

  “Ah, Taka,” the man said. Despite his voice’s hoarseness, it still carried upon the air a sense of authority. “I see you brought your auntie with you. Dragonseer Wells, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you and your exploits in the royal palace. I’d like to say King Cini misses you, but he’s still a little peeved after you kidnapped his nephew.”

  I tried to ignore these blatant lies. Taka wasn’t Cini’s nephew but Sukina’s daughter, and I had a hunch this man knew this as a fact.

  “Is that Travast Indorm?” I hollered over to Taka.

  Taka nodded. “That’s him.”

  “You know, it’s been years since I’ve travelled down here to the Southlands.” Travast continued. Despite the ugliness of his voice, he seemed to love it far too much. “Meanwhile, I’ve heard that you’ve been taking the boy through some rather pointless training regimes. How is he ever going to become great if he receives inadequate tutelage?”

  He paused a while, and the air felt stale in his silence.

  “Has he told you what he wants?” I shouted over to Taka. The wind had picked up, meaning I needed to raise my voice quite a bit to project it across the ten or so yards between us.

  “Exactly what he just said,” Taka said. “But don’t worry, he won’t hurt us. He just wants to show the king how much I’ve grown.”

  “But why?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Taka said, and I could see the concertedness in his eyes, which were set dead ahead. “We can take them. The king needs to know how powerful we are.”

  “But that will just convince the king to send more automatons. If rumours about this factory are true…”

  Taka was so consumed in his actions, probably still slightly under the effect of his drug, that he didn’t seem to be listening. Instead, he entered into a song that caused both the dragons around me and Velos to let out a massive ear-splitting roar. Then, Velos went out of my control, and instead dived into battle under Taka’s command. I tried to pull back on Velos’ steering fin to reel him back up, but he didn’t respond. And my songs came out too weak to have any power over Taka’s unwavering voice.

  “Taka, stop this,” I shouted. But my request was futile. It was as if someone was in control of his mind. Perhaps Travast through the drug. Or perhaps even Finesia.

  The war automatons responded to our charge first. The Gatling guns on their arms twisted on their pivots and let out a spray of gunfire. Under Taka’s command, the dragons responded by barrel rolling in mid-air. A few got shot out of the sky.

  Before I would have felt their deaths in the collective unconscious. But now, I just felt empty, as if they were meaningless drones plummeting to the earth.

  The rest of the dragons, including Velos, soon reached the ground-based automatons, and we showered them with fire. It melted the brass on the automatons, and hundreds of them toppled over and collapsed to the floor.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Lieutenant Talato had lifted her rifle off her back and now was tracking Travast through the sights. A loud bang suddenly filled the air, and a shot came from a small gun protruding out of Travast’s platform. Talato’s rifle spun out of her hand and tumbled through the brown secicao clouds, becoming lost in the thorny secicao foliage below.

  Then, while the Greys rose into the air and circled back around, Travast lowered his hand and a ceasefire started. This gave him time to speak.

  “Don’t think you can best me with your inferior technology,” Travast said over his loudspeaker. “The privilege of impressing the king doesn’t belong to the lieutenant, but Dragonseer Wells and Taka Sako. Show him what you’re made of, because I’m recording this entire scene.”

  “What are you up to, Travast?” I shouted over to him.

  And for a moment he paused, and it seemed that he couldn’t hear me. Below, the wind soughed through secicao branches. The acidic clouds became thicker around me, their acetic touch stinging my skin. I could now faintly smell their eggy aroma through the clip on my nose.

  “I’ve already explained enough,” Travast bawled through his loudspeaker. “Now, it’s time to prove to King Cini that you are a force to be reckoned with, because despite having lived with Alsie Fioreletta all his life, he doesn’t quite believe in dragonseer magic.”

  The surrounding automatons sputtered back into life and their Gatling guns roared into action. I swore and swerved Velos sharply off to the side. I took him down low as some bullets hit the ground in front of us, sending up plumes of ash and dust, and sticky specks of secicao resin.

  Taka followed a little off to the right and behind us. “Do you trust him now?” I hollered back to him. But I don’t think he heard.

  Over to my left, I noticed a war automaton, spouting bullets out of its guns. And I pushed up on Velos’s steering fin to compel him towards our target.

  “Power them up, Lieutenant,” I shouted back behind me. Promptly,
the Gatling guns on Velos’s flanks rolled into action. Two trails of gunfire homed in on the war automaton. They hit it dead in the chest, and the machine toppled over and crumpled into a heap on the floor.

  But we didn’t have a chance, because from straight ahead, a swarm of Hummingbirds spun up from the ground and followed a sharp curve to attack us from the right. One bashed into my chest, as I turned Velos towards them. If I hadn’t been strapped into Velos’s armour, it would have knocked me straight off the seat.

  “Dragonheats,” I screamed. “Hold on.”

  The Hummingbirds sailed past us at speed and regrouped with a huge Roc automaton ahead. I locked eyes on the beast, remembering how a similar automaton had skewered Velos’ tail with its pointed beak at the Battle of East Cadigan Island, almost killing him.

  That was when the gunfire cut off once again, so Travast could voice his latest speech. I clenched my teeth, feeling insulted. This wasn’t a battle at all, but a test.

  “This isn’t going well at all,” he said through his loudspeaker. “Dragonseer Wells, you are meant to have remarkable abilities. And yet you seem to exhibit the skill of a common peon. And Taka, I expected more from you. You showed much better potential back in the palace. Now, I’m just going to have to eliminate you, unfortunately.”

  I looked back at Taka. I could see in his eyes how much he felt betrayed.

  And then, from behind him, the swarm of Hummingbirds made chase. They sped right passed us, evidently trying to get ahead of us. Behind them, the huge Roc lumbered forwards a much slower pace. Dragonheats, the Hummingbirds were trying to force us into its path.

  “Can we get above them, Maam?” Lieutenant Talato asked. Her voice was barely audible over the now roaring wind.

  I shook my head. “They’re secicao powered,” I replied. “They can get just as high as us. We’re dead meat.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Faso’s voice came out of the right-hand side of Velos’s armour.

  “What the…” I said.

  “Thank me later,” Faso said. “Looks like I completed my invention in the nick of time.”

  “Faso,” I shouted. “How did you – Wait… Can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear. I took the liberty of installing speaker technology on your dragon armour so we can talk while you’re flying your dragon and I’m flying mine.”

  I huffed. I would hardly call an automaton a dragon, no matter how much it might look like one. But then, whatever made Faso happy. He was here to help, and that’s what mattered.

  Soon enough, the inventor came into view, sitting on a mechanical dragon that looked more majestic than I’d expected. What must have been a good two-hundred Greys accompanied him, with olive suited soldiers riding aback them, carrying rifles and wearing masks.

  Unlike Velos’ armour, Faso’s automaton only had two seats, both brass and equally uncomfortable looking as the one on which I sat. Faso had taken the front, Winda sat behind him holding onto the inventor’s waist. Her mousey hair streaked out into the wind as the automaton sped forwards. Her eyelids were scrunched, and although I couldn’t see her grin of ecstasy underneath her mask, I knew it was there. Really, she was the last person I’d thought would take so much pleasure from flying.

  Faso, on the other hand, wore this strange-looking helmet, as well as his mask, making him look a bit ridiculous. The mask looked like some kind of automaton – a sphere masking the crown of his head, with spinning cogs and gears arrayed around it. The helmet covered his ears, and at his temples two hinges supported a curved visor that spanned across his eyes. There was no way he could see through it, but he still seemed to know exactly where he was heading.

  In front of Faso, Ratter had curled himself over a set of handlebars, his paws manipulating a control panel containing a complex web of wires. The dragon automaton also sported a gigantic cannon on its underbelly, much more sophisticated than Velos’ because of several hollow rods protruding out of the sides of it, which I presumed to be guns. These shifted around tracking the automatons beneath. The dragon automaton also had four Gatling cannons on its flanks as opposed to Velos’ two. At the back, above Winda’s head, towered a much larger mounted turret, with a triple-layered bullet belt snaking away from it.

  As the dragon automaton moved, it glowed bright green, flaring up in my augmented vision.

  “My, my,” Travast said over his loudspeaker. “If it isn’t the great Faso Gordoni.”

  “And who the dragonheats might you be?” Faso said.

  “I’m Travast Indorm, no doubt you’ve heard the name.”

  Faso laughed. “I’ve heard it somewhere.”

  “So you’ve not been keeping track of the king’s most talented scientists since you left.”

  “Ha,” Faso said. “There has been no one so great as myself in the king’s domain since my leaving.”

  “You know so little about your field for such a ‘great’ man,” Travast replied. “All the latest automatons in the king’s arsenal are my invention, including this newfangled factory you’ve no doubt heard about.”

  “And such a thing is balderdash. Technology has not yet reached an advanced enough stage to produce itself.”

  “Well then,” Travast replied. “You’ll soon learn how mistaken you are. The magnificent machine I’ve built in Ginlast contains enough automatons to obliterate your entire precious base.”

  “We shall soon see about that,” Faso said. He had now levelled himself out, so he was hovering right besides Velos. He pulled a lever on the left-hand side of the dragon automaton, causing it to let out a huge ear-piercing screech. It was so high pitched that Talato, Taka, and I had to clutch at our ears. The Hummingbirds ahead of us spun into action and readjusted their target to charge at Faso and his dragon automaton.

  Then, the guns protruding from the cannon bucked into life. They let off a volley of shots. At once, a whole load of spheres tumbled out of the tight Hummingbird swarm, reducing it by half. The Gatling guns then did their work, pivoting on their great turrets and letting out a loud whirring sound that resonated off the ground. More and more spheres plummeted from the sky until only several remained. Then, Winda took hold of the two handlebars on the overhead gun and she unleashed a final barrage of bullets that eliminated the Hummingbirds from the sky.

  Faso took hold of a stumpy stick that jutted out of the handlebar in front of him. He used this to turn the dragon automaton to face the Roc. On the automaton’s underbelly, the cannon started to glow white at the front.

  “Keep it steady,” Winda shouted out. I could only hear what she was saying because Faso hadn’t turned off the speaker system.

  “I’m doing it,” Faso said.

  Meanwhile, energy continued to build in the cannon below, which soon became a brilliant beam of light directed straight at the Roc automaton. The massive automaton opened its beak and let out an ingratiating hiss before it plummeted towards the floor.

  “This is exactly what I need,” Travast shouted through his loudspeaker. “Mr Gordoni, you’ve surpassed yourself. I’ve recorded everything, and the king will be most impressed.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Faso asked.

  “This was a test,” I replied. “He wanted to record us taking down a small force so he could show our power to the king, but he hasn’t explained why.”

  “But why doesn’t he just eliminate us here and now if he has the capability?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  But he didn’t have a chance, because two obtuse-angled wings shot out of the side of Travast’s platform, and the propellers turned to face towards us. They powered up, and the platform jetted off into the distance, a plume of green gas trailing in its wake.

  7

  General Sako stood waiting for us in Fortress Gerhaun’s courtyard, as we came in to land. As soon as we touched down, Taka leapt off Velos and ran straight back to his room, without even a glance at his grandfather. Gerhaun was still asleep, so I cou
ldn’t reach out to her to tell her what had happened.

  I worried that I could be at risk against Finesia. So, without thinking, I took a flask of water from the seat, opened my jar of cyagora and took a pill down in one. I scrunched up my eyes as I endured the pain as the tablet worked its way down my throat. Then, I returned my attention to the situation at hand.

  I checked whether General Sako might have noticed me taking the pill. But he was staring up at the dragon automaton that Faso had just flown overhead – low enough that we could hear it screeching through the sky, creating a harsh draught. The Greys weren’t far behind him, and they each returned to their stables.

  Lieutenant Talato dismounted via the ladder, with an agility that belied her stocky build. I followed her down, and then I went to greet General Sako. His breath stank of secicao, which he habitually smoked through a pipe.

  “Blunders and dragonheats, you look terrible, Dragonseer Wells. What happened out there?”

  I shook my head. “Turns out that Travast’s army was much more powerful than it first looked. He rode on this floating platform device that could shoot a rifle right out of Lieutenant Talato’s hand from two-hundred yards.”

  General Sako’s moustache twitched. “What did you expect when flying with such a small force? My grandson had a death wish.”

  “I don’t know what he was thinking. But I’ll go talk with him right now.”

  “Maybe you can get through to him. The number of times I’ve tried to understand that child. But he just has an agenda of his own.”

  “He’s almost a teenager. And I guess he’s just going through that phase.”

  “Aye,” General Sako said. “I’ve raised one myself and know what you mean. Though Taka, he seems much different than Sukina was.”

  “Boys can be tougher, I hear,” I said.

  “You can say that again.” General Sako had taken a long time to accept that his long-lost granddaughter had been transformed into a boy, and sometimes I don’t think he completely grasped the concept.

  “By the way,” he continued, “before you go, I’ve already scheduled a briefing for tomorrow.” He pointed to a talkie at his hip. “Faso installed this remarkable technology that allowed me to hear everything. With what Travast Indorm said about the factory, it sounds like we have to act fast.”