Dogfighters: Under the Hill

by Alex Beecroft

  Dedication

  To all the readers who didn’t throw the book at the wall after the cliffhanger in volume one.

  Chapter One

  With a lithe movement, Oonagh swung her leg over the dragon’s ridge and slid to the ground. Here she proved taller than Flynn remembered. Seven feet tall and willowy, shiny and black as polished obsidian. She had changed herself, as casually as Flynn might change a jacket, in order to match her steed, and the only patch of colour between the two of them was the dragon’s red and amber eye, fixed with reptilian curiosity on the little golden birds of Sumala’s headdress.

  “I must confess, I’m disappointed.” Oonagh drifted close enough for Flynn to touch. She had done this to him. She had ordered his plane shot down. She had been the one. How right that she should be the colour of soot, like the inside of the Lanc’s Perspex once it had been coated with burning airman.

  He thought of grabbing her, putting a hand around her throat and squeezing. But despair was still reverberating in him like the aftereffects of a struck gong. He felt as though he stood at the bottom of the ocean, miles down, submerged beneath the pressure of tons and tons of grief. It was so heavy he couldn’t move.

  While he thought, the queen’s guards fell into place around her, their long spears gleaming with viscous, almost living light. The elf guard were all sharpness, even the silver glints from their armour fell on the eye like razors.

  “It cost us some pains, finding out exactly what the prophecy meant,” Oonagh went on. Her bare feet did not sink into the marsh. The white flash of her chain upon chain of diamonds had a pinprick glitter. Like Sumala, she had left off other clothes, except for a black hooded cloak beneath which she was clad entirely in jewels. Unlike Sumala, her figure was warlike, tall and honed and sturdy. She noticed him looking and swept out a hand in what seemed a gesture of invitation. With the spear tips behind it, it was a command. “Walk with me.”

  She led the way back to the oaken causeway, through thickets of gorse that came into bud as she passed. The silver eyes she affected today gleamed with the same edge as her guardsmen’s knives when she looked sidelong at Flynn’s shell-shocked face. “Nor were you and your friend easy to locate. We have the promise that you will prove instrumental in saving me from a great threat…”

  “As long as I am not dead.” Flynn thought about suicide. Rumours that some divisions had been issued with cyanide pills for just that purpose had proved in the end only rumours, but now he thought, If only.

  Oonagh smiled. Her skin had the texture of hot tar and the smile looked greasy as a result. “Ah, yes. As long as you were neither dead nor alive. And which would you say you were?”

  A new horror joined the sick realisation in his stomach and made the tic above his eye start up, maddening as the drip drip drip of water torture. Alive, he’d said, confidently enough to Liadain, but that was before he’d seen his harness rot into the ground in seconds.

  Neither alive nor dead? Huh, yes. How remarkably appropriate. He felt in his pocket for the final stub of his last cigarette, only to find he had already used his last match. So, it seemed destiny did own the fates of men after all. Free will was only so much hogwash and wishful thinking, and he was doomed, ever since he made that first bargain with the hag, to end up somehow supporting the elvish equivalent of Hitler.

  Oonagh’s dragon performed a strange leaping hop in an attempt to keep up. Unlike the queen herself, the creature had sunk deeply into the mud, had to use all its wing power to pull itself out with a pop and a whiff of marsh gas. It came down before them on the firmer bank of the river, swam out into the stream to get clean. Sumala, surrounded by guards, ran and squatted on the bank, calling to it. It leaned its chin on the reeds in front of her, and he could hear them whispering to each other, she in a barely audible murmur, it in a hiss like iron quenched in a bucket.

  “What do you want of me?” Flynn asked Oonagh. He was surprised at Sumala’s seeming carefree attitude. A moment ago she’d seemed to understand that something dreadful had happened. Now she was off, making new friends.

  A lurch of guilt caught the thought up as concern for her fought a weary battle with his own selfish misery. Why was he thinking badly of the girl when she had just given up her own escape for his sake? Yet why had she been so ready to do so?

  He wondered if Liadain was right. Was Sumala’s real purpose to stick with him, to control him? If that was the case, then of course she would have turned down the chance of being sealed in a different world from him. Was she being noble, a good friend? Or had she just proved herself a spy?

  Oonagh put a firm hand on his shoulder, breaking these uncomfortable thoughts. “I want you to do what you have been brought here to do.”

  He shrugged it off, there was a tickly charge to the touch, and he didn’t want her reassurance. “I won’t help you invade other countries, enslave their inhabitants and plunder their resources. I don’t care what I’m destined to do. I won’t do that.”

  Accepting the rebuff, Oonagh climbed up to the lip of the riverbank. The fog was breaking up and streaming away, and it seemed for a moment as if she were the lightning in the centre of the cloud. Then the sun broke through, and she dazzled so bright he couldn’t look. “My poor child,” she said. “I cannot invade anyone’s country, and no one can invade mine. No one comes in or out of this realm without the permission of one of its queens. That is how it is for the queens and kings of all worlds. Only your own is as leaky as a sieve. That is because the human world has killed its king and half destroyed itself in the process. I think you have been speaking to someone who has told you lies about me.”

  She had a plausible voice. He felt compelled to believe her, and even as he noticed and resented the compulsion, Sumala said, “That’s true. And that’s why you had to kidnap me, because you thought that if you had me as a hostage my father would have to agree to open his realm to let me back. Then you could take your warships into his country and have it for yourself. Well, I won’t let you, and neither will he.”

  “Someone has been saying remarkable things to you both.” The queen beckoned, and her dragon set its great claws in the bank and heaved itself like a crocodile onto the land.

  “Someone should be eaten,” it said, in a voice like wind through gravel. “A moment’s snack and it’s done.” It laid its head down in front of Flynn, and its muzzle alone came up to his thigh. With its jaw on the ground, it and he regarded one another eye to eye.

  There was a whole universe of fire in its gaze, welcoming him into cave upon cave of gold and amber, maze upon maze of riddles. He saw himself briefly as it must see him, in monotone, surrounded by a lapping cloud of something. It looked like smoke. No, it didn’t look like anything—it tasted, he tasted of weariness and confusion and despair.

  He was leaving a vapour trail of homesickness behind him. It tasted the washed-out blue of a woodpigeon’s breast and smelled like frankincense. Flynn shook his head, stepped back, and Sumala put herself between the mocking yellow gaze and him. “Leave him alone!”

  The rumble of dragon laughter was like stones falling. Its face did not change shape, but it raised its wings as a dog might raise alerted ears. “He is not above a mouthful, but I would have trouble getting the taste out of my mouth afterwards. You, on the other hand, covered in gold…”

  It slid out a long, bright blue tongue and lashed the air around her. “I could crunch the bones, melt the gold and spit it out to add to my hoard. You are a toothsome morsel.”

  Hands on hips, Sumala stared it down, and at last the avalanche of laughter came again. Flynn thought, for one mad moment, that it winked at him, the glow in one eye fading, flicking back on.

  “Up you come then,
” it finished with ghastly cheer, jerking its chin to gesture them up. At the same time, one of the guards jabbed Flynn in the back with his spear, and the energy in it gave him an acid zing, as if his blood had turned to lemon juice.

  He staggered but managed to stay on his feet, propping himself on the dragon’s neck ridges. A murmur went through the onlooking warriors, and the one who had struck him stepped back, looking frightened.

  As he pushed himself upright, the dragon’s neck surprisingly warm beneath his palm, the scales smooth but not slimy, it occurred to him that they had expected him to fall over, unconscious, and he remembered, belatedly, how much stronger he was than they.

  Could that help him now? Could he turn, unexpectedly, fight them all and… And what? Certainly not go home. So what else was there to do? He looked speculatively at Oonagh, who was leaning on her own spear, quite calmly, waiting for him to do as he was told.

  The skipper would have fought her just for that. Just because he didn’t like to be told what to do. But Flynn would never see the skipper again, so what the hell did it matter?

  Liadain’s information came back to his mind and, bruised about the heart though he was, he felt a stirring of purpose return. Perhaps he couldn’t fight his own war any more, but in this world, could he still do his bit? The thought of resistance grew slowly, but as it did, the dragon’s mouth opened slowly in a gape of moonstone teeth, and a wash of cool purple flame flickered about his ankles.

  Ah. Yes, he thought, good point. Setting his foot in the angle of the dragon’s elbow, then on the shoulder, he climbed up and took a seat on the long, sinuous back. It had what he considered to be the traditional arrangement of spikes all along its backbone, but when seen up close they were more like the humps of a camel, smooth knots of flesh beneath which the skin indented as it did in the hollows of a backbone. The result was a natural saddle, like that on a medieval warhorse, with a pommel before and cantle behind. A little tight for him, particularly in his boiler suit, flying jacket and Mae West, but smooth and not too hard, padded by a layer of fat.

  The muscle worked beneath him, and he fell forward as the dragon brought its hind legs beneath itself. He grabbed at a dorsal spike to avoid being flung back again as it pushed up on its forelegs, walked with the awkward, deliberate tread of an iguana back to more solid ground. Sumala ran lightly up the trailing tail, followed by two guards, and as the dragon turned, bringing himself nose on into the wind, for all the world like a Lanc about to take flight, Oonagh jumped from ground to shoulder and set herself in the embroidered saddle.

  I could kill her now, Flynn thought, separated only by the dragon’s spike from her vulnerable back. His knife was still in his boot. A single stab and he could avenge the death of the boys. He could end Liadain’s war at a stroke. These people at least could have peace.

  With a swarming, uncomfortable run, the dragon hurled itself at the riverbank. It was higher here, two or three feet above the water’s surface. The great muscles bunched and thrust. He scrabbled at the turf with claws as silver as moonlight, digging the point on his tail in and using it for extra thrust. The huge, membranous wings snapped out—the shape of his back changing beneath Flynn’s seat. Flynn gripped with his knees as he’d been taught to do riding the carthorse on his uncle’s farm, but the black scales gave no purchase, only a million reflections of himself, looking wild and wind tossed and a little fraught.

  The river surface flattened in the down drop and pressure hammered Flynn into the ridge of spine. Tears came to his eyes. They rose in the air with a bound. Another down blast, and the dragon tucked its feet in close and, just missing the other bank of the river, began to laboriously climb the air as a man might climb a flight of steps. Every riser an effort.

  Despite twenty-three operational sorties, Flynn didn’t like to see the ground recede beneath him. He missed his navigator’s cabin and the blackout curtains he could pull around him to shut out vision and fear. But he swallowed around the familiar smooth pebble of fear in his throat and looked down, memorising the lay of the land—river to waterfall, waterfall to industrial heartland, distant glimmer of spaceships and mountains beyond. In the other direction the river bisected high moorlands and terminated in a lake ringed by tall hills and forest.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the spaceships?” he asked, his hand heavy on his knee, as if he already carried the knife in his palm and was conscious of hiding it there.

  “It is your destiny to do what you will do.” Oonagh swung a leg about the pommel of her saddle, and used it to swivel, facing him. “Already there are signs that things are working out to my advantage. Is it my place to make your choices easier?”

  “Yes, if I’m to be your champion.”

  “No. If that is what you are destined to be, that is what you will be.” It was hard to tell what the thoughts were beneath the silver mirrors of her eyes, and her face was flawless and expressionless as a result. But her sigh was the sigh of a very old woman. “Yet if you have seen my country, you know why I must act. Your people are not the only ones fighting for their lives, Navigator. Tell me, do you like raining fire on the heads of innocent children? A warrior’s honour is never to fight with drudges, serfs and women, and yet you go to war against all of these. Does your conscience not trouble you?”

  He could have said yes. But not to her. “Not really. They bombed us first. Besides, Hitler has to be stopped. Gas chambers? Extermination camps? You can’t compromise with that. Let them get rid of their madman, and we’ll stop bombing, but there are worse things than dying, and having him win would be one.”

  “You would do anything to stop him.”

  “Almost.”

  “Then we understand each other, for I too am fighting against a future I will not allow to come to pass. You fight for your freedom. I fight for survival.”

  “Fine words.” The slipstream blew bitterness out of Flynn’s mouth. “And I’ve heard a lot of fine words recently. Which ones am I supposed to believe?”

  She laughed, a full-throated, startling sound. “This is why I shall not give you any more words. If you are to be my champion, then my champion you will be, without persuasion or force.”

  “No force?” Sumala shouted into the wind, gesturing behind herself at the guards. “What do you call this?”

  “Safeguarding my investment.” Oonagh laughed again.

  Beneath them, her merriment fell like rain on a pristine meadow. Between the mountains, the tallest thing in the plain lands was the hill of the palace, its crown as smoothly green as the pastureland, speckled with poppies and cornflowers. The slope of its sides looked bright as red flares, the lime wash reflecting the rosy light of sunlight. A processional line of standing stones wound up to the single great door, and the turf between them was smooth as any English bowling lawn. But where the river pushed its way back into daylight, the exit was concealed by a small copse of briars and elders.

  There were other copses here and there in the meadow, making Flynn wonder if they concealed other exits. There was no reason, after all, why path upon path could not be threading through the darkness above and below the city’s public streets.

  “What do you intend to do with us?” Sumala asked, shouting over the woosh and rush of the wing beats and the shrill of all her bells.

  “Nothing you need fear.” Oonagh smiled. “It is important to me that your father should know I have not mistreated you.”

  Sumala’s winglike black brows swept down over her almond-shaped eyes. She scowled very fetchingly, Flynn thought, and the thought had more weight than he might have liked. He could not go home, that much was certain. Therefore he must—if he was to live at all—learn to live with these people. It was probably allowable then to start noticing, once more, how very attractive the girl was.

  Don’t give up yet. We’ll find you a way home.

  His stomach was a snake pit, full of writhing cold. For the first time, he was sure his imaginary friend was lying. In any event, better treat li
fe from now on as if he’d bailed out over occupied country. Better not to cling too hard to thoughts of what he’d lost—that way lay madness. Better think instead of what he might usefully achieve here.

  He reconsidered his knife. The guards were behind Sumala. How quickly could they get to him? Quicker than he could bend down, draw the knife and stab it into Oonagh’s back between the ribs?

  Looking back, he met the gaze of the elf who had jabbed him earlier. This particular type affected red eyes, red hair and green skin. Ghastly! That and the intense stare, the look of personal affront he’d worn since he’d failed to lay Flynn out flat the first time, indicated a character who was waiting for the slightest opportunity to pounce.

  Flynn leaned, got his fingers into his boot, and the shaft of the spear came down hard on his shoulder. The head of it, flickering with lime-sour light, stood out a little way from his chin. All the cells of his body cringed from the threat of the sting. He pushed the knife back into its scabbard and leaned away. Well, that answered that.

  Through his clamped knees, he could feel the surge of a great heartbeat, and he wondered about the moment where he had seen the world through dragon eyes. What would it be like to bank and fly under your own power, in a grey world beneath a constant stream of tastes and scent? He could imagine it if he tried, but could not find words for the experience, even to describe it to himself.

  Still, he could feel the jolt of impact from the landing through his own arms and legs, could almost imagine he felt the grate of soil and pebbles through his fingernails. He clung on tight as the great beast dug in, bracing itself against the sudden stop. When everything had settled enough for him to look up, he found its head swung towards him, an emotion that looked like laughter in the inferno of its eyes. Plumes of steam rose from its nostrils and glittered in the sunlight like a fountain of ruby.

  Oonagh raised the deep hood of her cloak over her head before she leapt off. Her shadowed face disappeared, and only her jewels could be seen, glittering bloodlike in the radiance of the setting sun. It hung above the distant mountains like a shield of bronze, and the snow beneath it looked like gore.