Dragon Chameleon: Episodes 9-12

by Wilson, Sarah K. L.

  “Please!” A woman’s voice called from beside me. She sounded close to tears. “Please, can you help me! I can’t carry them all.”

  She was the only one coming out on the street, her arms full of four children. One – a baby – was tied around her in a white scarf. Another she held on her hip while two little faces peered out from her skirts.”

  I opened my mouth to tell her she’d need a different way to the Castel and then I felt it – a ripple. A ripple in the golems below.

  Why could I feel them so easily? I’m no kin of yours, golems!

  Tachril can see them! They climb!

  “Climb up!” I yelled to the woman, my arms opening to take the toddler from her hip.

  She shoved him into my arms at the same moment that he started screaming, reaching for her, his face a red mess of tears and snot. I was allergic to children but I clamped him in one arm, ignoring his battering fists and reached for another child, pulling the boy into the saddle in front of me.

  Saboraak danced nervously and the children screamed in terror.

  “Would you stop that?” I barked, not knowing if I meant her or them. I was nervous too. I was scared too. We all were. And I didn’t have time to be patient. None of us had time.

  The next child was shoved at me, a little girl with long dark hair. I put her in front of her brother and reached an arm to help their struggling mother up behind me.

  She was still clambering aboard when the first shadow peeked over the wall.

  Chapter Fourteen

  A row of shadows joined the first one as I pulled at the crying woman. She was having trouble with her center of gravity low and the baby in her sling.

  “Hurry!” I yelled still not knowing who I was talking to.

  “Too late! Too late!” My mimic screamed, his face a rictus of fear.

  Shouts filled the air from the wall and then fire really was being thrown at the shadows. Stones and rocks were next, and shadows were falling from the wall, but one – just one – leapt forward straight for me as if I had been outlined in light.

  Or as if I had bright moon-tattoos all over my face. Yeah. So helpful, ancestors.

  My arms tightened on the children.

  “Fly! Fly!” I called, hoping the mother was holding on. I didn’t have arms for her, too. I only had two. Skies and stars, if only I had more arms!

  Saboraak started to launch in the air and then stopped, tugged backward.

  She screamed and something inside me shattered with fear. I clung to the children, looking around to see a wolf-golem with her tail clamped in his teeth. Saboraak struggled against his hold, but every flailing move shook at us so that I barely could hold the children. Their mother clung to my back with one arm, the other wrapped around the baby, her own screams and tears added to theirs.

  And then Tachril was shooting from the sky like a lightning bolt. His massive wings blocked my vision but the snarls and snapping and squealing of metal behind me was like a song of death ripped from the mouth of an angel.

  Saboraak spun free, surging into the air. Was she hurt? Was it bad?

  Hurts. Lots. I’m bleeding.

  How badly? What did you do to stop dragons from bleeding?

  I’ll be okay. We need to hurry.

  She flapped hard, dodging the peaks of buildings as she chased the city streets upward, tier upon tier to the Castel. The skylifts that usually carried traffic quickly were silent and unused, their operators pulled away by the urgency of the night. The buildings were dark or filled to the brim with men brandishing weapons. Or – and this made me shudder – mostly empty except for a few people with white aprons and steaming pots. Healers. They were preparing for the wounded.

  My stomach did a flip at the gates of the Castel where people choked every entrance. After grabbing this mother and her four wailing children from the teeth of death, I couldn’t just leave her to fight her way through that crowd herself.

  “Find one of the lower towers,” I called to Saboraak.

  I lowered the mother to the roof as we landed on the lowest open-topped tower, shoving the screaming red-faced toddler into her free arm, wishing he’d spare my ears as a thank you – but no, no gratitude there.

  I leapt down from Saboraak and opened my arms to help the other two down, putting one on each hip. There wasn’t time for little legs to keep up.

  “Wait here for me, do you hear?” I said to Saboraak, harsh in my jittery anxiety. “Don’t go flying off! I’ll be back.”

  Tachril-

  “Can look after himself! You’ll build your dragon city but not if you fly off right now!”

  That didn’t even make sense. I wasn’t making sense. That ability left me hours ago.

  “Follow me,” I told the mother, running to the stairs and descending as quickly as I could with two children in my arms. They were maybe four or five. Were children this size always so heavy?

  By the time we reached the bottom of the stairs to the storerooms below I could have sworn I was carrying two dragons.

  “Halt there,” the guard at the steps said.

  In the storeroom, careful lines were formed, clerks running up and down them with a harried look, clutching shuffled papers and frayed quills, assessing who could carry and be given supplies and who needed carrying. The other entrances were choked with people and five or six guards held the line at each one. Here, inside the empty Castel there was only one.

  “No men,” the guard said. “No space for you. Can the woman carry all the children?”

  I looked at her. Her red-rimmed eyes looked overwhelmed.

  “Pair her up with someone who can help,” I said.

  The guard nodded, looking relieved that I wasn’t fighting him. How many fathers had he torn from their families today? His eyes looked haunted.

  “You could carry them,” my mimic suggested. “Lenora would let you. She owes you that much.”

  No one owed me anything.

  But I did catch a glimpse of Lenora as I set the children down.

  “Be careful,” I warned their mother. “The journey isn’t over yet.”

  “Thank you!” she gasped, tears rolling down her face. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Just get them to safety,” I growled. I wasn’t good at emotion. Especially this much of it. It was like a tornado whipping me up into the air and spinning me around until I didn’t know earth from sky.

  She hurried away with a clerk the guard hailed. It was hard not to keep watching them with my eyes even as they hurried to what might be safety. I hated screaming toddlers. And at the same time, I wanted to stay with them and make sure they were safe. I was as jumbled as any tornado.

  “Tor!” Lenora hurried up from the crowds. She looked like a rag someone had wrung out, her big eyes haunted and aching. “The golems?”

  “On the walls,” I said. “I have to go.”

  She nodded biting her lip as she looked around. “How many more?”

  “The lines are long. Likely more than you’ll get through here before the walls are breached,” I said quietly.

  A shadow passed over her face and she turned to go but I caught her arm. “Zyla?”

  “She’s down there leading them. It’s up to her now,” Lenora said.

  “And your brother?”

  She shrugged. “I haven’t seen him. Skies and stars send he is safe.”

  “He seems to know his business.”

  She nodded wearily, pulling together a smile for me. “We’re all behind our fighting men.”

  Well, that’s nice. Oh, wait. She meant me.

  What did you say to that? Was she trying to encourage me? Was it even possible to encourage someone when you were both sure the situation was hopeless?

  More than likely, one of us would be dead by tomorrow.

  I saluted. It was the only thing that came to me.

  And then I spun around and ran back to the steps, sped up them, letting all my emotions push my legs so that I wouldn’t have to think about what I was runn
ing from.

  Some things no one should have to live through.

  Some things no one should have to feel.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I took a good look at Saboraak’s tail when I got up the stairs.

  Leave it.

  Gouges of flesh were torn out of it leaving red gashes and ragged scales.

  If I live, I can sleep it off. We need to go help Tachril.

  Skies and stars! We’d only met Tachril a few days ago. She needed to cool it on the obsession thing.

  How would you feel if that was Zyla out there?

  Zyla was down in the warrens. She was leading desperate citizens through narrow paths in the infinite dark. I was trying not to think about that. I was trying not to be swallowed up. Skies and stars send her safe!

  Sorry.

  I leapt onto Saboraak’s back, tightening all the straps as she leapt into the air, flying up, up, up until the city was so far below that we could see everything – a dragon’s eye view.

  It was worse from up here.

  The black swarm edged the walls like paper dipped in tar. It clung to them as men shoved back with polearms and the dragons of this city swooped down and plucked them from the walls, flinging them back to earth. Would that be enough to kill a golem? If “kill” was even the right word ...

  Seems to be working.

  Skies and stars, I hoped it would.

  They needed to buy the vulnerable more time to flee. We needed to buy them that.

  Saboraak plunged down from the air. Did she see something that I didn’t?

  Oh, of course. We were headed to where Tachril swooped and fought against the golems on the wall, his Green wing fighting with him. I was surprised to see that Nostar and his wing all had spears in hand. As their dragons lunged and fought, they stabbed as they could. That wasn’t much against a golem, but sometimes pressure from the exact right point could tip the balance.

  As I watched, a well-placed spear thrust from Letina tipped a golem over the edge and it fell, woodenly from the city wall into the long plunge to the ground below. I shivered. One down. Hundreds more to go.

  I was going to need a spear.

  How about a flagpole?

  Saboraak banked hard to the side as we flew past a building with a flag hanging out over the street below. The flag hung from a sharp-ended pole sitting in a metal bracket.

  I leaned out as we passed and snatched the flagpole from the bracket. It was long – at least a foot longer than I was – a garish red with a heraldic sign on it – decoration maybe? A dragon gripping an arrow. What fool flew that over his shop?

  An arrow maker, perhaps?

  They called those fletchers.

  I pulled at the flag, trying to rip it off, but it wouldn’t budge. I’d just have to use it with the flag still attached. At least it was heavy and sharp on the end - a spear with a flag attached to it.

  I positioned the spear in my grip just as we reached the wall.

  Saboraak swooped down, her feet snatching a golem from the edge of the metal and stonework wall at the same moment that it lunged toward a knot of men. They barely scrambled away as she plucked it from the ground.

  Its weight dragged us down and Saboraak tumbled from the wall, dragged by the weight until she dropped the golem off the side.

  One down, only a few hundred more to go ...

  The humans fought hard, spears and polearms more use than swords, as groups of thirty or more men pressed and pushed against a single golem.

  I watched in horror as one of the metal beasts snatched a man up from the ground with his teeth, shattering him in those mighty jaws even as his fellows shoved with all their might, sending the automaton toppling over the wall and plummeting toward the ground, his victim still clutched in his jaws.

  Saboraak dove into the fray again, side by side with Tachril. I could feel her burst of pride and joy at his presence. Oddly, it made me feel safer, too.

  His flare of fire raged over the backs of a pair of golems, but their metal carapaces were unaffected by the flames. Tachril snatched the first one up, bobbing under the weight and dropping over the side. We were fast behind him, descending to grab our own golem and replicating the action.

  How many golems could the dragons stop one at a time?

  In the chaos of the flight, my vision spinning with the flurry and fury of Saboraak’s work, it was hard to catch the rest of the battle in more than glimpses.

  I’d catch sight of a group of men shoving a golem over the side of the city with a roar, only to spin away as Saboraak set her sights on another one.

  Why were they so easy to knock back when they could climb up the underside of the city?

  The pressure from behind them is too great. They can’t scramble back. It’s forward or fall.

  I’d catch a glimpse of another group, scattering and screaming as a golem burst through their ranks and into the city, only to lose sight of it again as Saboraak dodged the attack of another leaping golem. It was strange to fight a thing that had no expressions, no emotions, only relentless, snapping steel.

  I shoved his snapping jaws away, leaning into the point of my spear with all my might as it caught his fiery eye.

  Keep it up! We’re doing great!

  We were surviving. Nothing more.

  There was a flurry of black wings just above my head as a wing of Black dragons dove down to snatch the rogue golem that had broken through our ranks. The claw at the tip of one black wing scored across my sleeve, tearing it open. I flinched away.

  That was close!

  I was still catching my breath as Saboraak wheeled, hurtling after Tachril as his wing dove toward one of the great city gates where dragons could enter, and massive platforms were usually raised from the lands below.

  Lee Estabis stood before the arch, holding a wickedly shaped polearm high in the air and shouting encouragement to his men as the morning light spread his shadow out like the flag on the end of my spear. Where was his black dragon, Isitdor?

  He flies with the other Black dragons. Estabis has chosen to stand and fight with his men on the city streets.

  Noble.

  His men rallied, gathering around him with a roar as together they pressed back another surge of golems.

  The golems crashed forward, shredding bone and flesh and weapons indiscriminately.

  And then we were in their ranks, the dragons snatching up golem after golem, and dropping them to their deaths like birds breaking open tortoises.

  We were pushing them back, shoving them inch by inch back to the rim of the skycity. I could see hope in the glimpses of men’s faces as they fought.

  We were doing it.

  We were going to save Estabis.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A terrible ripping scream tore through the air and Saboraak shuddered under me.

  What was it?

  What-?

  She leapt to the side and in the flurry of her flapping wings I grabbed the pommel of the saddle, gripped my spear and tried to hold on as we bumped against a building, masonry, and dust raining down on us.

  The golems in the gate surged forward, leaping over a new obstacle – a fallen Black dragon dead on the street in front of the gate.

  I gasped in horror as I saw soldiers scrambling through the rubble to try to pull friends out from under their massive dead ally. The dragon’s rider scrambled up on top of him, spear held high as he jabbed toward the eyes of the first golem. He disappeared as their bodies surged over him, trampling both him and his fallen dragon.

  We couldn’t let them pour through the gate like that! We couldn’t –

  A horn was sounding. Men fled down the streets.

  “Come on, Saboraak! We have to stop them!”

  She didn’t seem to be listening. She shoved her body against the building. Was she hurt? I spun in the saddle, looking, looking. I couldn’t see a wound other than her tail, but wounds could be inside, invisible. She matched the color of the building exactly, as if she hoped to
blend in.

  “Saboraak?”

  She didn’t answer. I fumbled with my straps, unbuckling them.

  The golems would be here at any moment. They were pushing forward through our defenses. A few men, scattered, operating independently, fought in small groups.

  Hyoogan dropped to the ground in their midst, battling his way forward with snapping jaws and scything wings. He grabbed one golem in his strong jaws, flinging him to the side. The golem hit a nearby building and fell to the ground as men scattered below.

  But it was too much for one dragon. A pack of golems was on him now, their metal mouths tearing chunks from his wings and scales. His brothers surged down from the sky, grabbing up his attackers and flinging them over the side of the city.

  I loosened my last buckle and dropped to the ground, running so fast to Saboraak’s head that I almost tripped over my spear. She leaned against the building, quivering, her head low, her eyes wide.

  “Are you hurt?” I yelled over the chaos, taking her massive head in my hands. “Saboraak?”

  A black dragon. They killed a black dragon.

  Fear gripped my heart in its icy hands. She was afraid. She saw a dragon twice her size fall dead from the sky and she was frozen with fear. I’d seen this before.

  I’d been in Vanika when it fell. I’d been one of the lucky ones who survived the fall. I’d been there when the city was taken by the Dusk Covenant. I’d been there when it burnt in wide swaths as the Dominar took it back. But I’d hidden in the shadows. I’d scrambled to safety, hiding and running and hiding again. I hadn’t had to stand and fight. Other than brawls, I’d never really fought at all. My fancy throwing knives were worth nothing here.

  I looked around, assessing.

  All my ability to charm others and draw them in was useless here. We didn’t fight flesh and blood, but something much more powerful.

  And I could feel it. I could feel the tide of the golems surging up. I could feel where they were winning and where they were losing. I could feel them falling over the edge and crumpling. I could feel it as if I were somehow attached to them. If I concentrated, I could feel each golem, point right to them even on a moonless night.