by Stephen Deas
He felt the air tingle. Lightning arced from the nearest glasship but it fizzed into nothing before it reached the eyrie rim. They were coming low, level with the eyrie where the cannon couldn’t bear on them. Black-powder cannon were designed to fire from the ground at glasships attacking from the sky. No one had thought that on an eyrie already flying a mile over the ground that wasn’t so clever. The alchemist had explained this to Tuuran long ago and they’d had a bit of a laugh at the Taiytakei for not being as smart as they liked to think; but the alchemist had also whispered a little secret in Tuuran’s ear that he’d never have thought of himself but was so patently obvious. What goes up must come down. And glasships, unlike dragons, were big and slow.
They had the cannon turned toward the glasships, the barrels cranked for the furthest range they could manage. He’d seen it done with scorpions before and archers did it all the time, arcing up-and-over shots instead of shooting straight. No one had ever hit a dragon with a scorpion doing something so daft, but dragons were fast and agile and glasships weren’t. And there were a lot of them and they were clustered together, concentrating their lightning to drive the dragon away.
He winced as the first cannon fired, as loud as any thunder, then squinted to see whether it made a difference. He hadn’t the first idea, but the glasships were coming straight towards the eyrie, and all he had to do was keep making it rain iron balls somewhere between them and eventually he’d hit something. And he had a lot of iron balls and a crew of a dozen men for each cluster of cannon and a whole pile of conveniently abandoned sleds to carry all the powder and shot.
Sleds.
He didn’t know where the warning came from but it made him suddenly look back behind him, away from the glasships.
Liang ran out into the hatchery, hugging the eyrie wall, eyes darting everywhere for the next thing that would try to kill her. Sleds shot overhead and lightning rained from the sky. The hatchling dragons screamed and burned and lashed their tails and tore apart any who came near the cannon. A killer appeared and slashed, severing a hatchling’s wing as he burned in the dragon’s fire. Out over the rim and beyond the wall, soldiers on sleds swarmed around the black-powder cannon. The air fizzed and flashed with thunder as the Taiytakei swung their ashgars and slaughtered each other. Dozens of men fell, and then a spark must have set off some powder and one of the cannon exploded. Liang reeled. Over the roar of the wind and the lightning, the detonation rang in her ears. Debris – irons balls, bits of cannon, shards of mangled gold-glass, limbs and broken bodies – fizzed across the eyrie and showered over the far side of the dragon yard and the rim beyond. The Taiytakei around the cannon were pulverised and the blast picked up and shook every sled within a hundred yards, flinging them through the air, shrugging off riders to crash to the yard or the walls or fall screaming to the all-devouring storm-dark a mile below. More soldiers on sleds swarmed around the other cannon. Hatchlings shrieked and tore them down.
Liang kept as far away as she could. She scurried to the closest set of steps, well away from any of the cannon clusters on the rim. The crippled hatchling turned its head to look at her, more curious than anything, as if trying to understand what she was doing. Liang climbed to the top of the wall. She slipped and slid down the outside and then she was on the rim. The cannon here were already ruined, destroyed in the Vespinese attack weeks ago when Tsen had vanished. It was almost quiet here except for the wind. There was one other thing out on this side though.
Liang looked up at the glasship floating overhead, one of the five now keeping the eyrie aloft.
A sled shot past Tuuran’s head as he dived around the bulk of the cannon. Lightning cracked and sparked along the barrel. Another sled whizzed past. The soldier on it levelled his wand and then vanished, torn off and thrown away by a furious hatchling. It was all wrong, fighting with a dragon and not against it. Then again it was all wrong fighting men on flying glass sleds who threw lightning, especially when he didn’t have any of their nice fancy armour. A solid brigandine had done him fine in Dhar Thosis, but now he was buggered.
He cringed behind his gold-glass shield. Lightning slammed into it, dazzling him. He picked up a stone, ready to throw it, but the sled had shot off over the dragon yard and now another raced overhead. The soldier on the back swung his ashgar and sent one of Tuuran’s sword-slaves flying. The Taiytakei had wands, armour and their sleds. Tuuran’s soldiers had sleds too, but the Vespinese Taiytakei were practised with them, and knew how to fly, and that made all the difference.
The lightning from the glasships was getting closer. They were coming in range. Another minute or so and they’d start hitting the eyrie rim. Another minute after that and they’d reach the cannon and then . . . well, never mind then. Had to last that long first.
‘Keep firing the cannon!’ he screamed, not that anyone could hear him over the roar of the wind and the cacophony of screams and dragon shrieks and thunderclaps. Four bolts hit a hatchling all at once. It crashed out of the air and smashed into the rim, rolled and jumped up and shook itself and was back in the air at once, mad with fury, but for a moment the Taiytakei had him and his men at their mercy . . .
A thunderous explosion shook the eyrie. He felt it through his feet a moment before he heard it and then a thumping wall of air hammered into him, staggering him, almost knocking him down. Pieces of stone and flying metal fizzed overhead. Something hit his shield hard enough to crack it, almost knocking it out of his hand. He saw a plume of bright fire, smoke trails arcing away before they were torn apart by the buffeting wind. Men and sleds tumbled and fell all around him. A Taiytakei landed heavily in front of him and groaned, dazed. Tuuran brought his axe down before the man could get up. Two cannons were still firing but his own sword-slaves were too busy fighting for their lives to tip bags of powder and iron balls into the barrels. He saw one on a sled turn and flee and then another, and he couldn’t say he blamed them for it, and then one of the hatchlings shot out from the eyrie and tore them both to pieces. ‘Our side!’ Tuuran screamed, not that the dragon could hear, but he was sure it knew exactly what it was doing. They had no mercy, no fear, no remorse, and certainly no kindness.
He cowered behind his shield as another barrage of lightning flew at him. He was right next to the powder store. Deliberate choice, but now the Taiytakei knew what they had to do and they were firing at him again and again, and all he could do was hide behind the shield and wait for a spark and . . .
Shadow engulfed him. The red-gold dragon swooped and shot over the top of his cannon as it sped back towards the glasships. The wind of its wings tumbled sleds, tossed riders into the air and scattered them to the stone below, Taiytakei and his own sword-slaves alike. One sled smashed into the cannon. Tuuran looked about. Half his men were dead. The rest were running. He was on his own. He picked up the broken sled, thought for a bit about propping it over the powder store and then reckoned that was pointless given there wasn’t anyone left to load the cannon anyway. He jumped on it and tried to make it fly but it just sat under his feet and did nothing except make him feel stupid. The hard way then.
On foot he bolted around the rim for the cannon that were still firing.
Liang moulded her bomb until it was wrapped around all of the silver chains that connected the eyrie to the glasship above. Everyone was missing the point. They were fighting over the eyrie but why did it matter? The dragons, Zafir, the sorcerer sitting quietly in the middle of it all while anarchy and chaos and the end of the world exploded around him . . . no one would ever truly own any of them. They had to go. No eyrie, no more dragons.
She fired her lightning wand at the bomb, reeled from the light and then staggered and fell as a wall of hot air slammed into her. As she lay dazed, she wished she hadn’t fought Tsen so hard for so many glasships to keep them from falling into the storm-dark and cursed Lin Feyn for setting enchantments she couldn’t break.
She picked herself up. The silver chains were severed. Four more to go. She’d stand
a little further away for the next lot.
A second cannon exploded. The blast knocked Tuuran off his feet and more of the Taiytakei off their sleds but they still kept coming. There were several on the ground again now and Tuuran kept waiting for Crazy to do something instead of sitting there with his head back, staring with his silver eyes up at the sky, but he didn’t. He just sat, and anyone who went near him simply vanished into black vapour and blew away in the wind.
The rim was still littered with junk and all manner of detritus. Liang spotted a slave hiding, curled up under the ruin of a crane that had once lifted supplies from the desert. The eyrie had never struck her as particularly large, but running around the rim with a bomb in her hands to the second mooring, it felt vast. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d run so fast, or if she’d ever been as terrified as she was now.
She glanced at the approaching glasships. Their lightning was almost at the walls. She couldn’t see the dragon rampaging in their midst but she didn’t dare hope it was dead. Nothing ever seemed enough. Dragon and rider alike, somehow they survived everything.
She reached the second mooring, set off her bomb around the silver chains, stayed long enough to see that all of them were severed and then ran back the way she’d come, flooded with relief to be free of the cursed thing, only to have the great red-gold dragon shoot up from under the rim straight over the top of her, flattening her and almost making her heart stop. There were holes in its wings, charred and ragged. The dragon circled the eyrie once, caused havoc among the Taiytakei on their sleds, knocked half of them out of the sky with the wind of its passing, and then shrieked and arrowed away. On the far side of the rim another detonation shook the ground as a second cannon exploded. Liang picked herself up, shaking. Three more moorings and then it would all be over, and it was just a matter of finding a sled that still worked and getting Belli to stand on the back of it with her – never mind his terror of heights – and then not being eaten by a dragon or shot down by lightning as they fled, and maybe, just maybe, escaping all the way from the Godspike to the Dralamut.
It made her laugh sometimes, her own boundless optimism that somehow everything would end not too badly after all. Helped with the shaking though. She ran back around the rim and over the wall to the mouth of the tunnel where she kept her bombs and her sled; and it was only as she reached the entrance to the spiralling passages that she saw the crippled hatchling, waiting for her there.
Tuuran’s cannon were silent. The lightning from the glasships had reached the wall now and they were climbing. He saw a hatchling struck again and again by Taiytakei wands until it crashed into the dragon yard, and then a dozen soldiers struck it with more lightning from the air, over and over, keeping it writhing and helpless while three men on the ground with ashgars clubbed at its head. Another hatchling shot through them, scattering the soldiers on the sleds and tearing two of the Taiytakei from the ground in its talons and hurling them away, but too late. The fallen hatchling didn’t move.
Tuuran half ran and half fell down the steps to the dragon yard. What defence was left was clustered around the last cannon now, two hatchlings and a few dozen soldiers, but they were being swamped, the men cowering behind their shields under a deluge of lightning. The glasships were still falling, one by one, smashed by cannon fire or torn from the sky by the raging dragon, but nowhere near fast enough. Once the eyrie was in range of their cannon, everything would be over. He raced into the middle of the yard.
‘Crazy!’ Somehow the wind was blowing more strongly in his face. ‘Crazy! Do something! Look!’
But Crazy Mad didn’t look up, and as Tuuran tried to get closer, he found the air thicker and thicker until a few feet away from Crazy it was like trying to walk through a wall and he simply couldn’t. ‘Crazy! You’ve got to . . .’
The eyrie shook as the cannon behind him blew apart.
Liang’s eyes bulged. The hatchling came at her, and the air was full of men on sleds and lightning, and any moment now one of them was going to see her, just another slave in the open, and shoot her down. She reached for a piece of glass to mould and throw at the dragon, but as she did, the hatchling suddenly turned and Liang saw the flicker of a man appear beside it and then vanish again. The hatchling jumped back and spat a gout of flame. The moment was enough. Liang threw the glass into the tunnel entrance, shaping it as it flew to seal the tunnel shut and the hatchling inside it. It wouldn’t hold for long but maybe long enough. She turned and ran back for the wall, up the steps and over the other side, looking for a place to hide.
The air popped beside her. A killer. She whimpered and looked down at herself but there was no cut, no bladeless knife drawing away already dripping red with her blood. He looked at her. The knife was in his hand, ready. ‘For whom do you fight, enchantress?’
She was shaking so much that she could hardly speak and she couldn’t stop looking at the knife. Any moment now and he’d use it and then she’d die, but worse Belli would die too. She had more glass and she could make a shield, but it wouldn’t matter because she didn’t have time and he could appear anywhere he liked and the bladeless knife would cut through metal and glass as though it was air, and then she’d never finish severing the moorings to sink them all into the storm-dark, and even if he didn’t kill her here and now, she’d sealed the hatchling into the tunnel and the bombs she’d made were in there too and she’d never get to . . .
She stopped. Froze for a moment, consumed by her own quivering and the pounding of her heart. The knife . . .
‘I would sink this eyrie into the storm-dark,’ she quavered, still staring at the knife. ‘I was trying to do that. I was cutting the chains. But you could do that. You could cut them all. In a blink. Any one of you could.’
His face was a blank mask. She had no idea whether he understood. She went from terror to wanting to shake him.
‘Cut the chains that tether the eyrie to the glasships! Finish what Tsen tried to do! It will all sink into the storm-dark and be gone for ever.’
He didn’t move. She closed her eyes and waited for the cut to end her life, but it didn’t come. When she opened them again, he’d vanished.
Diamond Eye was gone, lost to hunger and rage. Zafir felt his sense of death, his own coming end, but greater still his hunger to be a storm as he fell upon the glasships yet again, a frenzy of tooth and claw and lashing tail. Twice he tumbled towards the storm-dark below, helpless and dazed and dazzled with pain, mind ragged and jumbled and askew, and twice Zafir had screamed him back. She’d torn through the cacophony and the madness and rammed the order of her will into him. Fly! Fly! Spread your wings and fly! The second time they’d fallen they’d almost touched the maelstrom, but she’d done it. She’d saved them both and the dragon knew it. See. We have a use.
Diamond Eye didn’t answer. He powered up in renewed fury towards the glasships as another one splintered and cracked under a hail of iron from the eyrie cannon. There was nothing their enemies could do but hang helplessly in the sky and hurl their lightning. Diamond Eye flew higher then turned and fell upon them, crashing into the highest, slashing and biting at the discs at the heart of it until the glasship tipped and began to slide to its end. He fell upon another and tore out its heart and gripped it with his claws, dragging it towards the next, shielding himself with it from the lightning that flashed and thundered around them. The glasships crashed together and exploded into shards while the dragon stormed on, slashing with his shattering tail, swooping and soaring as their gold rims glowed with white-hot light and Zafir felt the air prickle and scratch in the hail of lightning. They were almost over the eyrie now, the glasships raining death over everything, the battle already lost, the end coming close. Zafir closed her eyes. Her heart sang. They were primal beings now, both of them, locked together in this, dying as a dragon and a dragon-queen should die. Lightning shattered the air above her, beside her, all around her. Noise deafening, light blinding, yet Diamond Eye jinked and dived and rose and rolled b
etween the thunderbolts. The air smelled of fire and sorcery, that burning tang that rose sometimes from the depths of her old palace where the Silver King had made his miracles.
Lightning from the glasships was hitting the walls. Crazy didn’t flinch. Tuuran shook his head and turned his back and ran for the tunnels because now there was nothing he could do except find a sled and go. The eyrie shuddered again. He had the strangest feeling as though it was tipping, like a ship rolling in the swell of the sea.
A thunderbolt struck Diamond Eye’s wing near the shoulder, punching another hole through the skin. Sparks arced along his wing and rippled over his scales. He tipped sideways. The glowing golden rims of the glasships brightened to fire again. Another bolt hit him in the belly. He shrieked and tumbled into one of the glass discs, a savagery of tooth and claw and tail and fire, blindly smashing it down. Straps in Zafir’s harness groaned and snapped as he wheeled and tried to recover. She felt his rage at these ships-that-flew, burning her on the inside as his flames scorched the air without. Another bolt hit him at the base of his tail. She felt the shudder. Sparks ran over his scales and then there was another thunderclap and she felt her skin prickle . . .
A bolt hit his neck a yard in front of her. For a moment her mind went blank. The noise drowned everything. She almost flew from the saddle but the remains of the harness held. Her heart stopped and then began beating again. Every muscle turned rigid. Diamond Eye fell, blind, dazed with pain, one wing paralysed. He couldn’t lift his head.