Dragon's Eye

by Christopher Stasheff

  Chants and charms that only I knew, and would only pass on to Malcolm for the use of his friends in my own good time. Those books were not going to be cast into the whirlpool of a worldwide war, where half of them might end up in the hands of those who did not value them and the rest burned in bombing raids.

  Malcolm would be paid at my convenience, not his, and if he grumbled, I would remind him that no Scot ever hatched could truly get the best of a Welshman. Singing is not the only art of the red dragons, as he was about to learn.

  Then we strapped Damar into his carrier and the carrier to his mother, and took to the night sky.

  We chose a cloudy night for our departure, although we knew that radar could see through clouds. Fortunately few airborne radars were in service at that time, so we had only to worry about antiaircraft guns guided by radar, and even they were none too common. (If we had had to make our flight in 1943, I doubt I would be alive to tell of it.)

  The weather turned against us as we were over Denmark, so we found a sparsely inhabited district and settled in for the day. I cast a limited spell of Otherness over the abandoned paddock where we lay, one that would convince a casual passerby that it held nothing but a few sheep. Before I did that, however, I noticed several bombers colored like Malcolm flying overhead, bound west as if fleeing the dawn.

  "You said those were British colors," I prodded Malcolm. "What are they doing flying from Germany?"

  "Maybe the British have started raiding Germany," Malcolm said. "A little revenge is a natural impulse."

  "Oh yes, they could do it easily," Daffyd said, and went off on a long lecture about RAF bombers that could carry bombs as far as Berlin. I listened with half an ear, hoping mostly that we did not meet any of them either going or coming. Their gunners and the German gunners on the ground would both be nervous in the middle of an air raid.

  It also occurred to me that perhaps a little camouflage all around would not be a bad idea.

  "How do the Germans paint their bombers?" I asked Malcolm.

  "Gray bellies and dark green tops," he said, before Daffyd could offer another lecture. "But I do not have the power to change all of us. Coloring myself as an RAF bomber used up all the Coloring power I have until the next full moon."

  "Well, we are hardly going to wait here until then," Evelyn said. "What can you do with the power you have? I hope it includes changing yourself, because over Germany those colors of yours will be anything but a protection."

  Malcolm looked dubious. "I can darken your redness, and maybe take the brown off my back. If I am very lucky, I can make my belly gray. We might look like a German bomber leading a formation of civilian planes."

  "As long as we look like something that has business in the sky over Germany, I hardly care if we are blue with yellow stripes," Evelyn snapped. "Begin, and do not stop until you have done all you can."

  Malcolm parodied coming to attention and clicking his heels, which is quite noisy in a dragon; we have four heels. I told him that so much noise could make people wonder if we were sheep, and I did not know how strongly the Germans held this part of Denmark. I did not want to learn at the wrong end of a machine gun.

  Malcolm did his work well enough so that none of us would have recognized ourselves in a mirror when he was done. How much this helped us with the Germans, I do not know.

  We had the promise of clouds if not storms that night, so we took off at sunset, flying as high as Rhiannon could reach and match the others' speed.

  This was a mistake.

  Dragons are not as affected as humans by lack of oxygen (although above 8,000 feet we cannot flame very well). An adult can cruise at 12,000 feet for days, so we thought that altitude would be safe enough for the few hours it would take us to cross Germany.

  We were wrong. Above 10,000 feet we met a brisk west wind, which took us well to the east of our intended course. We were also above two of the four layers of clouds, so that we had only occasional glimpses of the ground for navigation.

  We were indeed doing better at finding our way than Bomber Command did at that stage of the war. It could find the continent of Europe easily; it could usually find the right country. Anything smaller, like a specific city, was a challenge, and one not often met—which explains why the Berlin raids before that night had cost the Germans more lost sleep than anything else.

  Nonetheless, Malcolm had assured us that we would be flying mostly over undefended territory on our route to the Thuringerwald. (The Black Forest dragons had become too involved with Nazi cult practices to be trustworthy. The Thuringerwald dragons were hearty peasants, who liked to be left alone with their venison and didn't bother their green-crested heads with politics.)

  He kept on reassuring us even after we saw searchlights probing up through the clouds. He fell silent when the flak began bursting, although fortunately well below us. (Postwar American experience with the DEW line and Arctic dragons suggests that we make poor radar targets, and the German radar operators at that stage of the war were underequipped and undertrained.)

  Malcolm did not lose his composure until we passed over a winding lake with islands strung out along it. Reflected light from the flak bursts and the searchlights showed it clearly, at least to a dragon's night sight.

  "That's the Wannsee," Malcolm said. He sounded uneasy.

  "Oh?" Evelyn said (or rather called, as we were making a good speed and the wind of our passage blew away anything less than a shout).

  "Yes."

  "What does it mean?"

  "Ah—the Wannsee is in Berlin."

  There was a silence, complete save for the wind and the distant flak, but eloquent of wrath to come.

  "Berlin," Evelyn said. "The capital of Germany. The most heavily-defended city in Germany. The most dangerous spot in Germany to fly over."

  "Except for the Ruhr—" Malcolm began.

  Evelyn made an obscene suggestion for disposing of the Ruhr. "What is the best course out of here?" she added.

  "The Wannsee is in western Berlin," Malcolm began.

  Then Daffyd shrieked:

  "Plane behind us, Father! Coming up fast! It's a Messerschmidt 110."

  I reversed course and hovered to get a look at our pursuer. Also to take the rear position, so that if necessary I could hold this opponent while the rest of the family escaped. Knowing that one would not be the first dragon to meet this honorable fate made it no more appealing.

  The plane had twin engines and twin rudders, and apparently two humans aboard. It also had a noseful of guns, and I had an unpleasantly close view of them for what seemed an age. I knew that the humans were as certainly doomed as I was if it came to battle, and readied my breath.

  Then the flak gunners, with a solid target at last, suddenly improved. Shells burst all around my family and me, filling the air with sizzling fragments, smoke, and stench. But the fragments had just a trifle too far to travel to strike with damaging force.

  Dragon scales, however, are tougher than aluminum. Flames torched from a wing of the enemy plane as a fuel tank blazed up. I saw the human's faces twist into grotesque masks of fury and despair at meeting such a fate at the hands of their comrades.

  Then the plane blew up. This time the fragments were not so harmless. I felt my scales gouged in three places and pierced in at least one. A wall of thunder cut me off from the rest of the world, helped by another wall of light and a third of stinking smoke.

  Then Evelyn's cry pierced all the walls.

  "Damar's falling!"

  It seemed that one of the straps of the carrier had been cut by a piece of flak, without Evelyn noticing it. Before she had time to examine the carrier, the German plane exploded. Another fragment gouged Evelyn's scales and ripped through two more straps.

  The last one held only briefly, then carrier and dragonet came free and plummeted toward the earth.

  At least I hoped it was the earth. Land dragons sink like stones if they strike water, and Damar would not be able to hold his breath long en
ough to bottom-walk to land. They can endure a good deal of punishment if they strike even hard ground, and treetops are almost a cushion.

  The best solution, of course, was for Damar to strike nothing. The whole family folded wings and plunged after him. I doubt that the best flight of Stukas in the Luftwaffe could have dived in a more perfect formation.

  We hadn't entirely forgotten about the flak guns, of course. We had merely turned our attention to other matters. It was brusquely turned back when a flak battery almost directly below opened fire.

  Fortunately this was a battery of 88's, comparatively slow-firing for work on dragons already below 8,000 feet and diving fast. One shell would have crippled any of us, two would have been the end, but all went wide. (I don't know if they saw us and were frightened or were simply not shooting very well.)

  We spread out as we dove, to make sure that we would completely surround Damar, in the air or on the ground if we couldn't catch him before he landed. I caught sight of him and lost sight of Daffyd at about the same time. Then I signaled to Malcolm to spread out even farther; he and I were going to dispose of the flak.

  That might be sacrificial, but it was certainly necessary. Even if Evelyn caught Damar in the next moment, we were down low enough for the clumsiest Germans to make good shooting. The fewer guns in the area, the better our chances of returning to high flight and getting away from Berlin.

  I plunged vertically, then flung out my wings so that even dragonbone and sinew protested. I leveled out just above the treetops, and just outside flaming range of the battery.

  But I had lost the breath I'd taken to deal with the plane, so I had to draw another. Malcolm had no such problem. He came down from the far side of the battery, and I saw a mob of frantic gunners, some fleeing, some manning machine guns or snatching up rifles, a few standing by their pieces and trying to crank them down.

  All were too late. Malcolm's breath went out in a searing blast of orange flame. Gunners died screaming where they stood, or ran screaming, clothes aflame, to die a little farther away. Ready ammunition exploded, and Malcolm swerved hard to the left to avoid flying straight into the blast.

  Half-dazzled as he was, he did not see the power line. His left wing chopped through it as if it had been old rope in a dragonets claws. Sparks flew, and the two ends of the line lashed about. One of them slashed into a natural-gas tank, rupturing seams and letting gas pour out to meet the sparks.

  The sun seemed to rise as the tank exploded. I saw Malcolm above the blast, climbing desperately for altitude, both wings beating strongly. I trusted that he was all right. The touch of iron had been brief, and dragon scales are poor conductors of electricity.

  Now I had to find the rest of my family,

  In the next moment Evelyn bugled, and the moment after that the scream of a train's whistle drowned her out. I leaped into the sky, fearing to hear Evelyn's scream next.

  Instead I saw Damar in his carrier, squalling lustily, and jammed in the iron framing of a railroad signal tower. A train had stopped just short of the tower, and the train crew were pointing at the apparition ahead.

  Finding Damar apparently unhurt was a victory that might be snatched away from us at any moment. That it was not, I owe to my mate and daughter.

  Evelyn bugled again, and this time flamed. The orange torch seared the casing of the locomotives boiler, heating steam-laden tubes beyond their limits. Seams dissolved, steam poured out, and most of the locomotive vanished in a white cloud. The engine driver also vanished, leaping from his cab and running off into the shadows.

  Burning gas and exploding ammunition had banished darkness. The fireman must have seen what he faced, but was holding a shotgun, aiming it at Evelyn from the right, at a range where a headshot might cost her an eye.

  He did not see Rhiannon until it was too late. Her mother's true daughter, she stayed low to the ground until the last moment. Then she reared, neck at full stretch, and breathed into the fireman's face. Not flame, just the several cubic feet of concentrated methane a dragon's stomach holds.

  The fireman did not faint on the spot. But he dropped the shotgun, which went off with a harmless bang, and clapped both hands over his face. He ran off so fast that I am sure he eventually caught up with the driver.

  Evelyn had freed Damar and was crooning over him while Rhiannon wandered along the train, I suppose she was looking for something sweet, like a carload of sugar or even a case of candied fruit. I called her back, just as more firing broke out on the other side of the train. I told my family to get down, while I leaped on the top of the train. I could have gone much higher by flying, but I would have risked hanging in the air, an easy target.

  Instead I saw Daffyd lying in the middle of a road carried over a small river or canal by an iron bridge. A convoy of military vehicles had started across the bridge when he blocked their way.

  As I watched, he flamed the lead vehicle, an open Kubelwagen. Daffyd had a weak flame, but he still blew all four tires. The men in the car jumped out before the gas tank caught fire.

  The staff car behind backed up sharply, ramming into the front of the third vehicle, a medium half-track. The half-track's driver started backing without looking behind him, and rammed the bridge railing. Rammed it—and pushed clear through it.

  With the staff car still locked to its front bumper, the half-track slid inexorably over the side of the bridge, to splash into the water below. This left my son facing the last vehicle in the convoy, a Mark III tank.

  Daffyd flamed again. He didn't reach the tank, but he dazzled the gunner and commander. For a moment they couldn't shoot. In that moment I reached flaming range.

  They must have had a round loaded, because flame and the commander flew out of the turret. Then the first round set off the ammunition load. The turret flew clean off the tank in a great gout of flame.

  After that, the bridge collapsing under the tank was an anticlimax.

  The only one of the family not accounted for now was Malcolm, and even he reappeared, favoring his left wing, by the time I rejoined Evelyn. She was hastily rigging new straps for the carrier, torn from uniforms and webbing discarded by fleeing flak gunners.

  Briefly, I had visions of dozens of Luftwaffe flak gunners running frantically across country, stark naked and babbling of dragons, and hoped they found both clothing and calm before the Gestapo found them. I have no quarrel with killing in a fair fight; the Gestapo and their ilk are slime, to be purged with flame.

  But this was no time for dreaming or laughter. We had rescued Damar, but now it was time to avoid losing our victory. Our wings thundered as loudly as the flak, as we took to the sky.

  We made the Pripet Marshes safely, although with empty bellies. The Thuringerwald dragons were not inhospitable; they merely had no food to spare. Reichsmarshall Herman Goering, they said, had made it impossible for an honest dragon to come by a mouthful of venison without risking life and wing.

  There was food in the Marshes, however, as well as dragons from every land threatened by war. (There were even some dragons from China, and not in even dragons' memory had our Chinese kin come so far west.) Some of them had healing magic, so the hurts we had taken were soon a thing of the past. Nor did any of the healers ask payment, except for a retelling of our story.

  Before the snow flies, the Black Forest dragons came in. They met a chilly welcome at first, but they turned their claws to whatever work needed doing and kept quiet.

  In time we learned that word of the descent of wrathful dragons on Berlin had frightened the Nazi dragon cultists out of such wits as they had. They began watching the Black Forest dragons closely, then chaining some as hostages.

  When they sacrificed a dragonet to Wotan, the dragon's patience snapped. So did the chains, the rooftree of the temple, and the necks and backs of more than a few of the cultists. They lay dying in the flaming ruins of their temple as their totemic beasts took wing to freedom.

  Of course, no word of dragons was mentioned in the highest c
ircles of the Third Reich. There our visit was called the first successful RAF raid, on the very capital of the Reich!

  On this hangs a tale.

  Hermann Goering had publicly declared that if one enemy plane flew over the Reich, the people could call him Meier. That night, enemy planes had not only flown over the Reich, they had struck hard.

  At a meeting the next morning, Hitler greeted Goering as "Herr Meier," and went on from there. According to the kobold enslaved to keep the Chancellery's plumbing in order, the Fuhrer went on at great length, exhausting his entire vocabulary of invective on Goering.

  The Reichsmarshall, the kobold said, did not look happy.

  Two days later he gave the orders to prepare to switch the air raids on England, from RAF targets to London. On September 7, 1940, the first of the great raids on the capital took place. The raids battered London; the RAF was reprieved with only weeks to spare.

  No longer did the Sector Stations have to plot raids with one hand, repair damage with a second, and patch wounded with a third. Experienced RAF pilots could get a decent night's sleep; new ones had a chance to learn their craft.

  Goering's turning his air armada against London snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. The war was by no means won for civilization, human and dragon alike—as who should known better than dragons who found their refuge in the Pripet Marshes in the very path of Operation Barbarossa, in June of 1941?

  But our visit to Berlin had been a first step on the long road to victory.

  SAINT PATRICK'S LAST SNAKE

  by Judith R. Conly

  Forewarned by shadowed antique visions,

  I recognized my nemesis, a sheep-shaggy man

  clad in ill-cured skins and self-styled holy filth,

  armed with weather-warped staff and righteous zeal.

  Into my new-wakened need to nest