Destiny of Dragons

by Jack Campbell

  “I understand,” Kira said. “I saw horses being loaded into cars. Where will those cars be?”

  “Part of another train following us, to reduce the load on the locomotive pulling these cars and also reduce the danger to the horses if something happens to this train.”

  As Anders left, Kira shot a stern look at Jason. “Why are you gloomy again?”

  “He’s worried about something happening to this train,” Jason pointed out.

  “Nothing is going to happen! We’re going to have a long, safe trip to Gullhaven, and the only enemy we’ll have to deal with is boredom!”

  The train lurched into motion as two soldiers entered the car with apologies and sealed shut the armored blinds over the windows before departing.

  Kira flopped back onto a couch once they were alone again. “So much for watching passing scenery. What are we going to do for the next two days?”

  Jason gave a hopeful glance forward at the bed area, separated from the lounge area by a closed door. “I can think of something.”

  “No,” Kira said. “There are a couple of hundred Lancers sitting in seats in cars in front of us and behind us, wearing their combat armor and carrying their weapons. I would not be happy or comfortable having fun while the soldiers guarding us are sitting up all through the night. That’s one reason. The other is that I’m not the queen. I can’t lock any doors on this car. Everything has to remain open so the guards can check or get to any spot if necessary. I will not engage in any activity with you if there’s a reasonable chance some Lancers might stroll by and start offering suggestions on ways to do it better.”

  Um, yeah,” Jason agreed. “Maybe I can practice throwing my knife. I’m getting pretty good at that.”

  “I don’t think we should throw knives at the queen’s fine woodwork,” Kira said.

  “So what do we do instead?”

  “Sien has a small library in this car. See? Hopefully there’s stuff we haven’t read.”

  Jason checked out the titles. “Hey, there’re copies of some of the tech manuals from the Demeter in here.”

  “Dematr,” Kira corrected him. “Which ones? And don’t make any of those comments about how archaic the junk in them is when that junk is still state of the art for this world.”

  The day passed as slowly as she had feared, the train rumbling along at an annoyingly sedate pace. More than once Kira felt like complaining to the Mechanic driving the locomotive that surely it would be safe to go a little faster, but that Mechanic was Gari and she knew he’d stand his ground against her.

  As wearying as the long day in the train car was, it worsened because her Mage powers kept trying to slip out of their bonds and search the countryside. Kira had to repeatedly clamp down on her powers, and then deal with an unusually powerful sense of confinement in the car afterwards. By the time dinner was done, simple rations like those the Lancers were eating, Kira was fed up with the day. Jason, wisely judging her mood, had stayed mostly silent for the past few hours.

  It must be full night outside by now. Kira yawned, wondering how far from Debran they were and whether she should give up and go to bed.

  She heard the boom of an explosion, followed by the high-pitched screech of locomotive wheels sliding on the rails after the brake had been pulled. The furniture in the car was all fastened down securely, but momentum shoved Kira against the side of the couch for a few moments before a sickening crash and lurch told of the locomotive leaving the tracks, twisting and yanking at the cars it was pulling. The lights went out, pitching them into darkness, just before Kira’s car left the rails, too, tilting and sliding and shuddering until it came to a halt, canted at an angle, the front end pointing downward along the shoulder of the track.

  Kira staggered to her feet, trying to balance on the slanting floor. She barely had time to do that, hearing the pop of rifle fire erupting outside, before someone grabbed her and pulled her down to the floor of the car.

  Chapter Six

  Kira managed to check her attack just in time as she realized that it was Jason who had pulled her to the floor. Before she could demand to know what he was doing, twin crashes came from the front of the car as a pair of projectiles slammed into the armor, followed by the explosion of shaped-charge warheads tearing into the bed compartment. Kira saw light flash around the door to the bed area as it was blown out by the force of the explosions, shrapnel flying past over her, fire bursting to life amid the ruin of the beds and providing flickering light.

  “How did you know?” Kira demanded of Jason.

  “Ambush. Night. It made sense,” he gasped, helping her stand.

  “They may have more dragon-killers,” Kira said, looking around and holding onto a table to keep her balance on the slanting floor. “We have to get out of here.”

  “We’re not going out the front,” Jason said, pointing at the wreckage and growing flames in the bed compartment.

  Kira drew her pistol, chambering a round and letting off the safety as she ran up the sloping floor to the back door of the car. But when she tugged at the door it didn’t move, jammed in place by the way its frame had twisted when the car derailed. “Emergency exit,” Kira gasped, half-sliding/half-running back down the slope and checking her progress by grabbing one of the chairs when she reached the exit located low on one side of the car. She knelt, the erratic light from the fires in the bed area allowing her to spot the levers holding the exit closed.

  Jason helped her twist free the levers. Only a few seconds must have passed since the first dragon-killers hit the car, but to Kira it felt like it was taking far too long to get out of what had become an armored death trap.

  She braced herself with her hands, kicked at the emergency exit and saw it pop free. Kira went through feet first, grabbing her pack as she fell to pull it out with her, dropping down to the ground, Jason right behind her. Outside, the night was illuminated only by the stars and the flash of rifle fire, the sounds of the battle suddenly much louder.

  Kira had barely regained her balance when she heard a whooshing sound and pulled Jason to the ground with her. Another dragon-killer slammed into the car above them, its blast penetrating into the seating area where they’d been moments before.

  Kira crouched low, staring about her, trying to figure out who was where. From the look of the rifle flashes, the ambushers were spread out to the west of the train tracks.

  “Lancers to me!” a familiar voice called over the sound of the rifles.

  “Come on, Jason.” Kira ran in that direction, toward the back of the train, finding a confused group of Lancers being formed by Sergeant Bete into a defensive line backed against the derailed cars behind them.

  “I need a gun,” Jason said, sounding breathless. “This isn’t a knife fight.”

  Kira knelt and picked up a carbine lying next to a fallen Lancer, shoving it into Jason’s hands. But to her surprise instead of joining the Lancers lying down to fire back at the ambushers, Jason lay down and rolled onto his back, watching the tilted tops of the train cars.

  She tried to catch her breath and figure out what was going on, flinching as the impact of a fourth dragon-killer rocked the armored train car she and Jason had occupied. “Where’s Colonel Anders?” she yelled at Sergeant Bete over the crash of Lancer carbines and attackers’ rifles.

  “Up front somewhere!”

  Up front. Where Gari was. Had he been hurt? What would the ambushers do to him? “I need to go up front to check on the locomotive!” Kira shouted.

  “No, Captain!” Sergeant Bete yelled back. “You need to stay here. Running around in the dark in the middle of this fight is a good way to get yourself killed.”

  “I’ll be fine!” Kira started to rise to her feet, only to halt and stare at Bete as the sergeant pointed her pistol at Kira.

  “You’ll stay here, Captain, even if I have to shoot you in the leg to keep you here! And don’t think your mother wouldn’t thank me for doing it!”

  “You wouldn’t dare, Serge

ant!” Kira cried, starting to get her feet under her again.

  “Try me, Captain!” Bete shouted, aiming at Kira’s leg.

  Kira glared at Bete, knowing the sergeant would do exactly what she was threatening to do. Snarling with frustration, Kira dropped to her stomach again as a fifth dragon-killer hit the armored train car. “What the blazes are you doing?” she demanded of Jason, who was still looking up at the derailed cars behind them.

  Instead of answering, Jason suddenly tensed and aimed upwards, firing. Startled, Kira saw a shadowy shape on top of one of the cars reel backwards and out of sight.

  “I hope that was a bad guy,” Jason yelled. “They definitely weren’t one of the Lancers.”

  “Sergeant Bete!” Kira called, gesturing upwards. “Behind us!”

  Bete turned, looked, understood, and directed some of the Lancers to mimic Jason to cover the tops of the cars. Moments later two of them fired.

  A figure in a Mechanics jacket fell to the ground not far from Kira. She had only an instant of icy fear that it might be Gari before a grenade rolled from the figure’s now-limp hand, the primed fuse sputtering.

  Jason rolled to his knees and swung the butt of his carbine, connecting with the grenade and knocking it out into the night before it exploded too far off to harm any of the Lancers. “That was either golf or baseball,” he called to Kira. “Maybe cricket.”

  “Teach me!” she called, scrambling over to the fallen enemy in a Mechanics jacket. Rolling the body face up, she saw sharp features that felt oddly familiar. Where had she seen this man before? And why did a train seem part of that memory as well?

  On the train north out of Tiae, the day she fled with Jason. The man who had claimed to have been a Mechanics Guild assassin.

  “Sergeant! At least some of the attackers are Mechanics!”

  Bete passed the word. The rifle fire from the west had faltered for a few moments, but now redoubled, most of the shots passing over the prone Lancers to slam into the railcars. Absurdly, Kira could smell the scent of churned-up soil and cut grass mingled with that of burned propellant from the carbine shots and the wood smoke from the burning armored railcar.

  More figures came over the top of the cars behind them, Jason and some of the Lancers firing to drive off that attack.

  “Are you all right?” Kira called to Jason, feeling helpless and impotent as she lay next to him.

  “I didn’t want to take the train!” Jason yelled over the noise of the gunshots. “And, yes, we did have to jump off again!”

  “At least it wasn’t moving this time!” Kira yelled back. “And I didn’t have to throw you off!”

  “That’s so much better! Thank you!” Jason aimed upward and fired again.

  Kira sensed something out there in the night in the direction of the ambushers, a spell from a Mage unknown to her. She concentrated on it, trying to keep her own Mage presence completely masked. Moments later, Kira saw a glowing pillar appear in the darkness, coming toward where she and the Lancers were pinned against the wrecked railcars.

  A Mage, using an invisibility spell to get close, perhaps even inside the Lancer perimeter, before lashing out with the long knives that Mages carried.

  Another glowing pillar appeared as a second Mage used the same spell, coming from a different angle toward Kira and the Lancers. But invisible to the Lancers, and coming closer every moment.

  “Blazes,” Kira muttered, hoping that a stray shot would accidentally strike at least one of the Mages, but they were coming from far enough to the left and right that fire aimed at the attackers in front wasn’t much of a threat to them.

  “Blazes!” Kira whispered again. She had to protect knowledge of her Mage powers. But not at the expense of the lives of others. She wouldn’t let a single Lancer die because she wouldn’t take a risk on their behalf.

  Kira came to one knee and aimed carefully with her pistol. Sergeant Bete noticed, turning to tell Kira to get down again, but instead gazing with a baffled expression toward where Kira’s target must be.

  Kira fired.

  A Mage appeared, stumbling backwards from the impact of her bullet. Kira had already swung to face the other way, aiming at the second Mage, firing, seeing no result, and firing again. The last shot scored, another Mage appearing to stagger to one side.

  The Lancers saw the Mages appear and fired in a ragged volley that scored enough hits to knock both Mages down for good.

  Kira dropped down to her stomach again, seeing Sergeant Bete staring at her. Kira shook her head in a clear warning to Bete.

  It couldn’t have been much later that the rifle fire from the ambushers began to falter. Sergeant Bete called out to Kira. “They know they can’t get to you, and they have to get well away from here before dawn comes. They’re probably breaking contact.”

  Kira nodded, her eyes toward the less and less frequent flashes of enemy fire. “Do you think we should pursue?”

  “No, Captain, I do not. They prepared this attack. There may be traps set out there, and we have wounded we need to leave some Lancers to protect. Any force we sent out in pursuit would be too small and too slow to succeed. More likely they’d be ambushed again and take heavy losses.”

  Of the things Kira was certain of in life, Sergeant Bete’s personal bravery ranked high on the list. So did Kira’s assessment of Sergeant Bete’s military judgment. If she said don’t go, Kira wasn’t going to argue. “I agree.”

  “Why do you think they used only two Mages against us?” Bete asked.

  “I’m guessing when we shifted plans they didn’t have time to get more Mages they trusted here,” Kira said.

  The enemy fire stopped completely at least an hour before dawn. But the Lancers waited until growing light made it safe to move before the groups from the front of the train and the rear of the train linked up.

  As they waited for Colonel Anders, Sergeant Bete came close to Kira, speaking in a low voice. “Something odd happened during the attack, Captain. Something odd involving those two Mages.”

  Kira exhaled heavily before replying in the same low tones so they wouldn’t be overheard. “Nothing happened, Sergeant. Nothing that should be reported.”

  “I have a duty, Captain.”

  “I understand,” Kira said. “If you have concerns, if you feel your duty requires, report directly to Queen Sien or to my mother. Tell them.”

  Bete paused, thinking. “The queen or Lady Mari? Either one?”

  “Directly. In person,” Kira said. “What you tell them will not surprise them, and I’m certain they will ask you not to place it in any written report or speak of it to others.”

  Sergeant Bete nodded. “Very well, Captain. Not even the colonel?”

  “Not even the colonel.”

  “Then I will take you at your word, Captain. I know that you, and Lady Mari your mother, would not ask me to do anything that would violate my oath to Queen Sien.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant. My mother always enjoys talking with you. She often says how lucky she was in the men and women who came to fight alongside her against the Great Guilds.”

  “It was our luck to have her to fight for,” Bete said, smiling.

  “But if you had shot me, I think Mother would have been a little unhappy with you.”

  “Maybe,” Sergeant Bete said, getting to her feet. “Or she might have commended me.”

  Kira watched Bete walk over to where one of the other Lancers was looking down at the body of one of the Mages.

  “How do you suppose that happened?” the private asked. “Did we just get lucky?”

  “Must have,” Bete said. “There were a lot of bullets flying around. A few went through the right spots.”

  Kira saw the dead being laid out and went to help despite the protests of the work detail that they could handle it. Jason came to help her as well, raising up one of the fallen and carrying him to where he could be laid down side by side with the others in a neat row. It took all of her and Jason’s strength to carry one. Kira remembered her mother once wondering why the dead were so heavy, why they seemed so much heavier than when they were alive.

  Fortunately there were only three dead here at the rear of the train. “Only” three dead, Kira thought bleakly as she looked at them. She knew their faces. She’d known them. Not well. But Kira had known those who now lay silent and unmoving.

  Her mother had done this. She could do it. But blazes, it was hard.

  Her brooding was interrupted by the approach of Colonel Anders. She saluted him. “We lost three killed and twelve wounded back here, sir. Some of the wounded were injured when the train derailed.”

  Anders returned the salute, his expression grim. “It’s fortunate the train was moving more slowly than the usual express. I hate to think how many injuries we would’ve sustained if we’d derailed at twice the speed.”

  Kira looked around in the growing light, depression weighing on her. “This is all my fault.”

  “You’re not that important, Captain,” Anders said, his voice sharp. “These are enemies of the queen and of Tiae. They hit this train because of the mission you’re on. But they would have been a danger to us regardless of whether or not you were within a million lances of here. And those killed or wounded were doing their duty as they had promised to do, as well as to their comrades. Grieve the dead, but if you feel sorry for yourself I’ll give you something else to do to take your mind off it.”

  Kira glared at him, knowing the colonel was right. “No, sir. That won’t be necessary. But if something else needs to be done and I can do it, I expect to be tasked with it.”

  “Understood.” Anders looked around. “I made far-talker contact with some Bakre Confederation forces. They’re on the way. The train bringing the horses managed to stop in time, and didn’t come under attack. Stay alert, Captain. I have no intention of losing you to whoever did this.”

  “Yes, sir.” Kira waited until Anders had moved on. “Jason, I’m going up to where the locomotive is.”

  “Okay.” He looked at the carbine he was still carrying as if uncertain what to do with it, then tightened his grip on the weapon and nodded to her. “Let’s go.” Kira turned to yell. “Sergeant Bete! I am now going up to the locomotive!”

  -->