by D. P. Prior
The ceiling shook, and then slowly, the copper petals that comprised it began to inch apart. Through the widening gaps, Nameless could see snatches of bubbling dark water, the fleeting forms of monsters of the deep. He kept thinking the shields surrounding the city were going to collapse, and that the sea would come crashing in.
The citadel juddered and bobbed within its invisible balloon. It started to rise, slowly at first, gradually picking up speed, until Nameless could gauge their progress by the brightening of the waters. Shoals of fish scattered before them. A shark bounced away from the shields. They punched through a blanket of algae, and then he could see a burgeoning patch of cobalt that they were heading straight into.
“Shove over,” Ancient Bub said.
He was still there, in the cockpit? He was supposed to be—
“You think I’m trusting the fate of both our peoples to a shogger who doesn’t know his left from right?” Bub said. “I’m taking the helm.”
“Well, if you’re sure about that,” Nameless said. “I thought I should be the one—”
“I know what you thought, son, and I don’t agree. You’ve already done more than anyone else in defense of your people, and more than anyone to bring mine home to Arnoch. There’s no need for you to die, here. If our people are to coexist, they’re going to need strong leaders. They’re going to need people like you, and that wench of yours.”
“Cordy? Oh, she’s no one’s wench.”
“That’s what I mean. Go on, son. Hop out. Let this old codger do something useful in his dotage.”
Nameless looked away, thought of all Ancient Bub was offering him. And it didn’t take a genius to see that Bub would have a much better chance of flying the airship, of getting it to where it needed to be without catching the city in the blast. Bub was right: there was no need for both of them to die. Nameless’s fingers wrapped around Paxy’s haft, where he’d left her leaning against the bench.
“If you’re going to go, go now,” Bub said.
Nameless couldn’t move.
Arnoch swayed and shuddered. Pressure screamed in Nameless’s ears, and then, with a crash of cascading water, the citadel broke the surface. Cobalt skies blazed down through the shields, and bathed the chamber in stark light, now the petals of the roof were fully open.
“Cut the moorings!” Bub cried.
The order was echoed down below, and then the airship bobbed and shook. Nameless’s heart beat was a racing rattle. His breaths came quick and shallow, and his stomach turned queasy as they floated toward the opening at the top of the tower.
A thunderous roar rocked the citadel, and this time it came from without. A dark brume billowed toward Arnoch, and from its smog emerged wings that could span a mountain range, a corkscrewing tail that could wrap around the city, and five monstrous heads upon writhing, snake-like necks. It was the first he’d seen the whole dragon in one go, which told him it was still some way above them. But as it came swooping down, there was no doubting the sheer immensity of the beast, and Nameless wondered if they were going to need a bigger airship.
One after the other, fizzing rushes roared up from the curtain walls. Red lightning arced skyward, and the dragon back-flapped its wings so furiously, the resultant wind lashed the citadel like a hurricane. Crisscrossing streams of red scorched along the dragon’s scales, and then it returned fire with an excoriating blast of fire from its crimson head. There were muffled screams, and another volley of cannon fire. Blue pulses of light streaked in between the red, glanced harmlessly from the scales of the dragon’s head.
And then four more of the heads swept down, converging to unleash a scathing torrent of flames, lighting, gas, liquid, and ice that coalesced into a noxious blast of unimaginable force. The water shields buckled as the dragon’s breath dispersed along their surface. Fractures webbed their way all around the glassy dome, and pockets of corrosion started to eat their way through.
“Steady,” Ancient Bub said as the airship rose toward the slowly disintegrating shields.
The dragon swept above the citadel, plunging them into darkness. The scales of its underbelly slid past interminably, giving way to the never-ending tail, until at last, it veered off in a wide arc, then started to wheel back for another attack.
“Steady,” Bub said again.
The airship continued to rise as the corrosion spread across the shields and the cracks began to widen.
“Brace!”
The top of the airship struck the shields, and they shattered. Nameless ducked and covered his head, expecting shards of glass to rain down, but instead, there was a deafening pop, and the shields simply vanished.
And they were free of the citadel, continuing to climb above the central tower. All around them, far below, the waters of the inland sea raged against the aftereffects of the dragon’s wing beats. Atop the curtain walls, Dwarf Lords turned the barrels of their cannons to face the oncoming beast. A chunk of the battlements had been blown apart, and charred bodies lay scattered about the parapet. Nameless caught a glimpse of Cidruthus Tallish, a long gun aimed high, and beside him, sighting down the length of an identical weapon, was Shadrak.
As the airship continued to gain altitude, Bub pulled back on a lever, and they veered to the right. He took a firm hold on another and forced it slowly forward. The airship picked up speed, moving out over the waters and away from the citadel.
But on the port side, the dragon had already spotted them and was bearing down toward them with a fury.
***
Shadrak cursed under his breath. It was too soon. The dragon had seen the airship and was corkscrewing through the air toward it in a violent flurry of wing beats. Wind blasted through the crenels, and he had to hold on to the edge of a merlon to stop from plummeting from the parapet.
Cid had seen it, too, the danger to the airship. If the dragon attacked now, Arnoch would be caught in the blast.
All along the walkway, cannons swiveled to track the dragon’s hurtling path.
“Hold your fire!” Cid commanded. “You’ll be next to useless at this range. No wasted shots, remember?”
“We’re shogged anyway,” Shadrak said. “It’s already over.”
Cid ignored him and took a potshot at the dragon. A blue bolt streaked from his gun and ricocheted from the dragon’s black head. He only just missed an eye.
“Shog it!” he said, lining up for another shot.
The airship kept moving away from the walls of the citadel, but it was too slow. The dragon was closing by the second, bringing its breath weapons in range.
Shadrak got it in his sights and squeezed the trigger. He clean missed, and heard Cid tsk him.
Cid fired again, and his bolt glanced off the crest running away from the center of the jade head.
Five monstrous mouths yawned toward the airship. Lightning sparked. Flames flickered. A noxious cloud billowed. Icy droplets fell away from the white head, and the purple head sent out a testing spray of liquid that Shadrak had already seen corrode the shields.
“Last chance,” he muttered to himself as he let out a slow breath and fired.
Blue light pulsed from the end of his gun and crossed the intervening space before he could blink. The dragon bucked and coiled in midair, and all five heads arced back toward the city as it roared in pain and fury.
“Bullseye!” Cid cried.
And he was right. Out of the dragon’s white, frost-rimed head, only one sapphire eye blazed. The other was a weeping pit of gore.
This time, the dragon was well and truly enraged, and its massive bulk shot straight back toward Arnoch with turbulent flaps of its wings.
“Aim for the eyes!” Cid commanded, and cannons all along the wall tops began to swivel.
The look Cid gave him told Shadrak the dwarf was under no illusions. He knew anyone atop the battlements was finished. But if their sacrifice preserved the airship long enough for it to get far enough away from the citadel, and if the dragon took the bait, then maybe it was
worth it. The odd thing was, for the first time in his life, Shadrak found he really didn’t care if he lived or died.
As the dragon soared toward them, he thought it was going to ram the walls. Cannon after cannon fired at will. The skies were ablaze with coruscating streams of crimson. The dragon’s scales smoldered where they were struck. Shadrak fired at an amber eye, but the red head whiplashed aside on its sinuous neck. And then the beast veered upward, skimming the top of the wall. One by one, the cannons died, their crystals spent, and Cid yelled for the Dwarf Lords to abandon their posts and get below. Not one of them obeyed him.
A frosty plume from the dragon’s white head, enveloped the central tower the airship had launched from. The black head whipped back round and sent a blistering bolt of lightning into the battlements from behind. Chunks of masonry flew. A cannon fell to the shoreline below, and a Dwarf Lord toppled after it.
The dragon’s tail crashed into a tower, ripping away its copper dome. Stone cascaded to the streets, and dome clashed and clanged after it, until it struck the rear of the barbican and brought down a shower of rubble.
At first, Shadrak thought the dragon was going to land within Arnoch’s walls, break the citadel apart from within, but it arrowed skyward and wheeled around so it could once more bring its breath weapons to bear.
It was taking no chances. This thing was no brute. It knew it had them, so why change what wasn’t broken?
Red Cloaks scattered from the debris at the back of the barbican—no more than five or six. One of them was limping, and another clutched his arm to his chest.
This time, when the dragon came roaring back down, Dwarf Lords surged away from the base of the curtain walls, beneath the cover of the parapet Shadrak was watching from. They brandished axes, hammers, and glaives in a stupidly heroic show of defiance. Shadrak knew he should have admired their courage, but he’d never seen the point of valiant last stands.
So, why was he here, then, atop the battlements, staring down the sight of his long gun, hoping against hope for a lucky shot? Had he lost the will to live since losing Kadee a second time? Or had it rubbed off on him, this dwarven trait of making a virtue out of futile situations?
He glanced off at the airship, still moving away from the citadel, and thought of Nameless, how the dwarf always refused to give up, no matter how hopeless things seemed; no matter what he’d done.
All five of the dragon’s heads converged on the charging Dwarf Lords, not even bothering to waste their breath weapons. Blacked-cloaked Kryptès spilled onto the rime-frosted summit of the tower the airship had launched from, unleashing a hail of glittering bolts from a dozen crossbows. Leading them, his shield strapped to his back, mace hanging from his hip, was Grimwart.
It was a distraction, no less, the bolts bouncing from scales harder than stone. Nevertheless, the dragon checked its dive, undulating in a writhing reversal that brought its heads level with the battlements. The Dwarf Lords at the lifeless cannons stood their ground with grim fortitude, but none of them drew weapons. What would be the point?
The jade head snaked round, opening its jaws to emit its noxious, roiling brume, but Cid aimed true and shot it smack bang in the middle of an eye. Screeching with rage and pain, the dragon rolled over in midair, bringing the purple and black heads to bear. Shadrak couldn’t think what their breath weapons were—acid and lightning, unless he missed his guess. It hardly mattered. Everyone along the top of the wall was as good as dead.
He fired, and the black head swerved aside of a blue bolt. Cid had better luck with the purple one, blinding it one side. And then Shadrak blasted right through the pupil he’d missed the first time.
The dragon thrashed and veered away, dislodging merlons along an entire strip of wall. With a single beat of its gigantic wings, it brought itself above the central tower.
The Black Cloaks were already rappelling down the side closest Shadrak, having given away their position when firing their crossbows. It was the only thing that saved them.
The dragon set its front claws on the flat roof, gouging deep grooves in the stone. The remainder of its vast bulk was still kept aloft by the gale force beat of its wings. Its back legs were tucked under its belly, and its tail hung down to the ground, where it thrashed about and sent the Red Cloaks running for cover.
From its perch above the citadel, the dragon roared, each of its heads a different pitch of thunder, and Arnoch trembled. If it stayed where it was, it would never take the bait of the airship, and that meant all was lost.
Shadrak and Cid kept aiming for eyes, but at the greater distance, their chances were slim. The black head discharged a storm of lighting at the base of a curtain wall, blowing out huge chunks of masonry, but failing to breech the buttress on the outside. From the gaping jaws of the jade head, a poisonous cloud blew toward the barbican, and acid spew from the purple one corroded the battlements it was facing.
More figures appeared on the tower top the Kryptès had vacated in the nick of time: wild-looking dwarves with braided beards and hair wound into spikes. Their torsos were naked, blue with tattoos.
They charged beneath the dragon’s belly toward its front legs anchored on the roof, and as they came on, they shrieked blood-curdling roars. Axe heads broke against talons tougher than steel. Hammers shattered, glaives snapped, but nothing seemed to deter these crazy shoggers. The dragon’s white head glared down at them and unleashed its frosty breath. Spears of ice ripped into them, spraying frost and scarlet. But still the dwarves fought on with tooth and nail, as if they were too crazed to know they were beaten, that they should already have been dead. The white head breathed again, and froze the dwarves solid in variegated poses of brutal rage.
But in the clamor of their lunatic attack, they had covered the more stealthy approach of a small band of Dwarf Lords, who came at the dragon’s feet from the other side. It was futile, painful to watch. Cid and Shadrak kept going after eyes, but the dragon was growing wise to their attacks and shielding its eyes with half-closed lids.
Each head splayed away from the central trunk of its body to face a different wall, with the fifth, the crimson one, looming up over the tower top upon which the front legs stood. The Dwarf Lords saw, but stood their ground, hacking for all they were worth, and although their superior weapons did not shatter, they did not even scratch the scales of the dragon’s feet, or chip the bone of its claws.
All but one.
Matriarch Gitashan swung her scarolite saber with blistering force, and it lodged deep in one of the scales covering a toe. When the dragon stomped, shaking the tower, Gitashan rose with the foot, then hacked again and again. Fountains of oily blood rained down on her, but to the dragon, it must have seemed like nothing so much as the sting of a wasp. It was just too big. Too vast for anything the Dwarf Lords could hit it with to have any effect. But the Matriarch was as crazed and as focused as the mad dwarves had been, and she kept to her task, even as smoke billowed from the crimson head’s mouth, and fire began to form.
She must have hit something tender, for the dragon screamed, and launched itself from the tower. Gitashan was thrown clear, but another Dwarf Lord leapt to break her fall. It was her sister, Thyenna.
The dragon rocketed into the skies above Arnoch. Beyond it, the airship had passed midway to the opposing shore, the gatehouse side of Arnoch. But if it was far enough away to avoid Arnoch being caught in the blast, it was also too far for it to catch the beast’s attention.
With its wings furled on its back, and its necks intertwined so that all five heads stared directly at the citadel below, the dragon dived toward the wall Shadrak and Cid were relentlessly firing from.
As it came, the necks unwound, and the whirling heads shook the curtain walls with devastating roars. Five sets of jaws began to part. Lightning sparked, fire blazed, ice glistened, acid dripped, and poisoned plumed.
Shadrak thought of Kadee, and hoped she’d be proud of him.
His finger tightened on the trigger for one last usele
ss shot, when he caught a flash of golden light erupting from the airship.
***
Paxy streaked away from the airship, blazing like a small sun.
As the dragon hurtled toward the top of the curtain walls, met by nothing save for two flashes of blue fire as harmless to it as insects, the Axe of the Dwarf Lords sped beneath it and erupted in a flash of aureate brilliance.
The dragon swerved away from the walls and started to plummet, but it righted itself before it hit the ground and shot straight upward, necks thrashing, heads casting about wildly for the cause of its pain.
Paxy’s flight back to Nameless’s waiting hand was a faltering meander. She lost height, and the light of her blades guttered, then died.
The dragon leveled out, and swung all five heads toward the airship. With three cracks of its massive wings, it propelled itself in Paxy’s wake, and crossed the space between them with frightening speed.
“Here it comes,” Ancient Bub said. “This is it. You ready?”
Before she found Nameless’s hand, Paxy clattered to the deck of the cockpit.
“Ready,” Nameless said, picking up the axe and holding her to his chest.
“And you, girlie?” Bub said, speaking to Paxy’s dull and lifeless blades. “Are you ready, too. I need one last spurt from you.”
A thrum moved through Paxy’s haft in response.
“One last spurt for what?” Nameless said.
But there was no time to waste on questions.
The shadow of the dragon fell over the cockpit, and its roaring threatened to shatter his eardrums. The heat of its breath, the cold, the overpowering stench of ozone, acid, and toxic spew, built to an oppressive weight in the air. Amid the red-head’s jaws, flames burgeoned into a roiling conflagration, and lightning crackled between the fangs of the black one.
“To slow your fall,” Bub said.
And without warning, he shoved Nameless over the side.
Fire, ice, acid, lightning, and virulent noxious spew hit the airship all at once.