‘Is there anything I can do?’ Jericho called above the din of men as they prepared to repel the threat.
The captain appeared momentarily stunned. He had considered this his fight and had not expected a priest to take an active part.
‘Certainly, how fair are you with a cannon?’ Blackthorn asked.
‘I don’t know cannons, but I’m good with magic.’
‘Each to their own, I suppose. I guess if you can distract the beast with your magic, we might have a chance to at least slow it down enough for us to get higher and out of his reach. Head aft and use what you can against the creature.’
Jericho nodded, headed to the rear of the ship and skirted the wheelhouse on the port side. Promptly at the order of the captain, the ship began to incline sharply and headed into the clouds, a defensive measure designed to elude an enemy. It stalled Jericho’s progress, and he was left clinging to a bulwark for grim death.
The ship suddenly lurched with a noise like thunder and sent Jericho flying into the iron wall of the cabin. The dragon had attacked, its massive frame colliding with the side of the ship.
Jericho reached across and took a firm hold of the wooden bulwark to cast a glance over the side.
Sure enough, an enormous black beast prepared another attack run.
On its back, a hooded figure piloted from a smooth leather saddle just behind its wings. He held a rein in his hand threaded around two giant rings cast through the dragon’s nose. A deafening roar erupted from the beast and rumbled through its great chest. Jericho peered at a curious glow that emanated from the sides of an iron chest plate; it had a red hue to it, yet there was no visible reason why the light should be there. Jericho, however, knew the secret. Behind the chest plate, the dragon’s heart lay unprotected, behind a thinly armoured layer of skin.
It was nearly impossible to hit a dragon that was in control of its own mind in this spot with any measure of success. Many who had tried had either missed, or hit, though had not downed the dragon, and were then consumed by its fiery breath.
A bucket of thick white liquid crashed down around him from above and ran in slow rivulets down the deck. He looked up, and he saw a pale-faced boy who gripped tightly to thick ropes that surrounded the bladder like envelope. In his left hand, he held a wooden bristle brush that dripped with the same thick paste.
Jericho understood; the boy was there to seal any holes in the envelope with thin layers of leather patches that were strung around his neck. He had become unsettled when the dragon began its attack, and his paste bucket had slipped from his grasp.
Just how vulnerable were they right now, many hundreds of feet in the air? They climbed all the time, with nothing but a bag of air to hold them there. Jericho forced the thought from his mind and instead turned to find the captain.
Finally, he spotted him, aiming his peashooter at the beast off the port side. Jericho precariously slipped and slid down the deck towards the captain. The end of a black spiked tail the size of an elephant’s trunk swung past him and collided with a deckhand with a sickening thud. The unlucky soul was sent flying through the air and over the side of the ship with a terrified scream.
‘Captain?’ Jericho yelled. ‘Blackthorn?’
The skipper turned to the sound. ‘What is it?’ he yelled.
‘Aim for the dragon’s chest plate, sever it with your cannon, and we will have a chance to defeat this foe,’ Jericho hollered. The noise of the dragon and the rush of wind deafened him. ‘Behind is the dragon’s heart, we can defeat this abomination if we can get a clear shot at it.’
‘I might just have the thing.’ Blackthorn smiled. He raced off to the stern of the ship and skidded from handhold to handhold just as Jericho had.
A minute later he returned carrying a long bundle of sackcloth, and after he had struggled back up the incline, he dropped the package with a clang and finished with a few deep breaths.
He dropped to one knee and quickly undid thin strips of leather that bound the material, and extracted a six-foot-long harpoon. He looked at Jericho with a broad smile on his face.
‘For catching big fish,’ he said. ‘And they don’t come much bigger than that.’ Blackthorn pointed at the incoming creature and then offered the harpoon to Jericho.
Jericho took the weapon and tested its weight. It was so light it felt like a ceremonial spear from the temple, yet he knew if it hit home, this would do the trick and kill with no trouble.
‘One shot, make it count.’ The captain clapped Jericho on the back and jumped down a dark hatch cut into the middle of the deck.
Barely a minute later, several thunderous shudders rocked the ship, and to his horror, he saw that the ship spat flames and smoke. He watched as the dragon swerved and dodged incoming cannonballs with ease. It was the rider, in control of the dragon, who needed to be relieved of his saddle permanently for the plan to work.
He summoned all his mental strength and soaked up the energies from the earth and sea below, and the air around him. He visualised in his mind the rider’s saddle, and as he focused on the task, his hands began to glow blue. He concentrated on the buckles, and visualised how they were fastened, and imagined he was undoing them. Several attempts and one sweaty brow later, he had, by sheer determination, unfastened one of the buckles that held the saddle to the dragon. This was enough to unseat the rider, who fell from his ride. He did not fall far, as the reins, he held arrested his drop.
The rider was shaken by the fall, though soon recovered, and attempted to remount his charge. Jericho aimed a knockout spell at the rider and missed, so uncontrolled were the ship’s movements. He grabbed hold of a rope to steady himself and took aim again with an extended arm. His whole being focused on the rider, now almost back in his saddle. He drew the necessary elemental forces from around him, and seconds later the rider was no longer a threat; he fell into the sea far below, a silent scream of shock on his face.
Without warning a pair of hands grabbed him from behind and threw him to the deck; he looked up and saw a toothy grin. ‘Be more careful, son,’ said an aged pirate, who then stomped off with a wooden leg visible below his knee.
The old pirate had saved Jericho from impalement by a spike from the dragon’s tail as it swished across the deck. He had been so deep in concentration, he had neglected to keep his focus on the enemy’s whereabouts. But wait, this was a new dragon and a new rider.
‘Damn, just what we need,’ he cursed.
‘You can say that again,’ said Blackthorn, and offered him assistance up from the deck.
‘Have we managed to get the chest plate off yet?’ Jericho asked.
‘No, but my lads tell me we are mere minutes away from a direct hit. These things are devilishly tricky to hit. I, however, have some of the best marksmen at my disposal.’
‘Captain? The dragon is leaving,’ a voice yelled from a crow’s nest strapped to the side of the envelope.
Blackthorn and Jericho looked to where the crewman had pointed, and sure enough, the riderless dragon had quickly disappeared into the distance and appeared to head north.
‘Well, I’ll be. Why would it be doing that, do you think?’ Blackthorn pondered.
Amongst the thunderous discharges of the multiple cannons aboard ship, Jericho had an idea.
‘Free will. The beast regained its free will when its rider fell. The spell that bonded the pair has been broken.’ Jericho remembered the last conversation he had had with his cellmate, Silentus Madook.
‘What’s that now?’ Blackthorn asked.
‘A wizard of sufficient skill can take away the beast’s mind and control its actions. When the rider fell, the creature was able to control its own mind once more. I guess it’s going home.’
‘To the tower?’
‘I highly doubt it. Would you willingly return to captivity? I mean, they aren’t homing pigeons, after all. There were rumours of a dragon stronghold in the far north, though that was before we thought they were extinct.’
; ‘So I guess all we have to do is take down the rider to rid ourselves of these beasts.’ Blackthorn turned to a short, thin man near him. ‘Tell the cannon teams to aim for the rider.’
‘Aye captain.’ The wiry man saluted and ran off at full speed.
‘I guess you won’t need that harpoon after all.’ Blackthorn raised a brow and reached for the weapon.
The captain jerked, his head snapped back, and a look of puzzlement spread across his face. He looked down at his chest in a drunken fashion, and his eyes widened in shock. A three-foot black spike from the tail of the dragon exited his chest, glistening red with his blood. Before Jericho had a chance to react, the dragon’s tail whipped the captain into the air and out of sight. Jericho was horrified at the violence of the captain’s death. He had seen death on a grand scale, though never one that involved a dragon, and it was a terrifying sight.
Panic ensued. The death of the captain shocked the crew into inaction, and now the dragon was free to pick them off one by one. Without a leader to guide the men, all was lost, and Jericho knew they would never listen to him. He was an outsider, and from their perspective, he had brought ill fortune upon their heads. As superstitious as they were, it was a wonder they had not thrown him overboard already.
To his alarm, the dragon headed back, and fast. He began to run. He needed to get undercover, and quickly. He made for the main cabin and hoped for a plan to escape this.
The dragon swooped overhead; Jericho dived and slid into the side of the iron framework. He stood and rubbed his shoulder, now sore from the impact, and made his way to a set of wooden steps that led up to the wheelhouse. He took them two at a time and reached the main cabin door quickly. He burst inside to find the deck deserted, each member of the crew preferring to save his own soul. However, he might. Yet how did one save oneself thousands of feet in the air? He looked around and spotted a wooden lever on the rear wall. Its handle was painted red and looked important. He stepped up to it and noticed a small sign posted above it. He wiped away a layer of dust and read: ‘In case of emergency, pull!’ He shrugged and pulled the lever.
For a moment not a lot happened. Then somewhere deep below, a rumble, followed by mechanical sounds, began to rattle the ship. He ran outside and looked over the edge of a wooden rail. Something peculiar had emerged from the sides of the ship, and he needed a better viewpoint. He looked about him and spotted a ladder set into the metal framework that followed the curved roof of the wheelhouse. He hopped onto the first of the rungs and climbed quickly.
Seconds later, he was balanced awkwardly on the roof of the cabin and swayed with the ship. He stepped carefully to the edge of the wheelhouse and peered over. He saw that several small boats hung loosely at the starboard side of the ship, suspended by thick ropes from cast-iron hangers.
Several of the pirate crew jumped into the first of the newly acquired appendages and cast off.
The moment the boat left the ship, it dropped like a stone, and a leather patchwork envelope began to unfurl from a central pipe set into the midsection. The envelope filled with hot air from a quick-lighting furnace, and the boat slowed. The pirates were now in charge of individual smaller versions of the mother ship.
Jericho turned quickly; this was his means of escape. He headed back to the ladder and had nearly reached it when, out of the corner of his eye, an enormous black shape loomed. His head whipped around, and he instinctively dove for cover. The gigantic black dragon, limbs outstretched, made a grab for him, but missed and collided with the side of the envelope. The envelope immediately began to collapse in on itself to trap the dragon. Claws, legs and tail became entangled in the thick ropes that surrounded the air sac, with no chance of escape. The dragon began to scream, a horrific sound that threatened to burst his eardrums.
Jericho wasted no time and jumped from the roof of the cabin to the deck below, only to twist his ankle in the process. With a yelp he hobbled to the bulwark at the starboard side of the ship, to find that the escape boats had gone, and none remained.
He gripped his hair and joined the dragon, as it attempted to free itself, in a scream of frustration. He looked up into the sun-filled sky, with Er’ath’s sister planets faintly outlined.
‘Mighty Rindor, if I ever served you well, please find me a way out of this,’ he pleaded to his God.
‘Dareth Jericho, as I live and breathe,’ said a soft female voice behind him.
Jericho dropped his hands and turned to face the voice. A smile erupted across his face, for there before him stood his sister, Matron Eliana Truelove, and she smiled broadly. She wore a white bonnet and pinafore, tied around the waist, and under this, she wore a blue tunic. They rushed into each other’s arms and hugged.
‘My God, Eliana, you’ve put on some weight,’ Jericho winked.
‘You need talk; you’re looking a bit grey around the gills, there, cheeky boy.’
‘It is so good to see you after all these years,’ he said and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
‘Brother, as lovely as this is, I think you have failed to notice that this ship is sinking fast.’ She swung an arm in a wide arc to indicate the threat.
‘Of course, I noticed. The sudden drop kind of gave the game away. Wait! How did you get on board?’
‘I ported here, of course,’ Truelove replied.
Jericho laughed. ‘Indeed, how stupid of me? I couldn’t port from the island, but we are far from it now.’
‘Take my hand, brother.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘To the infirmary, of course. Do you think I stopped by from the third cloud on the left?’
Jericho rolled his eyes; he had indeed missed his sister, even though she still ribbed him as she had done when they were children. He quickly took off his boots and held on to them tightly.
Without further delay, he and his sister vanished with a crack. The dragon, in one last-ditch attempt to escape, let loose a fiery blaze from its nostrils. The inferno caught a hold of the envelope at lightning speed, and the pirate airship with its new captive fell to its doom, engulfed in a huge ball of flames.
Truelove and Jericho landed softly inside the section of the golden temple that was her infirmary. While she donned her footwear, he looked around at the familiar surroundings and noticed that not much had changed, besides the patients. Several casualties appeared to be asleep and were in various states of healing at the hands of his sister.
The infirmary contained twenty beds in total and had offered a place for medical care to the guard of the temple, before the incident with an incorrectly mixed growth tonic. He remembered that when the room had left the temple unexpectedly, two walls were missing, and it seemed Eliana had rebuilt the missing walls and roof section above the dormitory. At the opposite end of the room were Eliana’s comfortable living quarters, and a small surgery.
‘Come, this way, you look like you could do with a good square meal,’ said Eliana, and tugged at his arm.
He hobbled after her down the natural corridor between the beds, and took the odd glance left and right. Two of the beds, he noted, had curtains drawn, and either the occupants wanted privacy, or their injuries were exceedingly gruesome.
‘I hadn’t given it too much thought, but now you mention it, I am rather hungry,’ he replied, and his stomach rumbled in agreement.
‘It is fortunate then that I have a full pot of broth bubbling away nicely in my quarters.’
‘To be truthful, I haven’t had much of an appetite since they murdered Eraywen,’ he said and looked suddenly pale.
Eliana stopped short. ‘Oh, Dareth, I had no idea, I am sorry. What happened?’ A hand reached across her mouth, her eyes wide in shock, and tears welled.
‘Those people back there in the tower, they were dark wizards. They used Eraywen to lure me to their lair, in an effort to have me spy for them.’ Jericho paused to allow himself to be led into Eliana’s office, and she guided him to a comfy leather chair opposite a toasty fire. There he sat and
stared into the flames for a few minutes, and mourned his loss. Eliana did not prompt him but waited patiently for him to continue.
‘We had escaped, Eraywen and I, along with a slave called Silentus, a good man. Only we were caught, and they killed her. Cold-bloodedly killed her, snuffed out her life like a candle.’ Jericho’s face contorted with pain and rage, and he struck the arm of his chair with his fist. ‘That is when I was taken to their master, Lordich Secracar.’
Eliana took a sharp breath at the name. ‘But surely you are mistaken. The man is dead.’
‘I wish I were mistaken, sister. No, he is very much alive thanks to a little deal he did with Death. Tell me, though, how is it you were passing the black tower?’
‘I was blown off course by an unusually high wind that caught my sail. I had to winch it in for fear it would rip from the mast.’
‘You have a mast?’
‘Oh yes. That, and much more.’
‘Tell me, how do the pirates find you up here? All alone, I might add,’ Jericho questioned curiously, eager to change the subject.
‘That, dear brother, is a closely guarded secret, and one I will not divulge. These pirates are seriously misunderstood.’
‘Misunderstood? They are liable to cut your throat as look at you. Why do you help these men?’
‘I promised the gods and made a vow to help all those in need of medical care, regardless of creed, colour, religion or background. I have made this my life’s work.’
‘You don’t miss The Brotherhood, your home, me?’ Jericho asked, in the hope, he would trigger in his sister a desire to return home.
‘Oh, terribly, though my help is needed here. You have many fine healers at the temple. The Pirates, however, have none, well, none that wouldn’t think twice about amputating a damaged limb of a shipmate, when a simple healing potion would have cured the man. These people need expert care, and I’m the one to provide it.’
‘That you are, sister, that you are.’ Jericho nodded, barely able to control the disappointment in his voice. ‘Since I cannot persuade you to give up this endeavour of yours, it is imperative we make all haste to the temple. The Archmage needs to hear what I have to say.’
The Aduramis Chronicles: Volumes 1-3: The Definitive Collection Page 20