2 - The Dragons at War

by The Dragons At War

  "But . . . but . . ." Tchk'pal glared back at Kang. "They... I..."

  "Don't be modest, Tchk'pal," Rajak said. "This army needs heroes. You're a tribute to us all. Help him along, there, men."

  Two human soldiers steadied the stumbling Tchk'pal, escorted him, staggering and weaving and mumbling to himself, back to the ramparts.

  "That was brilliant, sir!" Slith said. "He'll never dare tell the truth now!"

  Kang shook his head. "He won't tell Rajak the truth. But wait until he gets hold of us. He's still our commander, or have you forgotten?"

  Slith's tongue slid out of his mouth, curled at the tip. Together, they strode somberly back to the ramparts. Gloth came up and reported.

  "Sir, we lost four men, counting the commander, and one ballista. I've already got third troop working on building another one. What's the matter?"

  Kang shook his head. "Don't count the commander. He's alive."

  Gloth dropped his sword, narrowly missing his foot. "Alive? How could he have lived through that? Sargas take him and-"

  "Attention!" Kang saluted.

  Tchk'pal was climbing up onto the ramparts.

  "Now we're in for it," Slith muttered.

  Kang braced himself.

  Tchk'pal walked up to the draconian commander, grabbed hold of him by the shoulders, and kissed him on both sides of his face.

  Kang almost passed out from the smell and the shock.

  "S-s-sir?" he stammered.

  Tchk'pal grinned. "Well done, men. I gain honor and glory in division commander's eyes." The minotaur's own eyes narrowed. He jerked a thumb back at the catapult. "That my idea, you know. Both of you remember that!"

  "Oh, yes, sir," said Kang.

  "Your idea, sir," Slith added. "Genius. Pure genius."

  "Yes, wasn't it." Tchk'pal was smiling again. "And now I have another, even better idea ..."

  The draconians groaned inwardly, waited to hear their fate.

  Tchk'pal turned to gaze fondly at the catapult.

  "We're going to do that again," he said. "You will fire me into battle on the morrow. Except this time, I want to attain more range and greater height. I want to be able to fly at least twice as high and travel twice as far at twice the speed. Can you handle that, dracos?"

  The two draconians looked at each other, and grinned.

  "Your next flight will be truly glorious, sir," Kang promised.

  "You can bet on it, sir," Slith said.

  "Excellent." Tchk'pal put a hairy arm around each of them. "And now, lizard-boys, let's celebrate. Do you have any more of that tasty apple juice?"

  Through the Door at the Top of the Sky

  Roger E. Moore

  He was hurrying home, the comfort of sheltering rock just a hundred and twenty miles straight down, when they caught up with him. Lemborg saw a streak flash across the left rearview mirror, but the word missile had not reached his brain when the port hydrodynamic maneuvering tank exploded at the rear of his ship.

  Lemborg was slammed between his flight seat and leather seat restraints a dozen times like a rubber ball, ears ringing from the louder-than-thunder bang of the pressurized tank's demise. When his double vision cleared, the diminutive gnome saw the great blue sphere of Krynn shining from his rearview mirrors instead of filling his forward command window. The Spirit of Mount Nevermind, Mark XXVIII-B was yawing to the right, clockwise, a miles-long contrail of twisted white smoke falling behind it like the tail of a burning comet.

  On top of that, there was a new star ahead among the infinite constellations, a star that did not move with the others. The star was bright and steady, and even a novice wildspace pilot like Lemborg could tell with a glance that it was following him.

  They were following him.

  Lemborg gasped. His mind overloaded with a thousand unspeakable terrors, the white-bearded gnome grabbed the yellow lever at his side with both hands and tugged back sharply. Metal clamps unlocked with shrieks and groans along the Spirit's stern; warning sirens and alarm bells raised deafening cries in protest. With a jolt that ran the length of the Spirit and shook Lemborg right down to his teeth, the entire hydrodynamic maneuvering assembly came free of the ship's fuselage, just as Krynn's vast, white-streaked face drifted back into view from Lemborg's right.

  At the very moment the assembly was jettisoned, Lemborg released the yellow lever and reached up, grabbing an overhead handring attached to a thick pin. He jerked down. Metal screamed as a huge spring shot sternward along a track, pulling on the rope to the primary gyroscopic stabilizer. The rumbling whine of the gyro immediately went through the Spirit, and the ship's tumbling ceased.

  Lemborg fell back into his wool-padded seat, his breath shallow and his wood-brown face pale and streaked with sweat. Glorious Krynn was straight ahead again, a beautiful blue-and-white ball that filled his window and stretched beyond. Sancrist Island and the safety of Mount Nevermind were minutes away. He was almost home. The loss of the maneuvering assembly, which had cost 17,406 steels, weighed two tons, and took three years to perfect, meant nothing. If they caught him-only that mattered. The burst tank rendered the assembly both useless and dangerous. It would also slow him down, and speed was Lemborg's only friend.

  A flicker passed to starboard, very close by. Lemborg saw the dark streak flash ahead, barely visible against the white clouds of Krynn before it vanished.

  They'd missed. That was unusual. It would not happen with the next shot, he knew. It was time to chuck his last cow chip, as his cousin in the Agricultural Byproducts Disposal Guild liked to say.

  Lemborg adjusted the gyro using a steering bar, reducing the angle of his dive into Krynn and orienting the ship toward Sancrist Island. He then mumbled a traditional gnomish engineering prayer ("Great Reorx, please do not let this device blow up in an inappropriate manner!"), stood up in his seat as far as the restraining straps would allow, and kicked down with his right boot.

  His boot heel thumped down on a metal plate, which gave way slightly. Lemborg heard a scraping sound far behind him. He shut his eyes, gritted his teeth, and forced himself back in his seat as far as he could go.

  There was a BOOM! louder than the maneuvering-tank explosion, louder than lightning in your own living room, louder than Reorx's Hammer against the Anvil of Creation, forging Chaos into the Stars, the Five Worlds, and Universal Order-or so ran the crazed thought through Lemborg's mind as a beyond-tremendous force slammed him back into the overstuffed pilot's seat and tried to pull the skin off his face. Hot needles seared his eardrums. He couldn't breathe. He passed out.

  He involuntarily opened his eyes again to a mad, whirling scene. Wind blasted through the cabin and pummeled his face, snapping the straps against his chest and arms. Clouds raced by the shattered command window, titanic cotton balls and lacy streaks of white hurling overhead against a bright blue sky. The air stank of roasted metal, wood, and paint.

  Lemborg lay limp and unmoving in his seat. A headache burned like lava throughout his skull. His orange coverall suit was filthy, his body felt like it had been pounded by giants, and he thought he would soon throw up.

  He remembered the emergency button. May as well, he thought through the boiling pain in his head. Be interested to see what happens if it fails. The fingers of his right hand crawled down to the end of the armrest, curled under the knob at the end, and fumbled with the button there.

  A shock rumbled through the ship, throwing Lemborg forward into his straps. The chaos of passing clouds slowed down as the ship decelerated, then flew straighter. Lemborg imagined the Spirit's emergency wings cranking outward and locking into place. The drogue chute had likely been torn instantly away, but it had at least slowed the ship down to make it more maneuverable.

  The battered gnome's left hand caught hold of a short vertical bar by his knees. He made a slight adjustment to the bar, and the nose of the Spirit tilted downward, revealing a bright wasteland of dunes and dark grass roaring by only a few hundred feet below. Almost home. He squinted
into the wind, hunting for a makeshift landing strip.

  Lemborg then saw that the ship was descending much too fast. His eyes widened with horror. Instinctively, he put out his right hand to deflect the eroded sandy ridge rushing up at him.

  The Spirit cleared the ridge top. Almost.

  A bone-breaking, world-shattering BANG! rang through the ship. The Spirit rocked madly, slammed port and starboard by ground debris as it skidded across the rock-strewn sands. A thousand banshees screamed from the lower hull. The emergency wings smashed into boulders and were torn off. Dust spilled into the pilot's cabin and blinded Lemborg instantly, filling his mouth and stinging his face.

  Lemborg never saw the stone walls ahead, or the archway with its two ancient gates-closed-standing right in his ship's path. The fuselage of the cone-shaped spacecraft smashed the wooden gates into clouds of flying splinters. As the ship skidded through, the outriding port and starboard auxiliary maneuvering tanks at the ship's midsection struck the ancient stonework on either side of the gate and blew up instantly, cutting the Spirit cleanly in two and destroying most of the arch as well.

  In a shower of bright orange flames, splintered rock, and blackened chunks of wreckage, the forward half of the Spirit of Mount Nevermind, Mark XXVIII-B ground to a halt in the center of a long-abandoned desert city, nose tilted slightly upward as it climbed the sandy slope around a dry stone fountain. Falling debris rang off the scorched metallic hull.

  Lemborg dizzily opened his eyes and had a brief, blurry view of a huge, grinning monster peering in the ruined command window. This cannot possibly be good, he thought, just before unconsciousness mercifully claimed him.

  *****

  Consciousness claimed Lemborg back after centuries of bad dreams. He was vaguely aware first of being alive. It was not a wholly pleasant sensation. The skin on his face and hands felt hot and sunburned. He licked his chapped lips and discovered that he was thirsty. Terribly thirsty.

  "I offer my greetings." The voice in his ears was resonant, so deep and strong that Lemborg felt his whole body vibrate. "You must soon explain how you brought your curious device into my city, and whether the manner of your arrival was planned in advance. I was quite impressed, and so will be patient with your response."

  The little gnome opened his eyes. He looked dizzily up at a richly painted ceiling that stretched beyond the edges of his vision. Little humans in colorful robes marched in great inset circles above, sounding trumpets and beating drums. Toward the center of the parading circles were figures with outstretched arms, reaching toward a handsome, elaborately armored male human on a throne in the center of it all, who raised a sword in his right hand in a bland gesture of triumph. The ceiling was cracked with age, but the colors had not faded greatly.

  Lemborg blinked and tensed his body experimentally. A groan escaped his lips as he squeezed his eyes shut. Every part of him ached abominably. He was little more than a living bruise.

  "You have many injuries, but you will live," said the resonant voice in a friendly tone. It did not sound like any being Lemborg had ever heard. The words were clear, but the register was so low that Lemborg knew whoever was speaking had to be huge. An ogre, maybe. With luck, not a minotaur.

  "Wa-" Lemborg's parched throat closed off before he could continue. He coughed and raised a hand, and was promptly rewarded with waves of agony through his arm, shoulder, and chest.

  Cold water unexpectedly splashed into Lemborg's face. He gasped and half sat up, crying out in pain from the sudden movement. He attempted to lie down again, but it only made the pain worse.

  A massive, solid object pushed gently against his left arm. He started to cry out again-but blessed, beautiful-as-spring relief poured through his body. His pain was gone. He thought of a sea wave rolling up a beach to cover the sand with its cooling foam, submerging him as it passed.

  He sighed, then took a shaky breath and rolled onto his left side, opening his eyes again. He tried to sit up, with great success.

  He saw the dragon.

  "AAAAAAHHH!" he screamed as he fell back. The dragon gleamed like a vast mountain of burnished golden hue. Huge dark eyes watched him impassively beneath thick scaled ridges. The monster's head nearly brushed against the distant painted ceiling. A great set of ivory claws rested not two feet away from Lemborg, each of the five claws longer than Lemborg's legs.

  "More water?" asked the dragon with concern. The great clawed foot beside the gnome lifted soundlessly away from him, formed itself into a cup, and dipped into a broad metal tub nearby. Water cascaded from the claws as they lifted away again and rushed at the gnome with frightening speed.

  He scrambled back but was drenched in a second from head to foot. Racked with coughing, Lemborg flailed his arms hysterically.

  He dimly sensed that something very large had moved close to him. The air grew exceedingly hot.

  "You will have no fear," said the dragon, quoting a spell. The air around Lemborg burned as if a great oven door had opened. The dragon's words sang through the gnome's body, then came to fiery life and leaped into his mind.

  Lemborg fell back, arms dropping to the floor at his sides. He coughed a bit, caught his breath, then sat up once more. The dragon had assumed its original position and now watched him with patient eyes.

  "No more water, thanks!" the wet gnome shouted quickly. "Feeling just fine now, quite fine. Sorry for the fright show there. Not much chance to see a dragon close up before, not around home, anyway. Just in the books. Obviously, dragons are much bigger in real life. Simply caught me off guard." He glanced behind him to make sure there were no more surprises.

  "I am pleased," said the dragon, leaving Lemborg a trifle confused as to just which of his remarks the dragon was pleased about. The dragon turned its head slightly to favor the gnome with its right eye. The gnome thought the gesture almost regal. The dragon never wasted movement, doing only what it needed to do and no more.

  "We should be introduced," the dragon prompted. Hot, dry air blew against Lemborg's face. The breeze smelled like burned sand. Lemborg's scalp itched, and he quickly curled his chapped lips inward to wet them.

  "Ah. Certainly." The gnome carefully got to his feet, brushed off his orange flight suit, and straightened up to face the dragon. (He had an idea floating in the back of his mind that facing a live dragon was extremely dangerous, but for some reason it didn't seem to be worth worrying about.) "Aerodynamics Guild technician-pilot fourth class Lemborgamontgoloferpaddersonrite. The short form of the name, of course, but humans butcher it to Lemborg. If there is just a moment to spare, there is the longer short form of it, which should take no more than a half hour, or the full form, which-"

  "Another time, perhaps," said the dragon with finality. The gnome fell silent. "Lemborg, you may call me Kalkon, which of course is the short form of my own name. I will not trouble you with the longer form." The dragon lifted its snout the slightest bit. "I complimented you earlier on the manner of your arrival here in the so-called Northern Wastes of Solamnia. The show was pleasingly extravagant, as spectacular as the great sand-devil of 353, which carried off the Great Temple's western tower here. I watched the scene in its entirety from the doorway of the constables' main barracks. A very destructive expenditure of energy, to be sure, and one that required a spell of healing on my part to aid your recovery"-the dragon put emphasis on that last part- "but I do applaud your style. You must be well regarded among your fellow wizards."

  The gnome's mouth drifted open in surprise. "What? Oh! Not a wizard, thanks, but rather with the Mount Nevermind Aerodynamics Guild instead. Not a wizard, no, no relation at all. And thank you for the spell. Quite pleasant, actually. Eh ..." Lemborg turned again to look around the room, a huge empty hall. "Just landed a technojammer here, but... um, it seems to have been misplaced just now. Seem to have misplaced the landing zone, too-was aiming for Mount Nevermind. Hope that new-model technojammer isn't lost or ... anything. Perhaps some light could be shed on just where that silly thing seems
to have-"

  "You are a tinker gnome from Sancrist, to the west," interrupted the dragon, nodding once with understanding. "Your people build mechanical things that blow up."

  Lemborg grimaced. "Well, now, not all of them do, of course. That is something of a myth because less than ninety percent of all gnomish inventions for the last twenty fiscal years really ever blow up or need to be recalled for catastrophic defects in design or workmansh-"

  "You called your flying device a technojammer," said the dragon-Kalkon-patiently. "What exactly does a technojammer do?"

  "Oh." Lemborg's forehead furrowed in sudden concentration. He had tried explaining this before to humans, but with little success. It was such a simple thing, too. "Well, that vessel, which of course has been misplaced, is a technojammer, and technojammers fly, rather like birds only without the flapping of wings and feathers and such-more like, um, powered gliding, um, the way that spelljammers fly-or glide, rather-only technojammers, unlike spelljammers, use no magic, only machinery, though both were designed for travel into wildspace-that being the, um, nothing that lies above the world, or around the world, or really between the different worlds, and these technojammers can, um-"

  "You arrived here on a flying ship that could travel between worlds," interrupted Kalkon. Surprised that the dragon had caught on so soon, Lemborg nodded his head vigorously. "Were you returning from another world, then?"

  "Oh, no, took off from here, absolutely," said Lemborg. He stuck out his chest a bit and pulled on his short white beard in pride. "In fact, first-ever successful flight of an Aerodynamics Guild technojammer! A miracle of modern achievement after only twenty-seven tries, not counting the eighty-six previous programs. Got out and took the old Spirit of Mount Nevermind, Mark XXVIII-B up for a spin at dawn this morning and ..."

  Lemborg stopped. His gaze dropped, the color running out of his brown face until he was almost gray.

  The dragon waited, watching Lemborg carefully.

  Lemborg looked up, licked his lips, and swallowed. "Um, pardon for having lost the thread of the current conversation," he said distractedly. "Perhaps best to exchange names and addresses now and get together again as soon as scheduling allows. Yes. Certainly would be a good thing right now to find the way to that technojammer, if it has indeed been seen, then stay in touch later after the Nevermind Postal Guild strike has been settl-"