Whisper Alive

by Marc Secchia

  After her briefing with the King, she took a quick crust of bitter grey trail-bread and a swig of water. A concise, intense consultation with the Head Engineer followed before Whisper raced off into the gathering dawn. Where would Warlock Sanfuri be waiting next?

  * * * *

  A day and a half later, she had her answer, and it was the worst one possible. The Warlock’s forces held not only the most beautiful bridge she had crossed on the way out of Arbor, with its majestic spectacle of eighteen mile-tall cliffs broken only by a single white torrent that fell fifteen of those miles over a series of steps into the Brass Mirror far, far below, but also – unfortunately – it was by definition, location and reputation, the only bridge. Period.

  Here, where she had paused to gawk before, Arbor’s side-canyon cut into the main gorge in a narrow crack some twelve miles deep. The ledge-trail led around the corner and out of sight, a good five miles above the river that joined that amazing waterfall just above one-third of the way up. Arbor lay a mere fifteen miles along that cliff-hugging trail. High winds and thousands of belligerent Wyverns nesting the length and height of these cliffs accounted for any idea that she might glide across. The bulwark that speared across the three-quarter mile gap crawled with Gold-Red Dragons, below the bridge, above and all around. The Wyverns, gathered in stripes and spots of variegated colour upon the cliffs, would give their larger cousins respect. Not so much, a Whisper. On the near side, hundreds of Sanfuri’s troops worked with Warlocks and a dozen Enchanters of the Stone Element to fashion battlements that spanned the entire V-shaped access to the bridge. Seventy feet tall. Forty thick. No canodraconid was about to bulldoze through that. They had already fashioned balcony-like emplacements above to provide additional discouragement to any ground-based assault.

  Whisper lurked a quarter-mile higher up, looking down upon this hive of industry with a frown that matched Xola’s best efforts. Sunstrike frazzle that Warlock! His pick of location was as predictable as it was perfect.

  Worse, the battlement affair was being repeated on the far side, where the Arborite garrison had recently stood. Only a dark smudge upon the rocks betrayed its previous existence. The trail would be cut off from the bridge.

  Sighing, she pulled out an Azarinthe stylus and a few message reels, and began to take detailed notes. Xan would be hard-put to think his way through this one, unless his sister had a couple of handy, localised earthquakes hidden up her magical sleeves. First, she must provide all the data she could and return it back a ways down the trail; then, it would be time to run the gauntlet against two Warlocks stationed either side of the bridge and a horde of beasts that could hear her heartbeat from ten paces and, according to the lore, distinguish a single scent amidst a million.

  Great odds, Whisper. A shame she couldn’t shield scent – not yet. Her stylus scratched away. She paused, tugging at her whiskers until the skin pulled painfully beneath her nose.

  Convulsively, she wrote: Does the Warlock seek to consolidate his operations, based in Arbor?

  Her heart was acid, a mirror of the Brass Mirror down below, reduced to a thread by the incredible distance. Not a crossing for any creature which suffered from vertigo. Pensively, she touched her tail, willing it to regrow. For that alone, she owed it to Arbor to attempt this crossing. Where was her courage now? Drained into a canyon of despair as stunning and overwhelming as the panorama that faced her?

  She felt so small.

  Then, she smelled a hint on the breeze. Assumbi blossoms. Oh, could she? Whisper’s heart lurched in her chest, making her clutch the spot. She flushed with hope like sunstrike impacting unsuspecting flesh. Madness!

  The sort of madness that just might work …

  * * * *

  Two hours after dawn, Whisper made her move. The motley cohort of guards down below had relaxed; they stood about, chatting and joshing each other. Nothing would happen. Sunstrike played in spots upon the bridge, slowly tracking across the grey-orange span that protected the pedestrian walkway dangling beneath. In the middle stood a patch of unmitigated sunstrike four hundred feet wide, a brilliant, blinding band of sunshine. Nothing could pass through – no creature would be foolish enough to attempt a crossing, anyways.

  In theory, Whisper told herself. The problem with proving theories upon one’s own flesh was that the result could be … well, messy.

  She had crept down the cliff over the course of an hour, gliding in a few spots so as to preclude any possibility of dislodging a speck of dirt or a leaf. Now, she had found a spot between the workers and two indolent Gold-Red Dragons. She drew a deep breath, focussing on the closer beast, the female. Deliberately pitching her mental voice into the lower range of a male Dragon’s tones, she said:

  You blithering snot-rag, did your dam drop your egg before you were born?

  The Dragoness’ head jerked up. She stared at her companion, who stiffened perceptibly at the hostile gaze. What? he growled.

  Did you just speak to me?

  He snorted, You’re mad. Go bother a smaller Dragon.

  After exchanging heated glares for a few moments longer, the two Dragons shifted apart, ignoring each other ostentatiously.

  Whisper tried again, You’re so full of bilgewater, you’re leaking pustulent scut around the earholes.

  The female snarled, Shut it, Red, before I slam your sorry, gummy trap shut for you!

  What are you prattling about? he bristled, ruffling his spikes to their impressive maximum. His wings flicked restively. Are you with egg?

  With egg? Typical flame-headed male. Don’t think you can bait me without comeback!

  The male turned his shoulder stoically, pretending interest in the building works – obviously, he was far too stuffed with self-importance and draconic nobility to rise to a few barbs. Creeping closer still, Whisper now tried to produce a more mellifluous female-like voice. Well, in your case, you waddle like a pregnant dracoworm.

  What the – the female’s head jerked about, searching. Whisper had half a second to apprehend her mistake before the male clashed his fangs against the female Gold-Red’s neck.

  GRRAARRGH!

  The Dragoness responded as Dragons would, in a vicious whirl of talon and fang. Whisper let them go at it for a few seconds, to let the fires build and the tempers rage, before she yelled, Last one across is a blind flatworm!

  The male jerked away, only to suffer the Dragoness pouncing high onto his back, all twenty-four talons gouging away with abandon as she clambered up to his shoulders before using him as a springboard to leap into the lead. Roaring incendiary insults at each other, the Dragons sprinted for the bridge, scattering the shocked Warlocks to the winds. Whisper sprinted after. Aye! Her plan was working! And she did not possess a single functioning neuron inside of her skull. Rational concerns were useless. She was committed.

  That said, if she did not catch them in time, or if the race stopped … lifting her knees, Whisper galloped after the Dragons for all she was worth. The Gold-Reds were quick, but they were more concerned with snapping at each other and scrapping, while she was solely motivated by catching up well before they hit the band of sunstrike. Heat! Whisper ducked through a sunbeam. Watch out! The male’s tail almost thrashed her off the bridge, but as she wobbled toward the edge, desperately trying to catch her balance, the female braked slightly. Wham! The bigger male slammed into her haunches. The Dragoness cuffed him with a terrible blow to the jaw, her hind talons fully unsheathed, while Whisper made herself useful by leaping onto the male’s tail, not as yet having attained the pinnacle of her fungus-brained plan. The crucial moment arrived as she slipped beneath the base of his tail, hanging onto his rough scales with every talon and every ounce of strength she possessed. This was the risk. If she fell, scraped off, or was crushed between tail and stone …

  Podgy old bloatworm, sneered the female.

  The male thundered after her, bellowing, I’ll bloatworm your bloated, rock-scraping belly, you skanky fungazoid!

  Ah, Dragons.
Full of insults as always.

  Sunstrike! Heat boiled off the bridge, washing over her body in stifling waves, but the Dragon’s tail shielded her just enough. Fractions of inches. Her paws burned, but Whisper dared not shift her precarious grip as the Dragons charged through the open area. Even they could not bear direct sunstrike for long. She smelled the smoke starting to curl off the Dragons’ wings and bodies as they raced into the sentikor shade once more, and the male immediately took his turn to pounce! Sinking his talons into the female’s tail, he exerted all of his enormous strength, leaning backward as he dragged her beneath his forepaws. Whisper groaned aloud as the Dragon’s tonnage crushed her briefly against the stone buttress. She felt as if the Dragon had sat on her sternum.

  Both Dragons froze, searching with nostrils a-flare and ears alertly pricked upward. Instantly, the fight was a wisp of memory-smoke.

  Very well. Unclipping one of her daggers, Whisper swung for the one region she could reach, which was squarely between the Red-Gold’s hind legs. There she scored, well, not a devastating stab as she had intended, but she succeeded in carving a shallow slice of flesh out of his masculine pride instead.

  The effect was salubrious. The male howled a strangled note and choked out an agonised fireball as an involuntary convulsion of his steely thigh muscles flung him into an improbable, handstand-like pose above the female’s hindquarters. Whisper tumbled free. The incensed Dragoness kicked her pursuer off the bridge and swung about, searching. Her eye-orbs blazed the crimson of her towering rage.

  Fire licked from her nostrils. “Where are you? I hear your frightened heartbeat, little one.”

  Whisper backed up a step. Here came the male, easily catching himself with a few wingbeats that were slightly more tentative than usual, she hoped.

  “What is it?” growled the Dragon.

  “The Whisper’s here. I scent nothing, but I’m quite certain I heard something … whatever attacked you. That voice – it wasn’t you or me. That creature spoke telepathically!”

  Wicked fire-eyes scanned the expanse of bridge, burning crimson with rage. Any second now, they would douse the entire area with fire. She would appear and expire in one puff of smoke.

  Whisper willed herself to reappear, screeching, “Surprise!”

  Even more surprisingly, her ploy paid off for a superheated second as the Dragons saw something emerge from nothing. They goggled. She stuck out her tongue and waggled it as best fright and adrenaline allowed. “Pair of corpulent slugs! Can’t catch me!”

  The Dragons sprang for her. Unfortunately, they were both forty feet long and weighed at least ten tonnes each. She was tiny, and by far the nimbler creature. Whisper had the satisfaction of seeing the Dragons slam together right above her head, before she pelted for the end of the bridge. Flat out. Almost flying. Terror lent her paws the proverbial wings as the Dragons thundered their rage at each other, then came silence. Horrifying, skin-crawling silence. Don’t risk a backward glance! Even over the wind hissing across her pointy ears, Whisper heard their approach, the mighty beating of the wings as the Dragons gave chase. A trio of Warlocks and four further Dragons faced the incoming Whisper with open amazement as she sprinted straight at them. Her hearing tuned in to the cavernous double-inhalation of breath behind her as the chasing Dragons stoked their belly-furnaces; now a bubbling of fire and lava and the crackling of flames up their long throats as in her mind’s eye, the necks extended to become muscular tubes for aiming the Dragon fire where it was most wanted, which happened to be squarely at one fast-moving, furry little rump.

  She gave it an extra-cheeky waggle.

  At the very last instant she could imagine, Whisper triggered her camouflage and flung herself sideways off the bridge. Twin airstrikes screamed past her departing tail and detonated not only against the paralysed Warlocks, but through them. They seared furrows in the ground all the way up to the fortification works, splashing a wave of molten rock against the engineers there. Screams rose above the crackling of bushfires and the outraged bellowing of Dragons attacked by their kin – or, that was their instinctive response, as the attacking pair skidded to a halt that churned up a wave of rock chips and moss. Before she could blink, a massive, fangs-flying brawl developed in the landing area just weakside of the bridge, where the battlement spanned slopes that rose thirty feet before turning almost immediately to the vertical; to her right paw a towering stele that flanked the trail-crack, and to her left paw, the even more uncompromising canyon wall. The Dragons tangled with each other, ripping wings and gnawing on limbs and tails as they held nothing back. The Human engineers fled, screeching like frightened gaspafinches.

  Whisper grinned fiercely. Dragon emotions. Predictable.

  Flare! Catching the cliff just fifteen feet below the lip, Whisper swarmed upward while she enjoyed the cover of the chaos she had created. She raised her head and scanned the scene. Half a second later, she pelted for the cover of the nearest works cart. The arched metal gate on this side stood ajar to allow the workers access. No doubt, it would be swung shut if ever trouble threatened from across the bridge, and the metal looked to be three inches thick, perhaps supplied with further wooden reinforcing behind. Whisper’s eyes fell on a mound of welding rods just nearby. Each carried a charge of mana; Manrax had introduced them to her just a couple of days ago. Scooping up a pawful of awful intentions, Whisper crept beneath the cart.

  Aha. Discarded metal cuttings, even better. Selecting a couple of suitable candidates, she crept to the front of the cart. Rod. She twisted the end and tossed it up and behind her, in the hope that some of those supplies might be flammable. Now, a metal shard. Selecting a target from amongst the men – a mix of races and skin-colours from what she could see, standing beside the gates looking on as the Dragons disagreed, quarrelled, bit each other’s wings and tails and searched for her all at once – she whipped her arm into a hard, flat throw.

  The metal veered. Whisper had just begun to hiss her frustration when the greenish fellow standing just behind her target clutched his neck and went down with an agonised, lingering scream. Perfect. She could not have paid him to create a better distraction.

  “Over there!” thundered the Gold-Red Dragons, charging at the engineers and soldiers, who reacted predictably. They scattered like dragonets chasing tasty flying drakkids.

  Whisper would have done exactly the same. No point in waiting to see exactly how flat an enraged Dragon’s paw-stomp would leave one, was there? One inch thick or two? Picking another target further back from the gate, she let fly with an activated welding rod. The smoking point spun away from her to smack into an engineer’s ribs. Unfortunately for her, it left a trail of smoke linking her hiding place with the yelling man. Two Dragons pounced upon the hapless fellow even as he pointed in the opposite direction, howling about her being near the cart. His neck snapped audibly, cutting off the sound mid-wail. Ouch.

  Whisper broke for the gate.

  KAABOOM!!

  An explosion whisked her effortlessly into the air, propelling her just inches beneath the lintel of the fifteen-foot gap. Result! From the cart? Her ears throbbed painfully. Landing, Whisper charged onward, took a drunken lurch to her left and rebounded off the tunnel wall. She tore out into the brightness, and found herself facing off with a squad of twenty of the Warlock’s finest.

  Oh no.

  She puffed out her chest. “First man who moves, I’ll kill him.”

  Not one of them so much as blinked. Right. So she was not about to intimidate anyone. Any second now, she’d have Dragons breathing down her neck, and – net!

  From a standing start, she was quicker than most Humans credited. Avoiding the swishing rope net, Whisper only succeeded in slamming into a soldier right at the corner of their formation. A heavy hand scragged her neck. “Come ’ere, you.”

  A frozen second. Blinking. Rising into the air.

  I am not a victim!

  Her paws dived into her carryall, a split-second raid. Welding rod. Snap. De
ftly, she inserted the business end of the rod into the man’s chainmail sleeve.

  “Unholy – yeeeee!” shrieked the soldier, dropping his catch.

  Oh aye! Manrax had been very particular when describing the use of these welding rods. Whisper palmed two more. Snap. Snap. Activating the rods, she blurred toward the nearest soldier and touched the rods to his sword. Sparks! Crackling! The fellow jerked backward, jabbing the soldier behind him in the throat with the point of his elbow.

  That was all the measure of grace she enjoyed. The soldiers broke for her with a low, concerted growl not unlike the Gold-Red Dragons still kicking up a fuss on the other side of the battlement. Whisper ran for her life, jinking and masking her presence until she realised the rods were, of course, still smoking. Ugh! When would she learn? She flicked them back into the pursuing pack of soldiers, raising a few outraged yells, before bounding away as an assortment of swords, spears and daggers sliced through the air she had just vacated.

  Whisper had a couple of breaths to appreciate where she was as she swerved around the stele and onto the trail. Home run! Fifteen miles to Arbor. The end was close enough to entice her eager nostrils. From here, the trail led all along a fairly broad ledge on the edge of this secondary canyon to the city, but thankfully, any further settlements lay beyond and openside of Arbor. Where would she find the opposing armies?

  Skittering around a long bend at top speed, Whisper found them dead ahead. Three hundred feet. Through a sparkling turquoise screen raised by at least a dozen of Sanfuri’s Mage-stooges, she saw a massive siege engine creeping along the ledge, protected by armoured phalanxes of Arborite soldiers. On this side stood a legion of Sanfuri’s Irregulars, numbering at least three hundred, supported by five Gold-Red Dragons. Why did they not attack the soldiers of Arbor?