Longfang

by Mark Robson

  ‘It’s me who should be apologising,’ she continued. ‘I hope you understand. I know you’d never deliberately hurt me, but my fears will not go away. It doesn’t make any sense, but I can’t stop the feelings. That’s just the way it is.’

  ‘You have come further than you realise, dragonrider,’ he said, his tone flavoured with pride. ‘I have watched you learn to control your fears in two short weeks. New circumstances inevitably cause them to flare. The fears have dominated your life for a long time, but I can see your bravery is more than a match for them. Be assured I will not test your strength unnecessarily, Nolita. We will press southwards and continue to look for the others as long as we can.’

  The light was fading and the snow showed no sign of letting up. The bitter cold had long since numbed the feeling in Nolita’s toes, fingers and cheeks. Her fur-lined clothing had insulated her body against the worst of the wind chill, but they had been airborne for a considerable time now. Her body was cold-soaked and she knew she would have to land soon or risk permanent injury.

  Visibility was very limited. Even during occasional lulls when the snow’s intensity thinned, Nolita could see about a league at best. In the heavier bursts, she was unable to see more than a few hundred paces. The constant bombardment of snowflakes forced her to half close her eyes so that her lashes kept the flakes from blurring her vision. The fading light heralded the impending fall of night. It would not be long before the darkness effectively blinded her altogether.

  When Fire made the link with Fang, Nolita felt his surge of excitement and relief through the bond and guessed he had found at least one of the others. Her mirrored emotions were short-lived. Fire’s thoughts moved instantly to urgent concern, bordering on panic.

  ‘What is it? What’s wrong, Fire?’

  ‘It’s Fang and Kira,’ he answered, his mental voice sounding clipped in her mind. ‘They’re in trouble, but I can help. Hang on.’

  Hanging on was not easy. With no sensation left in her fingers and her limbs weakened by hours of flying in the bitter cold, all Nolita could do was lean forwards and wrap her arms around the ridge in front of the saddle. Fire dipped into a shallow dive and began to drive forwards with all his might in an effort to reach Fang and Kira as quickly as possible. Nolita closed her eyes, feeling the wind rush increase as Fire accelerated through the blizzard.

  ‘Brace yourself. We will land shortly,’ Fire warned. ‘Keep your head down. This will be like when we had to burn our way out of the wood, except this time we’re going in.’

  Nolita did not know how she could possibly brace herself any more, but she was glad of the warning. The abrupt change of speed and body angle was almost too much. If she had not known it was coming, the sudden deceleration and running landing would most likely have thrown her from the saddle. The abrupt strain as they landed made the muscles in her arms feel as if they were exploding as she fought to stay on Fire’s back.

  Fire slowed to a walk and Nolita felt his chest expand beneath her as he inhaled ready to breathe his hottest fire. Eyes closed, and half dangling by stirrups and arms, she wriggled backwards until she settled into her saddle. The rumbling roar of Fire’s flame made her instinctively hold her breath. She expected him to pause before entering the trees, but he continued walking forwards into the burning path ahead.

  The crackling of burning wood and the stinging smell of smoke filled the air. The reflected heat of Firestorm’s torching breath was so hot that Nolita feared her numbed flesh might blister without her feeling the damage. He paused his deluge of fire and suddenly she could hear Kira’s voice ahead.

  ‘Kill them, Fire! Kill them all!’

  She was hysterical! The shock of hearing the normally fearless huntress in such a state was enough to make Nolita risk opening her eyes. Firestorm drew another breath. Fiery twigs and charred pine needles were dripping from the trees around them in an orange and black rain. Smoke and steam filled the air, but Nolita could just see the outline of Fang through the swirling murk ahead. In the brief moments before Fire began spraying more bright flames from his mouth, she had time to make out what looked like dozens of ropes holding Fang in place. There was also a wide ring of red around him where his blood had stained the snow.

  ‘What the . . .?’ she spluttered.

  A second roaring jet of fire sprayed from her dragon’s mouth. He played it back and forth across the snow between them and Fang. To her amazement the snow did not just melt. It retreated in a wriggling mass of serpentine whiteness. She rubbed her eyes, thinking she was seeing things, but the rubbing made no difference. The squirming wave of white was definitely alive. Alive with what, she did not care to know.

  Gradually, Fire breathed the flames closer and closer to Fang. Nolita no longer cared about burning embers. Her attention was focused on Kira and Fang. With startling abruptness, all the rope-like creatures released their grip on Fang and joined the multitude in the fast retreating wave. Fang opened his mouth and roared. Nolita could see he was still straining against something. The dusk dragon’s muscles were bunching hard as he pushed up from the ground with all his strength. Quivering with the effort, he surged to his feet and turned. Another long line of the creatures was attached to his other side. Firestorm breathed more fire at them and they were quick to detach and snake away at an alarming speed to join the myriad others.

  ‘Kira? Are you all right?’ Nolita called anxiously.

  ‘A lot better for seeing you and Firestorm,’ she called back. ‘If you hadn’t come along, we would be dead for sure.’

  ‘Is it safe to climb down, Fire?’ Nolita asked.

  ‘So long as you stay in the area I’ve cleared of snow, you will be perfectly safe,’ he replied. ‘The swarm won’t venture onto the bare ground by choice.’

  Although she was tempted to ask him about the swarm, Nolita wanted to see Kira. She slid down Fire’s side and hit the ground running. The earth steamed beneath her feet, still warm from Firestorm’s torching breath. Kira was dismounting more slowly. As Nolita drew closer, her run faltered first to a stuttering walk and then to a complete stop. Fang was every bit as big as Firestorm. His looming presence set all the alarms going inside her head again. Her legs refused to take her any closer, so she waited.

  Kira slid the last few hand spans to the ground and promptly collapsed, clutching at her right leg. Fixing her focus firmly on her friend, Nolita gritted her teeth and blanked the hulking presence of the dusk dragon from her mind. Forcing her legs to move, she stumbled the final short distance to Kira’s side. The Racafian girl was curled on the ground, sobbing. Nolita knelt down beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘It’s all right, Kira,’ she said softly, her heart racing. ‘It’s all right. Fire will heal your leg. You’ll be fine. Hush now. It’ll all be all right. You’ll see.’

  Kira looked up at her, eyes filled with tears not just born of pain, but of anguish and guilt. ‘I hesitated, Nolita,’ she said. ‘I hesitated! I didn’t do as Fang said and I nearly got us both killed. If you hadn’t come along those . . . those things would have eaten us and it would have been my fault.’

  ‘You don’t know that for certain, Kira,’ Nolita protested. ‘There were masses of them. Who’s to say they wouldn’t have pinned Fang down anyway? They must be strong to hold down a dragon. It looked to me as though flames were about the only thing that would shift them.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ Kira sobbed, ‘I couldn’t even light a fire. What sort of a hunter can’t light a fire? If I’d got a fire going, they probably wouldn’t have come near us at all. I’m pathetic!’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Nolita said firmly, shocked to see Kira like this. ‘You’re one of the most capable people I know. It’s freezing and you’re from a tropical climate. What do you expect? Now stop running yourself down and let’s get your leg sorted out. What were those things anyway? They looked disgusting.’

  ‘Fang called them ice worms, and “disgusting” doesn’t begin to describe them.’ Kira shud
dered and her eyes went distant. ‘No eyes, a large mouth full of the most horrible teeth you’ve ever seen . . . and tough! I never realised something that size could be so difficult to kill.’

  Firestorm was quick to breathe his healing fire over Kira. Nolita sat with her back to her dragon, but also in the flow of his amazing blue nimbus. A sense of warmth and well-being rushed through her as she sat with her friend. Her fatigue melted away and sensation returned to her fingers, toes, cheeks, nose and ears. Next to her, Kira sighed with relief as the pain in her leg first eased and then disappeared altogether. No sooner had her wound closed than she was on her feet and at her dragon’s side.

  Fang’s healing was next. It took several breaths of the blue flames to heal all of the dusk dragon’s injuries. There were dozens of nasty wounds in the underside of his body. Some of the ice worms had eaten right through his scales and deep into his flesh.

  Nolita watched with mixed feelings as Firestorm moved away. She was delighted to see Kira free from pain, but even with her friend at her side, Nolita was unable to totally banish the apprehension that she always felt in the presence of the dragons. When he walked away from her, she felt a sense of relief, but this time he did not go far. Fire took a few steps and grabbed a fallen pine trunk between his teeth. Although not fully grown, the tree was heavy. With a series of jerking movements that reminded Nolita of a dog pulling at a rope, he dragged the tree trunk into the centre of the area he had cleared of snow and then he snapped it neatly in two. Using his great talons with remarkable dexterity, he rolled the two halves together before setting fire to them.

  As Firestorm moved away from the burning logs, Nolita and Kira moved closer to enjoy the generous heat they gave off. Nolita had felt so well after bathing in Firestorm’s restoring breath, she was surprised at how tired she felt. It took a while for her to realise that this fatigue was not her own. It was coming through the bond. The healing fire of her dragon had revived her and her friends, but his efforts had left him exhausted.

  ‘Thanks, Fire. You were amazing. Now rest,’ she told him gratefully. ‘You’ve earned it.’

  ‘Thank you, Nolita,’ he replied. ‘But we must not stop long. We have to find the others before dawn. Aurora’s gateway to the other world will be a welcome sight at sunrise. Segun and his men cannot follow us there. It will be good to leave them as far behind as possible.’

  They rested for just over an hour. The two girls sat quietly soaking up the heat from the fire and taking the opportunity to eat and drink. Occasional movements in the snow at the edge of the melted area niggled at the corners of their eyes to begin with, but it was not long before all fell still and silent aside from the gentle crackle of the fire.

  The girls talked in low voices, and first Kira and then Nolita told of what had happened after they had split. Nolita told Kira about the fear she had experienced when she had thought she was going to spend the night alone with her dragon. Kira was a good listener and spending this time with her reminded Nolita how much she missed her older sister, Sable.

  It was Firestorm who insisted they move again. The snow was still falling, as was the temperature.

  ‘We cannot delay any longer,’ he told Nolita. ‘I sense night dragons approaching. They are still some distance away. I can’t tell if they have located us yet, but if we stay here, they will find us for sure.’

  Nolita wasted no time. She was on her feet in an instant.

  ‘Night dragons!’ she said, grabbing Kira by the arm. ‘We’ve got to go! Now!’

  The two girls scrabbled to throw their things into bags and climb up onto their dragons. In little more than a minute they were on the move, taking the path that Firestorm had burned through the trees on his way in.

  There was no sign of the ice worms as they made their take-off run through the deep snow outside the cover of the trees. Nolita was glad and Kira felt an even keener sense of relief. Launching into the darkness was less frightening to Nolita than in daytime. The lack of visual cues made flying easier to cope with.

  No sooner were they airborne than they turned to the south, powering along at a frantic pace in an effort to slip away from the approaching night dragons. The fast rhythmic beating of the dragons’ wings infected both girls with a breathless sense of urgency and a creeping anxiety that the night dragons would begin actively chasing them at any moment.

  Nolita felt Fire reaching out frequently with his mind. He searched ahead for any sign of Aurora and Shadow, and then more tentatively behind them to try to discern if the night dragons were aware of them. As he said nothing, she remained content to concentrate on keeping her fear of flying under control by counting his wingbeats and keeping her eyes firmly shut.

  On they flew, the relentless falling snow and bitter temperature gradually chewing through Nolita’s thick clothing until once again numbness began to creep across her body. In subtle incremental shades the sky brightened in anticipation of the rising sun. Whenever she did briefly open her eyes, the snow-covered landscape below appeared a ghostly grey/white in the pre-dawn half-light. The spectral shadows and the hypnotic falling snow gave ample reason for Nolita to keep her eyes shut as much as possible.

  ‘More trouble!’ Firestorm’s warning was preceded by a surge of emotion through the bond. ‘I sense Shadow and Aurora ahead, but the main body of night dragons are there, too. They must have split up to search for us.’

  ‘What do you think we should do?’ Nolita asked.

  ‘There is nothing we can do,’ Fire said, his voice sounding frustrated. ‘They’re too far away. We will not reach them in time. Aurora’s forming a gateway. Segun is closing. She has no choice. Shadow’s gone.’ He paused. ‘Aurora’s gone, too. They have left us behind.’

  Chapter Eight

  Crash!

  ‘Bloody hell!’ Jack swore as a huge explosion lifted the tail of his aircraft, leaving it pointing almost vertically down at the ground. His ears rang with the aftershock of the noise as he wrestled with the controls, desperately trying to coax the machine back into level flight. He pulled back further and further on the yoke with little noticeable effect. The aircraft was accelerating towards the ground in a death dive.

  A glance over his shoulder was enough to confirm the damage was bad. The tailplane was in tatters and there were gaping holes in the fuselage. His elevators were almost completely gone, leaving him with extremely limited pitch control.

  ‘I’m damned if I’m going down in enemy territory,’ he growled, pulling back the yoke as far as he could. ‘Come on, baby! You can do it. Don’t let me down now.’

  The sound of the wind in the wires built rapidly from its normal whistling song to an unearthly howl as the aircraft plummeted towards the ground. The needle on the airspeed indicator cranked around rapidly, already exceeding the maximum recommended velocity. The aircraft was falling at a speed that Jack knew could tear the fabric apart . . . and it was still accelerating.

  Was this the end? Would all his combat experience be concluded by one lucky shot from the ground? It did not seem fair. Against all the odds, he had survived far longer than perhaps he deserved. He had gambled time and again during combat, but somehow he had always managed to return home in one piece. He had begun to feel almost invincible – a dangerous illusion that had claimed the lives of all too many of the flying aces.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ he snarled at his machine, his teeth gritted and his lips pulled tight in a determined grimace. ‘I’m not ready to die just yet.’

  He could see the lines of the trenches ahead. If he could just flatten the dive sufficiently, he would at least impact the ground on friendly soil. Many pilots had miraculously walked away from crashes before. He just needed to give himself the best chance of survival. At least if he crashed on the right side of the lines and lived, he would not have to worry about being dragged off as a prisoner of war.

  He suddenly realised that in the shock of the moment, he had not touched the throttle control, which was still in a cruise setting.
He throttled it back to idle and instantly began to feel the slowing propeller act like an airbrake. The airspeed stabilised, still dangerously high, but no longer increasing.

  ‘JUST A LITTLE HIGHER!’ he yelled, releasing his frustration in a great shout. The muscles in his arms started to twitch with the effort of sustaining the pull force, but little by little the nose of the aeroplane began to climb, as the earth loomed closer and closer.

  ‘How long have we got, Ra?’ Elian called aloud.

  ‘Not as long as I’d like,’ she replied. ‘It’s not quite dawn yet. The barrier between worlds isn’t weak enough to form a gateway. Besides, I don’t want to use all my strength getting us there. I must be able to get us back again at the next opportunity.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Climb,’ Aurora said bluntly. ‘The higher we can get, the closer to dawn we will be. Segun will expect us to run, but I’m hoping he doesn’t know about the gateways.’

  ‘Surely Widewing will be able to out-climb us even if we get above her,’ Elian pointed out, searching the sky above for signs of the incoming night dragons.

  ‘Yes, but if we’re quick, she won’t reach us in time to prevent our escape.’

  Elian clung tightly to the pommel grips as Aurora pounded the air with her wings, converting every possible scrap of energy into height. Shadow powered past them and climbed away at a seemingly impossible angle. If it had not been for the reported proximity of Segun and his lieutenants, Elian felt sure that Pell would have enjoyed showing off his dragon’s superior strength.

  ‘He’s probably enjoying the moment regardless,’ Elian muttered, grinding his teeth at the thought. ‘Where are Segun and his cronies?’ he asked Aurora silently, trying to shift his focus back to more practical thoughts. ‘I can’t see them anywhere.’

  ‘Closing from our right,’ she answered.