Dragon Strike

by E. E. Knight

  At the center of the four columns was an old throne. A simple thing, wooden with brass feet and arm caps, almost unadorned.

  Naf lay sprawled upon it, an arrow in his shoulder and stomach. Hieba held him in her arms. She’d aged greatly since he’d last seen her. Two long ropes of gray contrasted with the black in her hair.

  “Well, AuRon,” Hieba said, “you’ve made it in time for the last act of our heroic tragedy.”

  “Your daughter?” AuRon asked.

  “The Queen sent her off to the southern provinces,” Hieba said.

  Naf chuckled, a stream of saliva and blood trickling out of his mouth. “I am glad, though I wish Desthenae could see my final repose. Would you believe, today I sit on the ancient throne of Dairuss? The first kings of Ghioz dragged it all the way here and forgot about it in this old tower. Do me a courtesy. Once I’ve breathed my last, burn me in it.”

  Chapter 25

  Wistala, heading south with the muster of the north to the aid of Thallia and Hypat, was met on the road by Dsossa and a twin column of riders escorting what looked like a group of thanes and their families.

  The thanes went far off the road to avoid Wistala, but Dsossa trotted ahead.

  “Hypatia’s surrendered,” Dsossa said.

  “When?” Wistala asked.

  Dsossa shook her head. “Does it matter? What can be done? The Ironriders swept through the Iwensi like a storm, over a dozen passes and down the Iron Road. The Ghioz had barges laden with grain for their horses—trade that was supposed to be coming to Hypatia.”

  “Fount Brass has mustered a herd of mounted thugs and war-carts. There are even four dozen Knights of the Directory with trained warhorses and remounts—not that they would stand a chance against the thousands of bowmen of the Ironriders. Shryesta sent spearmen and horsemen. Had they only made it to the city in time!”

  “With such a force, perhaps something could be attempted.”

  “The Directory have surrendered.”

  “We haven’t.”

  “We’re Hypatian.”

  “So we obey the Directory. If they have surrendered, we have as well.”

  These Hypatians and their legal niceties!

  “I’m also a dragon of the Lavadome. The Lavadome hasn’t surrendered to Ghioz.”

  “If the dragons of the Lavadome attack, can we count on your support?”

  “What will be left? The docks and the iron-quarter are burning.”

  “I wonder if the Ironriders have ever had Hypatian wines and brandies?”

  “If they haven’t, they will wish they’d lost their heads in battle.”

  “The Ironriders wouldn’t be so foolish as to let all their riders pillage. There must be some force still keeping order.”

  “I’m told there are chieftains and their personal guard squatting in on the Ziggurat and the Directory hall.”

  “We’d best come in two waves, light/heavy,” Ayafeeia said. “Heavy wave will wait for the light to go to ground fighting, then fly in and support. We’ll grind them between ground and sky.”

  “Opportunities for glory in the light wave, I think,” a dragonelle said.

  “I shall lead it, my Queen—”

  “No, Ayafeeia. You shall lead the heavy wave, to more judiciously direct their strength. You have the more experienced eye for that sort of thing.”

  “No! The Tyr would never.”

  “It’s a poor Queen who shouts ‘go’ and remains behind.”

  “Yes, but a live one.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard the whispers. ‘She does it for the bows.’ ‘She lives to humble those who once stood as her betters.’ ‘She murdered the Tyr’s first mate.’

  “If the only proof they’ll accept is a corpse, so be it. My mate has said this is the beginning of an age of fire. I will put my flame where his words are.

  “Are you coming, Essea, to represent the Imperial Line in this red dawn? Or were you only my friend these years to better pass around gossip about the private habits of the Tyr and his mate?”

  Wistala had never seen such beautifully shaped claws on a dragon before. Her servants must have labored hard perfecting their shape. But they’d also perfected the points.

  Essea looked doubtful. “I am your friend and loyalist, my Queen.” She stepped forward. “Admit me into the first wave.”

  “Who else will fly with their Queen?”

  Other Firemaids stepped forward, by tradition the oldest and toughest or the young seeking the glory of being named as the leader of the attack.

  “That’s enough!” Ayafeeia cried, seeing old Verkeera step forward, her battered scales stitched together with Ironrider-rein and bound up in blood. “Verkeera, you have the biggest firebladder of any of us. Let me have it in my line to pour down on the enemy.”

  “I would rather shield my Queen’s other flank with my body,” Verkeera said.

  “I intend to move too fast to have much care for my flanks, Verkeera,” Nilrasha said. “The last time I led a line into battle against the Ghioz, we were trapped under walls and destroyed by Ghioz fighting from their fortifications. But this time our opponents are strangers to the city too! A house collapsed on me. I’ve been waiting years to return the experience to a few Ghioz.”

  “Carry full bladders into battle,” Ayafeeia said. “We are matched against horsemen. But horses don’t care for the smell of dragons. Spray your water as carefully as you spray your fire, for once.”

  The dragonelles chuckled at this and some made jokes about fighting with both ends. A few coarse jokes passed among the green ranks.

  “What about you, Wistala?”

  “I’m afraid to trust my wing to the air again. I will go in with the Hypatian horsemen.”

  “We’ll count on you to come to the rescue of the first wave,” Ayafeeia said. “The sounds of fighting shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  “Maidmother, would it not be better to let the Hypatians lead the attack? It’s their city. Let them keep their honor by winning it back.”

  “It is an accepted rule of the battle art that air should pass ahead of ground, the way the rain strikes before the flood.”

  The quote stirred Wistala’s hearts. She’d read an old battle-treatise of Rainfall’s grandsire. Strange that one of his maxims passed over to dragon-strategy in such a manner. Perhaps dragons had fought with the Hypatians in those ancient battles.

  She brought herself back to the present.

  “The Hypatians’ approach may draw the Ironriders out into battle.”

  “Or it may send them to the walls and war-engines.”

  “I’ve been in the city. The walls are old and ill-kept, and if they have any war-engines, they weren’t on display when I passed through. The Hypatian numbers are few. Would not their princes send their horses out to fight in the fields such as would be most familiar to them and their manner of fighting?”

  “You argue like an Anklene, Wistala. Very well. We shall stay concealed in the marshes until you launch your attack.”

  “I’ll leave it to you to best judge when to launch your fliers. Just do not leave us out there too long on our own.”

  “For our gardens and our vineyards,” Sandwash shouted, leg hooked in perfect balance atop his strange sidesaddle, his enormous bow held with long, slipper-covered toes of one extended leg. The pose reminded Wistala of the dancers who’d traveled with the circus, who could hook ankle around behind ear like a ruin-cat.

  “For our roofs and our hearths,” Ermet called, perched atop his thug on the horny ridge just above the eyes. A long-handled ax hung easily in one stout arm, a forked mancatcher in the other.

  “For our fathers and our daughters,” Roff called.

  “For our libraries and our courts,” Wistala said, finding her Hypatian again.

  “For all this and all we hold dear,” an aged, bent elf in the shining armor of a Knight of the Directory called, just barely keeping his great, steel-shod warhorse under control.

  “Let’s get to
some stompin’ already,” the horse muttered.

  “For all this, forward, Hypatia. Forward, the Last Host!”

  “Forward, the Last Host!”

  They came into the open fields beside the riverbank and passed through the vineyards, tearing away stakes and stalks as they went.

  The advance wasn’t quite so splendid as a charge. The horses moved at a fast walk, having to keep behind the vanguard of thugs. But it allowed Wistala to keep up at an easy pace.

  Yet there was something to be said for a slow advance. Wistala wondered how it would look to the bleary-eyed Ironriders as they woke to the drums of battle.

  The thugs had been trained to go into battle in step, and their heavy footfalls shook the ground. Behind them one felt it rather than heard it, a boom . . . boom . . . boom . . . as the creatures swayed forward in their odd, sailorlike gait. What would such a noise sound like to the Ironriders, far from home in a strange city?

  But for all that their pace was slow. The Ironriders had plenty of time to prepare and draw their plans.

  The Ironriders, or some part of their number, rode out to meet them.

  They rode out in three long columns, a trident of black emerging from three different points in the city. Wistala, peeking between the thugs and kicking up as much dust as she could as she walked to hide her presence, guessed the Hypatians were outnumbered ten to one or more.

  She marked three tall banners drawn by horse-carts, as high as ship-masts. Bodies hung from them, arranged in frightful and gory poses. She recognized among them women and the black-and-white robes of the Directory.

  So much for a peaceful surrender.

  Ah, well, the center would make a fine aiming point for her leap.

  “Do not take alarm at what I’m about to do,” Wistala said.

  The thugs halted and lowered their heads. The men riding them dropped shutter-like shields down to cover their faces and forelimbs. A mobile wall had sprouted on the battlefield.

  Arrows of the Ironriders struck the shields, sounding like hail on a metal-plate roof.

  Wistala marked the approaching center banner. One of the Hypatians shot a flaming arrow into it, trying to burn it. But the bodies had been well coated with pitch to preserve them.

  “I do so hate this sort of thing,” she muttered.

  She gathered herself behind the line of thugs.

  “Mossbell and Thallia!” she roared.

  Even the thugs jumped.

  Wistala tore forward, leaped, using the heavy hindquarters of the thugs as a vaulting-point. As she sailed into the air she extended body and wings, getting every dragonlength she could into her arc.

  Arrows rose to meet her, but most passed behind or stuck into her tail, for she gathered speed as she fell, or so it seemed, for in battle all motion was slowed to a dreadful crawl.

  She fell against the banner and its cart, knocking the totem down. Using wreckage to shield her breast, she lashed out with tail and spat fire across the ranks that faced the Hypatian right.

  Horses screamed and scattered.

  Wistala thought it best to keep moving. She trotted, tail lashing to keep them off, head held low where a sword-stroke couldn’t get behind her extended griff, and simply used her body as a sort of mobile linebreaker against the ranks of Ironriders.

  If there were any old hands at dragonfighting among their number they showed no sign of it. They didn’t try to trip her with lines or get a rope-drag on her tail. A few halfhearted charges and thrown lances against her side left her with feathered shafts dangling from her sides and backbone. She broke up more organized charges by beating her wings, hard, into the horses’ faces. The brutes didn’t care to be peppered with wingblown pebbles.

  “Hy-yah! Hy-yah!” came the war cries from behind as the Hypatians charged forward to support her, the great Knights of the Directory leading the way on their tall horses, half again as high as those of their opponents.

  Still, the battle would have gone ill for the Hypatians. Despite the chaos in the center, the two Ironrider wings stayed in order and reached out to envelop the Hypatians. There were not nearly enough thugs to form an armored ring capable of covering all the horsemen, archers, and footmen. Elvish arrows flew far to tear gaps in their line, but the dark riders closed each gap as remorselessly and unfailingly as ants.

  They harried the Hypatian flanks. As the edges of the Hypatian battle line went ragged and uneven, the Ironriders charged, snipping off sections of spearmen and sending archers tumbling back with the precision of a skilled-body thrall shaping up a ragged scale.

  Then the Firemaids struck.

  The dragons came in low, with the rising sun to cover their approach.

  The drakka were already in the city, hiding in garbage piles and pigsties, anywhere that would hide their scent.

  None knew from where a drakka might strike next. They slithered out of sewer holes and plunged from rooftops, attacking Ironrider messengers and officers rousting the riders out of the beer-halls and tobacco-dens.

  Following their example, the population forgot their fear, and their surrender, and rose. They flung crockery from balconies and dumped boiling water from high windows. Angry Ironriders set fire to houses, bringing mobs with ax and rope ready to fight either flame or invader.

  Many a booted, long-haired rider ended up hanging from a laundry line strung between two buildings.

  The Ironrider princes upon the Temple Hill had forgotten more about warfare than the thug-riders entering the city in street-filling columns had ever known. They organized their reserve into rows of archers guarded by spearmen, with riders ready to ride from point to point and dismount wherever an attack might develop.

  It was against their ranks that Nilrasha’s first wave flung themselves.

  Some landed behind the lines, some in front, some atop roofs and some in the confusing tangle of decorative gardens. Orange blossoms of dragonflame colored the hillside.

  The second wave of Firemaids, kept under control by their maidmother and the veteran warriors, circled Temple Hill, dropping to strike and then retreat when the arrows grew too thick.

  The Ironriders, with courage of desperation, hurled themselves against the dragons. They climbed onto haunches to hack and stab, wormed their way between slashing sii and stomping saa to sink their daggers into vulnerable undersides.

  For generations after, the phrase “died like an Ironrider” passed into Drakine, used for a dragon who succumbed to wounds with teeth and claws and spurs gripping enemies.

  It was easy for Wistala to find the Queen. All she had to do was listen for the high dragon cries of “Blood bats! Blood bats!”

  Wistala hurried up the corpse-littered streets, between buildings roaring as flames consumed them, to find Queen Nilrasha stretched out in the ruins of an old Hypatian temple.

  “I did think the roof could hold my weight,” she said. “The columns looked so thick. But here I am. The columns are still standing and I’m not. I’ve just no luck with buildings, that’s all.”

  Ayafeeia stood by her, sadly surveying a torn wing. Nothing but a bloody stump remained of her left. The rest of it was a flat, gory mess under a fallen pillar.

  “Perhaps his next mate will lay down a string of eggs worthy of a Tyr.” She smiled.

  “Yefkoa,” Ayafeeia said, “you’re our fastest dragonelle. If ever you flew for love of your Tyr, fly now and tell him his Queen needs him.”

  Chapter 26

  “Aerial Host,” the Copper bellowed, trying to summon the words from his hard-pumping heart and heaving lungs. “Dive!

  “Griffaran guard, with me!” he called. “Keep the roc-riders off them.”

  “Teach those coop-hatched fools the terror of a free wing and a loyal heart,” Aiy-Yip shrieked.

  No dragon could keep up with fast-flying griffaran. The Copper found himself tailfeather-slacking, as Aiy-Yip might have styled it.

  Roc-riders rose to meet them. For one instant, the formations, rising and falling angles,
turned to meet, like the spearheads of opposing armies. Then it dissolved into a whirlwind of combat.

  When roc-riders attacked the dragons, griffaran swooped and dove, knocking riders loose for a long fall or tearing at wings so the roc-riders spun earthward, their mounts keening and the men screaming.

  But if the roc-riders tried to turn on the griffaran, the griffaran applied the same principles that served the roc-riders so well in their fights with dragonkind—they outturned and outclimbed the big, laden birds.

  Scale against feather, flame against arrow, ball-and-chain against beak-and-talon, the two forces left feather, blood, and glittering scale falling to earth as they swooped and parried, a mad aerial dance of ever-changing partners.

  The Copper watched one roc fall in a blaze of flame, leaving a dark smear of feathers.

  “Behind you!” one of his two remaining guard said.

  Two roc-riders swooped down. They must have been high up and far off when the encounter started and both the Copper and his guard over-attentive to the spectacle below.

  The Copper turned to protect his bad wing. The fliers bored in on him, diving around the griffaran. Their men loosed arrows from curved bows and the Copper felt the missiles punch him.

  One passed behind, one in front. If he’d had use of his flame he might have started a feathery blaze. As it was he had to settle for turning and a futile snap of teeth in the fast-flying birds’ wake.

  A griffaran got the frontmost rider, as it turned out. Or part of it, anyway. The Copper doubted the legs left in the saddle would be of much use piloting the bird.

  The Copper turned to meet the other. Perhaps he could distract it long enough for one of his griffaran guard to strike.

  The other roc-riding warrior, watching the griffaran tearing toward him from behind, only turned to look at the Copper when his mount shrieked and shied. The Copper flapped hard and narrowed his wings, lowered his crest at the end of a ram-stiff neck.

  They struck, the roc open-winged and evading, the Copper driving.