“The city gate’s under heavy attack,” said Zip. “A couple of dozen Dragonships, a battering ram, I think … at least fifty ships nearing the city … Yolathion’s group wading into the mess …”
Beran’s long-range war-crossbows spat a spread of four quarrels, unanswered; three Dragonships exploded, but Yolathion was about to come under serious pressure, Aranya saw. The Sylakians were too many. She and Zip had only dented the line. Dragonships from both camps were already in a serious tangle east of the city, exchanging volleys of thick catapult shot and spinning slowly to the ground or vanishing with a flash of light followed by palls of smoke. Beran’s forces had to yield ground steadily, outnumbered four or five to one.
Sapphire, what are you doing?
A blue streak whizzed joyfully toward them. Sapphire was so full of herself that it took Aranya and Zip a long while to get any sense out of her.
“I think she’s talking about friends,” said Zip.
Windroc bad. Rajal good, Aranya said firmly. “Something about the windroc symbol, Zip.”
Zip waved meriatite at Aranya. “Eat.” She turned to Sapphire. Go. Help us.
Zuziana had talked Dragonish. But Aranya only had time to blink before Sapphire hurtled back toward the mountains. “I don’t get it,” she said, judging the battle. “This way, Zip.”
“Something about scaring the bad man, that’s all I understood,” said the Princess of Remoy. “I’ve a feeling we’re about to see Garthion emerge.”
Chapter 30: Dragonship Battle
Dragon and Rider dived into the thick of the battle. Sweeping eastward, they relieved King Beran’s Dragonships, gaining them space to retreat and regroup, before dashing over to lend Yolathion a helping paw, or arrow, or anything else he needed. The battle began to blur for the Dragon. All the high-speed manoeuvring required a huge output of energy; every time she looked up it was to see another Dragonship looming before them, or crossbow quarrels spitting toward them, friend and foe alike.
“Another. Another,” Zip kept panting. She tossed her first empty quiver overboard and dug into her second with a vengeance.
The monk Ri’arion was down in the city, tearing into the squads of Sylakian soldiers who had managed to disembark from a few Dragonships to try to attack the gates from within. His long sword flashed as he spearheaded a troop of Immadian soldiers into the heaviest fighting. Fire seared from his hands. He wielded his massive sword like an axe, chopping through armour where subtlety failed. Aranya dropped a fireball into a knot of several dozen Sylakians waiting for him and received a raised-fist salute in response. From without the city gates, the low, guttural chanting of the battering-ram team rose even above the roar of battle. A deep, hollow booming sounded as the gates quivered at every blow. Above, three dozen Sylakian Dragonships pounded the defenders on the wall. More motored up on the breeze, fighting tooth and nail with Yolathion’s reduced force and pressing them back moment by moment. Aranya saw the catapults and war crossbows within the city were in action now.
“The gate,” panted the Rider. “If that goes …”
Aranya snarled, “Got it.”
At once the Dragon hurled herself toward the melee above the city gates. Yolathion’s forces were under attack from fore and rear. Aranya corkscrewed, dodging a spray of quarrels, before hosing a knot of vessels in front of her with all the fire she had in her belly. She shielded Zip with her body, but still, the furnace-blast sucked the air out of her lungs and made her Rider gasp and cough. Zuziana wiped her eyes.
“And I just started to grow eyebrows again.”
“Sorry …”
“Beware left.”
Aranya dropped like a shot, but still snagged ropes on her tail. “Nets.”
“Burn them off, Dragon.”
Her head snaked past her Rider. Burn her own tail? Whatever next? She described a narrow arc in the air as the moored ropes forced her flight-path toward a gaggle of three Sylakian Dragonships. Arrows pattered off her belly and port flank. A quarrel slammed into her right front knee. Aranya groaned at the pain, but still released a burst of fire that freed her from the netting.
“Up and under,” ordered Zip.
Yolathion and his crew were snarled together with four Sylakian Dragonships, drawn together with boarding hooks and ropes. Aranya saw the massive Jeradian smashing Sylakian soldiers off a gantry with his war hammer.
“Don’t hit that bunch,” she ordered Zip.
Zuziana drew two arrows and held them ready in her fist. “Get me an under-armour shot at the big Dragonship. It’s thinner below, Aranya.”
“Two shots?”
“Shut the fangs and fly.”
Aranya dodged into a storm of arrows and catapult fire. She returned fireballs of her own, destroying two Dragonships below them as they passed by and homed in on the biggest. She angled her flight path carefully, adjusting her wings, dodging a spinning, flailing Sylakian warrior as he tumbled from above. Her Rider gasped as something struck her. Zuziana’s teeth ground together audibly, but she still took the shot; two arrows, darting like vengeful wasps beneath the overhanging armour of the large Dragonship.
KAARAABOOM!
Aranya hissed, “Excellent.” She coiled herself mid-air and sprang away from the wreckage as it spun lazily toward them, a rapidly-swelling cloud of superheated smoke and flaming debris, raining down on the soldiers on the ground, bringing momentary confusion to the attackers at the city gates.
Aranya swivelled her neck. “Oh dear … here comes Garthion.”
“Yolathion! He’s in trouble.”
Dragon-Aranya flipped herself around in the air and swung her head to avoid a crossbow quarrel that scored her cheekbone. “Where?”
“There.” Zip flung out her arm.
“Zip, you’re hit.”
“Only a flesh wound,” said the Princess.
There was an arrow stuck deep into the muscle halfway up her thigh. That was no flesh wound. Blood seeped down to her ankle. But the Remoyan only gritted her teeth and gestured at Aranya to continue. Aranya dodged debris as she oriented on Yolathion’s decimated command. They had destroyed many Dragonships, but were less than half in number than when they had begun that morning. One of the Dragonships attached to Yolathion’s tangle was burning freely. Already, Sylakians and Jeradians alike had thrown out hawsers and were swarming down to the ground, fighting each other even as they shimmied down the ropes, fleeing the impending explosion. Yolathion was seeing to his men before himself–the brave fool.
“No,” cried Aranya, seeing Yolathion in her mind’s eye engulfed in exploding hydrogen.
She swooped toward the interlocked Dragonships.
Claws extended, Aranya slammed four-pawed into the Dragonship’s cabin and hung on with her claws. “Ride?” she growled.
Yolathion gaped at her.
“Ride! Now!”
He slapped those of his men he could reach. “Go, go. On the Dragon. Grab the tail, anything.”
Rapidly, a dozen Jeradians mounted up in an orderly scramble. The cabin began to buckle under their combined weight.
“Take them,” shouted Yolathion.
“Not without you,” Zuziana screamed back.
“There’s no room.”
With a shriek of overstressed metal, Aranya tore loose and fell. She gasped as she flapped hard under the weight of her load. Yolathion and two warriors were left … what could she do? The Dragonships lurched down toward her. It would blow any moment.
“Jump onto my wing!”
Yolathion and his men jumped. One of their boots snapped a wing strut. Aranya wobbled horribly in the air, throwing off one of the men, but Yolathion managed to hang onto her wing bone with one hand and help his comrade with the other. Dragon-Aranya spiralled downward, grabbing for the stricken Jeradian with her forepaws, but she missed.
Zuziana was shouting at Yolathion to climb closer to her body so that Aranya could balance her load better. It was all she could do not to fall out of the sky like a r
ock. Aranya battled with all her strength, plucking the man out of the sky by the scruff of his neck. Her Rider screamed at her entire load to lean to the left. Suddenly, she was level in the air. Flapping mightily, Aranya brought them to a jarring landing right outside the city. Her injured knee buckled and she ate dirt as she landed.
Detonations battered their eardrums and shook the earth beneath their feet. A tangle of cabins and struts crashed down ten feet from her left wingtip, but Yolathion and his men were safe–only to face up to two thousand Sylakian warriors, she saw. They were right alongside the city gates. The Jeradians were not exactly smiling and waving at their Sylakian counterparts.
“Go!” roared Yolathion, leaping off her wing. “Jeradians to me! Protect the Dragon!”
On the ground, she was a sitting target, Aranya realised. Quarrels tore the earth around them. Already the Sylakians, smelling opportunity, peeled off a number of Hammers–hundreds of armoured warriors–to attack her and her brave screen of Jeradians. Among them were Crimson Hammers, her hated enemies. Garthion’s best.
She glanced up to the mountains. Only two dozen Dragonships, she estimated rapidly, including Garthion’s enormous four-hundred-foot flagship flying the windroc of Sylakia from a dozen flags. Where were the rest? What were they missing? But she had no time to think. Magic built rapidly in her chest, an unaccustomed pressure that she remembered as her Storm power, but this time suffused with energies she had no name for. Power spilled into her throat. She felt weak and drained.
“Aranya?” asked Zip. “Meriatite?”
“No. Close ears …”
Rising on her hind legs, the Dragon craned her neck over the Jeradians and opened her mouth. Her belly muscles rippled powerfully. But it was not sound that erupted from her throat. It was a blue fireball, burning fiercely and brilliantly, so brightly that not even a Dragon could look upon it. The fireball arced languidly over the Sylakian troops as they ran forward to engage the Jeradians and the Dragon.
Yolathion’s eyes rose, too. “Down,” he bellowed, and dropped on his face. Most of his warriors did the same.
Aranya raised her left wing instinctively, shielding her Rider’s face from the quiet flare of light. That was the strange thing. It was as though a sun had landed on the field of battle, expanding soundlessly at first. An intense flare, suns-bright, lit up every vein and artery in her upraised wing. She smelled ozone, the smell that accompanies a close lightning strike, before a thunderclap followed the agonising dazzle. Aranya staggered. The men on the ground cried out. When she looked again, there was a hole in the Sylakian forces. The city wall sagged in a section two hundred feet long, its molten stones slowly slipping toward the ground. The battering ram was gone. A dozen Dragonships above it had also vanished.
All that remained was ashes drifting to the ground.
Yolathion scrambled to his feet. The armour over his shoulder was slashed open. He grinned at Aranya. “We’ll have to find some other Sylakians to fight, I guess! Thanks for the rescue.”
Dragon-Aranya grinned wanly at him. She felt sick.
“Jeradians, to me!”
More Jeradians trotted over a small rise behind them. In moments, Yolathion had several dozen warriors under his command, a tall, grim lot all told, save for a youth who threw a quick grin at Aranya and Zuziana.
“Back to the city. Let’s dent some Sylakian helmets.”
“He’s such a man,” said Zip. “But he’s no monk. Aranya, are you alright?”
“That wasn’t a good idea.” She tested her wings, before springing into the air with a laboured thrashing. “Too much power, Zip. I feel sick. I don’t think I could cough up a single fireball after that.”
“Come on, petal.” Her Rider patted her neck. “Do I need to insult you to get those fires burning again?”
“I’d rather just gnaw on Garthion’s head.”
“What’s happening to the north? Mind, another Dragonship.”
Aranya gazed over Immadia city, beleaguered at a dozen points now, and up to the mountains. “I see ten Dragonships, twenty–where’s the rest of Garthion’s command? Where’s my Dad?”
“Focus, Aranya.”
“I’m trying, Zip.”
She pushed her weary body up into the air, searching. The city’s defence was giving a good account of itself. The catapult and crossbow emplacement teams worked with well-oiled efficiency, making the Sylakian Dragonships fight for every inch of ground–but the enemy were still many, harrying the city in three major groups, one of which was forging toward the castle. Aranya saw her father leading a charge against Sylakian ground troops up there, men landed by Dragonship within the city itself. He would soon come under attack from the air.
“Look, Ri’arion,” said Zip.
The monk was up on the battlements, organising ropes to haul the Jeradian troops up and into the relative safety–or mayhem–of the city itself. Bodies lay strewn across the battlements, the red of Sylakia mixed with the purple of Immadia. Aranya saw a group of Immadian women attacking a Sylakian soldier with pans, cutlery and even a chair.
“He needs to go up to his catapult,” said Aranya. “Shall we give him a ride?”
“After I down that Dragonship,” said Zip, dipping an arrow into their fire-pot. “Two of them. Darn. Need to refuel.”
Oil glugged behind her. Aranya gazed up again at the mountains. Garthion’s force motored down at their top speed toward the undefended rear of the city. King Beran would be surrounded. But what–what were those white dots up there? Birds? Her eyes narrowed, following the flight of two Dragonships straggling Garthion’s main group. They had just appeared from behind a peak. The white dots mobbed the Dragonships. Attacking? Harrying?
“What in the Island-World?” she breathed.
“Aranya! Forward!”
Heeding her Rider’s call, Aranya surged through the air, driving her exhausted body on to a collision course with the two Dragonships Zip had pointed out. Sss! The first arrow was away. She banked, jerked into a vertical climb and furled her wing as a half-dozen crossbow quarrels rent the air. Only one struck her a glancing blow on the belly. No damage. Aranya righted her flight.
“Now, Zip.” The second arrow sped true. Aranya’s secondary optical membranes blinked through darkness to light, shielding her eyes from the intense flash. “Good shot, Rider.”
“Right.” Zip wiped her eyes. Aranya realised that Zuziana must be as worn-out as her Dragon. “Get us over Ri’arion so that I can shout at him. Aranya–why were you puzzling like that at Garthion’s Dragonships? That wasn’t Aranya-standard frown number ten.”
Winging down to the battlement, Aranya explained what she had seen. Zuziana quietly but firmly rebuffed her unspoken question about whether or not she was ready to face Garthion. She stuffed several chunks of meriatite into Aranya’s gaping jaw.
Finally, Zip said, “Let’s work back to the north, Aranya. The castle’s about to become the main battleground. Yolathion’s here at the gate.”
Raising her voice, she shouted at Ri’arion and waved at the north.
The monk looked pleased, much to Aranya’s surprise. Was he looking forward to meeting the man he had cursed? Why? Cupping his hands, he called, “Pick me up. Go to the castle.”
Aranya tried to grab him with her right forepaw, but the knee-joint would no longer flex. She wheeled around and picked him up with the left. The monk scaled her leg and plopped himself down in the position behind Zuziana.
“We meet again, Remoy,” he said, and kissed her lightly.
“Scandalous monk.”
“What scandal shall we start today, o treasure of the southern Isles?” Ri’arion pointed at the arrow. “In or out?”
“In,” said Zip. “As long as I don’t move my leg … you’re hurt, too.”
He shrugged. “A flap of skin on my scalp. I shan’t miss it as much as I’ll miss my finger.” He held up his left hand. The tip of his longest finger had been neatly amputated. “This one I shall make Garthion pay f
or, personally. If you set me down near your father, Aranya, I’ll take care of him for you.”
“My Dad’s doing fine down there,” she growled.
“Easy, rajal,” laughed Zip.
“I’m not a rajal!”
“You’re just an ugly, mangy Dragon, you are,” said her Rider. “Ooh, would you listen to those fires, Ri’arion? She gets a belly full every time I insult her.”
“Hmm. Must remember that technique,” said the monk, pretending to search around his person for scrolls and ink. “Put self at risk of death by enraged dragonet of Remoy …”
“I’m not a dragonet!”
Ri’arion laughed. “Aye, it works.”
“Incoming Dragonships,” warned Aranya, side-slipping to avoid two speculative shots. “I’ll take the starboard side. Ready, Rider?”
“Always.”
Aranya ‘bounced’, as she called it–a sudden climb to throw off the warriors’ aim, before she levelled out and pointed her nose at the flotilla of Sylakian Dragonships menacing the castle. Beran had eight Dragonships up there–all he could afford–while nearly sixty enemy vessels converged on his position from all directions. Another Sylakian battle group worked their way over the city, taking on the ground emplacements. Smoke rose from many houses and buildings. Bodies littered the streets. This was what the Sylakians had done; Garthion’s wish, fulfilled. A Dragon’s sight could take in every detail. Aranya wanted to close her eyes but found herself unable to.
Fire seethed in her belly.
Her ears seemed to close. The sounds of battle retreated. Aranya flowed into a dreamlike state, as if the battle had slowed down around her. She saw with extraordinary, conscious detail, every arrow buzzing through the air, every quarrel and every last scrap of catapult ammunition that glittered in the sky. Zuziana’s cry of rage became a drawn-out groan. For the first time Aranya became aware of the all-consuming power of Dragon consciousness, the overwhelming flood of information gushing into her mind, the taste and smell of battle filling her nostrils, the exact nature of the flame super-compressed inside her fire stomach and other powers beside it, powers as yet unplumbed, the sensation of the wind rushing over her wings and scales, and the precise position of every Dragonship across the entire city. She perceived it all.
Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) Page 41