by David Angelo
She cleared her throat like someone about to give a big speech, then turned to address Fin directly.
“I’m not like other dragons,” she said. “I knew I was different when I was a child, and for the longest time, I was in denial. I lied to myself, put myself through so much pain, all because of who I love. Do you remember a few months ago, when I jumped in Chok’s face when he mentioned the village of Nab Isle?”
“Vaguely,” Fin said. “Why?”
“There’s someone there,” Kyu continued. “I go there every few months, or whenever the resistance is on a long leave. The village isn’t far from my hut on the beach, and we stay there and just…love each other, where no one else can disturb us. I’ve been seeing this person for years, and I’ve never told anyone, including Chok.”
“What’s his name?” Fin asked.
“It’s not a he, Fin.”
Kyu crossed her arms and diverted her attention away from Fin, like she was afraid to look him in the eye.
“Her name is Nickita,” Kyu continued. “She’s a Faranchie woman, like myself, and I fell in love with her after my relationship with Chok fell apart. I met her when we were on leave. One night I walked from my hut to Nab Isle because I couldn’t sleep and hit up the local bar.Nickita was the only other person there, and we just started talking, because there was nothing else to do. I was so sad then, and she just seemed to notice that I was feeling blue, and after we chatted a while, I told her what had happened between me and Chok. About how we were struggling to take care of my son and how the resistance was floundering and how everything was falling apart.
“I had never done this with anyone, but with her I felt that I could open up about everything, and she listened. And then she told me about how she had been kicked out of her home and that she wasn’t allowed to go to her father’s funeral after a Cullidon murdered him during a fistfight. It just seemed like our lives had gone to shit. And I realized then that she was like me, and I asked her if she would like to come with me to the hut, and she said yes.”
Kyu caught her breath, and her eyes began to water.
“When I woke up the next morning with Nickita next to me, I realized that I could not deny my predicament any longer. We spent the whole week together, and after my leave was over, I made a promise that I’d see her again. But I felt like I needed to tell someone. So I told my sister.”
Tears ran down Kyu’s cheeks, and her breathing trembled.
“What happened?” Fin asked.
“I…” Kyu started. “I thought she would understand, but…” Kyu sniffed. “…she didn’t. She said I was an abomination, that what I was doing was against the laws of nature. And then that bitch took my son away from me.”
Kyu broke out into a sob. Fin rushed to her side and hugged her, trying to console her the best he could. He could feel her tears run down the side of his shoulder, reminding him of all the times he’d hugged Scarlet during her times of personal turmoil. Eventually, Kyu’s crying slowed until she was able to speak a little more coherently.
“That is why I’ve kept it a secret,” Kyu whispered. “I was afraid of what else I’d lose if I opened my mouth, declared to all of Edon that I’m not normal.”
“But you are normal,” Fin said.
“You…you think so?”
“Of course I do,” Fin said. “This is who you are, and no one can change it. You were born this way, out of no fault of your own, and anyone who says that you’re less of a dragon is wrong, dead wrong. Your sister and every other person who says that you’re unnatural are talking out of their asses, and they’re the ones who need to look at themselves in the mirror.”
“What about the Elder?” Kyu whimpered. “The church taught for ages that people like me were an abomination, just like my sister told me. How can I work on the Elder’s behalf if I’m defying her laws?”
“If Blizzard didn’t want you to love women, she would not have made you as such. Besides, why else did we kill the pontiff? So that bastards like him couldn’t use religion to oppress us, all of us. And if Wyart doesn’t accept you for who you are, he can taste my claws too.”
“But what about the resistance? How would they react?”
“I don’t think you should worry too much,” Fin replied. “This resistance would not be where it is today without you. I have faith that if you were to come out, no one would criticize you, because this resistance was founded on the belief that all dragons are equal. If anyone has a problem with who you are, they can leave, because this is not the place for that brand of bigotry.”
Kyu let out a deep sigh of relief.
“That’s the nicest thing I’ve heard in a long time,” Kyu said. “I will come out tonight, before tomorrow’s battle.”
“And when everything is said and done,” Fin said, “we’ll get Arch back, I promise.”
“Thank you, Fin,” Kyu said. She wrapped her arms around Fin’s shoulders and hugged him tightly. “I’m glad you’re with the resistance. You really did bring the light back to this group.”
“Consider that my thanks,” Fin said, “for helping me get over my shock of fatherhood.”
“Anytime,” Kyu said.
Later that evening, Kyu came out to the entire resistance. Not a single insult was spoken, and no one left the group on the eve of the battle.
33
BLACK-TOOTH PEERED THROUGH THE spyglass at Titan’s guard towers. In each one there were two soldiers, one with a spyglass like his own, the other armed with a rifle. More guards were posted along the rampart near evenly spaced cannons. In the dead of night, the only source of light came from torches that flickered from the edge of the parapet.
Black-Tooth passed the spyglass to Chok. They were seated in a prone position a few yards away from the fort’s entrance. They had left with a small squadron ahead of the dragon wings to provide ground support during the first stage of the assault. Black-Tooth had hardly slept a wink, having left as the rest of the crew were about to go to sleep. His eyelids burned and felt heavy, and despite Chok’s urges to take a rest before the assault began, he remained vigilant. He wouldn’t be able to sleep for long anyway, given the pressure he was under.
“What kind of rifles are those?” Black-Tooth asked, pointing to one of the guard towers.
“Edonion Armament Model 30s,” Chok said. He lowered the glass and looked at Black-Tooth. “They’re long-range, large-bore flintlocks used by sharpshooters.”
“How long a range are we talking?” Black-Tooth asked.
Chok looked through the glass once again. “Judging from their size, I’d reckon that it’s pretty far.” He looked at Black-Tooth. “If it were daylight, our heads would be jelly.”
Black-Tooth was thankful that Chok knew so much about guns. He motioned for the spyglass and looked through it, focusing on the snipers in the towers. Those rifles looked even more intimidating now that he knew what they were.
“They shoot the same rounds as my ax cannon,” Chok said. “Perhaps I can restock after the battle’s over.”
Black-Tooth hardly heard him, because as he scanned the parapet, he noticed something that gave him pause. Standing at the base of one of the guard towers was a soldier who held what appeared to be a gun with a large metal barb sticking out of the muzzle. He was in the process of showing it off to a fellow soldier, who looked at it with awe. The soldier handed it to his buddy, who aimed it toward the sky and followed the path of an invisible target.
Black-Tooth hurriedly handed the spyglass back to Chok.
“What is it?” Chok asked.
“You tell me,” Black-Tooth said. “Look to the base of the guard tower on your left and tell me what that Cullidon is holding.”
Chok took the spyglass and looked. Black-Tooth observed his expression change from one of confusion to puzzlement and finally disbelief.
“That’s a harpoon gun,” Chok said. “They use those up north to kill whales. You usually see them on the sides of ships, but I ain’t never seen one b
eing held like that.”
“What do you think they’re using them for here?” Black-Tooth asked. But he already knew the answer.
Chok lowered the glass. “If I had to put money on it, I’d guess that they want to use it to shoot down our wings. And I reckon they probably have more on hand.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” He knew Kyu had trained the pilots to evade musket fire, but not harpoons. He looked up. “We’ve gotta tell them about this so they can be prepared.”
“I don’t know if we can,” Chok said. “It’s almost sunrise, and the wings will be here any minute.”
“We can get Kemp to tell them.”
Black-Tooth stood up, but before he could make another move, he heard it. The buzzing sound that resembled a far-off beehive, and the crackling and popping that always reminded him of wood in a fireplace.
Black-Tooth took off in a mad dash back to where Kemp and their troops were stationed. He didn’t even wait for Chok to catch up. He ran through the thick foliage and pushed as hard as he could through bushes and vines, hoping that something would somehow delay the wings. But he knew deep down that by the time he reached Kemp, it would already be too late.
And the buzzing came closer.
Fin felt the crisp morning air drift over him, rippling the fabric of his wing and reverberating along the wooden frame. The engine purred and popped behind him, its noise barely registering in his mind. All of his mental energy was focused on the amber lights that twinkled through the tops of the trees and the early morning mist. Titan, the focus of all the team’s work over the last week, was just on the other side of a small patch of forest. Beyond them, inside its walls, Fin knew that there were hundreds of troops ready to flay him alive. He could almost feel the fort staring him down with fiery contempt, and he returned the stare with stone-cold reserve. Everything he had trained for, every move he had made in the last five months, had led to this moment, and Fin could not have felt more ready. Today was a test, one that would define him for all the world. He’d come out victorious, a failure, or dead. Part of him wished he could peer into the future and see what it held, but another was too anxious to look.
If anything, he was glad Kemp lacked the power of precognition.
Kyu flew beside him and waved her hand.
“How ya hanging?” she called over the sound of her wing’s engine.
“Couldn’t be better,” Fin said. The adrenaline that coursed through his veins had kept him up the night before, but he felt not the faintest urge to sleep.
“We should be there in a few minutes,” Kyu said. “Have you checked to see if you have enough pipe bombs?”
“Oh yes, several times,” Fin said. The bombs sat neatly arranged in their cradle next to him.
“Good,” Kyu said. “We’re going to need all the bombs we can get to take out those towers.”
Fin nodded. He looked down at his bomb rack, and in particular at a set of four bombs with red markings on their tops. They were firebombs, ones with more of the propellant in them, that were intended to set targets on fire rather than shower them with shrapnel. Chok had designed them for use against the towers, which were partially made of wood and therefore would burn easily.
Fin sensed movement to his right and noticed Chinaw had come up next to him. He nodded at Fin with a smirk that turned into an ear-to-ear grin as he turned his attention back to the fort. It was the first time Fin had ever noticed him smile, and not in the forced way either.
“You ready for this?” Fin called.
“You’re Elder-damn right I am,” Chinaw replied with unbridled enthusiasm.
“You seem bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” Fin said.
“You kidding me? This shit’s fun. I never thought I’d like flying, until Kyu coaxed me into it a week ago.”
“If only I were that lucky with Chok,” Kyu said with a laugh. “I’m telling ya, flying is some of the best medicine I’ve ever received.”
Fin smiled. They were right about the liberating sensation that came with flying miles above the world. He wondered if this was why he wasn’t as worried as he’d usually be during such a mission.
They would’ve continued their conversation had it not been for a sudden bang, followed by a whooshing sound and then a crash. Fin turned his head in the direction of the crash and saw a fellow wing, its engine billowing black smoke, fabric torn to shreds and smeared with the pilot’s blood. Fin caught a glimpse of a metal barb sticking out from the top of the craft before the box caught fire and the wing sputtered into the trees. It landed as a smoldering wreck and exploded upon impact.
“What the hell was that?” Chinaw said.
Before anyone could reply, there was another bang, and a spear-like projectile rocketed past Fin’s wing, missing it by inches. Fin reeled from the gust of wind in its wake and struggled to maintain control of the wing. By the time he got it stable, three more shots rang out, and more spears zoomed past.
“Evasive maneuvers, now!” Kyu said.
Fin and the others split formation and scattered just as horns blared from within the fort. Fin’s heart raced as he accelerated his craft, the wind blowing even harder in his face than before. He swerved in all directions, hoping to make himself as difficult to target as possible. He couldn’t tell how many of his fellow pilots were still alive, or if there would be any left by the time he reached the fort’s walls.
“Fin? Pilots? Can you hear me?” It was Kemp’s voice in his head. “Black-Tooth wanted me to warn you about…well, I think you know by now.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Fin grumbled.
“Anyway, they’re using whaling harpoons,” Kemp continued. “It looks like you’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to do to evade them, so yeah…I’ll just shut up and leave you to it.”
Kemp sounded embarrassed and a little awkward toward the end, and rightfully so. Fin wondered how in the hell it had taken her so long to send a warning. Either way it was a minor annoyance compared to the situation at hand.
Titan’s front wall was close. Fin pulled out one of the shrapnel bombs and held the fuse to his lips. He steadied his flight path and slowed down to get a more accurate shot at his target. He was aiming for a cluster of guards near one of the central ramparts, their muskets trained on him. He observed their armor, made of silver plate that had recently been polished. Some of their helmets had red or white plumes affixed to them, perhaps to indicate rank. One such anointed was armed with one of the harpoon guns, and he was almost done loading it by the time Fin pulled the fuse. The bomb began to spit sparks as Fin lowered his craft, coming within a hair of scraping the top of the rampart. He flew over the wall and dropped the bomb right as the soldiers fired their weapons and the one with the harpoon took aim.
Fin didn’t see what happened, but he heard it: the deafening boom, the scream of guards being flung far and wide, and rocks pelting the ground below. He craned his head around to get a better look and saw the dust settling onto a black crater where the soldiers had once stood. Smoke tails from chunks of burning shrapnel arched like fingers over the edge of the wall, lingering in the air. It was a beautiful sight to behold.
Fin flew a little farther, then cut a sharp turn and headed toward one of the guard towers. He grabbed one of the incendiary bombs and chewed the tip of its fuse. Already, explosions were ringing out from within the fort as pilots dropped their payloads on the soldiers below. Fin ascended slightly to keep his craft just above the tower’s pointed roof. A sharpshooter from within aimed his rifle at Fin and fired. Fin swerved and felt the air separate in the musket ball’s wake. He was close enough now; he pulled the fuse on his bomb, and when he was in range, he hurled it at the gunner’s nest.
Fin accelerated to avoid splash damage, yet he still felt the bomb’s heat when it detonated. Fin turned and saw the guard tower lit up like a torch, the flames wrapping around the edge of the roof. One of the guards, perhaps the one who had fired at Fin, threw himself out of the tower, his body ablaze, screaming
all the way to the hard ground below.
The second of the two towers that faced their advance burned from a different incendiary device. Fin could see who threw it, thanks in part to the bomb’s smoke tail, which hovered in the sky next to the wing. It banked and turned toward Fin, allowing him to see that Chinaw was the pilot.
Before Fin could congratulate his buddy on his latest feat, a harpoon tore through Chinaw’s wing. It punctured the fabric, sending it into a tailspin. Fin could hear the combustion engine crackle and pop as Chinaw attempted to regain control, but it was useless. Chinaw plummeted and crashed in the center of the fort.
Fin turned in the harpoon’s direction and saw the shooter perched inside the third and final tower. He hadn’t even begun to reload. Fin narrowed his eyes and flew at full speed toward the tower. He grabbed two bombs, an incendiary and a shrapnel, and chomped down on their fuses.
“Eat shit and die,” Fin growled.
The shooter began to load his gun, pouring the gunpowder and using the next harpoon as a ramrod. Unlike in the other towers, this shooter was alone. When he saw Fin approaching, he quickened his pace. Fin pulled the cords and let the sparks fly from the tips of the bombs. The shooter rammed the spear into place and hastily primed the flash pan. He looked up, and Fin could see the panic in his eyes. Fin was within throwing range. The shooter pulled the hammer back and took aim directly at Fin. He fired just as Fin chucked the bombs.
Fin banked hard and missed the tower by inches. The frag bomb went off first, blowing the soldier to pieces and sending bits of flesh and stone hurtling toward the ground. Then the incendiary exploded, engulfing the tower in a fireball that rose up the spire and set the shingles ablaze. Fin looked back; he was now outside the fort’s perimeter, at the tip of the triangle, with the now-burning guard tower directly behind him. Fin turned, but when he did, he noticed something strange about his wing. The engine seemed to struggle, as though this simple maneuver was too much for it to handle. Fin yanked on the fuel lever, thinking that maybe it needed more, but it didn’t work. The wing started to vibrate violently, and Fin felt like he had to fight to maintain control.