[Age of Fire 05] - Dragon Rule Read online

  Good riddance.

  Ship fighting wasn’t without its hazards. He felt several painful splinters in his sii and saa and he had lines and nets tangled in his scale. His griff rattled in vexation.

  “My Tyr!” HeBellereth, his scarred old Commander of the Aerial Host called. “Are you injured?”

  The Copper straightened his neck to trumpet:

  “The towers! The gate! Never mind me. Keep to the plan! That fortress must be taken.”

  The moon peeped opened the top sliver of its great white eye over the Inland Ocean. By it the Copper could see the barges coursing across the bay, pulled by churning pairs of Firemaids with leather-wrapped cables in their mouths.

  The smell of salt—salt from the blood, salt from the water, salt from his own rended flesh, brought the night to brilliant life. He’d rarely felt more alive. The pain of his sore wing was forgotten in triumph as he watched his laden dragons alight atop the shielded towers of the fortress.

  Men dropped off the hovering dragons and onto the battlements the way squirrels fell out of a tail-swiped tree. As planned, they seized the deadly war machines in the towers before they could be loaded and readied.

  A mass roared out of the night. The Copper couldn’t react until it was upon him, so intent was he in watching the human warriors of his Aerial Host.

  It struck him and the deck of the ship with such force the ship flopped over on its side. The ship’s timbers groaned in protest.

  It was a dragon. Not one of his own, no laudi marked its wings as testament to worthiness to serve in the Aerial Host, no white stripe painted on the side of its flank and crest for the night attack showed him as friend. Nor was it a dragonelle.

  A black dragon, and a huge one at that, climbed out of the mass of lines and wood, dragging it like a water dog emerging from seaweed.

  This dragon hadn’t grown up in the Lavadome, and fed on stringly lightsick cattle and fatty pork. Its limbs and haunches and back ridge were meaty, and nine long horns had been left to grow riotous and wild into a barbed thatch, a barbaric look when compared to the polished horns of his own dragons.

  “They said I’d be able to spot the leader with the birds and all,” the great dragon said thickly, speaking Drakine as though it were a foreign tongue.

  The Copper scrabbled up onto the side of the tipped ship, fighting lines that tried to pull him under. The two dragons’ joint weight sent it rolling again and the Copper felt the snaps of masts transmit through the hull.

  His Griffaran Guards fluttered about like anxious nectar feeders. The black dragon batted one away with the tip of a massive wing.

  Griff flanking his jawline rattling of their own accord, the Copper tasted the air around the stranger. He reeked of whale blubber.

  “I take it these are your men?”

  The black ignored him and lunged forward, mouth agape. Their weight upset the ship, and they both slid into the bay before the diving griffaran could sink their claws into the stranger’s flanks. The big black struck him like an avalanche. Only the water, slowing his enemy’s limbs, kept him from being opened at the inner joint of his left saa.

  A digging, rending grip caught him across the back. Not since he’d fought old King Gan in his bats’ cave did he feel such power. The only chance the Copper had was to make it to the surface where his guard could hit the big stranger from all sides. He pressed with his legs and broke the grip, losing more skin and scale in the process.

  Whoever the stranger was, he hadn’t spent his youth in endless trials against other dragons. For all his strength, he fought rather clumsily, used to letting his size exhaust his prey. He should have coiled with his tail to secure his hold from the other direction.

  The Copper lunged out of the water and the griffaran swooped down to meet him, letting out alarmed cries. A dragonelle circled above, crying out, but his ears had little but his only pounding pulse in them and he couldn’t distinguish her words.

  He was halfway out, using the crusty creatures covering the bottom of the overturned ship for purchase, when the black’s head broke water. The black took a deep breath and shot a warning gout of flame at the frantic griffaran.

  He dove again and the Copper felt teeth clamp around his tail. The Copper dug in sit and saa, but the black swam like one of the great whales beneath the overturned ship, and once again the hull rolled as the he was dragged under.

  The Copper became doubly entangled in rope and wreckage. A powerful mass closed around him, and the black hauled him to the surface, its neck wrapped around his.

  They came out, tresses of rope and broken wood hanging about their crests and horns.

  “Call off your dragons,” the black gasped.

  Strong, but not in very good fighting trim.

  He tried to feel around with his saa for somewhere to gut, but the black had his legs about them like the coils of King Gan.

  “Before I say anything, I’ll have your name,” the Copper grunted.

  “My name’s Shadowcatch the Black, from the Isle of Ice,” the dragon said.

  His brother’s island? Had the reclusive wretch sent assassins? Madness, especially since his drakes and drakka—or had they fledged—were promising young members of the Drakwatch and Firemaidens.

  Two of his veteran dragons, having lost the heavy load of troops, now circled low overhead.

  “My Tyr?” one called.

  “Answer with aught but a recall of your wings, and I’ll tear your head off,” Shadowcatch said.

  Not an intelligent dragon at all, more bulk than brain. Did the brute think he could just bellow and have the soldiers now landing on Swayport’s beaches and advancing behind flame-spewing dragonelles return to their craft? Fire burned bright at a sea wall protecting the town and in one of the towers of the looming fortress, an orange torch sending reflective flame across the comfortably warm waters of the bay. A little foggy, the Copper reckoned some of the warmth came from the two opponents’ mingled blood.

  The Copper struggled in vain. He thwacked the brute’s head with his tail, but that great tangled crest warded off the weak blow; all they did was spin.

  A broken mast floated among the wreckage, tangled in place like the rest of them by rigging lines.

  “Even if I pass the word, it will be some time before I can recall all my forces. The moon will be halfway up.” The Copper flailed about with his tail, managed to strike the mast. He got some semblance of a grip with his tail, for once in his life grateful that his sii had been maimed in the hatchling fight rather than his tail.

  “Just do it,” Shadowcatch said.

  “As you say,” the Copper said, doing his best to get a better view of his opponent.

  He reached with his tail, found a grip. With all his remaining strength he pulled the splintered end of the mast hard toward him, striking the black in the thinner scale of the neck where the tight coils of his own left the scales raised and turned at a vulnerable angle.

  The black bellowed, gave one final tremendous pull—the Copper was sure his spine would snap under the pressure, leaving him to be pulled under by the deadweight of his hindquarters—and reared up to bite.

  A pair of griffaran clawed at the black’s head, not going for his eyes but wrapping their talons around his thatch of horns. Flapping together, they pulled him out of biting range; dragon jaws are strong, their necks less so, and a third member of the Guard whipped under his chin and clawed at his throat, going for the pulsing neck-hearts.

  Shadowcatch released the Copper and used weight and momentum to topple back into the water. One of the griffaran released his hold and flapped away, his companion was caught under the black’s mighty crest and struck water hard.

  Water roiled and the Copper bobbed in the black’s wake.

  “He’s heading out to sea!” the Firemaiden above called.

  “Leave him,” the Copper gasped. He pushed the sodden, dead-eyed bird up onto the wallowing hulk of the ship. The Copper bent his ear to it, heard a faint pulse. Not sur
e what to do, the Copper tapped it a couple of times with his snout and gave his guard a lick on the display crest between the eyes. The bird was a veteran of many battles; he had painted marks on his beak. The Copper felt he should know his name—Mishi or something like that. Suddenly the bird-reptile’s pulse strengthened and the griffaran blinked.

  “Thank you, my Tyr-awk!” it squawked, taking a deep breath and preening out sodden feathers.

  The rest of the Griffaran Guard made a colorful, taloned tornado above his head as the Copper gladly left the wrecked ship and coursed for the beach, limbs tight to his sides and body writhing like a snake’s. The whole waterfront was alive with flame and cries.

  The Copper pulled himself up onto the beach and shivered, chilled. He must have lost a good deal of blood between the wing and his fights. He made a pretense of issuing orders as reports came in—the overall direction of the battle could be better handled by HeBellereth.

  Someone brought him a dead horse and he managed a few mouthfuls. Digestion warmed him, and he brought the rest of the meal and propped it atop the chimney of a burning building facing the sea wall so it might toast and smoke. He’d lost his taste for raw mammal flesh long ago.

  He took to the air, rather tiredly and painfully, his Griffaran Guard trailing him so close they looked like a colorful extension to his tail.

  HeBellereth had done a dragonlike job of directing the fight. Some fires raged below, small fast ships that might be used to put crews into the larger ships burned and a few houses wore hats of flame. The Aerial Host had spared the warehouses and workshops, fishing boats and big-bellied merchant craft. The wealth of Swayport remained intact.

  Discipline. His dragons knew better than to burn a city. Reducing flimsy human dwellings to splintered fuelwood and charcoal with flame and tailswipe might be fine fun, but it wasn’t the way of the Tyr’s dragons as Protectors of the Grand Alliance. Burning homes meant the exposed humans would sicken and die, a loss of valuable thrall capital.

  Alley fighting sputtered below, brief shouts and clashes that faded into chases in and out of urban gardens, tiny side doors, or narrow staircases.

  The Copper dipped first his right wingtip, then his left, ignoring the newly revived pain as he sought a better look.

  A young human led one of the storming columns off—at least he seemed young insofar as the Copper could judge things. He was fencepost-thin and thickly furred, his thick and shining mane flowed out from beneath helm—even the best older human warrior tended to go a bit thin as they aged. He was a whirlwhind, tearing doors off their hinges, upsetting carts placed to block streets leading to the cliffside fortress, hurling javelins uphill at the fleeing Swayport archers two full dragon-lengths and more when he wasn’t leaving crumpled foes like dropped bundles in his wake with swings of a battle-ax.

  The Copper marked that he wore the furs and goggles of one of the Aerial Host. He thought he knew most of the men, but this tall, thin fellow was new to him.

  The storming columns converged. Though the gates had been bashed open by tailswipe and dropped stones, the Swayport soldiery had made a barricade of the rubble, broken timber, and bent metal. The Hypatian soldiers faltered here, and were flung back by desperate spear fighting and pressed shields.

  The young human picked up a fallen Hypatian banner, leaped upon the pedestal of a broken statue in the paved plaza before the citadel’s gates, and swirled the banner. He called to one of the Aerial Host crossbowmen behind, who touched arrow to smoldering match and sent a sparkling signal-bolt into the Swayport crowd at the gate.

  The Copper marked that one of the attacking dragons passed low. The dragon altered course, swooped for the gate, and executed a neat spin to dodge a harpoon fired from some concealed war machine in the fortress.

  Alert fellow to mark the signal and attack so quickly. He’d get a new laudi dyed to his wing for that.

  The dragon landed atop the rubble and turned into a biting, clawing fury. Swayport soldiers were tossed through the air or fled the dragon’s fighting madness. The dragon leaped into the sky again as missiles rained down from the tower. A boulder struck him hard across the back and he fell.

  The lanky young human, howling the raaaaah! battle cry of the Aerial Host, ran forward, armed only with the Hypatian banner. Soldiers of the Lavadome and Hypatia streamed behind.

  The Copper watched in satisfaction as the storming column flowed over and through the gates, axmen foremost to break down doors. The mass of men divided, flowing off into riven portals and up the fortresses’ ladders and stairs to reinforce the men still fighting at the tower tops.

  * * *

  With that he watched the sun come up, while the wounded and the booty-laden returned to the waiting barges.

  The resistance, what there was of it, was broken-backed by the time the last tower fell, threatened by his Aerial Host men who’d been dropped onto the higher levels and spry young drakka climbing the sides and fighting drakes from below— with the usual competition for glories and honors and tallies of bitten-off heads between the males and females, of course.

  Many of the Pirate Lords had run away by secret paths, only to be rounded up by hunting Firemaids, but a few stewards and captains remained to plead with the dragons to leave the rest of the city unburned—for a city it was, a much more impressive one than the old maps based on memories of his aged warrior showed.

  They’d won a rich prize indeed. The Copper had half-formed plans to carry off the valuables and leave nothing but piles of broken stones as a warning to others who might defy his emissaries, but his Hypatian allies must have their colony back.

  The Copper snorted when he learned the Pirate Lords had hired three dragons to guard the skies above their cities, only to have two take flight when they looked up and saw the array of approaching dragons. The Copper wondered if the dragons had been paid in advance for their services. Only the black, cursing, took wing toward their foes.

  They held a celebration, and a memorial service, the next night in the conquered fortress. The men enjoyed wines from half a world away, the dragons feasted on skewers of organ meats discreetly collected from the dead and sliced into unrecognizable hunks. The men of the Aerial Host were rather hardened to dragon tastes and appetites, but surrendered potentates of Swayport might be provoked into foolish violence.

  It had been a terribly busy day for the Tyr and he was eager to fly back to Hypatia—and his mate in her fastness—but the proprieties had to be observed. Under the broken battlements the dragons gathered, awards were announced and names and deeds read into the Song of the Aerial Host that would describe the war against the Pirate Lords, as soon as a fitting one could be composed by one of the more talented dragons.

  The fallen young dragon who had answered the signal-bolt at the gate was broken-backed and unconscious. HeBellereth judged he’d never fly again, or even open his eyes to receive his justly won laudi. His rider, as was the custom for the fallen in foreign lands, dispatched him with a quick spear thrust under the right sii.

  The humans then lowered the head and opened the neck heart.

  “Only one loss. FeMissanith, an Ankelene who fought like a Skotl. Sorry to lose him, we don’t have many Ankelenes in the host, and he was a good example to others. Until the end. Young and foolish, alighting like that in the thick of them.”

  “I recall a young and reckless dragon serving in the Bant with me. Chance favored him, he recovered from his wounds, and he rose high.” The Copper nudged HeBellereth.

  “Seems a waste to let all that dragon blood be spilled for nothing,” HeBellereth’s signalman-rider drawled.

  “Quiet, now,” HeBellereth drawled. HeBellereth, who always bristled and sparked before a fight, spoke rather slowly and thickly afterward as he attended to his duties. The rest he could leave to his lieutenants, but he always looked after the hurt and fallen before consuming a barrel of wine and some marrow bones and sleeping the strain off.

  “He’s right,” the Copper said. “Our me
n deserve a victory toast of dragon blood. They’ll need it for the work of loading compensation. Save us from having to open a vein.”

  Someone snorted. The idea of bleeding the honored dead rankled, but the Copper needed his men’s and the Hypatians’ energy for the work of setting Swayport in order ahead, and dragon-blood would do the trick. Besides, hadn’t their allies just feasted on human corpses? “Speaking of victory toasts, I’ll offer my own blood to that young human who led the storming column in from the sea. I didn’t know him.”

  The Copper hoped he had enough to spare. But he’d always had a strong constitution and was used to veins being tapped by his bats.

  “That’s old Gunfer’s son,” HeBellereth said. “He was the first human boy born to the new Aerial Host after you became Tyr. Gunfer’s too old to do much but sharpen weapons and fix buckles before we fly into battle and tend wounds after; his years take him back to the glory days of that cursed Wizard on his isle. Threading dragons with rein-rings indeed.” HeBellereth snorted.

  “One more thing, HeBellereth. Make sure he gets a golden storming stripe upon his wing before his body is burned.”

  “I’ll paint it myself, my Tyr,” his rider said in a choking voice, cleaning the merciful spearpoint with his own silken scarf.

  There’d have to be a new promotion from the Drakwatch into the Aerial Host HeBellereth had mentioned, more than once, a likely young dragon, newly fledged. His brother Au-Ron’s son AuSurath the Red had strength and wit and skill and followed orders well, even if it meant hanging back rather than being foremost in seeking glory in battle. Most reds flamed first and answered questions after. But something in him rebelled at putting one of AuRon’s into the Aerial Host.

  Always too suspicious, he told himself. Well, that’s how you’ve managed to stay alive all these years, he argued back to himself.

  He could think about it later.

  A few of the dragons shifted uncomfortably as the human dragon riders gathered around FeMissanith for the victory toast from the dead hero’s neck. The Copper silenced them with a glare as he personally filled the first tankard and handed it to the human captain of the Aerial Host, a one-armed fellow the Copper always thought of as “Blaze” because of his red-veined nose and ruddy, windburned skin.