Dragonsight (33 page)

‘S’cressling cheeps every few moments, then listens for an echo. If she hears an echo from dead ahead, then there is a mountain there.’

Zimak scowled. ‘Then what?’

‘She starts flapping, gains height, and flies over. Or she might do a few more cheeps to work out the mountain’s outline, and fly around it.’

‘I don’t hear any cheeping,’ Zimak said dourly.

‘She is cheeping, only it is too shrill for you to hear.’

‘Gah, what’s the point of that?’ asked Zimak

‘Cattle, sheep, other prey like that cannot hear the dragon coming, so the dragon does not give away its location. That is why they can strike in total darkness, mist, and smoke, and why they approach in silence.’

‘Then how can you tell she’s cheeping?’ Zimak wanted to know.

‘Zimak!’ Jelindel snapped.

‘It is all right,’ said Osric. ‘I can’t tell if she is cheeping, but I am fairly sure that she is not feeling depressed and contemplating suicide, so I doubt that she is likely to forget the cheeping, fly straight into a solid wall of rock, then plunge in a mangled heap to rocks thousands of feet below.’

‘But –’

By now even Osric was becoming annoyed. ‘Look, Zimak, next time you have your sword out and are fighting for your life, do you really think you would need me there yelling at you to keep your eyes open?’

‘Enough, Zimak,’ Jelindel said. Something in her tone made Zimak clamp his mouth.

The mist began to lighten. Moments later they were a little below the cloud base. They were high over farmland.

‘Now are you convinced?’ asked Osric. ‘We are a mile and a half up, and there are no mountains.’

‘I can see some hills,’ muttered Zimak.

‘No more than two hundred feet high,’ estimated Osric.

‘And I see a town,’ said Jelindel.

‘They are pretty common,’ replied Osric.

‘This one is running.’

‘What?’ gasped Osric and Daretor together, as Jelindel brought her farsight to bear on the dark patch far below.

‘The giant chicken-cottage things, hundreds of them, all running along in formation.’

‘Hundreds?’ exclaimed Daretor. ‘Did you say hundreds?’

‘That I did,’ said Jelindel, looking elsewhere. ‘I also see that Fa’red’s growing many more airliners. So many, hundreds, perhaps a thousand.’

‘I’ve heard of a face that launched a thousand ships, but a thousand giant chickens?’ said Osric.

‘How could Fa’red have found the money for so many?’ asked Daretor.

‘Well, they live on chickenfeed,’ said Jelindel. ‘Admittedly, an awful lot of chickenfeed, but then chickens eat just about anything: grass, leaves, garbage scraps. An army of five thousand could do the work of tending them, and most kingdoms have armies that size, or larger. Fa’red must have convinced some ambitious monarch to provide the manpower, in return for invincible steeds for his army.’

‘That’s totally and absolutely without honour!’ spat Daretor. ‘Imagine a warrior being killed in battle, then having to explain to the gods of the afterlife that he was trampled to death by a giant chicken. I mean if he fronted up to the Warrior’s Circle in paradise with a story like that they’d slam the dummart door in his face.’

‘Hie,’ Zimak said. ‘That two-timing rat Hargrellien.’

‘You’re right,’ Daretor admitted grudgingly. ‘Last time we saw her, she said she was going to build something called a squadron. She must have done so, and joined forces with Fa’red.’

‘For all her faults, she did save our lives,’ Jelindel reminded them. Her voice caught. ‘There,’ she cried. ‘Look down there.’

‘Fires,’ observed Daretor. ‘Someone is fighting back.’

‘Not so,’ said Jelindel, squinting through her farsight again. ‘There’s … four no, five airliners dropping fire pots on a stone bridge. The airliners are about as long and wide as a ship. I think they’re just in training.’

‘Still not as good as a dragon,’ boasted Osric.

‘True, but still vastly better than no dragon at all,’ Jelindel repeated. ‘A thousand airliners could move an army of ten thousand at a hundred times the speed of marching men. Such mobility would win most battles before they began.’

‘… a hundred times the speed of a marching man,’ muttered Osric. ‘Hold a moment. That’s as fast as S’cressling.’

‘Yes,’ said Jelindel. ‘We must be sure to stay clear of them.’

Daretor leaned over the side of the palanquin. ‘Remember that town that was running along the ground? Well now it’s taken off and flying.’

‘Osric, we’re still descending,’ said Jelindel. ‘You were meant to keep S’cressling near the clouds so we could hide quickly.’

‘Well you could have told me.’

‘Flock of two or three hundred airliners about to intercept,’ reported Zimak.

‘Climb!’ shouted Jelindel. ‘Tell S’cressling to climb for the clouds.’

For the next few minutes nothing more was said. S’cressling beat her wings, gaining dozens of feet in height with every stroke. The squadron of airliners spread out like a vast net in the sky.

‘They climb faster than we do,’ said Osric. ‘How can that be?’

‘They are bred to do nothing except fly and run,’ explained Jelindel. ‘Nor do they have the weight of a head and neck.’

‘No head,’ said Osric. ‘That means they will not have echo location like S’cressling does. Once we are in the clouds they will be blind yet she can still locate them.’

‘All very nice as long as we can reach the clouds,’ said Daretor, stringing the only bow on board. ‘We have two dozen arrows.’

‘Three hundred airliners, ten archers on each, that’s odds of three thousand to one,’ said Jelindel. ‘Sufficiently bad odds for a gloriously heroic battle, Daretor.’

‘Is that meant to cheer me up?’

‘I’d not dream of it.’

The first of the arrows began to whiz past. The cloud base was still hundreds of feet above. S’cressling was beginning to tire after the frantic climb, for most dragon flight is achieved by riding air currents. Only occasionally do they flap their wings to gain a little height, change direction, or find a better air current. Daretor was certainly no match for the best of the enemy archers. Most of his shots fell short of their target, and would probably not have hit even if they had made the distance.

Occasional arrows were hitting S’cressling, but all bounced off her scales.

‘Can’t you ask S’cressling to spray them with fire?’ demanded an exasperated Daretor.

‘That takes energy, and she needs all she has to out-distance our foe. If they get any closer, we will be shot full of arrows in a thrice,’ replied Osric. ‘Besides, they could – argh!’

An arrow had struck the youth’s arm, pinning it to the wooden saddle frame. Jelindel was beside him in an instant, cutting through the shaft and pulling it out.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘Just winged me,’ gasped Osric. ‘Why is it always me who gets it in the arm?’

‘Just lucky I guess,’ Jelindel said, smiling. ‘Hold still, I’ll need to staunch the blood.’

‘Make it quick, please.’ He winced. ‘We need to take evasive action.’

No sooner had the wound stopped bleeding than S’cressling banked sharply. A grotesquely large chicken, wearing a streamlined cabin nearly collided head-on. But for S’cressling’s exhalation of fire, which incinerated the airliner, they would surely have crashed into one another.

‘That is what I feared. Suicide attempts,’ shouted Osric. ‘A collision with something as large as that will kill even a dragon. They’re not invulnerable, after all.’

‘But the riders would be killed too,’ said Daretor.

‘They only have to jump clear, and other airliners could swoop down to catch them.’

They ascended into the mists of the cloud base. S’cressling was suddenly the only one not flying blind. Damp, chilly, but concealing mists swept past.

‘S’cressling says that the airliners are already far behind,’ Osric reported.

‘So, at least we saw the foundation of Fa’red’s plans and survived to tell of it,’ said Daretor.

‘All the more reason to keep the dragonsight out of his hands,’ said Jelindel.

‘Never thought I’d be so happy to fly in clouds,’ said Zimak. ‘Osric, she is cheeping, isn’t she?’

‘Indeed she is.’

‘One matter still puzzles me,’ Jelindel admitted. ‘Why didn’t Fa’red take control of the dragons when he had the dragonsight?’

‘Because the dragonsight is only half of it,’ explained Osric. ‘One also needs to control the Sacred One. Fa’red could not do that; the Sacred One is too big to carry away. When the dragons are free, they could take the Sacred One back home. Or they might stay – it is all conjecture. If they go, I suspect Fa’red will be unstoppable.’

Jelindel and Daretor hung on grimly as the night air whistled around their heads. The turbulence was the worst they had encountered. Zimak looked morbidly into the darkness on either side. The dizzy rush of wind, the sense of something massive just off in the darkness, was profoundly unsettling. All three were close to collapsing. Although Jelindel was as spent as her companions, she secretly syphoned off some energy to them.

S’cressling was navigating through the canyons of the massif. It was a feat dangerous by day and almost suicidal by night, even by the light of three moons. Osric had insisted S’cressling knew the canyons like his tongue knew the roof of his mouth, and that she could fly them blindfolded. At which point Zimak had asked, ‘So how many times has she flown them
blindfolded
?’

‘Zimak, shut up,’ Jelindel chided.

Thus they were shooting along narrow canyons. Walls rose sheer on either side for thousands of feet, blocking out what little starlight there was, for the moons, unfamiliar to S’cressling, were casting multiple shadows. The canyon was only a few yards wider than the dragon’s wingtips. The sense of rushing speed between the formidable and unforgiving barriers was breathtaking and frightening. One wrong move and they would be dashed to pieces in midair, their pulverised bodies falling through inky blackness to the jagged rocks below.

The Q’zarans were never entirely comfortable flying on the back of the dragon even in daylight. Despite the chill night air they sweated, sitting rigidly on the deck, clutching guy ropes and stanchions.

‘If we get through this,’ Zimak said, ‘I’ll never fly again.’

‘Then you’ll have a long walk home,’ said Daretor.

‘Fine. Dragonfrost exists no more.’

‘There are other dangers now, though,’ Daretor replied. ‘Nevertheless, I’ll be with you.’

‘You sound like a couple of nagging spinsters,’ said Jelindel, without trace of conviction.

The massive slabs of darkness continued to rush past. Those on the deck did not dare to move as the dragon banked first one way and then the other, the sickening aerobatics wracking their stomachs with nausea. The nightmare continued for what seemed an eternity.

In the pilot’s saddle, Osric grinned to himself. He had not bothered to tell his companions that the flight was not quite as dangerous as they thought. Although dragons had astonishing farsight, they were often almost blind in close quarters, and would peer at objects, especially people, first with one large unblinking eye and then the other, trying to bring them into focus. Thus, even in day time, S’cressling would not have used her eyesight for such delicate and dangerous manoeuvres to any great extent. She used a combination of innate knowledge of the canyon layout and her wingtips, which acted like a cat’s whiskers. S’cressling’s speed was more apparent than real. In the confined space, she flew at a leisurely pace, which was exaggerated by the wind and darkness.

Several times she deliberately let her wingtips brush the canyon sides, as though familiarising herself with the walls due to the unfamiliar shadows now cast by Q’zar’s moons. In addition, she used a process not unlike that used by bats; sounding distances by echoes. This was Osric’s ‘cheeping’; the sound S’cressling bounced off the canyon walls was at too high a frequency for mortal ears to hear.

The truth was that there was far less danger than the Q’zarans imagined, but S’cressling was unaware that she could have put their minds at rest. After all, they did not ask her.

She flew like this for some time before, finally, turning into a canyon that ended in a cul-de-sac. She flew for another fifteen minutes, enjoying the sense of coming home. Ahead lay a place that she had not visited in some time. There was a great joy in her heart at the thought of returning.

At the mane, Osric knew they were almost at their destination. He called back to the others and told them the news. Zimak grunted in relief even as he coughed up blood into a rag. The poison had been acting on his system severely.

Moments later S’cressling banked hard, dropped some three hundred feet, and flared her wings to kill speed. Then they were on firm ground again.

The three Q’zarans rose unsteadily to their feet. It was still too dark to see much, and they knew they were somewhere halfway up the side of a canyon wall. They could just make out round blobs of deeper blackness where the mouths of great tunnels gaped in the stone walls.

‘Well, we’re here,’ said Osric from the darkness nearby.

S’cressling moved deeper into the tunnel at whose entrance she had landed. The tunnel went straight for two hundred yards then turned at right angles. They saw a glimmering of light. When they rounded the bend, an enormous cavern opened before them. It was almost a dragon city, and contained over a hundred nesting dragons, all of whom turned to scrutinise the newcomers.