A/N: Thank you beeblegirl, SnidgetHex, and pallysAramisRios for reviewing!
Chapter 2
A mile outside of Paris, Clara tapped Porthos's shoulder and pointed to the edge of some woodland.
"Land there."
Confused, he nevertheless nudged Vrita with his knees to signal her to head down. As they did, a pewter blue dragon emerged from the trees. Vrita had barely touched down before Clara was slipping off her back and going to greet the other dragon. Porthos should have figured she hadn't walked all the way to Paris to seek him out.
Clara climbed up onto the dragon's bare back. "Now we can continue."
Porthos gestured for the two of them to take the lead, and they took to the skies again, flying east of Paris to some mountainous forests. Porthos had been curious about where Clara and her dragons might have settled after their last encounter, but it didn't look as though she was taking him to their new sanctuary. Instead, she led the way to a wide ledge partially stretching out over a river. The dragons pulled up at the edge, touching down and shuffling away from the precipice.
"This the last place you think the dragons were?" Porthos asked as he dismounted.
"Yes," Clara replied. "There are tracks."
He moseyed around the ledge, taking note of the scratches in the granite from dragon claws and the swish through the dirt from their sweeping tails. At least two had been here.
"No signs of wagon tracks," he commented. Which was how someone would transport a captured dragon.
He spotted some glittering pink powder on the ground and bent down to examine it. Taking off his glove, he dabbed two fingers into the substance and rubbed at it. The granules were coarse, like salt.
He straightened. "This what you found earlier?"
Clara nodded, still seated atop the blue dragon.
Vrita meandered over and took a sniff. In an instant, her eyes glazed over and her entire posture went slack.
"Vrita?" Porthos asked in alarm. He twisted around and quickly brushed the powder off his hand before spinning back toward his dragon. "Vrita!"
She stood there as though in some kind of trance, unresponsive.
"What's happening?" Clara asked, hopping down from her dragon and hurrying over.
"I don't know. That powder did something." Porthos snapped his fingers in front of Vrita's face, which drew her inattentive gaze to him but otherwise got no reaction. He cursed under his breath. "Come on, girl, come back to me."
"Water," Clara suggested.
Right. Porthos reached past Vrita's neck to snag his canteen from the saddle and unscrewed the cap. He then poured some water over her snout and rubbed around her nostrils, trying to dilute whatever she'd inhaled. She blinked languidly in response, hardly disturbed by the invasive treatment.
Porthos looked around helplessly. "The river. Come on, girl, let's get you something to drink." Touching her shoulder, he managed to coax her into moving and following him down the slope to the water's edge. "There you go," he encouraged, pointing to the babbling stream.
Vrita mindlessly lowered her head to drink from it.
"I'd say we found how someone could take two dragons without a fuss," he scowled.
Clara looked worried as they waited for Vrita to drink her fill. Porthos then cupped some water in his palms and splashed her full on in the face with it. After a few rounds, she finally started to jerk away, shaking her head vigorously.
"You back with me?" he asked.
Vrita squinted and looked around in confusion.
Porthos exhaled heavily in relief. "Right, then, we're gonna have to be careful tracking the dragons, make sure ours don't get dosed with any surprises."
Clara still looked troubled. "I didn't know there was a compound that could do that to a dragon."
"Me neither." He turned in a slow circle to survey the area. "I'm not sure how competent they'd be to fly in that state. They might have moved off on foot. We should see if we can find any tracks or scents."
Clara whistled and waved for her dragon to come down and join them as they all spread out to search the immediate area. It didn't take long for them to find a trail of broken twigs and disturbed soil heading away from the river.
Porthos checked to make sure there weren't any traces of that pink powder, then looked to the blue dragon. "Can you get the scents of your clan mates?"
The dragon bent its nose to the ground for a few good whiffs, then bobbed its head in the affirmative.
"Then let's go," Clara said, striding off through the foliage.
"How come you didn't try tracking them before?" Porthos asked as they walked. It hadn't been that difficult to find the trail. "You seem determined enough to handle things on your own."
"I could have," she immediately replied defensively.
"That's what I said," he pointed out.
Clara shot him a curt glare, then deflated a fraction. "I figured it couldn't hurt to have help."
"That's certainly been my experience," Porthos said diplomatically. He was actually secretly pleased that Clara had valued his help enough to ask for it.
He heard Vrita make a chortling sound and tossed a sharp look over his shoulder at her. She smirked back at him.
"What's your dragon's name?" Porthos asked Clara to divert from the previous line of inquiry.
"Issa. She's the second dragon I rescued when I began my work."
"When the war started?"
Clara shook her head. "I've been doing this long before that. Issa was kept chained in a barn by some baron, no room to move. Her wings had started to become malformed by the time I found and freed her. It took some time and physical therapy, but she regained the ability to fly."
Porthos glanced ahead at the blue dragon leading the way through the woods. He couldn't imagine doing that to such a noble creature.
Some of Clara's methods in the past might have been questionable, but Porthos believed in her cause.
.o.0.o.
Aramis and Rhaego arrived at the palace for guard duty, expecting to be watching over the Queen and Dauphin in the gardens again. But no shaded dais had been erected, and Aramis could see through the windows into the palace that something was amiss—servants were scurrying around in far too hurried a manner.
He gave Rhaego a pat and then headed inside. No one paid a lone musketeer any mind, and he followed the hustling trail of servants up to the Queen's apartments. Treville was standing outside, giving some orders for the King's meetings to be postponed.
"What's going on?" Aramis asked.
"The Dauphin is ill," Treville replied.
Aramis turned to look through the open door where the King, Queen, the baby's governess, and the royal physician were all crowded around the crib. "Ill how?" he asked.
"Fever, cough. The physician is prescribing some medicine and is confident he'll be fine. But the King is understandably distracted." Treville furrowed his brow. "Where's Porthos?"
"He had something to take care of," Aramis replied smoothly. "And it seems there will be no outings in the palace gardens anyway."
Treville huffed. "It's a good thing I'm not your captain anymore."
Aramis gave him a cheeky grin. "Come now, Minister, you know we've never let you down."
Treville gave a weary eye roll reminiscent of his days as captain.
But then their expressions turned serious again as they looked back at the royal family clustered together. Aramis reached up to touch his rosary and said a silent prayer for the child.
.o.0.o.
Brochard had worked through most of the night and the following morning trying to identify an antidote to the compound that had poisoned the dragons, but so far he wasn't having any luck. They couldn't rush science, he'd told the concerned musketeers. And while that may have been true, it didn't stop the riders from worrying about their dragons, or the rest of the men from feeling the anxiety as well. The only balm was seeing Captain Athos again; he had a way of inspiring the troops—despite the fact he was more of a laconic leader than rousing speechmaker. D'Artagnan knew what they all saw, though; he saw it himself.
Ayelet and Savron had taken off that morning to go hunt and had already brought back some spoils before heading out again. The rest of the regiment was in a holding position until Brochard could solve the problem with the poison. For now, at least. If it went on too long, d'Artagnan suspected they would receive orders to commence with the campaign with ground forces only. He hoped it wouldn't come to that, though.
A cry of alarm suddenly went up from somewhere in the camp. "Incoming!"
D'Artagnan ran into the open, whipping his gaze around for the source of the attack. A screech rent the air and two dragons launched into the sky to intercept an enemy dragon coming right at them. The green Spanish dragon roared in return and banked sharply, releasing one edge of a tarp clutched in its talons. Black powder rained down like ash directly on the two Musketeer dragons, who screamed and thrashed mid-air. Zhar was below them on the ground, poised to join the fight, when the powder hit him in the face too. He threw his head back with an ear-splitting shriek. Men were running and shouting, and when Zhar whipped his gaze toward them, his eyes were blazing blood red.
D'Artagnan's heart seized with horror. "No! Get back!" he yelled as Zhar screeched and lunged at the men.
The other two dragons in the sky twisted around and dove back toward the encampment, fangs and talons bared as they ripped through tents and came crashing to the ground. There were only two dragons unaffected, and they leaped in to engage their den mates and keep them away from the musketeers.
Zhar trampled through the camp, belly glowing hot with unreleased fire.
"Down!" Athos yelled as he ran straight at the dragon and flung a fistful of refroidi into Zhar's mouth.
The dragon jerked back with a gargling cough as his flame was extinguished. But that only fed the rage the dragon's bane had caused and he charged straight at Athos, who barely dove out of the way in time. Zhar skidded to a stop and spun around with a snap of his jaws.
D'Artagnan bolted for Brochard, who was cowering by his workstation in the sick dragon pen. "Do you have anything to stop them?" he yelled.
"Uh, yes, yes, here."
The man fumbled at some jars and thrust one at d'Artagnan. It contained a blue powder he recognized, so he spun around and ran back into the chaos, grabbing a fistful of the sedative and throwing it in Zhar's face. The dragon reared back with a shriek, tripping over several tents and flattening them.
D'Artagnan veered left and headed for the other two, who were still fighting Astra and Huron. Some of the sick dragons were trying to get up and help but were too weak and were getting mowed down by the brawling brutes. D'Artagnan didn't want to knock them all out, but he didn't know how to get close enough to just hit the two crazed dragons.
One of them opened its maw wide to belch out fire, but Athos managed to get some refroidi in its mouth first. But then the dragon in its wild state body slammed the one next to it, who then went rolling toward where Athos was standing. D'Artagnan's heart dropped into his stomach when he lost sight of the captain.
"Back up!" Etienne yelled to Astra and Huron, who backpedaled away from the other dragons.
D'Artagnan took the moment to charge forward and hit them with the tranquilizing compound. He then scrambled away as they screamed in response, the sedative not working as quickly as it should have. But their movements became more clumsy and they tripped over each other. Everyone scrambled backwards, giving them a wide berth, until finally they collapsed in a heap, chests heaving.
"Athos!" D'Artagnan climbed over the wrecked camp supplies to get to where he'd last seen the captain.
Some others had already reached him and were helping him off the ground.
"Are you all right?" d'Artagnan exclaimed.
Athos looked a bit rumpled but intact. He nodded and looked around at the devastation. "Dragon's bane."
"Yeah." D'Artagnan had hoped never to see its effects again.
Three dragons were down, two were scratched up and bleeding, and the poisoned ones were strewn about the area where they'd tried to get up to fight but collapsed.
"Sound off," Athos said to Etienne. "See if anyone's injured."
Brochard stumbled out, eyes wide and looking shaken. "What happened?"
"You've heard of dragon's bane?" d'Artagnan said.
His eyes widened further. "Merde. I heard about the incident with the stuff several years ago. I didn't think there were any in the trade who still knew how to make it."
"Someone working for the Spanish obviously does," Athos said grimly.
A trumpeted call sounded from above, and they all flinched and whipped their gaze toward the sky. But it was only Savron and Ayelet returning with more deer carcasses from their hunt. D'Artagnan was selfishly relieved they hadn't been here for the incident and gotten exposed themselves.
They angled around to land at the edge of camp, looking around in dubious alarm at the mess. Astra and Huron walked over to them, probably to fill them in on what had happened.
"Keep looking for a cure for the poison," Athos told Brochard and then turned away to survey the damage.
Etienne and Christophe made their way back over.
"A few minor injuries," Etienne reported. "Mostly bruises. Given what happened to Aramis and Rhaego that one time, I suppose we got away lucky."
Lucky, but devastated nonetheless. The Spanish were definitely trying to eliminate the Musketeer regiment.
"This stuff wears off, right?" Christophe asked anxiously.
"Yeah," d'Artagnan answered.
"The Spanish obviously have access to new alchemical formulas," Athos said. "We need to find out who their source is and stop them."
"How?" Etienne asked.
"We'll have to capture a Spanish soldier, a captain or higher." Athos roved his gaze around the camp in thought. "Astra and Huron saw the Spanish dragon that attacked. If they can find its base camp, we'll know where we need to target our efforts."
Etienne nodded. "We can send them out."
"Do it. We'll take the time to regroup and plan our next move."
And hope the Spanish didn't blitz attack them again in the meantime.