Written: April 26th, 2020 – May 8th.
Published: May 17th, 2020.
Contact - Reacting
12 miles west of Abalone: 90 Minutes After Contact, July 2nd, 5,015.
It was a quiet night, for the three refugees of Abalone's conflagration. They flew on their wings, and when their wings dragged they stumbled forward on their talons, and in a few minutes took to the air again, plodding an unyielding pace towards the one site he knew had to be reached. The dragoness leaned into his side.
Relying on him. Trusting him.
"Crest," Wells said, voice heavy with exhaustion. Boy he was out of shape. "How much longer can you go on?"
"Long as needs," she said.
"Only another two kilometers."
The setting moons cast long, tenuous shadows on the hills, deep wells of darkness the troughs between the crests. It reminded him of playing on the ocean surface as a dragonet, of the voice that comforted him when he'd learned a brother died in The War.
Everything's gonna be OK.
The shallowing of the darkness in the east cast light upon the west; ahead of them a small fortress on a hill gradually melted from the night; black-within-blue, the sharp lines of its battleworks obscured by the oblique properties of the wee morning.
Nonam trotted to his right, the snout of the Sandwing grim and decided, eyes flickering from side to side as the Sandwing picked a path without the aid of Seawing night vision. The dragon fluttered golden wings moodily, willing to undertake flight but hesitating to ask it of Crest.
"One more flight," said Wells, coaxing.
It was something already to ask a dragoness to go on like this, and another to have her go and do it. Drooping wings met the air with an uneven beat and she took to flight, steadied by his tail. They skimmed over a grove of rustling saplings and dropped on the grey battlements before a half-conscious night watch.
"Bwha, who goes there," came the voice. Wells realized it was a she. He saw his reflection in the soldier's eyes and he realized he looked like hell.
"Sergeant Wells, soldier of the Seawing Marines; Crest, and Nonam, a Sandwing," he said. "Abalone is under attack."
The watch stared at him with bleary, unsympathetic eyes. "Ha ha, very funny," she said. "And the truth?"
"That is the truth, ma'am," said Wells. He threw down the bronze scale-comb, and both smelled the scent of blood not that of a Seawing's nor a Sandwing's. "Look east and you see the light. Abalone is burning."
A faint humming caused him to pause.
"They're coming, you hear it?"
"With all due respect, sir, your story sounds rather out of the ordinary -"
Wells pushed past the watch and dropped into the armory-yard. She was holding things up, and if she delayed him any longer there were going to be more dragons who were going to die.
"Hey! You can't do that! You can't!"
He ignored her, and she rang the alarm, which was exactly what he wanted. A dozen recently-awakened Seawings surrounded him a minute later, and it was five minutes afterwards – too long, too long – that the dragon-in-charge of the base came out, a rather small dragon, indicating he was young, almost as youthful as Wells.
"What's going on here?" he asked.
"This crazy here says there's an invasion of Abalone, sir," said the watch, standing in front of Crest and Nonam, who were under guard. Crest shot her a glare that should've melted her into a puddle, but didn't.
"I am Major Shell, in command of Fort Burgeon," said he. A major in control of an entire base. Lucky him, not. "And you are?"
"Sergeant Starfish Wells, Seawing Marines. Abalone's under attack, sir. It's burning and you need to defend this position right now or the attackers are going to kill you with your nightcaps on."
"Release him," said the major, and the soldiers surrounding Wells let go. "I'm taking care of this base while my superior is away, and I'm not about to do anything drastic. I know the fire's there, and I hear something, but… are you sure?"
The major's voice was deep and monotone, droning on and on through urgent topics with only a slight tinge of inflection.
"Sure as sure can be, sir," said Wells through his teeth. The fire was there. It was right damn there, backing up his story, and yet it was so fantastical nobody wanted to believe it.
"They might be having a bonfire, and you're worked up over it," suggested Shell. "All the same, I'll raise a company and see what I can do."
"Sir," said Wells, edging near blatant, court-martial worthy levels of disrespect. "You need the whole complement."
"The entire battalion?"
Oh, this was very much worse than he thought.
"There are only a hundred and fifty soldiers here, sir?"
"Four score and sixteen," said the major. "A third of us are on ocean leave."
Stupid disarmament policies compromising them in their time of greatest need. Ninety-six versus five hundred or a thousand, or more.
"Okay," said the major. "I want a scout flight off C schedule geared up. Move!"
Dragons grabbed their spears beneath them and organized themselves while Shell turned to Wells.
"You never said who the invaders were."
"Wasp-looking-striped-type dragons," said Wells. "They have four wings and tail stingers, and they used some sort of pipe that shot darts. They seem pretty afraid of fire and they die like any other dragon; that's my assessment. They were overconfident and that's how we got out."
"We?"
For the first time the major turned his attention to Crest and Nonam. Nonam waved.
"I'll go back," said Wells. "I'd go back if it meant she – they made it, sir."
"You son of a turtle-slapper," said the major, shaking his head. Crest tossed Wells the bloody comb and Wells held it out in his talon.
"Doesn't smell like Sandwing or Seawing blood to me, sir."
"You should've led with that: I'm convinced," said Shell. He leaned down. "Put the base on alert!"
"Sir, yes sir," said the officer beneath.
"Ssh," said Wells, tilting his ear and letting his jaw hang.
"Excuse me?" said Shell.
"Ssh."
The buzzing sound in the air burgeoned in pitch and volume, and the tired soldiers filing out of the casement to the underground portion of the base fluttered their wings at the ominous feeling settling in their bones, as if a host of yellowjackets had founded a nest at their talons.
"Nonam, got any fire?" asked Wells, and Nonam shook his head no. There was no repeating that trick, not while the Sandwing was out.
A question now forced itself prominently into his mind. Did he stay or did he go? Already he was a coward, leaving the fort like that to go save his love and take care of his life instead of the lives of his Marine brethren. Crest could fend for herself in the debate hall, but who would protect her from the invaders if he died?
He saw Shell, saying something in the ear of Nonam. Wells caught the tail end of the conversation.
"Not faking," said Nonam. So he was confirming the story, though there was little confirmation needed when the black dots buzzing across the distant fields toward them were patently hostile.
"Sergeant Wells," said major Shell, still in that monotone: "You're not required to stay and fight."
Conflicting loyalties wounded his heart. To whom did his service belong? Her Majesty or Crest?
"Sir?"
"Nonam tells me you're not just using her as an excuse to get out. I believe him. You should leave, or the invaders will make the decision for you."
Wells would have stayed if he had no one to care for; his duty was here, fighting the good fight to protect the civilians to the west from rapacious slaughter. But now Crest was at his side, clouding his decision-making by her presence, causing him to second-guess himself, though he knew bumbling hesitation ultimately meant death.
"Get H flight over here, and give them some water and victuals for a three-day journey," said Shell. "We need to warn the Mudwings of the threat."
The four dragons of H glided to the forefront of the ninety-odd dragons below, warming to the gravity of what was about to happen to them. Like Wells, they hesitated when they saw the comrades they'd be leaving behind, feeling somehow that if they remained they would make a difference; that departing was treacherous abandonment.
A lance corporal pressed a fifteen-gallon canteen into his talons, meant to stave off heatstroke during the hot summer days, and a javelin, a small spear for self-defence. Yesterday he had been a lance corporal, and with nowhere near the same amount of responsibility, and today he was a sergeant flying away.
"Enough waiting," he heard someone say in his voice. "Let's move."
And as he and Crest made to leap from the battleworks, he looked back and saw Nonam putting on a combat jacket and clutching a spear. The deserter would stay.
Then they were flying again, heading west and north by west, their pace heightened by the dark shapes flitting about behind them, blurred in the dawn, and a minute later a clash of hardened iron against foreign steel, punctuated by the strange screech of a dying wasp. The four Seawings accompanying them quickened their wingbeats and drew off until they were nothing more than dots on the horizon, leaving him and Crest to rot.
He strove on, the welcome sunlight of dawn morphing into harsh glare that burned his wing even as he sheltered Crest in his shadow from the same. A Seawing needed water to live: he would die if he lost hydration, and it had been twelve hours since he had had a proper drink. Fifteen gallons was not very much for someone who weighed six tons; between himself and Crest it was like ten ounces for a scavenger in the middle of the desert. He moistened his tongue and cut short his desire to drink, passed the well water to Crest and watched her press on.
The brook bottoms left his mouth full of phlegm and tasting like bracken and fish that had been lying on a beach for days on end with the flies keeping it company, and little it did to sate his thirst. They reached another fort in the afternoon, but there was no one there. It was abandoned during Disarmament, and they stayed their course beyond it, though later Wells wished he would've stopped and checked if there was an unchoked spring.
The dry, rolling hills and broken geography flattened now, and on the horizon he saw, further west of him, the wavering green of the humid rainforest, and, north, the rancid marshes. They stretched their wings and soared in place, allowing a moment's respite.
"Should we continue west?" said he, asking for Crest's input. "The Seawings went west."
"Along," said Crest. She was winded, and flagging, but all the same she pointed to the boundary between the rainforest and the marshes. "There's shade."
Further in and deeper from the coast. As far as they knew there were wasps invading every mile of the Bay of Diamonds. There was no rest for the weary, and they both knew that, and descended into the lowlands, moistening their mouths with sips that depleted the canteen ever further.
A speck appeared in the mud flats while they were flying above the sparse trees at the border of the forest, and Wells cautioned Crest to get down into a cove of brush.
The speck resolved itself into a clump of specks, and then into dragons either Skywings or wasps. Wells's stomach boded ill. The dragons landed nearby and spoke among themselves in Common but not Common, as if they were conversing in a tongue warped by the ages from the dialect spoken in Seawing nurseries and Mudwing river homes.
He had to strain his ears to listen.
"- telling you saw somebody - - - the trees make me nerves - - got word from up-high, fight right off the coast and it cost us." The speaker's voice was dry and raspy.
So his warning had made a difference.
"- - dead now? Serves they right. First -" something "is near. Krait getting into our heads - - don't mind the -" Queen? Matriarch? Commander? "but Krait, make me nerves, - - - like that."
What did he mean by getting into their heads? Another spoke.
"We've got some on the islets and the coasts o'er here - - - a night-fort and they crumble - - - wait – told you there was nothin' here. Move on."
Wasp wings buzzed and faded into the distance, but it was a long time before Wells dared stir from his position, sheltered from the torpid heat by the shade of arching, twisting trees. He turned the conversation over in his head, picking at it. Enemies on the coasts? How far north? How far south? Was the western end of the continent affected? Getting into their heads, getting into their heads.
He cast the troubling thoughts into the compartment of his mind reserved for such things, praying it would not burst and drench him in stored misery. Further north they kept, the land steaming warmer rather than cooler, choking mist curling intangibly over the pitches of reeds and rancid backwaters: one dragon's wasteland, another's paradise. The marsh gas made him sick even while flying, out of the worst of it, and the water, unless taken from a river, was unfit for Seawing consumption.
"There's only a sip left in the canteen," said Wells, uncapping it and eyeing the inside.
For a moment they soared at an impasse, each thirsting badly but neither willing to deprive the other.
"I'll – I'll save it then," he said, and lowered it quickly, too quickly. It slipped from his hold and splashed in a muddy pool below, floated for a moment, burbling as swamp water flooded the mouth of it, and slipped beneath the concentric waves of its impact.
Wells descended for it, fishing with his claws in the mud for where it ought to be. Talon-tip met metal, hard in contrast to the yielding muck. He grasped it – rectangular instead of round – and pulled it from the goop.
It was a dog tag, the chain rusted away from years of sitting at the bottom. He wiped away the mess and read the inscription: W L S. He kept it, for it reminded him of his surname, felt for the canteen and found it, filled with gunk that would never fully wash out.
Better than nothing. He beat tired wings and saw, for the first time, a hut standing out against the horizon to the northwest, invisible from the air because of its discreet muddy green color.
"Civilization," he said when he'd caught up with Crest.
He beckoned to the spot and they glided there, landed in the mud with muck-coated hocks. There was no door, and he tapped on the wall instead of knocking. A Mudwing dragoness came to the step, talons brown-white from grinding roots in a mortar and pestle.
"Who are you?"
"Refugees," said Wells, at the same time as Crest said, "Travelers."
The dragoness blinked.
"Welcome to the Mudwing Kingdom," she said. "Are you going to stay on my doorstep or come in?"
"You don't know us and we don't have anything to give you, but we'll come in," said Wells.
And the dragoness shrugged with her wings. "It's a peaceful land. I trust you not to be bandits in my house."
To which Wells gave a nod and Crest sighed.
No cold, wet floor had ever looked so appetizing as this one did now, and yet if they rested here the enemy would catch up. There was still time enough in the day to get farther in and further up the kingdom. They needed to.
So Wells helped himself from the aquifer and cleaned out the canteen – though still it smelled funny, and while he did he let Crest lay down and get a breath. That she'd made it this far was miraculous, and still the world demanded more.
"You folks are sure in a hurry," said their hostess.
Wells shook himself, vainly attempting to smooth away the soreness. "You should be too."
He yawned. Blood rushed past his ears and it rumbled like a sheer current through an underwater gap.
"I admit there's something out there," said the dragoness, taking half a dead lamb from where it hung on a ceiling-hook. "But I shan't be afraid of it. You can't live your life in fear, you know, of this or that. You can have the leftovers, if you're hungry."
Wells nodded, grateful. The two set about eating ravenously while trying not to look like they were starving. It was a futile endeavor.
"This is something to be afraid of," said Wells, after he'd finished the meal. "I would run if I were you."
"I did notice some Seawings earlier today, heading into the rainforest, military types, and they were furtive and concerned," said the dragoness. "And someone flew by the neighbors' place and their family up and went. It's only a few hours' flight to the rainforest for me, and I can swim if I need to. Where are you headed?"
"North to the palace, if we can reach it," said Wells. So the soldiers Major Shell had sent had gotten through. "There's more people that need to hear about it. Moorhen in particular."
Of course the Mudwing kingdom would hold. It had held in the great war through thick and thin, and when had fought the Seawings to a standstill before even that. The collapse of the tribe was unthinkable
Yet they were not prepared…
He sighed.
"We've stayed too long," he said. "I thank you for your hospitality, but we've got to go."
He and Crest filed out of the hut and stretched their wings.
"Take care, you two," said the dragoness.
"Take care," said Wells.
Then he took off and they went on. He looked back every so often, trying to see the brown hut against the brown mud and the dark green pond scum, and for a while he could make it out, till one time he threw a glance over his shoulder and he couldn't see the speck at all.
Each muck flat blended inconspicuously into the next: sometimes they would come across a dirty river or a lake, but these, too, were indistinguishable from each-other. He had reached a point where the weight of each mile no longer added to his burden, where the soreness in his wings was constant, as if he had reached a limit of the old Wells and broken it and gone on.
Time was precious, but the sustenance the Mudwing had given them – odd, that they'd never gotten her name – the food was necessary to keep them going, or they would've run out of energy and died in the muck.
"Another dragon," said Crest, her eyes picking up a dot which Wells had dismissed as a bird. "That's five in the last hour."
Compared to the vast expanse of nothingness they'd gone through after leaving Abalone, this stretch of territory was thickly populated. Wells thought of altering his course to deliver the bad news to the Mudwing, but did not. They flew more north, doing about three leagues an hour. The dragon they'd seen never left their sight: he was coming from left to right, flying almost the same course they were. He landed in a small town of domelike Mudwing homes, one just off their path.
"Should we follow him?" asked Wells. "It's only a few miles off."
Crest shrugged. She would dearly like to stop, but the things she'd seen meant she'd dearly like to go on. Wells nudged her right and they descended into the flat center of the place where the shadows grew long.
The snout of the 'Mudwing' looked back at them from where he was leaning on a fencepost. It was not a Mudwing, it was a Skywing, whose scales looked rather like (and Wells wasn't imagining it) tuna, and whose shoulder bore a starred patch, as if he were one of those sorts who pretended to have importance.
"Hello," said Wells.
"Hello," said the Skywing. "You look hurried for a sergeant."
His eyes glossed over Crest and returned to Wells.
"I am," said Wells. "There's been an invasion in the south."
"That's interesting to hear," said the Skywing. He was deliberately downplaying his concern, for his brows tightened and his eyes grew more introverted, as if thinking. "Someone told me that before, but I thought he was overstating it."
"He wasn't," said Wells. "I killed one."
"That's more than the Mudwing did," said the Skywing. "What did they look like?"
"Wasps," said Wells. "They had four wings and they were striped."
"Four wings?" said the Skywing. "How many talons am I holding up?"
"Two," said Wells. "Where's the palace? North?"
The Skywing shook his head. "You're closer to the Skywing border than you must have thought. This is Little Tree. The palace is south-west of here."
Wells's talons curled. Back?
"Where is the invasion coming from?"
"The coast. Abalone. Thousands of them, at least. The force that took the town was a brigade, at minimum. Probably two."
"How can I believe you?" asked the Skywing.
Wells produced the bloodied brass comb. The Skywing nodded, cupped his wings.
"Wait," said Wells, remembering their Mudwing host. "What is your name?"
"Marshal Eagle," said he. "And I have to fly."
With a beat of his wings the Skywing disappeared, his speed putting Wells's to shame.
"So he was a lot of help," said Wells, as the two watched the Marshal go.
He had been talking to a marshal. At least that was something. And he had seemed to believe them. Wells focused inwards, to the dragon at his side.
"I can't ask you to go on any longer," said Wells. "I'm a military dragon: I have to continue. You, well, you don't."
"Starfish," cautioned Crest. It was one word, but it held great power over him.
"Of course, this is a terrible way to propose," said Wells. "I want you to go inland, as far as you can. Without me."
Stoic and understanding, Crest looked at the ground but kept listening.
"Without the news I bear, this entire kingdom could be lost. I have to give it."
"Where do your loyalties lie?" asked Crest.
"You," said Wells. "No. I don't know."
His strong tail waved at the Mudwing passersby.
"I'll make it out, I promise. Get mail everywhere you can, tell me where you're staying. I'll find it. And when I come back… I'd like you to marry me."
The answer was not easily forthcoming.
Wells produced the ring, still shining bright in a tarnished world.
"Keep it."
But she would not take it.
Night fell and they had nothing to pay for a place, so they went outside the village to sleep. That was the first time Wells ever heard Crest cry. Morning came and he got up and she was already awake, staring forlorn across the land.
"You will come back."
"Guaranteed," said Wells. He pressed the ring onto her middle talon, then found he didn't want to let go.
"There no use standing around, you know, for you shan't get anything done that way," said Crest.
"Goodbye," said Wells.
He took a deep breath, turned and fled.
July 2nd, 5,015: Somewhere in the Skywing Kingdom.
For Sergeant Byrd, life was bearable because of those cathartic moments. A soldier in his flight had bothered to bring, from a continent more than two thousand miles away, a piece of contraband, a harmonica. Now she produced it in afternoon camp, five miles away from the forty-odd sky dragons holding them up. The flat, silver clouds sublimated and reformed in the air above them, hazy and entangled with the indigo emptiness and the white stars beneath which they floated.
"Give us a tune, Monarda," said private Chervil.
The fanged dragoness obliged. 'Ode to Clearsight' curled through the assembled dragons like a fresh breeze in a stuffy tent. They knew it by heart, whispered the lyrics to the wave-like notes, now rising, now falling, now pirouetting upward and fluttering between chords. Their breaths caught in their windpipes as they tilted their ears and stilled, buoyed by the musical current. It paused, then descended to a memorial pitch, commemorating Clearsight's death.
Byrd let it go on a minute and a minute more, and when the last scale was played in the moonlit clearing he held up his talon.
"Wrap it up," he said. "Thorn has us flying fifteen miles before midnight, so eat your fill."
"Sir, yes sir," they said, and fed themselves.
Scarcely had they taken off from the clearing when Byrd heard the calming regalia of that harmonica, sighing wistfully as a moon broached and the enemy ahead poked at Thorn's flanks, probing them for stragglers in the lines or spread-out formations. The humiliation of the afternoon had strengthened them, and there was no disorganization that night.
"What do you call our red adversaries?" Chervil said, as the 108th flew on, guided by Thorn's navigation officer.
"Soots," rang out a voice. "Cause I'm coated in a talon's breadth of the stuff."
It coughed, and the nickname the dragon had given was infectious.
An hour later and ten miles ahead, a light twinkled into existence ahead of them. Byrd blinked and twisted his neck. Was it a star risen clear of the trees? Was he imagining it? It grew larger in his consciousness, more concrete as they drew nearer.
Quietly now, but not so quietly that his subordinates were unable to hear him, Thorn called the huddle. Byrd and the commander of second company – Stinger – moved to the front.
"Sir," they said when they reached him, visible because of the tiny candle he'd cupped by his chin.
"That light's in a building," said Thorn, his words paced between breaths. "There's glow coming off the walls where it is, see? There's dragons moving in front of them, our adversaries."
"Soots," said Byrd.
Thorn frowned but moved on.
"If so there's at least forty in the area, that we know of. I'm getting a messenger to the two companies adjacent and telling them to group up with us by dawn. Third company goes on the right flank, second on the left. Surround them from the north-east and north-west and attack if you think they're moving. Maintain surprise."
Hivewing doctrine allowed for few questions from subordinate to superior, and Byrd asked none, though there was the pressing problem of staying in touch in the dark, with no visual or audible signals allowed because of the need for stealth.
Mum was the word, and third company quietly passed the information between them. A hush had fallen over them like a thick blanket, muffling their willingness to speak. They flew low along the wooded hills, blending their silhouettes with the tips of the trees, not unlike sticklebacks. It was odd, how little wonder he held when he looked at a tree now as compared with yesterday.
More lights flickered into existence as they went: they were circling a town of decent size for this continent (though nothing near the size of the hives), which was in a cozy stream valley, the south-eastern side, their side, dropping sharply to the stream from a height of about a hundred and fifty feet. The ground was smoother on the other side of the bank, an elevated plateau supporting the town before the land transformed into rolling, wooded hills again.
Byrd now saw that the glow they had first sighted was the glimmer of a tower. The commander of that outfit would rue the day he allowed the fire to be lit.
Third company hunkered down on the side of a ridge and waited, and waited, and waited. Byrd used his telescope to watch the enemy encampment, and guessed the range to be eighteen-hundred yards, or about a mile from the slope of the hill. A Hivewing geared such as he would take two minutes to close that distance, and he crossed his talons and hoped the soots inside were snoozing and not ready to run, or worse (or perhaps better), stand and fight.
Still, the place looked peaceful. If it was peaceful enough the soots might be unalert, and Byrd might score a kill. Two concepts were competing for attention in his head, and the result was mental contortion.
"Something moving on the ridge, sir," said Monarda.
Byrd raised the glass, and his heart pulsed in his chest. The night obscured all color, and what was impossible by day was doable in the dark.
Specks descended the steep, almost cliff-like contours one by one, walking backwards to scale a hill barely climbable by mountain goats, let alone eight-ton dragons like Byrd. They paused, invisible in the evergreen bushes where the hill leveled out and met the stream, then pressed on.
"Friendlies," he said, "Four wings. Thorn's growing impatient."
Shadowed faces all focused on him, more sensed through feeling than sight. Did they follow?
Byrd held up a talon. "Wait."
Black in the moonlight, the waters of the river shone silver where the flanks of the fording Hivewings disturbed them, the waves lapping higher and higher over their bodies until they were submerged up to their necks. The Hivewings swam, then reemerged from the narrow river on the bank, weaponless.
Hundreds of destroyed spears during the trip from Pantala had taught them all about rust.
The leader beckoned towards the hilltops, then hid his dragons in the defilade of a shallow hollow.
"Single file, stay in pairs," said Byrd. "We'll go down quietly. Leave the nonessentials and spears in a cache, bring only the blowpipes."
It was third company's turn to attempt the nervewracking descent. Thorn wanted to get closer while keeping the element of surprise at his chest: Byrd understood that, but he also would've preferred not going down a hill backwards, where if he slipped, there would be little chance of recovery. He hadn't practiced upside-down flying more in cadet school, as he'd pronounced it bunk.
Now he edged past a boulder, hung like a cat from a rock ledge, then let go and plunged the twenty feet to the ground, which was not more than a body-length.
With most of their number on the ground and only a third of them left on the ridge, disaster struck. A private rested his back talons on the boulder and inadvertently dislodged it. The stone rocked, hesitating at the lip which had held it in place for years, then crested it and fell with a crash, the unlucky private not far behind. Those at the bottom waited in breath-held silence.
Silhouettes of dragons appeared at the tower, their undersides rimmed by fire-glow, as if they were standing over a torch. They pointed and shouted.
"Forward!" said Byrd.
The Hivewings surged, streaming away from the group in pairs. It was a better showing than they'd given in the afternoon, but it was still undisciplined and unpracticed, and Byrd was reduced to chasing after, hoping to avail his unit before the engagement progressed from ne'er-do-well beginnings to disaster.
"Altitude, altitude!" he yelled, while dual-winged shapes sprung into the air like bats from a cave.
Hivewings rose belatedly from the ground, but too late.
"Here comes second," he heard someone shout.
Dragons roiled from the hills north-west of the town, with Stinger at their head. They spread out in a crescent and enveloped the confused soots like a cloud of hornets surrounding an unlucky scavenger.
"Moons above," said Chervil, and whistled.
"Quit gandering! Clear out the buildings one by one!" yelled Byrd.
Finally his words had an effect. The dark Hivewings unglued their eyes from the battle overhead and poured into the bases of the two-storied houses.
Byrd saw someone punching and kicking a door, flew closer and saw it was Chervil.
"Move over," said the sergeant.
"Yes sir."
He pushed forward and shoved away the plank locking the gate in place. It was metal-backed, and his tail stung when it smacked into the cold sheet.
Fifty frightened, woolly livestock baaed at him from the corner.
Byrd backed out, showed Chervil the thin plate that would've prevented the success of any physical attack, then let the barn alone.
"Where to?" asked Chervil.
"Follow me," said Byrd.
He knew as little as his subordinate did. The unfamiliar landscape turned him around, and north and south blended into indistinguishable directions. A sloped casement burst open and a dragon flew out, claws outstretched. It hit Chervil and the two tumbled into the dirt, kicking and scratching. Chervil came out on top, claws fumbling at the soot's jaws to keep it from breathing the deadly flame.
Byrd impaled it with his stinger and it went into convulsions, emanating the scent of hot dragon blood. It would be his first kill, but there was no time to contemplate: they raced on in the melee, leaving the soon-to-be dead enemy behind.
Fire roiled in the night, glowing eerily as it flowed like devilment from a Leafwing's cauldron: it lit the position of the soots and let the Hivewings attack them from behind.
Chervil found one such dragon, facing down two friendlies with sparks effervescing from its maw. He clawed at its flanks with his left talon, weak, and the enemy whirled and released a well-aimed jet. Chervil beat his wings back, wobbled, and rolled in the earth. The flames rolled towards Byrd and he ducked them, though the sudden heat seared his scales. Then the two Hivewings came up from behind and finished off the soot.
Byrd turned Chervil over, wrote off the young soldier and turned away, then felt a claw pull at his tail.
"I'm good sir," said the private. For the first time Byrd noticed the blood flowing copiously from the private's wing. "Just a little worse for wear."
"Hang in there," said Byrd.
He thanked the dark for hiding the true extent of Chervil's injuries, even from Chervil.
The fighting had died down now, the worst of it anyway.
"Can you move?"
Chervil shook his head.
"Do you feel light?"
"No sir."
"I'm going to get you out of the way," said Byrd.
He propped up the private on a shed in a vegetable garden.
"Try not to stir too much," he said, then departed to see after the rest of his soldiers.
Delay and hesitance had boiled away, and the residue was that of victory. Though there were more casualties lying by the wayside as he flitted about the scene of battle, the Hivewings had won, and they knew it.
"The ultimate taboo," muttered Byrd. He galloped past Monarda and came to the spot of the stabbed soot.
It was gone: his definite kill had turned into a probable.
He poisoned it – it died before he could get a look at its eyes, or crawled away and was dying now. The efficacy of Hivewing venom was unquestionable. It was disappointment he was feeling now, not a vague sense of hope that the soot had gotten away. His head crushed the underdog in his heart: like an underdog, his heart just kept coming back.
"Get me a status report of everyone in the company," said Byrd. "I want the group encamped around -" he searched for a place, "that building. And get a flight to go help that fallen private and retrieve the equipment we left on the ridgetop."
Byrd looked sideways at Stinger, who was standing near enough to look like he wasn't listening but close enough to employ his ears and hear what was being said. Stinger was wishing he had claimed that building, the red one that towered two stories above everything else here, with a solid foundation and a cellar too, what with the hanging Z illustration indicating it was some kind of inn.
Byrd stepped toward the fellow sergeant.
"Any casualties?" he asked Stinger, easing the perceived slight.
"Few," said Stinger. "We're prepared for another successful surprise attack, if that's what's required of us. You?"
He emphasized 'successful'.
"Less than expected," said Byrd, and nothing more.
Suddenly he remembered Chervil, and how third company had paid its dues in blood. There was nothing irreparable in the private's injury given time and luck, but the rapid course of the battalion's advance made time scarce, and luck was as loyal as the changing breezes.
"Give me a moment," he said, and glanced to a buck private who'd just flown up to him and was waiting, patiently, for a lull in his superiors' conversation. "There's a casualty by a garden shed about two dwellings west of here. Administer medical attention as needed."
"Yes sir, sir," said the private, and, in the time when Byrd expected him to leave: "Permission to speak, sir?"
Byrd bit his lip. "Granted."
"We've encountered civilians in the cellar of the red building."
Now the lack of someone to distribute his orders was rankling him.
"I'll take care of it," he said. "Dismissed."
Now he buzzed his wings and went towards the tower. It was standing on the crest of a shallow incline, which made it stand farther above the river than its height warranted alone. It was circular at the base, made of red cuboids that smelled of clay and fire, cemented by brownish-grey mortar. A shelf of the material bulged from the side facing the river and ran downwards along the slope for a little ways before it was subsumed into the earth.
This, presumably, was the cellar, like the cellars of the Hives, though probably not used for water storage like the underground cisterns of his home.
Byrd found the ground-level entrance. There was a second one shadowed against the stars above him, a balcony of sorts, if it could be called that without the balusters. It was too far away from his destination to be of much use.
He ducked inside through the swinging doors: it was pitch-dark on this level, and though his group had been carrying torches when they arrived they had set them and the flints aside before crossing the river. The opening pointed southwards, away from all but the dimmest of the three moons, and his night vision had been ruined by the hot flames of the soots, so that outlines were little more than a blur. The only light came from the downstairs, and it was obstructed by Monarda, whose head poked out of the floor casement that led below, fangs exposed by the grin brought on by their quick victory.
Dragonets wailed and she frowned, then ducked to the side for Byrd to pass.
"Careful as you go down again," he said to the dragoness, remembering the unlucky private. "And start a light by the flints when the flints arrive from across the water."
Then he descended carefully: the cellar was too small for flying antics, which was the reason for the steps, and though the slope of the stairs was bearable, he did not wish to fall. There was a false landing and a corner, and once he'd turned the corner he could look left from a place roughly equivalent in height to the ceiling and see the contents of this place.
Aromatic barrels lined the outer walls, and on the dirt floor stood, crouched, and lay the most diverse collection of dragons Byrd had ever seen: small ones with shining coats; old codgers with rusty scales; young dragons of half a dozen different colors leveling their chins at him with resentment. The young dragons had fire in them: they were unafraid to do what they believed to be right, and the combination of virility and lack of consideration for consequences made a dangerous mix.
They all looked at him like he was in the wrong.
There was fear there, but also anger, and if unaddressed their anger would metamorphose into hate. The braver dragonets glanced at him with undisguised wonder: the more timid ones cowered behind their mothers.
In a melting pot of epic proportions, Byrd cleared his throat.
"Stay here," he began. "Accommodations will be made for you. Things will get better."
How much of that had gotten through was impossible to tell. Their eyes bored into him with an intensity difficult to imagine, and they silently contradicted his presumption that what he was telling them was right.
He bowed as an excuse, then did an about-face in the cramped stairwell and headed to the main room, where a light had been struck and there was decent visibility at last. The upstairs was not connected to here by stairs, as the basement was: instead there was an ovular, smooth-rimmed opening in the center of the ceiling that led to a second story perch. It was nice to see architecture like that, especially when his neck was stiff from bending down to clear the overhead.
"Where is Thorn?" he asked.
"Scouting the town for more civilians, sir," said Monarda. There were more dragons in the room than her now: two dozen crowding the entrance and monkeying around with things when they thought he wasn't looking, and a dozen more peering over the upstairs opening and getting very little work done.
"Go ask him what our orders are on civvies," said Byrd. The dragoness pushed her way through the standing privates and took off. Byrd looked at the rest of them, then realized that the flight had brought back the equipment since there was a light lit.
"Situation report," he said, putting force into the order.
The downstairs had made him irritable.
"We are one KIA and one other casualty for the engagement, sir," said the dragon in charge of the flight who'd gone out, a flight-com, and those were usually not worth much. "The dragon who fell died and we have two others with burns, including one with substantial heat damage and a substantial blood wound."
That must be Chervil.
"A regrettable loss," said Byrd.
"Furthermore, some of the equipment was knocked into the river when the boulder crashed: however, I was able to rescue most of it and wipe the water off, to prevent rust."
Smart dragon.
"The severely injured dragon has been bandaged and I had him moved into the upstairs to keep him out of the wind."
"Good work," said Byrd.
Competence was what he needed to remind him of the military spirit. He thought a moment.
"Get some water to clean out the cut."
"Of course, sir."
The dragon hurried away.
Byrd flew to the second floor and landed by the prostrate form of Chervil, looked east from the balcony acrosst the misty hills, now grey with the onset of the sleepy glow which precedes the rising sun, and saw fourth and sixth companies tardily flying towards him.
Chervil murmured.
"Looks like somebody's late to the party."
Many thanks to LiterallyHasNoIdeasForAnOKName, who much of this chapter was written for. He has Wings of Fire stories published under the same name, and I highly recommend them.
Author's Note:
And so Wells and Crest separate at last. I wanted more time to develop the relationship, but I also needed to emphasize the urgency of time and what was happening to the continent just in a couple of days. The world depends on how fast that message can get over the mountains, and it was a defining character moment for Wells that he had to choose. Will they get back together? That depends on how much you guys want them to.
Moving on: as a guy who knows enough about military affairs, tactics and strategy to be annoyed at most stories that hint at war but don't depict it well at all (the original five books, some fanfiction I've seen in various archives), I've tried to represent what I believe the military would be like in the Pyrrhian universe.
Tell me what you thought of this chapter: I do want to hear it, and sometimes new ideas go into the story when taken from reviews.
Cheers, and have a good day, fair skies and fair reading.
Signed, Black.
