Contact – The Dirt.
Morning, July 3rd, 5,015: Somewhere in the Skywing Kingdom.
"First company is departing on the hour," said Thorn. "I'm splitting the battalion."
Having decided that keeping the civilians in the basements of Smolderfax was preferable to letting them have the run of the outside, at least until the rear guard came up and they had their wings clipped, sergeants and Lieutenant were standing just outside the red building where most of 3rd Company had made camp. Birds chirped from the green trees, and though at first their songs had been novel, Byrd's interest quickly faded until the chatter seemed constant, purposeless and insipid, though his name was pronounced much like that of the creatures.
But first company? Departing?
"Our orders are to divide every time we create an open flank," clarified Thorn.
Certain things said an officer liked an order about as much as his subordinate did, and Thorn's flared nostrils were one of them. Until reinforcements arrived – and with their ravenous consumption of supply they might take another day and a half to reach Smolderfax, let alone wherever the 108th had got to – the brigade was forced to fend for themselves with a blunt stick instead of the sharpened spear they were meant to be.
Stinger looked sidelong at Byrd with one eye and Byrd tried to look straight ahead, but failed.
"Keep to the respective commands of your units, and good luck," said Thorn, and the Hivewing lieutenant took off and buzzed away towards the company he directly led.
"Who's managing both companies, then?" asked Stinger.
Until the new communication method was accepted by second cohort, orders were only as fast as the dragons that carried them. And as they both knew now, Hivewings were slow.
"I have no idea," said Byrd. "Whoever gets promoted."
Stinger nodded.
There was no particular reason for Byrd to crave advancement – if he was lieutenant, who would manage the guys at the company and wing levels? Not somebody as competent as he was. But as the two shook talons and went their separate ways, the male competitiveness in his blood took over and said that if anybody was going to be in command, it'd be him.
They went their separate ways. Stinger could be a case study for where he'd end up if he did or didn't do certain things: did take charge of second and third companies or didn't.
But this was the now, and there were still those pesky prisoners to deal with. Byrd headed to the tower, walking this time, for his wings deserved a rest.
A singular sepia nose peered from behind the door of the barn Byrd had burst into last night, retreated and showed itself again. He would not have seen if he was flying, and there was a small chance even on the ground but that the motion attracted his peripheral attention. He stilled himself in a ruined garden, flanks hidden by reefs of tomatoes. He was as stealthy as a silhouetted zebra, but he was at an oblique angle to the door, and that was enough.
A young, light brown dragon stalked from the door, chocolate-colored wingtips tucked close to coffee scales, yet quivering with excitement. The 'dirtwing', or whatever it was that they called themselves, was obviously trying to escape into the countryside, where a full occupation might never find him. Byrd could let him go: there was little harm being done.
But keeping him here would grant him the protection of the empire… as well as obligation to life-long service and bondage to his descendants.
It didn't work like that, did it?
Byrd trotted from behind his dubious concealment and laid a talon on the dragon's shoulder. The dragon whirled at the touch, beating stubby wings to gain separation. Byrd would not let it.
"Come on," he said, nodding at the tower. "We're going back."
The dragon glared at him from eyes set in defiance.
"No."
"You are coming with me."
"No."
"And what if you don't? We'll find you sometime."
The dragon wrinkled his snout: there was much of the Pantalan dialect he must not understand.
"Why?"
"For the good of the empire and you," said Byrd.
"You believe it?" said the young 'Mudwing.'
"Is it important – of large meaning – that I do?"
Whether or not the full meaning of his statement was interpreted was up to how Byrd said it. Pyrrhians spoke funny: they took their time about talking and let their voices settle to their natural pitch instead of artificially raising or lowering them according to their station.
"Good of the empire means good of your leader," said the Mudwing. "And you?"
"You're wasting my time."
Byrd shied away from the questioning prisoner. The words of the dragon fertilized the discord between his head, his head, and his gut. All the same, he shook his head. That guy couldn't be right.
The flat plaza on which they'd rounded up the populace was adjacent to the red, two-story building on the hill where third company kept house. Byrd flew up to it now, landed between the balusters on the second floor and strode in with his wings folded so they nested on his back.
Monarda was fanged instead of a stinger dragon, and he knew the soldier by the way her harmonica hung from her throat on a chain. Now she was giving him an odd, insubordinate stare, as if suddenly she had skipped two ranks and was a first sergeant over him, or a colonel.
"First cohort's a hundred miles away," she said, and then her snout wrinkled, confused at what it'd just done.
The new way of doing things unsettled him when he was still at the driver's seat. Byrd glanced at the injured Chervil, then flew down as quickly as he had come, going to the outskirts of the town where he knew Stinger was, running his talon along the wood – wood! - cattleguides as he went.
Cows. A fantasy built from an off-talon mention by Clearsight. The real things were mundane. But that reminded him: the brigade's rations were running low. His ration pouch flapped on his side, weighed down by half a bar of alcohol refuse, plantstuffs, and a tenth portion of meat.
His company foraged whenever possible.
Stinger was on the green, first on the common, fourth wing twitching with the biting gnats that thirsted to feed on dragonflesh.
"Chervil's side is still bad, and one in the company dead from the start, plus a couple more casualties from fighting those soots on our second day in. One of my dragons is getting an infection every day of the week," said Byrd. "D'you think soot staff sergeants have second in commands?"
Without a second in command, the only dragons he could discuss things with were his superiors and his peers, and it was taboo to disturb a dragon higher-up on station over a matter easily argued a triviality.
Stinger shrugged. "We're needing some reinforcements soon."
"I got news by way of the speak," said Byrd. He swore, sometimes the higher-ups used their power not for best efficiency, but for the scare factor. "The body of First Cohort's only a hundred miles away now."
Two days' travel. Anything could happen in that time.
"The soots multiply," said Stinger.
Byrd raised his monocular scope once more. Far-off was the peak of a tall mountain, studded with dragon-made crenelations blended into the rock and yet red at the tips, as if some Maker had reached down and bejeweled the summit with a crimson crown.
"Wasp wants us to take that on our lonesome," said Byrd. A heavy sigh escaped him, the sigh of one who has completed a lengthy task and is then given a longer, more difficult one.
108th Brigade all the way. If he continued on, perhaps these plaguing doubts would be left behind, drowned in the blood of war.
"Stinger?" he asked. "What do you feel about all this?"
"More power to Wasp," said Stinger, and shrugged. The statement was genuine. He believed his words. "There's some soots up on the hill, and the easiest way to pass is in the valley of those slopes."
Thorn was elsewhere on the front, and so they had to form their own battle plan. Without the presence of the absolute command, authority easily diminished to bickering sergeants.
"I'll bring up third company," said Byrd. "That spot at the base of the hills is a good rendezvous point."
He checked the sky.
"Ready in five minutes and there in a quarter of an hour," he said.
"Same," said Stinger. They saluted each other, then returned to their respective sectors of the town.
Byrd retreated to his dragons, encamped in the red building and overlooking the listless, inertial river. How these Pyrrhians could afford to dedicate so much space to one establishment. It made him think, though he tried not to, because it brought the uncomfortable stinging in his gut. Again he banished the feeling. The alive dragons of third company were on ground level: Monarda, ladling cleaning alcohol spirits from a barrel into a pail of water, and Chervil, cleaning his side with it.
"River water?" asked Byrd, raising his voice so it would reach down.
"Yessir," said Chervil, flashing a grin of verve and energy, despite his constant discomfort.
"It looks unclean," said Byrd.
A cloud of murk twisted at the bottom of the pail, an odd sight for someone used to the clear collected rainwater and dew that served the hives.
"It's fine," said Chervil. "I'll be ready by afternoon, s'arnt."
"We're pushing on in a minute," said Byrd. "Everyone that can in second and third Wing, get your spears. First wing gets left behind here to watch the town. Stinger and I are going up the hills and into the forest – we'll blow the horn if we need you.
Chervil impugned his usually vivacious demeanor, said: "The invasion was gonna be a piece of pastry: yeah right."
Nobody had ever earned anything without taking some risk and doing something, thought Byrd. While he was fighting, the question of whom he was risking his life for should not bother him.
The young private looked beyond the suspended dais. "There goes first company! Wonder what they're doin'."
"Leaving," said Byrd. "Covering our flanks."
"Aw," said Chervil.
It was a majestic sight; forty-eight dragons rising into the air northwards, rolling, and departing west. They passed over Byrd's position like a river of bees, and ere long were flying a dozen yards over the river, so elegant they (almost) made Byrd forget he had a rendezvous to make.
"Rations," he said.
"Yes sir," said the dragons of the Wings, putting less hoopla into the words than they had while coming onshore, three days ago at the start of this.
"Combat pouches?"
"Yes sir."
"Spears, blowpipes?"
They nodded assent.
"On my lead for takeoff," said Byrd. Twenty strong dragons leaped from the ledge, wings overlapping each-other to catch upwash of their brethren's beats. They reached a speed of eighteen knots seven seconds after their jump, and from then to the rendezvous point, a mile and a half away, was about five minutes.
Stinger's force arrived a minute later, to their chagrin and Byrd's satisfaction. The two staff sergeants got to work planning for the almost inevitable engagement.
"Those soots up there have increased their numbers," said Stinger. "I see forty camping in the open, undisciplined scum."
So this was a different group than they'd been driving back these last few days. Those dragons were disciplined, hardy and fierce. These guys had no idea what they were doing. The threat of an enemy numerical advantage no longer seemed so intimidating. Byrd put his eye to the scope.
"Look, another ten trooping out of the woods."
The soots were standing on the brim of the hill, making faces and jeering. The critical difference in the calculus was that the attacking force needed three to one odds to take a position. If they had Thorn and his company, and one of the six other companies in the brigade around besides that, they would have that advantage.
"Too bad we're spread out along a hundred miles of front," said Byrd.
"Third company, get some altitude!" he shouted out loud, and then professed, in a quieter voice: "I don't like coming up the hill against those polearms."
The battle began as these battles usually did; with the soots on top and the Hivewings beneath, at a slight disadvantage. Byrd knew what that was before it came into play.
Blowdarts whistled upwards from Stinger's ranged Wing as the soot commander whirled overhead, and Byrd's dragons followed with potshots of their own. The lethal projectiles gained five hundred feet, hung in the air, visible for the blink of an eye, then came down again. One punched a hole through one of Byrd's left wings.
"Cease fire!" he ordered, but sporadic volleys continued for a minute after until the word reached everybody.
Damn if it was creepy, but that communication of thoughts would've been useful in this sort of situation. While the orders were going out there was little Byrd could do but observe. He liked what he saw.
A smart soot commander would've used his speed and his altitude to play the delaying game. This one was overeager, ruled by his subordinates, who probably wished to give the invaders a taste of their own medicine. Soots descended and started going one on one with the Hivewings. Rookies they might be, but dragons like Monarda would give better than they got from these greenhorns.
Two came for Byrd directly, and he matched spears with one, kept the other at length with his stinger while he gave ground out of necessity. The first one swung his poleaxe wide for a slice, and Byrd reversed direction with a flick of his wings. The heavy axehead of the soot's weapon had too much momentum to swing back before Byrd stabbed the soot in the chest, and it dropped, unused, to the ground below.
The other hesitated at the fate of its ally, then pressed on while Byrd's spear was embedded in the still-kicking soot. The poleaxe darted forward and sliced into Byrd's scales, yet lacked the energy or direction to go deep; a quick jab knocked the polearm upward, and Byrd finished the soot with his poisonous tail, then wrung out his fist.
His knuckles hurt like hell.
His situational awareness had decreased to that of a dragon looking through a tunnel. Instead of chasing the enemy in front of him, which would've gotten him killed, Byrd realized his blindness and hovered, taking stock of his surroundings. Soots tumbled from above, dead and dying, paralyzed by the invisible blowdart killers. Hivewings fell, too, less of them, but it was a bad trade.
Byrd yelled the regroup, for nothing: the fighting continued as it had. The company was embroiled in the mad furball, and the only means of reforming was ending the fight. A horn blew, Stinger's horn. Dragons rose from the captured town of Smolderfax and hastened to Byrd's aid, and the soots, now with the weights against them, fought on and retreated at the last moment. Not all of them.
Monarda seized one of those who had failed to retreat, bit the unfortunate soldier and kicked him away. Even if he survived the poison, the fall would kill him for sure.
"Glad for the reinforcements," said Byrd, looking over the first Wing.
Among those who'd come to help was Chervil. He dipped and bobbed in flight, staying his course by willpower and a lack of wind. The gash in the subordinate's upper side was angry, glistening with yellowish pus and bubbled underscale.
"Chervil! Go back to town," said Byrd.
The dragon made that pained smile. "Yessir," he said, turned and hissed, exposing fanged teeth.
Byrd looked at his own bleeding chest. This cut would be treated with water from a clear brook or from the center of a running river.
He needed a second in command, but the Hivewing system didn't allow for that. The leader was in absolute control at the company level, and he didn't want to break with tradition just yet. Officers were set apart from their enlisted. Instead he said to the nearby dragons of the company, "Ensure no more water comes from near the river banks."
And they nodded assent.
Byrd took off his supply pouch, checked how many ration bars there were. As long as they were dry they would keep, and they were the mainstay of the army's food supply at the moment, but that fact alone couldn't change the terrible, insect-like taste of the world's worst victuals, of which there were only enough to fit in his talon; no more. Three a day, four in combat, which was every day – that was two and a half days, three if he rationed them. And recon companies didn't have subunits dedicated to bringing along the essentials which made a functioning military possible.
The decision was easy.
"That barn there, in the middle of the village," he called out. "Go get the livestock in there and divvy them up for consumption. And get a fire lit just outside the building. I want some light here."
"Yes sir," said the soldiers, and they ran along.
It was time to test the local morsels; never mind that the animals once belonged to the dragons currently imprisoned in that cellar. The conquered loot of this village was rightfully Hivewing. Had they had a cauldron he would've ordered a stew made from clean river water, for soup went longer than meat alone in dragon's bellies. But he did not, and he could not, and instead assisted in prying the barn door from the jamb, and slaughtering the woolly livestock inside.
It was a gruesome business, but the smells made his mouth water; he was a dragon, and the last sergeant ever to be accused of squeamishness about animal blood. They snapped the thin necks, then withdrew from the barn and ate in the red building. The locals peered from the basement with their jaws set and their eyes gimlets, glittering in the flickering firelight from just beyond the door, but third company paid them no heed.
"Throw me up one," said Chervil. Somehow he had moved himself to the rim of the oval opening in the roof, and was licking his chops at the feast. Someone tossed him some food and he caught it with a hiss of pain, then bit into it.
"It's good stuff sir, try some."
Byrd looked around, ensured that everybody else had a morsel before he began to eat.
The taste of mutton was simultaneously the oddest, richest, and most filling thing Byrd had ever eaten. The hives did not have red meat: they had insects or rodents or fish bred in cisterns to furnish food and fertilization for the crops that grew on and about every hive and its subsidiary outbuildings. The cultivated stuff tasted bland even with salt: this stuff had spice without seasoning. Byrd liked it, and as he surveyed the raised eyebrows and consumed servings of his company he realized the others did as well.
Monarda left, probably conducting her privy, and Byrd noted her departure without paying much attention to it.
"Hey sir, my canteen broke."
Byrd looked left and saw the flight commander from yesterday holding up a silver metal canister with a yawning crack in the bottom. The soldier's scales were orange and grey instead of orange and black, and instead of criss-crossing his torso in solid lines like most Hivewings' stripes did, his split at the midline so the effect was more like crosshatching.
"How'd you do that?" asked Byrd. "You were the flight commander from yesterday, right?"
"Yes, Bolt. I was uh, testing some of the tools I found and I was, well, I wanted to know whether the awls over here are as good as the awls back home so I -"
"You punched a hole in it," said Byrd. "In steel."
"Yes sir."
"We don't have a replacement for that," said Byrd, his heart sinking.
He couldn't do very much about that, now could he? If this was a base he could relegate Bolt to some unpleasant job that Silkwings usually did, but he was on the front, in a war, where every soldier was essential. And since they didn't have a Silkwing along, they couldn't patch the bottom of that jug.
"No more food tonight," said Byrd. "Go find some clay if you can, and try to patch it up with that and heat. And think before you act!"
Younger dragons and their follies. It should've been obvious that hitting the only canteen Bolt had with an awl was a bad idea, but for some reason Bolt had gone and done it, the kid. It was only yesterday that he'd seemed somewhat competent, and now this.
Byrd would have to teach him to reason beyond his actions and forward to the consequences; else Bolt would stumble through life like a short-sighted dragon, always aware there was something off but never mustering the will to ask for glasses.
Monarda slipped back through the door.
"Give us a tune!" said Chervil, and Monarda nodded, but went to wipe off her talons in the grass. Before she took up the harmonica she made a pronouncement to Byrd.
"Caught some civvy dragonet trying to escape, sir," said Monarda. "Chocolate and sepia was what he was, and pretty small."
"What did you do with him?" asked Byrd.
"I killed him."
"Ah."
If the other dragons of third company heard this, they put little thought into it; other tribes were chattel, hardly of the dragon species. Killing one in cold blood was not murder.
There was something wrong with that viewpoint, wasn't there? The dragonet had seemed intelligent, language barrier though there might have been. He had ambitions, friends, a livelihood. The dreams of a sheltered upbringing would never be realized, because now he was dead.
The music began and went on, but Byrd stood in the corner and watched the company he'd come to think of as his children, and did not hearken to the tune. There was an awareness that had come over him that Monarda was a killer; it made him uncomfortable to be around her, and even more fidgety to think that he too was a killer, a murderer of soot kids who hardly knew what they were doing.
It was going to be a long night.
He needed to do something, anything.
"Put up a watch," said Byrd.
"Sir, yes sir," they said, and then each said 'not me' until the last eight to speak groaned and went out to keep station.
The order served to distract his mind and his heart. Already he was thinking of other matters. Should they douse the fire? It would make his position harder to find, harder to exploit – but the soots already knew he was here, and it served to brighten the soldier's spirits. Byrd decided it could stay.
In the meantime, he needed to get some shuteye. Sleep, however, would not come. His vision would fade and his body would still, but it was a conscious thought that stilled him. At long last he fell to unconsciousness, but realized he had because he woke up, some time later, with the night growing old and the flames burned down to embers.
Faintly he heard two dragons talking.
"I was going to be a construction overseer," said a voice. Bolt? No. A moment's thought revealed it as Chervil's. "But I saw an army poster back in fourteen and thought I'd join up for easy living and nice pay. Instead I got to build character on another continent."
"It's an adventure."
A dragoness. Monarda. Byrd had half-made his mind up to call out and end the hocus-pocus before it got intimate, but they went on and he decided to hold his tongue and learn something about the dragons in his command.
"I didn't join up; I was inducted on my birthday. I didn't have a career path planned out and my teachers knew it, so the military took me."
"When's your birthday?" asked Chervil.
"The end of August."
That explained it. Monarda was a military dragonet. They probably got her at seven. August, August. The month was only three and a half weeks from now, and her birthday four more.
"Think Byrd's awake?" asked Chervil.
"Probably not," said Monarda. "But we should be quiet. I don't want to wake him up and make him mad, and we ought to be keeping an eye out, even if we aren't on watch."
"No, no, it's fine. He's probably sleeping like the dead. What do you think of our sarge?"
"Knows his stuff; does what you can expect from an officer and keeps his head. But him and Stinger, there's going to be sparks, and nothing to do about their rivalry but stand back and work around it."
And what if Monarda's intuition was right?
"Yeah. But… it was too damn bad we lost that guy to a falling rock; what a stupid way to go. I wonder if there was anything I could've done to change it."
"Don't think about it," said the dragoness. "If you do you'll destroy yourself by regretting too much."
Good advice, but how to use it? Byrd felt he would take a long time to master the trick.
"And we should be getting to sleep. Good night."
"Night."
And when the dragons' chattering stopped, Byrd got some shuteye with them.
Afternoon, July 3rd, 5,015: The Mudwing Palace.
His goal was the righteous one: his tidings were true. But as Wells looked up, and up, and up, and stretched his neck a little more so his eyes could see the peak of the spire, the forthright nature of what he bore foundered. This place was built for prestige, to attract the respect of the powerful people who visited this kingdom, and to awe into obedience the little dragon with more power than he thought he had. There was no guarantee they would listen to Wells the marine sergeant, a title that'd been so powerful just a few days ago but now was an empty promise.
But the wasps would be here in a day, if not hours. It was his duty to give these guys a chance.
Such as the guard who'd been stonewalling him for half a damn hour at the gate of this place, beneath the marble statues of the war heroes.
Every war hero was as afraid as Wells at one point in their lives: they'd just learned to overcome that fear, and rely on it to tell them of trouble once they'd mastered its cowardly impulses.
"I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not allowed to let you come inside and disrupt the orderly goings-on of the palace. The Queen doesn't have time for that," said the sentry, a sturdy, boneheaded sort with a chestplate of iron, but no spear in sight.
Wells possessed nothing if he didn't have perseverance.
"What about one of her advisers, then?"
"No."
"You have to understand," said Wells, the matter already having been made clear.
"I do understand," said the guard. "Do you have any family around that could take care of you? We do have a lot of heatstroke in Seawings at this time of year."
"What's all the fuss?" came a voice, mediated in its pacing, even in its tone and so infinitely more powerful.
The guard turned to the gates. A dragon had glided down from the sepia entrance hall and was standing just behind Wells and the sentry, whom Wells now called Lughead.
"Nothing, sir. Just another doom-and-gloomer come to ruin our day."
The dragon (who wore the patch of colonel on his fore-shoulder) raised the scale above his eyes so it morphed into an eyebrow. This one was more slender than Lughead, but his build served to emphasize the muscles he had rather than draw attention away from them. His brown eyes moved slowly about the place from behind an aquiline nose, inhaling every detail, and his dark scales were edged with a shadow of gray, an indicator of age.
"Your doom-and-gloomer holds the rank of sergeant," said the colonel. "Perhaps he has something interesting to say to Moorhen's head of defense. We're a rather small department, but we still have power."
A chance! Wells had better not waste it: if he gave a bad first impression all was lost, and they would hear with their ears but never listen. His tongue stuck to the top of his mouth while he thought of the words.
"My kingdom is dealing with an invasion," he said. "Have you heard of any reports like this before?"
The colonel shook his head no.
If Wells made them believe, he could tell them about the true scope of the problem later. Saying everything like once would make him seem a madman.
"Abalone was sacked the night before yesterday," said Wells. "The coastal town."
"By what? Skywings?"
"If they were Skywings they were disguised excellently," said Wells. "They appeared to have four wings, but they died like anything else. They burned the town and only a few people got out. They're up to the rainforest already, and they'll be here tomorrow if not in a few hours."
The colonel drew himself up, as if about to pass judgement.
"Your statement is hard to believe," he said, "but we'll look into it. You do not want to know what will happen to you if you're telling a lie, trust me."
Wells nodded.
"Oh, I wish I was."
The colonel looked at him expectantly, as if administering a test for falsehood. Evidently he passed the exam, for the Mudwing turned and said "Follow me."
Wells did, but already there was a sinking feeling in his guts; the soldiers here were too few and too disorganized to mount resistance against a foreign invader. Trusting that the other tribes would hold to a peace deal, Moorhen must have discarded her arms and armies. Dragons did not need weapons to fight, but boy, it made war a helluva lot easier.
The hall in which he strode had white walls with symmetrical blue diamond designs painted onto them, each with teal and cerulean centers and wreaths of lazuli playing between the contours of floor was composed of marble slabs, excellently cut and fitted together by competent masons. It was meant to make its visitors think the Mudwings were a tribe of wealth, a tribe that'd risen above the squalor by which its neighbors defined it and become cleanly, tidy and neat. All it invoked in Wells was a sense of doom and impending loss.
But he was being taken seriously, at least for now.
"How soon will your invaders be here?" asked the colonel, eagle-like nose pointed straight at Wells.
"Maybe tomorrow, maybe in an hour," he said.
"We would've heard something."
"They outpace news of their advance. You don't believe me?"
The colonel sighed.
"While it's possible there's a danger, I don't think so. I moved you away from the gate because you were causing a ruckus, not because I thought your tale was true. We have a room in one of the lower towers where you can get some water and rest yourself, uhh."
"Wells."
What a fool he was, and how badly his sense of duty had impinged upon his judgment, all for naught. Now he had left Crest behind, and had no way of discerning where she was save the accounts of dragons she'd left in her wake, while in the meantime the enemy got nearer and nearer to sweeping the Mudwing Kingdom clean. He was a damn, damn fool.
"At least give me a room with a window," said Wells. "At least do that for me."
"That we can do," said the colonel.
Wells sighed. "There's nobody you can mobilize, no force you can put on alert?"
"It's not worth it."
"It is. If you can buy thirty minutes of time…"
"I'm sorry, but no."
At that Wells's protests grew feebler and feebler as time went on. They gave him some food to eat, and when they put him in the room with the gabled window looking west, with the sun shining in through the thin bars which supported the yellow-purple glass panes depicting Lotho killing the sea serpent, his exhaustion overcame him and he fell asleep.
Early Morning, July 4th, 5,015: The Skywing Palace.
Alone in the old Skywing war tower, Eagle examined the last despatch. Orders had been sent gathering up the general staff, but at the moment Eagle was marshal, logistician and strategist rolled into one. Overwork led to exhaustion; exhaustion led to mistakes. Mistakes led to Skywings dying for nothing.
Smolderfax was gone, lost in the morning. Only three more towns lay between that and the palace, and the militia garrisoning the countryside was simply not enough.
It was time to start thinking about the unthinkable. If things went on like this the Skywing palace would fall in two, maybe three days: fighting harder could extend that period, but not by much, and it would spend dragons better used later on in this conflict. Regulars, too, were few and far between. He had two orders, or about eight thousand dragons on the western border, guarding against the Icewings in case they tried to make trouble, but rotating them here would take three days, and deprive those regiments of much-needed supply. Brigades were being assembled here and there, but they too lacked victuals and replacements for attrition.
They didn't know who they were fighting, and that was a problem in itself.
If the palace was cut off from the Kingdom's body – and soon it very well might be – the newly formed pocket would be unable to sustain itself for more than a month, at best. He needed to work with the advantages he had and buy time for the superior Skywing war machine to assert itself.
Disarmament had hit them hard.
Firstly, he needed to ensure Skywing resources remained in Skywing talons. Secondly, he needed to preserve the population and its military. Thirdly, he must avoid expending units in futile engagements they could not win. To these ends he drew up three unequivocal documents with historical implications. The first's name was General Order 1052 (A).
ALL ABLE DRAGONS BETWEEN 5 AND 9 ORDERED TO TRANSPORT ALL ESSENTIAL MATERIALS BEHIND NEWLY CREATED FIRST MOUNTAIN LINE (FMT). SEE SEC 2 FOR DETAILS.
DRAGONS OLDER THAN 10 REQUIRED TO ENLIST OR BEGIN PRODUCTION OF WAR MATERIEL, UNLESS OLDER THAN 35. ELDERS WILL BE EMPLOYED AS INSTRUCTORS, MANAGERS, AND OTHER NON-COMBAT DUTIES. ENEMIES DEFINED IN SEC 3.
GOOD LUCK.
General Order 1053 was also written and signed. The palace was to be evacuated by July 4th. And, last and certainly most secret, was General Order 1052 (B).
I, Marshal Eagle, approve the reactivation of The Program.
He read it, read it again and poised the tip of his quill at the parchment, able to destroy the order with a single penstroke. It was evil to breed dragonets specifically for war, and have them fight before their dragonhood was due: it would deprive them of their childhoods, their fathers, their mothers and everything else he had known when he was at a young age.
Sitting in his desk drawer was a letter some soldiers had wrote, from the last war, asking where they could fight. Long conflict had left a damaging imprint on their malleable minds and all they could think about was battle.
That was not something he wanted to do, but if things kept going so badly he might have to do it.
An early dawn unfurled from the east, the same as Byrd was seeing a hundred miles away: Eagle had worked through the day and the night, and the exhaustion he'd fought was overtaking him. He would blink and wake up in a different position: he'd swayed during the blackout, and his body's natural balance was what saved him from an embarrassing tip-over.
Talons clicked in the outside hall, and a head poked in the door. Ruby. Eagle managed a salute, the sloppiest he'd ever given a royal.
"No combat unit ever passed inspection," she said. "You've drafted orders?"
"Yes," said Eagle, and read her the first order. "The populace needs to be mobilized."
"What's this part about the first mountain line?"
Eagle bit his lip.
"That would be tied into the second order," he said. "We don't have the numbers to hold the palace."
Ruby opened her mouth and then shut it again. The rising disk of the sun no longer brought cheer, but dread of what would happen in the new day. Forty-eight hours was all it took for the world to go to hell. The worst thing she could do was order him to defend this place to the last soldier.
The queen gave the slightest tilt of her head.
"Very well then," she said. "These stone walls never held much sentiment for me anyway."
A moment.
Eagle's mind and his mouth were out of whack, and once he started talking it was hard to stop.
"I have a moral conundrum," he said. "What if I had to do the wrong thing to protect dragons?"
Ruby turned from the golden window, set her claws by a stone joist.
"I'm listening."
"What if that was the only way? If there was no alternative, should I?"
He'd already had to live with himself once over the program dragonets, had always been able to speak up but never had. The high point of his career was defined by cowardice, even before Scarlet killed Marshal Alpine over the matter. It was not lost on Eagle that he was a Marshal now.
"There is always another way, but it takes thinking, with this," said Ruby, and she tapped her skull. "Talons and spears can't do everything. The program was the worst way we could've handled the great war, but then, everyone was hard-pressed by Scarlet's cruelty. That was the way her mind worked."
Her tail curled around her legs.
"These invaders, they're dragons too. They'll make mistakes. You can make them make mistakes, when you get inside their heads. Go take their overconfidence and turn it into despair, and win with that."
Then she gave a wry smile.
"But I'm just a young queen who doesn't know anything, back from reprimanding the gate staff. And as your queen, I'm ordering you to get some rest. Marshal Forge is arriving shortly, and the kingdom will get along fine without you for eight hours, even if we are… relocating."
"Yes, ma'am," said Eagle.
The queen leaped from the floor joist and glided down the palace flanks. Finally allowed recuperation, Eagle fell asleep as the sun's disk cleared the horizon. It was the first time he'd done it since the end of the great war, and as his eyes closed a torpid thought remarked that this time would not be the last.
Afternoon, July 4th: 5,015.
For Glory, the Rainforest was home. Its people were her people now – even the Nightwings. It was a land of safety, an alcove war heretofore had left untouched.
And now she would ask them to go fight for a tribe they hardly knew and most could care less for, because of her friendship with Ruby and her belief – for her conviction was unverified by her eyes at this point – that something was coming to the continent.
All the same, she remembered the prophecy of Moonwatcher. Moonwatcher was right: of course she'd be. When Moon talked, Glory listened.
Light green crept across her scales where beads of purple belonged, and she focused on her native colors and the pale rescinded.
The people had been called to war once – only once, and there was no telling if they'd back her. The old Queens would not like it. The Nightwings would not like it. But as Glory stood still on the smooth wooden platform of the medical treehouse, she realized her position was akin to a dragon in leading strings, like a puppet. Power was the master holding her captive.
She should base her decision on whether she thought she was right, not whether it was most expedient for her position or status; else she would tread the well-worn path to evil and tyranny.
Queen Glory believed she was right. The difficulty was in getting the rest of the tribe to think that way (for Nightwings and Rainwings had blended well enough in the four years since the war that they might well be called two sides of a misshapen coin). The timidity and fear which had hung about her since her earliest days lapped at the foundations of her emotional mask, as it always had, and she fought to put it behind her, as she always would.
A creak made her ears swivel outwards; there was another dragon here; a step like a Rainwing, but heavy in a way peculiar to -
"I know you're skulking around, Deathbringer. Come on out."
A hybrid dragonet looked up from his strawberries at the unprovoked voice, then shrugged and went back to arranging them in neat rows of plump fruit, as if the Queen talking to thin air happened every day, which it did; her acrimonious tone cutting through the humid warmth, saying: 'and wouldn't you like to know?' over the mahogany and the green knots of vine rope. Now a black talon perched confidently on the cordage; a wiry, sinuous dragon flowed from shingles to floor and reformed in a strong, upright stance with his head cocked to one side and a slight grin caressing his snout.
"At your service," said Deathbringer, and: "Why are you so gray?"
Though there was no 'My Queen', Glory could not care less. He was a throwback to her younger days, when she was a bird still looking for a nest to settle in. Had she found it in him? Even her heart never understood that aspect of their relationship.
Now she relied on him as an adviser at the very least.
"What would the Nightwings think of another war?"
"What would a fly think upon sighting a frog?" asked Deathbringer. "After Jade Mountain most of us would prefer to stick to our knitting."
'You say most of you,' Glory would like to have said, if circumstances were less urgent. Deathbringer, too, expected a rejoinder of the sort, and though he was looking at her half his attention was probably dedicated to the next piece of banter.
"To tell the Nightwings to rethink things again is too much, after the three world-shattering experiences they've been through in the last five years," said Darkstalker while she was waiting. "I daresay I've grown comfortable with the peace; me, the perfect assassin."
"Who also is afraid of scavengers wielding pointy sticks," said Glory. "So you would not mind it, and your friends would be comfortable with it."
A moment.
"It's not like there's a war on, is there?" asked Deathbringer.
That pale green was skimming along beneath the surface of her scales, building the pressure to breach.
"There is," said Glory, "or at least, Eagle seems to think so."
"Eagle?" said Deathbringer. "Eagle? How could a staid Skywing general know more about it than me?"
"He says he ran into Seawings who were fleeing from the south-east, and they told him it was an invader."
The hybrid dragonet in the corner dropped a berry onto the floor and both of them looked at him before looking back at each other.
"Unparalleled accuracy! Impeccable sourcing," said Deathbringer. "And if he's right then every tribe on Pyrrhia is screwed."
The cheery, clear weather above their heads was at odds with the somber mood beneath the sky, beneath the sun, the light of which speckled down to Deathbringer's black scales, filtered like the leaves and seeming much like the spots of a leopard; only these swayed with the rustling of the trees.
"Not us," went on Deathbringer. "You want to get into the coming war; of course you do: I can read the worry on your face; it's clouding your snout like a thunderstorm moving in on a crisp day. I think you're right to want to help the other tribes, but the long and the short of it is the Rainwing kingdom doesn't have anybody to field except me and a few hundred traumatized Nightwings, which is hardly grounds for an army. Putting some of your Rainwings into a war would be like sending dragonets into battle; they couldn't handle it, nobody could, if you even convinced Fruit Bat and the others to risk their tails in the first place."
He paused, restraining himself, then went on with dignity.
"There's a yawning canyon of a difference between fending off a tribe of Nightwings who aren't even expecting you and holding your own against a group of invaders who're already hankering for trouble. The whole thing seems farfetched. I believe it because I know you, but half the dragons in the tribe don't, and the other half will call you crazy, and between those is only a slim margin of those who you could persuade to help. It's hard to believe in miracles."
"I can convince them," said Glory. "I'll phrase it in the long term, since former queens never seem to think about tomorrow. And, as for sending dragons with no experience into a war, it's not right."
Deathbringer's eyes flickered, and he lowered his head and she knew he agreed.
"And that's why you're in charge of training them."
"Ha," said Deathbringer. "I supposed so. I'll go and find some of the Rainwings I know want to see the world and have some virility in their blood, and I'll teach them. My art of backstabbery goes well with Rainwing camouflage, you should know. But making soldiers out of any but the best of the best in less than six weeks is impossible."
He went out to the platform and spread his wings.
"Don't let your gratitude at getting an early warning slow you down, Glory; you'd better make use of it, because the best intelligence in the world is of no use if the dragon in charge pays no heed."
And then he was gone.
Glory shuffled her wings and looked back into the hut, where the hybrid dragonet was, or should've been. He'd disappeared while they were talking, but where to? A quick exploration of the scent yielded a hole behind one of the convalescent bunks; while the others had smooth bedding, this one's straw was recently ruffled. Glory peered into the hole and looked at the dragonet's warm eyes.
"It's alright to come out now," she said, and offered the dragonet a talon.
He sniffled.
"I don't like all that talk of wars and invaders and stuff," he said. "It sounds like controlling people."
He finished lamely.
"I don't like it."
And Glory stifled a low chuckle, for it would have been inappropriate to address the young one's fears. "It is bad," she said. "Come along, Peacemaker; I think your spirits will recover with some strawberries."
AN:
Everything is going according to plan… ha ha! If you liked it, I'd appreciate it if you told me about it. There's no author in the world whose day wouldn't be brightened by someone leaving a review on his story.
Next up, Captain Thrush! I feel like he's been a bit neglected since his introduction.
Written May 11th – May 28th, 2020.
Published Sunday May 31st, 2020.
