Contact – Sudden Meeting
AN:
A very short one, and a hurried one, but an author's note nonethless. To Unazaki: yes, the Rainwings are a sleeping giant, and yes, their abilities are overpowered somewhat, but, if you didn't notice, in the last chapter I made it so that they had shadows. I can't believe nobody else saw that before I did.
July 6th, 5,015: Somewhere in the Sky Kingdom.
And just as the horrid weather had come to the brink of breaking his spirit, the clouds had been swept away by a refreshing southerly wind, and the rain abated. The overcast broke into individual cumulus, and in turn those raced away like scud, the bright light of the sun softened when the playful hazes sailed before it. It was a fortuitous turn of events for one such as Byrd, but a dangerous one as well. The increased visibility meant it would be easier for the enemy to spot them. This was what he was telling Bolt now.
"How much strength have they got?" asked Bolt. "We keep bumping into elements of soots. It seems to me they're everywhere."
"Maybe they patrol along the front," said Byrd. He was shouting over the buzz of the friendly wings. Bolt was intelligent for a dragon his age, if over-curious, and destined for promotion. It would be a good idea to teach the wing-com the lessons taught to cadets, which would save much trouble down the line.
"That's a lot of front."
That it was. But the soots were fast enough to make it work. Still, though, he thought he would've broken past their patrol pattern by now.
"They're good at battlefield security," he said. "I haven't seen a single support element this entire time. It's difficult. Say there's a thousand miles of front they have to protect. Say they have as many dragons as we do – a hundred thousand. But a good deal of that is noncombatants – engineers, signal people, couriers. Doubly so for the couriers for them. So maybe they have seventy thousand. I think far less. But maybe they have seventy thousand. That's seventy a mile… no, that doesn't make sense."
"One or two a mile, sir?" said Bolt. "In groups of forty or so."
They had not yet learned that the soots called their combat groups a sortie.
"Makes sense," said Byrd.
They flew on, scattering the gnats which dizzily buzzed about the bushes situated on the bank of a rippling brook.
"What if there wasn't a front?"
Byrd blinked and looked at his subordinate. Such a suggestion was beyond the pale. If an army didn't have a front and a system to support that front they'd lost before the beginning of the war. A lesser enlisted dragon in Bolt's place would've dismissed the statement as idle musings, but the young soldier had tenacity.
"I don't mean if there wasn't a defense at all, only thinking that there might be an alternative to the, to the conventional sense. We ran into a few of their lookouts yesterday, right? And they bugged off, right?"
Byrd nodded.
"So they went to warn their main combat group of where we were. But we don't know where their main combat group is. They could have battalions in reserve spaced out, oh, every fifty miles."
"Fifty miles? I can do the math and that's not a lot."
"But suppose they had lookouts every twenty miles or so, in pairs or threes. Then when they see enemies, one goes off and warns the battalion while the other tracks, and then maybe one splits off a couple days later for an update or whatever or something like that."
Byrd was beginning to have a sinking feeling.
"Then they vector the battalion onto us and boom, a hundred and fifty versus eighty, even if our side has the same number of dragons per mile. That's the way it seems to me, sir."
"Good grief," said Byrd. "And if they're doing that, they have the advantage, or at least they don't have a disadvantage."
"We could beat it if we could go faster than them, get out of their track before they could react, since even at their speed it would take a day and a half or three to get eyes on us, send word, mobilize the reserves, correct their course to where we are rather than where we were, and make a battle plan. But us Hivewings in a race against even the slowest soot -" here Bolt shook his head. "We'd lose by a mile."
"Where'd you get the idea for that kind of warfare?"
Bolt hummed. "I was watching the bees and the way they find all the best flowers."
For a moment they went on, Byrd feeling grim, examining his combat experiences so far and looking for an answer to a problem vaguely defined. There was that time he'd killed two soots – one hesitated after the death of its compatriot, then charged, too late. The enemy's hesitation was much like his reluctance to change his course now, even whilst the threat of a superior force vectoring him was hanging overhead like the blade of a guillotine. There was a crucial element he was missing; his failure to sound it out was reflected in his occasional grunts about the chatting going on in the group about how far they'd go north before the next reading of the astrolabe.
It was as if there was a mental process going on in everyone's head, feeding off of normal situations, good or ill, deciding what to do and when, and explaining why. If a strange event occurred to throw off the process, either it was rejected, or the convoy of thought was knocked off course for a while until it could find its way again.
He had been dangerously close to the former reaction. Now he was experiencing the latter.
So what threw the mind from its wheel-ruts? Bad things? Perhaps.
But beyond worrying about the enemy, he had to manage his company as well.
They flew on, and on, and on, with the sun their pacemaker. Accursed, it fell too soon when he was not looking, and gave him no time to prepare night camp, or else was affixed to its portion of the sky overhead, when he was worried about detection or using it to keep time. It shone on the bottleflies circling over the cattle corpses, and made their black bodies shine purple and blue, and beat down like a killing star on the Hivewings, who were unused to living outside their hives, and paid the price for their softness. It made the animals act strangely; a few more than others. Most laid up in the wood, or held court near the streams, their torpid movements economic, to avoid creating too much heat on that hot, hot summer day. Soldiers had no such luxury.
Byrd's scales felt cool to him, yet he knew they were blazing. His stomach doubled up in knots like it had that time he'd had an intestinal bug as a dragonet – those many times. He was on the verge of heatstroke, though he was flying forty feet in the air, and durst not call a rest for another ten miles, at least. It would be one hell of a time for the soots to ambush them, with him in his state and Stinger's group beaten out of fighting trim.
The enemy were laid up in the shade, however, or deciding what to do as they followed third company.
"Higher by fifty!" ordered Byrd. He wanted a respite, away from the awful heat and the humidity which the trees exuded into the air.
"Higher by fifty, sir," was the reply. They all gained a span of altitude, and that was enough for him. He suspected, too, that Chervil had been about to fall behind.
Poor dragon! Did he like the favor of third company so much that he would torture himself just trying to keep up? The soldier was going to pull a muscle at this rate, and his teeth clenched every time he used the wing near his cut. He had three others to take up the slack, but that only strained them. Byrd was looking forward to a good rest before their next deployment, for his soldiers' sake.
And that brought another thing to mind. Were they recon? - or had the brass looked at the map and seen a useful Hivewing element with speed and striking power and decided to use them as regular soldiers? A recon battalion did not bring a dedicated medical element; no surgeons, nothing more serious than a first aid kit and twist tourniquets. Most of them knew little about the arcane yet deadly mumbo-jumbo called infection; Chervil had to discover that first-talon (though mostly he'd gotten over the unpleasant experience).
Snouts flushed and hearts beating like thunder, with all too light provisions banging away from unwieldy canvas haversacks at their necks, they flew in a flat wedge, like geese. With scales filled with mud and grease and grime, and the occasional squashed mosquito - "Mosquito? Don't look like a mosquito to me. It's a skeeter," Chervil would say – they flew. Their eyes scanned the horizon warily, their gazes ran up the bluffs and down again, and swept the forest around them for ambush.
The flat wedge formation made travel easier for everyone except point. It was useful – but it obstructed visibility looking to the inside, and made it possible for the left-side guys to be blindsided by an attack from the right, bogged as they were in this thick forest. That was why they usually assumed a crescent, or four or five-dragon groups when in combat.
The system could be made better. There was a solution out there in the world – moons knew the soots probably used it, the way they scooted around quicker than the eye could catch. For all the world Byrd was stuck on it. His mind went back to the earlier analogy of wheels stuck in ruts from which they could not get out. He was mired in one of those muddy tracks, spinning his spokes. Bolt was doing his job beside him, keeping both eyes open for trouble, spear never too far from claw – but it was at exactly these times that he was at his least insightful, though Stinger would've said it was when the soldier was doing his best.
Byrd looked over his shoulder again, glancing at the young subordinate, whose theory was too grim not to be true. If it was correct (and paranoia told him it couldn't be otherwise), they had a couple of hours, maybe a day before they were engaged, possibly from any direction, with the effective soot tactics.
He needed to throw the enemy for a loop, force back their thought processes and give Byrd the tempo. He put that idea in a mental drawer marked 'soon, but also later', and barked the order for descent. They set foot in a meadow near a stream, a rocky one, dotted with a plant Byrd was sure happened to have relations with the Pantalan poison ivy back home. The ground was virtually coated with thorns and prickly bushes otherwise, which were annoying on any continent.
"For any of you oddballs who like ration bars, make sure you eat the stuff we got from town instead," said Byrd. "How much of that is left, perchance?"
The dragons poked the slabs of beef they'd strapped to their sides, which were now brazenly sundried.
"Supper tonight and tomorrow's breakfast if we stretch it," said Chervil. "I wouldn't like to eat this by tomorrow afternoon."
There was a round of chuckling, and general agreement from all. It did not escape Byrd that Monarda stood close to the injured Chervil, who held court with quiet jokes in the middle of the thorny clearing.
"You said something earlier on, something about mosquitoes," said she.
In a company of misfits and killers, there was an element about that dragon Byrd did not like, or understand. He could be missing her personality – or he could be pinning it down exactly. She was like a multi-faceted gem which always seemed to have one more side than he could count, a psychopath who went out of her way to talk with Chervil.
"Skeeters," said Chervil. "Great big ones the length of your talon that suck all the blood out of ya and then cough up spit to give ya -" here he hocked up a loogie and spat the phlegm droplet on the grass, "a bump. Wait, no, that's what mosquitoes do. Skeeter loogies are venomous."
"I hate the wildlife here," said a dragon. His name had been Maven, hadn't it? Yes.
Bolt cocked his head at that, asked: "How come?", and soon the two were embroiled in a deep conversation of outdoors' merits, complete with a few others in the group diving into the discussion every so often with a remark or two, then coming out later with a confused expression on their faces. Byrd noted with pleasure that eight dragons were already flying about up top, their eyes peeled for threats, without him having to tell them to do so.
They did not, however, protect against animals. A tiny mammal wandered into the clearing, half-hidden by the scrub, brown on its back and light brown most everywhere else, with white streaks between the two color tones, and a hint of black as well. It seemed like a more brightly colored squirrel, one of those animals which are always lively and hopping or skittering about on four legs and standing up and looking about on two with their bushy tails twitching behind them.
This one was quite sick, shambling along and looking about as if it didn't know where it was. Byrd could not get its scent from where he was, upwind, nor did he know its particular ailment, having lived a sheltered life in the Hives, even if it tended toward the exploratory by Hivewing standards. The small thing – it was about the length of his talon – scrabbled up a rock and then disappeared beneath the spines of a six-foot tall thorn.
- "And that's why it's a good idea to pay attention to the flora," Bolt was saying. The dragon lay back in the meadow, waiting coolly for the reply, unbothered by the sharp thorns and stinging nettles, which at worst were a minor irritation for dragons of their size, and scenery most of the time.
His competitor was thinking about his answer when suddenly his expression turned annoyed and he growled. "Something bit me."
Again he winced.
"That's it, little shit."
He reached down in the lush vegetation and pulled up the little rodent, which was snapping and biting and hissing, foaming at the mouth with unexpected rage for the dragons which had so rudely invaded the meadow. That was how Byrd saw it, at least.
"See ya, chucklefuck," said the soldier, and tossed the creature with a lazy swing of his arm. There was a hideous gnashing of teeth, and then a dull thud as it hit a tree trunk and went limp.
"As you were saying?" asked Bolt.
It was good to edify oneself, but Byrd had had enough. "Changing of the watch, you two," he said. "It's time to let the lookouts have their supper."
The two grunted, groaned, and fussed, but they moved alright, and before the eight watchers had hit the ground they and six others were circling overhead, their dirt-encrusted scales more a shadow than a shape, dappled by the leaves of the trees and the swiftness of their movement. The sentries were starved, more than starved, and yet they nibbled at the beef and lamb slowly, drawing out the experience as long as they could under Byrd's watchful eye. When he looked at them they would speed up, and yet in his peripheral vision they would go back to savoring. He couldn't keep them from wasting time that way, unless he ordered them to finish in five, but that might be counterproductive.
Leadership questions.
He oughtn't fret.
Meanwhile, the plan that had begun to foment just before supper had baked while he was eating, and by the time the rationed food was consumed his idea was well-done in the mental oven.
"OK, we're doing something different tonight," he said, casting a momentary glance at Stinger's group, who were barely visible through the trees a hundred yards away. His soldiers all gave him varying looks embedded with different emotions. Trust was one of them. Apprehension was another.
"Instead of staying here and setting a watch and flying off tomorrow morning, we're going to walk west by night and sleep a good part of the day, then ease back to a normal schedule over the coming couple of days. That's an order, and start moving."
Begrudgingly they got up from where they were lounging, packed up the compasses and souvenirs from town, and steeled themselves in their minds for the coming sojourn. Nobody wanted to be the first to say 'Slow down, sir', and so nobody would, not till they'd exceeded their limits many times over.
Hopefully that time would never come.
"And Monarda, go tell Stinger where we're going. Compass check!"
Those who were supposed to have compasses had them. There were two missing, each one intended to service four dragons, but there were three dead dragons who wouldn't be using them anymore, and so on the whole things were fairly balanced.
Bolt sidled up to Byrd as the whole shebang began to move off, first in ones and twos, then faster, in flights of four, crushing the scrub and blazing a trail through the brush as they flowed west between the deciduous tree trunks. The soldier was much like a younger brother; annoying at times with the way he seemingly wasted time or did dumb things in the name of finding out what would happen, but always imaginative and interested in what his elder was doing, and helpful. Now Byrd took a second out of his time to explain.
"We're doing something unexpected," he said. "I don't expect the soots think we'll break our pattern, and their scouts won't try to come close while they're tailing us. I'm acting on your hunch."
Bolt shrugged, glancing over his shoulder at the trodden-down bracken they were leaving behind them, and sniffing. The heavy product of built-up dragon-stink hung about them like a cloud, and would take a night rainstorm to wash away, one which they might get, or they might not. There was a pall on the eastern horizon, where the storms usually rolled in, and that was good for their purposes, but it might miss them.
Meanwhile, any stiff with a nose could follow them for miles, and they were going with the wind at their backs, which blinded them to the scent of anyone ahead.
That was the seamy underbelly of the good idea. Byrd hoped that blind luck and obliviousness on the part of the soots would aid his escape, and hopefully have them land in a different meadow than their evening camp. At this rate, though, they'd be twenty miles away by morning, and could then sneak back along their course and ambush the enemies who would've ambushed them.
"Is Stinger coming along?" asked Byrd.
Nobody heard him over the panting and the last buzzing of insomniac mosquitoes that hadn't gone to sleep yet.
"I said, is Stinger coming along?" he asked in a louder voice.
"Didn't see him, not me," came an answer from down the line, from the dragon Bolt had been arguing with. They were all staying together by sound, touch and scent. "Did any of you guys catch him leaving camp?"
"They were staring daggers at me when I left," said Monarda. "I didn't see his guys budge an inch."
"Looks like he's too busy sulking to move," said Chervil.
That was enough disparaging of Hivewings, irritating as their commanders might be.
"They have more casualties than we do," said Byrd. "Extra travel after an all-day flight would be dangerous for their health."
That made them shut up.
But the journey might be dangerous for his, too; the walking, leisurely by itself, was combined with twelve hours of prior exertion, and now a mild headache was banging away inside his skull due to the lack of sleep. The forty dragons melting through the dappled moons-light depended on him to come up with a battle-plan to keep them safe.
No, to win, he reminded himself, to win. Doctrine said they were expendable, all of them, even him, but the knot in his chest didn't see it that way. If ever he got a medal, it would be for protecting these guys, not killing the enemy.
He suspected the award would be posthumous.
No matter for him now. The bullfrogs croaked in the lowlands and the night-birds hooted. Several times he rocked in his tracks, talons splayed wide at the sound of an echoing screech reverberating in the night.
"Sounds like the soots are getting murdered out there," said Chervil, his ears swiveling towards the source of the screeches like a windmill trying to catch the breeze. Nobody wanted to think about what was happening if it wasn't the soots dying.
"Moreso the noise is coming from ahead," said Bolt. "It can't be Stinger."
The screaming would die away for a few minutes, then resurge as suddenly as it had gone, rattling nerves and curdling the red-black blood in their veins. Every shadow on the forest floor concealed a limber assassin; every snap of a broken stick entailed the creeping of a dozen cutthroats. Third company was getting jumpy on their night excursion. On one occasion the yelling happened right over Byrd's head, and he looked up to the boughs of the tree above him, expecting a soot to drop on his face and end his life.
Instead he saw a midget-sized owl, unimpressed with the six-ton monster a few feet beneath it, its feathers as gray as the hickory tree on whose branches it sat. Its beak opened an inch and its throat rumbled, and again came the raucous call.
"Alright, here's what we've been afraid of this whole time," said Byrd. He pried away the leafy branches obscuring the creature and its keen eyes. Forty dragons watched a screech owl preen.
"Moons, that little thing?" asked Chervil. "It doesn't look larger than a mouse!"
"What a load of big strong dragons you are, scared of a creature like that," said Monarda. She trotted on and put on airs, prim as a soldier can be, while the bird disdainfully preened crumbs of gray bark from its feathers and did its best to make them look foolish, and at long last beat its wings and flew off noiselessly into the night when it discovered it couldn't get a rise out of them anymore.
"Let it scare the soots out of their wits," she said. "I'm sure they'll appreciate it."
And Bolt fell back into the knot which had formed next to Chervil, and said, in a stage whisper which was just quiet enough for everyone to hear: "You're teaching her a sense of humor!"
Sarcastic killing harmonica-players were one thing. Making sure his company stayed together in the dark, sticky night was another. Counting off five minutes in his head, he would pause, listen, and look, go on, number five more, then repeat the performance. Going crazy from boredom was better than dying to an enemy they hadn't seen until too late, and it wasn't like this was ever going to get boring. He wished it would. He wished it wouldn't. They moved through the woods in pairs of pairs, clumped densely into a packet of dragons, as far as he could tell.
"Keep moving west," he told Monarda. "I'm circling around back."
He stepped offside of the company and let them pass on his left while he picked his talons on a mossy rock, then followed them to the best of his ability. It wasn't hard; they were making an awful racket which would've stood out to anybody, above the bullfrogs and the crickets blasting his ears with chirping. A deaf rabbit with earplugs would've heard the breaking branches and snapping twigs from a mile away; it would've been hard to get lost from his lot, but then, there were always dragons who could manage the most dimwitted feats.
Not in his company. Not after this.
A sound caught his ear and he crouched stock-still beneath the shade cast by a tree, the dappled leaves waving above the grass in a silver, moons-lit spot where a small hole opened in the canopy, illuminating a tangled mass of fruiting vines, speckled shadows crisscrossing its internal labyrinths. There was another dragon here, a being he could not see. Gradually he noticed slow, deep breathing, each exhale like a broad gust, held his breath and heard it go on.
An enemy, sent to spy out their bearings!
He closed his eyes and opened them again, the better for his night vision, and his sight was a tinge sharper, the gloom that much less impenetrable. There was an excrescence in the night, a mass where mass should not be, its outline impossible to make out because it existed in a patch of light and dark, and so dazzled him. Whoever it was had sensed him too, and was as still as it could be without being dead. How did Byrd move? How did he react? He had no friendly-or-foe on the guy, and he couldn't attack without knowing who it was he was attacking.
On the other talon, Monarda got further and further away the more he waited… he could hear the crashing of brush fade fainter and become more distant even now.
Boldly, peradventure foolishly, Byrd broke cover and trotted into the light, tearing the vines from his way. Slowly, grinning like an idiot and chuckling quietly, a soldier emerged from the dark, a Hivewing soldier, his sides still crusted with mud and his haversack dangling from his neck, as tall as Byrd, though lankier because of his younger age.
"Sir," he said, rapping his shoulder with his tail. There was a familiar quality to this dragon. Byrd sighed.
"It's not that funny," he said, and trotted off briskly in the direction of third company, nodding so his subordinate would follow him.
"I'm laughing at myself," said the dragon. The resemblance clicked in Byrd's mind. It was that guy Bolt had been arguing with, Maven by name. The soldier rasped his bitten appendage against a tree, then moved on.
"Still itching from that cut?" asked Byrd.
"More like aching," said Maven.
The crashing and breaking grew louder the more they trotted. They were headed in the right direction.
"That's bad," said Byrd, in a low voice not easily overheard. "Could be an infection."
"Frickin' wildlife," said the other.
"Language prevents you from expressing yourself. I suggest you find ways to say things other than using it."
Maven scowled, but perked up again when he saw they were nearing the group, who were strung out more than Byrd would've liked, but by no means in disarray. Their spoor of scent was
"Alright… Maven now. Stay close," said Byrd. He spoke now, slightly louder, his steady voice permeating the night. Too loud. "Byrd to third. I picked up a straggler."
"OK, we smelled you coming," said Monarda. "Join up."
"We will," said Byrd. "And be quieter, all of you. I could hear you from a mile off."
Byrd shook his head then. Dragons and their noses, and their loud traveling ways. He glanced at Maven when he left the guy in the middle of the formation. The soldier had never given him trouble before, had been an anonymous cog in the Hivewing machine. Now he was dropping out of formation. Byrd vowed to keep a closer eye on Maven, for the battlefield was no place to pick up bad habits. Often they had a habit – heh – of killing their practitioners.
Byrd's step dragged as his subconscious offered up a thought and his mind absorbed it. He was doing the exact same thing he'd criticized headquarters for making Thorn do… splitting forces. True, Stinger wasn't under his command, but did that make much difference? Once separated in this wide land, the odds were long of them ever finding each other again by chance. He would have to trust second company to come through. Hopefully they were chastised enough by now to have learned their lesson, or they never would.
Setting those thoughts aside in his perpetually growing drawer of 'things to worry about later', he retrieved another chain of logic from inside the mental storage device and went to work on it.
What Bolt had theorized was almost certainly true, he figured, hopping over a particularly expansive bush; the soots had to be tracking them using scouts, and mobilizing reserves, allowing them to defend a large front with relatively few dragons as long as they weren't concerned about any individual patch of territory. There were caveats to this. The element of surprise meant the enemy probably didn't have the system well established – unless they were a warlike tribe who did this for fun.
That was an unsettling thing to think about, and Byrd pushed it away from his mind, then stopped and brought it back. At least one dragon had to think about unsettling matters; in this case it was him. They'd broken contact at least; that was the good news, and a fact worth remembering. What should he do from here? Their course was still (nominally) on track for that palace to the north, but as far as he knew it was heavily fortified by now, so much so it wouldn't be worth the bother of mounting an assault if the Hivewing force numbered less than a division.
Another tree his face narrowly avoided, another bruise on the leading edge of his wing, already discolored with the dark spots of multiple other bruises.
He could turn around and go parallel to his track, wait for the soots following him to come by, take care of them in a decisive battle (using Stinger as bait), then get out of there.
Too risky. He didn't know how many they had (though he had a good idea), or where they were, or exactly what they were doing, or even if he could pull off another winning engagement against enemies who'd proved themselves to be competent more than half the time; dragons who were difficult to catch napping, unless they made mistakes, which were fortunate for him indeed.
So he would break off north tomorrow, along their original heading, and continue with what he had originally been tasked, which was reconnaissance, unless other orders arrived, till either the way let him send a report from where he was, or he deemed it necessary to return to a Hivewing camp to deliver intel for HICOMCN. Probably that place would be at Smolderfax.
"And stop," he said. "Reserve four for sentries till morning. Pass it down."
Forty-five dragons shuffled to a halt. A few trotted off into the woods to do their business, then returned, and the unlucky four enlisteds whose turn it was for lookout at this time of night went up the trees with nary a groan (if they had groaned there would've been sharp discipline, and they knew it).
"Get out the charts, Monarda."
"Yes, sir."
Byrd, too, ascended a mature, sweet-smelling tree big enough to hold his weight, at least for a couple of minutes. He was overdue to get a few hours of shuteye, but doing this was more important than retiring two or three minutes earlier.
He held up his brass, disk-like astrolabe, looking for the Green Star, as they were in the northern half of the world, and not the southern, where instead he would've gone for the Yellow Quadrant. His mark eluded him, till a wispy cloud drifted in front of one of the moons and revealed a verdant light gleaming, so close to his talons, but untouchable; even if he flew as high as a dragon could reach he would never hold it in his hand.
Nevertheless, it was still useful for navigation. He hung the circular instrument from a ring on its top, ensuring it was level, and not tilted. This was important. He put his eyes to the two holes in the thing and sighted the Green Star as best he could, then noted its inclination relative to the horizon. This was important too. Then he stuck out his tongue, thinking, figuring the local time, eyeing the stars, figuring the time, consulted a mental table, and came up with a reasonable result.
"Wish we didn't have to use these," he said, muttering. If not for it being a new continent they would know where they were instinctually: it being a new land not yet ten days old for them, they had to use instruments. That was one thing he was grateful to HICOMCN for, the instruments.
"Two hundred and fifty north from where we were in Smolderfax, from what Thorn wrote, and who knows how many west," said Byrd, looking down. Of course they hadn't got anything yesterday night; it had been raining, hard, and been miserable. Monarda was waiting at the bottom of the tree, head peering upwards and eyes glowing like those of a lynx. "Mark that down."
"Yes, sir."
"Do you have any idea of how far west we are?"
"Call it twenty miles tonight and forty going over the hills," said Monarda. "Not very much."
"Okay, mark that down too."
"Already done, sir."
"Another actionless day," said Byrd. "That's a good thing."
Monarda only shrugged, then put the maps back in her haversack. If combat was exciting for her she didn't say, but Byrd would've bet his mother's china set that it was. He chuckled nervously when he laid down to sleep. There were times when Monarda got bored of living with the normal people.
July 7th, 5,015: Somewhere in the Eastern Skywing Kingdom
It was a day before Ruby and Eagle found the ancient stronghold of Azkilach, and a day after Byrd made the decision to melt into the forest; in the middle of the timeline, so to speak, that Thrush met with a cluster of farmers a hundred miles north of Azley, that unfortunately wasp-occupied town.
That was a special part of Pyrrhia; the terrain there was unlike any ground anywhere else on that continent, and that is to say it was big-sky territory, gigantic, difficult to describe to a dragon who had never been there, who might fly from horizon to horizon and when he had arrived sense that the land had never changed, never would change, and would still be there by the time he died. The air was clear as crystal, and from where Thrush stood on the gray butte he could see for hundreds of miles, down to the coast, where an ineffable white haze concealed the sea. The earth sloped upwards towards his perch; its green grass met the sheer rocks rising sharply from the ground, precipitated by nothing. It was a long way down. It was a long way up, too.
Only a dragon – or perhaps a lynx or lucky mountain cougar – could ascend the sudden cliff. The summit was full of them, could hardly contain the crowd of tall dragons, short dragons, lookout dragons – Skywings steadfastly examining the vista for hostiles, the thin air no obstacle to their eyes. It was thicker here than Thrush was used to at the palace – but a good five thousand feet above sea level; enough altitude to make a few Mudwing pass out from hyperventilation, if they tried anything.
The tough dragons on the raised plateau were not Mudwings, yet on their backs and sides and shoulders they carried the distillation of a life's work; tools and seed, mostly tools. They were the ultimate oxymoron; the Skywing rancher.
"Fair winds and fair skies," said Thrush, greeting one. "I am Thrush."
"And the same to you," said he. "I am Peregrine, senior."
And a flash of memory came before Thrush and he remembered one of the JMA dragonets who'd been running around the first year, the bad year for Jade. He examined this dragon, and saw that the father looked like the son, albeit with a few differences.
The scales on the underside of his jaw had a whitish-gray tinge, like chalk; it was an affectation which would remain even after his next shedding: a mark of his experience and his age. When the dragons came up to the point, they consciously chose this one as their leader. Probably he was a retired major, or even colonel, one who'd decided to quit while he was ahead and pursue another line of work, that of free enterprise. It wouldn't have mattered if he'd stayed in the army; he was too old to make a difference on the field now. His current occupation was good enough.
"Yep, forty-five hundred head squirreled by Hart's Pass," he said.
"Better us than the wasps," said Thrush. Peregrine Sr. grunted. Behind him an associate spoke with a cluster of Thrush's subordinates standing in a circle about him, each lending an ear to what he had to say. It was a list of names – of recently dead Skywings, or those lost to the invaders.
"The cattle'll winter one, two winters," said Peregrine. "Then they'll start moving."
Thrush looked north, to Hart's Pass; he knew this land. He'd been born near here. And in the rancher's eyes was growing the glimmer of recognition. "They'll never find all of them. The land is too big."
The rancher nodded.
"Thanks for giving us the tip."
"It's the best I could do for my herd," said Peregrine.
"Will you go back, to the mountains?" asked Thrush.
"No."
"No?"
"You need logistics," said the rancher. Thrush knew this; the battalion of dragons milling around up here was proof enough of that. The dragon went on. "You need people managing your LoCs, misdirecting the wasps, keeping them off your back. I recognize you – you're from around here, but you can't spend all your time mopping up supply. And there's intel. Covering this country would take a hundred dragons. I have that – those who wouldn't join your company will still do their part."
Then Peregrine's eyes took on a contemplative look; instead of looking at Thrush they looked through him, and beyond him. His thoughts likely hinged on the coming of another war, and the inevitability of conflict which made life so difficult.
"Your compatriots brought supply," said Thrush, restarting the conversation. "I thank you for this, although… it's best to be off within the hour, for the both of our parties."
"Don't be too hasty," said Peregrine. He took a half-step backwards and turned his head, looking for a particular dragon, then (when he had found who his mark) shouted. "Is she here yet?"
"Close!"
"Don't let her start a prairie fire," said Peregrine.
"If you'll excuse my interruption, who is 'she'?" asked Thrush, disliking that he'd been left out of the loop.
Peregrine's face took on a wan smile. There were things in this world that frightened even him. "Scarlet's dearest pet."
Thrush bit his lip.
"Peril?"
Peregrine nodded.
"Where'd you find her?"
"Not too far from here, nearer the coast than is safe. She said she was adventuring. Ah, here she comes now."
The dragons on the rock, already tightly packed, crammed themselves together on the rim of the butte as Peril landed with a flare of her wings, the rock hissing under her talons. One accidental swish of her tail, one misstep – and they would be history. Thrush remembered Peril vividly from the Scarlet days. No one could unsee her, once they'd caught a glance of the thin, almost anorexic dragon with blue eyes and smoke curling upwards from all of her scales. Then he blinked, for Peril had changed. There was more to her now; she looked better fed, and at ease, if her movements were as controlled as they always were. Still, she screamed danger to Thrush's mind. The dragons in his company edged farther away than he; they were brought up on the legends and not the fact, and figured they would be incinerated if they got too close.
Well, they might. Peril had a unique personality.
"Hi Thrush. I didn't imagine you were out here, but I'm happy to see you anyway. Fake shake?"
All of a sudden Thrush found himself vigorously pumping Peril's talon from the safe distance of ten feet.
"Glad to see you," he said, and with the force of habit managed to lower his brows. "Your appearance is a bit of a surprise."
"Turtle and Tsunami left me on this side of the water," said Peril. Her happy-go-lucky glow dimmed for a moment, then regained its original strength. "I heard you had an invasion problem."
"We do," said Thrush. If he didn't know Peril's past he would never have guessed she was a multiple murderer, psychopath, and former pawn of an authoritarian dictatorship. The world was a fucked up place.
"I want to help, but I'm not sure how," she said.
Because obviously his dragons didn't need confidence in Peril whatsoever. There were lots of better things she could've implied instead of 'I don't know what I'm doing'.
"You can join the expeditionary," said Thrush. He was on the verge of subdividing his force to simplify delegation; why not do it soon? "We'll hammer out your circumstance in the organization soon."
"Sounds good to me," said Peril. "Making a difference."
Thrush could count on four talons the dragons he knew of who could change the world, and Peril was on that list. In fact, she already had. Thrush nodded, then addressed Peregrine.
"We thank you for the supplies, but we've been here too long," said he. "We'll use this place as a mail and supply drop."
"Good," said Peregrine. "No use in becoming too predictable."
"We'll keep the enemy on their toes," said Thrush. "We'll be moving south from here, lending a talon to the Mudwings."
Peregrine's snout took on a frown. "The Mudwings float or fall on their own. There's not much any one dragon can do to change that."
"We'll see," said Thrush. "Come along Peril, we've got to be going. And lieutenant! Give her a crash course in our operations, post-haste."
"Yes, sir."
"Fair winds," said Thrush.
"Fair winds!"
"Ready for takeoff! On me!" he shouted. His subordinates detached from Peregrine's dragons, then collected in diamonds, with no milling around between. Those who they'd picked up from the convoys were nearly as quick, and getting better with every day that passed. He was proud of his dragons, oh, he was proud. Then he remembered himself and leaped into the empty air southwards, followed swiftly by a rush of wings.
Peregrine Sr remained on the rock, then turned and strode away, till he was invisible beneath the lip of the rapidly receding outcropping. As suddenly as that, the elder dragon vanished from Thrush's sight.
Thrush looked ahead now, focused on the future and the present instead of the past. His shoulders strained at the pits, the tendons of his wings pulling to lift the weight of the old supply crate he bore under him, which banged his scales on the downstroke and tugged at his chest on the upstroke. Peril was the only unharnessed dragon near him; the wisps of smoke bleeding behind her like a spoor reminded him of the fiery scales which would incinerate any ropes. A dozen yards away bobbed the poor lieutenant, angular wings twitching from nervousness. His orders meant getting in touch with Peril so he could speak with her; but it was a difficult task to get in touch with a dragon who could burn him black if she bumped his wing. They would have to land if anything was to be explained – and preferably in a spot where she couldn't set a forest fire.
The only dragon who could twist tails with Peril and live was Clay of the Mudwings – but Clay was a kingdom off and far too slow.
There was Winter, but he was a freak case… then Thrush shook his head at himself; he'd been following the gossip too much. So it could be said that no dragon could twist tails with Peril and reliably live. With care, that aspect of hers could be tooled towards killing soots.
He flew on, making contingencies in his head and reaffirming them, and then making contingencies for those contingencies, as the land beneath him melted away to his north and was replaced by similar, subtly different land; ground greener and less rocky, such as the terrain he liked; country more suitable to the raising of cattle than Skywing dragonets. With the narrow, glittering band of the rightwards river his guide, he plowed the air currents towards the Mudwing kingdom, eventually passing the blurry border between one kingdom and the next, with no cheerful 'Welcome to Moorhen's Domain' to mark the way.
Having made no small amount of havoc, he was now flying blind into a land where he knew not where the enemies were, or what they were doing, or even if he was behind their main enemy groups or not. They had to use mobile warfare here – that was the best way to do it, a method of warfare only the Mudwings could comfortably eschew – and then only on their home territory. Static, pitched battles and wars of attrition were suicide. The plan, then, was to use Peril as their ace in the hole when encountering enemy troops, and his main force as a roving band of warriors, breaking every so often to forage supplies, as the Mudwings here were not so loyal to Scarlet as the ranchers of his homeland. Loitering was too passive.
At any rate, the land was steadily descending, and pools and lakes often caught his eye, even as the sun's glare dimmed behind ever more common clouds, ominous towers billowing upwards, breaching the bounds of what even a Skywing could do. For a minute they were traveling in the shadow of one of those pillars, his forces a train of ants struggling on flat sand, in a sky that had existed in a time before time, and would be just as blue on the day he died.
From horizon to horizon he saw five other dragons, and those traveling singly or in pairs: there were small squares of dark-colored land below; earth where crates of paraphernalia had been dumped and dragons had come to buy and sell, their talons scraping away the grass on patches of ground where what was left was dirt and stone. His Skywing eyes scrutinized the terrain, caught the face of a Mudwing glancing upward and took in its features, which mostly amounted to fear, then determination.
"Flag for descent!" he shouted.
He folded his wings so only half of them was exposed to the air, then nosed down, slicing against the rising air of the updraft column which was birthing a puffball beneath him even now. His wings brushed the incipient, round top of the white cloud, prickled, then came away damp, swirling mist clutching at his scales before it evaporated in the waning sunlight. Behind him Peril cut through the fog and tore it asunder; invisible air pushed the snowy tendrils away from her before they hissed and exploded into ethereal steam, while Peril emerged from the miniature cataclysm with scales dry and the inkling of a smile visible on her reptilian face.
Descending at nine hundred feet a minute, it took them a twelfth of an hour to get near the ground; a narrow creek around which trees had sprung up, with scraggly brush growing beneath them, and grass stretching away on the flanks of a shallow hill, lively green grass growing beneath the browned stalks of yesteryear, with prairie dogs snuffling placidly at the newcomers. Thrush slowed down, and Peril soared on the updraft coming from the hill, rising and swooping downwards when she lost the current, and climbing slower the next time.
"Secure the stockyard ahead," said Thrush. "There's a Mudwing inside; RoE do not engage unless engaged, hear me?"
"Yes sir," chorused the dragons, most of them. Then came the off-beat 'sir' of Peril. She was trying. Moons, she was trying.
"Leave him free, but make it clear he is not allowed to leave. Round up anyone else in the general area. Go."
SEC's dragons darted off like flickering flames, swarming the stucco stockade in groups of four and occupying it, despite the occasional protesting noises emanating from inside, and the yelling and roaring and a good deal more yelling: another third of the force fanned out and started looking for dragons fleeing for the Mudwing kingdom.
It was all over as quickly as breathing, and almost before Thrush could get over the anti-livestock stucco, too. There was the Mudwing in the courtyard, surrounded by crates of tools and soldiers, bigger than any of the Skywings individually but outnumbered a hundred to one. His eyes blinked from one dragon to another, and he swallowed.
"Robbers?" he asked. "In this day and age?"
He was delaying. No matter.
"No," said Thrush, stepping forward from where he'd awkwardly mounted the wall. Hopefully no one had noticed. "A Captain."
"There are better places for a war to start than my shop," said the Mudwing.
Peril, growing tired of flying, landed in the opposite corner, then frowned when a sprig of straw burst into flames beneath her talons. The Mudwing flinched, then stood stock-still, as if the act of not moving would make everyone forget his reaction.
"I'm not here to start a war with the Mudwings," said Thrush. "I'm here to say that we're not starting a war with the Mudwings."
"I don't buy it," said the Mudwing.
"Don't buy it," said Thrush. "Rent it."
He looked up. "We know you're delaying."
"Whatever for?" asked the shop-owner. "For what reason would I delay you?"
Two Skywings dropped another Mudwing on the dirt, too close to Peril for anyone's comfort.
"We got a runner, sir."
"Good. Keep looking for more," said Thrush, then turned back to the first Mudwing. "You were saying?"
The bravado deflated from the dragon like air escaping a popped balloon.
"You're right. But still… what reason do I have to believe you?"
"None at all," said Thrush. "I'll tell you what we're here for. There's an invasion from another continent sweeping up from your southern border, which will soon consume everything you own unless you do something about it. We're here to fight it."
"Bollocks."
"You have every right to say that, but you're in the wrong," said Thrush. He produced the scales of a wasp from inside a carry-on which he wore, tossed them to the shop-keeper. "Tell me those came from a dragon in Pyrrhia."
"Paint."
"Scratch them. I don't have all day."
So the Mudwing scratched them, and bit at them, and rasped them, until half the scales were eaten down and were still the same color.
"Paint," he said, but there was no longer the same conviction in his tone.
"We're here for a just cause," said Thrush. "I can't have you be a hindrance to us, riling up the countryside in their favor, whether you know it or not. That was what your accomplice was going to do. Don't make any trouble."
"No promises," said the Mudwing.
"Don't make any trouble."
Thrush's gaze was unyielding, and it took less than fifteen seconds for the Mudwing to break.
"Fine."
"Get out of dodge, too. East is the best bet," said Thrush. "They're not here yet, so count yourself lucky, pack up and go."
"S'not like you're making it any more hospitable around here, flying in with a battalion and prancing around as if you owned the place," said the Mudwing. He sighed. "I'll go."
"Good idea," said Thrush.
It was a better one than even he knew. For now, though, he had a few more pressing problems. Such as what they were going to eat, and where they were going to proceed from here. His best chance, he decided, was to link up with any Mudwing groups who'd survived the wasp invasion, help them set up a defense network, then high-tail it back home where he belonged, hopefully before the kingdom collapsed, or his soldiers succumbed to starvation.
Being pragmatic didn't mean he couldn't plan for the future.
Written June 23rd, 2020 – July 9th, 2020.
Published July 12th, 2020.
