AN: Apologies for the delay. This was supposed to come out a week ago, and be longer than it is now. I've been busy as heck. If I maintain a good writing pace I can get another one out in the next couple weeks here. I'm... not happy with this one. I can do better.
Many thanks to WhatDidIDoToGetHere for his continued support. Here's a cookie (::) for first review. Can I get a nickname for ya? I want a nickname, your screen name is way too long to type all the time.
As always, let me know what you think in the review box. It only takes a few minutes, and I'm happy to hear it :)
They came across a rag-tag formation on their way to Lastka, five or six dragons at most, beaten and bruised and burned, dragons flying off-balance as if some of their wing membranes had been torn to shreds. They were coming from the north-east, headed west as if traveling to Pinion, where third company had just come from.
"Hail!" cried their leader. "Where are you bound!?"
The shout echoed in the valley, breaking through the ever-present Hivewing hum.
"To Lastka," said Byrd. "Pinion was razed. The enemy hit it this morning. Where are you from?"
"Hill forty-one thirty," said the Hivewing. His tail drooped, and his scales were marred and scraped – injuries from a panicked scuffle, Chervil thought, not anything serious. "They're all gone, we're the only ones left. They're demons, fucking freaks."
"They're as dragon as the rest of us," said Byrd. "Was that this morning?"
The Hivewing nodded, tail lashing nervously. "It's the trees," he said. "They came from the fucking trees, ass-crack of dawn and first thing I know half of us are on fire and the other half are about to be. Shot one with a dart an' he didn't give a shit."
Byrd raised his talon, stopping the soldier's rant. "I've been in combat, I know. So you ran off and came here. Like I said, we're going to Lastka. It's harder to take down. Bigger garrison. More sentries, more patrols. We'll head there and join up with our friendlies."
The Hivewing took a shaky breath. "We'll go with you," he said.
As if he had a choice, Chervil thought. Tremors ran down the dragon's legs, and though he must have fled hours ago his yellow pupils were still dilated from fear; as if the ground had fallen out from underneath him, his concepts of how the world worked shattered like so much tinted glass. The quiet front had suddenly exploded, and they weren't ready. Byrd said they were going to Lastka, and the Hivewings hung on to that hope like drowning rats.
It bothered him that he'd seen that expression before, but it didn't surprise him. Byrd's third was two companies – one at the front, one in the grave, a unit where hope was a rare commodity; more precious than food, as vital as water, and as fragile as a candle-flame. Chervil saw it rekindle in the soldier's eyes,and sighed. He'd find out if his hope was warranted soon enough.
"What's your name?" he asked. Might as well attach a name to the face.
"Durzal," said the Hivewing.
He introduced his companions, and then they set off.
The men hardly talked on the way to Lastka. It was too loud to carry a conversation without getting up in the other guy's face, or shouting so hard that a dragon's voice turned hoarse and painful after about five sentences. The guys from hill forty-one thirty looked dead ahead, dragging behind, numb from shock. Chervil's eyes skimmed over the landscape, his weary gaze skipping over terrain features, then coming back to examine them more closely, exhausted, his mind moving too slowly to keep up. He'd been on the front line since he got here, either fighting or about to be fighting, sleeping half nights, every night, watching as more and more friends from boot camp died and unfamiliar faces took their place. Their training took all the fat off their bodies, but now their scales were showing bone.
At some point it all became too much, but Chervil hadn't gotten there, not yet. So he kept his eyes moving, and he kept flying.
The sharp ridges and snowy mountain peaks flattened as they headed towards Lastka, green, open country sprawling in front of him as far as the eye could see, the landscape turning blue at the horizon. Town laid straight ahead, perhaps ten miles out, the journey made slightly longer by the light headwind coming out of the east. Chervil spotted a small, wispy cloud to his right, dark and moving at a right angle to the wind. What a weird sight, he thought. Kind of looked like the Hivewing regiments when they got together for combat exercises that one time.
Wait.
"Contact!" he shouted. "Front right! Far!"
Byrd quickly raised his spyglass, trying to get visual identification. The naked eye could only see so far without losing detail, and Chervil squinted trying to figure out if the formation was Hivewing.
"Enemy!" shouted Byrd, his voice rising over the Hivewing hum. "Headed for town!"
Chervil grimaced. To show up this well from that far out, the soots had to have a couple hundred dragons at least. So they'd found the culprits for whoever razed Pinion – he sure hoped so. To have one enemy unit capable of razing a Hivewing FOB was bad enough, to have multiple brigades rampaging behind the lines was a level of bad he didn't want to think about, soldiers mustered hardly a month after the Hivewing invasion had begun.
The enemy was not a gazelle getting run down by the Hivewing hunters, he was a wounded tiger fading into the jungle, turning every so often to lash out at his pursuers.
"We might be able to make it before they reach Lastka," observed Byrd.
And if they stayed away from the protection of their friendlies, the enemy might just come after Byrd's small formation and wipe them out.
"It's our best shot," Chervil agreed.
With the town dead ahead, and the soots coming up out of the south, they might reach Lastka before the enemy… and woe to them if they didn't.
"Full speed ahead!" ordered Byrd, and Chervil poured on the coals.
Exhaustion tore at him, sapping his strength, but he pushed through it with fear, the fear that kept him aloft on the trip to this alien continent, driving him ever onward. His wingbeats ate up the miles, the enemy drawing closer and closer on his right, headed towards the town. Lastka sat on the top of a green hill, ethereal fields surrounding it in the lowlands, with a stream flowing past it on the north side. He saw dragons moving about on the ground there, glanced at the soots and saw their red scales in the summer light, the same color as red brick. A chill went down his spine. He hated being afraid.
But at the end of the day, fear let him know he was still sane.
They tore over the treeline at a record pace. Chervil did a victory roll as he came in to the landing field, flipping himself upside down so that the ground became the sky, and the sky to the ground, puffy clouds floating below / above him like as if they were reflections in a glassy sea. Then he rolled over the right way and touched down – spending too much time inverted made him want to puke.
A dragon raced out to greet them, rank bars indicating that he was an officer.
"Hail!" he shouted, "who is this, and where is your commander?"
Chervil saw Byrd hesitate.
"I'm in charge," said Byrd, "staff sergeant Byrd, third company. Brought some survivors over from Pinion."
"You got here just in time," said the Hivewing lieutenant, addressing Byrd. Chervil hadn't gotten his name yet, remembered him by his long, narrow, horse-looking face. "You and – who is it?"
"Staff Sergeant Horn, sir," said the fourth company commander.
"Right. We'll fold you in with the one eleventh in town. You'll be my battalion's plus two," said the lieutenant. He turned and Chervil saw his silver bar. "Follow me, we'll get you a building. Just fold in with my fellows for now."
"Aye, sir," said Byrd.
The lieutenant looked askance at Durzal and the four other dragons accompanying him. "These your guys, or non-combat personnel?"
"They're with us now, sir," said Byrd. "Survivors from an outpost that got wiped out."
The Hivewing lieutenant nodded, and didn't ask any more questions. He introduced himself as Juneau, and his subordinate as second lieutenant Kugan.
Somewhere along the line a couple of lieutenants showed up, escorted the civilians and non-combat personnel to one of the underground storehouses in town. Chervil watched the Silkwing go, limping along on three talons, her scales pale and dirty and dusty. Their eyes met for a moment, and he realized that he'd never gotten her name.
A dragon clapped him on the shoulder. "Hurry up," said Talon, "quit makin' big eyes and let's roll."
Chervil nodded. "Coming."
Third company quickly set up shop in a barn next to a battalion of line brigade pukes, more of a livestock stable, with a large, roofed area in the back to hold animals and supplies, and doors in the front under eaves, for what purpose he did not know.
By now the Skywings were soaring directly over the town, so high up that Chervil strained his neck looking up at the multitude of enemies menacing the sky. He was in combat gear, of course; stripped of his extra duffel bags to lighten the load, carrying his trusty spear and a dart shooter, even though he hadn't used one in weeks. He carried water and a pouch full of darts, but that was all. More Hivewings gathered in the town and in the grassy fields surrounding it, dragons in the 111th, 112th, and 113th brigades gearing up for battle. They took extra compared to third company; corpsman duffles, extra ammunition, javelins, even armored greaves.
For the first time, Chervil realized that the grassy fields around the Skywing towns weren't just for livestock; the air was hot and dry, with a brisk wind blowing up out of the lowlands to the east. A spark would be enough to ignite the brush, and then the mountains would go up in an all-consuming wildfire the likes of which no Hivewing had ever seen. The fields functioned as a firebreak for that emergency. Lastka would survive if the enemy set the woods ablaze, but he guessed that the enemy might try it anyway.
The Hivewings covered the ground like ants, and the Skywings clouded the sky like locusts, too high to fight, or perhaps even to reach.
"Clearsight's book," gasped Seagrass, "they're out to get us this time."
"Maybe," said Chervil. He looked left, east towards the underground warren where they'd left the Silkwing for safekeeping. "It won't be easy for them."
He panted, tongue lolling out to relieve the torrid heat. Even the breeze brought little relief, the whispering lowland wind blowing waves of warm air across his scales, bringing the stench of town's manure and piss and rot along with it. He almost preferred the chill, thin atmosphere of the mountains.
A ballista crew tended to their weapon under the eaves of a barn not far away, the oversized crossbow pointed as far up as they could tilt it, with a dragon standing by the winch in case he was needed. The bow was around the length of a cow, had limbs the thickness of his forearm, drawn back by the winch. He guessed it wouldn't do much, but it did let the defenses reach out and touch the enemy from the ground. Doom hung in the air.
"See anything?" Chervil asked Byrd, who was lifting the spyglass towards the sky.
"Couple signaliers, can't tell what the flags mean," said the sergeant.
Like the Hivewings' northern armies, the enemy used signal flags for large-scale coordination; bright, visible sails of cloth carried by dragons trained in the task. But where the friendlies used sails of cloth on poles, the enemy brought pinnets, streams of colored cloth trailing behind Skywings in the enemy formation. They changed them up as he watched, dragons circling overhead, making wide circles with whole battalions.
They couldn't stay up there forever.
Something had to give.
A battalion detached from the Skywings circling overhead, dragons in diamonds and clusters of diamonds and then strings of clusters, spiraling towards the town. Chervil swallowed, his mouth going dry, his scarred, melted scales presenting an unforgettable reminder of the pain even a single soot could dish out. Shouts went up from the field, the gathered Hivewings cantering towards the town at a fast clip, seeking the shelter of the stone buildings. The ballista crew wound up the winch, axles creaking as the loader cranked, muscles bulging as he fought the enormous draw.
Chervil raised his dart shooter, slotting the claw-length, pointed dart into the receiver. Its edge stripped off the safety silk, which fell to the ground in shreds. Now the weapon could not be unloaded without firing it into the ground to avoid dealing with the deadly poison. Deadly to Hivewings, at least. He'd seen too many soots shrug off a hit to put much trust in his weapon.
The ballista slotted in place with a loud click, and the loader dropped a bolt in the groove.
"General quarters!" shouted a Hivewing lieutenant. "Every dragon knows his duty!"
They did, but third company did not. Hivewings hunkered down in every building, under every eave, in the windows and the barns, even on the open ground, their orange stripes changing the landscape into a speckled carpet, studded with color. They crowded the main thoroughfare, waiting. Chervil leaned his right side on the nearby wall, supporting his arm so he could keep his dart shooter raised to the sky.
More soots streamed down, carrying cylindrical objects under their bellies, brown and round, perhaps three times longer than they were wide, secured to their hosts at arm's length, with a nasty, sinister vane at their rear. One soot unhooked the device, breathed fire on its end and a flickering flame started up, impervious to the wind, streams of thin, black smoke trailing behind his flight path. Other dragons did the same, till the whole formation was carrying burning torches.
"Fools," scoffed Talon, "they can't burn their own town, it's made of brick."
"Hush," said Byrd.
"Volley fire, fire on order!" cried the lieutenant. "Not a second before!"
Instead of each dragon choosing a time to shoot, they would all fire their darts at the same time. Chervil saw the enemy's brightly colored signalier in the lead, judged that many of his fellow Hivewings would go for that target and shifted his mental aim to the dragon behind. Shooting straight up wasn't wise, he thought. The darts could come back down.
"Incoming!" Byrd shouted.
The Skywings dropped their torches, the long cylinders falling to earth more slowly than Chervil had anticipated, coming down straight instead of tumbling. This close, he saw that the mysterious material was merely fibrous, flammable material and rope lashed together to form a shape, with bulbous, spherical forms packed into the middle space of the cylinder. Thick, green fumes billowed out from their centers. Smoke bombs? He could think of no other purpose.
Their mission complete, the Skywing battalion flared their wings and began to pull out of their shallow dive run, far out of range of the Hivewings gathered below.
"Fire!" cried one of the dragons on the ballista crew.
Chervil started, almost blowing his dart shooter even though he knew the call did not come from the lieutenant-commander. Others were not so discerning. A massed hiss went up among the Hivewings on the ground, a long ssschraaaach sounding in his ears as dragons shot at the enemy directly overhead, then reached for another round. The ballista went off with a thunk, its lone bolt arcing into the sky, missing behind the enemy, and then vanishing into the ether.
"Not a second before!" cried the lieutenant.
"In cover, now!" demanded Byrd.
Third company crammed into the stables and through the barn door, Chervil among the hasty rush to put something solid between him and the sky: and not a moment too soon, for the instant the flaming Skywing bundles touched down a shower of darts fell to the earth, cracking when they found stone, sticking tail up out of the ground when they fell into packed dirt.
"You'd think they'd know that wasn't a good idea," remarked Talon, looking at a dart that had fallen face-down in the street, leaking grey-green ooze onto the dirt.
"Combat nerves," said Chervil.
He remembered how jittery he'd been during his first fight, how tempting it was to just let 'er rip. For a dragon in his first or second battle, panic was always close at hand.
A horrified screech emanated from the other side of the street; a dragon with a score ripped down his flank by a falling round, blood pouring out of the minor wound. One of fourth company's men. His friends rushed over to him, digging in their duffels for a blood clotter, their forms blurring as smoke drifted into the street. Flaming cord and dirty ash rained down between him and the other side of the street, dusting the dragons with grey powder as they worked. They tipped a small bottle and poured some of the anti-venin concoction down his throat. Sergeant Horn cursed in the background, pacing back and forth as he threw helpless glances at the skies.
"Poor fucker," said Talon.
He'd live. The poison caused severe bleeding in Hivewings, could kill a soldier in a single hit if left untreated. But that was with a square hit, and this one wasn't so bad.
A messenger landed next to one of the burning enemy devices, signal flags tucked into his harness. He cast a nervous glance at the smoking bundle, then fluttered his wings to clear the worst haze away.
"Where is the battalion commander!?" he shouted.
"Here," said Lieutenant Juneau, stepping forwards. "What news?"
"Captain's orders a -"
And then the street blew up. The loud bang deafened Chervil, followed by muffled whumps as smoke and fire consumed the open space, debris cracking and spanging off the walls. The detonations ended as swiftly as they came, and his hearing slowly crept back to him, dragons shouting at a distance, sound muffled as if he were underwater, all while a low, ascending whine irritated him.
"Report!" a dragon roared, "Report!"
Chervil looked up, seeing Hivewings lying around, dazed, shocked, but alive.
"We're alright!" he said, "Sarge! How are you?"
Byrd picked himself up off the ground; they had taken shelter in a walk-in livestock barn, with several street-side openings leading to indoor pens. "I'm right here," he said, only a couple paces away.
"Somebody get the crew that beat us up, I wanna send my regards," said Talon. His mouth moved as if he was shouting, but he sounded quiet. "Moons!"
"Anyone hurt!?" asked Byrd.
"Lil stung but ain't much," called private Mombasa. "Few scratches."
Chervil looked over, seeing the claw-length spine sticking out of the other dragon's shoulder. "Ain't scratches! You're hit!"
Mombasa looked down. "Ah hell."
"Kintledge, Daring, Bluegrass, handle any injuries. Everyone check yourself for hits," ordered Byrd. "Chervil, let's get a read on what happened outside."
Chervil looked out into the street, up towards where the explosions had happened. Despite the magnitude of the noise, nothing had been destroyed; the buildings still stood tall, their sturdy construction impervious to the new Skywing weapon. But the messenger lay groaning in the street, blood trickling from shrapnel wounds in his flank. Spines stuck out like needles in a pincushion, buried halfway into the muscle, or leaving pinhole wounds where they had burrowed into softer flesh. Lt. Juneau rolled in the dirt nearby, roaring and clutching at his face.
"He's done," said Chervil.
"Maybe," said Byrd. "He's not bleeding out."
"They could use another kind of poison," said Chervil.
Still, he followed Byrd out to the middle of the street.
"Hey! Hey!" he shouted.
The lieutenant kept thrashing, crying out, heedless to Byrd and Chervil. Mindful of the little time they had, Byrd and Chervil grabbed the two, dragged them into cover where they could triage the wounds.
"Moons," Seagrass said, "he's got spines all over him."
Chervil paused.
"Which one?"
And Seagrass shrugged.
Of the two Hivewings, the messenger had the most spines in him, but Juneau had it worst. The blast had caught him in the eyes, popping them like soap bubbles; Chervil looked into them and saw only two oozing, bloody sockets, twisting and writhing as the poor dragon tried to control what was left. He shivered and averted his eyes. The unpleasant barn smells faded away, replaced by the iron tang of the murky Hivewing ichor, the dusty scent of dirty dragons and piercing dread.
Dragons staggered on the other side of the street, moaning as if they expected the world to come to an end. Mombasa picked at his shoulder, expecting the poison to kick in soon, hoping it wouldn't kill him They didn't know what kind of venom the enemy had put on the spines, but they had to. It just made sense.
Chervil fought to keep his breathing steady, knowing he was one of the lucky ones, knowing that could change. Despite all his combat experience he stood rooted to the ground, frozen. He had participated in half a dozen small unit battles, had watched his fellow Hivewings die around him, sometimes in droves, but he had never fought in a large-scale battle like this before.
-0o0-
Meanwhile, Byrd rushed from point to point; observing the enemy in the air one moment, surveying his company the next. Lieutenant Reggan's words suddenly came back to him, having aged like fine milk.
'The enemy aren't Hivewings,' he had said. 'We can beat them.'
He'd died less than a week later. Third company survived, for now, fighting a vicious counterattack that had come like lightning from a blue sky.
A Hivewing from the one-eleventh popped into the barn.
"How is the lieutenant?" he asked.
"Out of action," reported Byrd. "Who's the second in command?"
"I am, sir," said the Hivewing: this must be second lieutenant Kugan, his small silver bars marking his rank. He had wide eyes, and his breath came at a ragged pant. "Any ideas?"
Byrd paused, at a loss. He was a sergeant, not even an officer, and now a dragon outside his chain of command was asking him what to do.
"I suggest you get in contact with headquarters, explain our situation," he said.
"Right," said Kugan. "Clearsight's book, this is a mess."
"Better get out and fix it," said Byrd, subtly reminding the 2-LT to get out of the way. Sergeants pushing officers around; in combat the world turned on its head.
Command thought his unit had received whatever messsage their courier had brought, and would expect them to act on orders they could not possibly have acknowledged. That would introduce even more chaos to the already unorganized mess in the town, and to avoid that he needed to reestablish lines of communication.
But that took time he didn't have.
"Please! Arghhhhh!"
Screams and groans drifted from the back, the blinded lieutenant crying for help, for death, for relief, for his mother. Byrd had always known the cliché that dying dragons called for mom, had dismissed it before he came to the army. But it became a cliché because it was true.
"Hey sarge, they're coming back," said Chervil.
"Shit!" shouted Talon.
"We'll be alright, just don't go out on the street," ordered Byrd. He wondered if this time the enemy would bring something more substantial.
Moons. There were about a thousand soldiers in town, against maybe seven or eight hundred Skywings, and yet the Skywings were flying circles around the hives. And worse, staying in place was the best course of action; waiting for the enemy to come down so the superior hivewing numbers could swarm them and do some damage. Only if the enemy was smart, they never would.
"They wanna see if we'll come out and play," judged Chervil, looking up.
Byrd came over to take a gander for himself.
Skywings streamed down from the heavens, a different group this time, equipped with spears and bandoliers wrapped round their chests. The spears didn't worry him, their firebreath did. Defending against a Skywing at street level didn't mean keeping him at arm's length, it meant either getting up in his grills so close that he couldn't breathe fire for fear of hurting himself, or standing off at long range to pelt him with darts. But in urban fighting, neither was always possible.
A few dragons lit bundles on fire, then tossed them down to the streets as they descended… right towards Byrd's position. There had to be a hundred of them, vicious, lethal – and outnumbered.
"Incoming!" shouted Chervil. "On us."
"Aw, hell no," said Seagrass.
If they could survive the initial onslaught, they'd be alright, Byrd thought. There were too many friendlies down here for it to go otherwise. So why would the Skywings even try?
The enemy explosives crashed to earth, landing on streets, discarded carts, rooftops. One landed next to the doorstep, forcing third company inside. The doorframe provided cover from the eventual blast, but any standing underneath the eaves of the stable would be eviscerated when it went off. Another hit dirt a dozen yards from the ballista crew, breaking in half. The fire flared, the bundle hissed and then it blew up with an earshattering kaboom, shards spanging off surfaces in the street.
"Archers, line up!" cried Byrd. "Load!"
Most had already reloaded, but a few forgot in the heat of combat. Shredded silk strips wafted to the floor as the kneeling Hivewings slammed in new darts, panting, arms shaking. They had one volley when the enemy came in the door, and then they would be at his mercy.
But the Skywings avoided the street.
They landed on the slanted rooftops, scrabbling across the shingles, their red claws visible to Byrd when they came down to the lower parts of the roofs. If not for the still-burning weapon at the door, he would've ordered his men out to shoot at the exposed enemy up above.
A Hivewing leaned out the window on the far side, targeting the enemy on Byrd's side of the street.
"Duck!" shouted Byrd.
Talon signals flashed among the enemy, and a dragon instantly dropped to the ledge, craning his neck down to the window. Their gazes met for a moment, and then the Skywing belched fire, sheets of flame washing over the Hivewing point-blank, heat waves rolling off the stone. The hive's diaphanous wings shrunk like a dessicating leaf, then caught alight, burning, drooping as the dragon screamed. He tumbled out the window as a flaming wreck, his bones cracking when he hit the dirt, alive, rolling on the ground, smoke and steam bubbling from his ruined scales.
Darts snapped off the stone next to the Skywing, perforating him. He flinched and fell back, covered by a sudden explosion at the door Byrd was standing behind. BOOM. Dust flared up, gravel and spines falling to the ground like hail, a Hivewing screeching and cussing in the background, dragons bawling.
"Get in cover!" Byrd roared, frustrated.
Rule number one of street fighting; stay out of the streets.
A light thump suddenly sounded on the roof, scratching and scraping noises coming down from the ceiling as dragons tore up the shingles. Chervil spoke at Byrd, his voice coming to Byrd's ears as nothing more than a whisper. The explosions still rang in his head, a persistent white whine that refused to go away.
"What!?" he shouted.
"Orders sir!?"
"Is there a loft?"
"Yeah!"
"Have second cover it!" Byrd shouted, meaning the roughly ten dragons in Talon's group. "Don't go out the windows! We'll hold the door!"
They would if they could, he thought, but Skywing fire made his position precarious. If a determined company of soots decided to take this building, it would all be over. Dust and straw sprinkled down in the barn, Hivewings clambering up to the loft with their spears secured in their flight harnesses, breathing hard.
A few dragons in the one-eleventh had holed up in the building next to him, Byrd thought. If he could get in contact with those guys he could send for help. Yet with the enemy covering all the doors, getting a messenger out would be a death sentence.
Heartbeats piled up on heartbeats, Hivewings glancing at the roof, above them, all around them, their ears cocked to the scratching of the enemy above.
"We're all fucked," muttered Durzal.
"Maaaaan, shut up," retorted Chervil. "You've never had it so good! Our competitors are even redoing the roof for free."
"It was a good roof before we got here," said Seagrass. "And there's no such thing as a free lunch."
Chervil stuck out his tongue. "Free's free, and this ain't lunch so what's your point?"
Dragons chuckled, and Byrd let it go this time.
The fighting fell into a lull, vague hisses and shouts coming from above as the enemy yelled back and forth, while Hivewings on the ground did the same, scuffling and moving and taking the occasional potshot at the soots above.
"Any day now," Seagrass grumbled. "When will the line brigades come do their job?"
"We've got everything under control, no assistance needed," Chervil deadpanned. "Our guys can keep playing cards."
Scuffles, scratches, listening, a pause, more rustling above, a rush, a long silence. In combat the past and future ceased to exist, there was no tomorrow, only the now. He panted, short, swift breaths cooling him off in the hot, humid weather. The soldiers' body heat swiftly filled the building, turned it into a torrid, blazingly hot mess. His mouth felt dry. Private Daring and a few of the others in the loft fluttered their wings to move the air around up there, and it helped, a stiflingly warm breeze drifting across his scales. Finally Byrd heard shouting from his right, the buzz of wings as dragons came from deeper inside the city.
"Thank the moons," said Seagrass.
The private creeped towards the door, intent on looking outside. Byrd barred the way with an outstretched arm.
"Don't," he said. He looked at the other side of the street, towards one of Horn's men peering through a window. "Are we clear!?" he shouted.
The soldier shook his head, pointing towards Byrd's doorway and a bit to the right, holding up his talons, one, two, three. There were soots at the doorstep, waiting for the Hivewings to come out.
Byrd nodded his thanks, and just then he heard a thunk from above, and a bolt zipped down from the roof so fast it looked like a blur, drilling into the Hivewing's forehead like a tent spike driving through sand. The dragon's neck jerked up and he stumbled backwards without a cry, jaw flopping uselessly as it waited for commands that would never come.
Seagrass flinched.
"Couldn't let you go out like that," said Byrd.
The younger soldier let out a breath, then nodded.
Dragons shouted above him, and suddenly he heard a rush as the enemy leaped off into the air, leaving as quickly as they had come. The Skywings stacked up in front of the barn left too, fleeing. About half a minute later, an excited Kugan dashed in through the door – the same guy that Byrd had pushed around a little while ago, he remembered. He had big ears and an underbite that had two fangs sticking upwards on either side of his mouth.
"Great news!" Kugan shouted.
Chervil muttered from somewhere behind Byrd. "Now this I gotta see."
"Command says we're going on the offensive," exclaimed the 2-LT. "Get your company ready and get moving."
Byrd stared at him. If he was a Leafwing he would've called this guy a plant.
"That's not a great idea," he pointed out. "That's the orders?"
The second lieutenant brushed him off. "Orders is orders. Don't you want to kill a few of the enemy, sergeant?"
Oh moons, Byrd thought. The guy had bought into his own superiority so hard he barely even flinched at the destruction going on in front of him.
"Yes, sir," he droned, sounding as excited as he felt.
"Glad to hear it," said Kugan. "We'll put those uppity scum back in the dirt, just you wait."
Killing soots took a back seat to staying alive, and Byrd figured his company felt the same. But arguing with an officer was a sure way to get thrown in the cooler, and then who would take charge?
"Sir, what about the casualties?" Chervil questioned.
Clearsight's book, the poor lieutenant, Byrd thought. "Two serious casualties in the back, including lieutenant Juneau," he reported. "Got a corpsman?"
Kugan shook his head. "He's busy."
Byrd turned around.
"Secure for flight!" he ordered. "Everything in harness and ready to buzz, we're going , stay back and hold until we get a corpsman in here."
"Aye, sir."
"We got a ORP on that?" he asked Kugan, wanting to know the organized rally point command had picked to stage their attack.
"Over the center of town, can't miss it," said the second lieutenant.
"Sir!" shouted another dragon, "are we taking up our armor!?"
"You shouldn't," cut in Byrd. "There's no point."
"I'll figure it out," said the second lieutenant. He turned and cantered off down the street, towards the line brigade dragons jogging up from the south.
With everything already rigged for combat, his dragons had little to tie down. Byrd couldn't shake the feeling that this was a terrible idea; for the sake of going on the offense, he was about to leave the security of the defensible buildings and streets and head into the air, where they had nowhere to hide.
The line brigade dragons did a good job forming up. They had trained for this, and they swiftly grouped into company-sized diamonds near the ground, the diamond echelons stacking together to form a rough circle scores of spans wide and just as long. No matter which direction the enemy attacked from, they would never find a weakened corner in the one eleventh.
The air hummed as third company took to the skies, climbing up towards the Hivewings swarming from the southern end of town. He struggled to comprehend the numbers at play – the columns of Hivewing soldiers rising into the sky, spears glinting, their outlines breaking up from the dazzling orange and black stripes on their exposed scales, which felt strange to Byrd. The line brigades wore woven cloth layers over their bodies when training at home, protective jerkins designed to take the blow of an incoming dart and prevent it from breaking through the scale with its deadly payload. But those flammable garments were worthless here, worse than worthless. At least someone in their officer corps had gotten the right idea.
"Where's Durzal?" asked Chervil. "Did he miss the order?"
"Dunno, I didn't see him come up with us when we went up, he could've gotten lost," said Byrd. Or he could havehung back on purpose, but that went unsaid.
"Think we should call it in?"
Byrd shook his head. "After the battle," he said.
He looked around; Durzal indeed had gone missing from the ranks of third company, and he wasn't with fourth as far as Byrd could see, watching Horn straggle up behind, the disorganized dragons still reeling from the Skywing ground attack. The afternoon sun had started to set in the west, its blazing disc near to the far-off, blue-tinted peaks, golden rays beaming down to the landscape. Lastka cast a long shadow on the valley beneath it, the grassy pastures like an island in the vast forest.
"They're coming round!" shouted Chervil.
Not yet up to the level of the line brigades mustering overhead, Byrd could only watch as the enemy moved, dragons breaking off from the left side as they turned towards the one-eleventh, then more and more coming to follow. Were those bundles slung underneath them?
They would be useless up in the air, he thought. They took too long to go off, would barely do anything when falling through a formation. And the weight of their payloads had made them heavier, which must have been the reason why third company beat the Skywings into town. Still the enemy came on overhead, and he grew nervous.
The Skywing group that had landed and attacked had faded away to the south, fast and low. These dragons carried different gear, still had their altitude with them, an advantage as good as having the wind at their back. The side with the wind gauge spent less energy attacking, could carry their momentum onwards and escape if they needed to. That went double with height, and Byrd's mouth went dry as he saw the enemy sweep in.
Signals flashed above, and the center of the Hivewing formation fell back, enticing the Skywings to follow. It was a maneuver straight out of the book, the bait to an envelopment, and Byrd figured the enemy would never fall for it; their troops had ranged from untrained to uncannily competent during this campaign, and these ones had been competent so far.
"Fix spears! Pass it down!" Byrd ordered. If an enemy group suddenly detached to hit the straggling third company, he wanted his guys to be prepared.
The flapping sound of hundreds of wingbeats filled the air as the Skywing battalions tested the waters. They played it safe above the Hivewing brigades, which had become columns and columns of striped soldiers kitted for war, spears bristling outwards as the inner archers awaited the order to fire.
And then Byrd saw a Skywing raise a horn high, and a second later its long, clear note cut through the seething Hivewing hum, which had become more like an elemental roar, similar to the deep crashing of a watefall or the screaming of the mountain wind ripping through the piercing horn carried like brass playing over war drums, turning every soldier's a certain point he stopped seeing them all individually, saw a red mass rolling over and diving towards the Hivewing one-eleventh brigade on the far right of the formation, still a hundred feet above him and perhaps a hundred yards away, with the sun to his right, and the Skywings coming in above it.
He shielded his face with his talon so he could see better, and realized the enemy were blinding the Hivewing archers with the sun's glare, so they couldn't shoot.
It was the best dive run he'd ever seen.
Moons, he thought, the world wasn't meant for so many dragons in one place.
"Look at em go!" Chervil shouted. "There's more coming in behind them!"
Flying on Byrd's right side and farther out to the edge of third company, Chervil had a better view of the action. The Skywings dropped like stones, their wings held close to their sides, eating up the distance in a flash as they came closer and spread out to fill up his entire vision. They did not carry bundles, they carried long, shallow crates with ripcords attached, jostling in the harness as they dove. Moons! Would they dive too fast and wind up slamming into the dirt?
At the last second they pulled the ripcords, the bottoms fell off the boxes and silvery things poured out, like darts shooting through the air, only these ones fell into the one-eleventh and tore through the dragons there.
Dragons screamed, reeling, falling out of the sky. They had kept a tight formation, almost wing to wing, and its jam-packed nature worked against them. Those on the top layer had it worst, Hivewings spiraling out of the sky, or flying awkwardly, coppery blood scent instantly clogging Byrd's nostrils.
He snorted to clear them out, inhaled and smelled more blood.
And there were still more coming.
The Hivewing right flank staggered, shedding dragons every second, units falling into disarray. And why shouldn't they? A dense brigade was meat for the grinder, and yet a scattered one would fall piecemeal to a determined attack – like the one coming in from the Skywings following the original group.
The last of the Skywing force poured down on the right flank, catching the one twelfth and thirteenth brigades out of position, unable to come to their friendlies' aid in time, with third company isolated away from even the stricken one-eleventh, his dragons like low-hanging fruit ripe for the picking.
Byrd felt the order to scatter come to his lips, held it back with force of will. Panic would only get him killed.
"With me!" he yelled. "Beneath the enemy! Go, go, go!"
He changed course, seeking to fly directly beneath the incoming Skywings, so that if they sought to attack him they would have to cancel their sideways movement and plunge straight down to the ground at speeds far faster than any Hivewing could attain. Even if they pulled up, he doubted they'd hit his dragons with their iron rain.
Dragons hesitated, then fell in behind him, still shocked by the destruction. What a moons-damned mess. Go up and kill a few Skywings, the hell with that, Byrd thought.
As a last minute plan, he could drop to the town's street, but doing such would completely isolate him from the rest of the Hivewings, could lead to the entire unit being exterminated.
The remainder of the Skywing force plunged into the one-eleventh while it was still separated from the pack, passing over third company entirely. Entire companies scattered as the Skywings bore down on them, dragons fearing the iron rain more than their officers. But none came. The enemy threw javelins down as they passed, a wall of them rushing towards the beleauguered Hives; shots went up from the friendly archers, and all seemed to miss. The Skywings still had the benefit of the sun.
"Space out," ordered Byrd, "give me two spans, spears up. Give everyone the word."
"Aye, sir!"
"Stick with us and you'll make it!" cried Chervil.
Byrd turned again, closing with the Hivewing brigades flying in from the north, and the relative safety they provided. Fourth company followed him, with staff sergeant Horn at the head.
The moment the fight turned into a chaotic melee, the Hivewings would lose. The enemy strike forces split apart from each other and looped back towards the stricken one-eleventh, one battalion dipping below the Hivewings and yielding the altitude gauge for the first time. Not that it mattered.
And yet in the twenty-odd seconds it took the enemy to pull back around, the other brigades reached the one-eleventh, dragons pouring in, spears and dartguns at the ready, hundreds, nay, nearly a thousand dragons clustered together with glinting spears. Red battle flags trailed at the rear of each battalion, the roaring hum rising to a crescendo. Suddenly the balance swayed in favor of the line brigades.
Suddenly, Byrd's forces looked like a target.
His heart dropped into his stomach as an enemy battalion swerved and turned for him, with over two hundred yards separating him from the nearest friendlies: his maneuvers had bought him safety the first time, but not the second. The enemy force coming towards him had over a hundred dragons, yet third and fourth combined barely had seventy.
Byrd whipped out his spyglass, catching a glance of the enemy's bellies: they had abandoned the crates entirely, wore no payload at the waist.
"Hold!" he ordered, "Stay close!"
One half of the Skywing force swung wide, flying between Byrd and the friendly brigades, whilst the other charged head-on. Byrd cursed inside. Stupid, stupid! He had blundered by straying away from the brigades.
They must stick together, he thought grimly.
And then the Skywings closed the distance, and a sea of red filled his vision.
"Hold fire! Hold!" he shouted. "Archers, behind the spears!"
The enemy drifted by fifty or sixty yards away, skirting the range of the Hivewing archers whilst flitting close, tempting dragons to shoot.
"Below!" warned Chervil.
Dragons closed from the front, while more Skywings swirled about the sides of the formation. He was exposed, no cover, his heart working triple-time. Darts zipped through the air, archers in the center fumbling as their shaking talons reached for new rounds. The Skywings hesitated, as if surprised that their charge had not scattered the Hivewing force, each dragon hesitant to attack for fear of being the first to meet the sharp spears pointing outwards from the formation.
Hold, Byrd thought grimly.
A Skywing leveled a crossbow at him out the corner of his eye. Byrd struggled to react -
"DUCK!" Chervil shouted.
He slanted over right, and darts zipped out behind him, archers firing on the closest Skywing. Moons! The Skywing fired on the move, and the crossbow bolt arced past Byrd and vanished into the ether, passing where his chest had been a moment ago.
Too close.
Then an enemy officer barked orders and the dragons below and the dragons in front closed in all at once, not letting loose their fire, not yet. At high speed, the wind would blow it back into their faces.
"FIRE!" Byrd ordered.
With so many dragons charging in, the Hivewings could hardly miss. His heart sank as he saw two, three, four Skywings take a hit and keep coming, brandishing spears and long billhooks. Some rolled over and dived down, spiking back up from underneath.
Suddenly Byrd glanced and saw a Skywing in his peripherals, dropping from above. He twisted his spear towards the enemy and saved his life; the shafts bounced off each other and the soot kept going, sliding away from Byrd's rear-foot slash.
Death passed over him in an instant.
Head in the fight.
Skywings pressed up so close that the Hivewings couldn't shoot for fear of hitting their own soldiers. One flared his wings in front of Byrd, opening his maw. Byrd jinked, the flames sparking off and then gushing past his side.
He can't see me. Not while he's blazing away, thought Byrd. Heat brazed his scales closest to the stream of fire, but he lived.
He swiftly changed direction and rolled in underneath the Skywing, head on a swivel. The flames petered out, the Skywing wheeled towards Byrd, whipping out his long, evil billhook – and then a Hivewing planted his spear in the dragon's back, cudgeling him aside with a sharp kick.
The Skywing screamed, red blood spraying, redder than his wings that limply folded to his sides as gravity took him and he fell, revealing private Seagrass.
Byrd looked him in the eyes, acknowledging thanks, saw Seagrass looking at something behind him and jinked in time to avoid a lazily thrown javelin flashing by.
The battle still raged – his dragons huddled together like buffalo against circling hyenas – and Skywings surged around him – he flew closer to Seagrass, ordering the young private to stay close, no matter what – and a soot dived down towards Chervil, spear plunging for the unsuspecting Hivewing's back.
"LOOK OUT!" Byrd bellowed.
Chervil turned and the Skywing caught him on the shoulder, the two dragons tumbling down towards the town below, fighting each other as they plunged. Oh, moons. He's going to die.
"Sarge! Sarge!" Seagrass yelled. Byrd turned, his thoughts moving like molasses. "We gotta get back to the company!"
Byrd felt sick, let the private practically drag him towards the fighting Hivewings above him, the maelstrom of snarls and teeth and fire.
"What now!?" yelled Seagrass.
"Stay alive!" said Byrd.
They could only try.
He'd dropped out of the formation for mere seconds, yet Skywings swarmed third company, long tongues of fire reaching out, burning everything they touched. The flames dispersed quicker in the air, but they still blinded and boiled and cooked, wings shriveling, dragons screaming as the heat scalded their eyeballs.
But those were an unlucky few.
He lunged into an unsuspecting Skywing from below, driving his spear up with all the force he could muster. It caught on a rib and turned aside, the dragon rearing as Byrd slashed at its wings, legs, anything in reach, hissing. And then the enemy threw a long kick with his back legs, right into Byrd's sternum.
The hit knocked the breath back down into his lungs and he coughed, the Skywing taking the opportunity to fold his wings and dip from the fight, breaking away. Someone was blowing a crisp horn, and it wasn't his guys.
A squad of unfamiliar Hivewings appeared on his right, sergeant Horn at its head. Byrd felt something sticky on his talon, and wondered if he'd drawn Skywing blood.
"We're clear north!" Horn said, pointing towards the line brigades.
Instead of pausing to cut off third company as he had feared, the Skywings had yielded before the rushing onslaught of hundreds of Hivewings, and so an open channel of air met Byrd's eyes, right to the mass of friendly Hivewings. Showers of darts zipped through the air, targeting the Skywings on third company's flank.
"Let's take it then," Byrd said. "On me! Regroup!"
"You alright?" asked Horn, flying alongside.
"Just fine," remarked Byrd, "got the wind knocked out of me but nothing too major."
"You're bleeding all over your front."
"Is it arterial?" Byrd asked.
"No."
"Then I'll live. Don't worry too much about me," he said.
Poor Chervil. He could have survived the fall, Byrd thought, but he'd be a damned lucky dragon if he fought off the Skywing at the end.
"Damn near was an artery hit," Horn grumbled, but Byrd didn't respond. There was too much to do.
Third and fourth companies folded into the one-twelfth brigade coming towards them, flying next to one of the rows of companies making up a line battalion. They looked strange without their armor, their flight harnesses doing little to cover up the bare scales. Linemen carried spears, and archers carried the ineffective dart shooters – something was better than nothing, Byrd guessed, but he'd trade three of the things for a crossbow in less than the blink of an eye, if he had a choice about it. Watching a dragon's head snap back from the force of the blow made one hell of an impression.
Someone congratulated him when he made it in. "Good work surviving out there."
Byrd grunted his assent. These guys had barely seen combat, anyway.
With their ammunition expended, the numerically inferior Skywing force regrouped. Couldn't attack the line brigades without getting surrounded and swarmed, Byrd supposed. They were fast but they must be getting tired by now after all the days of flying, had fire but couldn't use it at high speed.
So this was what it took to win a fight.
Sheer bloody numbers.
With a final, shrill blast of the horn, the enemy turned around and sounded the retreat. Byrd stared, thinking it was too easy, thinking back to the Skywing force that had failed to pursue this morning. Why didn't they want to fight? Supply? Dragonpower?
Signal flags rippled at the rear of the one-twelfth brigade, white and red and yellow flags swaying in the breeze as officers communicated their intentions.
Exhaustion settled in, nagging pains and aches collapsing on Byrd like a heavy burden on his back. His muscles had gone beyond burning, entered the realm of distant might order a chase. He didn't think his dragons could take it – physically couldn't do it. Not after over a week of steady flying, followed by hours of running at high speed, then fighting. He doubted he could make it a couple of miles. Maybe he could fly on, he thought.
But he would be in no shape to fight when he was done.
Finally command finished deliberating, communicated their orders via signal flags and then the flags wrapped up. The line battalion next to Byrd received the orders, translated them, and then sent out a liaison to give third and fourth company the news, whatever that might be.
"What news?" Byrd asked.
"Line brigades are giving chase," the dragon said. He had a deep, gravelly voice, and tossed his head like he had a fly on the back of his neck. "You're part of the reserves – you're staying here."
That only meant the Skywings would be all over him if they doubled back for the town, Byrd thought. But it meant the chance to rest and regroup.
"Understood," he said. "Good luck."
"We don't need luck, but thank you," said the Hivewing. "For the queen."
"Aye," said Byrd.
He'd pulled through another battle – a tactical victory for his side. They'd driven off the advancing enemy force, and he still had a third company alive to talk about it. And yet, it felt like a loss.
"Everyone down," he ordered. "We'll search for the missing… and the fallen."
"Yes, sir," said Seagrass.
The guy had come a long way from being another wide-eyed, green-thumbed replacement, Byrd thought. It would be a shame to lose him too. We'll find you, Chervil, he thought. The fight had ended, for now.
The aftermath had just begun.
