40

The dragons were trundling out of their sheds in the gray chill, when one of the field sentries announced a courier to Hal. He bore a rather sizable package, coming from Limingo the wizard.

Hal puzzled, then remembered he'd promised to look over the poor mad raider's ramblings that'd been transcribed.

But not right now.

Storm squealed at him, and, obediently, Hal clambered up into the saddle.

He popped his reins on the dragon's back, and Storm staggered forward, great wings spreading. He hopped, then leaped, and was in the air.

Behind Hal, the rest of his squadron lifted up, and began circling the field, reaching for altitude.

As Storm climbed, Kailas looked down at the tiny needle and board secured to Storm's carapace.

It pointed steadily in one direction, the direction of Yasin's base.

Kailas tapped the rear of the needle with a fingernail, but it stayed in one place. That meant Yasin's dragons hadn't taken off yet.

Hal blasted on his trumpet, and, still climbing, the squadron followed him east and slightly south.

Hal's course would, hopefully, intersect Yasin's flight on its way to patrolling the fighting ground.

He took the dragons as high as he could, until he was struggling to fill his lungs.

Storm's wings moved slowly, sluggishly, at this height.

Hal saw one dragon fall off on a wing, and pinwheel downward to thicker, safer air. But only one.

He forced on east. His course, if he'd set it correctly, should intersect with Yasin's, no more than a league beyond his field.

Now there was nothing to do but wait, and listen to the leathern creak of Storm's wings, and the faint sound of the other monsters behind him.

It was cold up here, even colder than the late fall weather below on the ground.

For some reason, Hal's mind turned to Aimard Quesney, who he hoped was now safely tucked away out of harm's way in Deraine.

He wondered what Quesney would think of this latest devise, almost certainly knew the flier would rage about Hal finding yet another way to bloody the skies.

The sky had lightened as they climbed, although the ground below was still nighthung.

They'd crossed the lines without Hal realizing it.

His target lay on east.

Now there was the peep of the sun, glaring at him.

Yasin's advantage.

Hal squinted, looked ahead and down.

He thought at first it was his eyes, then picked out small black dots ahead and below.

Dragons.

Storm had seen them as well, and snorted.

No Roche saw them, which Kailas had counted on. It would have been insane for any Derainian or Sagene formation to be east of the front this early in the day.

Hal chanced a blat of warning, looked back, and saw answering waves from his flight leaders.

He forced calm, counted, watching the blots get larger and larger below.

Then he could wait no longer. He didn't need his trumpet. The lift of an arm was enough to take the squadron diving down, in four V flights, on Yasin's black dragons.

Hal found it momentarily amusing that he, and everyone else, still thought of Yasin as being a black dragon unit, strange because there were now almost as many blacks with Kailas's squadron.

But the menacing label remained.

Hal swore at his mind for fripperies, coming up with nonsense to avoid thinking about the death they were plummeting toward.

Hal steered Storm toward the dragon at the head of the formation, hoping it was Yasin. He had a moment to realize it wasn't, its guidon unfringed.

Storm had that dragon by the throat, tore it down, bones snapping loudly.

Hal snap-fired at that flier's wingman, hit him in the chest, then was below the formation as the rest of his squadron tore into them.

Hal pulled Storm up, letting the speed of his dive convert into energy, lifting him back up through the formation.

He had his crossbow reloaded, aimed at another flier, missed.

Storm lay over on a wing, turning, skidding as a Roche dragon came in on him. Hal tried to aim at the flier, couldn't get a clear shot, sent his bolt into the dragon's throat. It tore at itself, trying to rip the bolt out, spinning, falling, and was gone.

The two squadrons were a spinning, swirling melee. Storm went after another dragon, rolling almost on his back, Hal swearing, clinging desperately with his knees to the saddle, and there was a Roche dragon almost touching him. Storm's talons ripped at the Roche, and ichor gouted, and the beast fell away.

Hal had control, was forcing Storm into a climb, and a Roche flier fell past him, silently, mouth opening and closing like a beached fish, and he was gone.

A Roche dragon, wing torn, was trying to escape. Hal closed on it from behind, shot the flier out of his saddle, forgot about the beast.

Another dragon, this time one of his, tumbled past him, dying, falling to the ground far below, and then the sky was almost empty.

Hal blew the recall, and obedient to his own order, turned back toward their own lines.

As he flew, other fliers assembled on him.

Hal could hear them shouting, cheering as they flew.

Hal realized he had a grin as broad and stupid as any other flier.

They went back before dusk, this time circling around Yasin's base and coming in from the east. Also, Hal forbade the flying of any squadron symbol. He wanted Yasin to think that he was being hit not just by one squadron, but by all the dragon fliers of Sagene and Deraine.

Hal's fliers had claimed five dragons down in the morning, and six more at dusk, for a loss of three dragons.

That night, his fliers wanted to celebrate, which Hal allowed, within reason. That meant beer only. No one should fly in the morning with a thick head.

Hal went back to his tent, tried to sleep, couldn't.

Muttering to himself, he lit a lantern and decided to leaf through the madman's ravings.

He wasn't sure what he was looking for, so started near the end: Down, away, stumbling, not fall, come after me, abandoned, alone, silent like mousie like they taught me like they left me no squeaking, crying…

That was enough for that night. Hal decided he'd try again tomorrow or the next day.

The squadron was stumblingly weary. Not only was the drive against Yasin's squadron nearly constant, but they were constantly called for other duties, in spite of their supposed special status.

Exhaustion killed.

Hal now was used to writing letters to Sagene and Deraine, bemoaning the death of a flier, when, in truth, they'd been nothing more than names on the status report.

With an exception.

Danikel seemed beyond exhaustion, beyond fear.

He flew not only his detailed tasks, but whenever he could.

He and his blue dragon, Hoko, were in the air all the time, always across the lines, in spite of Hal's admonitions.

Kailas thought of grounding him, didn't know how he could, short of chaining him to his tent post.

Danikel never seemed to change, never seemed sleepy or tired.

He was buried under fan letters from Sagene, which he smiled at, but seldom read and never answered.

With one exception.

A letter came every day—or when the mails were on time—in a woman's hand, in gray ink, the addressing quite calligraphic.

He never told anyone who the letters came from, burned them after reading them twice and answering them.

Hal couldn't decide if they came from the baroness he'd been keeping company with in Fovant.

Danikel was beyond being the darling of the Sagene taletellers. Now they were referring to him as the very spirit of Sagene, the warrior soul of the country.

And day by day, his death toll mounted, although Hal never heard him claim a specific number of kills.

Alcmaen was nearly beside himself, left far behind in the count, but Danikel paid him little attention, treating him kindly, as a not particularly bright younger cousin, which further increased Alcmaen's rage.

Then, one morning, a clear day, Danikel didn't come back from his predawn patrol.

He'd told his dragon handler that he thought he'd "nip back of the lines, and see if any of Yasin's people were out this early," nothing more specific.

Hal checked the hospitals, sent orderlies to see if any of the front line units had reported a falling dragon.

None did.

Nor was any body recovered.

There were no claims from the Roche for a time.

Little by little it crept out: the soul of Sagene was missing, lost in battle.

The taletellers wailed like peasants at a village chief's funeral.

After a few days, word came from the Roche.

Danikel had been downed, in mortal combat, by one of Ky Yasin's fliers.

Hal didn't believe it—the claim was made very weakly, with no confirmation or interviews with the black-dragon flier who claimed to have killed him.

Hal thought it was the Roche taletellers' invention.

Alcmaen said, three days later, that he'd seen the Roche flier across the lines, and, in a terrible battle witnessed by no one, had killed the man and his dragon.

Even the Sagene taletellers had trouble with that one.

The gray-inked letters stopped coming, with never a query from their writer to Hal about the flier's death.

It was, other than the periodic wails in the broadsheets, as if Danikel, Baron Trochu, had never been.

The half ring around Carcaor was slowly closing.

The Sagene blockade of the Ichili River was closed, and almost nothing was coming upriver to Carcaor. Deraine had sealed off the River Pettau and the Zante, and its navy was slowly making its way south toward Carcaor, capturing or isolating each Roche riverine city as they came.

Each league they captured meant less foodstuffs and war materials for the beleaguered barons in the capital.

Yet still the Roche fought on, as if determined to destroy their country if they couldn't win.

Once again, Hal varied the squadron's tactics. This time, all the fliers had tiny magicked compasses, and flew out by themselves. Again, they held the heights, and waited over Cantabri's battlefield.

As they waited, Hal saw Roche formations break and fall back. The Sagene and Derainian troops, probably as exhausted as their enemy, stolidly moved forward.

When Yasin's black dragons flew into sight, the squadron hit them from all directions at once, as if the Roche were magnetized.

They took out four dragons that morning, Hal having killed three of them. Yasin's squadron fragmented on the first attack and fled.

Little by little…

Hal had the squadron stand down for a day. The fliers might have been up for more slaughter, but the dragons were wearying.

He started to catch up on the always-present paperwork, then stopped.

If he'd told Limingo he'd go through the madman's ravings, it was to find something that might suggest a way to defeat that demon.

And the time for confronting that spirit was drawing closer.

He sighed, pulled the manuscript over, and started reading, this time from the beginning.

Kailas forced attention, and then, abruptly, the babblings seized him: Ruined, ruined, all is ruins, ruined stones, moving, lifting, coming toward me… brown… a bear…jelly…jelly bear… reaching… duck away, duck away, do not take death… spear… thrown… hit… through it… jelly, jelly, jelly run, trying to run… screaming… crying… mother… a boy not wept… clawing at me… nor dashed a thousand kim… attacked…

trapped… mother, this place stinks… death… the dagger, dagger, my grandfathers… sharp… a bit of rust on the blade, blade, iron, old iron…

tunic flaming… embers… crumbling, reaching bear… and I threw it hard into jelly ness… screaming… stupid so slight a hurt…jelly bear screaming at so slight a hurt… in back and away and chance to run, run from jelly, run from death—

Hal had it.

Maybe.

But it was worth a try.

Maybe.

If he could just figure out how to make his idea work.