TWENTY-SIX - THE EXECUTIONER

No sea birds, Karin thought, scanning the gray sky above the gray-green sea. She spared a glance down at the crag. No nests and no signs of them. Not even the deposits of whitewash left by birds using the rocks for fishing lookouts. The place probably smelled better for the lack, but it did not make it any less forbidding.

The Executioner's attraction was its geography and topography, not natural beauty. There were several reefs and bars within a two-hour dragon flight of the ruined City of Night, none of them big enough or high enough above water to be called islands. But the Executioner had one thing the others lacked: Hiding places. The volcanic rock was laced with crevices, blowholes, fissures and pumice caves that could keep a dragon or two and their riders safe from eyes in the sky.

Karin and her partner had been here for almost two days now, keeping concealed and waiting for the signal. Karin hugged the jagged rock and stared out over the sullen ocean, scanning from horizon to horizon and back again for any speck that might be an approaching dragon. But the sky was as empty as the sea. Finally satisfied, she twisted on the narrow ledge and waved to her companion below.

Senta was a small, dark woman who was unusual in being both a skilled magician and a dragon rider. Karin was with her as her wingman and to use her scouting skills to keep them undetected and out of trouble until they had done what they came for.

I wonder where Mick… But she pushed the thought from her mind and concentrated on the business at hand.

Down below, back under a lava overhang, Stigi and Senta's dragons were restive. They didn't like being on the ground when there were enemies about, and the undead dragons made them nervous besides. Well, that was fine with Karin. She was nervous too. As soon as they completed their job here she would be only too glad to be back in the air and winging her way home.

Back in the Wizards' Keep, the command group around the tank watched in satisfaction. The diversion had worked perfectly. The Enemy had thrown almost all his forces north, out over the Freshened Sea. Now those forces were fully committed and it would take time for the Enemy to recall them. Too much time.

Of course that also meant that one lone biplane was the focus for every undead dragon and rider the Enemy had in his first wave, and he had a lot of them.

Gilligan looked at the clocks on the walls. “Okay, initiate phase two.”

He stared into the tank to watch the aerial ballet he had choreographed unfold. He tried not to think of Karin.

Karin spared another glance for Senta, standing now on the black rock and lashed by ocean spray. Now the signal had come and at last, at last they could do something besides wait.

Senta reached into her pouch and pulled out one of Taj's Origami dragons. She placed it in the palm of her hand, holding it against the wind with a curled little finger. She spoke a spell, blew on the bit of folded parchment and tossed it into the air with a cry of “oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh.” As soon as it left her hand it began to grow and change. Now there was a dragon and rider swooping up past Karin to circle over their heads. Even this close the illusion was well-nigh perfect to Karin's senses, right down to the rush of air on her face as the “dragon” climbed past her. She only hoped it appeared as perfect to the Enemy.

Below her Senta selected another parchment dragon and repeated the process, this time crying “oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-eye.” The next was “oh-oh-oh-oh-eye-oh” and the one after that “oh-oh-oh-oh-eye-eye,” just as the foreign wizard, the one they called Taj, had instructed her.

Origami after origami was tossed aloft to shapeshift into the seeming of a dragon and rider and join the circling throng above the rock. Finally the last of the sixty-four “dragons” was launched and named. With a wave of her wand and another one-word spell, she sent the group on its way. As one the dragons sorted themselves out into squadron Vs and climbed toward the south, a non-existent armada flying straight at the Enemy's stronghold.

If Karin was impressed by the reality of the seemings, Senta was even more impressed by the magical skill behind them. Such ruses had long been common in battle, but they suffered a fatal flaw. A magician could not control more than one seeming at a time. True, such an illusion could appear to be an army or a horde of dragons, but magically it was all one unit, with but a single true name. A skilled magician could quickly detect the fact and even the greatest of wizards could only control a few such magical entities.

This group was different. Somehow by naming them as they had been named they had become part of an entity called “array,” each separate, each with its own true name, yet all of them bound to perform collectively by a single spell. To Senta, this was high magic indeed.

She was still admiring her handiwork when Karin came sliding down the rock to join her.

“Perfect,” the blond woman said. “Now let's get out of here before the Enemy decides to investigate this place.”

Senta looked after her creations winging south. “I wonder why they call them drones when they don't make any noise at all?”

“Mick said…” Then she stopped, looking north. “Never mind that,” Karin said flatly. “We've got a problem.”

The other turned and saw a ragged line of black dots on the line where gray clouds met gray sea.

“Back under the rocks, quickly.” Both women sprinted for the shelter of the crevice, hoping against hope that the zombies' senses were as uncoordinated as their movements.

Had the seeming been detected so quickly? It had to be an accident, Karin told herself firmly as she pressed against the spray-wet rock. Only by chance had these undead been near at hand when Senta activated the seeming.

But chance or plan, it put them in a precarious situation. They were caught on the ground, outnumbered and perilously close to the Enemy's base. If they were spotted…

From her recess in the rock she watched as the ragged V passed perhaps two dragon lengths above the tallest point on the reef, swinging around the crag in jerky precision. For a minute Karin thought the zombies had not seen them.

Then one by one the zombie dragons peeled off and swooped back toward the island.

“Shit,” Karin breathed and pressed further back against the rear of the overhang.

Gilligan watched the second wave of dummy dragons soar aloft from the Executioner and aim straight for the City of Night. Almost immediately he saw a few ragged dots rise from the city to meet the suddenly-appearing foe.

“Okay,” he said. “They're as fully committed as they're going to get.” He picked up the microphone connected to the communications crystal.

“Now,” Gilligan said. Tora Tora Tora.” In the back of his mind he wondered if it had been such a good idea to let Charlie pick the code names. Then he focused on the display to the exclusion of everything else.

Charlie was in the middle of a heck of a fight. There had been perhaps ten squadrons of zombie dragons launched against him and the survivors pressed then-attack ruthlessly.

Charlie put on a display of flying that would have been the hit of any air show—and gotten his license lifted immediately by the FAA. He hauled the big biplane around so tightly the whole frame shuddered, giving his gunners belly shots on three and four dragons at once. He dived for the sea and skimmed so low that the following dragons crashed into the waves. He zoomed for altitude and then hit his flaps far above the safe maximum speed so that his pursuers overshot him and fell to his turret gunner. He used every trick in the book and a few that never made it into the book.

The zombie attackers gave as good as they got and then some. Salvos of arrows struck the plane, without effect. The mechanical damage the iron arrows could do was minor and the plane itself was not complex enough to be killed by their death spells. Dragon fire was something else. In spite of the efforts of his gunners and Charlie's frantic jinking, the swarm of dragons drew closer and closer, swirling in about him and diving on the aircraft to deliver gouts of fire. The cockpit was magically protected against dragon fire and there was no fuel on board, but the fire of even undead dragons is hotter than a flamethrower.

Finally it was all too much. Trailing flame in half-a-dozen places, the AN-2 went down in a flat spin. As the plane hit the water the magic link broke and the green diamond on the display winked out.

“I don't suppose…” Moira said into the strained silence.

“We will do what we can,” Bal-Simba said, “but I fear it is not much.” He turned to issue orders to one of the Watchers.

The others continued to stare numbly into the inky water.

“I am sorry,” Kuznetsov said at last.

“Don't be,” Jerry said quietly. “It was what he wanted.” He looked into the still black water in the bowl. “Maybe more than he ever wanted anything in his life.”

“At least it will not be in vain,” Moira said. “He has taken us the first step. Now we will continue what he has begun.”

“Your part approaches, Lady,” Bal-Simba told her. The others have assembled in the great hall.”

Gilligan nodded to the Chief Watcher. “You have the watch.”

Erus inclined his head and stepped to the tank to watch and issue whatever further instructions might be necessary.

As he followed the others out the door Gilligan's feelings were decidedly mixed. His training told him he was abandoning his post at a critical time, but his reason told him there was nothing more he could do. Unlike a controller in his own world he didn't have the capability to shape the battle from here on out. The forces were launched and everything depended on the execution. Now he could go kick ass with impunity.

Gilligan wasn't the introspective sort so it never occurred to him to wonder how much of his decision was reason and how much was the driving need to actually do something.

Perhaps fortunately, he was gone by the time the tank showed the zombies closing in on Karin and Senta.

Over the sea north of the City of Night a new battle was shaping up. The Enemy launched the last of its forces to meet the incoming squadrons.

The zombie squadrons bore north in ragged formation. These were the scrapings of the Enemy's aerie and many of the dragons and riders were so badly damaged they could barely fly, much less maintain formation. Still, under command of their guiding intelligence they all climbed and circled as best they could.

The League dragons came on in a smooth squadron weave. The defenders had height on them and the sun at their backs. Wings locked, they dove on the intruders.

A blast of dragon fire and a spark went tumbling from the sky. Another blast and another scrap of burning parchment went fluttering seaward.

In quick succession they knocked a dozen more “dragons” from the sky, all scraps of parchment.

That was proof enough even for zombies. As one they turned away from the drones and ran for the City of Night.

It was already too late.

The dragon cavalry of the League had trickled south under a cloaking spell, giving wide berth to the City of Night. Now they swept in around the volcano and over the City of Night on its slopes. Wing on wing of dragons soared above the Enemy's city and strafed anything that moved on the ground with bursts of dragon fire. The Enemy's aeries were empty and no dragons rose to oppose them. The zombies that trickled south from the decoy missions arrived in dribs and drabs and were easily burned from the air by dragon fire.

The great hall was not merely full, it was jammed. The eight wizards who would send the storming party on its way were pushed back against the wall by the crush. Besides a twenty-foot dragon, most of the castle guard was mustered, armed and ready, and another dozen or so wizards were scattered among them. Mick Gilligan was toward the center with his new pistol. Taking up half the space was a knot of 127 dwarves gathered close around their long and as far from the dragon as they could manage.

Kuznetsov and Vastly came pushing through the crush to stand next to Gilligan. From somewhere the Russians had come up with powder blue berets, striped jerseys and fatigues in a pattern of camouflage that Mick found just a little disconcerting.

“Brings back old memories, eh?” Kuznetsov said as they positioned themselves.

Around them the wizards raised their staffs and began to chant.

The Colt had sunk quickly, leaving only a small oil slick behind. Charlie had managed to launch the life raft before the plane disappeared, but with the zombie air force overhead Charlie had hidden under it rather than riding in it. The undead riders had made pass after pass on the bright yellow raft, tearing it to waterlogged shreds with their arrows. Then, as one, they had wheeled and headed south, leaving Charlie alone in the water.

As the last of the enemy dragons disappeared into the clouds, Charlie inflated his life jacket and surveyed his situation. He was hundreds of miles from land and already the chill of the water was starting to creep through his exposure suit. He had no food, no radio and nothing with which to call for help.

“Son,” he said to the empty ocean. “It don't get any more sporty than this.”

Then he saw dorsal fins slicing toward him.