Balanced on the Blade's Edge (Dragon Blood, Book 1) (29 page)

“It’s in an iron box in what used to be my
office and is now Nax’s,” Ridge said.

Iron. Of course. It blocked the sensing of
magic in a way miles of stone didn’t. Sardelle slumped against the
wall. Jaxi was in an office fifty meters away, not at the bottom of
some distant chasm. “I see your people haven’t forgotten
all
Referatu lore in the last three centuries.”

“Heriton studied up after he found that
book.” Ridge wanted to say more—his thoughts burned at the front of
his mind with such intensity that she got the gist without trying
to read him. He wanted to elicit a promise from her that she
wouldn’t hurt anyone on the way to retrieving her sword, but he
didn’t want to have to ask. He wanted to trust her. He just wasn’t
sure anymore.

Though that uncertainty stung, Sardelle chose
to see it as a good sign. In time, maybe he would get used to the
idea of her as a sorceress. Maybe…

She shook her head. She would worry about
that later. For now, she had to escape and retrieve Jaxi before the
mob dragged her out for a shooting.

“Thank you for the information,” Sardelle
said. “I’ll be careful. Nobody will see me.”

Ridge exhaled slowly, surreptitiously.
“Good.”

Sardelle sensed someone walking into the
building upstairs. “My guard is returning.”

Ridge glanced toward the hallway. “I’ll… try
not to find it disturbing that you knew that before I did.” He
sighed and looked back at her, holding her eyes for a moment.

Hoping for a kiss would be too much at this
point, and yet…

“Want to rub my dragon?” Ridge asked.

Sardelle blinked. “What?”

He fished the wooden figurine out of his
pocket.

“Oh.” She offered a sheepish shrug—that was
not
where her mind had gone—and stuck her
hand out. Enh, why not?

Feeling silly, she rubbed the belly of the
wooden dragon and handed it back to Ridge.

“Sir?” the guard asked from the hallway.

“Yes, I’m done.” Ridge pocketed his lucky
charm. “Thank you, Private.”

The young man squinted into the cell,
assessing Sardelle but not quite meeting her eyes. “You’re brave,
sir.”

“Uh huh.” Ridge stepped into the hall.

“Is it going to be all right for me to be out
here, sir?” the private whispered. “General Nax said the iron door
was supposed to keep her from getting out, but I… I also
heard—
overheard
—him tell someone I was
expendable.”

Ridge snorted. “
Nax
is expendable. You’ll be fine, soldier. Now, shut the door, eh? We
wouldn’t want her to escape.”

“Yes, sir. Of course.”

The door thumped shut, and if the men spoke
further, Sardelle didn’t hear it. An iron door? They thought that
would keep her in here? If they had lined the whole cell in iron,
it would have kept her from sensing or communicating with the
outside world, but it wouldn’t have done anything to nullify her
actual power. Still, Sardelle couldn’t help but feel very alone
again when the key thunked in the lock. Ridge had helped her, but
she also had a feeling that had been a goodbye as well.

* * *

Ridge hadn’t taken more than three steps out
of the confinement building when shouts started up on the wall.

“They’re coming again.”

“To the weapons!”

Ridge couldn’t spot the airship in the night
sky yet, but he trusted the lookouts. He jogged not to the wall but
to the flier perched on its landing legs near the frozen stream,
its hull as clean and rust-free as it was going to get. He wasn’t
surprised to find Captain Bosmont standing next to a wing, the
engine already humming in the back of the craft.

“Ready for that test run, sir?” he asked.

Ridge glanced toward the horizon. “Yes.”

“I figured you might be. Got her as ready as
I could while everyone was worrying about our witch.”

Ridge’s jaw tightened at the word witch, but
he didn’t correct Bosmont. That didn’t matter now. Getting in the
sky and helping the fort did. “Thank you, Captain.”

“If anyone can take that airship down, you
can.”

Ridge climbed into the cockpit. “I appreciate
your faith.”

“Good. But you should also know, if you wreck
this baby I spent so many hours on, I’m going to hunt you down in
whatever level of hell they stick you in.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Captain.”

“Oh, and one more thing, sir,” Bosmont said,
a grin splitting his broad face. “I made a little something extra
for you, to keep you warm up there.”

“Chicken soup?”

“Not exactly.” The engineer winked. “They’re
down by your feet.”

No sooner had Ridge slid into the stitched up
leather cockpit seat and pulled his harness across his chest when
an irritated call came up from below. “Where in all the cursed
realms do you think you’re going, Colonel?”

“To stop that airship, General.”

“Were you going to ask for permission first
or just do whatever you felt like, as usual?”

Ridge smirked down at the man. “The latter,
naturally.”

He fired up the lift thrusters, drowning out
Nax’s reply. He was going to be in so much trouble after this was
all sorted out that it hardly mattered what he did at this point.
Maybe if he took down the Cofah airship, his disrespect—and his
dalliance with Sardelle—might be forgotten or at least treated with
lenience. And if he failed utterly against the Cofah… the only
threat he had to worry about was Bosmont’s.

When the thrusters pushed into the earth, the
engineer and general scurrying back, and the flier inched off the
ground, Ridge let out a relieved breath. If he hadn’t gotten off
the ground, he would have felt idiotic about his insubordination.
But the craft responded to his touch, if more sluggishly than he
would have preferred. The crystal in the back glowed, illuminating
his control panel. At least that was at full power. A ceiling
light. The ridiculousness of it all almost made him throw his head
back and laugh.

Later. The Cofah ship was visible now, not
hovering above the distant peaks, but sailing straight toward the
fort.

Ridge hit the switch that lowered a cover
over the crystal, and the light disappeared. No need to make it
obvious to the enemy that he was coming. His hands knew the
controls well; he didn’t need to see to fly this craft.

As it rose above the fort walls, wind whipped
through his short hair, and the chill air burned his ears. Usually
he would have a leather cap and goggles, but he hadn’t been
expecting to fly out here. All of his piloting gear was back in his
locker on base. Tonight, he would have to make do without. One way
or another, he doubted he would be in the sky long.

Once he had enough altitude, Ridge nudged the
controls, taking the flier toward a rocky ridge the airship was
paralleling. Maybe he could sneak behind her that way—the dark
metal hull blending in with the bare slope—and attack from behind
while the Cofah were focused on the cannons and rocket launchers in
the fort. The soft clink-thunks of the engine shouldn’t be audible
over the wind and the airship’s own machinery. He hoped.

Ridge took the flier to a higher altitude
than the airship, though he was careful to keep the rocks behind
him, and not the snow. He would stand out like a beacon against a
white backdrop. Higher was often better, though, especially with
airship captains who rarely took their slow-moving craft into
battles. When they did, they were often used to looking down to
drop bombs, not up to fend off attacks.

The men on the deck were visible as Ridge
passed by, bundled so heavily against the icy wind that they seemed
to waddle from place to place. The number of people manning the
cannons disturbed him. Not only that, but the sheer number of
cannons. He supposed he should have expected that, based on the
damage the craft had done to the fort during its last attack.
Clearly this particular airship had been created for war, maybe
even specifically for this mission: to destroy the only source of
the Iskandian dragon flier power supplies.

Ridge was tempted to bank and veer in,
tilting his wings as he flew by so he could strafe the deck with
his bullets. They were preparing something to one side, a smaller
balloon and a big basket. An escape craft? Something for launching
bombs? Or maybe for delivering troops. He almost attacked it, but
he wanted to go for a more important target on his first run. He
could only surprise them once.

The flier passed the airship, and, staying
above them, keeping the stars at his back, he glided through a
turn. He grimaced at the pull in the controls, the jerky way the
craft responded. Tonight’s run might be all she had in her. He
could only hope it was enough.

He leveled the craft and headed toward the
back of the airship. If this one was true to other Cofah designs,
the engines would be in the rear, hidden below decks and behind
those wooden planks, planks that might be reinforced with metal.
The airships might
look
a lot like the
Cofah sailing ships that plundered the seas, but they were more
advanced, usually with superior defenses. His guns could still do
damage though. And he could always target the balloon, though it
would take a lot of holes to let out enough gas to bring it
down.

With the lights of the fort visible between
the deck and the balloon, Ridge struck. He squeezed a trigger, and
guns blasted, punching holes into the rear of the ship. Shouts
arose on deck, just audible over the wind. Men raced for cannons at
the back of the deck.

Tears burned his eyes, streaking back into
his hair, and Ridge again lamented his missing goggles, but he
didn’t falter in his mission. He kept firing until those men were
close to targeting him, then he pulled the nose up, hurling a few
rounds into the balloon before rising above it. He slowed his speed
as much as he could, putting that balloon between him and the deck
so he would seem to disappear to those below. The flier would drop
out of the sky if it tried to pace the airship, so he made tight
circles above it. He couldn’t see the Cofah any more than they
could see him, but he hoped he had them consternated—and
distracted.

A boom came from the fort, the first cannon
firing from the walls. The ball sailed by a few meters to the side
of the airship, but another cannon blasted on the heels of the
first. Those on the airship deck should be busy now. Time for Ridge
to do some more damage.

He guided the flier away from the balloon,
rising again so it would be difficult for them to see, then
swooping around to target the airship from the rear once more. That
was the intent anyway. Something streaked out of the darkness,
arrowing right at him.

A cannonball, that was his first thought, but
that would have moved too quickly to see, and this was bigger
anyway. Much bigger.

Ridge banked hard, his left wing tipping
toward the sky. The object—no, the
creature
—blurred past him, missing by inches. Far
more agile than he, it turned back toward the flier before he
realized what he was dealing with. If he hadn’t seen it before, he
would have been mystified, but this wasn’t the owl’s first
appearance.

Ridge swooped left and right, trying to make
a difficult target for the creature, even as he distanced himself
from the airship. He didn’t want to be visible to their cannons
while the owl distracted them. It screeched, raising all the hair
on his body. Not only was the unearthly cry eerie… it was close. He
glanced back, searching for it against the snowy peaks and the
stars, but it was playing the same game he had with the airship.
Only better. How could a mechanical contraption rival the grace of
nature? Granted, some sorcerer had perverted the creature, but it
still had all the agility of a bird of prey.

Something slammed into the top of the flier.
Metal screeched in Ridge’s ear. He shrank low in his seat, though
he kept his hands on the controls. He twisted his neck and glimpsed
spread wings and beady yellow eyes—the cursed thing had its talons
locked around a bar on the frame. It wasn’t more than three feet
from Ridge. The cockpit was partially enclosed, but not fully. A
giant owl could slip its talons in and slash his neck.

“So attack it first, eh?”

Easier said than done. Ridge banked hard,
shaking the creature free. Then he accelerated, flying over the
fort. He wasn’t sure it was the best direction—with that idiot Nax
in charge, Ridge might very well get shot down by his own
people—but it was the only way that offered room to accelerate
without having to climb over a mountain.

He pushed the engines to maximum power,
hoping the owl couldn’t match the speed. In a dive, a bird could
drop as quickly as his flier, but surely wings couldn’t flap as
quickly as propellers rotated. He twisted his neck again, looking
behind him. His own personal flier back home had mirrors, but he
hadn’t thought to install them here. Silly of him not to anticipate
attacks by giant birds.

The owl was trailing him, its massive wings
flapping, but falling behind. Ridge thought about trying to pull up
right before he hit the side of the mountain ahead—hoping it would
be so intent on chasing him that it smashed into the rocks—but he
reminded himself that this wasn’t another pilot-flown machine, this
was a bird, something far more agile than his flier. Especially
this
flier.

Instead, when he had pulled ahead as much as
he could without running into a mountain, he banked hard, turning
back toward the owl. He lined up that dark silhouette, which was
easier to see with the lights of the fort as a backdrop, and
pounded ammunition into it. He remembered that their bullets hadn’t
done much in that canyon, but the flier’s big guns had more power.
He hoped it was enough.

Ridge hit it. Many times. But the owl kept
coming. It flew straight at him.