Battledragon (18 page)

Ecator sank in again, cutting a foot deep into the hip plate of the cataphragm. The metal monster continued to move, although a shudder ran through it as Bazil put a foot up on it to heave the blade free.

The Purple Green gave a great roar as he pressed against the base of the pinnacle. The other dragons fitted themselves in around him; soon there were twenty tons of muscle and sinew at work against the base of the pile of rock. The pinnacle shuddered, and then it gave a heave and began to move.

Bazil and Alsebra were alerted by a shrieking from the dragonboys, and they dodged sideways, feet digging in the ash for purchase.

Too late, the cataphract saw its doom and began to step backward. The dragons were clear, the sorcerer gave a scream of hate, and the pinnacle toppled and fell directly upon the cataphract.

The great rocks crushed the cataphragm, flattening the helmet, knocking the giant's sword from its hand, and driving it downslope. The boulders bounded on, one tumbling over and over just above the sorcerer himself. Indeed, his servant was plucked from his horse and destroyed utterly by another smaller boulder.

The great rocks from the top of the pinnacle bounced down the volcano's side and then soared off the edge of the upper fissure and rained down to smash into the castle below.

There was a tremendous thud, and a tower collapsed in ruin. Sections of a high wall slid down in clouds of dust. Screams of fear rose up from the ruins.

The sorcerer fled from them, riding hunched over down into the cloud of smoke and dust that billowed up from the ruined gates.

There was a third pinnacle nearby that could be toppled onto the castle. It was larger than the first two, and taller, and correspondingly heavier. They studied it for a moment, and Dragoneer Feens and Manuel hit on the solution at the same time. There was a wide gap between two segments near the bottom. If they could find a wedge-shaped rock, they might lever the whole thing over.

By good fortune there was a sarsen of roughly the right shape not fifty yards away, lying where it had fallen from the volcano's mouth.

The Purple Green, Chektor, and the young brasshide Finwey picked it up and lugged it across. In shape, it was like a wedge of pie. With the aid of the others, they fitted it into the gap near the bottom of the great stack of lava blocks.

Then all the dragons put their weight on the rock and heaved it down.

The pinnacle shook all the way to the top. And then the wedge broke at the narrow end.

The dragons sprawled out on the ash with loud curses.

After a moment they got back to their feet, picked up what was left of the rock wedge, and shoved it back into place. In fact, it was improved by losing the first couple of feet. What was left was thicker and stronger.

Once again they heaved on it, and the pinnacle shook. They pulled down with every ounce in their huge bodies and slowly the pinnacle began to move. Creeping up by inches on one side. Dust and powder began to fly from the down-slope side. Finally, there came a sharp cracking report, and then the pinnacle teetered for a moment, a slab slid off the top, and then the rest fell. Huge blocks of rock bounced down the slope, bounded out into the air, and slammed down into the castle.

A cloud of smoke arose from the ruins. The castle was practically leveled.

The men that had been enslaved by the sorcerer cried out in joy at being released. They ran up and prostrated themselves before the dragons and dragonboys. A few were survivors abducted from the fleet.

"Saved. We're saved, shipmates…"

Another building collapsed in the castle with a roar of sliding stones and timbers. The smoke was getting thicker. And men a batrukh flew from the outermost tower, where the gate to the rookery of those fell creatures made a dark mouth. On the batrukh's shoulders flew a hunched-over figure. The batrukh gave a last cry of hatred and malice and flew into the north.

Wiliger awoke on the beach while they waited for the boats to come in and collect them. Alsebra was carrying him strapped across her shoulders. His sudden choking alerted her, so she released him and he sagged to the ground with a thud.

Wiliger remembered only the beginning of the fight. The approaching metal monster, then everything blanked out.

"What happened?"

Jak told him the whole story. "You were hit by a tail, sir, been out cold ever since. We was worried about you."

Wiliger was mortified. He'd missed the glory. Getting slapped down by a tail was the dumbest thing a dragonboy could do. Wiliger knew this now, just as he knew how to avoid dragon-freeze. He'd missed the battle, and they'd defeated the sorcerer without him.

Wiliger felt despair warring in his heart with a strange hatred for his own dragonboys.

After escaping the grip of the sorcerer, the fleet had run down to the tropics on the northerly winds. At length, though, they had slowed as they reached the doldrums. Weeks went by.

The tropic waters stretched still and vaporous around the becalmed fleet. Sails flapped uselessly against the masts. The heat beat down like a living thing determined to oppress all beneath it, the dragons were morose, the freshwater had become fetid, and despair was once again on the rise.

On all sides warm mists arose from green sea. The other ships of the fleet appeared like ghosts occasionally glimpsed through the murk. In such humidity men sweated simply standing still, but the water had to be strictly rationed; there'd been no real rain for weeks, and they were dependent on the supplies brought from home, which had grown sour and full of bugs after so long in casks.

The heat had laid Dragon Leader Wiliger low. He was in the surgeon's section, receiving treatment for severe depression.

For this the dragonboys of the 109th were extremely grateful. Since his less-than-noble showing in the fight on the sorcerer's isle, Wiliger had been a shrewish, waspy, demanding presence, making their lives hell. Inspections had become even more frequent, and endless hours of punishment details had to be worked off as a result of the slightest infraction.

Having Wiliger off their backs was about the only merciful thing in life, however. They'd been in the doldrums for weeks, endless days of heat and humidity with little in the way of a breeze and hardly any forward way on the ships. Sometimes the fleet sat in the same spot for days on end, until the foulness in the waters caused by thousands of men drove the captains to let down boats and order the ships towed to cleaner water.

The dragons were snappish and difficult to work with. Some still had wounds from the fighting on the isle, and their dressings had to be changed every few hours and fresh disinfectant applied. They did not enjoy this process and complained bitterly. Dragonboys knew better than to reply to any of it, however. Dragonboys knew that this was a time for them to keep low profiles and to share their own feelings only with each other.

On board the
Barley
conditions were tense. Another soldier was flogged for attempted rape. This time it was worse in that the evidence was unclear and the only witness was a good friend of the purported victim. The accused claimed innocence right up to and through his lashes. After this there was outright hatred between some of the soldiers and some of the crew.

Meanwhile everyone was aware of a growing level of anxiety among the generals and admirals. There were almost daily meetings in Admiral Cranx's fine stateroom.

The doldrums were particularly tricky at this time of year, deep winter in the northern part of the world. They had hardly moved in weeks, and the water situation was getting bad. The witch Endysia had tried several weather spells. Her drum could be heard sounding every morning as she tried to summon clouds. Clouds came, to be sure, but they brought no rain, only an oppressive greyness that added to the heat and humidity, and made the conditions perfectly hellish.

The day wore on, much the same as those before it, and as far as anyone could tell all those to come. The heat and oppressiveness seemed limitless.

In the afternoon Relkin finished fetching water for the dragon and took a rest on the foredeck, sitting with little Jak and Manuel. Their conversation centered around the mysteries of the continent of Eigo, to which they were bound. Eigo was a fabulous place, little known in the Argonath beyond legends of people with black skins and enormous monsters that lived in the ancient jungles of the deep interior.

Manuel knew a little more than most, having studied at the academy before passing exams to become a dragoneer.

"I think it will be strange to see nothing but people burned black by the heat of the sun," said little Jak.

"You'll get used to it." Relkin had seen plenty of dark-skinned folk in Ourdh and had grown accustomed to it easily enough.

Jak giggled. "I wonder what the women will be like."

Relkin punched him on the shoulder. "That kind of thinking will definitely get you in trouble, boy!"

"Do you think we'll be just as strange to them, all pale except where the sun's been at us? Maybe they will be afraid of us. Maybe they will want to catch us and put us in cages to look at."

"Maybe they will," said Manuel, "which would be a good reason for dragonboys to stick close to camp."

"But what if they really like us? What if we're like, sort of fabulous and wonderful to them, since they've never seen anything like us? Now, if that's the case, then their women will definitely be interested in us!"

"Wiliger will really come down on you if he finds you out of camp without a pass."

"Oh, Manuel, you always want to do everything just by the book."

"You know something, Jak, you're gonna find that the local traditions can sometimes get in the way of hell-raising."

"Relkin's right, Jak," said Manuel. "The folk of Eigo are fierce, and the men are legendary for their jealousy."

"All right, all right, I'll do nothing but march and fight and eat and sleep, but you have to promise me you'll do the same."

Relkin was usually touchy about his reputation as the great lover in the regiment, what with the Princess of Ourdh and his famous romance with Eilsa Ranardaughter of Clan Wattel. On this occasion he simply grinned knowingly at the younger boy.

Manuel knew better, of course.

"You won't have time for chasing local women, anyway. I heard that soon as we land, we reembark on riverboats and head upstream. No time to be wasted, every moment is precious and so on."

Jak grimaced. "I'm tired of boats. Real tired of this boat."

"Our duty is to serve, doesn't matter where they send us."

That sent Jak onto his other favorite line of thinking.

"I heard that we're going right to the deep interior. There's a sea inside the continent."

Manuel nodded. "We're going to the waters of the Nub as it's called. The great Nub. I think it means 'water' in the Kraheen language."

"There are sea monsters there."

"So the legends say."

"I was wondering if they could be related to wyverns. Wyverns are sort of sea monsters if you see what I mean."

Manuel was nodding agreement. "Some teachers believe that sea monsters are the ancestors of the wyvern dragons."

The talk of wyverns as sea monsters made Relkin nervous. His trust in his own dragon had been shaken by the strange affair of the sternfish. What had Bazil been thinking of? Or had he just not thought of the consequences if he'd been caught? He gazed off into the murk toward the lumpy mass of
Potato
in the mists.

He sucked in a breath. The haze was twisting around
Potato
, and quite suddenly he noticed that her topmost sails were filling.

Then the first hint of the breeze reached them, and the enormous sails of
Barley
suddenly twitched and rattled.

"A wind!" breathed Jak.

"I think so," said Relkin, who saw the mists clearing rapidly in the direction of
Potato
.

"Well," said Manuel, "maybe we really will get to Eigo after all."

The slight breeze blossomed for a few minutes and then faded somewhat for a while, but then it strengthened again and grew steadily stronger. The mists evaporated, and the flat sea rippled and then broke into waves. Within an hour a strange chop had developed that sent shudders through the big ships. The breeze had become a wind, rising steadily and coming directly out of the east.

Larger waves now appeared, rolling in from the east as well and lifting the sterns of the white ships as they came.

The crew muttered together while Captain Olinas spent much of the time up in the mizzenmast crosstrees with spyglass in hand investigating the eastern horizon.

The wind shifted slightly, until it was coming from the southeast and now it became gustier, shrieking through the rigging for a few minutes and then dying back to a gentler breeze.

The waves continued to roll in, real ocean combers now, with whitecaps breaking away into the distance. The feel of the sea had changed almost incredibly; now there was something large and ominous about its movements.

By nightfall, the wind had grown to a steady roar, and the ships were racing westward under a few scraps of canvas amid whitecapped combers that came rolling in, lifting the ships by the stern and then buoying them up atop a thirty- or forty-foot cliff of seawater before leaving them behind in the trough, enclosed on all sides by water.

Seasickness soon returned to the weaker members of the legions. Dragon Leader Wiliger did not appear, and dragonboys, who were mostly resistant to seasickness now, spent as much time as possible on the foredeck watching the wild seas rising and falling.

The moon arose, visible through bands of clouds that were moving very rapidly north, a distinctly different direction from the sea-level wind, which still came out of the east.

However, this soon changed, and the captain ordered a resetting of sail as the wind veered steadily to come almost directly out of the south. It strengthened again, and sea froth and spray flew over the decks.

Captain Olinas conferred with Admiral Cranx briefly. Then messages were sent by lamplight to
Potato
and
Oat
, which were now the only ships in sight. They then passed on the messages to the ships now over the horizon. Olinas expected that they might be on the outer fringes of a hurricane during the night. She believed that the hurricane was not going to pass over them but was trending northward and would soon turn and head northeast, away from them and off toward Cape Hazard and the Gulf of Ourdh.