Being a true shifter isn’t the blessing it may seem. But through pain and darkness Perdita seeks to find her own life despite the ambition of others…
Chapter Two – Reparation (part two)
It took nearly an hour before the bus we were following caught up with the other one. I idly wondered why there had been such a hurry and felt Moth chuckle in my head.
‘This guess? They leaving road soon. Lead bus driver knows the way.’
That made a good deal of sense and also reminded me of the limitations of becoming a dragon. Subtlety of thought is not generally a dragonish trait, and I have never managed to Shift into clever dragon form. I called down silent blessings on Moth’s head and her laughter was as bright as the sky above the snow clouds.
Mandrake whistled a complex trill and I understood there to be a mountain pass ahead. I whistled back and two of his biggest fighters overtook the group to wait at the top of the pass. Only the buses never breasted the rise.
‘Where are they, Moth?’
‘Hush. I listen.’
The dragons whirled around us in a silent holding pattern, but they were beginning to be impatient before she broke her silence.
‘Went into rock tunnel, couldn’t hear them. Now out the other side I have again.’
She guided me and the wing formed up behind. We had only been flying about five minutes when Moth asked me to slow right down.
‘Buses are stopped, but I not think destination.’
I whistled and the youngest of the dragons came forward. He flew higher than we had been before and one of the older fighters snorted.
“If he runs out of air, I’m not carting his carcass home to his mammy.”
“He be all right,” Moth said, “might have a headache.”
The cocky youngster spiralled down from his foolish altitude. He hovered in front of Mandrake who snarled.
“Report to the raid leader, puppy.”
For a moment I thought we were going to have a dragon fight on our hands – and to be honest I didn’t give much for the youngster’s chances. You could see his dragonishly adolescent brain veering between bravado and the simple fact that Mandrake would kill him without batting an eyelid. Wiser council won and he lowered his crest. Just in time by my estimation. He backed air and came to hover before me.
“It looks like a checkpoint ma’am. Then a long straight road across the plain to a complex of buildings behind a wire fence.”
“Well looked, young dragon.”
He dropped to the rear of the wing, but not before I had seen the contempt in his whirling eyes.
“What is that one’s problem?”
Mandrake showed his teeth. “I don’t know. And we don’t have the time to find out right now.”
The old fighter who had spoken before rumbled in his chest. “His mammy is from the same clutch of eggs as The Queen. Has always thought that made her something special. Taught young Farsight to have a chip on his shoulder. It’s a pity because there’s good stuff under the stupid, but I very much doubt if he’ll live long enough for it to surface.”
“If he keeps acting proddy with me he won’t. I want two of you to keep an eye on him. Acting the asshole could jeopardise more lives than his own.” Mandrake wasn’t sounding too happy.
“I’ll see to it.”
The wing master turned his attention to me. “How do you want to play this?”
Moth took over my voice. “Sun will be going down very soon. Make use of the blinding brightness of a snowy sunset.”
He laughed. “Ah yes. With perhaps a distraction?”
I took my voice back. “What do you have in mind?”
“A queen dragon. It’s a ploy we have used with some success before. A fighter can puff up his belly so he resembles a queen in egg and fly as if he was in deep distress. With any luck the miscreants will think ‘she’ needs to clutch and try to entice her down.”
“And their attention should be focused enough for a silent swoop.”
He inclined his head. “I think we are in agreement ma’am.”
Once we had a plan I just sat back and let Mandrake do his schtick. To say he was efficient was to undersell his skill. He was ruthlessly organised, and I could feel Moth laughing in my head.
“If we were looking for a mate.”
“Not us.”
She offered me a metaphorical hug.
The sun was just turning the sky the colour of molten bronze when the dragon limped over the hills. ‘She’ seemed barely able to keep above the tree line and flew as if every wingbeat cost strength she no longer had.
A voice from the checkpoint called out high-pitched and excited.
“Look what fortune is bringing our way.”
There must have been some sort of communication equipment in the checkpoint hut because a bell rang loudly in the fenced compound and a crowd of armed men swarmed out of what had to be the barracks. Once they saw the seemingly limping dragon they mostly dropped their weapons and began making encouraging whistling noises. Almost as one man they ran out onto the snowy plain, leaving only two grizzled veterans who were either too canny or too lazy to pursue the idea of a clutching queen dragon.
Moth whispered in my mind. “Don’t like this. Seems too easy.”
Mandrake was of a similar opinion because he changed his plan somewhat sending only half his dragons in low and hard while the other half lifted on the sunset thermals until they were no more than pinpricks in the sky. For a moment it seemed as if his caution was unfounded, but then…
The roof of one of the buildings opened and the sky filled with what I could only call a squadron of ‘winged monsters’, led by a flying horse that was being ridden by the ugliest little demon I had ever seen.
“Mandrake,” I called, high and clear, and hoping he would hear, as I didn’t know the whistled signal for what I wanted to say, “tell the wing to go for the riders. I think many of the reception committee are reluctant.”
He whistled his understanding and the high dragons dropped from the sky like falling death. Their battle cries and the smell of blood on the air were almost irresistible, but I held back, knowing that my time to enter the fray was not yet. The dragon wing was professional and its members killed quickly and neatly, leaving the bodies intact and moving with care and circumspection. Except, of course, for the proddy young fool – who couldn’t resist the siren song of bloodlust. He lost vigilance as he ripped the heart from the chest of one of the guards and lifted the dripping morsel to his mouth. Had I been less vigilant, or a nanosecond slower, he would have been dead meat – but I am what I am and my talons crushed the spine of the man who was about to sever the young fool’s neck with an enchanted blade.
And then, of course, I was in the fight, and there was no backing out. My bright talons were stained with blood and other things as I took my part in the killing feast that churned up the snowy earth and besmirched its whiteness with sunset red.
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