Blood of Dragons

It was not a flock of birds startled from their canopy home. These creatures came on swift, wide wings, more batlike in motion than birdlike. They flew in formation like geese, and even the powerful down-strokes of their wings were orchestrated, as if someone called cadence for them. Hest stared with the others and felt blood drain from his face. His hands and feet tingled and he could not voice what someone finally shouted, his voice still tinged with disbelief:

‘Dragons! A flock of dragons!’

‘Fortune favours us! Ready your bows!’ Lord Dargen shouted joyously. ‘Attack as they fly over us. Let us bring down one or two of them, and return home with our holds full of dragon parts!’

For the first time, Hest realized that the man was mad. Insane with fear for his family, believing that somehow he could get the magical items that would bring them safely to him when he returned home. Hest suddenly knew with terrible certainty that they were no longer alive, that they had died terribly, probably months ago, possibly screaming the Chalcedean’s name as they perished.

This quest was all the man had left. It was only a fantasy. Even if he filled the ship with chunks of bloody meat and kegs of blood, there was no grand life for him to reclaim. To fulfil his mad goal would be as disastrous for him as to fail. But this was his life now and he was trapped in it as surely as he had imprisoned Hest in his madman’s mission. Whatever doom he had brought upon himself, Hest would share. Weaponless, he stood and watched them come. Creatures of legend, glittering like gemstones against the endless grey sky, in the distance they looked more like adornments to a lady’s elegant music-box than vengeful flying predators. All around him on the decks of both ships, men were running and shouting, stringing bows, demanding arrows of their fellows, limbering their arms with their throwing spears. They have no idea, Hest thought to himself. He had seen the blue dragon of Bingtown, Tintaglia, once. It had been in the distance, as he returned to Bingtown after she had driven off the Chalcedean warriors. He had thought her pretty then.

But on his return to the city, he had seen what a dragon’s wrath could do. She had not intended to pock the paving stones with acid holes, nor fill the harbour basin with sunken ships. That damage had been incidental. He had seen the harm that one dragon, fighting on behalf of a city, could do.

He stood on the deck and tried to count the oncoming dragons. He stopped at ten. Ten times dead was very dead indeed. The slaves chained to their oars were praying. He was tempted to join them.

The dragons had flown through the night, ignoring cold and fitful rainfall. Sintara had expected to be exhausted by dawn, but they were not. They had flown on, as the sun rose, and on as it climbed into the sky. They had flown as if they had but one mind, reverting to the animals that perhaps dragons once had been. Mercor led their formation and Sintara had been proud to fly to his right. Blue-black Kalo had taken his left, and then Sestican and Baliper. Those three, she knew somehow, had been a long time with the golden dragon, perhaps swimming with him as serpents once. Quarrel they might among themselves, but now there was a common enemy to fight and vanquish. All differences among them were gone. Even their thirst for Silver had been suppressed. Fifteen strong, they had risen to Tintaglia’s cry for vengeance.

Silver Spit lumbered along at the tail of the line. Copper Relpda flew strongly, her early awkwardness scarcely a memory for her now. And ridiculous red Heeby flew wherever she would, now part of the formation, now trailing it, now flying to one side. Her slender scarlet rider sang as they flew, a song of anger and vengeance, but also one that praised the beauty of angry dragons in flight and painted a glorious victory for them. Ridiculous, and ridiculous that she and the others enjoyed it so. Thymara had complained more than once about how freely the dragons used their glamour to compel their keepers to tend them. Yet not once had she ever even admitted the power that human flattery and praise in song could exert over dragons. She was not the only dragon who flew with her mind full of Rapskal’s glorious images of exotically beautiful dragons triumphing over every obstacle.

They had flown straight, not following the river’s meandering course. Dawn had come earlier for them than it had for the ships on the river’s surface. The tall trees that surrounded this section of the Rain Wild River also blocked the earliest rays of the sun. The dragons had flown over the treetops, feeling the warmth of the sun limber their weary wings, and then, as the trees gave way to the open space of the river, they had seen their enemies in the distance.

‘Vengeance, my beautiful ones, jewels of the day! We will visit death on them, a death so glorious they will die praising you!’