Dragon and Herdsman

Jack looked around, squinting in the flickering light as he searched for his partner. He finally spotted him, clinging upside down to the tree trunk among the branches five feet above Jack's head. The dragon's scales had gone black in K'da combat mode, and there was a glint in his glowing green eyes that sent a fresh shiver down Jack's spine.

With a final lingering burst, the gunfire ceased. Cautiously, Jack eased his hands away from his throbbing ears.

Only to find there was an echo of the same sound coming from somewhere in the distance in front of him.

Alison and the others were under attack.

"Draycos!" he whispered urgently.

"I know," the dragon whispered back, his voice deathly calm. "Stay here. I will return for you."

CHAPTER 14

There was no need for stealth now, not with the chattering gunfire in the distance drowning out all other sounds. Draycos leaped upward through the branches, ignoring the swishing leaves that otherwise would have been a dead giveaway of his position.

But then, why would the mercenaries below him even care about noises overhead? As far as they were concerned, he was dead. They had just killed him.

He could feel a snarl of fury building within him. Ruthlessly, he forced it back. Right now, the combat situation required his complete attention. There would be time later to mourn the innocent Phooka the mercenaries had slaughtered.

To mourn him, and perhaps bring him justice.

Fifteen feet above the ground, a particularly thick branch angled out to the right. Changing direction, Draycos headed along it until it began to bend beneath his weight. There, he crouched down, bringing Jack's tangler out from carrying position and settling it into his paw.

He was just in time. With the battle begun, and the K'da poet-warrior finally disposed of, the mercenaries had also abandoned their efforts at stealth and were hurrying northward toward the distant gunfire as quickly as the terrain and vegetation would allow. A group of four passed almost directly beneath him, their guns held ready.

Smiling tightly to himself, Draycos fired.

Four shots. Four invisible bursts of thread instantly entangling their victims. Four nearly invisible flickers of light as the capacitors delivered a powerful electric jolt through the threads.

Four muffled thuds as unconscious soldiers hit the ground.

The next foursome was moving through the woods twenty feet farther along the right flank. Tucking the tangler back under his foreleg, Draycos dug his claws into the branch for traction and threw himself toward them.

There was no convenient branch or tree trunk waiting at the far end of his leap. But again, subtlety was no longer required. He landed six feet behind the hurrying mercenaries, half-crushing a—fortunately—thornless bush. Four more shots, and four more of the enemy were out of action.

The tangler still had three shots left. With a little luck on his part and a little carelessness on his enemies', Draycos knew he could probably take out another foursome before the weapon ran dry.

But he didn't dare take the time. The gunfight ahead was growing more intense by the minute, and if Alison wasn't already in serious trouble she soon would be.

Meanwhile, Jack should be all right, provided he stayed put as he'd been told. Tucking the tangler back under his foreleg, Draycos leaped into the trees and headed north.

He had covered roughly half the distance when he spotted the flickering light of the gunshots. He had covered nearly half of what was left before the sound separated itself enough for him to realize that there were, in fact, three distinct types of weapons involved.

Two were standard projectile weapons: the mercenaries' rapid-fire machine guns and Alison's Corvine pistol. The third, from the soft chuffing noise it made, seemed to be a higher-powered version of Jack's own tangler. Apparently, Colonel Frost really was serious about taking Jack alive.

The light flashes were becoming more distinct, and Draycos could now see where each group was coming from. He made one final leap to a tree right on the edge of the battle and paused there to study the situation.

And as he did so, he found himself raising his estimation of Alison's warrior training, wherever that training had come from. Taken by surprise, and at the low end of five-to-one odds, she was nevertheless holding her own with remarkable skill.

Starting with her choice of combat position. She had taken refuge behind a large tree, which had apparently survived some long-ago flood that had washed away a good deal of the soil at its base. The result was a shallow hollow in the ground filled with an exposed tangle of thick roots. Lurking within the resulting cage, Alison could shoot at her attackers all she wanted, while they in turn had little chance of getting through with a tangler cartridge. Even as Draycos watched, yet another spattering of white threads burst harmlessly against the roots.