Saori growled, “Thought so. You scream like a stuck pig. Call yourself a warrior?”
“You broke my finger!”
“Makes up for the ‘poor thing’ insult. Shall we continue with ‘sack-lady’?”
Hualiama jerked her throbbing hand away from Saori’s questing fingers. “You little rajal! I guess you liked it better in the sack?”
“In the sack? You just can’t keep your smutty mouth shut, you long-haired whore!”
“Mercy, what’s made you so touchy?”
Saori jolted her hand again. Pain stabbed up into Lia’s elbow, making her feel nauseous. The other girl hissed, “A slew of abuse, capped by stealing my man!”
“You
like
Qilong?”
“It’s a debt.” They wrestled furiously, hissing and growling as they fought the chains and each other, but Saori triumphed by dint of hitting Lia’s broken finger repeatedly. Twisting the ring finger savagely, she growled, “He saved me from slavery.”
Hualiama arched off the bed, gasping, “Curse your stupid honour, you vixen!”
“Here goes the second finger,” Saori warned, forcing the digit in the wrong direction.
Blood squirted into Lia’s mouth as she bit her tongue inadvertently. Saori was relentless. Surely only a Dragon could be so strong? Being handled like this, especially by another girl, swept Lia beyond fury, to a place where anything seemed possible and the need to escape the pain overrode all reason. Imagining the Tourmaline Dragon, she convulsed as though struck by lightning from afar.
Grrraaaaarrrgggh!
Her roar echoed Grandion’s, a smaller thing altogether, but the sound was infused with a wild, draconic strength. Suddenly, her left hand was free. Lia swung her fist across her torso. Blue light flared in the room. Flesh sizzled and the bedclothes burst into flame. She gasped, half in fright and half in amazement. Heavens above and Islands below, what had she just done?
Saori could not even scream. Her jaw hinged open and shut soundlessly.
The cabin door smashed open. Elki rushed in, followed by Genzo and a knot of pirates.
“What the–” Her brother sprang atop Saori, beating at the flames smouldering beside her left flank. “Pillow-roll!” he shouted, snatching one up to snuff out the fire.
Elki’s eyes flicked to the trail of smouldering blankets and barbecued flesh, taking in a blackened painting on the wall, and then swung back to fix on Lia’s left hand.
Hualiama shook her hand violently, trying to douse the unearthly halo of blue light. “Mercy!”
Saori yelped, “Get me away from this madwoman!”
* * * *
The moon Iridith rose in stately majesty ahead of the twin suns, eclipsing the eastern horizon until finally, the first golden slivers of true dawn glimmered past its edges. Golden spears radiated across the Island-World, crowning the previously dark brow of Merx Island in a glorious array of lime green and auburn treetops. Lia had never seen an autumnal forest display before, for Fra’anior’s volcano made the climate tropical all year round. She leaned moodily on the Dragonship’s gantry railing, and tried to ignore the clinking of manacles linking her ankles and wrists.
So much for trust.
Blame them, when she could not trust herself? How was it possible that in extremity, she had channelled Grandion’s power? Lightning had spurted from her fingers. She flexed her left hand. Ordinary, Human fingers. ‘Enchantress’ was the whisper, a moniker sure to earn her a swift dagger between the shoulder-blades.
Hearing a soft footfall she turned, expecting Elki. Her face fell. Saori.
The tall girl limped over, dragging her own set of chains, and settled against the railing alongside Hualiama. “How’s the finger, Princess?”
“Improving. How’re the burns?”
“Improving,” Saori returned dryly. “What do you see out there?”
“Dragons swarming over Merx like wasps disturbed from their nest.”
Saori said, “The Merxians fight like ghosts from the deep forests and caves, in ways my people would regard as dishonourable. Your brother tells me they’ve perfected a type of mobile giant war crossbow which fires bolts up to twenty feet long. That’s like throwing trees at Dragons.”
There was a lengthy, awkward silence.
“Princess, can I touch your hair?”
“What?” Lia swung away from the railing, clenching her chained fists despite the pain it caused her broken finger. “Wouldn’t you rather have a couple more fingers to break?”
There was a tautness in the girl she could not fathom. Hualiama wished her face could crack into a smile–amused or fake, it hardly mattered, for she hated to shun anyone. Intending to hurt them, she only hurt herself. That was Lia. But this windroc had been set against her from the beginning.
She muttered, “I’ve the impression that if I made the same request, I’d more safely explore the inside of a starving rajal’s mouth with my hand.”
“You’re so unlike us,” Saori breathed. “Hair as untamed as a Cloudlands-bound torrent. So many words. Master of your own Dragonship. Such a freedom from stricture, tradition and honour.”
“I have honour!”
“Then honour my request.”
“Ah … Islands’ sakes! I can’t even pretend to understand you.”
Responding to Hualiama’s reluctant nod, Saori reached out a slim hand and touched her hair. A tiny smile played about her lips, an unconscious sigh seemed to waft out of her very soul. Lia stood frozen. This was an Island beyond bizarre. She could stand alongside another Human being, and know less of them than she understood of the legendary realm of Herimor, beyond the Rift.
“Your turn.” Saori guided Lia’s hand to her short-cropped hair. Again, she sighed. Was Saori was making some sort of romantic overture? Hualiama removed her hand as quickly as possible, not wishing to feel those soft bristles ever again.
Lia wet her lips and asked, “What’re you doing?”
“Breaking taboos.” The other girl spread her hands apologetically. “In our culture, long hair in a woman is a mark of shame and degradation, a sign that a face must be hidden from view. We shun the face veil, unlike most Eastern Isles women.”
“In ours,” the Fra’aniorian Islander responded, “a shaven head is the mark of a prostitute. Sorry. But they shave their hair to avoid diseases carried by head lice and fleas.”
Saori laughed curtly. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever be friends, will we?”
Lia shivered. “I doubt it.”
“Too bad. The Prince speaks highly of you.”
“Qilong?”
“No, your brother.”
“Elki?” she squeaked involuntarily. The sheer nerve of this sadistic tramp!
While Lia fought for control, Saori said, “Could a Prince ever like a girl like me?” Lia flushed hot and cold, robbed of words, but the Eastern Isles warrior added, “I tell you this, because as his sister, you should be the first to know that I intend to make him mine.”
Hualiama managed only a graceless, incoherent splutter by way of reply.
“I could never wed Qilong. But your brother …” Saori blushed delicately. “He shivers my Island, o Princess of Fra’anior. There can be no other for me. What say you?”
“I-I-I … I’ll kill you!”
* * * *
To watch Saori and Elki tiptoeing around each other was like lying beneath a waterfall and allowing the flow to pound her brain into prekki-fruit mush, Lia decided. Everyone knew Saori was making moon-eyes at him. Nobody admitted it. Nobody knew what Qilong would do if he found out.
Cold-blooded murder was not a Hualiama character trait. Besides, it was too much fun to watch Elki behave as if he were entirely oblivious to Saori’s intentions. Was her brother such a fine actor? Or was he truly head in the clouds, feet floating above the Island? Even his sister could not tell. She should definitely not enjoy how much his behaviour appeared to torture the Eastern Islander, should she? Nor should she be so mean-spirited as to occasionally draw Saori’s attention to the splint on her little finger, a silent threat.
Qilong had not made his intentions regarding his captives clear, nor had he dared to raise so much as an eyebrow in Lia’s direction.
Instead, flying the white flag of an envoy–a diplomatic flag–Prince Qilong’s Dragonship dropped into a deep ravine which housed Merx’s worst-kept secret, the massively fortified entrance to the Human-inhabited cave-system, and the Dragonship’s unusual crew found themselves chugging toward a sight that drove any thoughts of her brother’s admirer clean out of Lia’s head.
Dragon battle!
Or was it? She saw a fantastic snarl of Dragons on the ground and in the air, Dragonships, and Human troops holed up in caves firing the enormous crossbows Saori had referred to at any Dragon that dared to brave the restrictive airspace. Why were the Dragons fighting each other? Why were there metal hawsers spanning the quarter-mile-deep ravine, if not to snarl Dragons in flight?
“Full reverse!” bellowed Qilong. “Get us out of here, now!”
Fireballs hosed the cliff where the men of Merx hid their weapons. Not two hundred feet off their bow, a Dragon spun in the air, speared through his torso by one of the tree-trunk quarrels. Lia clutched her chest in horror, almost as though she had felt the impact in her own person. Why would the Dragons risk an attack against such a heavily armed fortress? She scanned the scene as their Dragonship shuddered, struggling to change direction.
There. “No!” Lia sagged against the railing.
Saori, blast the girl into a Cloudlands volcano, thrust a shoulder beneath her armpit. “What? You’re hit?”
“Noo … down there.”
Bait. She saw bait, in the form of a days-old Green Dragon hatchling squirming and squealing beneath a heavy net the Merxians had staked to the ground just outside one of their caverns. A Green Dragoness stalked them, but the men held her at bay by threatening the hatchling with their spears. Two more hatchlings cowered behind the Dragoness’ wings, clearly distressed, mewling and hiccoughing the beginnings of fireballs. Maddened beyond reason, Dragons stormed the ravine, trying to reach the trapped hatchling, but they had to cross a terrible field of fire to reach the ravine’s bottom.
Her gorge rose. This was perverse, threatening a hatchling to lure other Dragons to their doom. Before she knew it, Hualiama shook Saori off and lurched into the navigation cabin, where Qilong stood in his customary wide-legged pose, barking orders at his men.
“Please!” The Fra’aniorian Islander cast herself at his feet. “Qilong, please–”
He startled. “I am Qilong, dread pirate-lord–”
“Mighty Qilong! This is wrong. I beg you … I have to go down there and save that hatchling. Please, Qilong. Show your mercy. Let me go.”
Saori suddenly fell to her knees beside Hualiama, and pressed her forehead to Qilong’s right boot. “Display the greatness of your magnanimity, o mighty Qilong, terror of one hundred and seventy-one Isles. Free the worthless Fra’aniorian, that she might prove her mettle in the fires of battle, or perish in misery and shame.”
Lia hissed sidelong at Saori, “What are you doing?”
“Giving you a chance to die.”
S
AORI THRUST ELKI
backward with the palm of her hand. “You do the Princess dishonour.”
“I prefer my sister alive, thank you kindly!”
“You’ve not the first understanding of our ways,” the tall girl blazed, her dark eyes as hot as lava pits, and her body positioned inflexibly to deny Elki’s advance.
Hualiama slid her Nuyallith blades home in their sheaths and lifted her Haozi hunting bow. “I’m ready.”
Aye, she was sick of being chained, irked at being the risible Qilong’s captive and more than ready to be chasing her Dragon across the Isles. But Lia would rather die than turn her back on that hatchling.
“Can’t a fellow follow ten paces behind?” Elki insisted. “Can I fire an arrow in my sister’s defence without ruining some ridiculous Eastern honour-code? She’s … breakable! Not half as invincible as her stubbornness suggests. Lia! Stop!”
Hualiama gripped the rope Qilong’s men held ready for her. As the Dragonship reversed back up the fern-fringed ravine, away from the battle, another Dragon tumbled by their starboard bow, its left wing clearly broken between the second and third wing-joints. It crash-landed heavily, a slap of flaccid flesh against stone, and did not rise.
“Leave it!” snapped Saori, thumping the Prince in the chest with her chained hands.
Elki howled, “I will not! You stay right where I can see you, short shrift, or I swear–”
“I love you too, Elki, but I need to do this,” said Hualiama.
Saori added, “In our culture–”
The Fra’aniorian Prince snorted, “Culture? I’ll show you culture! Where I come from, when we want to kiss a woman, we do this!” There was a short, shocked pause. “And to the windrocs with the consequences!”
Speechless, Saori seemed torn between dissolving into a puddle of tears, and wishing to slip a dagger into Elki’s chest.
Elki growled, “Obstinate wretch. You provoked me.”
Qilong clapped his hands happily. “Ah, a fine demonstration of barbaric Western customs. Perfectly decadent and worthy of a dread pirate-lord.”
Departing from a tableaux which could she have painted it, would have fetched a princely sum, Hualiama swarmed down the long rope, letting the tough cord rasp against her wristlet to control the speed of her descent. The cool depths of the ravine could not dampen her fire. The rage in her breast demanded to be unleashed, like the swollen, hail-pregnant black clouds that loomed over Fra’anior Cluster before a thunderstorm broke. An alert stillness pooled in her being. She took in the battle’s details, absorbing through her pores and nostrils the scents of mossy rock and Dragon fire, and the acrid stench of the Green Dragons’ highly acidic spit. Her ears attuned to the madness of feral Dragons. She palmed an arrow from her quiver, ready on her right hip.
Touch down. Lia sprinted across the slippery boulders of the riverbed, as nimble as a dragonet. She knew she would approach from behind the desperate Green Dragoness. Were she that Dragon, she would destroy any Human within reach. Arrow to the bowstring. Curse the still-tender finger, safely ensconced in its splint. Great Islands, how that Dragoness filled the narrow ravine-bottom with a mountain of gleaming draconic scale-armour! A tight-knit squad of ten soldiers faced the Dragoness, armed with spears and tall metal shields. Two Merxians menaced the hatchling, while another squad waited nearby, their eyes fixed on the battle higher up in the ravine.
Over the bunched boulders, Hualiama saw the tip of a crossbow quarrel orient on the stricken mother Dragon. She must hear Lia’s footsteps approaching from behind. The Dragoness was more concerned with her hatchling.
Instantly, the Human girl changed the angle of her attack. Shouting,
Murderers!
Lia ran up the Dragoness’ back to use her as a springboard, vaulting skyward to find an angle for a vital bowshot. Her arrow ricocheted off the boulder just ahead of the crossbow, and sprouted miraculously from a soldier’s helmet.
A huge green paw swiped at her.
I’m a friend!
Lia cried, flexing her legs to take the impact.
A what?
The Dragoness blinked as Hualiama skidded off the two backward-facing ‘thumbs’ of her paw and dropped awkwardly beneath the Dragon’s neck.
You’re a Human.
Sinking to one knee, Lia sighted along her arrow at the soldiers menacing the hatchling.
I am the Dragonfriend.
Her shot sped true. It did not penetrate her target’s breastplate, but the shot’s power knocked him clean off his feet. Her follow-up arrow darted barely an inch aside from a shield-boss as a soldier tried to throw Lia off her aim. The second spearman threatening the hatchling clutched his shoulder, and collapsed.
“Get the girl!” roared the leader of the green-clad Merxians. Their feathered helmets bunched as the men drove forward in a tight formation.
You deal with the catapult and those men,
Lia called to the Dragoness.
The Green Dragoness blinked her nictitating membranes, clearly confused at fielding orders from a Human.
Lia taunted the soldiers, “Can’t catch me, slow-slugs.”
Hurdling bushes and bounding over boulders like a cliff-goat scenting a hunting rajal, the Nuyallith-trained warrior evaded their spears and charged across the fifty yards or so separating her from the second squad of soldiers and the trapped hatchling. Fire! She dived aside to avoid the splash of a stray fireball. Two of the soldiers were less fortunate, and were roasted in their armour. Behind her, the Dragoness roared an earth-shattering challenge.
Still flat on her stomach, Lia drew and fired a reflex shot into the catapult-crew, exposed by her new position. If that twenty-foot, metal-tipped quarrel struck the Dragoness from this short a distance … she howled as a spear-point lanced into her right buttock, while two more spear-tips pinged off rocks near her right hand. Rather than stand and run, Lia dropped her bow and rolled, coming up with a Nuyallith blade in either hand, the right held clumsily–Islands’ sakes, was the little finger so important to a proper grip? This inane thought sneaked into her mind as she witnessed the Green Dragoness rear up, and simply drop her belly atop the squad of soldiers.
Who cared about elegance or style? She grinned.
Awesome!
Spinning, Lia launched herself at the crossbow crew, briefly startled to hear an incoherent but clearly female battle-cry coming from further up the ravine. Then, Elki’s well-known voice, shouting the ancient monkish battle-cry, “For the Dragon!”
The Dragon! Oh, the Great Dragon! Amaryllion’s fire boiled in her veins and fizzed in her ears. Destroying the team of crossbow engineers as though a tornado had ripped through their little emplacement behind the boulder, Lia reversed direction, scanning the battlefield. Three more squads of heavily armoured Merxians approached along the ravine floor, marching in close formation, showcasing the awesome discipline they were renowned for. Four men ran toward the trapped hatchling. Here came Saori, unchained, wielding a type of long dagger unfamiliar to Hualiama. She ran gracefully, her long legs scissoring across the ground. Elki thundered along in her wake, brandishing his sword with far greater zeal than skill. The pair crashed into the closest knot of soldiers with a crunch that made Lia wince.
Lia skimmed across the tops of three large boulders in succession, almost airborne as she bore down on the Dragon hatchling with her swords upraised.
Fear not, little one,
she called.
My baby!
The Dragoness screamed as Hualiama pounced upon the soldiers, her twin swords blazing with fire, red and blue mingled into an intense purple as they crossed briefly. Perhaps the Green Dragoness thought Lia intended to execute her baby. Acid spit rocketed past her left shoulder, striking one of the soldiers squarely in the face.
Refusing to look at the result of that acid attack–the sounds were hideous enough–she clashed with the remaining trio instead. Lia danced around the hatchling, her swords cleaving armour and bone. Nuyallith techniques flowed from her body like a river of molten lava–the rajal pouncing, a sideways snake-strike, the two-handed cleaver to finish off the final soldier. Lia winced, holding her leg where a glancing hammer-strike had cannoned off her kneecap.
She hobbled over to the hatchling.
I’m a friend, see? Don’t be afraid.
Despite being a hatchling, the several weeks-old male Dragon was twelve feet long and stood as tall as her shoulder. He blinked at her.
Mama fire-eyes?
Your mama’s coming, my flame-heart. Be strong! Fire your courage.
With a mighty blow, the Princess sliced through a good four feet of netting. Though the hatchling snarled and tried to spit fire at her, she marched around to his forepaws and began to cut them free. Those squads were too close. A crossbow quarrel fell from above, right on the hatchling’s tail. Lia yelped as he made an involuntary snap at her, snagging her wristlet with immature but needle-sharp fangs.
MY BABY!
The Green Dragoness’ pounce took her right over Hualiama, rolling her in a flurry of wings and paws and a jarring blow to her hip.
A deeper rumbling sound, however, undercut the sounds of the soldiers’ boots tramping in strict time. Lia gasped as a section of the opposite ravine-wall tumbled away, revealing three war crossbows and a catapult concealed in a flat cave entrance. The engineers rapidly oriented their weapons on the melee down on the ravine floor.
Now a high-pitched whistling rose over the sounds of battle! Lia knew that strange, ululating sound … it cut into her eardrums–
wheee-yyiiii-boom!
Hualiama recoiled as an entire squad of soldiers vaporised before her eyes. One moment they were marching, the next, even their armour and weapons exploded into a thin, crimson-and-silver mist. What Dragon power was that?
Take cover!
The Copper Dragoness Mizuki hurled herself at the crossbow emplacements, while the Green did anything but take cover. Mizuki sprayed the advancing soldiers with Dragon fire somehow mixed with acidic Green Dragon spit–or was this her special attack once again? Shields drooped over the soldiers’ arms. Their flesh boiled. Lia felt a wash of magic as the Copper Dragoness swiped her forepaw across the emplacements, blew up the catapult with her weird vaporising attack, and took two crossbow quarrels directly against her chest without flinching. Stone skin? She had encountered that skill when fighting the Roc. That Copper Dragoness had more tricks stored in her belly than an entire Dragonwing of Blues. Freaking awesome!
Dragging her attention back to the fight, Hualiama charged out from behind the Green Dragoness and barrelled into the remaining squad of Merxian soldiers.
Mizuki roared at the Green,
Protect your younglings!
Elki at her right shoulder, Saori at her left; they pounded the soldiers, who closed ranks and stood their ground grimly.
“Slow retreat?” Saori suggested.
Dragon-rancorous, Lia snarled, “Have I demonstrated my courage yet?”
“Oh, stop with the bickering already!” But Elki howled as Mizuki plucked him deftly out of her way, before whirling to vanquish six of his foes with a mighty snap of her tail. With his free arm, he threw her a jaunty salute. “Timely rescue, o mistress of might.”
Retreating, Hualiama cast about for her Haozi bow. Mizuki’s eyes whirled as she set the Prince down. The Dragoness said something to Elki which made Saori’s face darken, before she turned with massive, gleaming menace to start hosing down the ravine with fireballs, clearing their escape route. A few stray spears and crossbow quarrels rained down upon them as Hualiama, Elki and Saori sprinted after the departing Green Dragoness, who had all three of her hatchlings on the move as she fled the scene of the battle.
How had that hatchling been trapped? Which Dragons in their right mind would attack the famously impregnable fortress of the Men of Merx?
Now was no time to sit and ponder the lay of the Islands. She bolted.
* * * *
Having made good her escape and returned to Qilong’s Dragonship as promised, Hualiama found herself the subject of another insane argument in the navigation cabin as they made their best speed away from Merx. Mizuki had stayed behind to protect the Green Dragoness and her hatchlings. The Human Dragonship fled like a fat turtledove fleeing a hundred hungry hawks.
“I will not bind that wound on your hind parts!” Saori growled. “It’s shameful. Ask your brother.”
Elki, seated while First Mate Genzo bound a burn-wound on his upper arm, clucked his tongue unhappily. “She’s my sister, but–”
“I shall treat her alluring buttocks most tenderly,” said Genzo, with a gap-toothed leer at the subject of their conversation.
“You may eat my sword,” the royal ward glared at him, reddening. She began to unsling the Haozi hunting bow from its crosswise-slung position across her chest, but stopped. “Saori, at risk of offending you once more, I wanted to thank you–and Elki–for coming to my aid.”
“I, the piratical pestilence sweeping over two hundred and thirteen Islands, declare it a most noble deed,” said Qilong, unexpectedly joining their group. “I decree it most royally. Besides, if she who is no longer my intended can survive the humiliation of a barbarian’s ravishing kiss, she must surely consider the treatment of honourable wounds–”