Voices of Dragons (17 page)

If this didn't work, nothing would.

Kneeling on his back, Kay let the harness take her weight. She raised her arms, stretching them straight up. The wind punched into her, and she laughed.

They would be seen. No doubt about it. A role model for the community, her father had said.
The sheriff's
daughter—the hero's daughter
, the captions on the photos had read. Kay didn't know how real any of that was. She certainly didn't feel like a role model. But her father had been right, and people would pay particular attention to this, and treat it as more than a stunt, because of who she was.

Looking up, she saw news helicopters along with the military helicopters, and Kay wondered what kind of conversation was going on between their radios. The air was getting crowded. But she waved at them, hoping they could see her smile.

Artegal must have also felt they were getting hemmed in, because his wings started pumping again, and he climbed, ignoring gunfire and pursuing helicopters. She was so worried about him getting shot, she stopped worrying about falling.

This was only the first part of it. They'd been seen by the human side. Now, they needed to be seen by the dragons. He headed north and west, to the border, to the narrow valleys where they had practiced flying. Kay huddled on Artegal's back, wrapped in her coat for warmth, as he rocketed deeper into dragon territory.

This flight wasn't as exhilarating as the others had been. Before, they'd been playing. This flight had purpose. It was serious, more serious than anything she'd ever done. More serious even than her father's funeral, which had, in some ways, seemed like watching a movie about someone else.
But this—she felt her blood rushing in her ears.

She wanted to know she was going to be okay when this was all over. Artegal was taking her to see dragons. She wondered if this was what it felt like to go to war.

She wondered if she ought to be waving a white flag of truce.

The mountains grew closer. Artegal pointed toward them like an arrow. All the times she had looked north, watching the dragons, specks soaring in the distance, she never thought she'd be this close. Now, she wondered if she had secretly wanted to go to them all this time, like climbing a rock face that was off limits, an exotic spot on her map. She wanted to see, just for a moment.

When Artegal veered, she looked over, around the sail of his wing, and saw them. Dragons, three of them, like castles in the sky, growing larger as they approached.

It was far too late to change her mind, to turn back, and she grew afraid. She didn't want to do this; she didn't want to be here. She huddled on Artegal's back, but there was no way the blue and red ropes and her black parka would blend in with his scales.

A roar echoed toward them, then modulated, changing pitch, tone, rhythm. Artegal roared back in a clipped way she'd never heard before, different from his full-lunged shouts. Speech. This was how dragons talked to one another.

He climbed and spun so that his back faced them. This
was what they'd come here to do, just like showing off for the news cameras. She had to do her part now.

She crouched to her knees, braced against the harness, and waved, making sure the dragons could see her.

Two of the dragons were different shades of green; one was brilliant red, like a ruby. They split apart, arcing around Artegal, coming from both sides, and flanked him, penning him in.

They could force him down in a way the helicopters couldn't. They could match his speed, his maneuverability. They were bigger than he was. Artegal was a young dragon, after all. If they caught him, what would they do with her?

Take me home
, Kay wanted to yell, but the wind would carry her words away.

Then she thought, maybe Branigan was right. He was a spy, and he'd been planning to carry her back to Dragon and keep her hostage all along. Everyone would know where she was because they'd flown over Silver River. They'd advertised the fact that he was kidnapping her. She was an idiot. She should have stayed home. This whole time, she should have stayed home. She never should have gone back to meet Artegal that second time. The dragons were soaring toward them now, gaining altitude, getting above Artegal so they could force him to the ground. And Artegal wasn't doing anything.

But that was a ruse. A moment later, he dropped a wing.

His whole body tipped sideways and fell, low enough that his wing cut into the treetops. Then he raced up, wings pumping hard. The pressure of the harness dug into her, and ropes dug into the scales of his shoulders, and she was almost floating, hanging against the harness.

He flew higher than they ever had, and she started to wonder how high he could go, and if it would be too high for her, because the air was thin even here, and she was having trouble drawing breath. But he wasn't flying straight up. He was making an arc. A high, narrow arc. At the apex of it, he seemed to hang for a moment, hovering, motionless, his wings swept back, his nose pointed down. The other dragons were far below them.

He dived. As they dropped, his speed increased. He fell like a bomb to the silver ribbon of water that was the border, and while the other dragons might reach him, they couldn't stop something going so fast.

The speed and cold tried to flay the skin from her face. She wanted to look, to watch the ground come up, to see what the other dragons did. But she had to bury her face in her sleeve and cling to the ropes while she tugged against the clip on the harness, seemingly weightless.

When Artegal spun, she tried to brace and ride with it as they'd practiced. But this was different, flailing, out of control—his wings stuck out, flapping loudly, caught against the air instead of using it. Kay jerked against the harness. And Artegal fell.

It shouldn't have been possible—he was made for flying, built for the sky. But he tumbled until, with a massive grunt and shudder through his whole body, he spread his wings, which filled with air. His body jerked, swung, yanked to a stop. Kay crashed into his back. Then she saw what had happened.

Jets rocketed overhead—Kay didn't hear them because they were moving too fast, leaving the roaring sound of their engines behind them. They went right overhead, maybe only a few hundred feet above them. Probably more, but it felt close, close enough to knock Artegal out of the air with their passage.

Artegal climbed again. As far as she could tell, he was trying to regain his bearings. She could almost feel his heart beating through his back, and she wished she could see his face, to tell if he was worried, scared, angry, or something else.

Now that the jets had passed on, she could hear them, a mechanical scream that didn't sound at all like the dragons calling to one anther. Two of them, flying side by side, the new, super-agile jets. The Dragonslayers. They arced around, tracing a vast circle around the area.

The other three dragons turned to pursue the jets. The jets broke apart, made sharp turns, and moved to face them. Artegal hovered, watching. He seemed poised between wanting to join in the fight and wanting to flee.

The three dragons engaged the jets.

If they'd been conventional jets, the dragons would have flown circles around them. But when the dragons spun and twisted, their long tails coiling and snapping behind them, wings dipping and flapping, these jets turned with them, pivoting on their specially designed engines. Two of the dragons worked together to keep one of the jets between them—for a moment, they looked as if they were trying to trap it, to grab it in their claws as they'd snatch at their prey. The jets and bodies of the dragons were almost the same size, but with their long necks and tails, the dragons were bigger and could envelop the aircraft. The jet's afterburners flared, and it rocketed ahead, out of reach.

At the same time, the other jet spun toward them, dodging out of the way of the third dragon, harassing it. It fired. Guns or missiles or something. Kay only saw something flare like a spark from the jet's underbelly, and trails of white smoke flew away from it. But nothing happened. Whatever it was, it didn't hit anything.

It was a real dogfight, like in an old war movie. They looked like crows fighting over a scrap of food. Kay couldn't follow the actions, couldn't guess what each player would do next. Artegal groaned. Kay felt it through his back, a rumble like thunder.

The first jet broke away from the two pursuers, and again the other jet fired. The dragons dodged—nothing would hit them. The second jet was intent on helping the other, on firing at the two dragons, which were leading it
away, drawing it on—giving the third dragon, the scarlet one, a chance to act.

The red dragon pounced. That was what it looked like. It leaped up in the air, gaining extra altitude, somehow flying even higher than it had, as if launching from a solid base. Then it fell over the apex of its arc. But it didn't spread its wings, it didn't try to halt its descent, it didn't catch its fall. At the last moment, when it was right on top of the aircraft, it reached out with its hind legs and landed hard, claws digging into steel, scrabbling for purchase around wings, engines, canopy, rivets, and seams, whatever it could catch.

The jet fell. The dragon's weight slammed into it, and the pilot lost control. The plane flipped sideways and plummeted. Engines flamed to life as the pilot tried to regain control. Kay tried to imagine what he was saying over the radio. She wondered if it was Captain Conner.

Spinning now, the two tangled together, the dragon's tail coiled around the craft's body like a snake, his fanged jaws closed over the canopy. The jet straightened, wobbled—then the dragon lurched, stuck out a wing, tipping the plane off balance again, and they went back to tumbling.

If he had let go, if he had let the aircraft escape, they both could have survived. Maybe he couldn't let go. Maybe he was locked in, stuck, trapped—too dizzy to think. Or maybe he just wouldn't.

Artegal screamed his own fierce jet-engine roar and
plunged after them, wings flapping, reaching toward speed. But it was too late; he was too far behind. And he couldn't have done anything. Jet and dragon together plunged into the treetops of the forest, and a moment later a fireball exploded, rolling, cutting a path of flames through the trees. The sound was a different kind of roar, a rush of fire. A moment after that, a wave of heat passed over them. A thick, black tower of smoke, like the one they'd followed to Captain Conner's crash, rose high over the forest.

Kay was crying. Her nose was running. She couldn't think. She would never get that image out of her mind.

The other jet climbed, circled, then sped south, back toward its base.

Artegal lurched forward, flying fast, but without purpose or destination. He dipped, swooped, and finally fell into a pattern that made a wide circle around the place where the jet and dragon had crashed. She didn't look down toward the fire burning below. She didn't want to see what was there.

The other two dragons, the green ones who were left, circled with Artegal. They called to one another across the distance with roars and whistles. Kay wished she knew what they were saying. It may as well have been Latin. Were they older dragons? Could they remember a time when people and dragons worked together? If so, would they understand, or would seeing Artegal and Kay together only make them angry?

She almost thought she could understand them—the roars became deeper, the whistles more insistent, angrier, maybe. The green dragons loomed above Artegal. She could imagine them plunging down on her in the same way the red one had landed on the plane.

Artegal stretched his wings and wheeled away. South, back toward the border. He flapped his wings and stretched out, the way he flew when he wanted speed. Kay looked over her shoulder—the other dragons didn't follow. They looped, soared, dived, and watched them fly away, but continued marking the spot where the red dragon had fallen.

When they came within sight of the river, Artegal didn't dive, but slowly descended until he skimmed the treetops, the tips of the pines brushing and waving at his passage. Sailing on outstretched wings, he landed, touching his feet to the ground, leaning forward on his wings, and settling his body to earth.

They stayed there, still, a long time. Artegal rested, catching his breath, head hung low on a curved neck. She lay flat, trying to understand what had happened, trying to think of what to do next. It was easier simply to lie here.

Finally, because it probably annoyed Artegal having her hanging off him, she braced her weight to put slack in the harness and unclipped herself. She slid down Artegal's shoulder to the ground.

He turned slightly, only changing the angle of his head,
to look at her. His eyes were shining. His mouth was long, frowning. They gazed at each other for a long time. Kay didn't know what to say. She was still crying, softly this time, tears falling, freezing on her cheek.

“Now I've lost someone, too,” Artegal said.

“Who—who was he?” she managed to stammer.

“Brother's mentor.”

It wasn't quite an uncle. She wondered what the relationship meant to a dragon, how important someone like that would be. She didn't understand. How could she grieve with him if she didn't understand? How could they even talk?

“I'm sorry,” she said.

With a sigh, he tipped his nose to the ground. He'd never done that before. He'd brought his head low; he'd looked her in the eye at her level. But she'd never seen him rest his head, as if it were too heavy to hold up.

She wondered if dragons cried.

Hesitating, she touched his face, the narrow ridge of his snout that ran between his eyes. He blinked, left his eyes half closed, and nudged himself closer. Then she was hugging him, wrapping her arms around the narrow part of his neck, behind his head.

“Was this our fault?” she said. “Did they fight because of us?”

His breaths were sighs, like he was tired. “Would have happened. If not now, then later.”