“With what forces?”
“HeBellereth.”
“He lives? Good. But one dragon would be wasted. Now, with all five of us, we’ve got a good chance of clearing those towers of war machines.”
“They’ve built more, many more, on every rooftop in the town,” Nivom said. “You can see them from our hilltop.”
“Delay always allows the enemy time to prepare,” SiDrakkon said. “Still, enough fire should make them abandon their machines. It may take several days, but I’ve seen it done.”
“Your honor, Nivom has a plan to bring down the walls,” the Copper said.
“Sacrifice every blighter here to the Earth Spirit; it still won’t bring an earthquake.”
“No, sir. With rocks. Dropped by HeBellereth.”
“Ahh, youth,” SiDrakkon said, softening his tone a little. “Always thinking they can reinvent warfare. It’s been tried in other places. Never works—not one stone out of scores of scores goes true. No, I’ve got the experience.”
“You don’t understand,” Nivom said. “It’s a matter of force and momentum. He’s been knocking down trees for days now—”
SiDrakkon’s griff dropped and rattled. “Trees don’t shoot back. No, we’ll start this very night. No, not another word out of either of you! It seems I got here just in time before you all got yourselves killed. Fire and terror are the way to go with humans; believe me. They’re not dwarves, after all. Fire and terror, drakes. Fire and terror. Now, we’ve got to hurry. According to the griffaran there’s an army of Ghi men on the march, big enough to sweep this collection and two more besides off these hills.”
SiDrakkon’s second assault on the city walls was an improvement on the first only in its brevity. His duelist, enraged by javelins fired into his wings and belly, plunged into the city, and managed to make a good deal of noise roaring and smashing before he was silenced. The two young dragons, fast friends since their days in the Drakwatch, according to Nivom, died together when one was brought down in front of the gate tower and the other flew to fight beside him.
HeBellereth had the sense to empty his fire bladder in one long pass over the city and returned, setting the blighters to work fastening shut the holes in his wings with bits of leather and wooden pegs.
“They’re ready for dragons, all right,” HeBellereth said, wincing as a bone needle passed through his wing skin.
SiDrakkon alighted and the blighters ran from his growlings. He knocked over a tree with his tail and tore apart a meat-smoking hut.
“With four more dragons I could have done it,” he raged. “Three to go in and draw fire, and the rest to attack the war machines before they could be reloaded. Only four more!”
Nivom had a few words with HeBellereth and approached SiDrakkon. “Your honor, we can still try the rocks. HeBellereth is willing, and he wasn’t injured.”
“I should think not, the way he dropped his flame and flapped away. Yes. Send him back over there. I’d like to see that.”
Nivom set the blighters to work at the rock pile. There was a good deal of cheering and horn blowing from the other side of the river, and the men ventured from their gates to swarm over the corpses of the young dragons like hungry ants on a bit of dropped fruit.
HeBellereth waddled over to the steepest part of the hill, and the blighters, who’d rolled a more or less round boulder into position at the edge of the cliff, jostled for positions to watch.
“No. He’ll never get off the ground with that. It’s too big,” SiDrakkon said.
HeBellereth clutched the boulder against his chest, wrapping his front limbs about it, spread his wings, and launched himself off the cliff.
SiDrakkon, who hadn’t seen the stunt, stood with mouth agape as HeBellereth picked up speed down the steep hill. Then he leveled off, shooting down the river.
“He’s going downstream,” SiDrakkon said.
“Just watch, your honor,” Nivom said. “He just needs a long, straight run. We’re going to try for that ramp leading up to the main gate.”
HeBellereth shrank to a hard-to-see shadow against the night sky, banked, then rose a little using his momentum, and for a moment the Copper could see him framed against the low-hanging moon.
The dragon adjusted his course, rose with a few strong flaps, and then extended his wings as wide as he could and began a long glide toward the city.
“His idea, the glide,” Nivom said. “Oh, I can’t wait until I get my wings, can you, Rugaard?”
The Copper didn’t say anything. There was a chance, he supposed, that his wings would come in properly. The injury from that foul human seemed so long ago now.
Then HeBellereth was over the ground. Several arrow-flights away from the city walls, he released his boulder and soared off across the river, skimming the surface low enough that his wing tips broke the surface as they beat.
His stone bounced twice up the causeway. The first time its trajectory was almost flat; the second it must have caught on some projection, because it flew almost straight up. It struck hard just over the gate.
“Well, that didn’t seem to do much.”
“The angle was wrong,” Nivom said, sounding a little doubtful. “It took a bad bounce.”
HeBellereth came up and rested for a few minutes. Nivom helped the blighters select another stone and roll it into position.
“You’re wasting your time, I think. But if it amuses you…”
“Not an arrow struck home,” HeBellereth said. “Attacking a town is hatchling play if you can keep your scale to the wretches.”
“I found a rounder one,” Nivom said, returning with the blighters rolling the stone to the edge of the bluff. “If only we had some dwarvish stonecutters. Rounded stones would fly truer.”
HeBellereth repeated his performance, falling, then turning downstream and banking once again for the drop. Nivom held his breath as the stone was loosed. The Copper noticed Fourfang and Rhea crouching in the underbrush, clear of SiDrakkon’s eye, watching as well.
This time the boulder stayed low as it bounced. It hit the tower next to the gate, and they heard a series of shouts and crashes from the buildings in town.
“Did it! Did it!” Nivom said. “It punched straight through; did you hear?”
SiDrakkon resettled his wings. “So you made a peephole in the wall. Much good it does us.”
“Let me take that big, diamond-shaped one,” HeBellereth said, panting a little. “Just let me rest for a moment. They’re shooting at me as I pass the wall, not as I approach. I think I can release it closer.”
“If you think you can do it,” Nivom said.
This boulder was a little larger than the others, and the watchers heard tree limbs snap as HeBellereth passed over them. On this flight, rather than releasing it low over the causeway, he altered his wings so he rose, and released the boulder on the upswing. HeBellereth executed an elegant turn, keeping his belly away from the city walls.
The boulder transcribed a short arc and struck the wall with a crack the Copper felt all the way across the river. The gate tower shuddered, then toppled backward with a long, groaning crash, sending up a cloud of dust.
“I’ll be gutted,” SiDrakkon said.
The gate crumbled next; then a piece of wall where the tower had been attached fell away. A huge, crescent-shaped gap opened up.
The Copper roused Fourfang with a poke of his tail and sent the blighter to give a message to the king.
HeBellereth returned, a big chunk of his wing flapping as he landed. “Stitchers!” he roared. “They punched a hole in me with a rock of their own,” he said as the blighters went to work.
“You’ve done enough for now. Rest,” Nivom said.
“I’m getting the wind under me now,” HeBellereth said. “I’ll bring down another section of wall before you can recite Ryu-Var’s Tally of Drakine Virtues—if I can get this wing fixed.”
“Can you teach me how to do this, Nivom?” SiDrakkon asked.
“It takes practice. Some days of work,” HeBellereth said.
“The cheering and horn blowing have stopped over there, I notice,” the Copper said.
HeBellereth put in a long night, making two-score or more runs. Some simply missed, or the boulder bounced wrong, or it did no apparent damage. But by the time dawn came up the town looked very different. The smooth stone wall had been opened in three wide sections, the entire gate area lay in ruins, and the southernmost tower had collapsed, leaving a whole quarter of the city undefended.
The humans were frantically arranging the rubble to form an improvised wall.
But the real blow to the Ghi men came at dawn. The sun came up to reveal the king’s army camped south of the city, the hillsides thick with squatting blighters that made them look like vast melon fields. The tribes howled and clashed their spears against their leather shields, setting up a steady, doom-laden thrumming that echoed from bluff to bluff in the river valley. The Copper wondered if any human in those closely packed streets counted on still drawing breath by the next sunset.
