Dragon's Run Read online

  “Smoogie, it will be fine,” Miss Cog said through gritted teeth. “Sproka is a good girl; she’ll take good care of you.” She held a first aid crystal to what remained of her legs; the now-thawed meat of her legs was dead and black. The little medical crystal might save one. It didn’t really matter; death would be coming for her in one way or another.

  She lay in her riding harness on Hammer’s back, right between his wings. Smooge watched her with huge puppy-like eyes that brimmed with worry froma little farther down Hammer’s spine. Hard to believe that her Smoogie and Hammer had hatched within a decade of each other. Both were equivalent in intelligence, but Smooge had been starved for most of his life, living on minerals other than his favored aluminum. “Sproka is daughter, not you. No leave,” Smooge pleaded, scooting forward to prod her with his snout.

  “No touch, Smoogie,” Miss Cog said tightly. Smooge sunk back and gave a little whine. “We have work to do.” Even if she survived and succeeded, Yaz’noth would see her crippled and try to honor his promise of the fifth Talon. Well past her fiftieth year, Cog did not see that going well. Then she’d die, hurting her lord in the process. Although Yaz’noth would never admit it, the secret was that her lord hated to see pain. He always killed quickly, and while he might devise brutal punishments, he quickly lost interest in them if they were performed in front of him. That had been her family’s secret to becoming the Miss Cogs and keeping that name in her family for three generations now.

  At least she knew where Ishe was. She hadn’t been entirely sure that the young pirate had stopped at High Tree, but it had been a good gamble.

  “Sail!” Hammer’s voice rumbled from below her, and Smooge’s head shot up on his long neck. “Blackcoat?!” he hissed with sheer venom.

  “Little sail,” Hammer said.

  “Stand up. Let me see,” Miss Cog grunted.

  The mountain complained under Hammer’s weight as he stood from the crevice he had been lying in. After escaping Ishe and her new friends, they’d flown to the other side of the valley to watch and see if they had repaired the ship. Now he lowered his head to reveal the span of the forest beneath them. Miss Cog felt a spike of fear as she took in the sheer vastness so far from home and the warmth of her family’s tunnels. There, in the place where they had left the wounded cargo ship, rose a new craft. It circled up on a thermal with wings spread wide, more like a dragon than any airship she’d seen. And she’d spent five years on Scale when she’d been younger.

  At this distance, it looked like a bird taking its first awkward flight, wiggling and waggling as it circled ever upward. Miss Cog tightened the straps that held her in place. It could be a decoy. It could be a trap. But this close to the Golden Hills, whatever it was, it had to be grounded or destroyed. “All right, Hammer. Burn it out of the sky.”

  Hammer gave a single huff of eagerness as he spread his wings.

  “Buuuurn it!” Smooge cried as Hammer leapt from the mountainside.

  “I see him!” Drosa shouted out.

  “Where?” Ishe did not look away from the controls as she rolled her shoulder, feeling the new scar tissue resist the movement. The medical crystal had done its job, but they had lost so much time to healing.

  “Right there!” Drosa answered. She stood directly behind Ishe. Captain Small Winter had gifted her with the largest weapon he had, a shoulder-mounted hand cannon, and a crate of unmarked ice shells for it. No wonder he wanted to be on good terms with Madria; arms dealers were always juicy targets.

  “Dead east, Ishe,” Sparrow said from farther back, where he sat with Blinky in his lap.

  Ishe eased the two levers on either side of the power crystal back to neutral, and the craft leveled out heading north. They and the outermost levers, which controlled extending the wings, had been the easiest to figure out. The two middle levers did something more subtle that she hadn’t quite grasped yet. “Let’s see how fast Hammer can fly!” she called back to her tiny crew. “Everyone strap in.” She stomped on the pedals.

  The craft shook for a moment, as if the huge increase in current had taken the liftwood by surprise. Then the craft began to rise, swiftly gaining speed until it was as if they were falling up into the blue sky. The wind fluttered at the side sails until Ishe pitched the nose of the craft up, and the fall became an upward dive. Ishe maintained this until she felt her breath start to draw up short. She eased off and allowed their ascent to crest.

  Drosa made a groan of discomfort as Ishe pushed the craft into a powerless dive and saw that they had climbed far beyond the mountaintops. Everything in the valley below had become a sea of green bisected by the dead line of the river. It turned to a blur as the dive piled on the speed. The wind bit at her eyes. Ishe waited until the air tasted warm again before she pulled the nose up. The craft flew over the land as if they’d all been shot from a cannon. Faster than even Fox Fire under full propeller thrust with a tailwind.

  Joy spread through her body as the speed bled off, and Ishe pushed the glider back into a gentle climb. She risked a glance back. Drosa sat in the dead center of her bench, eyes locked on Ishe, one hand holding the hand cannon and the other gripping the back of the bench as if it and not the cables attached to her harness would prevent her from falling. Sparrow meanwhile stood, peering back in the direction of Tall Tree, absently petting Blinky.

  “Is Hammer gaining?” Ishe called back.

  Sparrow’s gaze shifted, then he shook his head. “Not at the moment!”

  Ishe turned back and focused on maintaining Dancing Fly’s speed, alternating between climbing and diving. She found ship had a point that if she pushed too hard, the wings started to shake and rattle. Not wanting anything to fall off, she settled into a gentle rhythm. And for an hour or so, the distant speck that was Hammer drew no nearer and began to recede.

  “Poor little Rhino.” A now-familiar voice curdled Ishe’s stomach as it breathed in her ears. “Always believing that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.”

  “Shut up, Coyote,” Ishe whispered back under her breath. “I don’t need your help.”

  “You are once again pitting your strength against a dragon’s. You may be the Rhino, but that dragon could pick you up and carry you into the sky.”

  Ishe pushed the craft into a dive, bringing on more speed. “It’s working for now.” And even as she spoke, she felt the winds beneath the wings shift. The breezy tailwind that had been propelling her toward the mouth of the valley was fading. The crosswind that flowed in the higher reaches of the sky dropped lower, pushing her eastward.

  “From whom do you think your mother learned the reading of winds?” Coyote laughed in her ear.

  Ishe dropped lower to get out of the growing crosswind and pondered how close to allow herself to drift toward the Eastern Mountains. The late-afternoon sun would be creating thermals there, but Hammer might benefit from those even more than she. “Doesn’t matter. I have nothing to offer the winds.” Ishe remembered her mother’s chest of spiritual offerings to the winds and storms. In her haste to depart, she had neglected to ask Captain Small Winter for some of his stocks. As she looked, her pilot’s station even had a small drawer for the purpose. She reached for it.

  “Perhaps, before you open that, you should reconsider your name,” Coyote said. “Don’t have to tell anyone. It can be aspirational. Ishe the Diamond-studded Coyote. Or if you want fearsome, Ishe the Red Coyote. I’m not picky as long as I’m in there somewhere.”

  Ishe opened the drawer. A piece of paper fluttered out and tried to escape. Ishe caught it. An ownership certificate. Ishe caught the sign of House Hana before she shoved it back in the drawer. “I’m not a coyote,” she declared. “I’m not my mother. I’m not going to be the worst example or pawn of the Fool.”

  “Were you a Rhino when you convinced the Grief to ensnare Yaz’noth? Did they do that because you are strong? Is that what convinced Low River’s absent hero to make a final stand?” Coyote’s whisper was laced with a growl of
frustration as the bones in Ishe’s arms went ice cold. “In the past, Rhinos needed to be saved again and again. Coyotes never needed help. You are already what you are. Call me when you recognize yourself, daughter.”

  For a fleeting moment, the wind caught in Ishe’s ears, and they swivel back to press against her head. A single breath came into her lungs through a nose that tasted a strengthening salt over the pine of the forest below. Whiskers bent, and she felt the tremor of the winds beginning to shift with angry tension. She breathed out over a too-long tongue, and her humanity slammed back down over her like a sodden canvas bag. Senses muffled, but the knowledge that she had gained stayed.

  The clear sky was a lie. The winds were growing angry, and a storm lay between her and Yaki.

  Ishe’s entire body shook for a moment, pining for more of whatever that had been. “Fuck you, Coyote.” She breathed right before the crosswind slammed into Dancing Fly.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The ancients thought the winds were unthinking forces. Beasts propelled by the turning of the land and heating of the sea. Tell that to the winds today and your ship will be dashed onto the nearest mountaintop.

  Private letters of Tabi Arai

  “He’s gaining again! Two miles back,” Sparrow called out.

  “Aye!” Ishe shouted as she gripped the controls. Sweat leaked out of the cuffs of her gloves and trickled down to her elbows as she desperately rolled Dancing Fly perpendicular to the latest gust that swatted at them. Gray tendrils of dark clouds now reached across the sky, heralding the storm that Ishe could smell without any supernatural aid. Had Coyote sent it? Or had all the Seven together decided this journey hadn’t been hard enough?

  Ishe gritted her teeth and threw the ship back into the sky, trying to feel for the edges of the wind currents through the craft’s wings. Sometimes, she found a favorable channel of air and raced forward, putting valuable distance between herself and Hammer. It almost made up for when the wind threw itself against her with a baleful howl. Against this, Ishe could do nothing but vainly cast the ship back and forth, fighting not to lose ground.

  Hammer seemed less affected by the wind, somehow perceiving the worst gusts before they hit him and powering through others with his massive wings. She could see him over her shoulder, growing larger in her vision. In time, they passed the mouth of the valley and the wide windswept plains opened before them. In opposite corners of her eyes she could see both the shadows of the Grand Torii and the Golden Hills’ central city through the haze of rain that rendered the sputtering sunlight to murk.

  It was going to be like Fox Fire all over again. Unless she did something, they had maybe thirty minutes of light left and still hours before they reached the city at this rate.

  Options. I need options. Ishe’s eyes cast about the console in front of her and stopped on the power crystal set in its center. A feral smile grew on her face as an idea formed in her mind.

  “Closer,” Miss Cog urged Hammer as she shivered beneath Smooge’s body. “You almost have her.” The pain radiating from her lower half had narrowed her world to the two dragons that sandwiched her body and the tiny wind runner that fought to evade them. The worst pain came from a foot that no longer existed. It felt as if her toenails were digging into her heel.

  The little ship banked a bit too hard and, like it had a dozen times before, caught an unhelpful wind, blowing them backward. A grin spread over Miss Cog’s face. “Now, Hammer! You can do it!”

  “Burn the blackcoats!” Smooge echoed as Hammer began to beat his great wings in earnest. His breath heaving with every stroke, the leather of Miss Cog’s harness grew uncomfortably warm. She could see them now, each huddled on the small deck: Ishe bent over the controls, a Two Herds tribeswoman pointing a rather large hand cannon in their direction, and the small husband with his spider in his lap. She felt Smooge tense above her, ready to take any shell they threw at her.

  Judging from the size of the cannon and their relative speeds, the girl would get at least one shot with that cannon before Hammer could light a wing on fire. An ice shot to Hammer’s wing could kill all three of them at this height. Hammer knew it.

  The craft leveled itself. The tribeswoman cracked her neck and then stared down her sights at them with deliberate swagger. Miss Cog pulled her small folding crossbow from its holster and said a small prayer to Yaz’noth for strength. The tribeswoman’s golden hair began to glow with the red tones of a fading sun as Hammer drew near, the same magic that had blinded her lord.

  “Here it comes!” Miss Cog shouted into the howling wind.

  With a puff of smoke, the hand cannon fired. Hammer jigged right, snapping his exposed wing to his body. The folded wing obscured her view of Ishe’s craft for a moment as the shell whizzed through the space where they had been. Then the sky lit with a flash. Hammer grunted in pain.

  “Bright pokeys!” Smooge cried as Cog saw the craft shoot upward into the sky, its wing-like sails pulled in.

  Hammer leveled out with a groan, head swinging from side to side. “Where go?”

  Miss Cog watched their quarry disappear into the clouds above. “They went up.”

  A moment of silence settled before Hammer spoke. “See them. I no need eyes. But humans can’t see through clouds.” Hammer banked and then began to push himself higher into the sky. “Smoogie keep Cog warm. Get real cold now. I see their power crystal.”

  “Aye.” Smooge huddled tight against Miss Cog, his silver scales trailing steam in the air.

  Ishe wrapped her fingers around Dancing Fly’s power crystal and yanked. Instantly, the thrumming of the wood around her died, the ship becoming a piece of driftwood on the wind. She handed it back to Drosa, who passed it to Sparrow. Sparrow placed it into a weave of spider’s silk connected to a bundle of sailcloth. Using both hands, he hurled the bundle off the back of the Fly. It tumbled once before the sailcloth opened and the power crystal drifted off down into the clouds. The sun was a half-crescent of red-gold to the west and below them would be near-darkness.

  They had one shot at this. Ishe swallowed as she closed the panel that had protected the crystal. Her hands curled around the levers. The words were there on her lips, but she held them in. Not yet. Not ever. She’d do this as herself. Time for the Rhino to knock a dragon out of the sky. “Here we go!” Ishe cried.

  “Aye!” both Sparrow and Drosa called back. Ishe pulled the levers and threw Dancing Fly into what would likely be its last number.

  They screamed back through the clouds, and Ishe immediately saw the dark shadow of Hammer’s form oriented on their jettisoned power crystal, its glow a lit spot within the clouds. The Fly’s dead weight fought her as Ishe angled through the angry winds and plotted a collision course with Hammer’s back. A silver form slithered on Hammer’s back, Smooge. Ishe could see Hammer’s pumping wings hesitate as the power crystal floated back into view.

  “Fire!” Ishe commanded.

  The crack of the hand cannon sounded over Ishe’s shoulder, and the shining blue shell arced out in front of them. But the arc was short.

  “Reload!” Ishe barked over Drosa’s curse. Ishe drew her own hand cannon from her hip as Drosa struggled with the larger weapon.

  Hammer started to dive, but Ishe followed him, bleeding off altitude that she had no way to regain. Drosa’s first shot at Hammer had been amazing, and she was still amazing, considering she’d never fought with a hand cannon before.

  Ishe needed to get her closer.

  “Loaded!” Drosa said as something heavy clicked into place.

  “Hold it. One moment.”

  Hammer banked hard, swooping off to the left.

  “Hard to see!” Drosa said, voice strained.

  He was. As they entered the twilight, Hammer faded into a shadow against the ground. Only Smooge’s shiny scales let her pick them out. She could feel their chances draining away. One wrong gust and the dragon would be above them. They needed to do this. Yet between the storm and the incoming darkness
, they’d missed their window. Unless… She considered options. Land and hide with the dragon on their tail. Even if they ditched Hammer, it might be days before they reached the capital. Or… She took a deep breath, tasting the wet of the storm on her tongue, and spoke to the wind. “I am Ishe, the Storm Coyote.”

  A familiar snicker came to her ears, but this time, it had come from her own throat. The world lightened, coming alive in a new palette of grays, Hammer’s wings brilliantly contrasted against the ground as they swept in for a pump.

  “Left wing! Fire!” Ishe commanded. The cough of the hand cannon boomed as Ishe stood and fired her own weapon.

  Hammer dodged the first shell, but Ishe’s hit his right wing dead center. The ice spread over a third of the limb, crackling like a tiny thunderstorm. Hammer pitched hard as the wing recoiled to his side, the brittle ice shattering.

  “In the lord’s name!” Miss Cog’s voice cried through the dusk, and Ishe heard something whistle through the air beside her.

  A sharp meaty whack followed by a small, surprised “Ah” from Drosa.

  “Shite buckets in the cannons!” Ishe swore as she pulled out of the dive. Over her shoulder Drosa hunched on the deck, but any more details were lost as the wind smacked the Fly like a boxer’s uppercut. She fought for stability, searching out a patch of calm air. Tastes of the breeze flowed in with every breath, a far cry from the clarity that Coyote had teased her with, but as she concentrated, she separated the salted air of the west wind from the warmth of the north. This storm was their battle and Dancing Fly nothing more than a dandelion seed lost in their struggle. The two winds twisted tendrils of cold and colder air around each other. With their scents on her tongue and their voices in ears, Ishe steered the Fly into the embrace of the North Wind. The sailcloth wings bowed upward as they were lifted higher by a violent updraft, spinning them like a top.