Dragon Rule

It struck him and the deck of the ship with such force the ship flopped over on its side. The ship’s timbers groaned in protest.

It was a dragon. Not one of his own, no laudi marked its wings as testament to worthiness to serve in the Aerial Host, no white stripe painted on the side of its flank and crest for the night attack showed him as friend. Nor was it a dragonelle.

A black dragon, and a huge one at that, climbed out of the mass of lines and wood, dragging it like a water dog emerging from seaweed.

This dragon hadn’t grown up in the Lavadome, and fed on stringly lightsick cattle and fatty pork. Its limbs and haunches and back ridge were meaty, and nine long horns had been left to grow riotous and wild into a barbed thatch, a barbaric look when compared to the polished horns of his own dragons.

“They said I’d be able to spot the leader with the birds and all,” the great dragon said thickly, speaking Drakine as though it were a foreign tongue.

The Copper scrabbled up onto the side of the tipped ship, fighting lines that tried to pull him under. The two dragons’ joint weight sent it rolling again and the Copper felt the snaps of masts transmit through the hull.

His Griffaran Guards fluttered about like anxious nectar feeders. The black dragon batted one away with the tip of a massive wing.

Griff flanking his jawline rattling of their own accord, the Copper tasted the air around the stranger. He reeked of whale blubber.

“I take it these are your men?”

The black ignored him and lunged forward, mouth agape. Their weight upset the ship, and they both slid into the bay before the diving griffaran could sink their claws into the stranger’s flanks. The big black struck him like an avalanche. Only the water, slowing his enemy’s limbs, kept him from being opened at the inner joint of his left saa.

A digging, rending grip caught him across the back. Not since he’d fought old King Gan in his bats’ cave did he feel such power. The only chance the Copper had was to make it to the surface where his guard could hit the big stranger from all sides. He pressed with his legs and broke the grip, losing more skin and scale in the process.

Whoever the stranger was, he hadn’t spent his youth in endless trials against other dragons. For all his strength, he fought rather clumsily, used to letting his size exhaust his prey. He should have coiled with his tail to secure his hold from the other direction.

The Copper lunged out of the water and the griffaran swooped down to meet him, letting out alarmed cries. A dragonelle circled above, crying out, but his ears had little but his only pounding pulse in them and he couldn’t distinguish her words.

He was halfway out, using the crusty creatures covering the bottom of the overturned ship for purchase, when the black’s head broke water. The black took a deep breath and shot a warning gout of flame at the frantic griffaran.

He dove again and the Copper felt teeth clamp around his tail. The Copper dug in sit and saa, but the black swam like one of the great whales beneath the overturned ship, and once again the hull rolled as the he was dragged under.

The Copper became doubly entangled in rope and wreckage. A powerful mass closed around him, and the black hauled him to the surface, its neck wrapped around his.

They came out, tresses of rope and broken wood hanging about their crests and horns.

“Call off your dragons,” the black gasped.

Strong, but not in very good fighting trim.

He tried to feel around with his saa for somewhere to gut, but the black had his legs about them like the coils of King Gan.

“Before I say anything, I’ll have your name,” the Copper grunted.

“My name’s Shadowcatch the Black, from the Isle of Ice,” the dragon said.

His brother’s island? Had the reclusive wretch sent assassins? Madness, especially since his drakes and drakka—or had they fledged—were promising young members of the Drakwatch and Firemaidens.

Two of his veteran dragons, having lost the heavy load of troops, now circled low overhead.

“My Tyr?” one called.

“Answer with aught but a recall of your wings, and I’ll tear your head off,” Shadowcatch said.

Not an intelligent dragon at all, more bulk than brain. Did the brute think he could just bellow and have the soldiers now landing on Swayport’s beaches and advancing behind flame-spewing dragonelles return to their craft? Fire burned bright at a sea wall protecting the town and in one of the towers of the looming fortress, an orange torch sending reflective flame across the comfortably warm waters of the bay. A little foggy, the Copper reckoned some of the warmth came from the two opponents’ mingled blood.

The Copper struggled in vain. He thwacked the brute’s head with his tail, but that great tangled crest warded off the weak blow; all they did was spin.

A broken mast floated among the wreckage, tangled in place like the rest of them by rigging lines.

“Even if I pass the word, it will be some time before I can recall all my forces. The moon will be halfway up.” The Copper flailed about with his tail, managed to strike the mast. He got some semblance of a grip with his tail, for once in his life grateful that his sii had been maimed in the hatchling fight rather than his tail.

“Just do it,” Shadowcatch said.

“As you say,” the Copper said, doing his best to get a better view of his opponent.

He reached with his tail, found a grip. With all his remaining strength he pulled the splintered end of the mast hard toward him, striking the black in the thinner scale of the neck where the tight coils of his own left the scales raised and turned at a vulnerable angle.

The black bellowed, gave one final tremendous pull—the Copper was sure his spine would snap under the pressure, leaving him to be pulled under by the deadweight of his hindquarters—and reared up to bite.

A pair of griffaran clawed at the black’s head, not going for his eyes but wrapping their talons around his thatch of horns. Flapping together, they pulled him out of biting range; dragon jaws are strong, their necks less so, and a third member of the Guard whipped under his chin and clawed at his throat, going for the pulsing neck-hearts.

Shadowcatch released the Copper and used weight and momentum to topple back into the water. One of the griffaran released his hold and flapped away, his companion was caught under the black’s mighty crest and struck water hard.

Water roiled and the Copper bobbed in the black’s wake.

“He’s heading out to sea!” the Firemaiden above called.

“Leave him,” the Copper gasped. He pushed the sodden, dead-eyed bird up onto the wallowing hulk of the ship. The Copper bent his ear to it, heard a faint pulse. Not sure what to do, the Copper tapped it a couple of times with his snout and gave his guard a lick on the display crest between the eyes. The bird was a veteran of many battles; he had painted marks on his beak. The Copper felt he should know his name—Mishi or something like that. Suddenly the bird-reptile’s pulse strengthened and the griffaran blinked.

“Thank you, my Tyr-awk!” it squawked, taking a deep breath and preening out sodden feathers.

The rest of the Griffaran Guard made a colorful, taloned tornado above his head as the Copper gladly left the wrecked ship and coursed for the beach, limbs tight to his sides and body writhing like a snake’s. The whole waterfront was alive with flame and cries.

The Copper pulled himself up onto the beach and shivered, chilled. He must have lost a good deal of blood between the wing and his fights. He made a pretense of issuing orders as reports came in—the overall direction of the battle could be better handled by HeBellereth.

Someone brought him a dead horse and he managed a few mouthfuls. Digestion warmed him, and he brought the rest of the meal and propped it atop the chimney of a burning building facing the sea wall so it might toast and smoke. He’d lost his taste for raw mammal flesh long ago.

He took to the air, rather tiredly and painfully, his Griffaran Guard trailing him so close they looked like a colorful extension to his tail.

HeBellereth had done a dragonlike job of directing the fight. Some fires raged below, small fast ships that might be used to put crews into the larger ships burned and a few houses wore hats of flame. The Aerial Host had spared the warehouses and workshops, fishing boats and big-bellied merchant craft. The wealth of Swayport remained intact.

Discipline. His dragons knew better than to burn a city. Reducing flimsy human dwellings to splintered fuelwood and charcoal with flame and tailswipe might be fine fun, but it wasn’t the way of the Tyr’s dragons as Protectors of the Grand Alliance. Burning homes meant the exposed humans would sicken and die, a loss of valuable thrall capital.

Alley fighting sputtered below, brief shouts and clashes that faded into chases in and out of urban gardens, tiny side doors, or narrow staircases.

The Copper dipped first his right wingtip, then his left, ignoring the newly revived pain as he sought a better look.

A young human led one of the storming columns off—at least he seemed young insofar as the Copper could judge things. He was fencepost-thin and thickly furred, his thick and shining mane flowed out from beneath helm—even the best older human warrior tended to go a bit thin as they aged. He was a whirlwhind, tearing doors off their hinges, upsetting carts placed to block streets leading to the cliffside fortress, hurling javelins uphill at the fleeing Swayport archers two full dragon-lengths and more when he wasn’t leaving crumpled foes like dropped bundles in his wake with swings of a battle-ax.