City of Ice (2 page)

The stupid little fool was making it so hard to keep him alive.

It was hard to believe that she had once thought of Leech as her prey, but then the idiot had the nerve to save her life. Even though she had been grateful, it had violated her professional standards as an assassin: Prey was supposed to be hunted, not helpful. It was just like a human not to respect his own place in the natural order of things.

And when she'd seen Badik stealing the Chinese archer's ring in the museum, she knew that her clan, the Dragons of the Moonglow, had worse problems than Leech. Badik and his clan, the Dragons of the Fire Rings, had almost destroyed her clan, so she'd joined Leech and Scirye. They were after Roland, who had killed their friends, and she was after Badik, who had slain so many of her kin.

The strange thing was that during the pursuit, she'd realized that the friendly, trusting Leech was nothing like the monster of the legends, Lee No Cha, who had not only killed a dragon prince but then had also made his skin into a belt. It had been Bayang's unpleasant task to assassinate each incarnation of Lee No Cha, which she had done diligently until she had met the latest version and she'd become Leech's bodyguard rather than his assassin.

The trouble was that he loved to fly as much as she did, and she remembered her own delight when she had first flown. However, that same eagerness made fledglings misjudge the level of their own skills and killed more of them than anything else.

Stretching out her tail, Bayang wrapped the tip around Leech's ankle. The disks were so powerful that she almost lost her grip, and she really had to haul at his leg to pull him back to safety.

“Stay in the frame, you little idiot! How many times do I have to warn you? You'll blow away if you stray outside it.” She held on to him just to make sure he didn't try again.

Leech tried to tug himself free. “You're not my mother.”

Bayang stiffened. “Don't be ridiculous! I'm a dragon and you're…a…a…” She caught her lip turning up in a sneer as she was about to say “human.” Among dragons, that could be a deadly insult.

And yet his words, though true, hurt. She hadn't realized that the hatchling, her former enemy, had become so entwined with her life that she was vulnerable to his insults. When had that happened?

But he's right,
Bayang admitted ruefully to herself.
No mother, dragon or human, would have done to him what you've done. I've killed all those earlier versions of him. And even if your sins could be erased, you're of two different species.

“True,” she said. “So think of me as your bodyguard. In that capacity, I'm telling you that a human couldn't withstand the force. And even if you could, you'd freeze. If a dragon like me has trouble when I leave the frame to clear the ice from the wing, what hope does a human have?”

He still looked rebellious. “We'll never know unless you let me try.”

She wondered if she had shown as much resentment when her flight instructor, Sergeant Pindai, had held her back. Probably. However, she hadn't dared talk back to the sergeant. The human hatchlings were the opposite, demanding reasons for orders that were actually just common sense.

“And what if Badik is in the airplane and comes out to attack you?” Kles asked.

Leech slapped his other armband. “I've got my weapon ring for that.” The armband would expand into a metal ring, stronger than steel.

“You don't know enough yet,” Bayang said.

“Whose fault is that?” Leech demanded. “You made me quit practicing.”

Koko pointed to his forehead. “For all our sakes. You nearly beaned me on the noggin twice when you were swinging that thing.”

“And what if you hit the airplane by accident?” Bayang pointed out. “If the airplane crashed, we'd lose the ring.”

“Yes,” Kles agreed. “From its heading, the airplane must be going to Nova Hafnia.”

“A plane that size would need to re-fuel,” Bayang reasoned. “When it lands, we'll see if it's Roland and Badik. And if it is, we strike.”

“Okay, okay, gang up on me,” Leech griped, and, folding his arms, he squatted a few inches above the mat.

“Now you're being sensible.” She let go of his ankle and sat upright again. Beneath her, the airplane seemed to float along as serenely as a toy and then disappeared beneath a high layer of clouds.

Her shoulders ached and she was tired, for it was tricky to fly the wing within the turbulent sky currents. She'd been the only one to handle it all this time. Even though a dragon's power of endurance matched her strength, Bayang was nearing her limits. But she felt the excitement of the hunt surge through her.

Let's see if we can get close enough to check on the passengers,
she thought. “Oh, mighty Naue, I've marveled at your skills. Great is your strength. Swift is your speed. And yet how delicate is your touch? Could you skim just above those clouds below without ripping them apart?”

“Is not Naue as tender as a moonbeam? As gentle as down?” Naue answered.

The wing angled downward as the wind began to descend until it was slipping over the top of the clouds, the mist barely rippling along the surface as it flew.

With gentle tugs, Bayang skillfully maneuvered the wing until they were as low as they could go and still be in Naue's embrace.

After a while, the clouds thinned until they seemed like gauze. They had flown close enough for her to see the airplane was a Ford Trimotor with engines on the wing and the nose. Instead of wheels, though, it had long skis for landing on snow or ice.

Kles made a hollow growling noise. “I smell falcon stench.” The griffin's fur and feathers bristled at the scent of his rivals for the sky.

Scirye quickly reached her hand up to stroke his back. “Calm down, Kles. Calm. We don't want you going wild on us.”

Peering over the edge of the wings, Bayang saw two giant falcons climbing toward the airplane. The Danish empire had used them as mounts for centuries and this species had been bred specially for the Arctic. Their bodies were the size of cars and their wings as wide as a small airplane's, but their great white feathers made them deceptively fluffy. Balls of down hid their eyes, their legs, and their claws and left their beaks half-covered so that they seemed shorter than they really were.

On their backs were human riders in heavy leather jackets padded with wool. One of them wore a helmet of the Nu Danmark colonial forces, but the other had a leather cap with flaps that covered his ears. Both of them wore leather boots that rose to mid-thigh.

“Bad luck for the airplane then,” Bayang said. “They've run into some freebooters. The British and Danish empires fought a savage little war for the Arctic territories thirty years ago. Eventually, the Danes wound up ceding this area to the British in exchange for money, so Nu Danmark became the Cabot Territory. But the Danish colonial forces refused to surrender. They call themselves resistance fighters, but they're not much more than bandits.”

The freebooters circled the airplane, their rifles trained on it. But then the airplane wagged its wings, the light flickering from one wingtip to another.

A door opened on the airplane fuselage and a human stepped out. Even as he began to drop, his outline blurred and he became the scarred dragon who had haunted Bayang's nightmares since she was a hatchling. Badik. Many years ago, he had attacked her clan.

Hatred swelled within Bayang and almost made her leap off the wing and dive for her revenge. But the human hatchlings could never control the straw wing on their own, so she stayed, gnashing her fangs together with frustrated clacks.

“Wherever Badik is so's Roland,” Leech said.

Bayang waited for the freebooters to shoot at Badik or flee, but instead Badik and the riders seemed to be talking. Then the humans actually saluted and banked away.

When Badik gripped the open doorway of the airplane, it dipped under the weight and then righted itself. As he still held on, his shape blurred until he was human again and could step inside and shut the door behind him.

Koko said, “So those big feather dusters are in cahoots with Roland.”

“He probably hired them for whatever he's got planned,” Bayang said. “I think we'll carry on with our original plan and catch them in Nova Hafnia.”

The airplane suddenly increased its speed, pulling away from the freebooters. Bayang's paws tightened on the straw control loops of the wing. They were so near their goal now.

She was just about to coax Naue into going faster when something whistled past. A second and then a third followed immediately.

The badger put a claw through one of three neat little round holes in the wing. “Please tell me that it was big mosquitoes that made these and not bullets.”

Worried, Bayang scanned the clouds ahead and underneath. Armored in scales, she had little to fear from bullets, but the human hatchlings were so fragile. The slightest thing could puncture them. It was a new sensation to feel this vulnerable, not for herself but because of others.

The freebooters were rising toward them, rifles aimed at the large target that was the wing.

“Hey, Naue,” Koko yelled to the wind, “giddy-yap and take us out of here.”

“No mere lumpling can command Naue,” the wind declared haughtily.

Bayang had learned tactics from Sergeant Pindai as well as how to fly, and there was little that the wily old soldier didn't know. “If you can't beat an enemy, run,” she had told Bayang. “But if you can't outrun them, outwit them.”

Thinking fast, Bayang twisted her head around and warned the others to hold on to the straw loops woven into the wing. Then, lifting her head, she shouted to the wind, “Oh, mighty Naue, I know those lumplings below. They said they know a wind who's stronger and faster.”

“They lie,” the wind bellowed angrily.

The air currents around them grew turbulent and the wing bucked and danced, but still Bayang went on egging the proud gale.

“Lies, lies, lies!” With a deafening bellow, Naue dove, taking their wing with him.

It was like riding a raft down the rapids of a river and it was all Bayang could do to hang on to the loops.

The shocked freebooters never had time to fire as Naue barreled through them. They were knocked loose from their stirrups, and riders and birds screamed as they spun away to the sides, and then Naue was plunging into the thick bank of clouds himself, tearing the mist apart as if it were cotton matting.

For a moment, Bayang couldn't see, but fine drops sheeted against the invisible walls of the frame, thickening as they sank lower until it was like rain.

And then they broke through the clouds, mist hanging in tattered rags from the edges of the wing.

And—what was it the humans said?
Bayang wondered.
Yes, it was out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Literally.

Beneath them, a caravan of huge bargelike wind sleds slid along on runners, sails flapping from the sleds' masts as cannon boomed from their decks. Like wolves snapping at a herd of buffalo were small wind sleds carrying freebooters. Their rifles flashed with popping noises.

And Bayang and her friends were plunging straight toward them.

“Pull up; pull up!” Koko screamed as they plummeted downward and the ground rose up toward them with alarming speed.

In front of Scirye, Bayang was digging her claws into the straw mat and hauling up at the control loops as she tried to free the wing from the wind's grip. It was amazing that the flimsy ropes didn't snap under the strain.

And suddenly they were whipping upward again as Naue leveled off fifty feet from the ground. As they soared parallel to the ground, the wind roared with laughter. “Ho, ho, ho, you lumplings screech like baby cave zephyrs.”

Scirye didn't think it was a compliment, but Koko didn't care. “Zipper or zephyr, you can call me what you like. Just don't wear out my ticker.” The badger wheezed.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Scirye checked their surroundings again. Eleven of the caravan were speeding away, but there was something wrong with the twelfth and largest wind sled. About a hundred freebooters mounted on reindeer circled around the crippled wind sled. One rider waved a tattered Danish flag triumphantly as the others darted in to throw grappling hooks at the sails, trying to tear them. The wind sled had already slowed to a crawl because of the gaps in the canvas.

Kles tapped Scirye's cheek to get her attention and then pointed a forepaw. “Look! The sled must belong to Sogdians.”

The flag on the wind sled's mast was beginning to droop as it lost speed, but Scirye could just make out the red fire emblem on the field of yellow. She knew that symbol because her Sogdian nursemaid had worn a pin of it.

Just to the north of the Kushan Empire, the Sogdians had once been fierce warriors. But their wars with Alexander the Great and his Greek successors, then the nomads and the Chinese, had worn down their strength. So the survivors had poured their tremendous energy into trade instead of into fighting—though they could still put up a good fight, as the freebooters were finding out.

Riflemen in red coats and steel helmets fired from the sled's deck, and little cannon, mounted on swivels at the bow, the sides, and the stern, flashed and boomed at the attacking freebooters.

Scirye couldn't help remembering her nursemaid, fondly recalling the soft, warm voice singing Sogdian lullabies to her and how the plump woman had wept when she and her sister and mother had left for the Istanbul embassy. Her father had stayed behind in the empire because of his duties as the Griffin Master, for he not only oversaw the imperial eyrie—from lap griffins like Kles to the full-size racing and war griffins—but he also was in charge of the tricky relationship between all the griffins and humans in the empire. As strong and commanding a person as he was, he'd been crying too as he tried to comfort their old servant.

Scirye turned to Bayang. “We have to save them.”

“I'm sorry for them,” the dragon said, “but we're going after Roland and Badik. We can't risk wandering into a fight that isn't ours.”

It was a hard choice, but Scirye had already made many difficult ones. “I don't expect you to help me,” she said, trying to keep the frightened tremor from her voice, “but Kles and I have to help them. They're friends of the Kushans. So let us off and then go on ahead. We'll catch up with you somehow.”

Scirye couldn't help feeling sad. She had spent most of her childhood moving from one consulate to another whenever her mother had changed posts, so she had never grown close to anyone except Kles. But in the short time that she'd been with her companions, she'd come to think of them as friends.

“Are you crazy?” Koko asked, but the look he gave them suggested he had already made his decision on that matter. “What're you going to do by yourselves? Do you even know these guys?”

“They could be kin to a person who was very important to me,” Scirye said.
Since Sogdians have big clans and extended families, someone's probably related to Nanny
.

Leech studied her. “This is one of those Tumarg things, isn't it?” Tumarg was the Way of Light, the code of the warrior, and staying true to those laws, Scirye's sister, Nishke, had died defending her mother and sister and one of her people's greatest treasures.

Even though she knew she could never match her sister's example, Scirye nodded. “I have to do this.”

“Then,” Leech said, “I guess they're important to us too.”

It was Scirye's turn to be surprised. “But Bayang is right. It's not your fight.”

Bayang harrumphed. “You don't understand. If we're going to defeat Roland and Badik, we have to work as a team, and you're an important part of that team.”

“So let's vote,” Leech said, and lifted up his hand. “I say we help out.”

Bayang nodded. “I second that.”

“Well, I don't,” Koko said, thumping his heels in frustration so that the wing shook slightly. “This is nuts.”

“The ‘ayes' have it,” Bayang said. “Motion carried.” Lifting her head, the dragon called to Naue again: “Oh, mighty Naue. Can you help the people below?”

“Pele only commanded me to help you,” the willful wind replied. “Great Naue is not your puppet.”

Bayang frowned. “Pele will be displeased.”

“Pele is not here.” Naue laughed. “So do not tell me what pleases her and what does not.”

Scirye decided that if the strategy had worked for Bayang, it would work for her. “We understand, Naue,” she wheedled. “You are too powerful to be anyone's servant. And anyway, a wind as strong as you could never touch such tiny sails without tearing them.” As a precaution, she motioned her griffin inside her coveralls.

“I am Naue,” the wind boasted. “I am the most delicate of winds. I can pick up a pebble without disturbing anything. A grain of sand. A tear from a baby's face. Sails are nothing.”

The next moment the wind had swept lower and they were charging across the plain, raising sheets of snow in their wake. Naue bowled over the freebooters and their mounts like so many bowling pins.

The wind sled swelled in their view until they could see the Sogdian crew pointing at them.

“Hey, we're the good guys!” Koko cried in alarm as the Sogdians raised their rifles and swiveled their cannon to aim at them.

Scirye's nursemaid had taught her Sogdian, but that had been a simplistic toddler's vocabulary. From the dim recesses of her memory, she shouted hurriedly, “Friend! Friend!”

Kles had poked his head out of her coveralls and saw what was happening.

“Oh, warriors who travel like shadows across sand and snow,” he shouted loudly in formal Sogdian. Even though Common Sogdian was used more often, the formal dialect was more polite and proper for a first encounter. “We have come to aid thee in thy hour of peril. Do not shoot your mighty weapons of death lest we perish!”

A big man in a hooded fur coat barked out a sharp command and the red-coated Sogdians lowered their rifles.

Naue puffed at the torn sails so they swelled like bubbles, and the wind sled shot forward as if it had rockets instead of runners.

“Ha, this is fun,” Naue boomed.

The snowy plain had seemed so flat when seen from far above, but now Scirye could see how it was humped by small ridges. The wind sled's riders cried out as the sled bounced into the air and then banged down, sending crates and passengers sliding about the deck.

Still, the wind sled raced on until Scirye heard the sound of cloth tearing and saw the sled's sails were shredding. Strips whipped back and forth, and the sled's timbers creaked and groaned under the strain of a speed for which the sled was never designed.

“Mighty Naue, please stop,” Scirye begged.

“Yes, I'm tired of this game.” Naue laughed. “Let's play something else.”

They veered to their right suddenly, circling back toward the freebooters.

Some of the raiders were searching for their lost weapons in the snow. Others were trying to round up their scattered mounts.

They seemed shocked to see the wing returning. A few tried to raise their guns and a submachine gun chattered briefly, but Naue twisted and curled back and forth like a snake, tumbling the freebooters onto their backs and sending the terrified reindeer bolting.

“Ho! I like this new game,” Naue declared.

“Oog,” Koko moaned. “I think I'm going to be sick.”

Scirye was feeling dizzy herself from their wild ride, and even an experienced flier like Kles was clinging to her as if he, too, was feeling nauseous. She wound up shutting her eyes against the spinning world and gripping the straps for dear life

Just when she thought the nightmare would never end, she suddenly felt the wing straighten out.

“Ha, that was more fun than wrestling a typhoon,” Naue exulted. “Now what else shall we do?”

Daring to open her eyes, she looked behind her and saw that the plain was littered with groaning freebooters lying in the snow. Beyond them the Sogdian wind sled was moving away, disappearing into the horizon as its momentum swept it on. It took her a moment to realize they were heading away from the mountains and Nova Hafnia and instead into the barren wilderness, away from Roland and Badik.