Dragonback 04 Dragon and Herdsman (29 page)

"It can be, yes," Draycos agreed. "But I know how to enter the
water so as to minimize the risk."

"What if they go higher before you crash them?" Jack persisted.
"You could be killed."

"That is a possibility a warrior must always face," Draycos said
quietly. "I am willing to take the risk. At any rate, we have no
choice."

"Sure we do," Jack said. "I can surrender."

"And then what?" Alison demanded. "You really think Frost will let
any of the rest of us live? Okay, Draycos, we've got a plan. Go get
ready."

"It will not take long for me to get to the tree," Draycos said.
"It will be a better lure if we give them a chance to see me."

"Fine," Alison said. "Just don't hang around long enough for them
to also get the range and start firing. Jack, you'd better get back
under cover."

Jack took a deep breath. "No thanks. I'll stay."

"Don't be an idiot," Alison growled. "Aside from everything else,
you're standing right where
I'm
going to be running in a
second. Now,
get back
."

"Please, Jack," Draycos seconded.

Clenching his teeth, Jack turned to go.

And jerked as he found himself staring into a pair of silver eyes
glowing from a black K'da face.

"Taneem," he breathed as his brain caught up with him. He hadn't
realized she'd followed him up here. "Come on, move back. We need room."

For a second Taneem didn't move. Then, her eyes flicking to
Draycos, she turned and padded back into the trees. With one final look
at Alison, Jack did likewise. "Okay," he called.

Alison nodded. "Here goes nothing." Lifting the gun, she squinted
along the barrel and squeezed the trigger.

For a couple of seconds the stutter of the machine gun drowned out
even the crackling of the flames behind them. Alison paused, fired a
second burst, then paused again. "Well?" Jack called.

"They see us," Alison called back. "Maybe trying to decide—here
they come," she interrupted herself, lowering her gun and backing
hurriedly away from the bank. "Make a hole, Jack."

Jack took another step backward, glancing over at the bent tree as
Draycos slipped past him—

And caught his breath. Taneem was crouched on the treetop, gazing
up at the incoming transport, the claws of her right forepaw poised
over the vine rope.

Draycos spotted her the same time Jack did. "Taneem!" he barked. "
No
!"

Taneem twitched her tail. "You are needed," she said simply. "I am
not."

And as Draycos leaped toward her, her claws sliced through the
vine and she was catapulted upward toward the river.

"What's going on?" Alison demanded, crowding against Jack.

"Out of the way," Jack snapped, shoving past her and sprinting
back to the river. Grabbing a branch for support, he leaned out over
the water and looked up.

Taneem was there, all right, balanced on the Kapstan's portside
wing. Her hind claws were dug into the metal for support, her forepaws
slashing away at the side hatchway. Another minute, and she would be
through.

"Have they attacked her?" Draycos asked anxiously from his side.

"They don't have to," Jack said, a sinking feeling in the pit of
his stomach.

Because Frost had clearly anticipated this move. Even as Jack and
Draycos watched helplessly, the transport began to rise straight up
into the air.

Locked up safe and sound in his transport, Frost was simply going
to go high enough to ensure that his attacker couldn't survive, then
turn over and dump her off.

"They will pay for this," Draycos said, his voice crackling with
anger and bitterness. "All of them. They will pay with their lives."

"That won't help Taneem," Jack snarled back. The Kapstan was a
hundred feet up now and still rising. "
Think
, blast it. There
must be something we can do."

"How about a net?" Alison suggested from Draycos's other side.
"Cut one of these vine meshes and use it to catch her."

"No time," Jack said. "Besides, as long as he stays over the river
there's no place for us to anchor it."

"Probably why he's still there," Alison growled. "Any chance
she'll know how to hit the water safely?"

"At the height they are at there is no safe way," Draycos said
grimly. "As Jack said, it will be like striking concrete."

"Yes," Jack said slowly as an idea suddenly came to him. "
If
she hits the water."

Alison frowned at him. "What—?"

"Rope," he snapped, shoving her halfway around and grabbing at her
pack. Getting it open, he scooped out her coil of rope. "Come on,
Draycos."

Jack sprinted upstream, his feet making huge splashes at the edge
of the water as he ran. "What are you going to do?" Draycos demanded
from behind him.

"You'll see," Jack said, dropping his own pack off his shoulders
as he ran, craning his neck to look up. Frost was still over the same
spot, and still rising. They had to be getting close to two hundred
feet by now. Jack looked down at the water, trying to estimate the
current—

"Here," he decided, splashing to a sudden halt and flicking his
wrist to send the rope uncoiling into the trees. "Grab the other end
and hold on," he told Draycos as he tied the other end around his
waist. Taking a deep breath, wondering if this was as insane as it
seemed, he threw himself into the river.

The water was icy cold, but he hardly noticed. Kicking out, he
sliced his arms hard into the surface, swimming for all he was worth.

"There!" he heard Draycos shout from behind him.

He paused and looked up. The K'da was right: Jack was now directly
beneath the Kapstan. He turned around, treading water, putting his back
to the low waves threatening to splash into his face.

And then, abruptly, the transport did a sudden midair roll around
its long axis, dropping its portside wing to vertical. For a few
seconds Taneem's claws held her to the wing. Then her grip gave way,
and she tumbled off and dropped toward the water.

Jack swore under his breath, splashing himself into final position
as he watched her fall. She had flattened out, he saw, turning her
belly downward and stretching her legs out sideways in an instinctive
skydiver's minimum-speed posture.

But it wouldn't slow her enough. Not from a fall of that distance.
If this didn't work, she would be dead.

In fact, there was a fair chance she and Jack would both be dead.

But there was no time to think about that now. Pumping his legs to
hold himself steady, Jack grabbed his left sleeve with his right hand
and yanked it all the way back to his shoulder, leaving the arm bare.
The more skin surface she had to aim for, the better. Lowering his
right arm back into the water, paddling hard, he raised himself as far
up as he could and stuck his left arm straight up. "Taneem!" he
shouted. "Taneem!" She was dropping toward him like an avenging angel—

And then, suddenly, she shifted out of her flat posture, turning
her body head downward. Her forelegs stretched out, pointing straight
for Jack's face. The paws slammed into his arm like a falling boulder—

And as he was shoved violently down into the water, he felt her
slide around his arm and down onto his back, the momentum of her fall
driving him straight toward the bottom of the river.

For a long, terrifying minute he plummeted downward, the churning
water battering against his face and body, his lungs fighting to keep
in what air he had, the sudden increase in pressure stabbing pain into
his ears. Something slammed up hard against his feet, knocking them out
from under him and sending his back and head to hit only slightly less
hard against sticky muck. His impact sent a surge of mud swirling
around him, cutting off the faint light of the surface as the blow to
his head sent stars flashing across his vision and scrambled his sense
of direction.

But even as he fought against a rising surge of confusion and
panic, the rope tightened around his waist, and he felt himself being
pulled up and sideways against the current. The swirling mud was left
behind; the glow from above returned and grew stronger—

And suddenly his head broke through the surface of the water.

"Jack!" Alison shouted.

Gasping in a lungful of air, Jack shook the water from his eyes.
Alison was knee-deep in the river, she and Draycos together hauling him
in by his rope. "Are you all right?" she called.

"Yeah," he managed, a fresh burst of adrenaline surging through
him as he looked up. With all of them now out in the open like sitting
ducks, all Frost had to do was drop back down to treetop height and
open fire.

But the transport wasn't moving in for the kill. In fact, as
Jack's eyes darted around the sky, he couldn't find either it or the
floater anywhere.

He looked back at Alison and Draycos in confusion— "There,"
Draycos said, nodding his head downstream.

Jack looked, to find the transport was indeed in that direction.

But it wasn't flying, and it was definitely not interested in
shooting at anything. It was lying half-submerged in the water,
spinning slowly around as the current dragged it eastward. The floater
was there, too, hanging on to the transport's single visible wing,
clearly trying to keep it from sinking the rest of the way.

He frowned back at the others . . . and then, slowly, his
waterlogged brain understood.

He turned his head in the other direction. There, also
half-submerged, was something that looked like a frozen bulge of water
sitting in the middle of the river. Even as he watched, the bulge faded
away, replaced by the familiar bulk of the
Essenay
, its lasers
pointed watchfully toward the crippled Kapstan.

"What do you know," he heard himself say as Alison grabbed his
right arm and started pulling him up onto the bank. "I guess the
chameleon hull-wrap
does
work underwater."

And then she took hold of his left arm, and a sudden flash of pain
arced through him, and everything went dark.

"I hope you realize, Jack lad," Uncle Virge said sternly, "that by
all rights you should have had your whole arm torn off at the shoulder."

"Okay, so it was a gamble," Jack admitted, wincing as the
Essenay
's
medic chair finished bandaging his left arm. Even through the
painkillers the elbow and shoulder still ached. "But I figured that if
Taneem could get around onto my back fast enough most of her momentum
would spread itself over my whole body and just shove me down into the
water instead of breaking my arm."

"Thereby offering you an excellent chance of drowning," Uncle
Virge countered. "Wonderful set of options you gave yourself."

"Yeah, but it worked," Jack reminded him. "Better than just
worked, too. If Taneem hadn't been up there distracting Frost's men,
you might not have gotten away with that sucker shot that took them
down."

"It was
not
a sucker shot," Uncle Virge said stiffly. "I'd
been locked onto your comm clip signal for two hours, just waiting for
you to give the order to go into action. Why didn't you?"

"For starters, we weren't sure you were still even with us, let
alone hanging just offshore," Jack said. "Anyway, what are we arguing
for? You crippled the Kapstan, and Frost and his buddies are miles away
by now trying not to drown. Life is good."

"Anyone home?" Alison's voice called from out in the corridor.

"Like there's somewhere else I could go?" Jack called back.

She stepped through the doorway, Draycos and Taneem at her side.
"Not really," she agreed. "What's the damage?"

"Just a sprain," Jack told her, lifting his bandaged arm for her
inspection. "No bones broken, no ligaments or tendons torn. A week or
so and I should be fine."

"I owe you my life," Taneem said, ducking her head shyly. "I do
not know how to thank you for that."

"No thanks needed," Jack assured her. "K'da warriors' ethic says
you do what's right no matter what the risks." He lifted his eyebrows
at Draycos. "Right?"

"Correct," Draycos said.

Uncle Virge snorted again. "Courage and ethics are fine in their
place, Jack lad," he said. "But there's a not-so-fine line between them
and reckless stupidity."

"Actually, I have to agree with Uncle Virge on this one," Alison
seconded. "That was a pretty boneheaded thing to try."

"There was nothing boneheaded about it," Jack insisted. "It was
simple basic physics. The big danger with water landings is hitting the
surface, right? I just arranged things so that I was already through
the surface, and she never actually hit it."

"It was still a terrible risk," Taneem said. "I will dedicate my
life to repaying my debt."

"Fine," Jack said. In his opinion, she was blowing this way out of
proportion. But there would be time enough later for Draycos to talk
some perspective into her. "I take it that means you've decided to stay
with Alison?"

"You weren't really expecting her to go back to the Erassvas, were
you?" Alison asked.

"I just wanted to make it official," Jack said, trying very hard
not to be irritated. Now that they were safe, Alison's knack for
rubbing people the wrong way was coming out full bore again. "Besides,
it's not just up to her. K'da don't impose on someone without the
host's permission."

Alison looked down at Taneem. "Actually, this is pretty cool," she
said, stroking the gray K'da's crest gently with her fingertips. "I'll
let her stick around. At least until the rest of her people get here."

"Her
people
are out there," Uncle Virge muttered.

"Her
former
people," Jack told him firmly. "Speaking of
which, did they all get across the river okay?"

"They swam it like fish," Alison assured him. "Large, lumpy fish,
of course, but fish nonetheless."