The Blind Dragon (22 page)

But it didn't penetrate.

Instead it slid away, tearing his dark green livery to reveal the shimmering shine of indestructible high silver.

No!

But they were already past him. Then Dagger hooked Fel with his rear claws—the force incredible, speed barely checked, clasps and buckles ripping, springing, blasting loose—the snap of bone, a grunt from the enemy as Dagger tore him from his saddle. Irondusk roared his rage. But the big dragon was too slow to do anything but roll his giant black eyes and watch his rider dangle behind the flashing knife of their passing, the white hot blade that had speared his master from the sun.

"Finish him!" Anna cried.

Already Lord Fel's weight was pulling them down.

Dagger banked hard against the Gorge's forested walls, leaves and branches whipping past, bringing his snout skyward, against the flow of the enemy convoy.

Now!

Dagger released Lord Fel from his claws, rising immediately against the Gorge's wind.

A strange silence as the man arced into the sky, the fluttering gold plume of his helmet the only real movement, a small, golden bird against the immense green of the Gorge as he plummeted to his doom, a silent, bloody burst popping from his helmet as he smashed bonelessly to the river bed's hungry rocks.

"A thousand deaths to traitors!"
Anna roared, her fist in the air.

She dropped her lance to the Gorge.

Dagger banked just as a pair of gunshots rang out.

Bullets whickered over her head.

They were racing below the convoy now, flying west back around the bend from which Fel had come, fast below the enemy. But now the Fel gunners had them in their sights, and they were wasting no time.

"Go!" Anna pushed her chest hard into Dagger's neck.

He leapt forward in the air, gaining speed with each thrust of wing.

Anna glanced over her shoulder.

The enemy convoy was wheeling now, turning as a unit, understanding, at last, the unusual nature of the attack, smaller scout dragons peeling off fast and mean, dozens of them arcing around into new trajectories, a low roar rising up from the Tevéss riders and dragons, followed by sharp, professional commands, the rip-snap of signal flags.

Dagger dipped a wing. A bullet hissed over Anna's head like an angry wasp. Irondusk had purposefully crash landed into the trunk of a massive, recently felled tree, turned, roared, and now launched himself directly at them. He was too far away, of course, but there was no question as to his murderous intent. The massive pulse of his wings shuddered the thrashing trees in his wake. The Gorge's walls were tidal seas of violent green. A volley of bullets snapped through the leaves around her, cracking and thunking into branches and tree trunks. Moondagger flapped with all his strength. Through her legs, Anna could feel his heart pounding, steady and strong.

There were at least thirty enemy scout dragons diving at them now. They had superior altitude, dropping at them like well-aimed stones. Dagger tried to gain more speed and elevation. The first bola spun above them, its low humming like a weird bird. Another volley of gun fire. A bullet tore the tip off Dagger's right nostril and hot blood sprayed, spattering her face. Another bullet punched through his neck, below Anna's knee. Blood bubbled but did not flow. Instead of slowing him down, the wounds seemed to give Dagger new strength. He tried to dive, to roll, to gain speed, flapping harder, and then harder still, as he tried to save them. The next bola hit Dagger's right wing, the splinter of hollow bone as the weighted cords spun, cinched the wing joint against itself, the force of Dagger's own muscle ripping his shoulder ball from its socket. He tried to keep them aloft with one wing. Insane careening and spinning as they hurtled towards the Gorge's tree-clumped cliffs. Leaves whipped Anna's face, scratched her goggles, cut her cheeks. And then they crashed nose-first into a jagged tree stump, into the eggshell crunch of bone and darkness.

59

M
OONDAGGER SAW A
factory. A factory filled with little girls and silver machines. It reminded him of the factory where Anna's family made the sacred dye of their war cloth. But it was different. They did not make color here. They made something else.

The silver machines hissed and moaned and rumbled as they opened and closed. Silver-white steam shot from silver vents. Great silver cogs turned eternally on silver tubes—opened and closed, opened and closed, opened and closed—the machines' noise a low, perpetual clumping. The pipes, the gears, the floors, the walls, the machines themselves, all shone with a soft, silver glow.

The machines looked powerful. And they were. But they were fragile, too, Moondagger understood.

Dozens of little girls worked the silver machines. They wore silver booties on their tiny feet. They stepped with little steps. They were several years younger than Anna, Moondagger saw, about Wendi's age. They wore silver gloves on their little hands, silver nets over their hair, and silver masks over their mouths. The masks protected the work.

The work must be protected. The promise must be kept.

A girl placed something into a machine. She pulled a silver lever. The machine whispered and clumped shut. When it hissed open, a glowing, silver tear sat in the machine's center. The tear was hot and perfectly smooth, about the size of a small apple. The girl took the tear from the machine and turned to Moondagger, holding it up to him with both hands, a silent offering. The glowing tear steamed with power.

Dagger stared into it. And for a moment, he imagined something dark turned inside—.

Then she dropped it and the tear shattered like a broken mirror. A black, segmented thing jittered amidst the glowing shards, its black feathers crystalline, obsidian casings splitting and ticking against the silver floor as the dark thing quivered and shook, finally sliding its way to a silver drain, dropping into darkness.

Somewhere below, a massive door thundered open and a terrible sound echoed up from the deep. The sound of a hundred rotten hooves pounding on rusty iron. The sound of the men that worked the
other
machines, the machines deep below. The tear's creature had set them free.

The silver doors crashed open and a gang of filthy men shamble-swarmed into the factory. Their uniforms were oily shrouds. Black slime dripped from their robes and sleeves. Their hands were crusty raptor talons, ancient and cruel. But the worst was their faces: like fleshy, black eggs. Their mouths were gummy slits. They did not have eyes. The egg faces reflected no light.

An egg-faced man grabbed the girl in front of Dagger, drove a shard of black iron into her chest, and dropped her to the silver floor, his weapon coated with molten silver. Dagger tried to roar, to protect, to do his duty, but he could not move. He could turn his head, but the rest of his body was frozen, as if shackled by invisible chains.

All around him, the egg-faced men killed. In pairs and in groups, they held the little workers down, ripped the silver masks from their faces, and cut into their throats, their legs, their arms. But there was no blood. The girls did not bleed. Instead, brilliant, liquid silver poured from their wounds, flowed silver, while the egg-faced men hacked and stabbed and howled. There was another sound, also. A constant, weeping cry as the voices of the little workers blended together to become a single, tremulous wail.

More tears shattered. More black things scuttled chitinous and feathered into the darkness below. More iron hooves pounded up from the dark. More egg-faced men, their smooth, plump egg heads bobbing and nodding as they crashed through the silver doors, toothless mouths gaping, black tongues flitting at edges of lipless mouths.

But the egg-faced men did not touch Moondagger. Indeed, while the massacre raged, every so often an egg-faced man would stop in front of him, bow deferentially, and pass him by.

The work must be protected. The promise must be kept.

Another tear shattered to the floor. But this time, instead of a skittering, dark creature, a large crow shook its feathers, leapt from the shards, and landed on the silver machine near Moondagger's head. When they saw the crow, the egg-faced men looked up from their killing and followed it, their heads tracking the crow as a single group, as if their eyeless faces could see. They pushed around Moondagger, gathering and shuffling around the silver machine where the crow had landed, shambling and murmuring. They were tall. Their oily clothes stank of fire and charred bone. They did not touch Moondagger but gathered close, encircling him until they enclosed him entirely, their eyeless egg faces black and nodding, their slit mouths muttering.

The crow cocked its head at Moondagger.

"You may choose," it cawed in its weird crow voice, a voice blended from a hundred mouths.

Choose what?

"Who lives, of course." The crow cocked its head, its dark eyes beady and intelligent. "And, who dies."

An egg-faced man threw something to the floor at Dagger's feet.

It was a body, mangled and crushed, a bloody mess, tattered and stringy, as if gnawed by beasts and left to rot in some culvert. The sky blue livery it wore was shredded and gore-stained, the leather armor blown wide. Moondagger could see the silver floor through the holes that were its wounds.

Dagger roared, flared his wings, suddenly free, and took a massive breath, blasting the circle of egg-faced men with a thundering funnel of silver-white fire. They melted away, black fog coiling into night—but then returned, exactly as they had been before—ropes of dark vapor twisting into being.

An egg-faced man toed the body over.

It was Anna. It was her. His rider. Her face was bloodless and horrible, her mouth open, lips peeled back, gums red, a silent nightmare's gape. But the worst was her eyes. Her eye sockets were burnt-out holes, the skin around them scorched and black.

Dagger snarled blind fury. He would kill them all!

Every last one.

He roared, blasting silver-white fire, turning his head slowly, making sure he got them all.

And this time, they did not flee.

Oh, no.

This time, they
burned
.

He took another breath and blasted them again.

Oh, how they burned!

Howling weirdly, their oily robes caught fire, blazing up like dried kindling, their weird egg faces pulp hissing atop jittering columns of raging white flame. Then they went still. The white fire still raged through their bodies, they still howled their toothless howl, but they did not move. They just stood there, straight—and burned.

The black egg heads began to split and crack. There were other things,
darker
things, inside. And now these things clawed through splintering black shells. A wicked flash of scale and feather, the dark edges of black swords.

"And so you have chosen," the crow cawed, its strange voice ringing from a hundred different throats.

Moondagger lunged at the crow, biting, but his fangs snapped down on wisps of black smoke.

And then there was nothing but a deeper sinking, a slow fade into nothing.

60

A
NNA ROSE TO
pain. Dizzying, bone-deep pain and darkness.

The air was cold and smelled of damp and ancient stone. She lay on a slab of rock. Her head, her back, her knees—her whole body—ached horribly. Especially her head. Gingerly, she waved a hand in front of her face. She couldn't see it. The darkness was absolute.

"Dagger," she whispered into the black.

Her head throbbed.

She'd been dreaming. A terrifying, bizarre nightmare. And although the memory of it was already fading, its effect lingered, as if some larval thing from the dream world had clawed through in search of a deeper nesting place, a hollow near the center of her chest where it could hide and grow.

She blinked at the darkness. White ghost shapes flitted across her vision. The rock slab where she lay was cold and hard against her back, covered by a layer of cool dust. She tried to open her eyes wider, but there was no light.

She was in some dungeon, some prison somewhere. The blackness was total.

But no. That wasn't true.

On the far wall, she could just make out a faint seam of moonlight. A small window, she guessed, shuttered against the night. She took a deep breath, but a knifing pain stabbed through her ribs and stopped her. She groaned.

She didn't know where she was exactly, or how long she'd been there, or how she'd arrived. But she did know this: Moondagger's presence in her mind was missing.

She closed her eyes. When she did, she saw them crashing into the trees, heard the crunch of bone, the rip of muscle and tendon.

Dagger.

Anna reached out with her mind, not sure what she was doing, but trying all the same, feeling for his presence.

Nothing. It was like reaching into a gaping, black hole.

Anna sat up. When she lifted her legs, a chain clinked and she felt the weight of dead iron shackled round her right ankle. She was barefoot. Her armor and weapons were gone, of course. She was wearing only her riding undergear and a few shreds of her armor's padding. Powdery dust caked her feet and palms.