Dragonback 02 Dragon and Soldier (24 page)

Draycos's neck arched. "Very good," he said. "I am impressed."

"Thank you," Jack said, rather pleased by it himself. "And the
missing line was the message?"

"Exactly," Draycos said. "The complete first stanza that I spoke
should have been: 'Until the brave achieve their rest, the warrior must
put forth his best. Come here to me, my oldest friend, and to the last
our home defend.' "

Jack thought back. "The third line was missing," he said. " 'Come
here to me, my oldest friend.' "

"Correct," Draycos said. "Uncle Virge is not precisely my oldest
friend, but it was the closest line I knew to what we needed."

"Definitely close enough," Jack agreed. "Especially since he's
pretty much
my
oldest friend. What about the others? Uncle
Virge said something next about warfire?"

"'The warfire blazes all around, the killing fields do beckon,' "
Draycos recited. " 'How shall my warrior friend be found? By curve or
straight-line reckon?' "

" 'How shall my warrior friend be found,' "Jack repeated the
missing line. "He wanted to know where we were."

"Correct," Draycos said. "As you can see, he understood quickly
what I was doing."

"Uncle Virgil always was a smart old fox," Jack agreed. "Your next
one was shorter, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Draycos said. "It was the only one that did not come from
one of my poems. I created it on the moment to identify the place where
we were headed."

Jack gazed out at the stars, thinking back.
The dog tells all;
the fires blast. Until the fury's spent at last
. It didn't make any
more sense to him the second time around than it had the first. "You
got me," he said.

"Think of the words," Draycos suggested. "Think of where we are
going."

"I still don't—"Jack broke off. "You're not serious. 'Dog tells'?
Dahtill? Dahtill City?"

"It was the best I could create," Draycos said apologetically. "I
hoped he would understand."

"I guess he didn't," Jack said. "You still had a lot more to say
to each other."

"True," the dragon conceded. "His next stanza was a question. 'You
speak in riddles in my ear. What do you say, what do you mean? While
all is dark and dank and drear, how can one silence fears unseen?' "

" 'What do you say, what do you mean?'" Jack murmured. "I don't
blame him."

"I then tried to give him a useful clue," Draycos said. " 'By what
foul deed is treason learned? By what hand are we crushed? The mines
collapse, the cities burned, the fields and vineyards hushed.'"

"The mines collapse, the cities burned," Jack said, nodding. "A
city with a mine beside it."

"He understood then, but was not absolutely certain," Draycos
said. " 'We sought the city of our foe. They held it strong against our
might. But through the desert we did go, and took it ere the fall of
night.' "

"The city of our foe," Jack said. "That covers Dahtill City, all
right, and probably fifty others along with it."

"But no other is so near to us," Draycos pointed out. "And none
that I know of is associated with an important mine. At any rate, I
told him he was correct. 'The scoffers say we face the night, that none
shall from that road return. But I say that your word is right; the
scoffer's words and fears I spurn.'"

But I say that your word is right
. "I just hope he really
did get the dog-tell pun."

"We shall soon find out," Draycos agreed. "At any rate, he then
told me he was leaving."

" 'The world will tremble, warns the foe,' " Jack quoted, just to
show he could do it. " 'And all will fall like burning leaves.' Next?"

"'But I must to my friends now go,'" Draycos supplied the missing
line. " 'To stand, though none endure to grieve.' "

For a moment the cockpit was silent. "Well, if it
doesn't
work, it sure should have," Jack concluded. "Pretty classy."

"Thank you," the dragon said.

"You're welcome," Jack said. "I hope you've got an equally clever
plan for getting the others out."

"Actually . . ."

Jack eyed him. "You don't, do you?"

"It is difficult to plan with so many variables," the dragon
hedged. "We do not know where our enemies will be positioned."

"I thought they were all going to be out looking for me," Jack
reminded him.

"Some may be," Draycos agreed. "But others will have stayed
behind. At any rate, even the searchers may have returned by this time."

"In other words, you're going to wing it."

The tip of the dragon's tail twitched. "That is not precisely how
I would have phrased it," he said. "But it is basically accurate."

Jack sighed. "I thought so."

With Dahtill City five more minutes away, Jack took the Lynx down
to treetop height. "I take it we're not jumping out this time?" he
asked Draycos.

"Correct," Draycos called from the back, where he was rummaging
through the various storage lockers. "We may require this vehicle to
move the prisoners. Is its ventral armor as strong as that of the
Flying Turtle we used earlier?"

"They're similar models, so probably," Jack said. Not that any
amount of armor would do them any good if the Shamshir knocked out the
lifters. "Any luck back there?"

"Very little," Draycos reported. "The soldiers must have taken
most of the weapons with them on their search for you. I have found
only two small MP-50 machine guns, with two spare clips each."

Killing weapons, the kind Jack had spent his life avoiding.
"Nothing else?" he asked. "No sopor gas or slapsticks or anything like
that?"

"The only other weapons are nine Class II explosive grenades,"
Draycos said. "There are no nonlethal weapons of the sort you prefer. I
am sorry."

Jack grimaced. "Me, too. Well, I guess we'll have to do what we
can. Maybe we can just pin the Shamshir down while Uncle Virge swoops
in and—"

"What was that?" Draycos cut him off.

Jack threw a quick look toward the horizon, then checked his
sensor displays. There was nothing unusual that he could see. "What was
what?"

"A small flash of light directly ahead," Draycos said, covering
the length of the transport in two bounds to land at Jack's side.
"There—it came again."

"I didn't see anything," Jack said, learning forward and staring
out into the night. "What did it look like?"

"Like the discharge of a Gompers flash rifle," Draycos said. "As
if far in the distance—"

And then, faintly, it came again. A flicker of light, like a small
flash of lightning coming from below the horizon. "You mean like that?"
Jack asked.

"Exactly," Draycos said. "There—another."

"Someone's doing some shooting," Jack muttered, watching the
flashes. "A
lot
of shooting."

"The Shamshir would not execute their prisoners, would they?"
Draycos asked, his voice dark and ominous.

"I hope not," Jack said, studying the flickers of light. There
didn't seem to be any pattern to them, no nice neat one-two-three
sequence. "Anyway, that doesn't look like a firing squad."

"Then there is a battle," Draycos concluded. "I will fly. You will
shoot."

"Wait a second," Jack objected. "I will shoot what?"

"We will know when we arrive," Draycos said, nudging Jack
impatiently with the side of his head. "Go. You must prepare."

"But the
Essenay
's not here yet."

"We have no choice," Draycos said firmly. "We must see what is
happening. Go."

Reluctantly, Jack climbed out of the pilot's seat. "I don't like
this," he said. "Why don't we land someplace near the city and take a
quiet look instead of charging blindly in?"

"There is no time," Draycos said, sliding into Jack's seat and
gripping the controls with his paws. "Whether the Agri are fighting the
Shamshir, or whether the Whinyard's Edge has launched their own strike,
we cannot afford a delay."

"What makes you think that?"

"Call it warrior's instinct." Draycos turned his green eyes on
Jack, "Go. Prepare."

"Terrific," Jack muttered, heading aft to where Draycos had laid
out the MP-50s. Why the Agri should suddenly have risen up against the
Shamshir he couldn't imagine. And the idea that the Edge would have
gotten involved was completely ridiculous.

Unless they'd gone to Dahtill City looking for him. Maybe Colonel
Elkor was madder at getting stuck up that tree than he'd thought.

He reached the back and picked up one of the MP-50s. For such a
relatively small gun, it was awfully heavy. Fortunately, Draycos had
already loaded the ammo clip into it, since Jack couldn't remember
exactly how to do that. "Any particular side you want me on?" he called.

"Use the right-hand side," Draycos said.

"Okay." Grabbing two spare clips and stuffing them into his jacket
pockets, he crossed to the right-hand hatchway.

Unlike the Flying Turtle they'd escaped in earlier, the Lynx had a
pair of safety harnesses attached to the bulkhead beside each of the
side hatches. Designed for soldiers to use while shooting outside, he
decided as he slipped one of them on and tightened it into place. "How
am I supposed to know what to shoot at?" he called to Draycos.

"I will direct your fire," the dragon said. "We have cleared the
last trees now and are approaching the city from the southwest.
Prepare."

Taking a deep breath, Jack got a firm grip on his gun and hit the
hatchway release. The panel slid up into the ceiling, and for the
second time that night he found himself standing at the edge of a
hurricane.

He took another deep breath, his mind flashing back to some of the
stupider jobs he and Uncle Virgil had pulled when he was little. Back
then, he'd often felt himself standing just like this, balanced at the
edge of disaster, waiting for Uncle Virgil to give the signal.
Wondering the whole time whether either of them would be alive to see
another sunrise.

Here, the sun wouldn't be up for at least a couple more hours. He
wondered if he would be alive to see it.

And then, from the cockpit, he heard a startled bark. "What?" he
demanded, his heartbeat suddenly thudding extra hard in his throat.

"They are free," Draycos called back. "Observe." He twisted the
transport around, sending Jack swinging on his harness halfway out the
hatchway.

And as he hung balanced there, he was treated to a bird's-eye view
of an amazing scene.

Directly ahead was the landing area at the edge of the city, the
one he and Draycos had escaped from. The two Flying Turtles he'd left
behind were still there, facing the two Shamshir buildings. From the
windows of those buildings a hail of machine gun bullets was blasting
out at one of the transports, accompanied by an occasional flash of
laser fire.

And at the focus of all that fury, firing gamely back at their
attackers, was the rest of Technical Squad Tango Five Zulu.

Jommy and Li were crouched in the open hatchway, Jommy with some
kind of machine gun, Li firing blasts with a Gompers flash rifle. Below
them, lying flat on the ground behind one of the transport's landing
skids, were Rogan and Brinkster, also with machine guns.

Alison was nowhere in sight, but it wasn't hard to guess where she
was. Ten to one she was already inside the transport, trying to get it
started.

Jack shook his head, half amazed, half annoyed. Here he'd come all
this way back to rescue them, and they'd already gotten out on their
own.

"You must give covering fire," Draycos called from the cockpit.

Jack took another look. The dragon was right. The squad was
fighting back well enough, but unless Alison could get the Flying
Turtle started real soon, they were going to run out of ammunition long
before the Shamshir gave up and went away. "Right," he called back
between clenched teeth. "What do I do?"

A second later he was thrown back inside as the dragon swung them
around in a tight circle. Just in time; even as he grabbed for a strap
to steady himself, a burst of gunfire raked across the side of the
transport, some of the rounds chewing up the ceiling and far wall.
"Stay clear!" Draycos shouted.

"You bet," Jack ground out, suddenly remembering what exactly it
was he had gotten himself into. This wasn't some practice drill, and
those Shamshir soldiers out there weren't firing marker lasers.

Draycos straightened the Lynx out, and Jack pulled himself
cautiously back to the door. They had overshot the scene of the battle,
he saw, and were coming back around behind the buildings. Apparently
Draycos meant for him to shoot at the Shamshir from behind.

That was fine with him. He'd just as soon fire from a direction
the other guys' guns weren't pointed at. He flipped the firing lever
like the Whinyard's Edge manual had showed, pointed the gun in the
general direction of the buildings, and pulled the trigger.

If it hadn't been for the harness holding him up, he would have
instantly found himself flat on his back. As it was, he nearly wound up
there anyway. The MP-50 had a kick like an angry Brummga, a hundred
times more powerful than the simple little tangler gun he was used to.

The weapon also had a definite mind of its own. Even as he
staggered backward, the muzzle seemed to jump upward, and before he
could get his finger off the trigger his burst had chewed up a little
more of the transport's ceiling.

"Jack!"

"I'm okay," Jack called back, struggling back to his feet and
trying to salvage some shreds of dignity. "I've never fired one of
these things, that's all."

"Come up here," Draycos ordered. "You will fly. I will shoot."

So much for dignity. So much, too, for any possible career as a
soldier. Just in case he'd been interested in one. "Sure," Jack
muttered, untangling himself from his harness and running forward.

They were nearly back to the edge of the forest now, Jack saw as
Draycos hopped out of the pilot's seat and he hopped in. "What do you
want me to do?" he asked.