Firestorm (4 page)

As they climbed still higher, Elian realised the white carpet was not complete. Small breaks were appearing in the cloud, but it would be some time before the sun was strong enough to break it
up more thoroughly.

‘How can you tell where we are?’ Elian shouted.

‘To be honest, I can’t tell exactly,’
Ra responded.
‘However, I can estimate very well. Also, if I concentrate, I can sense the presence of humans. There are
two of your kind below us.’

‘Can you hear their thoughts?’

‘I can hear echoes of their surface thoughts, but cannot read them with absolute clarity. From what I sense of these two, they’re up to no good.’

‘That’ll be Borkas and Farrel!’ he said excitedly. ‘Can you land us somewhere close, but where they won’t see us come down? I’ve got an idea.’

Ra turned gently to the right and entered a shallow, descending spiral that took them back into the cloud. Remaining close to the base of the cloud, so that she could see the ground directly
below, she cruised to find a suitable place to land. It did not take long. She picked her point and dropped steeply, before pitching neatly out of the dive and killing her forward motion with a
clever twist of her wings. They landed with the lightest of touches.

Elian eased his right leg over to join his left and slid to the ground, where he collapsed in a heap, clutching at his groin in pain.

‘What’s the matter, Elian? Are you all right?’

‘Yes . . . and no,’ he groaned. ‘It’s just that riding you isn’t like riding a horse. My legs don’t feel as if they were meant to split that wide. I’ve
overstretched some muscles in a rather delicate place.’

Aurora gave a little snort and Elian sensed her amusement.
‘You’ll get used to it quickly enough, dragonrider, though a dragon saddle would help. Now, what is your
plan?’

Elian outlined what he had in mind and she snorted again.

‘Crude, but effective,’
she acceded.
‘Very well. I shall be listening to your thoughts. I’ll play my part, do not fear.’

With that she turned and launched across the heath, away from where the two boys were waiting. Elian caught up with her climb quickly and watched the cloud swallow her without so much as a swirl
to mark her passage. With another groan and a lot of wincing, he got to his feet and began moving gingerly forwards.

The worst of the pain in his groin had gone by the time Elian caught up with the two bullies. They had given up on him and were walking back towards the village. It took a while for the boys to
notice Elian. When they did, however, they turned instantly to meet him, chatting to one another and grinning with wicked anticipation. He allowed himself a quiet smile of his own.

‘What d’you think
you
have to smile about, Elian?’ Borkas sneered.

‘I’m enjoying the moment, Borkas,’ he replied calmly, maintaining his smile. ‘Because this is the last time you’ll ever try to bully anyone from our
village.’

The two large lads stopped five paces short of him. They looked firstly at one another, then all around them, and finally back at Elian.

‘And what makes you think you can stop us, dungball?’ Farrel scoffed.

‘I’ve got a new friend who’s looking out for me. She’s decided it’s time you changed your ways. In fact she’s promised that if you don’t, she’ll
have you for breakfast.’

The two boys exploded into gales of laughter. ‘A girl!’ Borkas roared. ‘He thinks hiding behind the skirts of a girl is going to stop us!’

‘What a turkey!’ agreed Farrel. ‘Come on. Let’s give him a little reminder of how it works before his girlfriend turns up to scare us.’

‘Oh, it’s far too late for that,’ Elian said, standing his ground as the two boys curled their fingers into fists and took the first step towards him.

A sudden gust of wind from behind them was followed by a loud thud and a long, deep, shuddering snort. Borkas and Farrel froze. With painful slowness, they turned inwards towards one another and
onwards until they came face to face with Aurora, whose nostrils were less than a handspan behind them.

‘Block your ears, Elian,’
she warned.

He did so instantly, watching with amused fascination as she inhaled a huge breath, drawing her head up and away from the two terrified boys. With startling speed, she lunged towards them. Her
jaws opened wide and she let loose a deafening roar that literally blew the hair on the boys’ heads straight out behind them. Borkas and Farrel were suddenly faced with a very close up view
of her most impressive rows of large, razor-sharp teeth, her long, pointed tongue and her deep, deep gullet.

The roar ended. The two bullies remained motionless for a single heartbeat, staring in total shock into the huge dragon eyes regarding them from just beyond her teeth. Then they turned and ran
like Elian had never seen them run before. And as they ran, they screamed in abject terror.

Elian removed his fingers from his ears. His lips formed a broad grin of satisfaction as he watched them go.

‘Do you think that will do it?’

‘Oh yes, Ra!’ he chuckled. ‘That was as good as it gets! Borkas and Farrel nearly wet themselves! After that I’d be surprised if they ever bullied anyone
again.’

‘He gives me the creeps, Tembo. I don’t know if it’s his eyes or his uncanny ability to read signs that no one else can see, but there’s something
unnatural about him.’

Tembo shrugged his great shoulders. ‘You should be grateful, Husam. He’s the best dragon tracker around. Without him we’d all be forced to work hard for a living. He’s a
bit strange, but his senses make up for it. Look. He’s found something.’

Husam looked up at his hulking friend: loyal, trusting and immensely strong, Tembo was the best sort of person to have as a hunting partner. He appeared every inch the gentle giant, but was
surprisingly fast and deadly with a spear. His face looked as if a child had modelled it from clay, squashing a sausage-shaped nose onto the middle and giving him oversized ears that stuck out from
the sides of his head like flaps. His features made him look simple and his manner did little to dispel that impression. However, underneath the comic features was a many-faceted character, who
could solve even the most difficult of puzzles.

They had worked together for two years before joining Kasau’s party. As a team they had done well, but they had never known success on the scale they had enjoyed since joining the quiet
hunter. Kasau had instincts unlike anybody else. He did not need to hear rumour of rogue dragons terrorising villages. It was almost as if he knew where they would be before the dragons did. He did
not talk much, but when he did, everyone listened.

Tembo was right. Kasau had found something. Husam watched the hunter stalk across to the nearby stand of trees and back again. The hairs on the back of Husam’s neck prickled, as they often
did when watching Kasau at work. Damn but the man is spooky, he thought as Kasau straightened and walked back towards the rest of the party. Even from some distance away, Husam could see his eyes.
It was hard to ignore them. They were both brown, but where the left was a dark, chocolate colour, the right was almost orange. Mismatched eyes were said to be a sign of the devil. Husam had not
yet seen any evidence of evil, but he felt something – an awkward sense of discomfort in Kasau’s presence that he could not shake.

‘She is close,’ Kasau reported in his soft voice. ‘If this hunt is successful, we will all be rich. I can now confirm she’s a dawn dragon.’

‘A dawn dragon! That’s fantastic, Kasau!’

‘She’s close, you say? In which direction?’

‘How big is she?’

The questions arrowed in thick and fast. Husam noted that Kasau did not respond to any of them. Instead the dragonhunter held up a hand for silence.

‘There’s a problem,’ he said, his voice flat and cold. His eyes moved from one member of the party to another, settling briefly on each and then moving on. When his eyes met
Husam’s, his pause was a little longer. A shiver ran down Husam’s spine. For a moment he felt as if the strange hunter were looking into his soul. ‘The dragon has met her
rider,’ Kasau finished.

Groans rippled through the party.

Rogue dragons were the justification for dragon hunting. Killing those insane dragons was seen as a mercy to the dragon and a necessity to the communities the dragons terrorised. If
dragonhunters sometimes killed riderless dragons that were not true rogues, then the authorities tended to turn a blind eye – especially as the carcasses had properties that were beneficial
to the human communities. However, to kill a dragon that had a dragonrider was a serious offence. Aside from the penalties the authorities placed on such an act, there was also the danger that
other members of the dragonrider community might seek revenge. Dragonhunters who flouted this law did not have a great life expectancy.

Kasau again raised his hand for silence.

‘Who here wants to get rich?’ he asked. His voice was soft, but the words carried a weight that lent its own volume.

Is this the evil I feared? thought Husam, his heart racing. Could Kasau be an agent of the devil?

‘We can’t risk killing a dragon that has a rider,’ he said aloud in a firm voice. ‘It’s wrong. Besides, we’d not live to enjoy the rewards.’

Where had that last sentence come from? Kasau stared at him unblinking. Try as he might, Husam could not break eye contact. It was as if Kasau was holding his head in an invisible vice. Had the
quiet hunter somehow transferred that thought into his brain?

‘Who would know?’ Kasau asked, continuing to hold Husam with his gaze. The dragonhunter’s soft voice seemed to echo inside Husam’s head. It was a strange sensation.
‘Listen – the dragon has just met her rider for the first time. The dragonrider community are not yet aware of their partnership. Until the dragon takes her rider to her dragon enclave,
we can continue to hunt her without worrying about other dragons or riders.’

‘But what about the rider?’ Husam asked pointedly. ‘Are you suggesting we should kill him too?’

‘It might be kind to do so, but it won’t be necessary,’ Kasau replied, his soft voice cold and clinical. ‘Upon the death of his dragon, the rider will lose his mind. No
one takes the word of a jabbering lunatic seriously.’

A wave of muttering swept through the party. Kasau broke eye contact with Husam and looked around the group. Husam felt suddenly groggy. He staggered slightly, but Tembo’s arm was quick to
steady him. He rubbed his eyes and pain started to pound in his forehead with the steady rhythm of a drumbeat.

He looked around to see how the rest of the party was receiving Kasau’s suggestion. He could see that the quiet hunter was likely to split their group. Heated debate gripped them. It was a
larger hunting party than was typical: nineteen strong, including Kasau. Even so, they had prospered under his leadership.

Maybe a split is what he intends, Husam mused, noting the gradual increase in volume of the muttering, as tones turned angry. Maybe he feels the group has grown too big. If the group does split,
I could try for leadership of the second party. A leader’s share of the spoils is always greater. This is not the only dragon. There will be other hunts.

A third time Kasau raised his hand for silence. It took a little longer this time, but gradually the muttering subsided.

‘The tracks show the dragon is a mature, female dawn dragon. She is at the height of her powers. This is a dragon the like of which you will probably never see again in your lifetime.
I’m not giving up the hunt. Now she has joined with her rider, she will fly to see the Dragon Spirit in Orupee. Anticipating her track is straightforward. We can set a trap for her. The
Overlords will never know. Who amongst you will follow me?’

Some called
Aye
instantly. Others followed more reluctantly in dribs and drabs. Eventually the only two who had not responded were Tembo and Husam. Husam looked up at his friend. The big
man looked back, his expression clear – whatever Husam did, Tembo would follow.

For a moment Husam was tempted to turn and walk away. This was wrong. He felt it in every fibre of his being, yet he could also feel the draw of the gold. A dawn dragon’s bones, scales,
hide, eyes and horns would be worth a fortune. Assuming they were successful, even with such a big party every one of them could retire a rich man.

‘Aye,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘And may the Creator have mercy on our souls.’

Chapter Four

Aurora landed in the fallow field next to the cottage where Elian and his parents lived. It was well that he lived on the edge of the village, for Ra would have had problems
negotiating the narrow lanes without causing unwelcome damage to property.

‘
I think you had better get down quickly and talk with your people,’
she suggested, watching with a wary eye towards the edge of the village.
‘Some of them look as
though they might have the wrong idea.’

She was right. Despite the silent, gliding approach, their arrival had not gone unnoticed. A crowd of villagers was already congregating, with more running to join them by the heartbeat. The
women gathered excited children close about their legs and some of the men were armed with crude weapons. As if they would be of any use against Ra, Elian thought, dismayed that anyone would
consider harming his dragon.