The Dragon's Dance (4)
The dragon could not keep its eyes open, and its breathing had all but stopped. Every violent thrash of its body laid its emotions bare.
Ashtien declared, as though passing judgment.
"Descend, dragon!"
It was, perhaps, closer to a command. Ashtien was a woman born to rule the steppe — and on the steppe, to rule meant, at the same time, to protect.
She declared as a guardian, and she commanded as a ruler.
Not even a dragon could be the exception.
"You won't last much longer."
The dragon had squeezed its eyes shut and begun to thrash its neck. It could no longer endure the psychological pressure.
Vesta, an expert in beasts of prey, saw straight through the dragon's condition.
Suffocation inevitably induces unconsciousness. And that dragon is flying right now. The moment it faints from stubbornly holding on, it will plummet straight into the ground.
Dragonbone and dragonscale would do nothing to preserve its life then.
Throat, neck, spine, ribs. If even one of those four is injured, death is a real risk.
Even the ribs — the least lethal of the vital points — could pierce a lung or the heart if they broke the wrong way. In that case, not even the Empire's finest physician could save it.
At this height, there's no point calling a doctor. It would be instant death. All the more so for a dragon.
Vesta did not know the dragon's true weight. Watching it wheel through the sky, it might have been lighter than it appeared — but even so, there was no question it outweighed a human by several hundred times at least.
And the heavier the body, the more absurdly massive the impact it would absorb.
A dragon's neck is long. Relatively fragile against shock. And those wings? If it nose-dives into the ground, it's finished.
The dragon had no choice. Vesta and Ashtien had made certain of that.
"It's going down."
The dragon lowered its altitude. The eagle pressed in close behind it.
"It worked!"
"No. Not yet."
"What?"
"It doesn't look like it's given up."
The dragon was all but gliding now. At this speed, it would touch the earth in less than a minute.
Ashtien guessed the dragon's intent.
"It means to break the cape on its way down?"
Perhaps it had finally registered the exhaustion of its own endurance. It was gambling everything on a single desperate move.
"So it's willing to take the risk."
The two of them had robbed the dragon of its oxygen. Climbing again would leave it gasping — and if it brought the cape down in that state, it risked being caught in the collapse.
"Spite, is it?"
Ashtien smiled bitterly.
At length, Dragonhead Cape came into view. True to its name, it bore a long, slender neck — a bridge of solid rock, no different from a stone pillar raised by giants. It was almost impossible to imagine it crumbling.
But with the dragon's savage strength behind the blow, it was far from impossible.
Kuuooooh—!
The dragon's roar was magnificent. Ashtien answered it.
"It will not go as you will."
Her words, of course, never reached it. The two did not know one another's languages. Neither regarded the other as something capable of communication.
The dragon had never needed anyone.
"People aren't strong enough to endure alone, the way a dragon is. That is why we learned to trust one another."
Ashtien's eyes held a deep, unwavering faith.
"Dragon — have you ever been surrounded?"
— There is an eagle at your back, and before you, a falcon spreads its wings.
"Even for a dragon, it won't be easy."
Ashtien's gaze swept past the dragon, to what lay beyond.
There, upon the cape, stood the women — changing mounts at a gallop, scaling the rocky heights with breathtaking speed, every one of them proving worthy of Ashtien's trust.
Nearly all of them were rigorously trained elves. Only a single one — their commander — was the exception.
At their head stood Ahor. A human. A human who looked like nothing so much as a small girl.
To the great dragon, she was a mere insect, beneath notice. The dragon paid her no heed at all, flying only with the thought of shattering the cape.
"ALL OF YOU!"
Ahor's voice rang out. The women drew their bowstrings as one, a single flawless motion, and leveled them at the sky.
On the strings hung only arrowheads — no shafts, no fletching. On this steppe, there was only one kind of arrow that could be used so.
The Spirit Arrowheads.
"LOOSE!"
Dozens of Spirit Arrowheads embroidered the sky. But they did not aim for the dragon. They flew in almost perfectly straight lines, as though intent on piercing the heavens themselves.
To the dragon, which had braced itself to be struck, it was a strange sight. But wonder lasted only a moment.
The dragon raised its claws.
The cape would fall.
"I have received my orders."
Someone stepped toward it.
"Orders to hold this ground at all costs."
The woman did not hesitate. She did not retreat. She knew no fear, and she did not tremble.
She was Tamugai Ushun.
"Thus, you are denied passage."
Ushun hurled a single arrowhead into the empty air.
It burst into searing sparks, as if set alight — and the light spread like an infection, leaping from point to point.
As if a road had opened across the sky. The countless Spirit Arrowheads linked to one another, one after another.
"Perish—"
Ushun slammed her foot into the earth with all her might. Her twin bows rose high — and then—
"BURN-OUT-OF-THE-SKY!"
KWAAANG!
A vast thunder and lightning broke over the world.
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Light and thunder scrambled the dragon's every sense. In the end, it abandoned its purpose and settled upon the earth.
The mercy in it was that it had escaped the fall. Had it soared higher to flee the lightning, it would only have tumbled out of the sky moments later, done for regardless.
It knew instinctively that it had no choice left. It had to swallow the indignity of standing on solid ground.
Guuoooh—
The dragon endured, tending to its spent body. But its emotions had not dulled in the slightest. Revenge still burned in its heart.
It would rise again — and this time, it would see its purpose through.
She was an intelligent creature, cleverer even than the humans anticipated, and she was confident she would not fall into the same trap twice.
"So it really is here."
Sounds and presence — not just one or two, but a hundred at the least. Perhaps several hundred. They emerged from the mist like ghosts, their presence seeping out inch by inch.
The dragon's realization came too late. But it could hardly be helped. A dragon was, by nature, never the hunted. They had always been the hunters — masters of pursuit, strangers to vigilance.
The dragon did not feel fear.
Its feet were planted on the ground now, but a dragon was still a dragon. Heavier than hundreds of men combined, sheathed in hide like tempered leather armor, and able to vomit searing flame.
The mother dragon felt no dread. She was boiling over with blind fury.
Horses were approaching — of a kind with them. Eight-legged horses. Beasts that ranked above bear and leopard alike.
It was the centaur legion.
The centaur legion kept itself thoroughly dispersed, wary as they were of the dragon's fire.
They stamped and thundered their hooves against the earth, raising a din — and the vibration was unpleasant to the dragon. Perhaps it was deliberate. Perhaps they were scraping at her nerves on purpose.
The breathless mother dragon loosed a cry. At that boiling roar, the centaurs' footsteps halted.
A distance of forty meters or more. They were keeping clear of her flames, no doubt. For the mother dragon, it was a blessing. She had only to catch her breath here, and then rise into the sky once more.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
And then, something strange happened. Two warbands broke away from the line — and their leaders were nothing if not distinctive.
One gleamed gold; the other, a pitch-black figure with a frame that stood out above all the rest.
Tei, and Attila.
Tei charged with the officers of Altan-gerel and their warrior women. Attila drove forward at the head of his own followers.
The dragon merely looked on. Its breath came hard, and it had no wish to entangle itself with nuisances.
It was running on fumes. The dragon had wintered at Ainuwail, then endured a spring no kinder than winter — nearly half a year without hunting, simply holding out against the cold.
Her body was withered, weakened to its very limit.
With a labored effort, the dragon gathered its fire. The blaze fell short of its former fury, but it would burn through a company easily enough.
Tei, eyes fixed on the dragon's throat, shouted.
"THEY'RE AIMING FOR OUR LANE! ACCELERATE AND SCATTER!"
His voice brimmed with confidence.
They had been horse-and-man-as-one knights from the moment of their birth. They believed in the strength and the fortune written into their blood. Following Tei's command, they churned their legs without a flicker of hesitation.
KWAAAAAAAAH—!
"The flame is weak!"
Had they charged head-on instead, every last one of them would have died.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
A heavy, bone-deep vibration. Having driven one warband far away, the dragon swung its head around.
Attila and his followers were closing in.
FWOOSH—!
The dragon whipped its long tail. That single stroke broke the warband in half. One man's spine snapped and he died on the spot; another had all four legs shattered at once — a wound as good as death.
But Attila survived. Because even watching that tail bear down upon him, he had not faltered.
And because he had not once looked back at his comrades' deaths.
The dragon bared its jaws at the last of the death-seekers. Fire roared up from the depths of its throat.
The flame was about to—
Hkk—
CLANG!
The dragon's jaws snapped shut. The flame vented itself, pointless and wasted, between its own teeth.
The dragon could not understand what had happened. It tried to open its jaws again.
CRUNCH—!
Impossible. Attila, watching the struggle, spoke — his face swollen and corded with bursting veins.
"I've no confidence in out-muscling a dragon."
A chain was coiled in his hands.
"But keeping its mouth shut? That much, I can manage."
Attila hauled on the chain with every fiber of his bloodied body. Clunk. The jaw that had begun to lift locked shut once more.
"I despise it, mind you. How does it feel — being tethered like a beast on a rope?"
The moment the dragon found itself face to face with that savage, grinning visage.
The mother dragon felt something entirely unfamiliar.