Dragon Rule - E. E. Knight [9]
The rest of the Griffaran Guard made a colorful, taloned tornado above his head as the Copper gladly left the wrecked ship and coursed for the beach, limbs tight to his sides and body writhing like a snake’s. The whole waterfront was alive with flame and cries.
The Copper pulled himself up onto the beach and shivered, chilled. He must have lost a good deal of blood between the wing and his fights. He made a pretense of issuing orders as reports came in—the overall direction of the battle could be better handled by HeBellereth.
Someone brought him a dead horse and he managed a few mouthfuls. Digestion warmed him, and he brought the rest of the meal and propped it atop the chimney of a burning building facing the sea wall so it might toast and smoke. He’d lost his taste for raw mammal flesh long ago.
He took to the air, rather tiredly and painfully, his Griffaran Guard trailing him so close they looked like a colorful extension to his tail.
HeBellereth had done a dragonlike job of directing the fight. Some fires raged below, small fast ships that might be used to put crews into the larger ships burned and a few houses wore hats of flame. The Aerial Host had spared the warehouses and workshops, fishing boats and big-bellied merchant craft. The wealth of Swayport remained intact.
Discipline. His dragons knew better than to burn a city. Reducing flimsy human dwellings to splintered fuelwood and charcoal with flame and tailswipe might be fine fun, but it wasn’t the way of the Tyr’s dragons as Protectors of the Grand Alliance. Burning homes meant the exposed humans would sicken and die, a loss of valuable thrall capital.
Alley fighting sputtered below, brief shouts and clashes that faded into chases in and out of urban gardens, tiny side doors, or narrow staircases.
The Copper dipped first his right wingtip, then his left, ignoring the newly revived pain as he sought a better look.
A young human led one of the storming columns off—at least he seemed young insofar as the Copper could judge things. He was fencepost-thin and thickly furred, his thick and shining mane flowed out from beneath helm—even the best older human warrior tended to go a bit thin as they aged. He was a whirlwhind, tearing doors off their hinges, upsetting carts placed to block streets leading to the cliffside fortress, hurling javelins uphill at the fleeing Swayport archers two full dragonlengths and more when he wasn’t leaving crumpled foes like dropped bundles in his wake with swings of a battle-ax.
The Copper marked that he wore the furs and goggles of one of the Aerial Host. He thought he knew most of the men, but this tall, thin fellow was new to him.
The storming columns converged. Though the gates had been bashed open by tailswipe and dropped stones, the Swayport soldiery had made a barricade of the rubble, broken timber, and bent metal. The Hypatian soldiers faltered here, and were flung back by desperate spear fighting and pressed shields.
The young human picked up a fallen Hypatian banner, leaped upon the pedestal of a broken statue in the paved plaza before the citadel’s gates, and swirled the banner. He called to one of the Aerial Host crossbowmen behind, who touched arrow to smoldering match and sent a sparkling signal-bolt into the Swayport crowd at the gate.
The Copper marked that one of the attacking dragons passed low. The dragon altered course, swooped for the gate, and executed a neat spin to dodge a harpoon fired from some concealed war machine in the fortress.
Alert fellow to mark the signal and attack so quickly. He’d get a new laudi dyed to his wing for that.
The dragon landed atop the rubble and turned into a biting, clawing fury. Swayport soldiers were tossed through the air or fled the the dragon’s fighting madness. The dragon leaped into the sky again as missiles rained down from the tower. A boulder struck him hard across the back and he fell.
The lanky young human, howling the raaaaah! battle cry of the Aerial Host, ran forward, armed only with the Hypatian banner. Soldiers of the Lavadome and