Dragons of Spring Dawning - Margaret Weis [56]
The man wasn’t paying any attention to the riders behind him, assuming both were safely locked in their harnesses. Intent upon his work—the harness was nearly free—he never knew what hit him.
Rising up, Tasslehoff leaped onto the officer’s back. Startled, scrabbling wildly to keep himself balanced, the officer let his sword fall as he clung desperately to the dragon’s neck.
Snarling in rage, the officer tried to see what had struck him when suddenly everything went dark! Small arms wrapped themselves around his head, blinding him. Frantically the officer let go of his hold on the dragon in an effort to free himself of what seemed to his enraged mind to be a creature with six legs and arms, all of them clinging to him with a buglike tenacity. But he felt himself start to slide off the dragon and was forced to grab hold of the mane.
“Flint! Release the lance! Flint …” Tas didn’t even know what he was saying anymore. The ground was rushing up to meet him as the weakened dragons toppled from the skies. He couldn’t think. White flashes of light burst in his head as he clung with all his strength to the officer, who was still struggling beneath him.
Then a great metallic bang sounded.
The lance released. The dragons were freed.
Spreading his wings, Khirsah pulled out of his spinning dive and leveled off. The sky and ground resumed their proper, correct positions. Tears streamed down Tas’s cheeks. He hadn’t been frightened, he told himself, sobbing. But nothing had ever looked so beautiful as that blue, blue sky, back up where it should be!
“Are you all right, Fireflash?” Tas yelled.
The bronze nodded wearily.
“I’ve got a prisoner,” Tas called, suddenly realizing that fact himself. Slowly he let go of the man, who shook his head dizzily, half-choked.
“I guess you’re not going anywhere,” Tas muttered. Sliding off the man’s back, the kender crawled down the mane toward the dragon’s shoulders. Tas saw the officer look up into the skies, and clench his fist in bitter rage as he watched his dragons being slowly driven from the skies by Laurana and her forces. In particular, the officer’s gaze fixed on Laurana, and suddenly Tas knew where he had seen him before.
The kender caught his breath. “You better take us down to the ground, Fireflash!” he cried, his hands shaking. “Hurry!”
The dragon arched his head to look around at his riders, and Tas saw that one eye was swollen shut. There were scorch and burn marks all along one side of the bronze head, and blood dripped from a torn nostril. Tas glanced around for the blue. He was nowhere to be seen.
Looking back at the officer, Tas suddenly felt wonderful. It occurred to him what he had done.
“Hey!” he yelled in elation, turning around to Flint. “We did it! We fought a dragon and I captured a prisoner! Single-handed!”
Flint nodded slowly. Turning back, Tas watched as the ground rose up to meet him, and the kender thought it had never looked so … so wonderfully groundlike before!
Khirsah landed. The foot-soldiers gathered around them, yelling and cheering. Someone led the officer away, Tas was not sorry to see him go, noticing that the officer gave him a sharp, penetrating look before he was led off. But then the kender forgot him as he glanced up at Flint.
The dwarf was slumped over the saddle, his face old and tired-looking, his lips blue.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“But you’re holding your chest. Are you wounded?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Then why are you holding your chest?”
Flint scowled. “I suppose I’ll have no peace until I answer you. Well, if you must know, it’s that confounded lance! And whoever designed this stupid vest was a bigger ninny than you are! The shaft of the lance drove right into my collarbone. I’ll be black and blue for a week. And as for your prisoner, it’s a wonder you weren’t both killed, you rattlebrain! Captured, humpf! More like an accident, if you ask me. And I’ll tell you something else! I’m never getting on another one of those great beasts as long as I live!