Steelhands - Jaida Jones [200]
“You’ll wish I had kept you waiting longer,” Troius replied. “You don’t really think you can stand against us? You know firsthand the damage we can do.”
“Sure I do,” Adamo replied. “And back when the dragons were in testing, and none of us first wave knew if they’d be with us or turn against us, we were prepared to stand against ’em then. They were a damn sight bigger in those days, too.”
“I really had thought you’d join us,” Troius said, sounding disappointed. “Did the offer not suit you? It gave you a real chance to be who you were again.”
“Adamo knows who he is,” I said, since none of his other boys seemed prepared to speak up. “But who the hell’re you?”
“I’m depressed,” Troius replied. “Sad that such a great man has been reduced to leading a depleted army—if it can even be called that—made up of women and children.”
“Uh-huh,” Ghislain grunted. “And where do you figure me into that?”
Troius didn’t have time to answer the question, because Ghislain had struck out to break his nose—fast for a giant and ten times as strong as a regular man.
I recognized the sound from the number of stableboys back home who’d suffered the same fate at the hooves of one of Da’s wilder horses. I cringed and Toverre cried out, hiding his face so he wouldn’t have to see all the blood.
“Damn it!” Adamo shouted.
“Regina,” Gaeth whispered. “That’s no good.”
“Are we hitting now?” Luvander asked, happily holding up his fists.
I stepped forward—because if it was gonna come to simple brawling, then we were gonna have to show some solidarity—but then the reason for Gaeth’s distress became apparent as a metallic scream sounded out from below us. Not even a second later, the floor exploded.
I wondered if this was the way Royston’s power manifested itself. Then I didn’t have any more time for wondering, as out of the rubble burst a dragon. Smaller than I’d been expecting but no less beautiful. There were a few streaks of dirt on her here and there, and her face was half dog, half horse, with giant nostrils and a rooster’s comb made of sharp steel pieces, but all in all she was pristine, the kind of craftsmanship that’d make everyone who knew what they were looking at feel weak in the knees.
“Bastion fuck,” I said.
“Now you’ve done it,” Troius added, sounding all wet and pissed from the blood. “Ironjaw! Attack them!”
“We’re going to be killed,” Toverre practically shrieked, ruining our stalwart moment. Everyone else was just too stunned to react.
At least there wasn’t too much room down there for the dragon to maneuver. It took her too long to turn around, claws scraping at chunks of stone, shaking her tail out and nearly bowling over one of her allies. The time that bought us was all Adamo needed, howling at us like the Chief Sergeant he’d always been—even in the lecture room.
“Fall back!” he bellowed, and even Toverre hopped to like a trained soldier, all of us pressing back into the tunnel, where most of the advantage a beast like that had over us would be squandered.
Excepting, of course, if she had firepower.
Then, we were all cooked. Literally.
I was crowded behind Raphael and Luvander, who were, I realized, using their own bodies like shields for Toverre and Gaeth and me. They didn’t have to do that, I wanted to tell them, though I’d already put myself between Toverre and the dragon, knowing how delicate his skin was. I guessed we were all just trying to protect each other.
But something was rumbling beneath my feet. An earthquake, I wondered, or the whole place being brought down on top of us from the impact as the dragon broke through foundations to protect Troius?
I was gonna have to stop wondering, because nothing I came up with ever got close to reality. It wasn’t any earthquake, but a second dragon. I couldn’t see it as well as the first, what with Ghislain blocking my view, but from what I could see, they weren’t identical.