human uprisings for centuries.
As the dragons neared, Pet ran the back of his hand along his scratchy mustache. The mineral oil Burke used to lubricate the wheel-bows had thoroughly coated his fingers by now. It smelled faintly of pine.
'Aim!' Pet shouted. He drew a bead on an approaching sun-dragon. His lifelong familiarity with the beasts allowed him to judge their true distance against the trackless sky. He knew the dragons could see his men and their bows; they'd lose all element of surprise the second the first arrows flew. He had to wait until he was certain they would be in range.
He held his aim a few seconds, then a few seconds more, calculating the dragons' speed. Pet targeted the empty sky, aiming at the spot where the dragon would be when the arrow reached it, then shouted, 'Fire!'
Arrows flash upward like frozen shards of light. The snapping steel bowstrings made the wall sound as if a large harpsichord were being stroked by a giant-zing, zing, zang, zing, zang! For an instant, Pet worried he'd overshot his target, until the sun-dragon dropped his bucket. The crimson-beast doubled over, clutching the arrow in its gut. A half dozen of its brethren performed similar aerial contortions before they began to plummet from the sky. The dragons that followed veered and wheeled away as the seven struck in the initial volley fell. Keeping his eyes on the sky, Pet paid no attention to where the bodies landed. He'd already drawn another arrow.
'Aim!' he shouted.
Behind him, there was a powerful WHANG as a catapult Burke had salvaged from the dragon armory sent a shower of shrapnel skyward. Its target wasn't the sun-dragons, but the advancing army of earth-dragons who flowed toward the fort like a living river.
While some of the sun-dragons were pulling back in confusion, a full score continued to advance. Pet took a calming breath, making certain of his aim, then cried out, 'Fire!'
Zing, zing, zang, zing, zang!
This time, ten dragons felt the bite of the arrows, some falling in gentle arcs, some in dizzying cartwheels, and a few simply plunging straight toward earth. One smashed into the ground outside the wall not twenty feet away from Pet. The vibration of the impact ran up his legs. A rust heap crashed with a noise like a band of drummers falling down stairs as one of the dying beasts smacked into it.
By now, the remaining dragons were near the wall. One by one, they tilted their buckets, and a black rain of darts fell toward the men.
'Shields!' Pet shouted. In unison, all the men along the wall lifted the wooden disks propped before them, ducking their heads as they crouched. The thick oak shields were banded with broad strips of steel. Seconds later, the darts struck, and the entire wall rang out with a clatter and chatter as a thousand tiny, deadly knives buried themselves in the wood. Men started screaming seconds later. Pet looked up. A few of the braver sun-dragons had swooped down, snatched up men from the wall, and lifted them skyward. Pet tossed his dart-studded shield aside and drew his bow once more.
'Fire at will!' he shouted, knowing there was no longer any hope of unified action. Dragons were everywhere. A score of sun-dragons remained high overhead, but their darts would now be striking their own forces if they dropped them, for at least as many of the sun-dragons had broken ranks and were attacking the bowmen on the walls directly. Below, the river of earth-dragons spread out in waves as they reached the walls. From every direction, there was shouting and confusion. Pet tried to put it from his mind.
It wasn't courage that welled up within him at this moment. Instead, it was something far less passionate and far colder. He became deaf to the cries of his fellow men. He was undistracted by the bodies of sun-dragons falling from the sky around him and turning to red, meaty smears as they crashed into the snow. He gave no thought to his own life or safety. He simply became mindless, his body moving with a cool, machine-like efficiency.
The sole purpose of his life was to place an arrow in his bow, aim, fire. Again and again he followed this action, without a thought in his mind. Find a hole in the sky where a dragon would be, fire. Find another hole, fire. One by one, his victims fell. The sky was so thick with the bodies of dragons, it was nearly impossible to miss. If his arrow flew past one dragon, it would strike a second behind it.
Pet lost all sense of time. He maintained this trancelike state until he reached to the quiver on his back and found his fingers closing on empty air. Suddenly, the calm emptiness in him was broken and his thoughts came crashing back. His heart leapt into his throat. He consciously became aware of how empty the sky above suddenly seemed.
He cast his gaze down the wall, then toward the men on the other walls. He could tell their ranks had been thinned by the initial assault. In the city below, blood once again ran in the gutters. A wooden building near the center of town had been completely crushed beneath the remnants of a sun-dragon, and at least two more of the huge corpses blocked the streets. Yet there were no living dragons within the walls, not even an earth-dragon. Looking down, Pet surveyed a field of fallen green bodies. Many of those still surviving were crawling away on all fours, violently vomiting. The poisoned breakfast was taking hold! Despite this, there were still so many. Ten thousand earth-dragons, the spies had said. Were there even ten thousand arrows in Dragon Forge?
Turning his eyes skyward, he took comfort in the nearly empty palette of white. In the distance, he saw over two dozen sun-dragons in retreat, racing back toward their camp. Still, the aerial assault wasn't completely over. One last dragon swooped down from the covering clouds and raced toward Dragon Forge, its dart bucket still in its claws.
Pet lowered his eyes back to the wall and began to run, spotting the body of a fallen archer ten yards away, near the eastern gate. He saw fresh arrows in the slain man's quiver. Pet snatched up a handful of missiles and turned to find his target.
The sun-dragon he'd spotted was heading on a path toward Pet. Pet calmly drew a bead and let his arrow fly. He watched with great satisfaction as the arrow buried itself deep in the beast's breast, a shot that almost certainly pierced the heart. The dragon's eyes rolled upwards and its whole body went limp. It transformed instantly from a thing of grace in the air into a half-ton bag of falling meat.
For a second, it seemed as if the dragon were hurtling straight toward Pet, carried by momentum and gravity on a deadly path, but the dragon was actually coming down at a slight angle to his side. For a sickening second, Pet imagined the body of the dragon smashing into the gate he'd worked so hard to close, its corpse transformed into a swift and heavy battering ram.
Then, he no longer imagined it. He watched it, unfolding with an unnerving deja vu, as the corpse rammed at high speed into the thick wood. The mass and speed of the dragon were such that the body didn't so much crash as splash. A rain of dark gore shot in all directions as a thunderous crack split the gate. The wood tore from the hinges as the ancient logs snapped like sticks.
Pet found himself frozen, unable to think, as a hundred earth-dragons sprang against the ruptured gate, forcing it wider. Seconds later they charged into the city, with cries of victory shrieking from their turtle-like beaks.
Pet fumbled to place another arrow against the string. The calmness that had filled him so completely was now gone, replaced by the trembling certainty that he'd just doomed the city.
Then, a strange thing happened. A few of the dragons stumbled and fell, and others tumbled and tripped over them. Others who avoided colliding with fellow soldiers began to weave in drunken circles. A thick, oily smoke drifted through the city streets as Shanna and the men she commanded poured buckets of blue oil onto bonfires. Ragnar's men surged from the doorways of the buildings, bringing a swift end to these drunken dragons. Yet for every dragon they slew, two more poured through the gate. Not all seemed affected by the smoke. Perhaps the open air didn't allow the poison to spread evenly through the city, or perhaps the thick-headed earth-dragons possessed members of their race who simply were too dumb to be poisoned. Whatever the cause, Ragnar's men soon found themselves being pushed back toward the open city square.
Chaos was again spreading along the walls. Some archers began firing into the city, while other aimed outside the walls. Pet looked up and found the dark shapes of sun-dragons once more on the horizon. It was time to bring order to the chaos.
'Sky-wall!' he shouted running up and down the walls. 'Sky-wall, man your positions! Grab whatever arrows you can find and get ready for the next wave! Hurry!'
To his amazement, the men obeyed. He eyed the distant dragons. There were fewer than twenty. Where were the rest? If Shanna was right, there should still be over a hundred. Was this all that was left of the sun-dragons who would obey Shandrazel? Was the psychological element of the sky-wall working as Burke had predicted?
Behind him, he heard a loud, mechanical whistle. Breaking his own order to watch the sky, he looked toward the courtyard. A cloud of steam shot into the air as the whistle sounded once more. There was a loud clattering like
