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The Copper swung his tail down three times.
With that, the six biggest and most ancient dragons of the Aerial Host struggled to gain altitude. The men tied and strapped on the broad dragon-backs, clad only in warm riding-furs with a few light blades, shifted position so they were boots-down, looking like storm-wrecked sailors clinging to the sides of an overturned boat.
The Copper’s Griffaran Guard closed up around him, ready to protect their Tyr in battle.
The colorful griffaran were more feather-skulled bird than noble dragoncrest, but they were fellow egg layers and ancient allies of the Dragons of the Lavadome. Though lazy and playful and argumentative around their own nests, those who dedicated themselves to the Tyr found ample mental stimulation keeping watch and guarding the Imperial family, and in return the dragons kept egg raiders away from their nests and brought delicious dried fruits and salted nuts from far away, or had their thralls bake oily seed-crackers the avians preferred above all other foods. They had long talons and powerful beaks that could tear through dragon-scale, and as they were rarely called upon to fight thought the constant stream of tasty tidbits, shiny decor, and soft nest-bedding the Imperial family gave in exchange for their service ample compensation.
Night-fishing birds cried an alarm to their kin as they passed, but Swayport itself still slept. Only a few lights glimmered in town and fortress.
A swift-winged dragonelle broke off from the rest of the formation and headed for the sandbar. There were some flat-bottomed Hypatian river barges there in the surf outside it. Not the most seaworthy craft, but the Firemaids had managed to swim them up from the ruins of the old elven city loaded with Hypatian soldiers. Supposedly the scions of some of the great old military families of Hypatia, they looked more like a rabble in half-polished rust to the Copper, but they’d do for keeping order after the attack and going down some of the smaller, darker holes with the aid of slender young drakes and drakka swimming beside the barges.
The barges’ arrival, just off the sandbar, had precipitated the flight of the Aerial Host.
Ignoring the pain in his wing, the Copper sped up as though eager to come to grips.
Tide wasn’t in their favor. The sandbar to the south had several flooded passages across it, but with the tide out, the barges couldn’t be pulled through. They’d have to be emptied, dragged across the shallow by the dragonelles, and then filled again.
Well, if that was the worst thing to go wrong in the war with the Pirate Lords, he would take it.
A blue-white light on one of the boats in the harbor danced across the deck, then ran up the rigging. A signal of some sort.
The Aerial Host had been spotted. Or perhaps the dragons coming across the sandbar had become tangled in someone’s lobster pots.
The Copper checked to see that his man-laden veterans were on the way to the fortress towers, two heading for each, and then stiffened his wings and went into a glide toward the signaling ship.
He picked out a yellow and blue banner atop the tallest mast. So they had a guard on the captured Hypatian ship ready to signal at an attempt to retake the craft.
The Copper ran his tongue along the inside of his teeth in satisfaction. Much more than that is on its way, oh pirate sailor. But now the foua pulsing in his firebladder would have to be directed at some other target.
He shot over the captured ship and swung with his tail. Lines sang as rigging parted and he felt a satisfying krrack! as his tail broke salt-dried timber. But when he glanced behind, the man climbing the mast still hung there, waving his burning blue light in circles. Sparks from it rained down toward the bay in brilliant parabolas only to die like fireflies.
Little man, think you’ll escape me?
The Copper folded his hurt wing—sweet relief!—in a quick diving turn and—
A mass shot under him kunk-twaaang! followed by chattering chain.
Clever men! They put a dragon-harpoon on the boat. Of course everyone knew the Hypatians had dragon allies; it was a sensible precaution.
“Get them—at the war machine!” he called to his Griffaran Guard, who banked to flank him with their usual effortless grace. Griffaran could literally fly circles around a dragon.
Two circled, misunderstood his order—the unfamiliar dwarfish-based word translated into Pari translated into the accents of dragontongue and then hurled at a pair of anxious users of a patois of dragontongue and birdspeech in the night was a recipe for confusion but two others darted for the forged shell of the harpoon-thrower in its reinforced pinioned mount.
The griffaran landed atop the device and tore into the men working cranks on the machine like fresh calf meat. Pieces flew messily in all directions.
The Copper saw men at the tail—or rather stern, the tail end of ships were called sterns—aiming another war machine at the dragons cutting across the bay. All this nautical terminology suggested secret knowledge as obscure as any of the studies of the sages on Ankelene Hill, but it was part of the marvel of all the devices hominids invented to compensate for physical, mental, and moral weaknesses.
He forgot the man in the rigging, folded his wings, and landed on the deck—shattering rail, machine, and men. A few good stomps and the whole mess went overside, weighted down by heavy chains and weights.
Good riddance.
Ship fighting wasn’t without its hazards. He felt several painful splinters in his sii and saa and he had lines and nets tangled in his scale. His griff rattled in vexation.
“My Tyr!” HeBellereth, his scarred old Commander of the Aerial Host called. “Are you injured?”
The Copper straightened his neck to trumpet:
“The towers! The gate! Never mind me. Keep to the plan! That fortress must be taken.”
