"Right," Jack said, doing one last check of the makeshift harness she'd created for him. "Here goes."
Jack had done plenty of climbing in his lifetime, mostly up and down small buildings he was in the process of robbing. But going down this way, at the end of a rope he wasn't controlling, was a brand-new experience.
And definitely not a pleasant one. Muttering under his breath, he waded backward through the vines, trying hard not to get his feet tangled. It seemed like forever before he finally came to a halt beside the injured Phooka. "Easy, fella," Jack soothed the creature as he climbed awkwardly out of his harness.
The soothing tone wasn't necessary. The Phooka had abandoned even his weak attempts at freeing himself, and was lying motionlessly on his side. His eyes were still on Jack, his heaving flanks the only sign of life.
"Jack?" Alison's voice drifted down toward him.
Jack looked up. In the fading light she wasn't much more than a silhouette against the gray sky above her. "I'm here," he called back. "Get going. I'll see you around the other side."
Alison made as if to say something, then seemed to give a reluctant nod. "Be careful." She pulled up the rope, then disappeared away from the cliff.
Jack took a deep breath. When you have a K'da, you're never really alone, he told himself. "Draycos?" he called softly.
"I'm here," the familiar voice came. With a rustle of ferns, the dragon appeared from concealment. "I am not certain this was a wise move, though."
"Yeah, well, rescuing wayward K'da seems to have become my hobby," Jack growled. "Get over here and tell me what's wrong with him."
Draycos's examination was quick but thorough. "His left foreleg is injured," he reported. "It might be broken, but I think it is merely sprained. The left hind leg also seems hurt, but not as badly."
"What are his chances for recovery?"
"Very good," Draycos assured him. "I received a similar sprain during the Havenseeker's crash landing. I needed no treatment to recover."
"Good." Jack held out a hand to the injured Phooka. "Okay, big fella. Come aboard."
The Phooka didn't move. "Well, come on," Jack said, this time reaching down and grasping the uninjured foreleg paw. "You want to stay here all night?"
His only reaction was to try to pull out of Jack's grip. "I don't think he understands what you want," Draycos said.
"Oh, come on," Jack insisted. "He has to understand hosts."
"Yes, but you're not a host," Draycos countered. "At least, not the kind he has always known."
Jack let his breath out in a huff. He should have guessed it wouldn't be this easy. "So what now? We carry him?"
"Or we leave him here to die," Draycos said.
"I was afraid of that," Jack said disgustedly, measuring the fallen Phooka with his eyes. He looked a lot bigger, and a lot heavier, than he had from thirty feet up. "Let's get to it, then."
"Yes," Draycos said, prodding at the Phooka's side with his muzzle. "Can you help me get him onto my back?"
"Sorry, pal," Jack said, pushing at the side of Draycos's long neck. "My job."
"I'm stronger than you are."
"Absolutely," Jack agreed. "You're also the only one who can scout ahead and clear obstacles out of our way." He lifted his eyebrows. "Unless you really want to try cutting vine meshes with him balanced across your back."
Draycos's tail curved unhappily. But he was too smart not to see that Jack was right. "Very well," he said reluctantly. "I will assist you."
"That's okay." Crouching down, Jack got a grip on the Phooka's two uninjured legs. Then, bracing himself, he hauled the creature up and swung him onto his shoulders. "Geez," he muttered as he settled his load into place. "Why couldn't we have found a colony of baby K'da?"
"In a K'da colony, each generation is conceived and delivered together, within a two-year period," Draycos said. "This colony must be in the middle of that cycle."
"I was being rhetorical," Jack said with a sigh. "Don't just stand there. Find me a path."
CHAPTER 13
By now it was completely dark. Briefly, Jack wondered how Alison was doing with the rest of the herd, then put her from his mind. She could take care of herself, and he was likely to have enough troubles of his own without borrowing any of hers.
In the dusk, from thirty feet up, the footing along the cut had looked pretty tricky. In full dark, and up close and personal, it was even worse. Everything around him seemed to be twisted vines, stiff reeds, and thorny plants that grabbed at his clothing and shoes. Even with Draycos moving ahead and cutting the worst of it from his path, it was pretty slow going.
The limp Phooka balanced across his shoulders didn't make it any easier.
"At least we don't have anyone sniping at us," Jack puffed after fighting his way through a particularly unsociable row of reeds. "That's something, anyway."
"True," Draycos said. "And I find that fact ominous. The comm clip trick should not have fooled them nearly this long."
"Not unless they're really stupid," Jack admitted. "Maybe they decided to call it quits for the night."
"I don't know why they would," Draycos said. "They must certainly have equipment for seeing in the darkness. The disadvantage would be ours."
"Mine and Alison's, maybe, but not yours," Jack pointed out. "You do a lot better in the dark than we do. And personally, if I were them, I'd be a little leery about going up against a K'da poet-warrior at night."
"Perhaps," Draycos said, slashing through yet another stand of reeds. "We shall see when we rejoin the . . ." He trailed off.
"The herd?" Jack suggested quietly.
There was a sharp swishing noise through the reeds as Draycos twitched his tail. "I thought I could become used to the idea," the dragon said, a deep sadness in his voice. "But I cannot. I'm sorry."
"Nothing to be sorry for," Jack assured him. "I've never run into any primitive humans myself, but there are supposed to be a few tribes of them still scattered through Earth's denser jungles. I'd probably be just as weirded out if I ran into one of them."
There was a moment of silence, and Jack winced to himself. The situations weren't really the same, and they both knew it. "At any rate, I appreciate all you are doing for them," Draycos said. "Taking their burden upon yourself. Quite literally, in this case."
"No problem," Jack said. "Besides, I was herded around pretty much the same way back in the Whinyard's Edge. About time I got to see how the other side lives."
"I trust it is to your liking?"
Jack hunched forward and got a fresh grip on his passenger. "Just great," he said, straightening up again and flinching as the leaves of a low-hanging branch brushed against his forehead. "I could do this all night."
"Let us hope you won't have to."
They continued on in silence. The ground didn't get any easier to navigate, but as his night vision slowly improved Jack began to get the knack of seeing and deciphering the various shades of gray around him. Draycos's gold scales appeared almost luminous in the faint starlight, providing him with a fairly clear view of the path the dragon was carving out.
Jack's improved vision undoubtedly saved him from a few stumbles over the next hour of travel. Unfortunately, it didn't do anything to help with the weight slowly crushing his shoulders.
But there was something else about his passenger, a growing feeling that Jack couldn't quite put his finger on. A kind of restlessness, along with an almost twitching that he couldn't exactly feel but somehow knew was there.
At first he assumed it had to do with the Phooka's double leg sprain. But adjusting his grip and trying to walk more smoothly didn't seem to affect the restlessness. The more he tried to ease the Phooka's ride, in fact, the more twitchy he became.
Jack had just decided it was time to ask Draycos about it when the Phooka's weight suddenly vanished. "Yowp!" Jack gasped.
"What?" Draycos demanded, twisting around.
"Sorry, sorry—I was just startled," Jack hastened to assure him, squir
ming a little as his former passenger twisted himself into place around Jack's chest, back, and legs. "I guess he decided he could use me as a host, after all."
"He is on you?" With a noisy bound, Draycos landed at Jack's side, his forepaws slipping into the gap in Jack's shirt. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," Jack said, pushing the probing forepaws away. "Cut it out, will you? That tickles."
"I was merely concerned," Draycos said, reluctantly pulling back.
"I'm fine," Jack repeated, straightening his shirt collar. "And this is our chance to make some decent time. Let's get moving."
And with the injured animal now riding Jack's skin like a good K'da should, the trip did indeed become easier. There were still a few patches of dense vegetation that Draycos had to cut through, but everywhere else Jack was able to plow his way through on his own.
It took them another half hour to get around the hill Jack had pointed out to Alison. On the far side was a much gentler slope, and twenty minutes later they were back to the level they'd been on when the Phooka had fallen off the ridge. "There we go," Jack murmured, breathing hard. "Piece of cake."
"You will someday have to cook for me this cake you often speak of," Draycos said dryly. "Come—we must find Alison and the others."
"Go ahead," Jack said, pushing aside the reeds at the base of a thick tree and sitting down against the trunk. "I'll wait here."
"That may be dangerous," Draycos warned. "There are many night creatures around. Some are undoubtedly predators."
"I've got my tangler," Jack reminded him, pulling out the weapon and setting it on his lap. "I just need to rest for a few minutes."
"Then I will wait with you," Draycos said. "When you're ready, we'll go together."
"Look, just go, all right?" Jack said, starting to feel annoyed. "If you want to know the truth, I'm more worried about Alison than I am about me. Anyway, they can't be that far ahead of us. Just find them, then come back and get me."
"But—"
Abruptly, Draycos broke off, and in the darkness Jack saw his tongue flicking rapidly in and out of his mouth. "What is it?" he whispered.
"Movement," Draycos murmured back, putting his snout right up against Jack's ear. "The Malison Ring soldiers have arrived."
Jack's heart seemed to freeze in his chest. "Where?" he breathed.
"To the south," Draycos said, his tongue flicking out twice more. "Twenty of them at least, including nonhumans. They are traveling north in a sweep-line, fifty to one hundred yards back from our position."
Reflexively, Jack pressed his back harder against the tree. By pure blind luck he'd sat himself down on the north side of a tree that was wide enough to shield him from the view of the approaching soldiers. But that would only protect him until they passed and someone decided to take a look to the side.
"And," Draycos added, "there are three to five more already past us to the north."
Jack frowned. Two separate waves? Could Colonel Frost have figured out that he and Alison had split up?
"The lead group will be scouts," Draycos said, answering his unspoken question. "The larger group is the main fighting force."
So Frost didn't know he and Alison had been separated. Jack started breathing a little easier again. "Can you tell where Alison and the others are?" he asked Draycos.
Again, the tongue flicked out. "No, but the lack of activity implies they have not yet been attacked. Possibly not even spotted."
And in the meantime, Jack and Draycos were sitting between two enemy waves, both of which were completely unaware of their presence. There ought to be some seriously interesting ways to take advantage of that. "Any idea how the bad guys are traveling?"
"Most likely in a similar formation to that which they used earlier," Draycos said. "They will be in small groups of two to five soldiers. All the members of a group will be in sight of each other, but they will be spaced far enough apart to keep me from stopping all of them before they can sound an alarm."
Jack grimaced. "Any ideas?"
"They will be expecting a K'da warrior," Draycos said, lowering his voice even further. "But they will not be expecting a K'da warrior with a tangler."
"Ok-a-a-ay," Jack said slowly, frowning as he handed over the weapon. "And this is going to help us how?"
"You will see," Draycos said, taking the tangler and tucking it under his left foreleg. "How many shots are left?"
"Eleven."
"Good," Draycos said. "Stay here and remain still. The tree and its surrounding reeds should protect you from—"
And suddenly, without even a whisper of warning, Jack's head and shoulders were shoved hard into the tree trunk behind him as the red Phooka riding his skin suddenly leaped from the front of his shirt.
Reflexively, Jack opened his mouth to shout a warning, strangled it down just in time. Move! he thought urgently toward the Phooka, wiggling his fingers toward the creature as violently as he dared. The soldiers could arrive at any second. Get out of here!
But the red dragon ignored him. He shook himself once, like a dog just in out of the rain, and twisted his long neck around once to look at Jack. Then, turning around again, he jabbed his tongue out a few times and started casually loping northward.
He'd gotten perhaps ten paces when the forest exploded with the brilliant light and the shattering noise of gunfire from behind him.
"No!" Jack howled, the sound of his voice swallowed up by the stuttering thunderclaps.
But it was too late. Before the red Phooka could even react, his scales were already bursting apart with multiple hits. He writhed once in surprise and agony, collapsing to the ground.
An instant later he was gone.
Jack stared at the spot where the Phooka had been, his stomach wanting to be sick. Draycos had told him how K'da simply vanished when they died, going two-dimensional and fading away.
But to watch it happen right before his eyes was as eerie as it was horrifying.
And still the gunfire continued to rake the area. Jack pressed his hands tightly to his ears, trying to block out the noise hammering his skull and wondering what in blazes the soldiers were doing. Did they really think that poor, stupid animal could have escaped their attack?
And then, suddenly, he understood. Of course no mere animal could have lived through that. But they weren't hunting animals. In fact, odds were they didn't even know the Phooka herd existed.
They were hunting Draycos, poet-warrior of the K'da.
And they probably thought they had just killed him.
Jack looked around, squinting in the flickering light as he searched for his partner. He finally spotted him, clinging upside down to the tree trunk among the branches five feet above Jack's head. The dragon's scales had gone black in K'da combat mode, and there was a glint in his glowing green eyes that sent a fresh shiver down Jack's spine.
With a final lingering burst, the gunfire ceased. Cautiously, Jack eased his hands away from his throbbing ears.
Only to find there was an echo of the same sound coming from somewhere in the distance in front of him.
Alison and the others were under attack.
"Draycos!" he whispered urgently.
"I know," the dragon whispered back, his voice deathly calm. "Stay here. I will return for you."
CHAPTER 14
There was no need for stealth now, not with the chattering gunfire in the distance drowning out all other sounds. Draycos leaped upward through the branches, ignoring the swishing leaves that otherwise would have been a dead giveaway of his position.
But then, why would the mercenaries below him even care about noises overhead? As far as they were concerned, he was dead. They had just killed him.
He could feel a snarl of fury building within him. Ruthlessly, he forced it back. Right now, the combat situation required his complete attention. There would be time later to mourn the innocent Phooka the mercenaries had slaughtered.
To mourn him, and perhaps bring him justice.
&nb
sp; Fifteen feet above the ground, a particularly thick branch angled out to the right. Changing direction, Draycos headed along it until it began to bend beneath his weight. There, he crouched down, bringing Jack's tangler out from carrying position and settling it into his paw.
He was just in time. With the battle begun, and the K'da poet-warrior finally disposed of, the mercenaries had also abandoned their efforts at stealth and were hurrying northward toward the distant gunfire as quickly as the terrain and vegetation would allow. A group of four passed almost directly beneath him, their guns held ready.
Smiling tightly to himself, Draycos fired.
Four shots. Four invisible bursts of thread instantly entangling their victims. Four nearly invisible flickers of light as the capacitors delivered a powerful electric jolt through the threads.
Four muffled thuds as unconscious soldiers hit the ground.
The next foursome was moving through the woods twenty feet farther along the right flank. Tucking the tangler back under his foreleg, Draycos dug his claws into the branch for traction and threw himself toward them.
There was no convenient branch or tree trunk waiting at the far end of his leap. But again, subtlety was no longer required. He landed six feet behind the hurrying mercenaries, half-crushing a—fortunately—thornless bush. Four more shots, and four more of the enemy were out of action.
The tangler still had three shots left. With a little luck on his part and a little carelessness on his enemies', Draycos knew he could probably take out another foursome before the weapon ran dry.
But he didn't dare take the time. The gunfight ahead was growing more intense by the minute, and if Alison wasn't already in serious trouble she soon would be.
Meanwhile, Jack should be all right, provided he stayed put as he'd been told. Tucking the tangler back under his foreleg, Draycos leaped into the trees and headed north.
He had covered roughly half the distance when he spotted the flickering light of the gunshots. He had covered nearly half of what was left before the sound separated itself enough for him to realize that there were, in fact, three distinct types of weapons involved.