“Then I didn’t really need to use magic, did I?”
“You are an odd Iskandian.”
“It’s amazing how many people tell me that.”
14
“Don’t forget the magic dead zone,” Rysha said for the fifth time as the fliers cruised low over the dark desert, the mountain range up ahead appearing black against the starry sky.
“We haven’t,” Blazer said. “That’s why we’re flying low. Still.”
Rysha bit her lip to keep from saying more. She’d already shared everything Bhrava Saruth had told her, along with her opinion that flying through a strange land at night was a bad idea, especially if there was a zone where the fliers’ power crystals could stop working. True, Bhrava Saruth hadn’t said anything about magical devices being affected, but it seemed a logical assumption to make.
“It’s been twenty miles, and no troubles yet,” Leftie said, sounding chipper. Glad to be back with the group, Rysha guessed. “Maybe Bhrava Saruth was just passing along rumors he’d heard.”
“Maybe,” Rysha said, “but we’re far enough from the city and the coast now that we could risk stopping for the night and camping.”
“There are some large predators down there,” Trip said. “I’ve sensed them from time to time.”
“We’ve fought dragons,” Leftie said. “What could be considered difficult to deal with after dragons?”
“Giant tarantulas come to mind,” Rysha said, shivering at the memory.
Part of her desire to camp and rest might stem from her weariness from that event. Even though Trip’s magical power had coursed through her and healed her in an amazingly short period of time, she still felt more tired than usual.
“We’ll land at the base of Jralk Mountain,” Blazer said. “It’ll be hard to find a cave or whatever we’re looking for in the middle of the—”
“I sense something,” Trip said sharply.
“What? A dragon?” Blazer asked.
“No, a—actually, wait. It’s gone now. I thought there was some flying predator ahead of us.”
Silence followed the words. It was too dark to tell, but Rysha imagined everyone looking in all directions around their fliers.
“There it is again,” Trip said.
“Where?”
“No… it’s gone again. Hm, maybe this is what Bhrava Saruth spoke of. An area where—”
“Shit!” Leftie blurted.
“What now?” Blazer demanded.
“My power crystal just went dark.” Thumps sounded from his cockpit, and then halted abruptly.
“Leftie?” Blazer asked. “Report.”
Rysha leaned forward in her seat and touched Duck’s shoulder. “You should take us down, Captain. Better a controlled landing than a forced one, right?”
Duck didn’t acknowledge her—he was staring ahead and toward the right, toward Leftie’s flier. Rysha couldn’t see much in the dark. All their craft had been flying with the hoods down over the power crystals, so they wouldn’t emit light, but before, if one of the craft had been close enough, she’d detected a faint glow from the communication crystal. She couldn’t see that now, not from Leftie’s flier.
Not from anybody’s flier. Nothing had come over Duck’s communication crystal since Blazer spoke. Rysha found the silence unnerving, and she tried to tell if the buzz of the squadron’s propellers had changed tone, if their blades were slowing down.
Rysha resisted the urge to dig her nails into Duck’s shoulder and repeat her suggestion. Her pilot wouldn’t appreciate backseat navigation, and she didn’t want to distract him.
Fortunately, Duck shifted his attention forward again. “Major, I’m taking us down.”
Blazer didn’t answer. Nobody did.
Duck swore as he tilted the nose toward the dark ground below. “You’re right,” he called over his shoulder. “We’ll want to get down before the power goes out; otherwise, the wheels are all we’ll have for landing. That’s not a sane way to land in a dark desert at night. I—” He cursed and lifted the hood protecting his power crystal.
From behind him, Rysha couldn’t see the crystal itself, but she could tell it wasn’t glowing. The cockpit had gone dark, including the communication crystal. They were on their own.
“Make sure you’re harnessed in tight,” Duck yelled, not taking his eyes from the route ahead. “I’m disengaging the propeller from the drive shaft. Will do my best to take us down easy.”
This time, Rysha definitely heard the shift in the sound of the propeller, the buzz fading as all the power to it disappeared. Her stomach sank into her boots as the feel of the craft altered, and they dropped toward the ground. Rapidly.
When she peered over the side, the wind whipping at her cheek, she couldn’t tell how far away it was. Everything was just dark. How in the hells would Duck be able to gauge a landing? And what if they struck something? There weren’t any trees down there, but washes, boulders, cactuses? Absolutely.
“Hang on,” Duck yelled.
Rysha gripped the sides of the seat well and sank low.
The wheels of the flier slammed down instead of touching down lightly. Rysha bounced upward, her harness straps gouging into her shoulders. If not for those straps, she would have been thrown out.
The flier rose up, slammed down again, and once more, they bounced up. Rysha couldn’t brace herself enough to keep her body still. Her head whipped back and forth with the bounces, and she felt as helpless as a rag doll.
Finally, the wheels stayed down, but the flier lurched and wobbled as it sped over the rough terrain. Washes, rocks, and holes made the ride no less torturous than before. Cracks and thuds came from underneath the frame. Some desert foliage scraping at the belly and tearing into the wings. One wheel must have gone over a rock, because Rysha pitched sideways, the harness again the only thing keeping her from being thrown free.
Despite it all, or because of it all, the flier slowed down. Just as Rysha thought they might survive the unorthodox landing, the wheels splashed into water. Droplets sprayed up, spattering her cheeks.
For a bewildered moment, she thought they’d somehow gotten turned around and were landing in the ocean. The flier rolled deeper into water as Duck cursed, but their momentum finally slowed, and they came to a halt.
Rysha couldn’t hear the roar of the sea. All she heard was disturbed water lapping at their sides. Whatever body of water this was, it wasn’t an ocean.
“Thought this was the desert,” Duck said. “What’s a lake doing in the middle of the desert?”
“Some natural spring, maybe. Be glad for it. If we’re stuck here for a while, having a water source around will be useful.”
“Stuck?” Duck asked. In the now-silent night, she heard the click of him unbuckling his harness. “We’re not going to be stuck. We’ll find a way to fix this. Trip’s an engineer, and Blazer’s got some mechanical know-how.”
“I don’t think you can fix your power crystals without magic, and that may be in short supply now.” Rysha kept herself from pointing out that she’d warned everybody about this. It wasn’t as if Duck was in charge of the mission. Besides, what had the alternative been? To leave the magic-dependent fliers somewhere in the desert, hoping nobody chanced upon them and stole the crystals, while the team hiked across some invisible dead zone with boundaries none of them knew?
“Trip can fix magic things. We just need…” Duck stood up, peering across the dark desert. “I’m not sure where everybody went down.”
Rysha could barely see Duck in the dark. There was no way she knew where the other fliers were. The crystals had seemed to go out in a staggered manner, so the squadron could be stretched across ten miles of desert.
She didn’t point out there was no guarantee that everybody had survived. As rough as their landing had been, they had been lucky the ground had been relatively flat.
“Guess we’ll have to wait for morning to round everybody up,” Duck said. “You all right back there? Sorry about t
he bumps.”
As if they had been his fault. Rysha was glad the squadron had heeded her warning enough that they’d been flying low to the ground. She was also glad that, for whatever reason, as the flier design had evolved over the years, the thrusters being added for takeoffs and landings, nobody had considered the wheels obsolete and removed them.
“I’ll live.” Rysha rubbed the back of her sore neck, wondering if Trip would object to healing her twice in the same night. And would his magic work here?
Of course, by the time they gathered and walked out of the dead zone, it wouldn’t be the same night. She just hoped… She refused to believe he hadn’t survived the landing. He had uncanny ability in the sky. Surely, he would have found a way to bring his flier down safely.
“I reckon we should start a signal fire,” Duck said. “So the others can find us if they don’t want to wait until morning. I’ll hop down and see if there’s anything flammable here. I suppose finding wood is right out.”
“Some of the brush we ran over sounded solid.”
A splash sounded as Duck jumped down. “It’s not too deep. About three feet. Going to be a pain getting the flier out, though, especially if we don’t have power.”
“Something to worry about in the morning,” Rysha suggested.
A roar floated across the dark desert. Rysha thought of Trip’s warning about large predators. It had seemed far less alarming when she’d been flying a thousand feet above them.
She found her rifle in its mount, unfastened it, and also assured herself that Dorfindral remained secure at her hip. The scabbard had wedged itself further than usual into the small gap between seat and hull, and it took some tugging and grunting to extract it.
“You sure you’re all right, Lieutenant?” Duck asked, his voice coming from the tail of the flier now.
“There are times when being attached to a sword is inconvenient.”
“I’ve heard that, ma’am.” Duck’s voice was dry, but he didn’t make a lewd or anatomical comment, as Kaika might have.
As Rysha lowered herself over the side, splashing into the cool water, the roar came again. Closer this time.
“If we have to fight wildlife again,” she said, “I expect you to stand in front this time, Captain.”
“I would have been happy to stand in front last time, though my butt’s on the scrawny side, and might not have taken well to spider venom.”
“I assure you mine didn’t, either.” As Rysha slogged through the water to shore, she scraped through her mind, trying to remember if she’d ever read about the local flora and fauna. She knew her country’s offerings well enough, but few Iskandian texts mentioned Rakgorath in more than passing.
A third roar drifted across the night. It sounded like a lion. Iskandia’s southeastern steppes were home to the species. As a girl, Rysha had gone with her family on a safari down there and had seen the animals lounging in the sun on rocks.
Answering cries came from the opposite direction, not roars but the hair-raising yips and screeches of coyotes or something similar. A higher-pitched roar came from yet another direction, toward the mountains.
“Is it just me, or are we in the middle of a lot of animal activity?” Once she stood on dry land, Rysha slung her pack to the ground so she could poke through it and find her lantern.
“We might have landed in the only watering hole for dozens of miles in any direction.”
“So, they’re only heading this way because they’re thirsty?”
“Well, they might not mind it if they found some steaks by their watering hole.” Duck’s voice was farther away now.
Only because he was finding wood, not because he’d abandoned her, Rysha reassured herself. She also reassured herself that she could handle some animals. She’d battled men that day and won, and she’d helped battle dragons and survived that. She was training for the elite troops. That meant she was definitely a match for lions.
Assuming she could find her stupid lantern and make some light. It hadn’t flown off her pack during that wild landing, had it?
The thwacks of Duck cutting wood with the flier’s small emergency axe rang out in the night. Rysha thought the noise might make the animals stop their own racket, if only while they listened to figure out what was making it, but if anything, the roars and yowls and yips grew louder and more agitated.
“Ouch,” Duck blurted. “Everything here has thorns or prickly leaves. Wish I had some gloves.”
“I think I lost my lantern,” Rysha reluctantly admitted, kneeling back from her pack. It had been attached to the outside before. She was sure of it. It must have flown off.
Duck grunted as he dragged something toward her. A pile of wood? “I’ll look for mine. We’ll need a flame to light the fire.”
“Think the fire will keep the animals away?”
Duck hesitated. “It might help. Just shoot at anything you hear moving around out here. They’ve got firearms on this continent. The animals should know to be afraid of humans with guns.”
“Think I should fire a couple of warning shots into the air?” Rysha squinted into the gloom across the spring. She thought she’d heard a rustle over there.
“It’s up to you.” Duck splashed to the flier. Retrieving his pack?
Rysha readied her rifle, putting her back to the tail of the craft. She drew Dorfindral a few inches and whispered the command for it to stand ready, hoping the blade would flare to life and provide magical light. But it remained dormant.
More rustling came from the brush around them. The animals weren’t roaring or yowling as much now, probably because they’d had a nice chat and were ready to take action.
Rysha pointed her rifle in the air and fired twice. Even if it didn’t scare the animals, it would let the others know where they were.
The rustling paused for a few seconds. Unfortunately, she didn’t hear the sounds of any terrified animals taking off at top speed.
Two answering shots rang out to one side, perhaps a mile away, and Rysha smiled.
“At least one other flier landed successfully,” she said.
“I reckon so.” Duck splashed down again and pushed through the water toward her. “Unless someone else of the rifle-owning persuasion is out here. Or the critters have thumbs. I heard a story of flash apes in the Dakrovian jungles that stole some firearms, then started appearing and disappearing outside of a village, only sticking around long enough to shoot banana trees.”
“Just banana trees?” Rysha assumed he was trying to ease her tension, but she didn’t know if that was a good idea. Her instincts told her they were in danger, that the animals out there hadn’t been that scared by the gunshots.
“That’s what the story says. Apparently, it was a drought year, and the trees weren’t producing well. The apes must have figured the trees were just being stingy and that a few bullets would help things along. Eventually, the apes ran out of bullets and didn’t seem to know how to find and load more, so peace returned to the jungle. And the banana trees recovered from being brutalized.”
“Who told you this story? The wolves that you claim raised you?”
“Nah, wolves live in a different climate from apes, so they don’t tell stories about each other. Don’t you city folk know anything?” Duck clucked with disapproval. “It was a macaw that told me the story.”
“Naturally.”
Rysha glimpsed a flame in the distance at the same time as a familiar voice called, “Whose flier is that in the pond?”
“That’s mine, Major,” Duck called back.
“Should’ve known only you could find water in the desert to crash into.” Blazer came into sight, the small glow of her lantern lighting up the front of her uniform and not much more. “Living up to your name.”
“Didn’t crash, ma’am. This was a real fine landing, and the water helped slow us down at the end.”
“A fine landing?” Kaika asked, crunching through brush behind Blazer. “We’ll check that in the morning when
we look at the bottom of your flier. If it’s like Blazer’s, there are cactus guts spattered all over it.”
“Cactuses don’t have guts, ma’am.”
“You can call that pulpy green stuff whatever you like, but it makes a mess.”
Rysha, feeling better with reinforcements—and light—coming, lowered her rifle. But the soft crunch of a twig sounded behind her, and she whirled, instincts shouting a warning in her ear.
A dark shape sprang toward her, a black blur blocking out the stars for an instant.
She fired, cried, “Look out!” and dove to the side. Shouts erupted behind her as she rolled away, dust caking her nostrils and tongue. As she jumped up, more rifles fired. Something landed in the dust a few feet in front of Rysha. She aimed her rifle, finger tense on the trigger. But whatever that dark shape was, it only twitched a few times before growing still.
Nothing else did—the foliage around the spring erupted with yips, yowls, roars, and even hoots.
Blazer and Kaika jogged up, pistols in their hands. Blazer held her lantern over the dark figure, the dim light showing a scaled tan animal that looked like a cross between a lizard and a mountain lion. A large mountain lion. It had died on its side, its snout open, displaying very sharp fangs.
Rysha shuddered to think how close the animal had come to sinking those fangs into the back of her neck.
“Is there a reason animals are targeting me today?” she asked. “Do I smell particularly tasty?”
Duck stood the closest to her and leaned over for a sniff. “I’m not sure about tastiness, but you’re a touch aromatic.”
Kaika ambled up and slapped him in the chest. “You’re smelling yourself.”
“Am I? You sure?”
“Positive.” Kaika looked Rysha up and down. “Still, a bath in the spring in the morning might be wise for all of us. Especially those of us who’ve recently been slathered in spider innards.”
“It wasn’t the innards that got me,” Rysha grumbled. “That tarantula was medically precise in inserting gallons of its venom without slathering anything on me.”
“Anyone seen Trip and Leftie yet?” Blazer lifted her lantern and looked around.