“Claw marks,” Dreyak said, pointing down at several spots on the white ground. “It’s snowed since this happened, but you can tell that dragons were here. The marks are far apart. No polar bear made them. And here.” He walked a few feet and pointed to another spot. “Something huge and scaled was rolling around in the snow. At first, I thought it had settled down here to rest, but I’m finding several places torn up like this, and they’re more indicative of a fight than of a nap.”
Rysha couldn’t imagine dragons flying into a human outpost for a nap. Oh, she knew they slept, but this seemed an odd place for it.
“Why would a dragon have been fighting another dragon?” Blazer asked.
“Actually, I think multiple dragons were fighting. Far more than two.” Dreyak continued to walk along the perimeter and point out spots to back up his suppositions. He hadn’t claimed to be more than a warrior, but it seemed that reading signs and tracking were in his repertoire.
“Fighting over this place? To claim it as their territory?” Blazer eyed the outpost dubiously.
Rysha couldn’t imagine why a small human settlement would be coveted by dragons.
“I don’t know. There aren’t many settlements out here, are there? I’m only aware of this one from the Cofah, but I suppose there could be natives, or outposts from other countries.” His gaze shifted to Rysha.
“There are native tribes that come out to the pole in the winter,” Rysha said.
“Winter being the tourist season when it’s especially appealing?” Kaika asked.
“In the winter, the ice sheets extend to the tip of the Dakrovian and Myar continents and the isolated countries of Yon-yon and Bygeronii. The people can easily walk across and hunt. There are native species. Seals, bears, penguins, and smaller animals. Winter is a good time to get furs too. Did you know that white seal fur goes for as much as five thousand nucros in the markets back home? And the natives covet their fat over all others since it’s incredibly calorically dense?”
“She’s a veritable encyclopedia, isn’t she?” Blazer asked.
Rysha blushed. She already felt chagrined after flinging herself into the freezing sea earlier. She supposed this shouldn’t embarrass her. It was hardly the first time someone had singled her out for her tendency to overshare.
“It’s good that she knows stuff.” Kaika draped an arm around Rysha’s shoulders. “We’d be in trouble if you were the smart one here, Blazer.”
“That’s Major Blazer. If you’re going to insult me, I insist you use my rank.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Dreyak, what did you say your people were researching here?”
Kaika tossed the question out so casually that Dreyak opened his mouth and almost responded, but he seemed to catch himself. His eyes narrowed.
“I didn’t say.”
“Do you know?”
“Yes.”
“Is it something dragons would be interested in?” Kaika asked.
Dreyak walked another dozen meters along the perimeter, and Rysha didn’t think he would answer. He stopped and looked down at an area next to a few six-foot stakes protruding from the snow. Snow dotted with several dark red spots. He kicked aside some of the recent layer of snow, showing that the stains were larger than they had first appeared.
“It is possible,” Dreyak said, frowning down.
“Does it have to do with the portal?” Rysha asked.
Dreyak pressed his lips together and didn’t answer.
Rysha and the others joined him by the stakes. Dog paw prints marked the snow in addition to the bloodstains. Had the Cofah researchers brought teams for dog sleds? It seemed a primitive way to travel, given that steam-powered machines and vehicles were common in the world now, at least in Iskandia. But they were heavy too. Rysha imagined there were areas where the ice wasn’t as thick as the averages the encyclopedia articles reported.
“I think at least one of the dogs was eaten,” Dreyak said grimly. He walked over and picked up what appeared to be half of a leg bone.
Almost everyone looked uneasily toward the sky. They all wore clothing to protect their faces and necks from the cold, but Rysha had no problem reading the concern in people’s eyes.
“And the humans?” Blazer asked.
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Is it possible the dragons were fighting over the outpost because it represented dinner?” Kaika asked. “Maybe there aren’t enough of those succulent seals to go around.”
“If the dragons are hungry, why don’t they just go elsewhere in the world?” Rysha asked. “They’re cold-blooded creatures. They prefer warm climates.”
“Maybe they’re guarding the portal,” Dreyak said.
“Unless it’s much closer to this outpost than we believe,” Rysha said, “it seems like overkill for them to patrol the entire polar ice cap.”
“Are dragons known for subtlety?” Kaika asked.
“Perhaps not.” Rysha turned toward Kaika. “Captain, can we look inside the buildings?” She glanced at Dreyak. “There could be survivors.” She felt bad for misleading him about her interests, but she would like to find out what the Cofah had been researching, and he wasn’t inclined to tell them. Besides, she would certainly grab a first-aid kit and help the inhabitants if she found them here and injured.
“Yeah, you and I will go, Lieutenant. It’ll be nice to get out of this wind.”
“I see it’s your sense of altruism leading you to those buildings, ma’am.”
Kaika gave her a sarcastic salute and led Rysha toward the closest structure. Dreyak frowned after them, but something else on the ground caught his interest, and he knelt for a better look.
“Something wrong with a man who can track in the middle of the night without a lantern,” Kaika muttered as they rounded a corner and located a door.
“Maybe his dragon blood lets him see better in the dark,” Rysha said. “Or maybe he’s using his mind more than his eyes.”
“Both are creepy thoughts.” Kaika touched the hilt of her chapaharii blade. She had claimed Brysdral, the one the pirate king had wielded. The third one, which Blazer now carried, was, according to the runes on its box, named Eryndral. “My new buddy here would like to be thrust into his heart.”
“I know, ma’am.”
“Though it really wants to be thrust into Captain Trip’s heart. Having two soulblades must make him a doubly appealing target.” Kaika stopped at the door, tilting her head curiously. “You’d think its focus would be on the swords though, rather than Trip’s heart.”
Since Kaika seemed to expect an answer, Rysha offered one that wouldn’t reveal Trip’s secret. “The chapaharii tools aren’t that smart. They were magically instilled with a basic purpose and can respond to the command words, but they’re not thinking beings, not like the souls inside the soulblades.”
“Ah.”
Rysha couldn’t tell if Kaika fully believed her. Maybe she was starting to put together the pieces in regard to Trip.
Opting for her pistol rather than the sword, Kaika pushed open the door and stepped inside, the firearm in one hand and her lantern in the other. Judging by the foot of snow that had blown up against the door, nobody had used it for a while.
Rysha followed her inside, though she didn’t anticipate finding anything interesting in this structure, as it had the look of vehicle storage rather than a laboratory or office building.
Kaika started looking around immediately, her lantern not pushing the shadows back very far. Even so, Rysha got the sense of a single cavernous space inside. There was a vehicle, a steam wagon with a plow blade on the front for snow removal. There were also harnesses and bags of dog food. Rysha hoped that only one animal had been caught by a hungry dragon and that the others had been able to get away, or maybe been harnessed to sleds and mushed away.
She paused. Was that possible? She hadn’t seen sleds yet. Maybe the scientists had received enough warning, and most of them had fled before the dragons arrived. Or they
’d had the opportunity to flee while the big scaled creatures had been fighting with each other.
The thought of dragons thrashing about in the snow outside the outpost puzzled Rysha. Oh, they had definitely been known for fighting with each other the last time they’d lived in the world, sometimes in one-on-one territorial squabbles and sometimes, among those who had allied with humans, against dragons living in other countries.
She hoped they could find some of those dragons that had been friendly toward humans. Trip had mentioned making a deal with the bronze that had attacked the pirate fortress, but that hadn’t sounded like a true alliance. People had once ridden dragons into battle. They must have had close relationships. It was hard to believe, given that she’d thus far only encountered dragons that wanted to enslave or eat humans.
“Not much here,” Kaika said, returning from her circuit of the building. “I think that’s the only vehicle they had. Not much sign that others were stored next to it.” She waved toward the wagon and the roll-up door on another wall.
“I was wondering if the people might have fled by dog sled.”
“If they did, I’m sure Dreyak will let us know. Let’s check the other building.”
Rysha jogged out ahead of her. That was the one she was more interested in investigating, since it looked like it might hold offices. She had no idea what the destroyed buildings had held, as most of them were completely flattened. Living areas, perhaps.
She didn’t see Blazer or Dreyak as she hurried across the walkway toward the other building, but assumed they were all right. Trip or Jaxi would warn them if dragons were coming. It was handy to have them along. Rysha thought it strange that so many people had a hard time understanding that, that sorcerers could be helpful and shouldn’t automatically be considered enemies.
Though, she still wasn’t sure how she felt about Trip on a more personal level, now that she suspected he could read minds. He’d only hinted that he could do that once, replying to a thought she’d had but not voiced. Was it possible he knew everything that sauntered through her brain? If he did, he’d probably grow bored quickly, since she was often dwelling on academic topics rather than scintillating ones. Of course, he never seemed bored when she rambled on, and he hadn’t once cut her off.
Faint clanks drifted from the direction of the fliers, and she wondered if he minded that he always got stuck doing repairs. He did have the engineering degree, and he had said he liked fixing things, but if it were her, she would definitely prefer to explore.
The front door was locked, placing an obstacle in front of her own exploration. She thumped her shoulder against it, hoping the lock might be old—or frozen—and break easily, but the metal door was sound.
Rysha stepped back, eyeing the windows. They had bars over them. The other building hadn’t had windows, so she didn’t know whether to get her hopes up that the extra security for this one signaled something valuable. Or valuable research?
There wasn’t a hanging lock, or she might have shot it—or seen if Dorfindral could cleave through it. Instead, the knob held a simple keyhole.
“Is my assistance needed?” Kaika asked, coming up beside her.
“Yours or maybe Jaxi’s.” Rysha waved to the door. “Do you have any explosives suitable for blowing open locks?”
“My explosives typically blow the doors right off their hinges.”
“That would be acceptable to me.” Rysha gazed around at the mostly destroyed outpost. “Who would even know it had been us?”
Kaika lined herself up, shoulder to the door. She hummed a few bars, then performed a step-behind side kick. The door flew open so hard it banged on the corrugated metal wall inside.
“I like explosives more than the next person,” Kaika said, “but I prefer to save them for when they’re truly necessary.”
“Yes, ma’am. A good policy.”
Rysha hurried inside to a large room with a dozen interior doors. She hoped they weren’t all locked, or Kaika’s kicking foot would get quite the workout. The long tables in the large room kept her from checking right away. Large papers were sprawled across them, and she trotted over to take a look.
Maps. Dozens of them. Topographical maps of the Antarctic in the summer as well as the winter, showing ice coverage for different years. Some of the maps were marked with ruins sites. Dragon ruins sites.
Rysha didn’t have to take out her notes from Sardelle to know that the Cofah had marked some of the same spots she had. Interestingly, the coordinates that Trip had pointed to, saying he had a hunch that was their destination, were marked and described, as were several others within a couple hundred miles of the outpost.
Rysha peered closer to read the description for that one. It was on land. Mount Eldercrag. Ice Caves. Cave. Dragon statues carved into a fissure. Three thousand years old, no markings. No evidence of recent use. Cave explorations unfruitful. Dragons in area.
Rysha frowned. If the Cofah had already investigated her team’s most likely prospect and found it lacking, was there any point in flying out there? The Cofah couldn’t have anticipated that Iskandians would show up at their outpost, so it seemed unlikely these were fake notes meant to lead them astray.
Similar notes described what had been found at the other sites that had been investigated. None of them mentioned the portal, but Rysha had a feeling that was what the Cofah had been looking for, even if Dreyak hadn’t been willing to verify that. With dragons terrorizing the empire, they also had a vested interest in destroying it.
Rysha gazed around, eyeing the walls, lights, and furnishings, only vaguely aware of Kaika opening doors and peering into rooms. “This place hasn’t been here long, has it?”
The Cofah might have only set up the outpost after the dragon problem had started up.
“I don’t think so,” Kaika said. “And the people haven’t been gone long, either.”
“Oh?” Rysha thought of the snow drift against the vehicle building door. It had made her think the area had been abandoned for a while, but for all she knew, it could have snowed the day before.
“And they left in a hurry.” Kaika walked out of a room carrying a tea mug and a half-eaten sandwich. “The bread isn’t that hard yet, even though there’s not a lick of moisture in the air here. Humidity ten, twenty percent, I’d wager. I think those scientists were here as recently as yesterday. Maybe even this morning.”
“I guess if dragons were fighting on the doorstep, that would be a good reason to leave.”
“It would convince me to find a new apartment.”
“But where did they go?” Rysha looked back to the maps, this time investigating the area right around the outpost.
“I don’t know, but it’s not our mission to find them.”
“Dreyak won’t like the idea of leaving them.”
“Dreyak isn’t in charge.”
Rysha pointed at something marked on the map simply as “Cave.” The spot was only five miles from the outpost. Though she couldn’t imagine caves in an ice field, not significant ones anyway, it sounded like the kind of place one might seek out to hide from dragons.
“There are some journals and notes in some of these rooms if you want to take a look,” Kaika said. “I’m going to check on the flier repairs and see if our assiduous young men need help.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Since they hadn’t found any mauled bodies—only a half-mauled sandwich—Rysha didn’t mind being left alone. Besides, she was intrigued by the fact that the Cofah had apparently been looking for the same thing her team was—and for longer. Was there any chance they had found it? And that the dragons had somehow known?
It seemed unlikely, but it also struck her as strange that the outpost had apparently been here a couple of months without being harried, and that a bunch of dragons had descended on it out of nowhere. Maybe within the last twenty-four hours.
Even though Kaika hadn’t sounded interested, Rysha suspected it would be a good idea to convince the team to go
looking for the scientists. Her instincts, formed by reading about countless Cofah invasions growing up, not to mention the attacks she had lived through, railed against the idea of working with those people. But they appeared to have more information than she did. In this instance, it might make sense for the two teams to join together.
She would look around more and hope to find something more substantial than maps to convince Major Blazer to lead a hunt for the survivors.
4
The sounds of an argument outside drifted to Trip’s ears, and he looked up from the project he was working on to keep himself busy—and warm. After fixing the damaged flier and checking the others, he’d taken a look at the airship and found it only had a few issues, the torn envelope being the largest one. He had located patch kits in its hold, so it wasn’t an insurmountable issue. Had the scientists been given the time, which it seemed they hadn’t, they could have repaired it and left within a day or two.
He’d brought one of the other issues, a broken valve control from the airship’s single large helium tank, into the vehicle shed to a workbench in the back. A clump of patch tar from his flier’s repair kit was temporarily keeping the tank shut while he worked on the valve. Technically, he’d finished working on it, but thanks to a rickety kerosene heater, his little corner had warmed up enough that he was comfortable without his gloves on. He’d been loath to go back outside, so he’d started an extracurricular project.
“…not staying here,” Blazer’s determined voice came through the walls, even though Trip had shut the door.
Neither Leftie nor Duck stirred. They, too, had found their way inside and slept against the wall near his workbench, bundled in their parkas with their hands tucked under their armpits. Apparently, Leftie hadn’t been interested in snuggling with Duck to share body heat.