“Narissea! Where are you going!?” Abioye shouted back.
“Get them into the dunes, Abioye!” I shouted as I pointed up at the downward-curving mechanical dragon. I had no idea what it was I could do—but I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.
“Narissea!” Someone else was shouting, and I saw, on my left, that there were two figures cresting the dune ahead of me. I recognized them instantly—Tamin and Montfre. I told you to stay back from the battle! The hot and angry thought flashed through my mind, as I had known that their skills at healing would be needed—but they couldn’t have avoided seeing Inyene’s dragons.
No time! I thought, as the mechanical dragon hit the sand in front of me awkwardly, sending up fountains of sand and dirt as it rolled over and over. I jumped to one side but still managed to get covered in plumes of sand. There was a series of resounding cracks and the ground shook—before eventually the dragon was stilled.
Maybe it died, I dared to hope—until I heard another squeal of tortured metal, and the wounded mechanical dragon rose on mangled legs from the ground in front of me, one eye dark, but the other burning a terrible blue light.
The mechanical dragon was clearly injured—or damaged, I corrected myself—but that didn’t stop it. The creature awkwardly lurched out of the dirt of its impact, dragging one of its rear legs behind it, horribly twisted and useless. The thing’s wings were in an even worse state, however—one of them was completely shorn from its shoulder and lying many meters away on the dunes, while the other was twisted and crumpled, with its leather sail-like wings in tatters.
Its head swept to the right and left of it as if it was having trouble recognizing where it could be—behind it was the entrance to the gully and the remaining group of the Red Hounds and guards, who had halted in shock.
But it didn’t release its noxious dragon-breath, I saw. The thing barely had any of the black smoke trailing from its nose-slits that the mechanical dragons at the mines had. I wondered if it was either too damaged to use its flame—or whether this faster breed of mechanical dragon had been built without the capacity for creating a firestorm?
Either way, even damaged that thing could still kill all of us, I thought in alarm as it started to lower its snout back towards the gully, dragging its twisted leg behind it as it moved towards its new prey…
I couldn’t let that happen. “Hey!” I sprang up, waving my hands and shouting at the thing. “Hey, you rusted piece of trash!” I shouted at it, scooping a handful of grit from the ground to fling at it. The grit hissed against the thing’s scales, and the mechanical dragon swiveled its head back towards me.
Oh no, I thought, as the thing suddenly moved, much quicker than I had been expecting, its metal head darting towards me—
I jumped, hitting the dirt and rolling over to bounce up to my feet, spinning just in time to see the thing lunge forward towards me, its opening jaws eclipsing the sky as its shadow fell over me—
I screamed at the thing in rage, pulling my sword from my belt, knowing that it would probably be useless anyway—
Whump! The shadow suddenly vanished, and the mechanical dragon lurched to one side as if it had been struck. What? Someone shouted, and there was a flash of purple light from the dunes, and another bolt of boiling purple energy hit the mechanical dragon’s side. It was coming from Montfre; the young mage was standing with his staff raised in the air, and I heard him shout once again as he dragged the staff down, for it to flare with the same purple light and send another bolt to smash into the mechanical dragon. I heard squeals of metal and the sound of something snapping inside of it.
The mechanical dragon listed to one side, struggled to raise itself on its forelegs before something vital gave way inside of it. I heard the grinding of gears and a sound of hammering as if a hundred days down the Mines of Masaka had been compressed into a few moments—
And then, with a protesting screech, the thing’s body thumped to the floor, stilled.
Montfre had done it! He had managed to kill one of the mechanical dragons with his magic! A newfound hope filled me. If Montfre was that powerful—then maybe we would have a chance after the others after all.
“Montfre! Well done—” I shouted up to him, just in time to see him collapse to the floor of the sands, and for Tamin to cry out in alarm and hurry to his side. The effort must have been too great! I thought in alarm. I knew that Montfre had appeared to tire after he performed his spells or incantations, but I had never seen him collapse so completely like this.
I broke into a run towards the dunes, signaling for the last of the mercenaries and guards to move out. There were still three of those brutes up there, after all.
I got to the edge of the rise of sand to find Tamin already half-carrying the staggering form of Montfre down. “Uncle—is he okay?” I asked in alarm.
“I don’t know—I think it’s extreme exhaustion, but I have never known a mage…” my god-uncle gasped out as I ran to the other side of Montfre, and together we started limping across the sands. I gritted my teeth and refused to think of how slow we were going as I kept on glancing up at the sky above.
Ymmen! How goes the fight! I flung the thought at him with all my heart—and my panic.
Only for a curious blankness to meet my thoughts. What!? I could still see Ymmen—so I knew he wasn’t unconscious. And I could still feel him—but it was like someone had drawn a heavy blanket between our thoughts, separating us.
“Ymmen!” I shouted in alarm.
Ymmen was rolling through the air, with the three mechanical dragons following him—no, gaining on him. As soon as I focused my attention on him, I could feel the sensations that he must have been trying to keep from me: He was in pain. There was a gash along his side where the sharpened steel of the mechanical dragons had found him, as well as puncture wounds on his tail where they had nipped at him as he sought to lead them away from the humans below.
Oh, Ymmen! My heart thudded—but I could also tell that the wounds weren’t life-threatening, and that the black dragon had given as much as he got in return. One of the mechanical dragons was barely flying at all and was clumsily trying to slow its descent after Ymmen, and still another had one entire metal forepaw sheered from it, although I had no idea where the appendage had landed!
Ymmen led the mechanical dragons out into the sands, to where the groups of mercenaries, guards, and Daza would be waiting—and then the black dragon flipped in midair, extending his claws to catch the leading mechanical dragon and hurl it into the next. So fast was his maneuver that the two following dragons had no time to react or avoid the crash. They spiraled, a mess of twisted metal limbs and wings to obliterate the nearest sand dune as they hit it—
But Ymmen had barely given himself enough time to land, and I saw him snap out his wings and raise his legs in just the last few meters before he hit the dirt, pouncing immediately into a slide, roaring with pain.
“Ymmen!” I screamed, but I couldn’t go to him, not while I was helping Montfre and Tamin.
But the young mage apparently had different ideas. “Go!” he said tersely, gasping for air, his face looking even more ashen than it usually did.
I hesitated, but with a nod from Tamin I broke into a run across the dunes, heading for Ymmen. There was still at least one wounded mechanical dragon amongst the sands—and I had no idea whether the other two that Ymmen had thrown would be incapacitated or would still be lurching and hunting, as the first mechanical dragon to hit the dirt had been.