Elke counted the explosions and nodded to herself. Well, they’d been warned that some might get through. But the survivors had lost momentum. That gave her squadron opening enough.
Again she led her dragons into a screaming dive into the midst of the attackers.
The fighters filled the air with ECM, flares dropped free with magnesium radiance that briefly outshone the sun and chaff bloomed everywhere around them.
None of which mattered in the slightest. Dragons, even missile-armed dragons, don’t carry radar and the forces were too close for missiles. Now the defenders relied on the traditional weapons of the dragon cavalry. Bursts of dragon fire ripped at the metal shapes. Then the great bows sang and iron arrows leaped toward their targets. Planes cartwheeled across the sky or dropped like stones as flames and death arrows found their marks.
One lone fighter pulled away from the melee, climbing toward the relay station. Elke lined her dragon up on the metal enemy and touched the second stud on her saddle. Again smoke streaked from the dragon’s claws as a second missile sprang free. But there was no pulse of radar energy to warn the aircraft. Instead Elke held the missile on course by manipulating the stud with her thumb, always keeping it centered in the glowing orange rectangle. The missile traveled up the plane’s tailpipe and blew it out of the sky before the aircraft or its controllers even knew it was there.
In his castle, Craig cursed and pounded his fist on the table. But he had other things to command his attention.
Well, it wasn’t the first time he had lost heavily in the early moves and gone on to win the campaign. The enemy couldn’t do jack shit unless they could penetrate his fortress. They hadn’t hit his outworks yet. When they did things would be different.
Vaguely he wondered where the hell Mikey was and what he was doing.
The wind whistled and whipped like knives of ice around the high, dark spire where Mikey stood. He could sense rather than see the formless shapes that pulsated and moved in the freezing distance beneath his feet.
A single wan pool of yellow light illuminated his workbench. For the last time he checked the spell before him.
It was a complex shape about the size of his head and so dark as to be beyond black.
Mikey caressed the thing, oblivious to its piercing chill. At last it was ready.
We are prepared. The voice pulsed in his ears like his own blood. We wait.
With a gesture Mikey killed the light on the workbench. Then he clasped the sphere to him and started down from his high place.
The guardsmen and wizards advanced in loose order over the barren ground.
Actually, Donal thought, "loose order" was a misnomer. A "swarm of gaggles" was more like it.
But this was the formation they had been advised to use. Having seen pictures of their likely opponents Donal was all for it. Absently he reached back and touched the tube slung across his back. He hoped it was as good as advertised.
So far they had met no real opposition on the ground. The shelling had died down to a background rumble. Once a cluster of gray metal things swooped down on them with fire and explosions. But between their wizards’ lightning bolts and the timely intervention of a wing of dragons there had been very little damage done.
Up ahead a door opened in the castle wall and several things shaped like men stepped out.
Either we’re a hundred paces from the castle, Donal thought, or those things are giants. He signaled his squad to spread out and take cover. Seemingly oblivious to the oncoming metal giants, the guardsmen responded as they had been drilled.
A lance of fire slashed into the earth so close to him he could smell the ozone stink. Behind him bullets beat a tattoo into the dirt. Donal jammed the point of his sword into the ground and brought the dull green tube slung across his back around and over his shoulder. As methodically as he had been taught he flipped up the sights and lined them up on the giant robot.
The tube bobbed up and down as he followed his target and then he squeezed the trigger. The tube bucked slightly and Donal dropped and rolled just before another blast of laser energy rent the place where he had been standing.
When he looked up the robot was swaying uncertainly, its right knee a smoking ruin. Before he could get to his hands and knees two more explosions blossomed on the giant torso. It swayed forward once more and then toppled like a felled tree.
In his tower Craig swore viciously. His warbots were programmed to fight other warbots or dragons, not infantry with anti-tank missiles. He’d have to override and run this action himself. He slapped a button on his console, but nothing happened.
"Get me a control link!" he yelled into his microphone.
"We are trying, dread master," came a voice in his ear, "but there is something wrong in the transmitter."
"Then switch to the alternate," Craig yelled.
"That was the alternate," the voice said. "Maintenance estimates it will have the primary repaired in three point oh eight minutes."
"Shit!" Craig slumped back in his chair. This was like playing on a night when you couldn’t make a saving roll for love or money. Well, three minutes wouldn’t make that much difference in that part of the battle and there were plenty of other places he could put his time.
Meanwhile, was it his imagination or did he hear a high-pitched sound coming from his display console-a sound like a very small giggle?
"My palm’s sore," Danny complained.
"Well, don’t drag it along the wall," Jerry told him. "I didn’t mean that literally anyway."
Even investigating only the likely looking doors it seemed that it was taking forever to check out the rooms. Even this high up the castle was much bigger than Wiz had imagined.
The next set of doors didn’t look like anything Wiz remembered, but they were big and probably important. He was just about to punch the button when they slid open and he found himself face-to-face with a dirty, unshaven man in a tattered flight suit waving a pistol. Over the man’s shoulder Wiz could see an equally dirty and disheveled woman and a large dragon.
"Who the hell are you?" he demanded.
"Major Michael Gilligan, United States Air Force. Who the hell are you?"
"This is the Sparrow," Karin put in, stepping forward. "He is the mighty wizard I told you of." She sketched a curtsey. "Well met, my Lord."
"What are you doing here?"
"Raising hell," Gilligan told him.
"My Lords, the League is attacking the castle," Karin said breathlessly.
"I know. Look, can you get a message back to the Capital? They need to know we’re alive."
Karin’s face fell. "Alas, my Lord, the enemy is jamming our communications."
"Damn," Wiz said, entirely without heat. "All right. We’re searching this floor for a computer these guys are using to cook up something really nasty. Can you help us?"
"Of course, my Lord." Karin bobbed another curtsey.
"Okay by me," Gilligan said. "You really from the USA?"
"Cupertino," Wiz shrugged. "It’s pretty much the same thing."