He wrinkled his nose. Don't think about it. ‘Come on! Best we get to the bridge before those stone monsters do.’ He didn't wait. Didn't want to. Didn't want to even look at Crazy Mad in case he started glowing again. The Silver King was gone and he had to keep telling himself that. Just a story. Certainly wouldn't come back as some short-arse dark-skin slave, would he? Idiot! Stop even thinking such drivel! He ran between fires fresh from the last salvo of rockets and didn't look back. The streets and even the beach were covered in rubble. Burned-out ships floated lopsided in the water close by or beached in the shallows. The last of the fireships. A shriek tore the air across the sea — the dragon again. Tuuran scrambled into the shattered remains of another building and found himself a good solid piece of cover.
‘I thought you said it was on our side.’ Crazy Mad skittered down beside him, sliding on pieces of fractured masonry.
‘I did. But it's a dragon and you should never trust them, nor their riders.’
The dragon landed on the back of the furthest of the giant stone golems and tried to lift it out of the water, claws screeching on stone, tail lashing the sea and sending columns of spray into the air. The other two giants were almost at the bridge. Tuuran shook his head. Why do this when I could walk away? Because some slave master said so? Because that's where Crazy Mad wants to go? Just to smash stuff and scar a few pretty night-skin faces? Because I can't think of anything better to do? Come on, Tuuran, what the Flame are you doing here?
Crazy Mad sidled closer, watching as the giant and the dragon toppled backwards together under the waves. ‘How do you kill dragons, Tuuran? If that really is what you were made for?’
Tuuran laughed. ‘We drink a poison that kills them. Then we make them so angry that they eat us.’
‘Funny man. And really?’
‘Really exactly like I said, slave. You've seen one now. You think you're going to wander up to something like that with a piece of steel and do anything useful?’ He cringed as yet another volley of rockets screamed overhead, arcing out towards the stone giants in the sea, exploding around them. And what was that about? Who are they even firing at? Do they even know any more, any of them? Didn't matter though. Chaos was chaos, and while everyone was looking at the dragon and the golems they wouldn't be looking at him, so Tuuran lunged to his feet and ran out of the house across the beach, through shallow water and over fine muddy sand which sucked at his boots and tried to tear them off. Talking to myself. I don't even know which one of us is the crazy one any more. I'll be as bad as he is by the end of this.
There were Taiytakei soldiers running from the city towards them, but before they drew close a rocket flashed out of nowhere and exploded in their midst, wrapping them in a ball of fire, and then another and another. A building burst in front of him, flinging shards of stone through the air. Tuuran swore and staggered and turned his back as they peppered him, thumping and pinging off his armour. Crazy Mad pointed towards the sea. The nearest giant was almost at the bridge. In the shallows the water only reached its knees. It towered over the narrow stone streets.
‘Look at the bodies.’ Tuuran wrinkled his nose. They were at the edge of the bridge now, looking for a way up, and the dead were everywhere. Mostly Taiytakei, not the gangs of sword-slaves they had met looting the city. They had gold-glass armour and scorch marks on them. He ran on, hugging the wall. Not that that would save him if he was in the wrong place when the next rocket came in. They ran up a set of steps onto the golden bridge itself and he stopped there for a moment, gathering his courage. That was when he saw the back of Crazy Mad's armour. There was a hole in it. He poked his finger through, touching the skin of Crazy's back.
‘You've got a hole,’ he said, and he turned Crazy Mad around and poked another finger through a second hole at the front. ‘And another one.’ He wiggled both his fingertips. ‘In one side and out the other, but on you? Not a mark. Why aren't you dead?’ Crazy Mad only shrugged, not what Tuuran wanted at all. He shivered. ‘Isul Aieha,’ he whispered. Silver King. But that couldn't be. Couldn't possibly be. And maybe those holes were. . something else. Maybe they'd been there all along and he'd just never noticed. Maybe.
Crazy Mad rolled his eyes and pulled away. He vaulted up to the bridge and started to run, fast like there was a wind driving him. Tuuran took another breath and looked around him. The dead lay scattered about like litter after a summer festival, scorched and burned by fire and lightning. Sword-slaves and Taiytakei alike. Crazy Mad just kept going, across the open killing ground of the bridge, hurdling the bodies strewn over the road. Tuuran watched him. ‘Have to hand it to you, Crazy. Whoever you are and whatever you are, you can certainly run.’
Gawping. Never useful. When Crazy Mad reached the other side and no one had tried to kill him — yet — Tuuran tore after him as fast as his legs would go.
77
The kwen from the mountains had told her that nothing could be done about them. They would surely destroy her if she strayed too close. They will cleanse the bridges. Leave them alone. He hadn't told the dragon though, or else Diamond Eye hadn't been listening.
She wasn't sure which of them saw the creatures in the water first. They seemed like more boats perhaps, but with bigger wakes than their size deserved. Diamond Eye veered towards them at once but she turned him away, up towards the tallest of the three islands, the sheer-walled peak of Dul Matha if she remembered the name aright. More glasships waited there. They were high, drifting across the water towards the city, floating apart as if they didn't know quite what to do.
Lightning. She'd felt it from the ones over the city and seen the way the rims of their outer discs would glow and burn with a light brighter and whiter than the sun before they fired. Now she knew what it would do to her dragon. To plunge helpless to the sea from such a height would be death for her, even if Diamond Eye survived. So she reigned him in and forced him to hold his hunger in check. They would not fly fast and straight at these, not like they did before. This time she stayed away and circled higher until she was far up above them, and then she let Diamond Eye have his way. He fell from the sky like a stone, striking the first like a meteor, disintegrating it into a shower of glass and gold and then arrowed on straight at the sea to spread his wings and skim the waves and turn and rise and strike again.
And that was when he saw the creatures in the water for what they truly were, and this time when she told him to rise, he refused. They weren't boats. She saw that as they came closer. They were men, or giants with the shape of men, with craggy features of the same dark stone as the Dul Matha and long ropes of seaweed draped from their head and their shoulders. They were walking with all but their heads and shoulders lost beneath the waves so she couldn't be sure how large they were, but they were as tall as a barn at the very least.
Leave them! But Diamond Eye would not. He landed on the back of the first of them and snarled. Claws screeched on stone as he tried to lift it out of the water, wings tearing at the air, tail lashing the sea and sending great showers of spray over them all. Where the water touched his scales it steamed. The two monsters shook and Diamond Eye flapped his wings, striving for balance. He twisted his neck towards the giant's face, hurling Zafir forward against the buckles of her harness, knocking the wind out of her.