"I only wish I'd swung hard enough to cut through to the other half," said Burke.
At dawn, as the dragons came, snow began to fall. During the night, Burke had fine-tuned the cable-making machine. Now Pet had bows in the hands of three-score men, and nearly three dozen arrows for each of them. Delicate snowflakes settled gently on the filthy gray-brown blanket Pet had turned into a cape. All around him, his men stood in silence as the sun crept over the horizon. The rust heaps and scraggly trees cast long, dark shadows over the faint film of white snow on the ground.
The rising sun tinted the shroud of low clouds subtle shades of pink. In all, it was a serene winter landscape, a picture of peace, save for the hordes of dull green dragons pouring over the distant hills and charging the walls of Dragon Forge.
Pet cast his eyes skyward. The earth-dragons weren't his concern. A different squad of archers, armed with traditional bows, would be responsible for seeing that the earth-dragons didn't reach the walls. His duty was to scan the clouds for the first signs of sun-dragons. Slowly, one by one, their dark ruby forms emerged from the shrouding snowfall.
There were at least seventy in the initial wave, coming in at a height of five hundred yards, all carrying large buckets in their hind claws. The buckets would be full of iron darts. The dragons wouldn't even bother to aim, Pet knew. They need simply dump their cargo above the town and fill the winter sky with something much more deadly than snow. The men on the walls would either be killed, or forced into shelter, leaving the earth-dragons free to storm the gates and overwhelm the city. It was a time-honored strategy of the dragons, one that had crushed human uprisings for centuries.
As the dragons neared, Pet ran the back of his hand along his scratchy mustache. The mineral oil Burke used to lubricate the wheel-bows had thoroughly coated his fingers by now. It smelled faintly of pine.
"Aim!" Pet shouted. He drew a bead on an approaching sun-dragon. His lifelong familiarity with the beasts allowed him to judge their true distance against the trackless sky. He knew the dragons could see his men and their bows; they'd lose all element of surprise the second the first arrows flew. He had to wait until he was certain they would be in range.
He held his aim a few seconds, then a few seconds more, calculating the dragons' speed. Pet targeted the empty sky, aiming at the spot where the dragon would be when the arrow reached it, then shouted, "Fire!"
Arrows flash upward like frozen shards of light. The snapping steel bowstrings made the wall sound as if a large harpsichord were being stroked by a giant-zing, zing, zang, zing, zang! For an instant, Pet worried he'd overshot his target, until the sun-dragon dropped his bucket. The crimson-beast doubled over, clutching the arrow in its gut. A half dozen of its brethren performed similar aerial contortions before they began to plummet from the sky. The dragons that followed veered and wheeled away as the seven struck in the initial volley fell. Keeping his eyes on the sky, Pet paid no attention to where the bodies landed. He'd already drawn another arrow.
"Aim!" he shouted.
Behind him, there was a powerful WHANG as a catapult Burke had salvaged from the dragon armory sent a shower of shrapnel skyward. Its target wasn't the sun-dragons, but the advancing army of earth-dragons who flowed toward the fort like a living river.
While some of the sun-dragons were pulling back in confusion, a full score continued to advance. Pet took a calming breath, making certain of his aim, then cried out, "Fire!"
Zing, zing, zang, zing, zang!
This time, ten dragons felt the bite of the arrows, some falling in gentle arcs, some in dizzying cartwheels, and a few simply plunging straight toward earth. One smashed into the ground outside the wall not twenty feet away from Pet. The vibration of the impact ran up his legs. A rust heap crashed with a noise like a band of drummers falling down stairs as one of the dying beasts smacked into it.
By now, the remaining dragons were near the wall. One by one, they tilted their buckets, and a black rain of darts fell toward the men.
"Shields!" Pet shouted. In unison, all the men along the wall lifted the wooden disks propped before them, ducking their heads as they crouched. The thick oak shields were banded with broad strips of steel. Seconds later, the darts struck, and the entire wall rang out with a clatter and chatter as a thousand tiny, deadly knives buried themselves in the wood. Men started screaming seconds later. Pet looked up. A few of the braver sun-dragons had swooped down, snatched up men from the wall, and lifted them skyward. Pet tossed his dart-studded shield aside and drew his bow once more.
"Fire at will!" he shouted, knowing there was no longer any hope of unified action. Dragons were everywhere. A score of sun-dragons remained high overhead, but their darts would now be striking their own forces if they dropped them, for at least as many of the sun-dragons had broken ranks and were attacking the bowmen on the walls directly. Below, the river of earth-dragons spread out in waves as they reached the walls. From every direction, there was shouting and confusion. Pet tried to put it from his mind.
It wasn't courage that welled up within him at this moment. Instead, it was something far less passionate and far colder. He became deaf to the cries of his fellow men. He was undistracted by the bodies of sun-dragons falling from the sky around him and turning to red, meaty smears as they crashed into the snow. He gave no thought to his own life or safety. He simply became mindless, his body moving with a cool, machine-like efficiency.
The sole purpose of his life was to place an arrow in his bow, aim, fire. Again and again he followed this action, without a thought in his mind. Find a hole in the sky where a dragon would be, fire. Find another hole, fire. One by one, his victims fell. The sky was so thick with the bodies of dragons, it was nearly impossible to miss. If his arrow flew past one dragon, it would strike a second behind it.
Pet lost all sense of time. He maintained this trancelike state until he reached to the quiver on his back and found his fingers closing on empty air. Suddenly, the calm emptiness in him was broken and his thoughts came crashing back. His heart leapt into his throat. He consciously became aware of how empty the sky above suddenly seemed.
He cast his gaze down the wall, then toward the men on the other walls. He could tell their ranks had been thinned by the initial assault. In the city below, blood once again ran in the gutters. A wooden building near the center of town had been completely crushed beneath the remnants of a sun-dragon, and at least two more of the huge corpses blocked the streets. Yet there were no living dragons within the walls, not even an earth-dragon. Looking down, Pet surveyed a field of fallen green bodies. Many of those still surviving were crawling away on all fours, violently vomiting. The poisoned breakfast was taking hold! Despite this, there were still so many. Ten thousand earth-dragons, the spies had said. Were there even ten thousand arrows in Dragon Forge?
Turning his eyes skyward, he took comfort in the nearly empty palette of white. In the distance, he saw over two dozen sun-dragons in retreat, racing back toward their camp. Still, the aerial assault wasn't completely over. One last dragon swooped down from the covering clouds and raced toward Dragon Forge, its dart bucket still in its claws.
Pet lowered his eyes back to the wall and began to run, spotting the body of a fallen archer ten yards away, near the eastern gate. He saw fresh arrows in the slain man's quiver. Pet snatched up a handful of missiles and turned to find his target.
The sun-dragon he'd spotted was heading on a path toward Pet. Pet calmly drew a bead and let his arrow fly. He watched with great satisfaction as the arrow buried itself deep in the beast's breast, a shot that almost certainly pierced the heart. The dragon's eyes rolled upwards and its whole body went limp. It transformed instantly from a thing of grace in the air into a half-ton bag of falling meat.