The screams of the children had begun to die out. I hoped it meant Armand had found them, was moving them to a safer place.
One of the drinking soldiers spotted the dog. He pulled out his pistol and took a shot; the bullet struck a wall and sent chips of plaster flying. The dog yelped and tried to run.
I’d had no firm plan. I still didn’t. But when the soldier grinned and raised his rifle this time to aim again, I materialized as a naked girl right beside him.
“Bonjour,” I said, and punched him in the face.
I was smoke before the other men had finished whipping about, guns up. They weren’t laughing now, by God. They were shouting over each other, and the man I’d hit was shouting loudest of all.
I Turned behind them, standing against a stack of wooden crates filled with shells.
“Over here now,” I called in English, and ducked behind the crates when all twenty of them aimed their weapons at me.
“Cochon!” I yelled, which I was almost certain meant swine in French.
“Menj a fenébe!” I shouted next, and I didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded insulting.
And just as they were pounding toward the crates—because, even drunk, they weren’t stupid enough to fire at them—I Turned again, stole above them, and became a dragon next to the cannons.
A dragon in daylight. I’d never done it before, but I didn’t have time to celebrate it now. If I’d glimmered by moonlight, by day I was afire, nearly too bright to behold. I lifted my tail (my lovely sharp tail!) and swiped it at the nearest cannon, flipping it over, the wheels of its base broken off, a nice big hole in its side.
I found the eyes of the dog-shooting rotter and sent him my own evil grin.
All the men screamed. About a quarter of them peeled off and pelted away. The rest began to fire.
Smoke, dragon, smoke. Two cannons gone. Three. I was Turning more quickly than I’d ever done, but still the bullets zinged by me, some bouncing off my scales. When they came thick as flies I knew I had to stay as smoke; a lucky shot between my scales could kill me.
I made myself sheer and silent and drifted over the remaining men, a natural part of the smoke-choked sky.
There was still one cannon and fifteen soldiers to go.
The problem was, now they knew what I wanted. Two men were hunched over a tall black box that emitted an unmistakable electric hum; one cranked a handle as the other shrieked into a mouthpiece.
The others had rallied around the cannon, round-eyed, fingers on triggers, scanning the sky.
“Listen to me! Listen to me, all of you!”
The horsey-faced woman was standing in the doorway of what looked to be a decrepit granary that had been long forsaken to the woods, medieval thick-cut stones eaten over with moss and wild ivy. She was holding up both arms, her raspy voice gone strident.
Armand couldn’t discern much beyond her. He had the impression of bodies crammed in the space past the doorway. Of children sniffling, old men with creaking bones, women in kerchiefs, babies squirming. The stench of fear and feces rippled out, engulfing him. He cupped a hand over his nose, then forced himself to lower it.
“We have been saved,” the woman announced, solemn now, and backed up so that Armand could take her place.
He took a step forward, straining to see through the darkness. Why was it so opaque?
Whoever was in there, they were quiet as a tomb. All he heard was breathing, theirs and his own. The rise of nervous heartbeats. An infant suckling. Blood pulsing through veins—
“Who are you?” called a woman, and as if her question had lifted the shadows from his eyes, he could see her now, see all of them, in a clear blue, almost otherworldly illumination. The darkness melted back and he was faced with close to fifty people of all ages and shapes and sizes. All of them filthy. All of them greasy with sweat.
But for one. There was one face that didn’t match any of the others. A girl in the far back, half hidden behind her grandmother, perhaps. She had long reddish gold hair and a face as white and clean as—
“Sweet mercy! His eyes!” cried someone.
“What is it? What is that light?” whimpered someone else.
“Is it witchcraft?”
“The devil!”
“Not the devil, but angels!” claimed the horsey woman at his shoulder. “Do not fear! I told you God would deliver us!”
“No.” Armand was tired and jittery and his skin felt like it’d been crisped with hot coals and he couldn’t think of a single good reason to lie. It was too late to pretend now, and anyway, what these people wouldn’t witness firsthand, they’d hear about over and over. “Not angels, not devils. We’re English. We are dragons.”
“Drákon,” gasped the redheaded girl, and slammed back hard against the wall behind her before she disappeared into thin air.
Disappeared. No smoke. Only gone.
In the twinkling of an eye, he thought absurdly, exactly as the crowd flared into panic.
Here’s the thing about cannons.
They’re worthless without their shells, aren’t they? Without the bombs to fire, they’re just big, bulky, useless contraptions of metal.
I Turned into a girl behind the crates, lifted a pistol one of the deserters had dropped, and began to unload rounds into the wood.
Chapter 22
I found the village men trapped in a large stone building with a waterwheel attached, a river running brown and stagnant beside it. It was a mill, about a mile from where I’d just taken care of the rest of their company, and the dozen Huns guarding it had obviously heard the commotion. All those shells exploding at once—it might have been heard all the way to Prussia. Even as smoke, it felt like my ears were still ringing.
They were armed to the teeth, these blokes, rifles pointing in every direction, bayonets flashing. I became a dragon in front of them, plain as you please, and whacked my tail against the ground.
It was almost as earthshaking as the shells going off.
Only one of them thought to charge me. The others, happily, simply scattered. A couple actually jumped into the river.
As soon as the lone soldier noticed he had been abandoned, he skidded to a halt, halfway between me and the potential shelter of the mill.
I stalked toward him, twitching my tail. He was stocky and short, a patch of blond whiskers on his chin. I opened my wings and reared up, and he was too dumbfounded to even fire; he only stood there with his mouth hanging open, gawking up at me.
So I flicked him with a claw. It knocked him back to the dirt in a stir of dust, his rifle jarred free. His helmet rolled away down the lane, hollow as a tin can.
He was out. I Turned to girl, ran to the millhouse door, and strained to hoist free the heavy slab of wood that sealed it shut.
“Bonjour,” I called breathlessly through the door. At that point it was the only French my scrambled brain could remember. “Bonjour, bonjour!”
As the first of the village men began to edge past the doorway, some small, shamed remnant of Iverson flushed through me; I was young, I was nude, they were all males, and I was supposed to be a lady.
I Turned to smoke.
Their fields were burned, their village was rubble, and even behind those stone walls I had no doubt they’d heard all the ruckus. Surely they’d figure out for themselves that it was time to flee.
Besides, I had a strong and uneasy feeling it was time for me to return to Armand.
I followed the fragrance of his blood.
In my smoke form, I didn’t have what I’d term an actual sense of smell, yet I could recognize certain aromas. Like everyone, Armand had his own unique scent (sea salt, pine woods, lemon and clouds and spice) … yet what I chased now wasn’t that. It was him but not him, more an essence than a scent.