Dread Seven continued behind them, moving fast without the weight of their canisters.
“Do not bank,” Evander told Samara. She was transfixed with horror, her gaze locked on the pillar of smoke from the wreck. Evander gripped her shoulder. “Focus.”
A hazy black mist rose out of the trees, stretching and bulging like putty held in an invisible hand. Evander’s heart froze.
Not sparksparrows. Please, not sparksparrows.
The mist was made of birds no larger than brass thimbles. They arced overhead and then plummeted into the dreadnoughts, their wings at their sides and their tiny, razor-sharp beaks slicing through flesh.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!” Evander shouted, running toward Samara. She tapped the dragon behind its jaw, and its mouth gaped.
Evander grabbed Elspeth from her exposed position on the tripod shotfire and threw her to the side as the sparksparrows whistled into them. One struck her shoulder in a spray of blood. She shrieked and fell, lurching at the end of her tether. Another struck Samara between her shoulder blades, but the magic shirt saved her.
The dreadnought heaved a huge breath, its ribs constricting, and billows of flame erupted from its throat, enveloping the flock of spark sparrows and burning them to char. The remaining birds zipped past Dread Five.
Evander flipped an hourglass mounted on the tripod. Fifteen seconds before they could breathe fire again.
Below, the battle was a snarling cat, its body writhing bonelessly across the beach.
“Captain!” Samara yelled. “Orders?”
“Make for the manor! We have to take out the manor!”
“The resistance is too heavy!” she screamed.
She was right. Curse it all, she was right.But if they banked, the dragon’s back and the crew would be exposed to the shotfires below. It was too dangerous.
“Between the bunkers!” Evander replied.
Pellets tore Dread Five’s wings, and the dragon bellowed in pain. Samara held the creature’s head forward as the pellets pattered into her thick belly. They flew past the manor, between two bunkers.
Elspeth lay bleeding, too injured to operate the tripod.
“Make for the forest!” Evander ran down the dragon’s spine, his cable scraping behind him, and reached Giles on the wing. He patted the boy’s shoulder.
“Take the tripod,” he said.
Giles scrambled up and unclipped, then put his hands on Evander’s shoulders as they returned to the front. Giles stepped up and adjusted the weapon, checking the belt of pellets that fed into its side.
Evander pointed ahead at the artillery between the dune and the forest. “Spray them! Give them everything you’ve got!”
The shotfire rattled, flashed, raking across the artillery. One cannon went silent, its operators dead. The others were forced to duck as Dread Five soared above them and then over the forest of brown trees.
The battle seemed to fade away. No scattershot from the artillery here. No explosions from the other dreads. Only the distant thunder of the invasion.
Samara pulled the dragon into a bank, but Evander clapped his hand on her shoulder. “No,” he said. “Continue straight. Level out. As flat as you can.”
“But sir, this is the time to turn …” Samara objected. “The artillery isn’t firing at us …”
Evander’s eyes ached as he strained them, searching the horizon. “Exactly,” he said. “Straight. Giles, Ignatius, get ready. The fighters are coming.”
A line of small dragons, each with two riders, rose out of the trees. At the front, their pilots held them in formation as a razer seated behind opened fire on the dreads.
Chapter fifty-four
Valenna
“We will both survive.” Velenna repeated this to herself over and over, like a psalm.
