“It’s Scales!” Blade said. “Oh, thank goodness!”
Scales somehow backpedaled in mid-dive and whirled about. Hot fumes, grass, and clods of earth blew every which way in the wind of it. Kit was thrown out of the air and landed on his back with a grunt, a few yards from Don.
“You! Little black cat-bird!” Scales bellowed at him. “Get up and go and guard the entrance to that dome!”
Kit picked himself up without a word and limped hurriedly over there. Don gathered himself into a heap, where he crouched, whimpering. Scales glided forward to land, lightly as a wren, beside the brawling group of men and sheep around Shona. The sheep instantly struggled out from among the men and fled in bleating panic. The men had not yet noticed anything was wrong. Scales stretched out his monstrous head above them.
“I said get back into that dome, scum!” he growled.
Their faces turned up to him. It was now light enough for Blade to see individual expressions on those faces: fear, anger, bravado, horror, but mostly annoyance at being interrupted.
“It’s only one of their illusions,” one said.
Scales bent forward, picked up the nearest black-clad body in his jaws, and crunched. The man jerked and let out the most horrible sound Blade had ever heard. It was not even a scream. It was the noise of something in more pain than it could stand. Scales tossed what remained of the man down on the turf. “In the dome or get eaten,” he boomed. “Your choice.”
The rest of the soldiers untangled themselves with incredible speed and set off at a run for the dome. Kit opened the entrance there to let them in. A goose that had accidentally got shut inside the dome blasted out in a cloud of white feathers just before Kit sealed it again. After that she was forced to stand with her back to everything, preening her dignity back, too irritated even to notice the rest of the geese, who stood at a tactful distance, hooting respectfully.
Blade was kneeling by Shona. Shona’s hair was over her face, and her clothes were torn. She had blood on one arm, but Blade thought that was from someone else’s sheep bite. “Don’t touch me!” she said.
“Are you all right?” Blade asked.
“Just don’t touch me!” Shona said.
Blade looked doubtfully up at Scales.
“Leave her be. Go and help the black
cat-bird,” Scales rumbled. “I want you to hold the opening shut against the ones inside, while the cat-bird lets in the ones I bring back.”
It was now white dawn, light enough to see that the distance in every direction was full of frantic cows and black-clad men running away as hard as they could. Scales took off again, in another blast of hot air and flying grass. He flew low in a huge, sweeping circle, at the limits of where a man could run to in the time. Every so often there would be a billow of fire and some roaring in the distance, and Scales would come sweeping inward, driving a panting huddle of men toward the dome, where Kit struggled to let them in, while Blade tried to stop the ones inside from getting out.
“No, no!” Scales said irritably as he arrived behind the third huddle. “Balance your magics against one another. Brace them, and then sway just a bit to make the opening. Don’t people do arm wrestling anymore these days?”
“Oh, I see!” Blade and Kit both exclaimed. “Like that!”
“Yes. Like that,” Scales growled, and swung around into the distance again.
By the time Scales drove in the last panting, exhausted crowd of soldiers, Blade and Kit had become quite good at the arm-wrestling style of magic. They were congratulating one another and feeling nearly cheerful again until Scales rumbled, “Don’t just stand there grinning, cat-bird, boy! You’ve work to do. You need to be on the march by sunup.”
They stared at him disbelievingly. “We do?” said Kit.
“I’m worn out,” Blade protested. “We hardly got any sleep—”
“Got to keep these murderers busy,” Scales explained, “or lose grip on them. They’ve no food here, they’re angry, and they nearly got you once. Understand? And it’s no good me trying to round up all your horses and your cows. They just panic.”
“But Don’s hurt,” Blade objected, “and Shona’s—”
“I’ll see to them now,” said Scales. His wings folded with a leathery, slithering, final-sounding slap. He turned and stepped delicately across the trampled grass toward Don. Kit and Blade watched his spiked green tail slide around in front of them and then followed it mournfully. You did not disagree with dragons.
“Sprained, are they, or what?” Scales was saying to Don. “Move them, yellow cat-bird. Come on!”
Don miserably flopped his wings about. “They stood on them!”
“More fool you, for letting them,” Scales boomed. “Where are your instincts? First rule for fledglings is: Get airborne at the first sign of trouble. Didn’t anyone teach you that?”
“No, sir,” said Don.
“Comes of being brought up by ignorant humans, I suppose,” Scales growled. “Remember it in future. You, too, little black one.”