The Bird and The Dragon

Patrik woke to the realization of having his eyes covered and his hands tied together. He was surrounded by quiet discussion and noises from equipment being packed and checked.

“This one is awake, Huran,” a female said behind Patrik’s head.

“Good. I was afraid of having broken his skull. These are so fragile people.”

“But dangerous to hold.” The female voice carried barely contained anger.

“Simmons will recover. I was not expecting an ainadu strategej here.”

The speaker had walked to stand beside Patrik. A hand grasped his neck and forced Patrik to stand. A terrible headache blurred his thoughts, almost making him black out, but he took a wavering step to prevent himself from falling to his face. Covering the eyes did not close the dragon sight but this infernal headache had the same effect. Patrik's mind was full of pain and haze and he could not concentrate.

Huran breathed out and partly guided, partly dragged Patrik away. The ground sloped downwards, and the voices fell away.

“If you try anything, I’ll kill you,” the nocturna said. Patrik knew these people. They were strong and unnaturally tall, often dark-skinned and their irises were always huge and black, making the eyes look like bottomless pits. The nocturna were loyal to their people as they were the descendants of the armed forces that had fought the dragons at the end of the world. They were few, but their achievements in the field of war were the material of legends.

“You are young to be a strategej. Why did you dig that pit?” Huran asked.

“I was following my orders.”

“As we all do.” The nocturna’s hand on Patrik’s shoulder was big and heavy, but its touch was treacherously light. “I like that you ainadu have a clear hierarchy, you have your orders and blindly follow them. Slavery sure has its benefits.”

Patrik turned his head quickly and tried to bite the nocturna’s hand through the fabric of his hood. He was too slow and Huran swept him down without any effort.

“Truth hurts, right? You understand that if anyone does.” The nocturna pressed his knee to Patrik’s midriff. Struggling would have been pointless in this situation, but the worst thing was that the nocturna was not completely wrong about slavery. Or that was what Patrik had started to think when his understanding of the internal politics of his home country had grown.

“You put something in the forest’s system. What were you trying to do?” Huran asked.

“To destroy the production.”

“It failed. You know, little strategej, it was one of the sewage lines.”

“What happened to my men?”

“Three dead. Two wounded, three are on their feet, but one of them is such a loudmouth that I cannot guarantee his safety.”

Patrik counted in his aching head: the nocturna had found both the camp and the scouts. The loudmouth was Jerinhoe, who didn’t have barriers between his thinking and mouth. This combination together with the verbal brilliance had caused several incidents and prevented Jerinhoe from being promoted.

“We will release everyone alive after the march. Except you, strategej. You are coming with us.”

Patrik spitted to show his disgust. There was an old grudge between the nocturna and the ainadu.

“Well, dragon-slave. You can choose, do you want to be drugged or shall I break your arms?”

Patrik tasted the old blood in his mouth. He was not a slave to Agiisha or any other dragon. No, not even when their shadows flew through his dreams or his vision when he was using the resonance. “I won’t listen to such ravings from anyone,” Patrik said when a hot pressure wave rolled over them. Huran lost his balance and fell on top of Patrik emptying his lungs. The temperature rose and there were shouts, crackling of fire, and low, repeating popping noises, like something was boiling. The nocturna stood up.

“I’ll take my words back. You lurkers did succeed. By the olds, this should not be possible, unless you got help from somewhere.” Huran sounded almost bewildered, but it passed quickly as he shouted orders.

“I did not write the matrix,” Patrik said. Of course, he had studied it, but this was nothing like he had expected to happen.

“It is spreading in the surface root system; red hell take us all.” Huran dragged Patrik up and carried him back from where they had come from. Based on the sounds the pressure wave had hit the place with its full force. Over the sounds of fire, Patrik could hear shouting.

“It has burned to the skin.”

“Bandages!”

“Prepare to evacuate.”

“There was a crackle and then it exploded.”

Huran’s hand was still in Patrik’s shoulder. “Into what direction the fire is spreading?”

“I can’t see a thing.” The cover was removed, and Patrik could see the havoc around him. Two adjacent trees and one more in the same row had exploded. Only the blackened wrecks of their trunks were left. Some of the surrounding trees were on fire. Wounded were lying on the ground. Someone was extinguishing a burning backpack. Huran pushed Patrik’s face towards the ground.

“Do you need to touch it? How good are you in this?” Tactile sense had nothing to do with the dragon sight and Patrik did not need touch. Strategej closed his eyes, for it helped with the pain. Huran was right, the liquid injected into the roots might still spread. They needed to evacuate somewhere where the trees were not going to explode.

Patrik reached inwards and opened his sight concentrating on the energies around him. Adrenaline helped to overcome the headache. He couldn’t see the roots through the soil, but the trees’ activity increased towards the forest’s edge. At least their temperatures were higher there. Patrik made himself look deeper and felt his knees shake when an alien feeling passed through his body.

There was the touch of warm water on the naked skin, a body that was not his own. The sunlight was too bright, too yellow. It was only a ghost in the resonance, it was not real, and it was already disappearing, leaving Patrik in the reality where a forest fire was spreading. He saw an area of increased activity south of them, but the headache was too much to bear, and he closed his sight.

“North-east is the safest,” Patrik said coughing as there was bile in his throat. He was sure he hadn’t thrown up.

“You are a real treasure, little slave.” The nocturna gave an order and his men started to move, helping those who could still stand. Patrik saw only two other ainadu and nine nocturna walking away.

They walked on towards the north-east. The forest was silent around them, but the smoke raising from behind reminded them of the imminent danger. Later the wind changed and carried the smell of smoke to them. It was metallic and Patrik hoped the distance had stripped most of the poison away.

The forest was awake. Spores were rushing between the trees, vines were changing their colors and the silent birds were perching on the branches. There were more birds than Patrik had ever seen. In addition to the common small and brown species, there were the large, yellow-eyed ones, and a flock of quick, black birds passed them on their flight toward the forest’s edge.

Huran turned his hood-covered face towards the flying birds and seemed to calculate. “The forest has activated some version of the shut-out process. Claudia, do you recognize the flight pattern?”

“H-543 or -643, Did they ever put the Scwarb concentrate in this system?”

“No, it was tested only in sector four,” Huran answered absentmindedly still looking at the sky. Patrik listened quietly, he understood enough to reinforce the common belief that the nocturna knew more about the forests than anyone else.

“Roger that. Based on the canopy pattern this forest is a modified type two.”

“That version has sluggish time constants. Hope it is not too late. We’ll push through before the process reaches the northern side.”

“Lieutenant.” Claudia pointed towards the sky, where one bird was falling lifelessly. “We have company.”

Huran ordered three men to advance south while the rest of the group continued towards the northeast. The nocturna held good speed changing the scout at set intervals. They moved from one tree to another keeping the line’s movement uneven. The strategej spotted also the other signs of their training: the lack of any unnecessary noises, the directions they were spotting, and the hand signs they used.

Watergate’s four day long light time was turning into the night when it traveled in its tidally locked orbit around Abyss, the giant gas planet. The people called Watergate a planet, although it was a moon to the Abyss. The twin suns disappeared slowly below the horizon while they walked and the stars became visible.

The dark would continue for four days. The ancient concept of a 24-hour day was still used for keeping time. There were no auroras in the sky, but here close to the equator, they were not such an everyday phenomenon as in Watergate’s pole regions. Patrik wondered if he was going to see them ever again.

Nocturna’s vision in the dark was more keen than ordinary humans. They kept on moving long after Patrik would have ordered his men to rest or to light the way. At last, Huran ordered a stop in a crevice.

An hour passed, but the scouts sent southward didn’t return. Huran woke Patrik. “Strategej, check the situation.”

“Give me some water first.” Huran’s black eyes glittered in the darkness, but he pushed a huge metal bottle into Patrik’s hands. Patrik drank. His head was still hurting, but he was able to open his sight without risking a migraine. He tried to focus on the energies, but everything seemed to shimmer. Usually, it meant that the air was very humid or maybe the cursed spores were back. It took a moment until Patrik understood what he was looking at. “It is already here,” he said quietly, suppressing an animal urge to run from a fire.

“Are you sure?”

“How could I prove it? Check it yourself. Lick a tree or whatever it is your kind does.”

Huran snorted in despise but woke his men. The nocturna chose a dead-looking tree with bare branches covered in yellow growth and its trunk hidden in the luminous white vine. One cut the vine and revealed the bark below.

“It is warm,” the soldier said. The lieutenant nodded and the soldier took a saw starting to cut the bark. Patrik knew that with the ordinary tools, the work would have been time-consuming, even with nocturna’s muscles. Soon some yellow liquid dripped from below the bark, almost sparkling in the starlight.

“It has spred. Let’s get out of here. Claudia? Claudia! Take Weiss and empty all the inhibitor we carry in the pumping unit.”

“Roger that, lieutenant.” Claudia looked around and left for the trees farther down the row. The others prepared to move when one came running to Huran.

“Outpost is down. Alert red three.”

Huran cursed again and ordered a retreat. He commanded his remaining men into a line, and they proceeded into the forest. Patrik sensed the temperature changing. Some trees were ordinary in all the ways, while their neighbors were almost boiling.

“Ainadu, do you want to live?” Huran asked Patrik, whom he held close by.

“Yes,” Patrik agreed beneath his hood. Forest fire seemed a horrible way to die.

“We are being hunted. It is a rebelmonger with an inflated ego. He must be behind this fire because your tiny dose in the sewer could not have achieved this.” Patrik did not reply. He had to step quickly to keep up with the tall nocturna. “We will ambush them, and we will kill him. If you help me, I’ll let you live. Can you explode a tree at a given moment?”

“If I have time to prepare,” Patrik said confidently. He was skilled in writing the matrixes and the trees did not need much encouragement.

“It must work. Esrau is a sly one, but he is not expecting you. Nor your dirty tricks.”

Patrik nodded and walked on with the small group through the dark forest. Clouds were gathering in the sky deepening the shadows.