9 #2
Carmine slipped in the gravel, flapping his wings to boost himself.
Vulture and Nat were over the wall already, but a streak of dark dragon blood ran down where they’d just been.
Asta’s heart steeled. If she lost because she hadn’t been willing to push Carmine over those spikes, then so be it.
Let the Bruces punish her if they wanted to. She wouldn’t do that to Carmine.
They were at the top of the gravel pile now. Cascades of rock skittered down its side as Carmine shifted, impatient for Asta’s instructions. Asta was pretty sure that they would make it over the wall, but could they make their pass low enough to trigger the beacon without hitting the spikes?
‘Wings,’ Asta said to Carmine. He stretched out his wings and began to beat them. The air churned around them like a whirlwind, and Asta’s heart burned in answer. ‘Jump!’ she shouted to him over the wind.
Carmine jumped. Asta clamped his sides with her knees and rode the drop as Carmine’s wings found their rhythm. The ground looked unsteady, threatening. Asta’s stomach clenched.
But then, right on schedule, they stopped falling.
The wind caught under them, and they were airborne, nothing holding them up but the ferocious power of Carmine’s wingbeats.
Asta felt the pulse of his muscles under her, heard his breath quicken.
She, too, was breathing fast and hard, every atom in her body vibrating with the thrill of flying.
Asta leaned to correct their trajectory, and Carmine leaned with her. They cleared the spikes by a few feet. The beacon on the wall and the trigger on Asta’s collar both emitted a flash of light to signal that they had crossed within range.
‘Yes, Carmy! Good boy!’
Now for the landing. In the shadow of the wall, Asta could just make out the glow of the second beacon, but it was too dark to see the terrain around it – and landing in the dark could mean disaster. There could be branches, boulders, who knows what.
If light was what they needed, then they would have light.
‘Burst!’
Carmine’s sides grew cold under Asta’s legs, and he bellowed a ball of flame, flooding the ground below in a brilliant blaze.
In the burst of fire, Asta spotted a fallen tree trunk leaning into their path.
She steered Carmine around it and landed him in a sloping patch of grass near the beacon.
The flash on her collar told her they had landed close enough.
The sound of Vulture and Nat crashing through the trees came from somewhere down the hill below them. Carmine rushed forward. Branches caught Asta’s shoulders and knees as they ran. She tucked herself low in the saddle, sheltering behind Carmine’s bulk as best she could.
All of a sudden, the trees were gone, and they were in the open. The city lights were brightening an overcast sky, and Asta could see that they had emerged from the brush beside a set of train tracks.
The course thread ran along the tracks to the right, back toward the city center.
Below the tracks, the ground continued sloping down toward the river.
On the city side, the land rose steeply to a roadway above.
Somewhere up there, though she wasted no time looking for them, Asta knew the Bruces were watching.
Just ahead, Asta could make out a dark form bounding along the marked-out course and smiled to herself.
On a straightaway like this, Carmine could catch Vulture every time.
Vulture’s specialty was climbing. Asta slackened the reins, and within a few seconds, they were side by side with Nat.
One, two, three more strides, and they were pulling ahead.
Nat let out a guttural, animal sound, almost a snarl.
Asta’s senses were filled with the rhythm of her own breath, Carmine’s, his beating wings, and the sound of crunching cinders underfoot.
They were reaching flying speed. Asta gave Carmine the signal, and suddenly they were in the air again.
Asta’s heart filled with ecstasy as they lifted off the solid ground.
They would have to keep low to stay in range of the beacons, but it felt good to be in the air.
Without the sound of Carmine’s footfalls filling her ears, the world was almost peaceful. Down the bank to their left, the Hallium River ran smooth. A barge blared its horn in the darkness.
The tracks turned with the river, bending around to the right.
Asta and Carmine banked in the air to follow the turn.
Ahead of them, the course thread ran straight into a tunnel cut into the side of the hill.
The entrance was just wide enough that they could fly through it, and Asta steered Carmine toward the dark arch.
She was excited. In a track race, only drakes ran the tunnels. She had never flown one before, but she had always wanted to.
They entered the tunnel on the wing, following the bend of the tracks toward the beacon glowing in the pitch-dark ahead of them.
In the faint illusory light of the thread and the beacon, Asta noticed long, dark marks from passing trains scraping the wall.
The beacon flashed as they passed it, and they flew on, their breaths echoing down the tunnel.
The tunnel was turning out to be easier than Asta had expected, but something was off with Carmine.
He was tossing his head unhappily, as if he wanted to turn back.
At last, the track straightened, providing a view out the other side of the tunnel, and Asta saw why.
There, maybe a hundred yards beyond the tunnel’s entrance and barreling closer by the second, was the quaking light of a train engine.
They had two choices: run toward the oncoming train and hope to make it out of the tunnel and off the tracks before the train entered and trapped them inside, or turn back and try to beat the train out the other side. They had to choose – and fast.
Asta had all but decided to try for the entrance when her heart dropped.
Nat.
She and Vulture were back there somewhere in the tunnel. Nat had no choice but to turn back, but she didn’t know the train was coming. Asta had to warn her.
The tunnel was too narrow for a midair turn, so Asta landed Carmine, wheeled him around, and sprinted him back into flight, this time heading in the other direction.
As they flew around the bend, Asta spied the vague form of dragon and rider on the other side of the beacon, heading her way.
‘Train!’ Asta yelled, but Nat kept coming, her focus set on the beacon.
As if to make Asta’s point for her, the train blasted its warning as it entered the far side of the tunnel, and the sound exploded around them.
‘You idiot!’ Asta screamed as she passed the beacon. ‘Go back!’
Nat did not stop. She wasn’t going to stop. Missing a beacon would mean forfeiting the race.
Nat was coming in for a landing. Vulture’s hind leg crashed against Carmine’s flank, driving them against the wall.
Carmine’s shoulder made contact with the concrete, and he bellowed in outrage as he hit the ground.
Asta reached out a gloved hand and shoved against the wall to keep from falling from his back.
Behind them came a flash of light. Nat had gotten her beacon, but it wouldn’t matter if she didn’t get herself and Vulture out of there right now.
The whole tunnel was shaking with the rattle and roar of the train.
‘Move!’ Asta yelled.
Carmine streaked ahead, the dim arch of the opening growing larger and larger.
Asta and Carmine scrambled out of the end of the tunnel, plunging and sliding downhill toward the river, away from the tracks. Another shattering blast from the train’s horn rang from the tunnel. Asta turned Carmine, and they watched with trepidation.
Vulture and Nat jettisoned out of the arch and down the embankment a split second ahead of the train. One missed step, and it would have been over. The thought took Asta’s breath away.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Vulture charged back up the riverbank. They were past Carmine and Asta in a flash, heading for the far side of the tunnel where they would pick up the course thread.
A laugh welled up in Asta’s throat. Nat had been a hair’s breadth away from death, and all she could think about was the race. The woman really was fearless.
Asta urged Carmine up the hill after them. But scrabbling up a hill like this was Vulture’s playground, and they had no hope of catching them on this terrain.
They reached the other side of the tunnel and found that it was still swallowing the long line of rocking cars, one after another.
The course thread ran under the train’s flashing wheels for only a hundred feet or so before it turned away and up the hill.
The next beacon was fixed to the side of the overpass on the other side of the tracks.
Vulture and Nat pulled up short at the point where the course turned, their path blocked by the rumbling cars.
Carmine and Asta ran to the spot and stopped beside them.
It seemed that there was nothing to do but wait for the train to clear.
Unless.
‘Go, go!’ Asta shouted to Carmine, turning him down the track.
Carmine ran against the flow of the train, wings flapping.
Asta looked back over her shoulder to see if Nat and Vulture were following.
Instead, Nat was backing Vulture down the bank, her eyes fixed on the beacon.
She was going to try to jump Vulture over the train, Asta realized.
Asta turned her attention back to her own plan. Beside them, the wheels shrieked and the cargo containers rattled. The air was filled with the smell of oil and hot metal.