Chapter 13 #2
More cannons boomed, and a ball splashed down right beside the bow of the ship. Wreylith roared in the direction from which it had come. Bolstered by their numbers, the crews of the fleet vessels didn’t appear cowed by the dragon’s arrival.
“Yes, Your Majesty.” Hixun ran into the wheelhouse.
I can deliver your message telepathically to all in the area, Wreylith said.
“I think I need to do this myself,” Syla said.
She did, however, remain mounted on Wreylith as Hixun returned and tossed a megaphone up to her. Hopefully, while positioned astride a dragon, she would look regal, powerful, and like someone worth listening to.
“Good crewmen of the Kingdom,” Syla called toward the warships.
“I am Syla Moonmark, the rightful queen of the Garden Kingdom. As you can see, my death was falsely reported. Just as false is Lord Fograth’s claim on the throne.
He is not your supreme commander. I am. Further, it is foolish to fight amongst ourselves when we have greater enemies to deal with.
We must protect the Kingdom from the stormers, as I’ve been striving to do since before my coronation.
My engineering aunt has, with rare magical materials we gathered from around the world, made a new shielder artifact.
I command you to cease fire so that I may carry it to Harvest Island. ”
A cannon boomed on one of the warships, but it was the only one. Whether the crews were ceasing fire because she’d requested it or they were curious about what she was saying—and what her dragon would do—she didn’t know, but Syla took advantage of the relative calm and pressed on.
“As your rightful queen, I request that you join us instead of firing upon us. We must travel to Harvest Island as a united fleet if we’re to have a hope of driving away the dragons that remain camped there, savagely hunting all the game to extinction and destroying farms and orchards.”
You are fortunate that I do not object to the word savage in describing my kind, Wreylith said.
It’s somewhat accurate; you must agree.
We are apex predators. Wreylith roared. Savagely.
Syla opened her mouth to continue but noticed someone familiar glowering at her from the deck of the adjacent ship.
Lord Ravoran from Harvest Island. She hadn’t realized he’d come along with her little fleet when they’d departed Bogberry Island.
She told herself that it didn’t matter. They would soon have a shielder back on Harvest Island.
Once he realized she was speaking the truth about having one to mount there, he would hopefully set aside his ire.
“We have with us,” Syla continued, calling out to all in the cove and trying to will her innate power to help her, to add magical influence to her words, “the weapons platform that was made by the gods themselves and is capable of defeating—of even killing—enemy dragons.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Syla glimpsed her comrades arriving on the beach and willed them to hurry to row the dinghies out to the Fanged Whale.
She had no idea if her speech would result in anything, so they needed to be prepared to fight their way out of the cove—ideally before anymore warships arrived.
“But many enemies—many dragons—linger on Harvest Island,” Syla continued, heartened that nobody was trying to drown her out.
At least not yet. On one of the warships, an officer strode toward a cannon, pointing for crewmen to load it.
“We need your help to drive away the dragons and restore a shielder to protect the island and to make our kingdom whole again!”
A few people cheered on her own vessel, but on the warships blocking the way out of the cove… Syla couldn’t tell if the men were doing more than looking at her with skepticism. The officer at the cannon barked an order, and his crewman ignited the fuse.
Wreylith surprised her by springing from the wheelhouse.
Syla almost dropped the megaphone as she hurried to anchor herself to the dragon’s back.
As the cannon boomed, Wreylith flew over the cannonball’s arc.
It had been heading straight toward her and sailed over the wheelhouse, splashing down on the other side of the ship.
Good job dodging that. Syla looked back and caught Hixun’s men loading their cannons to return fire.
There will be others. Instead of flying away, Wreylith arrowed toward the warships. Actually, she was flying straight toward the officer who’d given the order to shoot.
“Don’t fire yet!” Syla called back to Hixun and held up a finger.
Wreylith crossed the cove so quickly that the officer, seeing his danger, didn’t have time to run far. More cannons boomed on his ship, forcing Wreylith to zigzag and fly up and down to avoid them, but she managed to reach the deck and pluck up the officer before he reached the door to the hold.
“Shoot!” someone cried, and archers fired at Wreylith.
The arrows bounced off her scales, but Syla, who had no scales, flattened herself to the dragon’s back and tried to make herself as small a target as possible.
Wreylith sank her fangs into the officer deeply enough to make him scream.
Syla winced. Wreylith didn’t snap the man in half but hurled him over the railing and far out into the sea beyond the cove.
Before leaving the area, she flew about, plucking up men at the cannons with her talons. She also tossed them into the sea.
An arrow glanced off Wreylith’s scales only a few inches from Syla’s leg.
Let’s go back to our ship, please, she said.
Wreylith roared, sounding like she was enjoying hurling their enemies into the water, but she did bank to fly back to the other ships.
Syla risked turning and raising the megaphone.
Again, she called to her magic, needing her power to help with what she’d had little practice doing before—leading people. Coercing people into following.
This time, as she spoke, the back of her hand warmed, and her moon-mark glowed silver.
“We will sail out of the cove, and you won’t try to stop us unless you want to irk my winged friend, but I implore you to consider what I said.
Ignore the lying usurper who thinks he’s taken my throne—I assure you I will return shortly for it—and join us in taking back Harvest Island.
Let the history books remember you as heroes who helped drive out the stormers and their dragons, not as puppets who obeyed someone who was never the rightful heir. ”
You are garrulous with your enemies, Wreylith observed as she landed again on the wheelhouse.
Hixun as well as a number of his crewmen were gaping at them.
I’m trying to remind them that they’re not our enemies. They should be our allies.
I sought to do the same.
You almost bit that officer in half before flinging him out into shark-infested waters.
Thus to convince him that it would be smarter to align with you than defy us.
I’m sure he’ll be thinking loving thoughts of alliances while the sharks are eating him alive.
If he cannot out-swim a few puny sharks, he is not a worthy ally.
The whale sharks around our islands can be sixty feet long.
But they eat plankton. It is the great blacks and razor-finned, both species which were tinkered with by the storm god, that one must be wary of. And they are rarely larger than twenty feet long.
So, they’re basically puny.
Compared to a dragon, certainly. I’ve eaten great blacks, though their flesh is not particularly delicious.
Not compared to horn hogs.
Oh, certainly not.
Booms came from one of the warships—the one Wreylith had denuded of a few of its officers.
“I guess that one isn’t going to join us,” Syla muttered.
Maybe none of them would.
“Your Majesty!” came Fel’s voice from the deck. The dinghies had arrived, and he was the first to surge over the railing and hurry to the wheelhouse. “As your bodyguard, I forbid you from charging toward manned cannons again.”
“We flew at them more than we charged,” Syla said.
Face red, Fel pointed at her. “If they’d had the presence of mind to shoot at you instead of your dragon, you’d be dead.”
“The flight wasn’t my idea. Just the speech.”
A cannonball splashed into the water two feet from the side of the Fanged Whale.
“Which was clearly effective.” Fel glared at Wreylith, as if all this were her fault.
Her golden eyes glowing, she lowered her neck so she could effectively glare back at Fel.
A testament to his frustration, he bared his teeth at the dragon instead of running away.
Syla placed what she hoped was a calming hand on Wreylith’s back in case she was thinking of tossing him overboard to see how he fared with the sharks.
Major Hixun dared to jog up, though he stayed back from the glaring match. “Everyone is on board, Your Majesty.”
He looked toward the vessels barricading the cove. Not all of them were firing—indeed, only the warship they’d visited was—but none of them had moved in invitation for the Fanged Whale to depart.
“It’s time to secure the shielder and sail away, Major,” Syla said.
“I don’t suppose you’d like to come down here and man the weapons platform.” Hixun waved to it in invitation.
“If it’s necessary, I will.” Again, Syla frowned at the thought of attacking ships in her own fleet, but they had to get to Harvest Island one way or another.
The effort it had taken Wreylith to fly to the cove with the shielder gripped in her talons ensured she wouldn’t be able to carry it all the way to another island.
“Good.” Hixun nodded, then jogged off to give his crew orders to depart.