Dragonfang Read Free Page B

‘you’ve been ensnared by a fairytale.’
    On the dragon’s back, riding in a sleek streamlined cockpit, were several armed warriors who grinned down at them. Each man was richly outfitted in the harness and accoutrements of battle, and small metal ingots that appeared to be insignia.
    Dropping from the sky above, a dozen more dragons came crashing into view, swarming in apparent chaos before quickly forming into aerial ranks. Each dragon trailed a net similar to the one that held Daretor and Zimak. In most of them small figures could be seen clutching the mesh, and wailing mournfully.
    ‘At least,’ said Zimak, ‘we’re not going to die immediately.’
    Meanwhile, Daretor was testing the strength of the mesh and looking for a way out. All too quickly he concluded that they were well and truly trapped – for now.
    The dragon squad flew at staggering speed towards a vast high wall of rock that towered above them for a hundred furlongs, its topmost pinnacle lost in dark swirling clouds. The noise of theleathery wings pounding the air was overwhelming. Every now and then, as if in triumph or ire, a dragon spewed forth a greenish gout of flame that seared the optic nerve and created a minor thunderclap as the air was annihilated.
    Nervously staring ahead, Zimak gulped. ‘Do you think they know what they’re doing?’
    Lit up by the three orbiting moons, the rock wall appeared unbroken; yet the dragon squad raced towards it with no sign of veering aside.
    Daretor shrugged. ‘It’s their world. Unless, of course, we’ve fallen into the hands of a tribe of lunatics.’
    ‘I’m always surrounded by them,’ Zimak said, miserably.
    Daretor pointed. ‘Steady yourself, Zimak – the wall is upon us!’
    Zimak steadied himself to scream yet again as the squadron shot towards a jagged rampart of rock that jutted from the wall, and which swelled quickly into view. Surely the dragons would dash themselves to pieces on the rock. But, at the last second, they banked hard and swerved around it, rocketing into a narrow canyon of sheer walls that revealed themselves at the last moment. The canyon, which disappeared above into dizzying heights and below into darkness, was barely wide enough to accommodate the dragons’ massive wingspans. The slipstream from the dragons in front and above sucked the air from the men’s lungs and violently buffeted the net, till they were sick, bruised and dazed.
    From time to time, they cast a look outwards to see the canyon walls blurring past. The speed of the dragons, not apparent in the open air, was here revealed as truly incredible, as was the precise nature of the flying. One small mistake would have dashed a dragon into a wall. Yet the entourage flew with nerveless disregard of the danger, deeper and deeper into the mountain.
    Occasionally, other canyons veered off at sharp angles, and into some of these a dragon sometimes darted, dragging its human cargo to whatever fate awaited it. At one point the canyon closed in tightly, a blank wall looming ahead. Zimak cried out, flinging his arms over his head.
    The dragon carrying them lunged abruptly upwards, towards a narrow cleft. Zimak peeked out and was sorry he did so, for the cleft was far too narrow for the dragon to pass.
    ‘We’re done for!’ he wailed.
    Daretor grunted, refusing to look away.
    The dragon banked steeply, turning almost sideways so that one wingtip pointed at the sky and the other at the dark canyon depths, before shooting through the cleft and levelling off on the other side.
    The view that greeted them was breathtaking. A vast crater, at least fifty miles from rim to rim, had been scooped from the earth by an aeons-old cataclysm. In the crater’s centre reared a single pinnacle of dark basalt, sheer and daunting for over five thousand feet.
    Carved into the pinnacle’s peak was a dark and foreboding castle. Its narrow turrets and battlements, thrusting upwards and outwards in a tumult of chaotic design, spewed