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  But some of her "specials" were simply ungodly. Abominations that turned his stomach. And while most of them required too much power, or time, to have truly become common, she had been promising a "new breakthrough" soon.

  He had therefore met one of her avatars at a refugee camp in the southern Briton isles. The south had been relatively easy to overrun, but the north still held out stubbornly, holding onto small glens and highlands that were monstrously difficult to maneuver in. The ancient fortresses that dotted the landscape, many of which had been rebuilt by reenactors prior to the Fall, were an additional challenge. Then there was the stubborn nature of the defenders. They seemed to positively relish fighting all the forces he had sent against them. If he was to use Celine's "specials" anywhere, it was to be against the damnable Gael.

  The refugee camp was standard, a long curtain palisade with a collection of wooden huts. The refugees were fed and sorted out, most of the men and some of the women ending up going through the Change process. The basic process was designed to produce beings that were more suited to the post-Fall world. They were sturdier and stronger than standard humans with some innate skills. That, at least, had been the basic specifications. He had added, to his continued dismay, a suggestion for "aggression" so they would make better soldiers.

  The humans in the line to be Changed had to be bound and guarded by soldiers. As he watched, a woman darted forward and tried to drag a man out of the line, only to be clubbed to the ground by the guards. One of them picked her up by her hair and dragged her down the line to a farther hut, part of the barracks complex for the guards. The man she had tried to grab slumped to his knees but was clubbed and then dragged forward by more guards.

  "Chansa," Celine answered, also watching the byplay. She turned to him, her black eyes bright and smiled. "You look so glum, Chansa. It's not as if they're being eaten or something."

  "Where did they take the girl?" Chansa asked, knowing in his heart the answer.

  "How should I know?" Celine smiled. "I don't keep up with every little operational detail."

  "You had something to show me?" Chansa ground out.

  "Over this way," the avatar waved, leading him back behind the Change rooms from which roars of pain could be heard. In most of the huts the humans were being Changed into the forms that were the basic sword-fodder of the legions. But Celine had thoroughly let herself go and there were other huts for "specialties." Armies needed soldiers. But they also needed construction workers, servants, medical personnel and other specialties. In the secondary huts each of the base humans was transformed to a more "suitable" shape. At the same time their original memories were removed, so that they wouldn't be depressed by the conditions of this Fallen time, and replaced with simple operational instructions, training on how to live in this new world.

  There were paddocks behind the huts where the newly made Changed stumbled into the world. They were thin and scrawny and often had to be kept from killing each other, but he knew that with a diet heavy in protein—and he often wondered where some of that protein came from—they would flesh out into tough, if undisciplined, fighters. Two of the new Changed charged each other as he watched and more mature ones that had been posted as guards closed on them, clubbing them with fists and tearing at them with their talons until the two half-dead fighters were separated.

  Back behind the area was a section designated for women and children who had not been subject to the Change. Children were simply too fragile, with insufficient internal reserve of energy, to be Changed and at least some women had to be left to manage them.

  He saw more guards wandering in the area, some of them going in and out of the huts and as he passed behind one he heard a whimpering shriek from the interior. The "refugee" camps were managed by Celine and if he had his way he'd change that. But since it was beyond his power to correct, he tried not to think about it. This extended walk was making that hard. He closed his ears to the sound of cries, some of them from children, as Celine led him to a much larger hut.

  "As you know, we've been unable to find a home for most of the female refugees," Celine said. "They are of limited utility in this world. And the children are nothing but a resource drain. But I think I've finally found a solution."

  Inside the hut there was a ring of guards around a small group of people. One male, a female who might or might not have been his wife, and three children ranging in age from a skinny, feverish-looking toddler to a girl just under puberty. One of Celine's acolytes was in the room as well and as soon as the two avatars appeared he began to mouth nonsense syllables.

  A globe formed around the group and the air around them filled with light, presumably from nannite interaction. Suddenly the air was split by screams of pain which dwindled and changed into pure rage. When the globe cleared, standing in the center was a thing. As large as Chansa and if anything broader. The beast was heavy bellied with a piglike face and long, curved tusks. His arms dangled nearly to its bowed knees and his fingers and toes were tipped by razor sharp talons. He was definitely, even disgustingly, male, with an enormous penis and a large scrotal sack. He looked around the room and lunged at the doorway but was stopped by an energy field. The beast struck at the invisible shield repeatedly with fist and shoulder, bellowing in fury, until the acolyte spoke again and the monster settled into a quiescent state that, nonetheless, radiated rage.

  "Where . . ." Chansa said and then cleared his throat. He didn't want to ask the question, knowing in his heart the answer, but he found himself unable to stop. "What happened to the people?"

  "The male was used as the nucleus for my newest creation," Celine said with a beatific smile, stepping forward to stroke her hands over the monster; her avatar passed through the field since it had been keyed for flesh and blood alone. "His internal energy was also used. As was that of the other resources. And their material was added to his. Perfect. Flawless," she said, stroking the creature on its arm. "The penis is fully functional, and he can reproduce with human females, assuming they survive the experience. The offspring . . . well, my models have several potential outcomes. I'm looking forward to empirical data."

  "Celine, even for you . . ." Chansa said, then pulled himself up. "This is madness."

  "Paul said that he wanted horror," Celine replied, turning to look at him as she stroked the creature's arm. Her eyes were bright and mad. "I can do horror."

  "Yes," Chansa replied. "That you can." He tried to consider the situation objectively but could not. And, strangely enough, it was not the image of the family disappearing that kept coming back to him, but the woman being dragged away by her hair.

  He wished that he could delude himself, as Paul did, that what they were doing was good, was just, was right. But he could not. He had long ago concluded that it was an evil beyond redemption, a force of ill more powerful than the world had ever known. He knew that he had dug himself into a hellish pit that it might never be possible to dig out of. And he knew what had brought him here: delight in power.

  Each taste of it had been like a drug to him so he had clawed his way up until, with Paul's help, he was a council member. But with each step on the ladder, as an inspector, as a special inspector, as an associate council member, a web of responsibility, checking that power, had woven around him, taking some of the heady drug away. When Paul presented him with the ability to throw off those webs, as if they were truly gossamer, he had taken it, knowing full well with whom he had allied.

  And it had led to this.

  If they won the war, if Paul managed to survive, if they could . . . weed certain members of the Council, Celine with her monsters, Reyes with his girls and his whips and his knives and, most especially, the Demon, if they could choose the right people to take the Keys of the Freedom Coalition, maybe they could dig out.

  Which meant winning. And that meant using, yes, every weapon at their disposal. Even Celine. Even this . . . monstrosity.

  "It's magnificent."

  * * *

  "The
y're magnificent," Rachel sighed.

  Herzer shook his head as the dragons winged in to a landing on Raven's Hill.

  "You're joking, right?" he asked. "I see what you meant about the surprise."

  There were six of them, four with riders and two riderless. Five of them were wyverns, which, unlike the classic "dragon," had two powerful hind legs and a vast span of wings to support their flight. Wyverns were nonsentient and trainable, barely. They had something of the intelligence, and personality, of horses. If, of course, horses ate flesh instead of grass and needed to consume close to their own body weight in food every day. Their bodies were also the size of a large horse but their wings, even folded, took up more cubic meters than their bodies. When opened, the batlike wings spread some thirty meters to either side.

  The one on the end, though, was a true dragon. Four legs, long neck, massive wings, large enough to overshadow the five wyverns. Dragons had been developed slightly before the elves and were sentient beings, with all the rights, and responsibilities, of humans. But further creation was halted shortly after the AI wars in reaction to the various horrors of that war. Afterwards there had been a brief population increase but over the succeeding two thousand years the race had dwindled away to almost nothing.

  And here was one landing in Raven's Mill. Apparently with the purpose of flying them down to the sea. And then accompanying the expedition to the Isles.

  "You have got to be joking," Daneh repeated for him. She was still puffing from the trip up the hill and now looked at their "rides" with total befuddlement. "Tell me we're not riding those down to Newfell."

  "Okay, I won't," Edmund said, chuckling. "But you might want to start climbing on."

  "Cool," Rachel said, then looked more closely at the True dragon. "Excuse me, Miss Dragon?"

  "The name is Joanna," the dragon said, lowering her head down to Rachel's level. Despite a mouth full of very long teeth she had flexible lips and a mobile tongue that permitted quite clear speech. "Joanna Gramlich. Most humans have a hard time telling dragon sexes. How did you know?"

  "We saw you at Marguerite's birthday party," Herzer interjected. "So you're now part of the Freedom Coalition? That is wonderful to hear."

  "That is a long story," the dragon replied acerbically. She had a fairly high-pitched voice that still rumbled. It was a tough trick. "I prefer to use the term 'independent contractor.' Duke Edmund prefers the term 'mercenary.' "

  "A mercenary dragon?" Rachel gasped. "Why?"

  "Do you know how much food it takes to run this damned form?" the dragon said. "I was caught like this by the Fall. I got really tired of trying to catch my own food."

  "Joanna works for room and board and a fairly high salary, which she takes in gold and gems," Edmund noted dryly.

  "And don't forget combat bonuses," Joanna said.

  "I won't. But this is a diplomatic mission."

  "Sure. Like it's going to stay that way with you around. Are we going to sit here jawing all day or are you ready to go? I can take two. I'd prefer the females; they look lighter. One of the wyvern riders can double up with the duke. I hope the big boy can stay on wyvern-back."

  "I don't know," Herzer temporized. "How do you control it?"

  "Don't try," Joanna snapped. "It will follow me; it knows who the pack-momma is. Just strap in and hang on."

  Herzer hefted his bag and walked over to the wyvern, looking up at it askance. The body wasn't much longer than a horse, but the giant legs bulked it to nearly twice the weight and three times the height. The "saddle" was a pad on the back, held in place by double straps running from the neck back to the legs; the wings attached all the way down the rest of the body. There were four reins that ran up to the beast's head but Herzer knew darn well that he had no idea what they were for.

  The skin of the body was smooth with small, pebbly scales like a lizard, and it was clear that the wyverns derived most of their genes from lizards. The wing skin, on the other hand, was almost scaleless and what could be seen seemed more like a bat's. There wasn't much to be seen of it because the way the wings folded and refolded, most of the open skin was folded under the flight bones.

  The wyvern turned its short neck to the side and glared at him out of one baleful, and very human-looking, eye. After a moment it made a sound, something like a very large dove, which sounded either questioning or querulous. Or, probably, both. Or so it seemed to Herzer.

  "Hi," someone said, walking up behind him. It was one of the wyvern-riders, and Herzer started when he realized that it was a she. In their leather uniforms and helmet it was hard to distinguish sex at any sort of distance. "I'm Vickie. Let's get you strapped up."

  "O-kay," Herzer said. "Where do I put this?" he asked, holding up his bag. He'd packed one spare uniform and some light clothes including a bathing suit someone had dredged up in his size.

  "Don't ask Joanna, or you might not like the answer," Vickie said with a smile. She took the bag and stepped nimbly up the wyvern's legs to the top where she attached the bag just behind the saddle. The dragon made another questioning sound and shifted the leg she was standing on at which she slapped it on the side. "Shut up, Chance."

  "The way this works is you lie down on his back. Don't try to sit up. It looks great in pictures and it works like shit in reality. See the slots on the side?"

  "Yup," Herzer replied. He'd been giving the harness a good look. "How do I handle the reins?"

  "Like Joanna said, don't," Vickie replied. "I'll hook them up, though. The top reins are for up, the bottom reins, which hook to your feet, are for down. Pull right with the top reins to go right, left reins to go left. Don't try to do a stoop, you won't like it."

  "What's a stoop?"

  "If you don't know what it is, you don't want to try it. Just hang on and don't mess with the reins. Chauncey will follow us just fine as long as you don't mess with anything."

  She waited as he climbed up the wyvern, then attached straps across his thighs. There were clear grab straps on the front but the only thing actually holding him on were the thigh straps. She finished by hooking the bottom reins onto his boots and pushing the top reins, which were one continuous circuit of leather, under his body.

  "The worst part about riding dragon-back is learning to keep your legs still. You go and stretch and this bad boy is going to head for the ground like a falcon. Got it?"

  "Got it," Herzer said settling his body in the seat. He was glad he hadn't brought his armor; it would have been very uncomfortable. "Is it Chance or Chauncey?" he asked.

  "It's Chauncey," Vickie admitted. "I call him Chance for short."

  "What's taking so long, Vickie?" Joanna bellowed and Herzer realized everyone else was already mounted. "You're supposed to be mounting him up, not arranging a mounting!"

  Vickie looked at him with a dyspeptic expression. "Gotta go."

  "See ya." Herzer grinned, wriggling closer into the seat. "We'll arrange the other some other time."

  Vickie chuckled and patted him on the butt as she climbed down.

  "Thanks, but I don't go both ways," she said as she jumped nimbly to the ground.

  "Pity," Herzer muttered as he watched her mount her wyvern. As soon as she was on, Joanna spread her wings and with a massive blast of wind, lifted off the hill and swept down over the river.

  Chauncey was apparently well trained because with a bound that caused Herzer's neck to snap back he leapt forward and upward into the air, following the larger dragon. Immediately the air was filled with wings as the formation of dragons reached for the sky.

  For a moment it was all that Herzer could do to control his vomit reaction. The combination of the height and the up and down motion of the wyvern as it got up air speed was sickening. But after that brief spasm he found himself caught up in the spectacular view. The dragons were making a curving climb to the right that carried them first out over the Shenan River, which glittered in the early morning light, then over the town of Raven's Mill itself. Looking around he realized
that they were already higher than Massan Mountain. As he thought that he grabbed the straps because the wyvern suddenly stopped flapping. For a moment he thought something had gone wrong but it was just a glide period as the formation turned towards the mountain across the river.

  As they passed back over Raven's Hill Herzer felt an upward motion that wasn't from the dragon and realized that they had passed over a thermal. Apparently to take advantage of it the dragons began their slow wing-beats again and they rapidly gained height until they lost the thermal and ceased flapping. They crossed the river at a gentle glide and Herzer had to wonder where they were going. The ocean was to the east but they were going west.

  Just as he really started to get worried, it wasn't impossible that New Destiny might have co-opted this "mercenary" dragon to kidnap Duke Edmund and his family, they passed over Massan Mountain and hit another, much stronger thermal.

  This was, apparently, what Joanna had been looking for because she began a climb at the end of the mountain, in the midst of the thermal, and the dragons seemed to rocket into the air under the power of their wings and the much greater energy of the rising air.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Daneh had ceded Rachel the front seat on Joanna's back and Rachel had initially been quite happy with that. She was looking forward to flying dragon-back. However, shortly after climbing on, as the dragon muttered various imprecations about sharp shoes, she rethought her position. For one thing, while she wouldn't have preferred to have the view to the front blocked by her mother's buttocks, it was now hers that were directly in view. What was worse, she badly needed to pass wind. The change in altitude, the frisson of fear on the lift-off, the whole experience was causing her internals to rearrange quite disastrously. And while she and her mother had had some tough times, gassing in her face was not going to be anything but killer embarrassing.