Страница 89 из 121
The circling dots were plunging downward now. Rifles began to crack. The surviving machine guns on the parapet began to fire, as well, but the gryphons were smaller, faster, and far more agile targets. The men Janaki had insisted on arming with the more rapidly firing Model 7s were going to be far more effective than riflemen, but the shotguns were also much shorter ranged. The men armed with them had to wait for the gryphons to come to them.
"Remember, Sir." Janaki's eyes burned into Roth chan Skrithik's soul, and his hands slid down from the regiment-captain's shoulders to grip the front of his uniform tunic. "Remember—the dragons are the diversion. They won't risk them in close. They've lost too many. It's the cavalry. You've got to stop the cavalry. If you stop it, they'll break off the attack. They won't take additional losses—not this far from home. But if the cavalry gets through, gets inside the walls, it's over. You can't—"
He broke off suddenly, and his eyes dropped abruptly back into focus. They were suddenly once again the clear, gray eyes of a young man, not the eyes of an avatar of legends.
"It's here."
His voice had changed, too. It was almost—almost—normal again.
"Good luck, Sir," he said, and his hands locked on chan Skrithik's tunic. The regiment-captain's eyes just had time to begin to widen, and then Janaki picked him bodily up and threw him off the gun platform.
Chan Skrithik landed so hard, so awkwardly, he broke the bones in his left forearm into gravel.
He scarcely noticed the white-hot agony of those snapping, shattered bones. It was so small, so unimportant, in comparison.
Janaki chan Calirath never even turned his head. He was still looking at chan Skrithik when the gryphon he'd never seen with his physical eyes at all hit him from behind and killed him instantly.