Ice Dragon

«Graduk patrol fliers! Three of them! And low, too!»

Blade followed the pointing finger and saw that the man was right. In a V-formation three swept-winged silver shapes were racing over the mountains and begi

The three machines were approaching too fast for there to be any hope of the boats scuttling back to shore in time to avoid them, if indeed the boats were their intended prey. They passed over the island barely a thousand feet up. Blade saw puffs of gray smoke rising above the rooftops of Tengran as alarm fires were ignited-or perhaps futile guns fired. Then, still in perfect formation, the three machines extended long ski-like undercarriages from beneath their fuselages and touched down as delicately as birds, in spite of their massive size and weight. They skated across the water like skimmed stones in feather clouds of spray, slowly losing speed and sinking deeper as they did so.

Even in the tension of the moment, Blade felt a brief surge of disappointment. From their shape, the whistle and roar as they came down, and the smell of the fumes blowing across the water from the exhaust nozzles, the Graduk machines seemed hardly more than jet-powered seaplanes. If this was typical of the «advanced science» of the Graduki, he found it hard to believe that they could be responsible for the electronics of the wands. But if not the Graduki or at least some among them, then who? He had thought he might be approaching the end of the mystery, but now it seemed to have suddenly whipped away out of sight. He felt like a man staggering along an endless tu

The three fliers had now turned completely around and were slowly approaching the boats. As they approached, Blade noticed turrets on top of each one turning slowly and training long black tubes on the boats. Then hatches opened in the gleaming metal flanks and helmeted men in blue uniforms, carrying smaller black tubes, climbed out on the wings. One of these men spoke through an amplifier, his harsh voice booming across the water.

«All right, we've got you surrounded. Throw your weapons over the side and row toward us.» Blade was reminded of Home Dimension policemen coping with an unruly mob, and the bellowing Graduki seemed to be producing much the same reaction among the people in the boats as policemen often did. These were now cursing openly, shaking their fists, hurling obscenities (but as yet nothing more solid) across the water at the blue figures. Far from throwing their weapons overboard, Blade saw some, Rena among them, fumbling for arrows or powder-horns.

Suddenly all the people in the five boats shouted together. From behind the flier that lay between them and the island, three more boats appeared, broad-beamed, many-oared craft in which the glint of weapons was clearly visible above the thrashing oars. But it was a shout that quickly turned into gasps and screams of horror, as the plane swung its turret sharply around and the black tube depressed and fired.

There was nothing visible in the air, but the patch of water toward which the tube was pointing leaped into the air like an erupting geyser in a spout of spray and steam. Seconds later the hiss of boiling water and the crackle of superheated air chased each other across the distance to Blade's ears. Their flying machines might be no better than Home Dimension's, but Graduk weaponry was clearly well beyond human practice, if not theory.

The boats slowed but did not stop. They continued to advance on the fliers, and now Blade saw men scurrying forward in each one and clustering around small ca

The men in the approaching boats and the people watching them hopefully had about thirty seconds to indulge those hopes. During those thirty seconds half a dozen of the blue-clad soldiers scrambled over the top of the nearest flier to the other wing, lined up, and aimed their tubes toward the boats. Blade swallowed, hoping he was wrong about what he saw coming.

He was not. With an ear-torturing crackle, both turret and soldiers opened fire together on the center boat. It was as if it had suddenly been dropped into the whirling blades of a buzz-saw. Amid the boil of steam and spray, Blade saw the hull part in the middle, the timbers on either side of the cut turning black in an instant. Men hurled themselves over the side, writhed in the boiling water, or whiffed out of existence in puffs of smoke as the invisible beam flicked across the decks of the two sinking portions. It touched the ca

The turret swung its heavy weapon to the next boat, while smaller flecks of steam and foam in the disturbed water around the sinking halves of the first one showed where the soldiers were picking off the survivors one by one with their lighter weapons. The turret beam chopped into the second boat, this time sweeping along its deck from fore to aft before swinging down to punch the hull open. As the screams of the burning men came across the water, something snapped in the watchers around Blade.

He heard Nilando scream, «No, you fools!» and then a dozen muskets went off around him and as many bowstrings twanged. One huge woodsman rose to his full height, whipped his axe up and over his head, and hurled it across the water at the soldiers on the nearest flier. It struck the wing with a sharp clang, bounced high, slid down the smooth metal, and vanished into the water of the lake. The woodsman clawed at his beard and swore.

Now more blue-clad soldiers were pouring out of all three fliers, and two of the three were turning their turret weapons toward the Tengran boats. Blade saw the third one caught in the middle of its frantic retreat, its oars sliced off one by one, as though a cruel schoolboy were pulling the legs and wings off a fly. Then he heard Nilando shouting again, his voice as close to panic as Blade had ever heard it, shouting at his people to stop. More muskets went off and Blade saw two of the soldiers drop to the wings and lie still, another one stagger and drop his weapon. Then Nilando swore a futile, incoherent oath, grabbed Rena by the arm, and jerked her over the side.

They had barely vanished when the crackle of the heatbeamers tore at Blade's ears again, louder than ever this time, and a hideous scream and the sudden smell of charred flesh made him swing around. The woodsman was falling, falling in two pieces; a beam had chopped through his body at one stroke. His torso toppled over the side with another scream and vanished in a churning blast of steam as another beam picked it off; his legs fell to the bottom of the boat and lay there, looking like something left after a fire in a butcher shop.

Then Blade realized that the beams were crackling all around him and other men and women were dying hideous deaths as the Graduk beammen picked them off one by one. The Irdnans were being used for target practice! Blade was filled with a fury as searing as the beams playing around him; at that moment he could have torn one of the beammen limb from limb without a second thought.

Instead he too snarled an oath and plunged over the side, on the side of the boat away from the fliers. The water bit ice-cold at his heated skin as he dove under, stroking himself far down until the bubbling and splashing as the beams tore into the surface of the water was far above him. He turned, even his capacious lungs begi