Valor wings, p.11
Valor Wings, page 11
The beam that Galahad was leashed to had cracked and was now resting precariously on what seemed to be barely more than a splinter of wood. Above them, rain pelted in from a large hole in the roof. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to quench the fire, which raged on stronger than ever.
“Galahad!” Iris cried over the noise of the fire and rain. “If you can fly, I think you might be able to pull your chain free where the wood is weaker there.”
Iris grabbed the harness to help herself scramble onto Galahad’s back, then held out her hand to Maud. “Come on!”
“I don’t know,” Maud said nervously.
“I thought you said you weren’t afraid of dragons?”
Maud looked around, evidently trying to come up with another plan. “I’m not. It’s the falling-off part that scares me.”
“It’s the only way!” Iris said. “But we don’t have long.”
Another large, burning beam thudded to the ground nearby, sending sparks flying. Maud dashed toward Galahad. She grabbed Iris’s hand and catapulted herself onto his back behind Iris.
“Hold on!” Iris said.
Maud wrapped her arms tightly around the girl’s waist.
“Now, Galahad!” Iris shouted.
With a sickening lurch, Galahad used his powerful hind legs to launch them off the ground. They wobbled in midair as he unfurled his wings to their full length and beat them uncertainly at first, then more confidently. The chain slowly slipped up the beam toward the weakened section as Galahad rose higher and higher.
“You’re doing it!” Iris encouraged him.
The entire barn groaned in protest as Galahad pulled against the weakened beam. Below, the fire churned hotter, fanned into a fury by the beating of the dragon’s wings. Iris could barely stand the heat of its flames on her face as Galahad struggled to free himself. It was going to be a near thing, she knew. Then finally, with a terrible cracking noise, they lurched backward. The chain had come loose at last!
“Fly!” she screamed, and buried her face against Galahad’s scaly neck. Seconds later, the dragon and girls exploded through the destroyed roof in a shower of orange sparks. A clamor of groans and screeches came from below as the barn finally succumbed to the flames. Iris felt the welcome patter of cool rain on her skin and raised her head. Far below, dark figures pointed up at them from the edges of the burning structure. The last standing wall of the barn leaned inward, then fell.
It was over. Galahad was free.
The first thing Max’s brain registered was darkness. Then a dull ache in his head that seemed to radiate out from the base of his skull. It was almost enough to make him want to retreat back into unconsciousness.
Jamie! Plum!
The names floated up from the recesses of his mind. With enormous effort, Max shoved aside the pain and wrestled through the cobwebs clinging to his brain.
He jerked awake with a gasp and found himself lying flat on his back, staring up at the underside of a canopy of trees. His head throbbed painfully. The green leaves overhead bobbed and moved rhythmically. Or maybe he was moving. He couldn’t tell. He tried to sit up but found himself tied down. The first thought that rang through his head was I’ve been captured by Germans!
“Well, look who’s awake,” came Jack’s voice. He spoke in a low voice, for which Max was thankful due to his splitting headache.
Max tilted his chin up and back. There was Jack, grinning down at him and carrying whatever Max was lying on.
“Sorry to have to restrain you, mate,” Jack said. “Couldn’t have you rolling off and into the trees on your own during our march. You know, if you’d needed a nap, all you had to do was say so.”
“Where’s Jamie?” Max croaked.
“Right here, Max,” came Jamie’s voice from nearby.
Still feeling groggy, Max let his head loll to one side and saw Jamie being transported on a makeshift stretcher.
Jamie tried to smile, but it ended up looking more like a grimace. On the ground between them, Plum pranced and yipped excitedly at seeing Max awake.
Max attempted to lift his arm to wave at her before remembering he was tethered in place. The gentle swaying motion from their march was making him queasy. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and groaned.
“You’ll be wanting to lie still for a bit, I expect,” Jack said, as if reading his mind. “Nasty business that, with the Me-109. But you came out on top with nothing worse than a whopper of a bruise on your head.”
“What happened? All I remember is the plane and then . . . nothing.”
“Let’s put it this way,” Jack said. “The stretcher you’re strapped to was once the wing of a German Messerschmitt. It’s not exactly going to be needing it anymore.”
Max’s eyes went wide. “You mean, Jamie hit it?”
“In one shot,” Jack said, and whistled appreciatively. “Not a bad bit of shooting there, though I wouldn’t recommend making a habit of it. He’d have punched his ticket into the great beyond if not for a little luck of the literary persuasion.”
Max wasn’t sure what Jack meant by that. He studied Jamie. The soldier’s shirt was torn back, and white bandages were wrapped tightly around his torso. A large, angry-looking bruise was visible around the edges of the bandages. Despite the obvious injury to Jamie’s body, he realized something was missing. “Why isn’t there any blood?”
“Because that bruise you see isn’t the only souvenir Jamie got from your little skirmish,” Jack replied. “Want to show him, Jamie?”
With a grunt, Jamie felt around on his right side and held up a small object. It took Max a few seconds to register what he was looking at. It was the book Jamie’s sister had given him, only now it had a jagged shard of metal embedded in its cover. “Is that a . . . ?” His voice trailed off, not quite believing what he was seeing.
“Fragment of a machine gun shell?” Jack finished for him. “Best we can figure, it shattered on the road in front of him and caught him in the chest on the rebound. Still had enough force to punch him backward several feet. Hit him right over the heart. If it hadn’t been for that book, well . . .”
Max gulped, his head feeling suddenly woozy again at the realization of how narrowly they both had escaped death.
“Iris is going to kill me when she sees what I did to her book,” Jamie said.
Jack raised one eyebrow. “Somehow I think she’ll get over it.”
“And, Max,” Jamie said, searching the boy’s face, “you’re . . . okay?”
Max closed his eyes to assess how he was feeling. “I think so, other than my head pounding and feeling sore all over.” He opened his eyes and searched for his dog again. “What about Plum?”
Hearing her name, the dog yipped happily and tried to hop up next to Max to lick his face.
Jack laughed. “Fit as a fiddle, I’d say.”
“Well, as soon as I’m feeling better,” Max said, “she and I will have a long talk about never doing anything like that ever again.”
“Don’t be too hard on her,” Jamie said. “If it wasn’t for her sharp hearing, the rest of our unit might have been spotted. We’ve managed to elude the Germans so far, but they can’t be very far behind.”
A muffled command to halt came from somewhere ahead and they stopped moving.
“Oi!” Jack said to the soldier carrying the front of Max’s makeshift stretcher. “Let’s set him down here.”
The men gently set their patient on the ground beside a large oak tree. Jack then started working on the ropes that had been used to keep Max’s body in place. “Think you can sit up?” he asked Max. “You’ll probably be wanting a little water by now.”
Max nodded. His throat felt like he’d swallowed a handful of sand. As the tethers came loose around him, he edged up onto his elbows. Why did his entire body ache so badly? He waited for a wave of dizziness to pass before sitting up all the way and taking a long drink from the canteen offered to him. Plum immediately crawled into his lap and squirmed happily while he hugged her tight with his free arm.
“Need a little help?” Jack asked.
Max lowered the canteen and looked across at Jamie struggling to sit up.
“I think so,” Jamie replied, pressing his hand against his chest. “Maybe . . . give me a minute though.”
When Jamie indicated he was ready, Jack gently slid his arms under Jamie’s shoulders and helped haul him into a sitting position. Max could tell the pain must be excruciating, but Jamie closed his eyes and focused on taking in long, slow breaths.
Not trusting himself to walk yet, Max crawled through the leaves on the forest floor toward Jamie with his forehead creased in concern. “Here, you can have some of mine,” Max offered, holding out the canteen to Jamie.
Jamie nodded and took it gratefully. He tipped his head back, poured the cool water carefully into his mouth, and took a tentative swallow. Then he coughed, spitting most of the mouthful onto the ground. “It even hurts to drink,” he said, and chuckled, only to wince again. “And laugh.”
“My grandmother says that pain is your body’s way of telling you it’s healing,” Max said. “So I guess it’s sort of a good thing, in a way.” The boy’s eyes fell when he mentioned his grandmother.
“I can tell you really miss her,” Jamie said.
Max nodded, then bit his lip and blinked fiercely.
“Well, she sounds like a very wise lady,” Jamie said. Just then his stomach emitted a loud growl. “And what do you think she would say about grumbling stomachs?”
“Probably that it’s your body’s way of telling you it’s time to eat,” Jack replied. “Unfortunately, we ran out of rations yesterday morning. We’ve been surviving on what we’ve been able to forage from the forest, which isn’t much.”
“When did we leave the main road?” Jamie asked.
“Early last night,” Jack replied. “Narrowly missed being spotted by a German convoy. They’ve got us fairly surrounded now. Fortunately, we found this road—if you can call it that—heading generally in the direction of the coast.”
Max heard a crunch of leaves off to his right. Major Stevenson emerged through the trees, striding purposefully back toward them.
“You’re both awake,” he said to Jamie and Max. “That’s excellent news.” He turned and addressed the unit. “We’ll stop here for a brief rest before we press on. I’m afraid we have to keep moving to keep ahead of the Germans.”
When Stevenson had left, Jack turned back to Jamie. “Anything we can get for you? More water? Some beef Wellington with red wine sauce?”
Jamie humphed softly at this and winced, clutching his chest again. “Actually, I was hoping Max might be able to read a little of his story to us.” He held up his own book with the metal shard embedded in its cover. “I don’t think mine’s in any shape to read anymore.”
Max looked up, surprised. “Um . . . I, are you sure? It’s just, it’s not all that good.”
“Come on, Max, let’s have it,” Jack urged. “I’d wager you’re a far better writer than you let on.” He retrieved Max’s journal for him and handed him a small flashlight. “Here you are, mate. Just keep the light hooded in case there are any German scouts nearby.”
Max nodded and directed the flashlight down at his lap, where it cast a yellow circle on the open page. Another young soldier joined them. His name was Boone, but he’d quickly earned the nickname “Boo” because he had a tendency to jump at the slightest provocation. Boo drew his legs close to his body and lowered his chin to his knees expectantly.
Max flipped to the first page, then glanced up at his audience, feeling his neck flush with embarrassment. Jamie smiled encouragingly, and Max took a deep breath as he lowered his eyes to the page: “Once upon a time, there lived a man named Sebastian who had a gift possessed by no other man. For Sebastian could speak to dragons.”
Soon, Max was once again lost in the story, his mind carried away on dragon’s wings into the quest to defeat the evil wizard. From time to time, his peripheral vision registered a form moving out of the deepening night to join their small group and listen. By the time he stopped reading and finally looked up, he was startled by what he saw.
Nine men . . . ten . . . no, the entire unit sat quietly in a semicircle in front of him, their tired but attentive faces waiting expectantly for what came next. All the crushing tension of their forced march—the constant fear of Germans, the sore and blistered feet, the lack of sleep and food—seemed to be forgotten under the trance of the story.
His story.
Max could hardly believe it. If there was any magic still left in the world, he reflected, then surely this was it.
Jack’s voice came out of the dark, breaking the spell. “Well, you can’t jolly well stop there. Does our chap Sebastian escape or not?”
Max laughed. “I haven’t quite figured out how the story ends yet, but there’s a little more.” He had just opened his mouth to continue reading when a bloodcurdling scream knifed out of the dark.
Sitting astride Galahad, Iris watched the rush of activity around the inferno below. Despite the steady rain, the remains of the barn continued to burn. The dragon slowly circled the pillar of smoke that rose into the night.
“Now what?” Maud asked behind her, clinging tightly to Iris’s waist.
“Now we take you home before Galahad and I go look for the dragons.”
“No way,” Maud protested. “I promised to help. And I’m going to. Anyway, they’ll have alerted half the village by now. Anywhere you try to land, they might have someone waiting to capture or even shoot Galahad.”
Maud was right. After all they’d gone through to free the dragon, Iris couldn’t risk him being recaptured now. “But my supplies. I lost them in the fire. We don’t even have anything to eat.”
“We’ll figure something out,” Maud said. “Just promise not to drop me.”
Iris smiled at the girl’s indomitable spirit. “Okay then. Let’s go find some dragons.”
Galahad beat his wings, propelling them forward, and their journey into the north began. Iris wasn’t exactly sure how fast the dragon could fly, but her father had said the journey north was a few days on foot. She judged that might be only some hours’ time by air. Then the real search would begin. She felt her heart thump a double beat. Even if they found the dragons, would they be in time to save their brothers?
“We’re . . . flying,” Maud half whispered behind her after a time.
Iris glanced over her shoulder. On the heels of their narrow escape from the fire, she hadn’t allowed herself the time to enjoy the sense of awe her friend was feeling. The wind whipping through their hair. The sense of complete freedom. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
Iris stared into the impenetrable blackness of the night sky ahead, wondering what lay waiting there for them. Far below, the occasional light shone from a lonely farmhouse as the hours slid by. Maybe inside each of those homes, someone was staring up at the sky, worrying about a brother or a son away in the war. The war had torn so many families apart. But at the same time, it had brought together many unrelated people into a sort of makeshift family united by their common fears and worries.
Suddenly, Galahad shuddered and seemed to falter. “I-is he okay?” Maud asked as her arms tightened around Iris’s middle.
“I’m . . . not sure,” Iris said. She leaned forward so he could hear her. “Galahad, is something wrong?”
A series of rumbles came from his throat in reply.
“He says he’s feeling a little tired,” she translated for Maud’s benefit. Iris rubbed his neck encouragingly. “We’ll get you some rest soon.”
By the time the first traces of dawn lit the sky, Galahad’s head visibly drooped as he flew, and his breathing grew increasingly labored. She knew he couldn’t go on much longer.
“There’s the ocean!” Maud said, pointing up ahead to where the first rays of the sun glinted on a golden strip of water.
As they arced over the shore, Iris studied the lonely coastline, thinking it was the perfect sanctuary for a herd of dragons. Galahad shuddered beneath her again, and she stroked his neck soothingly. For now, their search would have to wait.
“Let’s land there,” she called to Galahad, and pointed to an open stretch of sand.
Once Galahad had thumped down onto the beach, Iris quickly scrambled off and came around to his head. The dragon’s golden eyes seemed dimmer somehow. Her heart squeezed in her chest, seeing him like this. She examined the shoreline and spotted a sheltered bower big enough for a dragon to curl up and rest. After helping Maud down, she led Galahad there. He crumpled to the ground and immediately closed his eyes. Iris sat by his side and stroked his neck until his labored breathing settled into the even patterns of sleep.
“Do you think he’s sick?” Maud asked quietly, coming up to kneel beside Iris. “Maybe it’s the emotional trauma of being kept in captivity for so long?”
“Maybe . . .” Iris said uncertainly. Whatever it was, she hoped some rest would do him good.
It was Galahad who woke her sometime later. Iris sat up quickly, initially disoriented. She brushed sand from her cheek from where she’d fallen asleep and looked around, remembering their mission. The sky was slate gray. The best she could tell, it was already late afternoon. She was surprised they had all slept so long.
The dragon nuzzled playfully into her neck.
“You seem to be feeling better!” Iris said, and laughed with relief.
Galahad rumbled a reply from deep in his throat.
Maud pushed herself up on one arm where she’d been lying nearby. “What’s he saying?”
“That he’s starving!” Iris said. Overhead, a distant peal of thunder drew her gaze back to the sky. Dark clouds scudded slowly in from the north.
Addressing the dragon, Iris said, “I know, and I’m so sorry. Only, I’m anxious to use whatever daylight we have left to start our search. And at the very least, we might find somewhere to shelter from this storm. Do you feel up to flying?”
