‘Oh!’ Fletcher laughed, nudging Athena downwards with a swift thought. ‘I forgot!’
‘I won’t be forgetting in a hurry,’ Lovett grumbled, rubbing Lysander’s tufted ears. ‘Lysander spent most of yesterday being poked and prodded by crystals to be distributed around the Empire. We had to stand beside Hannibal, Zacharias’s Wendigo, the entire time. That thing smelled riper than a gremlin’s loincloth.’
Within Fletcher’s backpack, Blue shifted, as if he recognised the word. Fletcher didn’t even know if gremlins were capable of speech, but he changed the subject quickly.
‘Why are we flying above the clouds?’ Fletcher asked. ‘Don’t we need to see the lay of the land?’
‘Actually, we’re lucky the day is so overcast,’ Lovett said, shaking her head at him. ‘There are thousands of orcs, gremlins, maybe even goblins, going about their day-to-day business below us. This is their territory now. If even one of them happened to see us flying above them, this mission would be over before it has even begun. No, we’ll be staying in cloud-cover until we reach the drop zone. You’ll be pretty safe there – the Celestial Corps scouts tell us it’s relatively uninhabited.’
Fletcher swallowed, the thick bank of clouds suddenly seeming an insubstantial barrier between him and the land below. Indeed, on occasion the mist thinned, giving him tantalising glimpses of mountainous terrain, all of it covered in an overgrown mass of greenery. He dreaded to think how long it would take them to make their way back, should the Celestial Corps fail to extract them. If they could even make it back at all.
For the first time, he noticed a short lance attached beneath the side of the saddle. It appeared rather like a jousting pole of the knights of old, but a little shorter and more robust. This one was painted with stripes of white and blue, with a fearsome metallic tip that glinted in the sunlight.
‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing at it.
‘A lance, what else?’ Lovett replied, tugging it from its holder and demonstrating by couching it under her arm. ‘When you’re fighting a Wyvern, the lance is the only thing that will pierce its hide, and even then, you’ll need some speed behind the blow.’
Fletcher shuddered at the thought of fighting so high up, riding on demons that clashed together in a flailing mess of wings and claws.
‘Sometimes you’ll get an unwelcome passenger drop in,’ Lovett continued, replacing the lance and removing a blade from a scabbard at her side. ‘Shrikes, Strixs or Vesps are the most common, smaller orc-flying demons, and if they get too close, you have to take them out with this.’
Fletcher recognised it to be a rondel dagger – a needlelike blade with disk-shaped guards on the top and bottom of the hilt to protect the wielder’s hands.
‘Of course, that’s forgetting all the battle-spells flying around,’ Lovett said, twirling the dagger with practised ease and returning it to her scabbard. ‘If you thought spellcraft was difficult before, just wait until you have to do it in a dogfight.’
Fletcher shuddered, and for the first time resented how quickly he had been put through Vocans. One year was not nearly enough time to learn all that summoning had to offer, nor to perfect the techniques that he had managed to learn.
He had been told that orc shamans had weaker demons in general, but he wondered if that was truth, or propaganda. After all, Wyverns were some of the most powerful demons in existence. Perhaps it was the demons that were sent against the front line that were weaker, and the more powerful demons were being held back. For now.
‘We’re following the river,’ Lovett shouted as the wind picked up and snatched at her words. ‘You’ll be dropped in a swamp that feeds into one of its sources. Won’t be long now!’
As if she had heard, Ophelia came to a halt at the head of the squadron. For a moment she hovered there, peering at the ground below, then she shot three wyrdlights into the sky in quick succession.
At the signal, Lysander folded back his wings and they dropped through the clouds like a falling arrow, hurtling through the air so fast that the wind tore at Fletcher’s eyes and face. He took in a brief blur of green landscape, then leaves were slapping across his legs and arms.
Lysander seemed to leap from branch to branch, each one springing down like a bent sapling, slowing their descent to the point of breaking, only to be released as he moved on to the next. Finally, when Fletcher thought it would never end, there was a soft thud as the Griffin’s claws tore into the soil, skidding along the top and leaving four furrows behind them. They came to a halt moments before hitting a tangled patch of thorny briars.
‘Now that’s what I call a quick descent,’ Lovett whooped, punching the air with her fist. Fletcher felt Sylva slowly roll off Lysander’s back, collapsing on the ground with her legs akimbo, still conformed to the shape of the saddle.