Stormdragons

Chapter 12

The dragon only looked at Joe once. As they began their descent, he turned his massive head and fixed Joe with a baleful stare.

Joe's heart missed a beat. Was the creature hungry? If only I wasn't wearing a sweater and a thick jacket, he thought. If only the dragon could see that I was all skin and bone. But Joe was too tired for terror. His adventures had drained him of energy and left him light-headed. He spoke to the dragon in a deadpan voice.

'Everything they say about teenage boys is true. We eat junk food, we don't wash, we suffer from pimples and athletes' foot,' he said. 'Eat me and you're guaranteed to get bad breath and indigestion.'

The dragon didn't even blink. It swung its great head forward once more and altered the angle of its wings. Joe flattened himself against its neck as a gradual descent turned into a dive.

'Okay dragon, no need to show off,' he said.

They were no longer flying over water but travelling over a parched land of sandy desert and rocky plains. Eventually, much to his relief, Joe saw signs of civilization. Fields dotted the floor of the valleys. Cultivated terraces traced the sides of the hills. Dusty tracks wound their way between groves of palm trees. There were bridges over rivers, too, and clusters of houses built of clay or stone. Joe even saw a town with narrow streets and gold-topped minarets.

Sometimes the dragons flew low enough for Joe to make out individual houses and people going about their business. The reaction of the people below was confusing. In the towns people pointed upwards excitedly. In the countryside they shook their fists and dragged their children out of sight. Joe soon found out why.

As they approached a farm on the side of a hill, the dragon ahead of him dipped its left wing and began to swoop. A small boy minding goats began to run, hurrying his flock into the creek. The farmer pulled the nearest cow towards the stable. The remaining cattle broke into a panic-stricken run, bellowing and bumping into each other. The dragon flew low. At the last second it threw back its wings, extended its talons and snatched a fully-grown cow off the ground. Joe saw the poor creature's eyes wide with terror and heard its last, mournful cry. The dragon broke its neck with all the ease of a gardener topping the head off a dandelion.

Now the dragon to which he clung made the same arcing dive. Joe shut his eyes. There was a whoosh and a faint thud. Joe cringed and looked down to see the tail and back legs of a cow dangling below the dragon's scaly belly.

'At least,' he murmured to himself, 'I'm not going to be the main course.'

Apparently unconcerned at carrying several hundred kilos of cow, the dragons flew on into the mountains. For the first time, they issued sounds from their long throats, high-pitched cries which echoed eerily from peak to peak.

Joe heard answering cries and soon other dragons came into view. Three or four were circling lazily over a jagged ridge. More appeared as Joe's dragon swept down into a canyon. Half-a-dozen stood with their wings-folded in front of caves or underneath rocky overhangs. A few slept on ledges, their necks curled under one wing like wild geese.

As the dragons steepened their angle of descent, Joe gripped the leathery scales tight in his hands. They were coming in to land. Joe told himself to buckle his safety belt and to put his seat in an upright position.

The silent, grim-faced horsemen led Clare, Spud and Mac away from the shore. Spud protested at being made to hurry and was thumped across the shoulder for complaining. He carried on muttering away under his breath but even he fell silent as they struggled through the soft sand. After a mile or so the ground became firmer and they found themselves walking on a dusty track.