Chapter 95 - Dartwing

The dartwing must have spotted us as well, because it suddenly cut at a right angle, heading south. Far in the distance, I could see heat shimmering off great dunes that our buggies would never be able to handle. The dartwing’s enormous, bat-like wings cast a silhouette against the sky as it turned, and its long body undulated like a sky banner. Sourtooth was right, this wouldn’t be like trapping night haunts. This thing was massive. Maybe not as heavy as the thundercleave, but long and sinuous, despite the presence of feathers. It looked more like a winged serpent than a bird, and I started to wonder if the ‘dart’ in its name referred more to the shape of its body than its weaponized quills.

Maybe it was both. I cast a look over at the sour old orc. Between their name for the world, the names they had for creatures, and the name of our team captain in his esteemed self, I got the feeling that orcs were very literal namers.

Sourtooth leaned his bike into a turn to match the dartwing’s new trajectory and the rest of our convoy followed him.

I did a check around the buggy to make sure all the goblins had their armor on. I wasn’t sure if one of those quills could pierce the bone of a skull-mask, but I’d issued the drivers all ceramic versions. The goblins hooted and hollered as we began to close the distance.

The dartwing didn’t flap its wings as it flew. Rather, it used them to glide, and then dive down to the ground in a huge plume of dust before somehow shooting back up into the sky to glide again.

I directed our Girmaks to pull the buggy close to Sourtooth’s bike. “That’s sluggish?” I demanded.

The orc looked over. “Oh, aye. Heavy of wing and scale with her belly full, she. Hungry, we’d never catch her, nor likely, the coming of her see!”

“Splendid,” I yelled over the motors. Behind us, the Blood Gorgers had closed the distance some, ready to interfere with the chase on their oryx. They were leaned far forward in the saddle, and I saw them using a horn on the side of their mount to draw and nock crossbows with one hand while they gripped the manes of their mounts in their other fist. Well, lets see how their crossbows fared against our rifles.

I raised my hands above my head in the circle and whistled for attention. All the goblins turned my way, and echoed the hand signal as they cheered, including ones that ought to have been driving—nearly causing two trikes to collide and the monocycle to wobble alarmingly. I held out my hands and mimed working the action of a lever-gun, complete with chck-chck sound effects. My tribe echoed the onomatopoeia, and then echoed it with the real thing. The mechanical slam of dozens of rifle actions dropping into place filled me with an electric anticipation.

Ahead less than a kilometer now, the dartwing slammed into the ground in a plume of dust and folded its wings. Through the haze, I could see the form coiling like a spring and then launching itself into the air before unfolding those wings again. Dust cascaded off the trailing edges. Its feathered head twisted back and hissed at us, and I could see its distended belly dragging against the wind and slowing it down.

A creature like that could feed a tribe twice our size for a week. More, even. And I could make a half-dozen prop planes from the membrane of its wings. Maybe a larger airship. There was only one problem I could see: the large XX superimposed over its head by the System, where its level ought to be. I grit my teeth. No choice. All hope now lay in trusting that Sourtooth knew his business.

“Ready the launchers!” I called.

Across the convoy, bits of canvas and leather dust-covers came off the new additions to our buggies—courtesy of material from the Flock’s stockpiles. Armstrong climbed up to the gunner’s mount himself and pulled the cover from a hollow metal tube. I joined him and slid open the action on my newest rendition of Earth’s ballistics science converted to Rava goblin blastics.

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The black iron shells for these looked like up-sized rockettes, but they weren’t rockets per se. Though, looking at the long, hollow tube of the launcher, you might think that. I slid the cover back into place and latched it while Armstrong got his shoulder under the controls and locked the firing mechanism back. He pressed his eye to the targeting ring and started to angle the muzzle up, waiting for us to get in range.

The dartwing, however, must have realized it wasn’t going to outrun us. It wheeled with frightening speed, twisting back on itself and folding its massive wings tight against its body. The shriek from the wind through its quills reached us, sounding like a stuka siren from a WWII flick. The dartwing impacted a couple hundred meters ahead of us, shaking the ground with its impact as a wave of dust erupted.

A low whistling was my only warning to throw myself to the floor of the buggy before a staccato of dull thuds peppered the front of the vehicle. The other goblins onboard squawked, and at least one fell off the back.

A blue flame tendril emerged from the gearbox underneath me. “King Ap! The Dawi appears to have impressive defensive capabilities at distance,” said Girmaks.

Something Rufus had said came back to me. “You could take a thousand goblins into the desert and you’d lose a thousand goblins.”

“No kidding,” I muttered, lifting my head. Several quills had buried themselves in the sloping front side of the buggy, fletching blowing in the wind. If this was the type of creature that existed in the deep dunes of the desert, the interior of Lanclova never being settled or conquered made a lot of sense. I looked back. Armstrong had two quills standing up on the front of his armor, but was otherwise fine. He yanked them out of the plate carrier and threw them behind him.

“How exciting! I shall have to tell Taquoho of the Dawi”

Right. Exciting. Dawi, huh? Even monsters weren’t spared Girmaks’ unique brand of familiar brevity.

Ahead, one of the trikes surged forward, occupants cheering. I spotted the canoneer on the back, and a bunch of goblins on board who had supplemented their skimpy leather with religious iconography. The driver opened the throttle so wide the trike bucked up on its rear wheels, surging forward. So many zealots had crammed on board that the spears made the vehicle look a bit like a wedge-shaped hedgehog.

Armstrong reached down and pulled me back to my feet. “C’mon, boss! Can’t let the nutters ‘ave all the fun!” He stomped on the deck, and the engine began to roar as Girmaks opened the throttle up all the way to match the zealots.

A massive shadow slithered in the dust cloud, coiling in layers like a set of gears. It stilled and compressed for a moment before the body of the thing shot from the cloud, directly overhead of us. The massive head twisted down and hissed as it flew over, mane of feathers rattling. Its head was big enough to swallow a goblin whole. Its wings spread and cast a shadow over the entire group.

Girmaks swerved to the right to avoid the drooping tail that dragged a rake of spikes across the badlands terrain. As I held on, I could hear the screech of crude rubber tires, and then the crunch of at least one vehicle that hadn’t managed to get out of the way in time and the collective squawks as a dozen goblins were sent flying.

“Bring us around qui—woooah!” I shouted. We might not have had brakes on the vehicles, but that apparently didn’t matter to an Ifrit who could simply jam the gearbox. The buggy slid sideways, and the engine screamed. We bucked forward.

The zealots who had been leading the pack were now bringing up the rear, which they were not fans of, from their angry shouting. Their vehicle ramped up on two wheels as it pivoted nearly in-place. Goblins swung from the frame like pennants, doing whatever they could to hold on.

“Nice going, Girmaks!” I shouted. Then, back to Armstrong, “Ready!”

“Ready, boss!”

I glanced over at Sourtooth, who had brought his chopper around and had his pistol raised straight up in the air. “On my order!” he shouted.

“Prepare to fire!” I called out.

In our path, the Blood Gorger detachment was now directly in the path of the dartwing, which they seemed to notice only just before the big snake folded its wings and that air-raid alarm noise grew. A wave of dust and quills spread out from the impact, peppering more of the colorful feathers against the front of our buggy. One of them hit me in the chest hard enough to knock the wind out of me, but Armstrong caught me before I could tumble off the back of the buggy.

One of the Blood Gorger mounts tumbled over, sending a pair of riders flying, but the rest managed to dodge the worst of it. I looked down to see Sourtooth pluck one quill from the meat of his shoulder with his teeth and spit it out behind behind him. He held his pistol up.

Once more, the dartwing rocketed into the air. But as it spread its wings to catch the air, Sourtooth fired his signal gun, sending a rockette with a colorful trail through the air where it burst in a puff of green smoke.

As one, the gunners on the buggies fired.