Freedom Fire Read online

  “I wasn’t bugging you about it,” Magdalys said. “I was just —”

  “Hey, what you guys whispering about?” Mapper called.

  “Nothing!” Magdalys and Amaya said together.

  “It’s fine,” Amaya hissed.

  “Oh, wow, okay,” Mapper said. “Excuuuse me!”

  “I spy,” Sabeen said, “with my little eye. Something … that starts with b.”

  “Butt!” Two Step yelled, pointing up at the circling dactyls.

  Everyone stopped and stared at him.

  “Get it? Because they’re the Rearguard! Rear! Like rear end! Ha! You guys! Wait up!”

  “Why didn’t you read it?” Magdalys whispered once they’d gotten a little ahead of the others.

  “I just …” Amaya shook her head, shrugged. “I can’t?”

  “Bats?” Mapper said. “Do you see bats? Because if you do, they’re probably about to be pterofood, so don’t get too attached.”

  “Nope!” Sabeen said.

  “I know I seem tough,” Amaya said, looking down, her face mostly hidden by the long strands of jet-black hair hanging down to either side. “But the truth is I’m a coward.”

  Magdalys scoffed. “That’s definitely not true.”

  “Who else but a coward would leave the only letter they’ve ever gotten from their father unopened for days on end?”

  “Blankets?” Two Step tried. “There’ve gotta be blankets in one of these rucksacks right?”

  “Nope!”

  A familiar hooting sounded across the sky above them. Everyone stopped in their tracks and looked up. Two long dark shapes stretched up above the treetops ahead of them.

  “Brachiosauruses!” Mapper and Two Step yelled at the same time.

  Magdalys and Amaya traded a glance. “Does that mean —” Amaya started. She didn’t have to finish. Brachys were plains dinos, according to Dr. Sloan. If one was out in the forest, it probably meant someone had brought it there.

  “I dunno,” Magdalys said.

  “Up here!” Cymbeline called from the forest. “Hurry!”

  “Hurry?” Magdalys glanced around. Dark shapes were moving toward them across the field. “Amaya!” Magdalys whispered, nudging her friend. They both drew the carbines they had holstered and fanned out to either side as the boys and Sabeen rushed forward.

  “What is it?” Two Step asked.

  “Something’s coming,” Magdalys said, backing toward the trees. “Can’t make it out.” The shapes got closer. There were three of them and they were tall and very fast. “Run! Get to the woods!”

  A shot cracked through the night and Magdalys almost crumpled into herself from surprise. It was Amaya, she realized. Out in the field, a dino squealed and someone yelled, “Ho there!”

  “Hold your fire,” Cymbeline called. “Get into the woods!”

  Magdalys and Amaya backed into the shadows of the trees together, guns pointed out at the approaching riders. Cymbeline stepped forward, a lit lantern raised above her head, shotgun in the other hand. “Declare yourselves!” she hollered. “Or get annihilated.”

  “Whoa, there, whoa,” a low voice muttered in a long Tennessee drawl as the riders dismounted and stepped forward. “Almost winged Horace.” In the dim lantern light, Magdalys could make out their faces. All three men sported beards trimmed to line their jaws with no mustaches. And, except for a long scar running down the man in the center’s cheek, all three had exactly the same face. Worse than that, they wore the gray uniforms of Confederate cavalrymen. Magdalys gasped.

  “Card!” Cymbeline said, shaking her head and laughing. “It’s about time! Where have you been?”

  “CYMBELINE!” THE WHOLE Dactyl Hill Squad gaped at the same time.

  “You … you …” Magdalys stuttered. On the other side of Cymbeline, Amaya raised the carbine, her face steel.

  Cymbeline shook her head. “No, wait, slow down everyone! I see what this looks like, and it’s not …” She sighed. “They’re not Confederates, okay?”

  “Then why …” Two Step demanded, waving his arms in exasperated, self-explanatory little circles. “Why!”

  The man in the middle smirked. “You can see why they might think we were though, Cymbie.”

  “Card is a Union scout,” Cymbeline said. “He goes behind enemy lines to find out their positions and —”

  “We know what a scout does,” Mapper seethed.

  “Then you can understand why he’s dressed like that.”

  Magdalys felt like all the blood in her body was rushing into her brain. This whole situation was rotten, from the moment Cymbeline had said they should land onward. “What I want to know is, how did they know where we were going to be and why were you expecting them?”

  Cymbeline looked at her, brows raised, eyes wide, mouth slightly open. The only other time she’d seen her make that face was when the Zanzibar Savannah Theater, where she lived and worked, had gone up in flames right in front of her. “It was …” Cymbeline started. Her voice trailed off.

  “Not to interrupt the moment,” one of the other men said, “but there’s a secesh raiding party not far away and now that we’ve found you, we need to get you safely back to the Union camp so you can report to General Sheridan immediately.”

  “Report?” Amaya said. Cymbeline whirled to face her.

  “What’s secesh mean?” Sabeen asked.

  “It’s short for secessionist, lil’ darlin’,” one of the men said. “Confederates. The baddies.”

  “Why do you guys all look exactly the same?” Two Step demanded.

  “Like, literally identical,” Mapper added.

  Card tilted his head. “This here’s my older brother, Card. And that” — he nodded to the other rider — “that’s my younger brother, Card.”

  “And you youngens must be the crew from Dactyl Hill. Pleased to meet ya!” the younger Card said. “We’ve heard great things.”

  “Heard?” Magdalys hissed at Cymbeline.

  “Great things?” Amaya finished for her.

  Cymbeline glanced back and forth between them.

  The older Card doffed his gray cap. “Indeed. But my brother’s correct. We gotta get a-movin’, folks.” He shot a worried glance at the moonlit sky.

  “How far to the camp?” Cymbeline asked.

  “Far enough that we’ll need you to hop on the back of our paras if we’re gonna make it safely.”

  Magdalys had been so busy glaring at Cymbeline, she hadn’t bothered getting a better look at the mounts.

  The parasaurolophus, Dr. Sloan wrote in the Dinoguide, is among the most noble and versatile of all dinomounts. With their elegant crest stretching like a plume behind their head, they strike an impressive visage on four legs or two. They are equally at home grazing amidst the swaying North American grasslands or trundling amorously through the deciduous forest mountains of the middle states. (What, Magdalys had tried not to wonder, did it mean to trundle amorously?) What’s more, the parasaurolophus makes a whimsical, intelligent companion whether one plans a long journey, is preparing for battle, or simply wants a gentle beast of burden nearby who can perform menial tasks and act as a loyal coconspirator in gentle pranks and assorted shenanigans. (“Dr. Sloan is a weirdo,” Two Step had said, reading over Magdalys’s shoulder in the orphanage library.)

  The Cards’ three paras stepped (or trundled amorously, Magdalys supposed) into the lamplight. She’d never seen one before. They were shaped a little like their cousin dinos, the iguanodons, which could be seen promenading the streets of Manhattan and the Crest beneath their wealthy masters. The paras had those same thick hind legs and wide hips that curved forward into arched backs and smaller torsos, with long, armlike forelegs extending toward the ground. Those bony crests that Dr. Sloan called elegant reached up and back from their short snouts, and their sunken-in eyes blinked at the world with an irritated, skeptical squint.

  “What about Stella?” Magdalys said. “And the others?”

  “Stella?
” one of the Cards asked, raising a bushy blond eyebrow.

  “Our pteranodon,” Mapper said proudly.

  “Oh, that’s what that big ol’ ptero y’all flew in on is?”

  “I’m sure General Sheridan would love to have a look at that one,” the older Card said.

  “Mm-hmm,” the middle Card agreed.

  Magdalys wasn’t sure if she was more upset at herself for bringing up Stella in the first place or Mapper for spilling the beans. More than anything though, she was furious with Cymbeline for keeping so many secrets. Everything was happening faster than she could keep track of and none of it was bringing her any closer to Montez.

  Out in the field, Stella stirred. There was no telling what would happen if the Union Army got their hands on her.

  Go! Magdalys commanded. Stella looked up sharply. Magdalys felt the raw power of her glare, the huge creature’s unwillingness to leave her side. Fly. Stay away from any signs of humans. We’ll be … we’ll be alright.

  In a single, fluid leap, Stella crouched low and then hurled herself into the air, sending a flush of wind across the field with her enormous wings.

  Cymbeline shot Magdalys a look. Magdalys watched the huge shadow disappear into the moonlit night. The dactyls must’ve scattered to scavenge for dinner; the sky was empty.

  Except.

  A flutter of movement over the far end of the field caught Magdalys’s eye just as an eerie howl sounded over the breeze and chirping crickets.

  “What was —” Mapper said.

  “Confederate Air Cavalry!” Card yelled. “No time to argue. Everyone get on a para. We gotta move out.”

  Shadowy shapes flitted across the sky toward them as more howling sounded and then a series of flashes erupted from above amidst the crackle of gunfire.

  “Let’s go!” Card yelled.

  DARK TREES RUSHED past on either side as the para galumphed along in a wild, dip-and-divey gallop beneath Magdalys. She’d hopped on the nearest, Young Card’s mount, as gunfire thudded into the dirt around her and shattered branches overhead. Two Step had jumped on behind her and then Card had yelled “Heeyah!” and the para had leaned all the way forward onto all fours, making Magdalys feel like she might tumble off at any second, and away they’d gone.

  Up above, the Confederate dactylriders yelled back and forth to each other and let out their triumphant howls, occasionally swooping down beneath the tree line to hurl a shot or two into the darkness. Older Card had galloped ahead with Amaya and Cymbeline, while Middle Card’s para thundered along a few paces over to the side with Sabeen and Mapper.

  “Can you get a shot?” Young Card yelled.

  “Probably not,” his brother called back. “Looks like they’re just a small scouting expedition, not the full unit. Still … the others won’t be far behind.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Blam! Another shot rang out from above and smashed into a nearby tree.

  “Ragged Randy Run!” the Card up front called.

  All three brothers pulled their reins back and forth in sharp turns as their paras grunted and adjusted their forward charges into a zigzagging kind of dance.

  “That oughta keep ’em confused,” Young Card snickered. A few more shots hurtled down around them.

  Magdalys closed her eyes. Where were her Brooklyn dactyls? Come through, she called silently. We need you.

  The sound of the panting, snorting paras and their heavy footfall filled the air as the Confederates above held their fire.

  Magdalys gulped. Once again, someone was taking potshots at her and her friends. And to top it off, she was being carried along like some defenseless damsel in distress by strange men. Strange men wearing Confederate gray no less!

  A sharp caw sounded and more flapping from above, then yells of confusion from the air cavalry.

  The dactyls! The birch branches jumbled into a trembling dark haze with each bound from the para, but Magdalys thought she could make out a group of shapes flash into the crew of dactylriders and scatter them.

  Then more gunfire sounded.

  Swing low for me, Magdalys thought, and within seconds a whooshing sound blitzed through the woods toward them, branches snapping and leaves fluttering as one of the dactyls dove through the trees and fell into a smooth glide alongside the para.

  “What in the —” Card yelled, but Magdalys had already stood in the saddle, steadying herself with both hands on his shoulders. “Girl, what are you —”

  Magdalys leapt, grasping the neck of the dactyl just as it swooped into a steady climb back toward the treetops.

  “Now, how in the —” she heard from below just before the dactyl burst through the branches and out into the moonlit sky.

  “Magdalys, no!” Cymbeline yelled, but Magdalys didn’t care what Cymbeline said anymore. She had lied to them, in one way or another, like so many adults before her, and now she couldn’t be trusted. And anyway, Magdalys had had it with being dragged around places. She willed the dactyl to spin around and caught her breath.

  The four Confederate air cavalrymen were flapping off on their steeds, routed by the sudden onslaught from her Brooklyn dactyls, who were giving chase with hoots and screeches. But it was what they were heading toward that stopped Magdalys short: Out above the open field they’d just come from, at least two dozen more mounted dactyls flapped toward her, the howls of their riders rising in the night.

  “Ten-hut!” a stern voice cried over the wind. “Slow your steeds and take aim boys! On my mark, knock those pteros out of the sky!”

  Magdalys’s eyes went wide. Scatter! she pleaded. Get away!

  “And fire!”

  The first crackling barrage burst out from the Rebel Air Cavalry just as the Brooklyn dactyls were launching out in all directions like a slow-motion ptero explosion.

  A horrible shrieking filled the air. Magdalys saw three dactyls blasted out of the sky outright as two others spiraled in dizzy loops into the treetops.

  “And fire!”

  Another explosion. Something whizzed past Magdalys’s head. A bullet. Then the dactyl she was riding screeched and they both tumbled downward as the darkness of the forest suddenly engulfed them.

  EASY, MAGDALYS COOED to the tumbling dactyl beneath her. Time seemed to slow as branches scraped across her face and more gunfire crackled overhead.

  Easy, big fella, shhh …

  The dactyl’s mind was a muddle of terrified screeches and hoots of pain, but she felt him trying to regain some bit of control as he flapped fiercely to slow their plummet.

  One of his rear legs had been hit; she could see it dangling limply. Another shot must’ve passed through one of his wings, which was bleeding freely through a ragged hole.

  Landing would not be an easy thing.

  Slow, buddy, slowww, Magdalys insisted, and the dactyl seemed to quiet his panic some in response as they slid closer and closer to the forest floor. Easy fella, easy.

  When she could make out a patch of moonlit dirt and grass below, Magdalys leapt down, still grasping her hands around the dactyl’s neck, and pulled them into a messy somersault tumble.

  The ptero let out a squeal of pain and pulled himself out of her grasp, hopping a few limping steps away on shaky wings before falling to a heap.

  Magdalys stood. Her whole body ached and about a thousand little cuts probably crisscrossed her face and arms, but she was alright otherwise.

  “Mag-D!” Two Step yelled from not far away. “She’s over there! Come on!”

  Up above, the head of that air cavalry unit let out another bellow and another volley burst out. Magdalys prayed at least some of her dactyls were okay, but there was nothing she could do.

  A shape rushed toward her through the trees: one of the Cards on top of that para, galloping forward in that strange, seesaw gait. Then she saw the man’s stern face, that carefully trimmed jawline beard and furrowed brow, his arm reaching out and scooping her up and placing her on the saddle in front of Two Step.

  “The da
ctyl!” Magdalys yelled. “We have to bring him! He saved my life!”

  “There’s no —”

  “He’s wounded and he saved my life,” Magdalys yelled. “He’s right there!” She pointed to the panting heap where the dactyl had collapsed in the shadows a few feet away. “Please!”

  Card sighed, swinging his mount around and pulling it beside the ptero. “I don’t even know how we’re going to —”

  “I’ll do it,” Magdalys said, climbing down from the para with Two Step close behind.

  C’mon, boy, she thought, pulling the dactyl to his feet as Two Step helped him from the other side. This the only way you gonna make it.

  The ptero wheezed, dark blood splattering Magdalys’s face, but finally heaved himself upright and then clambered over the top of the para, which stomped its feet a few times with impatient grunts but otherwise behaved.

  More gunfire crackled above.

  “Kids …” Card warned. A few shots thunked the trees and soil nearby.

  “He’s on!” Two Step yelled, pulling himself up as he steadied the dactyl.

  Magdalys climbed on behind him. “Go! Go!”

  They surged forward, more shots ringing out around them and the foliage overhead rustling with sound of the Confederate Air Cavalry dactyls on hunt.

  “This way!” one of the Cards up ahead called as all three paras bounded down a rocky hill and then flushed forward between towering birch trees toward a shadowy grove.

  Magdalys and Two Step’s para lumbered along at the back, barely able to keep up with the extra weight it was lugging. Up above, the Confederate Air Cavalry swooped and hollered, occasionally taking potshots through the trees, but the moon had slid behind a cloud and the riders couldn’t seem to get much of a view of the forest below.

  “Ho there!” a stern voice yelled as the lead para pulled up to a halt before some trees. “Password or we light you up.”

  Card muttered something Magdalys couldn’t make out over the pants and stomps of the para beneath her.