There Be Dragons Here

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. There weren’t always a lot of things in the Valley. Science took a hard turn a few decades ago when a private lab up and decided that they could, not whether or not they should.

The Master Sergeant looked over the convoy that held both military and civilians. Their rotation was due at the outpost in a week. Barring any major incidents, they should make it. The officers were loaded up into their armored semi-trailers and doing their final checks. The NCOs, non-commissioned officers, were riding up and down the column on their horses.

He missed the days when Mounted Cavalry only made an appearance in military parades.

In smaller armored vehicles, more precious than gold, the chosen civilian families and officials were waiting patiently for the gate to open and the signal to start moving.

Everything happened at a crawl. None of the vehicles were able to go much faster than twenty miles per hour due to all of the armor. It allowed the Soldiers on horses to roam up and down the column and out off the trail and still not miss anything.

His radio crackled on his shoulder. They had the green light from Central Command in the middle of the city.

“We’re a go!” he yelled to the Soldiers trying to keep their seats on fidgety horses.

Arms lifted in unison and the first vehicle shifted into gear as the gate ground open. Guards on top of the wall waved at the column as they passed through. Heavy crew serve weapons on the wall shifted towards one of the last paved roads on the continent. They would guard them as far out as they could.

He stopped just outside of the gate, sidling his horse up next to the Colonel in charge of this convoy. They watched tensely as the vehicles crawled through the gate, flinching each time a Soldier rode by charging their weapons.

This early in the morning and at this time of year, the migrating herds should still be two weeks’ travel north. It was also too cold in their region for the dragons to be awake this early.

Scaly bastards hated the cold.

The last recon report stated that all of the local beasts were still deep in hibernation and weren’t expected to wake for another month. He prayed that the scientists were right this time.

Colonel Bishop handed over the most recent report that had been given to him at the briefing that morning. Basic predators that humans were used to were all that they were expected to encounter. Good. Nothing that common rounds couldn’t kill.

Once the last vehicle passed through the gate and the massive steel doors rumbled closed, they kick their horses into motion and rode for the front of the column. They were hailed by the trackers up front, waiting permission to do their jobs.

Years ago, when he was a young Soldier, he had thought tracking a useless skill. Everyone had GPS, infra-red and many other devices that rendered those old skills obsolete. Still, there were the random hillbillies and farm kids that showed up with the ability to find their way without any of that gear.

Now, they were highly sought after.

The two boys sat on barely contained horses, itching to get going. He remembered recruiting them from one of the tribes in Texas. Their families hadn’t wanted money for them. They had wanted horses and supplies. He had fought hard for permission for the trade.

His stomach fell as the boys took off ahead of the column, quickly out of sight down the side of the pavement. Four more Soldiers took their place at the head of the column.

There was no such thing as uniformity when it came to weapons anymore. They all pretty much carried what they wanted. Along with trackers, blacksmiths were jealously hoarded in the cities. They provided a supply of swords and other weapons that would not run out of ammo.

The four Soldiers in front of him and the Colonel each had a crossbow dangling from their saddles, two swords crossed over their backs, and two of them also carried longbows with iron tips.

The morning passed without issue. They had even reached their first checkpoint early.

All of the vehicles shuddered to a stop on top of the hill that had once been used as a tourist stop because of its view. Now, it was a vital place to reach to be able to rest.

Without being told, a few Soldiers rode up and down the column to check fuel levels. Water was set out for the horses and the people in the column took turns getting out of their cramped spaces to walk around and use the bathroom.

He laughed to himself a little bit. There was no such thing as rest stops anymore. Oh, what he would give for one right about now. He was getting too old for this.

A Soldier calling his name broke through his daydreaming of wi-fi and easily accessible indoor plumbing. He nudged his horse into motion and rode towards the Soldier that had hailed him.

Shit.

He hailed the Colonel, then slid down off of his horse. One of the vehicles was smoking. Just barely, but it was enough that it had to be taken care of. He sent the Soldier that hailed him to find the mechanic vehicle and to bring two of them back.

Thirty minutes later, it was worse than they thought it would be. He rubbed his hands over his face. The murmurs of curses filled the air around him. It was never a good sign when they had problems with one of the vehicles this early.

The trackers rode up, covered in dust from the road, curious why the column wasn’t moving yet. A look passed between them when they saw the mechanics hanging out of the engine compartment of the vehicle.

The Colonel made the call to circle the vehicles, horses in the middle if at all possible. Soldiers all around him carried out the orders, but he could see the looks on their faces. They were wasting valuable time.

One of the trackers pulled him aside, and with a heavy Southern accent, told him that they had found fresh tracks of a herd moving south early. He radioed back to the city, trying to reach the scientist that track the herds.

The answer came crackling over the radio about an hour later. He and the Colonel walked far enough away from the column so they couldn’t be overheard. Sure enough, they had been mistaken and the herds were closer than they should be.

Instead of answering the calls from the city, he switched to the channel that the outpost was on. He hailed the QRF on duty and tried to get extra vehicles. It was a negative. They had no vehicles to spare. All of them were in maintenance bays getting ready to be driven back to the city, but they could send Soldiers out on horseback. As long as they didn’t mind Soldiers from Western tribes.

He didn’t care. Bodies were bodies. I accepted what QRF offered and ended the conversation. Riding hard, it would still take those Soldiers three days to reach their position. Two, if they could get the vehicle up and running.

Nightfall brought the otherworldly sounds that they still weren’t used to. Howls, roars and calls from the massive animals rumbled through the Flint Hills. He sat on top of one of the trailers with his trackers and stared north as they worked to teach him the constellations.

The Master Sergeant was just about to doze off when a deep rumble shook the earth.

It started small, something he could only feel through the weak vibrations working their way up through the trailer. The trackers dropped down to the ground on silent feet and laid flat on the earth, their ears to the ground as they looked north.

A herd was heading straight for them.

He sounded the alarm, rousing everyone who had been taking their turn to sleep. But his heart stopped when he saw the tell-tale flash of dragon fire in the sky on the northern horizon.

Hell, he missed the days of jets and helicopters. He would give his soul for a pair of attack helicopters right then. He yelled to his troops and hailed the outpost again. QRF was already on its way, so their only hope was to try to hail a tribe that was nearby.

He had a decision to make.

Sent up a flare in hopes that the tribe would see it and potentially give away their position to the dragon, or wait it out, hoping that the dragon was more interested in the larger prey that it was currently chasing.

The Colonel made the decision for him. Despite their darkened position, he shot up the flare, followed by two more and switched his radio to the frequency that the tribe typically used.

Instead of being answered by the tribe, the dragon roared his challenge, sending all of the horses into a controlled panic on their lines in the middle of the vehicles.

A dust trail became visible in the distance at the same time that the boom of dragon wings reached them. Wails and calls from the herd made their ears ring as the animals rapidly approached their position.

None of them would get used to seeing mammoths in his lifetime.

His trackers begging him to get everyone and the horses off the hilltop. Leave the vehicles, they had to get to the trees. He didn’t wait for the Colonel, he gave them the order to do just that.

The colonel and the Master Sergeant were sliding down the hill just as the first mammoth came in to view. His jaw dropped when he realized that it was a mixed herd of mammoth and wooly rhino. Did they really do that? Or had they been driven together out of fear?

Soldiers pulled their horses to the ground and laid over their necks, trying to keep them calm and quiet under the canopy of cottonwoods. A sickening crunch reached him as the first vehicle fell victim to the stampeding herds.

The thought occurred to him, then. He had put an entire QRF in immediate danger and the tribe that they had signaled for help.

Dragons were voracious. They didn’t just kill to eat, they killed indiscriminately and for pleasure. Some claimed that it was to wipe humanity from the face of the earth so they could claim it for themselves. Some thought they were mindless beasts who didn’t know the difference. But a small fringe group of people swore that they were intelligent and that if humanity could just learn how to communicate with them, that they could share the world peacefully.

He didn’t know which group he agreed with. He had never really thought about choosing a side. The only thing that mattered was his job; moving convoys between the city and the outpost once a year.

The earth shook as the dragon landed just outside of the stand of trees, a full grown mammoth hanging out of its jaws. The Master Sergeant froze when those eyes turned towards the trees and the humans and horses cowering in their leafy cover.

He suddenly knew which group he side with as he swore that the dragon smiled. The beast literally smiled at him. His last thought, as the dragon set fire to the vehicles and then the canopy above them was that one day, he hoped that humans learned a better way to kill the evil that they themselves had unleashed.