there were also three heavy-weights beside : a petit chevalier and a chanson-de-guerre , each holding one corner of the french line , and anchoring the center was a dragon as different from every other beast upon the field as could be imagined : an incan dragon , with its long lapping scales like feathers gleaming a brilliant sky-blue and tipped with scarlet , looking more like some immense sort of brooding phoenix , wearing a kind of golden headdress and its belly armored in a mesh washed with gold and bearing many decorations : surely an officer in the incan armies , and if not yet wholly familiar with western warfare , likely to be an able commander in the air .