Authors: Richard Lee Byers
“Did you see a dracolich?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. With all the trees obstructing my view, I couldn’t see everything.”
“How did they know we were coming?”
We have a traitor, Taegan thought. He didn’t know why his instincts instantly suggested that answer, but it felt right. Somehow, someone in the expedition had made contact with the cultists during the night.
Rangrim waved his hand impatiently dismissing his own question. He turned and found his trumpeter, who’d obviously overheard the conversation, already standing close at hand awaiting orders.
“No, Jal,” Rangrim said. “You can’t sound the call to arms, or the enemy will hear, and come running before we’re ready. We need to get ourselves into a battle formation quickly but quietly. Help me round up the officers and sergeants.”
Once apprised of the danger, the Warswords prepared to meet the foe with a brisk efficiency that attested to their
quality. The trees made it difficult for them to arrange themselves in the straight unbroken lines their commanders might have preferred, but they managed to mass a goodly portion of their strength in a central position, with other warriors and the six bronze dragons stationed in two wings that extended diagonally forward from the ends. Taegan was no war captain, but he understood how the formation was supposed to work. Rangrim wanted the cultists to advance into what amounted to a box, so some of h is troops could attack their flanks.
Since he wasn’t one of the leaders, responsible for readying the men-at-arms, Taegan concentrated on preparing himself. He cast spells to heighten his strength and agility and to sharpen the point and edges of the sturdy cut-and-thrust sword he currently carried in preference to his beloved but flimsier rapier. His purely defensive enchantments, like the one that shrouded him in blur, didn’t last as long, so he’d put off conjuring them until the foe actually came into view, or simply trust his martial skills and the brigandine one of the queen’s armorers had made to protect him. Though he didn’t bother wearing such things in the cityfew rakes did, either for fear of being thought craven or out of reluctance to cover up any portion of their handsome clothes—he was a deft enough bladesinger that the light leather armor wouldn’t hinder him from making cabalistic passes.
When he’d enhanced his natural capabilities as best he could, he went to stand beside Rangrim and Quelsandas. The bronze repeatedly spread his membranous wings, casting the avariel into shadow, then retracted them again. Lance in hand the lord sat gazing intently into the trees, watching for a first glimpse of the foe, but eventually he took note of his mount’s restlessness.
Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes,” Quelsandas rumbled.
“Just eager to strike a blow, I expect. And here we were worried the army in the east would have all the fun.”
The huge reptile with his webbed feet, gleaming scales, and catlike emerald eyes stood silent for a moment.
Then he said, “We’ve been through so much together. If I asked a favor, would you grant it?”
“Of course.”
“Then climb down off my back and direct the battle from the rear.”
Rangrim smiled a perplexed sort of smile and said, “After all these years, you’re developing a very odd sense of humor.”
“I have a premonition. This one time, it’s better if you’re not in the thick of the fray.”
“I’m the one with a special bond to the Crying God,” the human chuckled. “I’ll handle the prophetic dreams and intuitions, if it’s all the same to you. Seriously, your nerves are getting the better of you. It happens to all of us occasionally, just before a battle. But there’s no need for worry. We may have a relatively small company, but we have discipline and training no rabble of madmen and hobgoblins can ever hope to match, to say nothing of half a dozen of the Queen’s Bronzes and the favor of the gods of light. We’re going to be fine.”
“I knew you’d say that,” Quelsandas replied, “but I had to try.”
The exchange unsettled Taegan. He sensed the bronze had left something unsaid, even if Rangrim, with his trustful and straightforward manner of thinking, didn’t. But before the fencing master could decide what, if anything, to do about it, the first of their foes appeared beneath the trees.
Stalking on two legs in beast-man form, a werewolf snarled when it saw the Warswords drawn up in battle array. An instant later, an arrow plunged into the lycanthrope’s gray-furred chest, and it fell backward. The shaft had to have been silver-tipped or enchanted to kill a shapeshifter so expeditiously. The archer’s comrades started to cheer until their sergeant’s bark cut through the clamor to upbraid the eager bowman for shooting before he gave the order.
Tall as the tallest human, scarcely less hairy than the werewolves, and clad for the most part in animal hides dyed
a bloody red, a trio of brutish hobgoblins reached for their own arrows. Then, behind them, appeared the most terrifying thing Taegan had ever seen. He shivered uncontrollably at the sight of it.
Like the bronzes, it had chosen to stay on the ground. For such huge creatures, flight through the dense branches in that portion of the wood was problematical. Once it had evidently been a gigantic living green, but the tissue of its wings hung in tatters, and bone showed through the rents in its decaying, withered flesh. Its sunken yellow eyes shone with a spectral radiance somehow perceptible even in the pale gray morning light. A man wearing the ornate robes of a Wearer of Purple bestrode the base of the creature’s neck, a skull-tipped ebony rod in his hand. No doubt he was a formidable combatant in his own right, but compared to the dracolich, he seemed utterly insignificant.
Some of the Warswords moaned.
“Steady!” Rangrim shouted. “Steady! Don’t meet its gaze, and you’ll be all right.” His lieutenants called similar words of reassurance.
Somebody yelled, “Impiltur, Impiltur!” and others echoed the battle cry.
Rangrim recited a prayer that made Taegan, and presumably others, feel somewhat less afraid. Quelsandas took a deep breath, then started whispering a spell of his own. Taegan was about to do likewise when he marked the sound of the bronze’s snarling, sibilant incantation. He couldn’t understand the arcane words, but even so, they filled him with an instinctive revulsion, as if they’d been devised to invoke the foulest powers of the Nine Hells.
Confused, he turned to Quelsandas, who instantly lashed a wing down to swat him like a fly. Taegan tried to leap out from under it, but the scalloped edge of the limb still caught him and dashed him to the ground.
It knocked the wind out of him, and he could only look on helplessly as the first volleys of arrows and blazes of magic from spellcasters on both sides flew, and Quelsandas finished
his conjuration. The other members of the Queen’s Bronzes threw back their heads and screamed.
The screeching startled everyone. The arrows stopped arcing back and forth, and the human cultists, werewolves, hobgoblins, and even the dracolich faltered in their advance.
After a few moments, the hideous noise subsided. The bronzes peered about in seeming confusion, as if they didn’t remember where they were or what was happening. Taegan heard a dragon rider on the far side of the Warswords’ formation ask his mount what was the matter.
The reptile responded by snapping its head toward the ground like a striking serpent and spewing a stroke of dazzling lightning down the line of Impilturan men-at-arms. It all happened so quickly the victims couldn’t even scream. They simply jerked and died, the stench of their burning flesh mingling with the smell of stormy skies.
The other bronzes attacked an instant later. Two more chose to unleash their lightning, another pair shredded Impilturan men-at-arms with fang and claw, and a fifth breathed out a plume of sparkling brownish vapor that inflicted no wounds, but set a dozen horsemen galloping away in panic. With their backs turned, they were easy prey as the wyrm raced in pursuit.
The dragons carried the paladins on their backs helplessly along. The knights shouted at their huge and cherished comrades, beat them with the flats of their weapons, or chanted prayers, trying frantically to bring the reptiles to their senses, though most likely they had no idea precisely what had gone so horribly wrong.
Taegan thought he did. The Rage in all its power had taken possession of the bronzes in an instant. Because Quelsandas’s magic had made it so.
The Warswords had stood ready to battle the cultists, but
when the bronzes, the very foundation of their might, turned on them, it caught them completely by surprise. It only took a few heartbeats for their formation to start disintegrating, as the humans scrambled desperately to distance themselves from the maddened wyrms.
“Ilmater, help us!” Rangrim said.
He started chanting another invocation, no doubt the mightiest magic at his command though Taegan doubted even that would be enough to avert the catastrophe threatening his command. Then it was Quelsandas’s turn to scream and thrash.
“No!” the dragon whimpered, and it was profoundly strange to hear such dread in so enormous and mighty a creature’s voice. “Not me! He promised I’d stay sane!”
He howled a second time, and when he stopped, his green eyes burned with demented fury. He sucked in a breath.
Taegan was still dazed, but the threat spurred him into motion, and he flung himself to the side. Even so, the thunderbolt struck his wing. Agony burned through his body, so intense he couldn’t even scream, just shudder in its throes. When it subsided, to his surprise he found himself still alive. Others in the path of the blast had been less fortunate and lay black and smoking on the ground.
Taegan’s pinion continued to hurt fiercely, but he was too full of anger and fear for it to balk him. He lurched up and threw himself at Quelsandas. If the gods were exceedingly generous, perhaps he could strike the treacherous bronze a mortal blow before the wyrm’s ability to spit death returned.
He thrust his sword deep into Quelsandas’s breast. The bronze pivoted, nearly tearing the hilt from his grasp, and raked at him with its talons. The attack might well have torn him to pieces if he hadn’t leaped backward. As it was, it only missed him by scant inches. When he tried to beat his wings to lengthen his spring, the charred one just twitched and gave him a fresh stab of pain. Until it healed, he wouldn’t be able to fly.
Quelsandas pounced after him. The great jaws shot forward, spreading as wide and as high as the gateway into death, which swallows countless souls every day. The elf wrenched himself to the side, and the bronze’s enormous fangs clashed shut on empty air, spattering their elusive target with saliva. The droplets bore a trace of lightning within them, and crackled and stung like needles when they hit.
Taegan lunged and cut, striking for the throat. Quelsandas twitched his head back, and the sword merely inflicted a shallow gash on the jagged collar of bony plates behind the jaws and eyes. The drake bit, the avariel dodged, then had to defend again when Quelsandas instantly followed up his with claws. The bronze lifted his right forefoot high, threatening a vertical slash, then lashed out with the left in a horizontal stroke. Momentarily deceived, Taegan ducked the genuine blow with not an instant to spare.
He realized he had to make himself harder to hit, otherwise Quelsandas was going to rip him to pieces, probably with a single attack and most likely within the next few seconds. Dodging and retreating, cutting and thrusting when the wyrm gave him the chance, he started conjuring an enchantment.
Quelsandas was in frenzy, quite possibly not fighting with the cunning he would normally display. Yet he still recognized spellcasting when he saw it, and it prompted him to return to his initial tactic. He hopped backward, out of reach of Taegan’s blade, lifted his head, and sucked in a breath. A whiff of ozone betrayed his intention to blast forth another flare of lightning. Taegan had little confidence in his ability to avoid the attack out realized he had no alternative but to try. He held himself ready while continuing his incantation. If he dodged too soon, the bronze would simply compensate.
Then Quelsandas jerked, and with a deafening boom, his breath burned harmlessly into the tangled branches overhead, shattering some, bringing chunks of wood showering down, and setting sections aflame despite the damp. Taegan
was so intent on his foe that he’d nearly forgotten Rangrim, and to all appearances, the rogue bronze had too. But the war captain was still in the saddle and had finally abandoned his fruitless efforts to calm his mount by counterspell or exhortation. He’d cast away the long spear that was his weapon of choice for fighting from the back of such a gigantic steed, seized the warhammer he carried as a backup, and his face contorted in mingled anguish and resolve, pounded it into the base of the reptile’s neck, spoiling his aim.
Quelsandas twisted his head around to snap at his rider, but the posture was plainly awkward for him, and perhaps that was what gave Rangrim time to block out the attack with his kite shield. When the dragon’s teeth slammed against the barrier, they scored and dented the steel, defacing the painted coat-of-arms. The impact jolted the paladin backward and made the segments of his plate armor clash together. But the shield must have carried powerful enchantments, for both it and its wielder survived.
Rangrim riposted with a blow to Quelsandas’s snout.
Meanwhile, Taegan finished his spell, creating the same defense he’d used the night Gorstag died. Quelsandas would see him in a slightly different position than the one he actually occupied. It might help protect him, if the drake’s keen senses of scent and hearing didn’t pinpoint his location even so. It was a start, anyway. He charged Quelsandas, whose long, lashing tail and stamping, earthshaking feet posed a deadly threat even when the wyrm wasn’t actually assaulting him, and he cut at the creature’s belly, simultaneously commencing another charm.
He gashed the dragon’s torso twice before raking claws drove him backward. He finished the spell, and Quelsandas appeared to slow as his own perceptions and reactions quickened. He attacked furiously when the bronze oriented on Rangrim and fought defensively when the wyrm returned his attention to him, and the paladin adopted the corresponding strategy.