And now the grapple lines dangling from the walls, lines placed by the attackers, were alive with panicked soldiers trying to escape from the fortress. As the dragon descended into the central courtyard, the great gate of Tarmish swung open and fleeing defenders by the hundreds streamed outward, a shrieking stampede of men trying to get away from the fear among them. In the receding fields, armies blended-Gelnian and Tarmite fighters fleeing together in their panic.
For Clonogh it was beyond understanding. A dragon had come to Tarmish, and was raging among the combatants, but it seemed not to discriminate. It was attacking both sides with equal enthusiasm.
Clonogh could not identify the dragon. Several times, during the dragon wars, Clonogh had seen dragons. He had always identified them by their color. There had been the beasts in service of the dark lords-brilliantly-colored creatures of crimson or blue or green. And then there had been the others, those whose colors were the colors of fine metal-the silvers, the coppers, the golds. These, he remembered, had fought against the chromatic beasts.
But the dragon he saw now, wreaking havoc on Tarmish, striking attacker and defender with equal enthusiasm, was none of these. Its iridescent scales flashed in the high sunlight with definite hints of brilliant green but equally strong hues of rich umber and warm bronze.
It was a mystery, but it had nothing to do with him. He knew dragon magic had occurred, and that he had been strengthened by it, but he knew also that its purpose had been something else. He had just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Now the far fields were alive with fleeing men, and Clonogh knew who they were. Mercenary soldiers, some wearing the colors of Tarmish and some of Gelnia, mingled in their retreat, and Clonogh smiled a cruel smile. Whatever the dragon’s purpose here, both Lord Vulpin and Chatara Kral had just lost their hired armies.
His eyes roving the scenes around and below the tower, Clonogh saw Lord Vulpin raging along his southern rampart, followed now by only a handful of true Tarmites. And in the field beyond the gate. Chatara Kral stood in the midst of her desolated encampment, screaming orders at fleeing men who did not look back to respond. Only a few of her troops remained with her now, native Gelnians bound to the cause of the Tarmish campaign.
In the devastated footings of one of the great walls, where a jagged opening gaped above the city’s underground, several furtive gully dwarves scurried from the shadows and darted for better cover. They disappeared into the dark hole, where drains led downward to the caverns. All but one. One of the gully dwarves held an ivory stick in its grimy fist-the Fang of Orm. And that one, darting for cover, encountered a Tarmite soldier. With a shriek the gully dwarf turned and fled, back into the base of the tower.
As suddenly as it had appeared, the raging dragon, which had now devastated and scattered the armies both inside and outside of Tarmish, was gone. As though it had never been there, it simply vanished, and once again Clonogh’s magic-honed senses detected the ironlike taste of a dragon spell.
“Transformation,” he muttered, recognizing the pattern of the magic, though he had no clue as to what the beast had become, or where it had gone. Dragon magic had restored him, magic drawn from the dragon’s previous spell, but though his sorcery was now powerful again, he was still only human. The mind of a dragon was not the mind of a human, and the intricacies of its sorcery were beyond him.
Still, it was gone now from view, and whatever the beast’s purpose had been, it did not seem to have any further effect on him. He stood unharmed on the skeletal remains of the tower, and Tarmish Castle lay in shambles around him, gaping and broken first by the missiles of contending armies, then by the wrath of a rampaging dragon.
The place was almost silent now. Here and there injured men cried out among the dead, and as the breeze shifted he could hear the strident, stunned voices of both Lord Vulpin and Chatara Kral, barking curses and orders at the scattered handfuls of Tarmite and Gelnian troops they still commanded.
The jagged hole where the gully dwarves had disappeared gaped dark and silent, like a beckoning cavern. Soldiers of Tarmish were hurrying toward it. On the south wall, several of Lord Vulpin’s lieutenants noticed them and pointed.
Raising a bony fist, Clonogh muttered a small spell. On the south wall Lord Vulpin halted and turned, as though confused. For a moment he gazed around, this way and that, then his gaze fixed on the tower and he started toward it. Beyond the open gate, Chatara Kral also turned, hesitated, then strode toward the gaping portal and the tower beyond. Behind each regent, confused men milled about, some choosing to follow their leaders, others turning away.
With a savage grin, Clonogh paced the great tower, hearing the thud of little feet on the rising stairs. The Fang of Orm was on its way to him, in the hands of an innocent.
In dim recesses in the bowels of Tarmish, Graywing stared about him in bewildered disgust. The dragon that had been here not half an hour ago, seeming to fill the resonant caverns with its fearful presence, was nowhere to be found. He and Dartimien had searched for it, splitting up to scour the echoing, vaulted chambers in wide sweeps, poking and peering into every tunnel and shadowed niche.
There was no sign of the formidable beast anywhere. Now Graywing stood a few steps into the great chamber in which the castle’s foundations towered like dark monoliths, and wrinkled his nose in disgust. There were gully dwarves everywhere he could see, doltish little creatures bumbling about here and there, more or less centering upon a major concentration of Aghar around the base of a huge pillar. Some sort of conference seemed to be going on there. A dozen or so gully dwarves were engaged in animated debate about something, while uncounted others looked on with dull curiosity.
A few yards back of the main swarm, he spotted Thayla Mesinda, trim and beautiful even here in these noisome surroundings. Small of stature though she was, she stood head and shoulders taller than most of the milling, blundering little creatures around her.
Scattering gully dwarves ahead of him, the warrior strode across the cavern toward the girl. As he approached her he held out a beckoning hand. “Come with me,” he said. “I’ll take you away from all this-” his voice broke abruptly into a grunt of surprise as a quick movement beside him warned him of attack. With a curse Graywing leaped straight up, drawing his feet up as a wide broadsword whistled past just below him, just where his shins had been.
Bron the Hero lost his balance as his mighty slash met nothing but thin air. Trying to keep his grip on the heavy weapon, he spun half around, tripped and fell on his face. The broadsword clanged against the stone of the cavern floor, and Bron’s big iron shield teetered for a moment on edge, then fell over on top of him.
Cursing and furious, Graywing stepped over the struggling gully dwarf, pinned the broadsword beneath a soft-booted foot and leaned down. “Don’t ever do that again!” he ordered.
“Oops, sorry,” Bron said, freeing himself from the weight of the shield. “Didn’ rec’nize you. Thought mebbe you a enemy.”
“Didn’t recognize me?” Graywing snapped. “You’ve seen me a dozen times!”
Bron got his feet under him, dusted himself off with grimy hands and glanced up at the human. “So what? Seen one Tall, seen ’em all.” The little hero got his shield upright and arranged its straps on his arm and shoulder. He reached for his broadsword, tugged on its grip, then noticed the human’s foot planted on the blade. “Pardon,” he said. When the foot didn’t move, Bron heaved the heavy shield around and smacked Graywing on the knee with it. The human hissed, jumped back and hopped around on one foot, cursing.
Bron retrieved his broadsword, squinted for a moment as he tried to remember what he was supposed to be doing, then resumed his position in front of Thayla. He was guarding her.
Thayla shook her head, her eyebrows arched in a pretty frown as she watched Graywing shuffle about, testing his sore knee. “You really shouldn’t be so rough with these little people,” she scolded the dour warrior. “They don’t mean any harm.”
“That little twit tried to cut off my feet!” the plainsman growled.
“Bron? He’s a hero,” Thayla reminded the man. “That’s what heroes do.”
“Right,” Bron agreed, “cut off folks’ feet.”
Graywing tried again, this time staying just out of range of the gully dwarf’s weapon. “Let’s get out of here, girl,” he urged. “This place will be overrun by Tarmites any minute now … and that dragon is still around here someplace.”
“No, it isn’t,” Thayla assured him. “Bron chased it away.”
“He did not!”
