noblemen charging out of the trees to strike the orcs from the rear, long swords flashing. The blare of the signal horns had been as loud as any Haliver Ilnbright had heard, in tens of summers of riding under the Purple Dragon banner… but no one had come out of the forest.
Not a single blade. Outnumbered and exposed to the foe on three flanks, Azoun’s warriors had fought hard and well, and hacked every last tusker into the dirt. Without Alusair’s forces, the choice had been simple: win victory, or welcome death.
The king had long since sent scouts to find Princess Alusair and order her to rally her men back to the royal standard. Three veteran rangers-each alone so one at least should escape ill-Randaeron, Pauldimun, and Yarvel, good men all, had gone out. Either they had found ill or not found the princess. How long must it take to travel a mile or two? Less long than they’d already taken, surely.
“Back to the river, or make camp here?” the battlemaster asked gently, mindful of the royal mood.
“Here,” Azoun said, the word clear and cold. A long breath of silence passed before he added, “I’d not welcome fighting my way back across the bridge next morn, just to reach this height again.”
Ilnbright turned and gestured. Men who’d been watching for it reached with swift, practiced speed for the first poles that would soon become the royal tent.
The guards standing close around the king were weather-beaten, eagle-eyed veterans. Gaerymm and Teithluddree had the better sight, still able to outshoot many of the arrowmasters, but the hulking bannerguard, Kolmin Stagblade (no one ever seemed to use just one of his names, perhaps because of his mountainous, inexorable bulk) stood a good two heads taller than either, so it was he who said suddenly, “Randaeron Farlokkeir returns. Alone, but laden.”
In silence the other men stepped aside to allow Azoun to stride forward and peer along the bannerguard’s pointing arm.
After a moment, Azoun turned away. His voice was almost gentle as he said to the nearest messenger, “Wine. Flamekiss. Just the flask.”
That flask was empty by the time the scout trotted around the men driving home the last lines of the royal tent. He went to his knees before Azoun, stretching his arms forth in silence to place a scorched helm and a half- melted, twisted shield on the trampled turf. A sharp burnt smell came to the hilltop with him-the smell of cooked flesh.
The helm might have belonged to any Purple Dragon but for the battered cheek guard. All of the men standing on the hill knew a certain scar and bend in it. The shield, too, might have belonged to a hundred hundred soldiers of Cormyr-but its unblemished upper corner bore a device that was Alusair’s alone, a steel-gray falcon leaping up from the palm of a war gauntlet.
“Majesty,” Randaeron murmured, “these were all I could find that I could be sure were the princess’s, in a place of many bones and bodies.” He spread his hands helplessly, and added, “The dragon…”
“Everyone slain?” Azoun asked, in apparent calm. “Torn apart or… cooked?”
“There were signs of many men in boots fleeing into the forest, each by his own path rather than together or along a trail. I searched the remains a long time, while Paulder and Yar followed the signs into the forest, but I cannot say that I found her highness… or know that I did not. So many were… bones.”
The ranger’s voice broke, then, and it seemed for a moment that the hands of the king trembled. When he reached down to put a hand on the scout’s shoulder and to take up the ashen helm, however, they seemed steady enough.
“My thanks, Randaeron,”Azoun said quietly. “Tarry here in camp, at least until your fellow scouts return. I am sure no man could find more among the dead than you did.”
Without another word to anyone the king walked away. Down the hillside he went, his steps slow and aimless, looking at the helm in his hands as if it held his daughter’s face.
Not a man moved to follow, though all of his bodyguards shifted to where they could clearly see where Azoun went, and the hillside below him. They saw the Old Blade of the Obarskyrs walk ever more slowly, until he entered a little hollow where he sat down as wearily as any overweight pike-dragoneer.
“Is she dead, d’you think?” a lancelord standing by the tent muttered to his superior. Keldyn Raddlesar was too young to know when to keep quiet.
“Lad,” Ethin Glammerhand growled back, “how could she not be? I doubt w-“
A shadow fell across the lowering sun, and both men fell silent, staring up into the sky in mounting terror as the Devil Dragon plunged down upon them.
Nalavarauthatoryl the Red was huge, as large across as the main turrets of High Horn, with jaws broad enough to swallow half a dozen horses-and their riders-at a single bite. They were gaping wide now, revealing the dark, vibrating throat from whence the flames would come. Eager fire burned in the dragon’s eyes, and its cruelly curved talons were spread wide to strike. In places the wyrm’s body was a deep, angry purple, almost black, and men were screaming as its racing shadow fell across them-screams echoed in the raw, mounting roar of fear and defiance that burst from the throats of the warriors on the hilltop, as they scrambled to stand apart from one another and raise their tiny weapons.
The dragon’s talons were aimed for the royal tent, but it must have noticed that no one rushed into that pavilion to warn anyone, or hastened forth-and that no bodyguards stood watchfully by its entrance. It veered aside at the last moment to pounce on one man whose raised and ready blade seemed to glow as if alive with magic.
Randaeron Farlokkeir screamed as he died, torn open from belly to chin by a talon an instant before his hands were bitten off, his enchanted sword vanishing with them into a mouth as large as his cottage.
“As large-as-” he managed to gasp, before a sudden tide from within him choked his words-and the world- away.
As the mutilated scout reeled and collapsed in a rain of his own blood, the dragon landed heavily beyond him, its tail sweeping aside a trio of sprinting dragoneers, and a sudden silence fell.
In that strange calm, the dragon looked around with an almost feminine, menacing smile.
“Well,” it said, its breath acrid and stinking, “where is the human king?” The voice, too, was female. The loudest reply to it came from the mouths of the Cormyrean officers slowly advancing on it. That response was an eerie chorus of teeth chattering in fear.
“Die, dragon!” one of them shouted suddenly, charging forward with his blade thrown back over his shoulder, ready to chop down.
“Die!” another echoed, starting to run in turn.
Both had seen what the dragon must not have. A lone, bareheaded figure sprinted up behind the dragon, drawn blade flashing as it raced along Nalavara’s flank. The Devil Dragon was about to find the man she was seeking.
As Nalavara almost casually smashed her attackers with a wave of one talon, the King of Cormyr bounded into the air and thrust his blade behind the corner of her jaw. His steel slid home easily, gliding with oily ease into the spot where no scales waited. Black blood spurted forth, smoking.
“Here, dragon!” Azoun snarled, his eyes blazing. “Murderer! Despoiler of my realm! Here I am!”
He jerked his blade free, and as the dragon turned her head with snakelike speed and a fearsome snarl, Azoun struck again, thrusting his steel deep into her tongue then plucking it out to leap away, rolling desperately in under the dragon’s chin.
Fire roared forth, setting grass afire and crisping an unfortunate dragoneer who was caught in its full fury and sent tumbling away through the air like a burning leaf. The king was gone.
Gone, that is, until the royal blade stabbed upward between the small, soft scales behind the dragon’s chin. The sword rose like a bloody fountain through Nalavara’s mouth and tongue.
“For Alusair!” the king cried. “For my daughter, wyrm!”
His words were lost in the squall of pain that burst forth from the dragon’s throat. She thrust her head up, baring her throat to the furious monarch, but he couldn’t drag his sword free in time, wallowing in blood-drenched dimness, to strike before Nalavara twisted away.
A talon longer than the king stood tall stabbed out for him. It missed his shoulder by a foot, no more, as the dragon gathered herself to spring into the air-doubtless for a short flight that would end in another swoop at the hilltop, and more fire, and the death of Azoun.
But Nalavara trembled, faltering, and above Azoun’s head there were ragged shouts of, “For Azoun! For
