Alusair! For Cormyr!”
Above his head?
Azoun rolled, keeping hold of his sword only with difficulty, and came out into the sunlight to see warriors running up the hill with fear white on their faces, but swords and spears and axes in their hands.
A rope was stretched tight up and over the dragon, one end trembling under the frantic sledge-blows of a sweating knot of warriors, and the other-The other was driven deep into the muscles of one of the dragon’s wings, held there with a savage smile by Swordlord Ethin Glammerhand. Lancelord Raddlesar was bounding up slippery scales to meet him, slashing at whatever parts of the wing he could reach as he hastened. A gruff swordcaptain wasn’t far behind, his axe rising and falling as if dragon meat was wanted on his cookfire forthwith.
Nalavara roared deafeningly and bucked, hurling the lancelord off his feet. The dragon rolled over, one slash of her jaws severing the rope, then scrambled upright as swiftly as any cat. The swordlord bounced helplessly against her scales, clinging to his sword’s hilt. Nalavara raked her talons across the Lancelord Raddlesar, cutting him to ribbons as he lay twitching on the ground, and bit down on the warrior in front of her.
Swordcaptain Theldyn Thorn was suddenly gone above the waist-blade, breastplate, and all.
His hips trembled, swaying, then crashed to the ground under the impact of the tumbling swordlord, spilled from the dragon’s wing high above. Spears bounced harmlessly off dark red scales, and King Azoun charged in once more to hack at all he could reach-the blood-drenched talon that had slain his lancelord and so narrowly missed him.
The dragon turned her head, spitting out torn gobbets of flesh, and drew back to either spew fire on the raging king or thrust her head down and bite him.
A priest of Tempus stammered out a spell that made the air around Nalavara’s head erupt in a sudden, dancing storm of blades, but the snarling dragon flapped her wings in the very heart of the whirling steel, as if their flashing points weren’t there at all, then bounded into the air. A flick of her tail smashed Swordlord Glammerhand into the heart of the steel storm. Two men leaped onto the king as he bounced helplessly, keeping him just beneath the whirling blades. They could do nothing to stop the dragon as she bent down, eyes closed against the flashing steel fangs, and bit blindly at Azoun.
The King of Cormyr rose to meet her, throwing off the lords trying to shield him as if they were lap dogs, and thrust his sword mightily through welling dragonfire and into Nalavara’s lip. Black blood gushed forth once more. The dragon roared and shook her head, one fang hurling the king away in a tangle of torn armor and royal blood. The two lords rushed desperately forward again.
Rings on their fingers flashed as the dragon bit down once more. This time cruel teeth closed on something unseen and skittered vainly across air, well above the struggling men.
The Devil Dragon roared her rage in the heart of the steel storm, then flapped her wings, rending the air with a sound like a clap of thunder, and ascended, ignoring the few arrows that reached for her, and all the shouting below. She trailed a few smoking wisps of blood as she flew in a wide, climbing arc west over the forest, not looking back at the hilltop, and disappeared north.
In the wake of the dragon, the hillside was slick with blood and littered with moaning men or the torn fragments of what had been men. In their midst, two of those whom the nobles of Cormyr liked to contemptuously call “little lords”-men recently ennobled by the crown for service, and lacking long years of proud family power-lay panting, face to face, atop their groaning king.
“Best end the shielding,” Lord Edryn Braerwinter gasped, “lest one of those ghazneths comes.”
“Is it… gone?” his fellow lord gasped, not daring to look. Braerwinter nodded, lacking the breath to speak again, and rolled slowly off the King of Cormyr.
Azoun Obarskyr lay with his eyes closed and his mouth twisted in pain, his limbs moving restlessly. Tendrils of smoke from the black blood of the dragon rose from him, and his armor was crumpled into ruin above one hip, and entirely bitten away above the other, all along his flank, which was dark and wet with blood. Wherever his breast was dry of blood, it was dark with the ash left by dragonfire.
Men were hastening up on all sides, now.
“He needs healing,” Lord Steelmar Tolon gasped, finding his feet, “but we must get him into the tent before half a hundred archers start spreading word that they’ve seen him lying dead. Take his other arm… under the shoulders…”
“What’re you doing?” Battlemaster Ilnbright roared, as the two lords staggered upright, Azoun hanging limply between them.
“To the tent!” Lord Braerwinter snarled. “Get him some healing-now!”
“You can’t just-“
“Well, we are,” Lord Tolon roared, in a voice even louder than the battlemaster’s bellow. “Get out of the way or die!”
He held up the hand in a menacing fist and his ring winked. Ilnbright, not knowing for certain what that ring did, fell back, face black with rage, then turned and shouted for priests.
“Bring me healers!” he roared. “Every holy man on this field, whatever his rank or protests. Haste!”
The ring on Tolon’s finger winked again, and the battlemaster fell silent, blinking in surprise. The ring’s magic had carried his shout miles distant, in a great and terrible roar. All over the field Purple Dragons were on the move, snatching up robed men by the elbows and collars.
“Bring the king’s sword,” Lord Braerwinter said to the astonished officer. “A warrior feels better if he can hold his blade.”
Still blinking, Battlemaster Ilnbright bent over and meekly scooped up Azoun’s mighty warsword.
A little later, two weary lords staggered through the grim ring of archers, ignoring the hard eyes that watched them go down the hill. The dragon had not come again, but if it did, the army of Cormyr would be ready. A splayed forest of shafts rose from the ground in front of each bowman, and the archers were standing almost elbow to elbow, all around the height where the royal tent rose.
“There,” Braerwinter murmured, pointing at the little hollow where the king had sat.
Alusair’s blackened helm still lay there. Tolon bent and picked it up as the two men sat down together, back to back so as to be able to see anyone approach, and in unison thrust their fingers under their gorgets to pluck forth pendants.
Hidden on the backs of those pendants were clasps akin to the weathercloak clasps that war wizards bore. Etched beside each was a tiny symbol, the badge of Filfaeril, the Dragon Queen, whom Braerwinter and Tolon had served now for many years. Laspeera had laid longspeaking enchantments on them that even Vangerdahast-or so it was said-knew nothing about.
“Lady Queen,” Braerwinter murmured, picturing the cold beauty of the lady they both served-and loved, “there is no gentle way to say this. His majesty has fought the dragon, and lies sorely wounded. The wyrm is fled, the orcs lie slain, and we hold the field against hosts of goblins still. They advance again, as we speak. More, the dragon came down on the Princess Alusair, and she is feared lost, with all who served under her. We gave the king all the healing magic we carried, ghazneths or no, for many healers have died already this day, but, your Highness, our potions seemed to do nothing to help him. I know not how much longer he has to live. He lies in his tent, atop the first hill north of Calantar’s Bridge, just east of the Way. More priests are coming, but if you could send hence the mightiest clergy…
They both heard the gasp that came from Filfaeril’s distant lips before she replied, her voice very steady,
You’ve done well, I doubt not, and my thanks for this news, dark though it be. Guard my lord, both of you, and yourselves. Cormyr will have more need of you, soon.
“We hear and obey,” the two lords chanted in unison, not falling to hear the sob that escaped the queen’s lips before the magical connection faded.
Lord Edryn Braerwinter looked at his friend and said, “Well, I guess we’d best-“
That was as far as he got, through a vain shout from nearby, before a dark form swooped down out of the sky, cruel talons spread, and tore off both their heads.
Cold laughter trailed the ghazneth as it soared into the sky again, pendants clutched in fingers that trailed blood, as the torn husks that had been Lords Braerwinter and Tolon toppled to the ground in bloody ruin. Arrows stabbed into the sky after the laughing scourge, but as usual they were too few, too feeble in flight, and too late.
