For a moment all six dragons teetered on the brink, their riders sitting back in the saddle. Then the steepling fall began, and the drakes shot earthwards.
Imladrik felt the wind race past him. Draukhain took the lead position, racing down like some gigantic falcon, already breathing heavily with an iron-furnace rattle in his lungs. Gaudringnar followed closely, shadowed by the swift Rafuel.
Tor Alessi rushed up towards them, rapidly growing in size. Imladrik held his position carefully, watching as the three lines of walls separated and became individually visible. He picked out the flashes of magefire in the pinnacles and the staccato delivery of the bolt throwers. He saw the fires burning along the parapets in the lower city, throbbing and flaring in the gathering dusk.
Draukhain growled with joy. By then he could smell the dawi. He extended his wings again and began to sweep into the attack run.
Hunt well, sang Imladrik to his companions, knowing that once the dragons were amongst the enemy they would each fight alone. That was ever the way with them: they were solitary predators.
The summit of the Tower of Winds shot past, the first of the tall towers to be reached. The drakes split, cascading like lightning across the city. Imladrik caught sight of Salendor standing on one of the highest platforms. The mage-warrior looked elated, and saluted him as he passed.
Then Draukhain plunged down further, snaking through the thud and shriek of projectiles and beating his wings harder.
The walls, sang Imladrik, gripping tight against the push of the wind. Drive them from the walls.
Draukhain powered towards the nearest breach, the clap of his wingbeats like thunderbolts. The dawi did not see him coming until far too late. Even then, what could they have done? Run? None of them were fast enough. They had scoffed at the legend of the drakes and now their mockery would kill them.
Imladrik guided the dragon towards the largest of the rents in the eastern flank of the city – a huge hole in the stonework the width of a hawkship’s sails. Dwarfs were battering away at a thinning line of elven defenders, pushing gradually into the lower city.
Draukhain roared, making the residual bulwarks of the twin wall-ends shake further. In a spiralling flurry of dislodged stone, he crashed into the dwarf front rank.
It was like being hit by a tornado. Dawi were hurled into the air by the impact, plucked and dragged from the rubble by Draukhain’s claws or slammed clear by savage downbeats. The lashing tail accounted for dozens more, sweeping them from their positions and sending them cartwheeling, broken-backed, into the seething mass beyond the walls.
Then the fire came. Draukhain twisted around, still airborne, spewing a massive, writhing column of dragonfire that crashed across the stonework like clouds tearing around a mountain summit. Even the staunchest of the dwarfs fell back in the face of that, clawing at terrible burns as they staggered clear.
Imladrik rose higher in his seat, riding the swerve of his mount. He bent his mind to the task of dragonriding, adding his consciousness to Draukhain’s own, melding his awareness with that of the mighty drake. They were like twin entities bound within a single gigantic physical frame.
Draukhain snapped his wings back and thrust clear of the breach, leaving a trail of smouldering carnage in his wake before pushing out into the horde of dawi beyond. Staying low, he punched into them like a ploughshare breaking into soil, blasting blue-tinged sheets of flame across the reeling lines before plucking the most defiant of them from the earth and flinging them high.
All across the beleaguered city the tale was the same. Each dragon hit the attacking armies at once, devastating the vanguard and driving deep into the supporting troops behind. These drakes were no drowsy, gold-hoarding wyrms of the eastern mountains – they were Star and Moon dragons, the most powerful beasts in all natural creation, sheer engines of destruction, avatars of primordial devastation. The dawi had never seen the like, and they shredded them.
Imladrik felt the lust for killing swell up within him. The taste of dawi blood came to his lips as splatters of gore streaked across his silver helm. A savage smile half-twitched on his lips, teetering on the brink of spreading.
Retain control, he sang, guiding Draukhain further into the press of dwarf bodies. He could see siege towers up ahead, all ripe for destruction.
Draukhain hurtled low over the battlefield, raking the oncoming hordes. The dwarfs who attempted to rally were first bludgeoned with dragonfire, then gouged by Draukhain’s jaws and talons, then swept aside with the disdainful flicks of his immense tail. Crossbow bolts clattered harmlessly from the dragon’s scaled hide. Axes and warhammers were wielded too slowly to make an impact; even those that connected did little more than bruise Draukhain’s armour.
Imladrik nudged his mount and the dragon climbed a little higher, thrusting clear of the struggling infantry lines and up towards the first siege tower. The dwarfs mounted on its flanks behaved with characteristically insane bravery, holding their positions and loosing a whole flock of quarrels at the approaching monster.
The pitiful scatter didn’t even slow them. Draukhain flew straight into it, smashing through the upper platforms and bursting clear of the far side in a rain of broken spars and planks. The entire structure blew apart, flayed into splinters by the thrashing tail and crushing wings. By the time the dragon wheeled back around for a return pass, nothing remained but dust, corpses and crackling firewood.
Back to the walls, sang Imladrik, struggling not to give in to the powerful urge to slay with abandon. Part of him wished to drive onwards, to carve a gorge of slaughter between the bloated flanks of the enemy all the way to the baggage trains. Part of him wished to push on towards Morgrim himself, to punish him for his lack of imagination.
You become the dragon; the dragon becomes you.
But he had to resist, to retain command. Draukhain swung about, angling hard
