with the dragon sitting upright, and the entire length of its long, thick tail, dangling over the parapet. The tower itself seemed to groan with the weight of her. A glance at where the stair guard had been revealed only empty space. Willa couldn’t blame the man. Running from a beast that had slitted yellow eyes bigger than wagon-wheels, and teeth as long as a grown man’s legs, couldn’t really be considered dereliction of duty, could it?
In her terror, Willa marveled at the way the morning sun reflected brilliantly off the dragon’s palm-sized scales, and turned them golden; and the way heat, shimmered and radiated off of its body, as if it were a great furnace. A fluttering of little wings, Talon the hawkling’s wings, caught her eye. The bird had something clutched in its claws. It struggled to carry the object up and over to Hyden. He took the offering, and smiled deviously. Talon then flew up, and landed on the half bald head of the dragon rider. He perched there, and puffed out his feathered chest, as proudly as if he were a dragon himself.
Hyden fumbled with the object Talon had delivered to him. After a moment, he had wrapped Shaella’s collar around his wrist, and tied it off, using his teeth. At once, the mighty dragon lowered its head, and extended a fore claw out, to form a crude stair step up to its back. At that moment, Queen Willa had no doubt that Hyden Hawk was destined to be a wizard of Dahg Mahn’s caliber, if not something even greater. It never occurred to her, that Hyden had taken the Dragon Queen’s dragon without using any form of magic whatsoever. All he had used were his wits, and his skill with the bow. Talon had done the rest.
Hyden shouldered Vaegon’s bow, climbed onto the dragon’s back, and sat behind Shaella. He gave Willa a confident smile, and sent Talon down to land on her shoulder.
“Hold off the demon-wizard as long as you can,” he called down to her.
He reached back, and patted the Night Shard in his backpack. “If this works, he’ll be nothing, but a plain, old wizard when I’m done.”
With that, the dragon leapt into the air, and veered sharply away to the west. On wing beats, that made the very air shudder, it shot off at an uncanny speed, and disappeared into the distance.
After Pael saw Shaella and her dragon winging away to the west, he vented his anger on the outer city. He thought she was abandoning him.
He cast a spell that buckled the earth away from him, like ripples from a pebble thrown into a pond. A great circle rose and fell, crumbling all in its path as it went. Buildings were leveled, and horses and men were thrown, or crushed. A large portion of the secondary wall, and the inner city beyond it, fell into ruin. For a few moments, the rumbling quake seemed to stop the whole battle. Pael stood, looking up from the epicenter of the destruction. He was seething. His normally slick, white head was aglow with rage, and his arms flailed about like some mad conductor, as he cast spell after spell after spell.
In the air, Mikahl was in pursuit of the Choska. The big, black demon could barely stay ahead of the flaming bright horse. From the ground, Pael sought to change the odds a bit.
Several back clouds misted into being, around the angry wizard. Three wyverns took form, and a razor- tusked beast, that looked somewhat like a wild boar, but was as big as an ox, snorted and stomped behind him. At once, the wyverns took to the air. The tusked beast charged off, through the rubble-strewn streets in search of men to kill.
Pael’s arm suddenly shot forth, pointing up into the sky, and a sizzling bolt streaked away, brighter than the daylight, from his fingertip. It took Mikahl by surprise, and sent him tumbling through space, away from the dying flames of his bright horse.
At once, the Choska demon dove away if from its pursuer, and swooped down to land beside its master. Pael leapt up onto its lowered neck, and together, they rose back up into the sky.
For a few long heartbeats, Mikahl fell, like a sack of grain thrown from a window. He had almost let go of Ironspike, but somehow managed to avoid that fatal mistake. With its magical symphony still in his head, he managed to recall the Bright Horse into being. The fiery Pegasus reformed between his legs and caught his fall, but it took a moment to get reoriented with the world, and in that time, Pael, and the Choska, gained position on them.
It had taken only seconds for Pael to turn the tables on Mikahl. The chaser became the chased. It was all Mikahl could do to hold on, as the demon wizard’s pursuit forced him to shake away the cobwebs Pael’s lightning had burned into his brain. He needed to think of a way to avoid being overtaken. He could feel the evil behind him. It was a nauseating, icy feeling that grew with the proximity of the wizard on his heels. The bright horse shot left, and then right, into a sharp banking turn. Suddenly, something in Mikahl’s brain fell into place.
The thing called Pael, on the back of the Choska, was the dark enemy that had sent the hellcat, and the wyvern. It was Pael who King Balton had sent him away from. It was Pael who had poisoned his King, and misled Prince Glendar, all those years. It was Pael, who had caused Lord Gregory, Loudin of the Reyhall, Grrr, and Vaegon to die. All along, it had been Pael. He knew it now. His blood surged past the white-hot simmer it had previously been, and turned into a violent boil. Ironspike’s radiant glow changed with his anger, into a blinding, silvery beacon in the sky. He was no longer the chased. He was in control now. He was leading Pael out past the city’s outer wall, away from the populace. If Pael was pursuing him, Mikahl knew that he wasn’t in the city wreaking havoc.
Mikahl closed his eyes, and let the bright horse gallop through the sky on his own head. He searched Ironspike’s symphony for what he might need, what he might use, to bring Pael down. The words of King Balton, the words of his father, echoed like timpani drums, in time with the harmonies in his head. “Think. Then act! Think. Then act! Think. Then act!”
King Jarrek fought like a hero, to let the soldiers of the Blacksword get inside the secondary wall. He had almost gotten trapped in the doing. Then, General Spyra had charged out, with a group of cavalry, and with the brilliant use of their long pikes, won the red armored Wolf King and his group free of the undead that had surrounded them.
King Jarrek had no sooner gotten himself to safety, and had his wind back, when he heard the shouts that the secondary wall had been breached to the north. He was getting too old for this sort of thing. His bones ached, and his muscles sang. He decided to go find Queen Willa, and see if he might help her find a way to survive the coming madness. These men were brave and true, and fighting with all they had in them, but Jarrek didn’t even dare hope that any of them would survive.
Pael, and his Choska demon, and now several slick, black, acid-mouthed wyverns, seemed to be everywhere. He wasn’t sure he could even survive the trip back to the castle. At least the dragon had fled. He was curious to know what happened at the top of the Royal Tower. They had all thought that Queen Willa had been lost, until she stood atop a crenel, and gave the official signal to close, and lock the secondary gates.
As King Jarrek approached the inner gate, the gate to the castle grounds, half a hundred bowmen leaned down and took aim at him. The Gate Captain had a panicky look about him.
“Remove the helm!” he ordered.
King Jarrek did so, and recognized the fear in the captain’s eyes when he scowled up into them.
“Gates…Open the gates!” the captain screamed. “Go Tuck! Go Walden! Find the red-armored impostor! He might be after the Queen! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!”
Jarrek gave the Gate Captain a puzzled look, then squeezed through the slight crack of the still opening portal, and wasn’t surprised when it started closing just as soon as he was clear. Save for the large formations of soldiers waiting to fortify the wall, the fountain pond area, and the forested park around it, seemed as peaceful as could be.
Looking back up at the scared captain, Jarrek called out. “What is it, man? What’s got your gunkin?”
“He was clad in red armor as you are,” the stricken captain replied. “I only now noticed the wolf skull on your helmet. Nobody questioned his cause, because we thought he was you. I should’ve known he wasn’t right. He had the smell of death upon him something awful. I thought it might just be from the battle, but now he’s gone to the castle. He might try for the Queen.”
Both of Jarrek’s Redwolf guardsmen had been on the wall with the archers when the battle had begun, and neither of them had been wearing their heavy plate armor. Jarrek had seen that whole section of wall blasted away. It was impossible for either of them to have come through here wearing their Redwolf armor. An excited tingle of hope started to creep into his heart, but then, just as quickly, the feeling turned to concern. “The smell of death upon him,” the captain had said.
At once, King Jarrek bolted after Tuck and Walden. He ran as fast as he could, in his loud, awkward fitting shell. He didn’t relish the idea of facing Brady Culvert in battle, even if the young man was already dead, but he would. He’d be damned if he’d let one of his men, one of his best friend’s sons, leave a taint upon the honor of his
