Connor licked his lips and said, “Yes, father.”
Madoc glanced toward the coming wyrmlings, then back down to his sons. “You cannot rule if you do not live out this night. Go and warn that fool Urstone what has happened here. Tell him how his men died gloriously, but in vain. Make sure that when you reach him, you have respectable wounds.”
Drewish nodded cunningly. “And what of you, father?”
“I’ll direct the battle for as long as I can,” Warlord Madoc said. “And then I will try to join you.”
Madoc turned back. The grass was afire now a hundred yards out. The wyrmlings reached the wall of fire, with flames leaping thirty feet in the air, but did not stop. They roared in defiance and hurdled through the flames, while humans made targets of them, hurling war darts.
Clouds of smoke were rising over the battlefield, filling the air with ash, reflecting the firelight back down to the ground.
Wyrmlings took poisoned darts to the chest, bellowed in rage, and continued rushing on. Here and there, one would stagger and drop, but most kept coming. The poison would be slow to work.
Many wyrmlings rode upon the backs of kezziards, great lizards some fifty feet in length. The monsters were fierce in battle, fighting with tooth and claw, lashing with their tails. The kezziards’ claws could easily get a purchase on the walls of the fortress, and then the monsters would scurry in, carrying attackers. Madoc began crying out, ordering his dart-throwers to target the kezziard riders.
The walls of the fortress were high, but at only thirty-two feet, they wouldn’t be high enough. The kezziards would reach his men easily.
Suddenly the battlefield was white with skull helms as the wyrmling troops filled it. Poisoned war darts began whistling up from them through the smoke.
Some of Madoc’s men cried out while others merely fell back and died without a sound, heavy iron darts sticking from their throats and faces.
The troops were roaring now, his men singing a death hymn while the wyrmlings hurled back curses.
Madoc spared a glance toward his sons, to see if they had stayed or if they had already fled.
He saw them scuffling in the shadows. Drewish had a knife that flashed in the reflected firelight, and he lunged with it. Connor staggered away, blood flowing black from the back of his tunic. He grunted softly, fearfully, as he dodged his brother’s blade.
Madoc did not think. He leapt from the tower into the midst of the fray, used his round war shield to club Drewish across the face.
“Damn you, you brat, what are you thinking?”
“I will inherit!” Drewish said. “I’m most fit to rule! First I’ll kill him, then I’ll take down the king!”
“Not if I get you first, you damned coward!” Connor roared, finally gathering enough wits to clear his war- hammer from its scabbard.
He tried to leap past Madoc to get at his younger brother, but Madoc stopped him with an elbow to the face. Connor staggered under the impact of the blow.
Drewish took the opportunity to lunge, his knife lashing at his brother’s throat, until Madoc punched him in the ear.
Both boys fell to the ground, beaten.
Warlord Madoc put one foot on Drewish’s shoulder, holding him down, while he grabbed Connor by the throat and wrestled him around to get a look at his wound.
Blood stained Connor’s back just above the kidney, but the wound did not look deep. Already the flow was clotting.
“Not too bad,” Madoc judged. “The armor foiled it, just by a bit.”
“I nearly had him,” Drewish spat, trying to struggle up to his feet. “But he ran away.”
Madoc glowered. It was bad enough that Drewish tried to murder his brother. It was made worse by the fact that he had bungled it.
“Here’s the deal,” Madoc growled. “You will both live to reach Luciare. If either of you dies-either at his brother’s hand or at the hand of a wyrmling-I’ll kill the survivor. And, believe me-I’ll take my pleasure doing it. Understand?”
“Yes, father,” Connor sniveled, fighting back tears of rage.
Madoc stomped on Drewish’s shoulder. “Got it?” Madoc demanded. He swore to himself that if this one didn’t understand, he’d slash the boy’s throat with his own blade for being too slow-witted.
“Got it,” Drewish finally agreed.
“Good,” Madoc said. “When I get home, we’ll have a council, figure out how both of you can have a kingdom.” He thought fast. “There are these small folk that will need someone to rule them with an iron hand. They’ll need big folk to be their masters. It will require great work to subjugate them, to properly harvest their endowments. I need both of you alive. Understand?”
Both boys nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Good,” Madoc said. He heard screams along the castle wall, one of his men shouting, “Get them! Get them. They’re coming over the wall!”
“Now, drag your asses back home,” Madoc growled. “I’ve got a battle to fight.”
He turned and studied the castle wall, searching for the source of the commotion, even as a huge shadow fell over him, blocking out the starlight. An enormous graak soared over the fortress. And there he saw it, a kezziard’s head rising over the north wall, its face covered in a barding made of iron chains, its silver eyes reflecting the fires.
Warlord Madoc listened to his sons scuttle away even as his mind turned to war.
Now comes the hard part, he thought: staying alive.
LUCIARE
So often we celebrate life’s small victories, only to discover how life is about to overwhelm us.
“Why are they cheering so?” Jaz asked, for as they marched through the city gates, the warriors beat axes against shields and roared. Nor did the applause die, but kept growing stronger.
Talon leaned down and said softly, “Because you slew a Knight Eternal. They saw it, and even now there are tales circulating of how you slew another at Cantular. No hero of legend has ever slain two of them. The warriors of Luciare have often driven them back from the castle, and sometimes escaped their hunts. But never do they slay the Lords of Wyrm.”
As they entered the city, the warriors cheered Jaz and gathered around, then lifted him onto their shoulders and paraded him through the streets.
Fallion gazed up at the city in wonder. The streets wound up through the market district here, and higher on the hill he could see a stouter wall. Above them, the lights played across the whitened walls of the mountain, flickering and ever-changing in hue, like an aurora borealis.
Soldiers patted Fallion on the shoulder and would have borne him away, but Fallion shook his head and drew back. In his mind, the words echoed, “though the world may applaud your slaughter, you will come to know that each of your victories is mine.”
Fallion felt a wearying sadness. Once again, men applauded him for his capacity to kill, and he could not help but worry that somehow he was furthering the enemy’s plans.
Fallion looked around; people were smiling at him, but they were strange people, oddly proportioned. He saw a boy that could not have been more than ten, but he was almost a full head taller than Fallion.
Shrinking back, Fallion felt very small indeed. He was a stranger in this land of giants.
Talon had said that men of the warrior clans had grown large over the ages due to selective breeding. But even the commoners here seemed massive.
The warriors’ seed has spread throughout the population, Fallion realized.
