Death of the Dragon

11

“These tuskers are so ugly,” Lancelord Raddlesar grunted, as his blade ripped apart a fat-bellied orc’s belly from its crotch to its breastbone, “that you’d think orc mothers’d soon lose interest in mothering more of them, hey?”

“They never do, Keldyn,” another lancelord replied mournfully. “They just never do.”

Those were the last words he ever uttered-a black blade burst through his helm and cheek and out his mouth in a red froth, and Lancelord Garthin toppled into the blood-churned mud without a sound, his dreams of settling his sweetheart in a grand house in Suzail swept away in one bright and terrible instant. His fall went unseen by his fellows in the frantic, hacking tumult.

“I’ve slain at least thirty,” a swordcaptain gasped, bringing his blade around in an arc that struck sparks and rang shrieks of protesting weapon steel from a dozen orc swords.

The endmost orc reeled back from that clash of arms, and Swordcaptain Thorn’s blade darted in like the fangs of a springing rock viper, in and out of a fat tusker’s throat so swiftly that one might have been forgiven for not seeing the slaying stroke-at least until the blood started to jet, and a fat, dirty body staggered helplessly back.

“Is that all, Thorn?” Lord Braerwinter called, over the surging shoulders of two orcs that were hacking an already dead armsman to the ground. “Whatever have you been doing all this time?”

The swordcaptain chuckled. “Sharpening my steel,” he roared back, trading deafening blows with a snarling orc captain larger than he was. “And tempering it-“

Both combatants swung as hard as they could, blades cleaving air until they clashed together numbingly, spraying sparks. Tortured steel screamed around their ears. As one, orc and man staggered back, shoulders shaking helplessly from the force of their meeting blades.

One of the gigantic snortsnout’s elbows struck a dragoneer’s helm, sending the man flying. The warrior fighting beside the downed man gave the reeling orc a look of disgust, whirled despite an orc blade seeking his own ribs, and drove his dagger hilt-deep behind the tusker’s ear.

“-in orc blood!” Theldyn Thorn roared, drawing back his warsword in both hands and smashing it forward through the staggering orc’s guard with such force that both of his boots left the ground-and the huge, hairy jaw, breast, and ribs beneath all shattered. They fell together, rolling in the mud, sweeping the legs out from under the orc trying to slay the dragoneer.

Someone else fell atop that orc, screaming in raw agony, and two sword blades burst through the tusker’s body inches from Thorn’s nose, almost blinding him with hot, dark gore. As he shook his head frantically in the stinking darkness, the screaming above him ended abruptly.

The swordcaptain blinked and heaved and spat his way up from under, finding his feet somehow in the muck. When he could see once more, he found he was in a little space clear of living orcs, facing staggering and blood-spattered Purple Dragons across heaps of the dead. He gave the dragoneer a dark look and snarled, “Slay your own orcs, boldblade!”

“Well,” the dragoneer growled back, kicking his way free of bodies that were still leaking bright blood, “I humbly beg my lord swordcaptain’s pardon. My hand must’ve slipped.”

“No doubt,” Thorn grunted, setting his shoulders to hack his way forward through a squalling tangle of bloodstreaked orcs whose blades were caught in the armor of the Purple Dragon they’d spitted together. “No doubt.”

In the heart of the fray, Swordlord Glammerhand and the lords Braerwinter and Tolon were grimly hacking and parrying, trying to keep orc blades away from two fellow warriors who refused to be protected: King Azoun and his daughter Alusair. The Steel Princess was leaping and twisting like a mad thing in the heart of knot after knot of snorting, screaming tuskers, hurling herself into danger as if she were eager to die. Black orc blood dripped from her helm and chin, and her blade leaped like a flickering flame amid the gore, rising and falling tirelessly.

Ever Alusair struck boldly forward, and ever her father followed her, hacking and stabbing with cool efficiency as he sought to deal death to any orc who got between him and his daughter and thus necessarily around behind Alusair’s back.

Orcs a head taller than she was snorted in anger as they put their shoulders down and rammed forward, together. One paid for his lowered guard with his life, his gorget cut away and the throat beneath opened in a hot flood-but the other sent Alusair staggering and chopped sidearm with his blade like a forester hewing down a sapling.

She grunted-it was more of a sob-as his blade bit home, and almost fell. An orc blade had drawn royal blood!

Roars went up from both sides as orcs shouted in triumph, and Cormyreans bellowed their fervent need to reach and rescue the Steel Princess.

“Die, tuskers!” Swordlord Glammerhand shouted, almost beheading an orc with a terrific cut. “Get thee to death and save us this trouble!”

Azoun’s eyes narrowed as he caught sight of dark limbs and wings waving almost tauntingly in the shadows beyond the orcs. A few more desperate thrusts and slashes brought him to where he could stand over the shuddering Alusair. He slapped a vial of healing elixir into her hand and growled, “Drink, reckless idiot!”

Alusair coughed, on her knees in the mud between two sprawled bodies, neither of them an orc. “Th-thanks, father,” she said thickly, spitting blood. “Always there when I need you.”

“Get up, lass,” he snapped. “I need your thoughts now, not your blade.”

“How so?” she gasped, reeling to her feet as the lords Braerwinter and Tolon took up stances on one side of the royal pair, blades raised and ready, and Swordlord Glammerhand and Lancelord Raddlesar stood guard on the other.

“Look you,” Azoun gasped, pointing through the slaughter with his blade. “We chase and chase this ghazneth, and it retreats, never crossing claws with us-is this the usual way these beasts war with us? And all we ever see is one and the same ghazneth. Where are the others?”

“We’ve been lured away,” Alusair said quietly, holding her side where the orc blade had bitten into her, and bringing her fingers away sticky with her own blood. She lifted her head and shot glances like arrows around the fray, stopping when she found the war wizard who was never far from the king. Arkenfrost was the mightiest mage out in the field with the royal army. “How many of your fellow wizards remain with the troops, Lord Mage?”

“Eight or so, if one counts untried apprentices,” Arkenfrost replied calmly through the tumult, “and three who’ve spells enough to make a difference in battle.”

“If they try,” Azoun snarled, “ghazneths galore will be down on them like hungry vultures. We’ve been duped-again!” Gods, he missed Vangerdahast’s foresight and sarcastic calm… but this was one war the King of Cormyr was just going to have to win without his royal magician.

He looked around at Purple Dragons heartily hacking down orcs, then back at Arkenfrost. “If we leave you, can you bring these men out into the sunlight again and back to rejoin us?”

Arkenfrost shrugged. “We fought our way in here, Majesty,” he replied calmly. “I daresay we can fight our way out.”

The king nodded curtly, caught hold of Alusair’s hand, and snapped, “We go. Guard yourselves.”

Alusair opened her mouth to say something, but Azoun made no move to halt his will. His ring flashed once as the vast blue falling seized them both-and when it cleared they were out under the sun again, the royal standard Azoun had sought to return to was fluttering beside their ears, and they were staring into the frightened eyes of three men in robes whose hands were leveled at the Obarskyrs, and whose wrists were crackling with the awakened lightning of battle magic.

“Strike not your king!” Alusair roared, her voice as deep a snarl as any swordcaptain’s. “How goes the battle? Did you face any ghazneths?”

The foremost man sketched the briefest of bows and stammered, “N-none, Royal Lady. Ah, Eareagle Stormshoulder, loyal mage of the Crown, at your service. Uh, your majesties.” He drew in an unhappy breath, and said stiffly, “We face a sea of orcs-tuskers everywhere, like a cloak on the hillsides all around. We dare not use much magic, for fear of the darkwi-the ghazneths.”

“Prudent,” the king said, nodding, “but use what magic you must. To let men die while you stand idle is to give a ghazneth a victory it hasn’t even taken the field to earn.” He shot the other two mages a steely glance. “Has Stormshoulder seen the fray correctly?”

“Ah, he has, your majesty,” one wizard said awkwardly, while the other stammered, “He has.” Then they both seemed to remember whom they were addressing, and found their knees with almost comical haste.

“Loyal Mage Lharyder Gaundolonn, O King.”

“Loyal Mage Mavelar Starlaggar at your service, Crowned Lord of Cormyr.”

Azoun waved these formalities aside with a growl that became the command, “Follow me! I’ll have these orcs swept from my land even if I have to slay each and every last one of them myself! For Cormyr and victory!”

Holding high his warsword as if it were a flaming brand sent down by the gods, the king charged forward. Alusair snatched up the royal standard and followed, snapping a quiet, “Come!” to the open-mouthed war wizards.

Helmed heads were turning to look at them as they trotted forward. The king’s army was facing a host of orcs that covered the hills ahead for as far as they could see, but a great shout went up as the Obarskyrs surged forward to the line where men and orcs were hacking at each other in the sunlight with a sort of grim resignation.

“For Cormyr and victory!” a thousand throats shouted in unison.

“Death to all orcs!” a swordcaptain called back, and the reply rolled out deafeningly, “For CORMYR AND VICTORY!”

And as the royal army raced forward with renewed vigor to hew down orcs, slipping and sliding in the black blood of the tuskers who’d already fallen, not a man there spared a glance into the sky for a ghazneth. There were orcs to kill, and too little daylight left to down them all.

“For Cormyr,” Azoun shouted happily, shouldering his way past a startled lancelord to lay open the face of a snarling orc, “forever!”

“Gods, yes,” Alusair murmured, from somewhere near his left shoulder, “let it be forever.”