Death of the Dragon

2

“No,” the oldest tracker said flatly, “no horse willingly gallops along bare rock when there’s soft turf to be had, unless the rider it’s obeying guides it so. If Cadimus went along here-as he must have done, to leave no trace for so long, and not having wings-then you can be sure someone was riding him.”

“His master?”

The tracker shrugged. “Who else?” Suddenly mindful that he was answering an anxious king and not an ignorant recruit, he added awkwardly, “Mind, Majesty, riders don’t exactly leave tracks of their own that we can follow, if ye take my meaning, but…”

“I understand,” Azoun said, lifting a reassuring hand. “You do good work, Paerdival-continue. The fortunes of the realm may depend on the trail you find for us.”

In reply, the tracker silently lifted a bushy pair of eyebrows for a moment, then bent over again to study the southern end of the bare shoulder of rock. In a matter of moments he’d given the impatient wave of his hand that meant he’d found signs left by the passage of the royal magician’s warhorse, and the army moved on.

The brief horn call that blared a breath or two later brought the army to an abrupt halt, and hundreds of heads turned in haste. A man was running from the rear guard, waving his hands as he came.

“To arms!” he cried. “Orcs behind us-thousands of them!”

The king did not hesitate. “Up this hill-everyone!” he bellowed. “Form a ring, spears to the fore, all with bows within and readying them. Move!”

The swordlords and lancelords around him began relaying the orders as Purple Dragons surged into motion, rolling up the hill in a vast, gleaming wave.

“I’ll be needing a foray force,” Azoun called to the lords Braerwinter and Tolon. “Gather forty men at most-men who can move swiftly and have good eyes, but none of the scouts. They deserve a rest.”

As he spoke, the horns that would call in the far-flung scouts sounded, and the first men reached the crest of the hill. In involuntary unison they turned and peered in the direction the rear guard had indicated for the orcs.

“Move, Tempus-damned sheep!” a swordcaptain bellowed at them. “Time for sightseeing later-there’s a war on, and we’re in it!”

Several mock bleats came as a reply as dragoneers moved hastily into a ring, grounding their spears and looking for their accustomed officers.

“Move, I said!” the swordcaptain growled at a lone, motionless figure, then fell silent, realizing he’d just bawled an order at the king.

Azoun spun around and clapped him on the shoulder reassuringly. “Keep right on doing that,” he murmured. “You never know when you might save a royal life. Just be assured that most of the time, I’ll ignore you.”

They traded grins-albeit a rather sickly one on the swordcaptain’s part-and took their own places. The officer stepped into the ring, and the king stood beside the two nobles who’d wisely selected some veteran officers to lead the force rather than trying to claim glory for themselves. They were standing with about twenty men. The king nodded approvingly.

“I’ll be needing some swift swords to seek out the enemy,” he told them. “If anyone is footsore or slowed for any reason, say so now. Your lives will almost certainly depend on being fleet in the field.”

He looked again at the hill from where the rear guard’s warning had come and stiffened.

A lone figure was running toward them, stumbling with weariness. It was a warrior, armor covered with dust, but seeming somehow familiar-a Cormyrean, to be sure.

Orcs were streaming up over that hill now, close behind the running knight. They were going to catch him and slay him right under the king’s nose, in full view of all the royal army.

Azoun’s mouth tightened. It would be foolish to abandon a strong defensive position to go down there to swing blades with so many orcs, but the last thing he wanted was to stand idle and watch a man he might have saved get hacked apart while he did nothing.

It was also something he didn’t want Purple Dragons to see and remember. The lone figure might be them, next time. What good is a king who stands heartless when a subject is in need?

“Foray force-down, and defend that knight! The rest of you charge when the hilltop is covered with orcs!” he roared, and set off down the hill.

“Majesty!” a lancelord protested, and another cried, “This is madness, good king!”

Azoun turned without slowing and cupped his hands around his mouth. “I can only hear officers who run with me,” he called. “If one man dies while I stand idle, what kind of king am I?”

He heard the approving murmur from the warriors in the ring, and the officers heard it too. No more protests came to the royal ears as the King of Cormyr, and his strike force raced down the hill, angling their charge so as to come between the foremost orcs and the lone fleeing figure.

Gods, but it was a horde. Hundreds of tall, hulking orcs, fresh and eager, loped along with their blades out and their tusks gleaming, howling as they saw the humans rushing to meet them.

The two running forces crashed together in a sudden mass of shouts, ringing blades, and thudding bodies. Azoun pointed at the lone, gasping knight they were trying to rescue to make sure no orc slipped through the fray. He saw that Tolon and Braerwinter were leading four dragoneers to form a ring, then he crashed into a knot of struggling men with the old, quickening eagerness for the fray. The king drove his sword half through an orc’s forearm. The beast screamed and tried to shake the steel free. Azoun barely heard an unexpected shout through its noise.

“Father! Azoun! Father!”

It could only be Alusair, but her voice was a raw sob. The king fell back from the fray, raising his ring. “Alessa? Lass?”

“Majesty!” Braerwinter’s voice arose like a trumpet, and Azoun realized that the exhausted, fleeing knight had been his daughter.

He sprinted across the field, hearing the mighty roar of his main army behind him as it charged down the hill to slay the orcs. He ran to where the small ring led by the lords stood around a lone, shuddering form.

The Princess Alusair was sitting, her mouth wet from the healing potion Braerwinter had already forced down her throat, her face streaked with dirt and rivulets of sweat. Her eyes were dull with weariness, and she was shuddering between gulps of air.

He might have stood on a hilltop and watched orcs butcher her-one of the best warriors in the realm.

“Lass,” he said fervently, dropping his sword and putting his arms around her in as gentle a cradling as he could manage. Her own embrace was fierce, and she put her face against his armored chest for only a few heaving breaths, never letting the men standing watchfully around them hear a single sob.

“I… found a grove of those twisted trees… It was full of orcs… Been running since… Spent all the magic I had fighting and running… Ring wouldn’t take me to you… How came you here to my backlands?”

The battle was rising around them in earnest now, men and orcs shrieking and shouting as they died, their cries almost lost in the incessant ringing of steel.

“Alessa,” Azoun said, rocking her slightly in his arms, reluctant to let go of what he’d come so close to losing, “I’m looking for the man who always knows what to do, no matter how much you two have crossed swords down the years. I need his counsel now, more than ever. Vangey’s warhorse came this way. We’ve been following the trail, hoping to find him alive.”

Alusair shook her head. “Cadimus was carrying someone else on this ride. Vangerdahast was-is-missing.”

“What? Vangey wasn’t in the saddle?”

Alusair shook her head again. “I fear he is truly lost,” she whispered.

The king threw back his head as if someone had slapped him, paying no heed to the battle raging close around them now. The endless orcs were slowly driving back the men of Cormyr.

The king closed his eyes and shook his head grimly. “No,” he muttered. “Gods, no.”

He let go of her and walked away, as if alone in a fog. Alusair and the lords exchanged startled glances, then sprang to their feet and followed. The Steel Princess scooped up her father’s forgotten sword.

“I’m no good at riddling my way out of prophecies!” Azoun told the air around him despairingly.

“Father?” Alusair slapped the blade back into her father’s hand and shook his shoulder, imploring, “King Azoun-speak to me!”

“Vangey’s wisdom lost to me, when I need it most?” Azoun murmured. “After all these years…”

He whirled around and snapped, “It cannot be. The old wizard’s off on some quick work of his own. Something he hasn’t told us about, as usual.”

“And if he’s not?” Alusair almost whispered.

Her father looked at her grimly, then said almost calmly, as if he were noticing the weather out a castle window, “Then the gods have truly turned their backs on me.”

A horn call rang out, bidding the army of Cormyr to try to return to their hilltop. The sound was almost lost in the derisive roar of a new wave of orcs.