Death of the Dragon

40

“Gods above watch over us,” Lareth Gulur murmured, watching the huge red dragon settle on a hilltop four miles or so away. The farm fields between it and a wandering brook not far below where they stood were covered in a cloak of moving goblins. “Earfangs, the scourge of men’s knees. I never thought they’d get this far.”

“If we don’t stop them,” his superior grunted, “they’ll be at the gates of Suzail tomorrow-and yon Devil Dragon’ll be coiled around the towers of the palace.”

Gulur shuddered. He had a new and better-fitting breastplate because a valiant Purple Dragon had died fighting the dragon the night before, but his helm was the same old dented one that had cradled his brains for a decade. It’s hard to salvage a helm when a dragon’s swallowed the head wearing it whole, but gore can readily be washed off a breastplate if it’s fresh enough. The thought made him glance down, involuntarily. When he looked up, Hathian Talar was regarding him with a grim smile.

“Just try and stay out of its jaws until Vangerdahast does his work,” Talar said. “Then you’ll see what a red dragon looks like falling ready-cooked out of the sky.”

Gulur looked up at the gathering gray clouds, and shuddered. “Like something to stay out from under?” he joked weakly.

Talar gave him a hollow laugh, clapped him on the shoulder, and strode off down the tense line of waiting men, all on foot. Goblins meant no horses. Their hooves might claim half a dozen or more, but the animals always fell, and fell hard, losing the lives of their riders to swarming goblin blades. Goblins ate horses and, for that matter, men. Fingers and toes, he’d heard, were delicacies. Along with other things.

Goblins he could handle, given swords enough, though he’d never seen this many goblins before, and knew from the tales of the older soldiers that so many had never before swarmed into Cormyr to take the field against any army. It was the dragon, though, that none could stand against. With flame, claw, and spell it-no, she, they said-smote the most valiant knights and the shrewdest battlemasters, sniffing out war wizards whatever their disguise and rending them to pieces.

She seemed to know Cormyr better than the oldest veteran Purple Dragon scouts and know magic better than any war wizard. She was a very “devil among dragons,” as one mage had choked, viewing the dismembered bodies of his three apprentices. The Devil Dragon it had been to the realm from that moment on, the name spreading across farms and barracks like sunlight in the morning. And there she was, only a few lazy wing beats away.

As Gulur squinted across the fields at her, the red dragon suddenly raised her head and looked, he thought, right back at him. He could see the glitter of one of her eyes.

“Gods defend me!” Gulur gasped, turning his head away with an effort. Even as he drew a sword that didn’t need to be drawn and looked along its length in an entirely unneeded examination-a length that trembled more than he cared to admit-he could feel the fell, cold weight of the dragon’s gaze upon him.

A trumpet blared, calling each man to arms. Gulur lowered his visor and saw to his lacing. Hathian came down the line again offering murmured courage and warnings. A small gap in the lowering clouds fell across the field, and the sun shone warm and bright upon the hill where they stood. Gulur looked around at this small corner of fair Cormyr for what might be his last time, and drew in a deep breath. The goblins were across the brook and toiling up the hill. It wouldn’t be long before the call to charge came.

“Is this wise, my liege? We’re so few!” Durmeth Eldroon called, spurring his black stallion over to the king. Even from the height of his saddle, he found himself staring up into the stolid face of a mountain of a man in plate armor. This was Kolmin Stagblade, Bannerguard to the King. Stagblade held a fearsome battle-axe in his hands, its blade turned out to keep even excitable Marsembian nobles at bay.

“You see another choice?” Azoun asked calmly in return. “If we retreat to Suzail or Marsember, we abandon our farmers-and their crops-to the goblins. We’d be left to fight the dragon on our own rooftops, with all the war-ruin on the heads of our wives and children. If we retreat beyond our cities, Cormyr is lost. If we cannot stand against these foes here, let us fall as dearly as we can, so those who come to the gates of Suzail and Marsember are as few and as wounded as we can leave them.”

“That’s all that’s left to us?”

Azoun shrugged. “A ruler does what he can and tries to find or make new roads, new chances… but my time for that is past. Now I must bar and guard the gate on the road I’ve built. It’s the task left to me.”

Eldroon’s reply was a wordless snarl as he spurred his stallion back along the ridge to where his troops stood in a knot, still not fallen into formation.

“There’s trouble waiting to happen,” Battlemaster Ilnbright growled, glaring after the dwindling noble. The veteran Purple Dragon commander looked like the hewn and hardened warrior he was-a chopping block as wide as he was tall, as massive as a cask in his deliberately dulled armor.

Azoun shrugged. “No time to right it now. If any man here sees aught amiss with our friend Eldroon’s deeds on this field, and lives to see the end of it, take word to either of these two men.”

Men looked where he pointed. The king’s gauntlet was extended at a grim-looking Dauneth Marliir, High Warden of the Eastern Marches, and a nervous-looking Lord Giogi Wyvernspur. They sat on horses-swift errand-mounts, not warhorses-behind the crest of the hill.

” ‘Take word’?” Haliver Ilnbright growled. “Where’re they going, then?”

“To Jester’s Green, to command the last hope of the realm,” the king said, loudly enough for all of the war captains gathered around him to hear. “If we fall, and our foe goes on to threaten Suzail, these two lords have the duty to lead our eldest veterans and youngest reserves in the field. Their task will be to guard the walls of Suzail as long as possible, and get as many Cormyreans-your wives and children-away safe from our shores if need be. There are already coins from our vaults, hidden away safe, in certain cities elsewhere. If Cormyr falls, its royal treasury goes to its citizens, a hundred gold each, and thrice that for heads of families.”

A lone voice cut through the general murmur that followed. “Gods bless you, my liege,” one of the older war captains growled, bowing his head. “That’s one care gone from me, right there. If I fall, I’d not want my king to go unthanked for such service to me and mine.”

“Aye! Well said,” and the like came from a dozen throats. Amid their thunder, Azoun gestured to Dauneth and Giogi. They saluted and turned their mounts away, down the slope that led to the next hill closer to Suzail-a height where the king’s tent had been erected, and a few hostlers stood holding nobles’ warhorses.

“What about Marsember?” a lone voice asked softly, as the war captains turned grimly to face the foe again.

“We’ve not swords enough to spare to guard both,” Azoun said bleakly. “The navy holds Marsember with the aid of some hired adventurers. If a thousand thousand goblins appear at its gates, there’re boats enough.”

“But…” the voice began, then fell silent.

Battlemaster Ilnbright’s broad and hairy hand fell on the Marsembian’s shoulder. “That’s the hard part of being king, lad,” he growled in a whisper that was audible half the hill away. “There’s never enough to do anything proper, or please all the folk. Ye do what ye can, and yer subjects hope ye’ve a heart and honor to be their shields. This one does-be thankful ye live in Cormyr and not someplace a lot more cruel.”

“Haliver,” the king said quietly from close by, “sound the trumpet. It’s time.”

Battlemaster Ilnbright nodded, squared his shoulders, and took the horn from his broad belt. He did not hesitate as he blew the call that would send almost every man on that hill down to his death.

Ilberd Crownsilver had never been in a battle before. He was here now only because he was a Crownsilver, young and expendable enough to ride into possible death so as to serve the king and bring glory to the family. He’d been young enough to be excited and even nonchalant about the clash of arms. After all, how much harm could one take, riding with King Azoun and Royal Magician Vangerdahast? He was even looking forward to swaggering into eveningfeast to grimly tell his kin of his bravery and tell them of how the king had personally praised his cool manner and valor. At least, he’d been young enough for all that about an hour ago.

Now he was cowering behind a rampart of fly-swarming goblin bodies, the stink of death and his own vomit strong around him, hoping to somehow see the end of the day alive. His ears were ringing from the constant din of screaming, blades crashing upon blades and armor-some of these knights used their swords like clubs or threshing flails, battering their foes into the dirt by simply hammering on armor and shield until the limbs beneath broke or were wearied and beaten down-and he’d yet to see a valiant death. Or even a clean one.

Their first charge had slaughtered goblins by the thousands. The brook was running black with goblin blood and flooding the field, its channel so choked with little humanoid bodies it created a wide marsh of blood-hued mud. Their second charge fared as well, but the earfangs were endless. On they came, in an endless howling flood, and more and more men were beginning to fall. Perhaps four hundred were left-no more-and still the goblins came on, waving their spears.

And the Devil Dragon had not yet taken wing. Almost lazily she lay sprawled on that hilltop, gloating, as her forces surged on in their hundreds and thousands, overwhelming the Purple Dragons by the sheer weight of their numbers. The army of Cormyr had retreated back up the hill to force their foes to climb to meet them. The hillside was heaped with dead goblins, slaughtered almost at will until the arrows and quarrels ran out, sword arms grew tired, and the patient sun beat down.

Still the goblins came. Each wave forced its way a little higher up the slope. Each left behind a red wash of fallen, but there were armored men aplenty among all the goblins now, and though he’d swung his sword all of twice, Ilberd was reeling with weariness.

He didn’t know how the battlemaster and the other older, larger knights could even stand up, yet they spent the time between each wave drinking water from troughs, mustaches dripping, and pointing out particular goblins to strike at when the next wave came. The time during waves they spent hacking like merry madmen, bellowing war cries and bounding around like boys at play. Gods above, if he ever lived to see the sunset, this would be the last battlefield he’d ever

“Guard yourself, lad!” Haliver Ilnbright bellowed, clapping Ilberd between the shoulders with enough force to make him stagger, and striding on without breaking stride. “They’re coming again!”

“Slow to learn, aren’t they?” a white-haired old knight who’d lost his helm in the last fray drawled. “This is getting to be like a proper romp in the Dragonjaws, it is! I’ll have to get my minstrel to write a ballad about this…”

“I hope he sings swiftly,” a Purple Dragon armsman growled. “Here they are!”

The howling spilled over the bodies in another rushing tide of flapping leather, slashing swords, and beady goblin eyes. Men planted themselves-no running and leaping now-to hew steadily, like harvesters with scythes and many fields in front of them, in a rhythm of death.

Ilberd dodged a yelling goblin, slipped, found himself nose to nose with another-and was promptly blinded by its blood as a foot took it in the face and a blade bit deep into its neck.

” ‘Ware, lad,” Lareth Gulur shouted through the din of steel all around them. “Hold your place… ‘tis hard to fell goblins when you’re wallowing about on the…”

His next words, whatever they may have been, were lost in a little scream as one goblin ran right onto his blade, a second thrust a blade deep into his crotch, and a third bounded up to slash his face.

The Purple Dragon spun around, clawing at the air for support, and crashed down on his face. Ilberd didn’t even have time to gape. It was all so sudden. Sudden, and final.

And the realm said the Steel Princess did this every day-had done this every day, for years. Gods, but she must have been frightening to stand near!

“Back, boy, if you don’t know how to use that!” Hathian Talar roared, shouldering him aside and slaying a trio of goblins with a deft fore-and-back cut. He tripped over Gulur’s arm, saw who it was, and cursed like a fiend, then he snatched up his fallen friend’s blade, shook the dead goblin off it, and charged down the hill with both blades flashing in his hands like bolts of lightning. Goblins fell in droves around Talar, as he stood alone in their midst roaring like a walrus. Tears were streaming down his face and he was shouting curses so fast the words were tripping over each other to get out of his mouth.

Ilberd Crownsilver gaped at him in utter astonishment-and was still staring like a statue when hurled goblin maces battered Talar down, and a snarling swarm of goblins surged over him, hacking and stabbing.

The young Crownsilver flung down his sword and fled blindly up the hill, weeping. He had to get away from this, had to get anywhere. He had to be where men weren’t shrieking and dying, their lives spent in an-

Fingers of iron caught hold of his shoulder and shook him until his teeth rattled. The hands spun him around, setting him so firmly on the ground that both Crownsilver heels were bruised right through his boots.

“We don’t need the rear guarded quite yet, lad,” Battlemaster Ilnbright growled. “We’re in rather more pressing need of our line on this end of the ridge not collapsing completely. Just stand in this gap here and kill goblins, hey? It’s not that hard, you just need a bit of practice!”

A sword was slapped into Ilberd’s hands with numbing force, then the mountainous commander was off down the line again, racing in to stand beside a faltering, bleeding lionar to hack down half a dozen goblins before the wave fell back down the hill, shrieking their rage as they went.

Ilberd swallowed, then his stomach heaved, and he tried to be sick again, though he’d nothing left to empty from it. When he could stand upright once more, he looked up at the crest of the hill and his jaw dropped.

King Azoun had lost his helm in the fray and was bleeding from one ear. A second slash across his cheek was already drying into a dark line. He was holding up a staggering giant of a man-the bannerguard, Kolmin Stagblade.

Kolmin took two faltering steps, looked up at the darkening sky, then crashed over onto his side with a landing that shook the dirt under Ilberd’s boots. The man lay still. Azoun bent to him, then straightened, looking grim. The flies were already swarming.

A sudden coldness settled over Ilberd Crownsilver’s chest. It was at that moment that he abandoned all thought of a triumphant entry into the family halls and decided that he’d never see them again. He wasn’t going to leave this field alive.

The clouds were covering the sky now, blotting the sun from view, and in the sudden gloom Ilberd saw Battlemaster Ilnbright striding up to the king. Wisps of white hair blew in the breeze on both their heads, and Ilberd suddenly realized how old these men were. They’d stood on fields like this one forty years ago, and more.

And they were still alive.

He was grinning at that, heart suddenly lighter, when his thoughts fell upon a new idea. Just how many other eager young men had stood with them then who weren’t alive to stand there now?

It was three grim, weary hours later when Battlemaster Ilnbright fell, roaring to his last breath, under a cloak of struggling, scrambling goblins. Ilberd himself hewed down the last of them, tears of rage and grief temporarily blinding him.

When he looked up, it was to see perhaps sixty men still standing around him or sitting wearily on the ground, some groaning from their wounds.

The field below the hill was knee deep in dead goblins. They were heaped head-high in some places. Still, a fresh wave, a thousand strong or more, was trotting out from behind the hill where the dragon lay sprawled at ease.

“That’s it,” someone said quietly. “We’re doomed.”

“What?” someone else growled. “And not have a chance to take some of these home to Malaeve so she can try her recipe for goblin stew?”

No one bothered to laugh, but there were a few silent smiles as men took up blades and worked aching arms in slow swings, waiting for death to come up the hill and snatch them down.

“For Cormyr,” someone whispered, almost as if it were a prayer.

“For Cormyr,” a dozen throats muttered in response. With something like wonder, Ilberd discovered that his own voice had been one of them.

Somehow they’d withstood that wave, the exhausted and blood-drenched few on the hilltop, though one lionar lay twisting and sobbing, his guts on the grass around him, pleading to someone-anyone-to cut his throat and end the pain.

King Azoun took a flask from his belt and put it to the man’s lips. The healing potion did not close the grisly wound, but the pain faded from the warrior’s face, and the king put one arm around his shoulders to help him stand. They were standing together grimly, knowing how little time they had left to live, when the thunder began.

Men looked up at the scudding gray clouds, racing across the sky as if in haste to be elsewhere but as endless as the swarming goblins. No lightning split that sky, and no rain fell. Could the dragon be working a spell? Or was this the work of the royal magician?

Ilberd glanced along the hill at Vangerdahast, who’d lain on his stomach murmuring spells and reading scrolls aloud for most of the day. He’d been wreaking great havoc among distant goblins but took no part in the hewing on the hilltop. If the strength of Cormyr on this hilltop shrank to any less, the young swordlord thought grimly, the wizard might not have any choice about fighting with blade and boots when the next wave came.

The thunder deepened, becoming a steady sound, and louder. The Devil Dragon was on her feet now, twisting around to look behind her. She sprang into the air with a ripple of powerful shoulders, great batlike wings beating once before she plunged down in a pounce on something out of sight, behind the hill.

Someone near Ilberd muttered, “The elves, come again? That can’t be…”

The thunder swept around the hill, driving a red foam of shrieking, spitted goblins before it before they were trampled and ridden down. Purple Dragon banners flapped above the riders. They raised their swords in a shouted salute to the king, then they crashed into the goblins between the hills.

“Gwennath,” Azoun said quietly. “Thank all the watching gods-Tymora most of all-that I’ve a marshal who knows when to disobey orders.”

“She’s emptied High Horn!” a war captain bellowed joyously. “See the banners-they’re all here!” He burst into unashamed tears, not caring if half the world saw his mustache dripping.

A figure in black armor rode at the head of that thundering mass of knights-a figure that raised one slender arm to Azoun as the riders swept past up the valley, driving the helpless goblins before them.

Azoun returned the salute, and laughed in delight.

He was still laughing when the gigantic red dragon swirled into view around the hill, clawing and biting as she roared past mere feet above the heads of the High Horn cavalry, and plunged down on the front ranks of the galloping Cormyreans, biting and clawing.

When she rose from the confusion of rolling, screaming horses and shouting men, jaws dripping with gore, the dark-armored figure could not be seen. When the wyrm turned in the air and breathed fire along that line of death, nothing but dark-armored figures could be seen, toppling amid the smoke.

“So passes Gwennath, Lady-Lord High Marshal of Cormyr,” a knight beside Ilberd murmured. “Who rode all the way from High Horn to win this battle for us-and lose her own life.”

“Win it?” someone else growled. “Forgive me if my eyes fail, but I seem to see a dragon…”

The Devil Dragon turned in the air with indolent grace and plunged down upon the cavalry, taking them in the rear just as they had done to the goblins. She skidded along, shaking the ground in fresh thunder with the force of her passage, and snapping her jaws like a dog ridding itself of stinging flies. A bloody cloud trailed from her as she swept her foes in a terrible tangle down the battlefield, leaving a long, bloody smear.

When their heaped, shattered corpses brought her to a halt at last, she bounded aloft again, scattering those who tried to hurl lances at her with a sweep of a mighty tail. She circled, looking down at those she was going to slay at her next pass. Or the next one.

Gwennath may have been dead, but she’d left one last trick for her slayer. The great red dragon had barely begun her dive down at the cavalry when there was a flash from within its close-packed ranks, then another.

“That’s magic!” someone on the hilltop shouted.

“Lord Wizard?” someone else barked. Vangerdahast peered, and kept peering, and said simply, “Aye. Magic.”

They stood and watched as the dragon came down, large and terrible in the sky-unmoving, claws outstretched and mouth agape as the ground rushed up, her eyes rolling wildly at the last.

“It’s spellbound!” someone cried excitedly, as horsemen scattered in the valley below.

The dragon crashed headfirst into the valley.

The ground shook, and many of the men on the hill fell as the ground quivered under them. Those who kept their footing saw men and their mounts cartwheeling helplessly through the air in the vale below, twisting in agony and despair, and vain attempts to catch hold of something in the roaring chaos that engulfed them.

The ground shook for a long, groaning time. The stiff-winged wyrm slid along like a giant plough, choking out a cry that sounded very like a human woman sobbing, as it helplessly hurled a great cloud of dust and dirt at the sky in its wake.

Clods of earth rained down on the hillside, and men swore in awe and threw up their hands-too late-to shield their eyes. The earth itself seemed to groan and echo its complaint back from the hills around, as at last the Devil Dragon came to a halt.

A horn sounded even before the great wyrm stopped moving, and lancers in the valley below spurred their mounts forward in a charge that ended at those curving scales as they milled around, thrusting and hurling for all their might.

The dragon surged as her assailants raged around her, heaving herself up once, twice, then twisting and rolling over on her side among screaming horses and sprinting men. She thrashed, flailed, then shook herself all over, hurling bodies like broken dolls in all directions, and righted herself.

Ilberd could have sworn the Devil Dragon was wearing a grim look as she flapped her wings, bowling over men and horses like so many toys and clearing a wide area around herself. She reared up and beat her wings in earnest, then, faltering only once. When she took to the air, she was not quite free of the magic, and her wavering flight was straight to her hilltop, to a crashing, heavy landing.

The beast lay motionless, but for her heaving sides, for some moments. The men on the hill saw many spears moving up and down with her scales.

“Blood to us,” a war captain growled in satisfaction. “Now let’s get over there and finish the task.”

They were already moving forward when a lancelord pointed and snapped, “Gods above! More of them!”

Up into view from the far side of the dragon’s hill were coming more goblins-a steady stream of fresh faces, shields, and waving blades.

The men on the hill came to an uneasy halt-all except for the king and the wizard, who trudged steadily on amid the goblin bodies, heading down the hill into the blood-drenched valley. The cavalry swept past the way they’d come, seeking more goblins to slay or perhaps a place to take shelter from red dragons on the wing.

Lancelord looked to lionar, then down at the dwindling figures of the king and the wizard, then at each other again. Helpless shrugs followed and the grim, bloody survivors began to descend the hill once more.

“King Azoun?” one of them called uncertainly.

“On! Our work’s not done yet!” the king called back, rather grimly.

“What price glory?” Ilberd Crownsilver grunted wearily, as his slippery descent brought him down beside his ruler. “Haven’t we slain goblins enough?”

“We’re not here to win glory, lad,” Azoun growled. “We’re here because Cormyr needs us. Or at least that’s why I’m here.”

The young swordlord stared at him for a moment, face going pale, then suddenly ducked his head and went on down the hill.

As they came to the blood-choked stream, the king drew his sword again.