The Shield of Daqan

by David Guymer

  There was no evidence yet of panic.

  The city burned, but by Roland, with warriors like these to call upon he would hold his castle. “They have been well trained,” said Fredric.

  “I take no credit,” said Trevin.

  “They are a credit to General Brant. And to every man and woman who has stood on this wall before them and held it.”

  “As are you, sire.”

  Fredric smiled, and for the first time his immediate thought was not to argue the virtues of some more valorous ancestor. “We will win this yet. If even one message rider made it past the hounds of the Uthuk Y’llan and out of Kell then I would not bet against Kellar stamina to hold until reinforcements come.”

  “Relief from Dhernas or Forthyn is about all we can hope for now,” said Trevin, his voice dropping to a cracked whisper as they passed under the castle’s threshold.

  Even confidences could carry far through the barbican’s stone tunnel.

  The column rode for a long minute. The horses’ hooves rang alternately off stone flags and metal grates, echoing loudly, the tiny chink of sunlight at the tunnel’s far end growing steadily into a second gate that admitted Fredric and his knights into Kellar’s outer bailey and a scene of urgent anarchy.

  Soldiers hurried back and forth, running errands alone or as whole units rushing to reinforce some embattled section of wall. Horses huddled together, untended, confused and panicked by the mayhem around them. Aged runemasters in the scholarly robes of Greyhaven clutched tightly to cracked tomes of battle spells while harried apprentices fussed with towering golems, etching runes, adjusting charms. Only the golems themselves were unflustered, as fearless as rocks with immense blades, idle for now, in their untiring hands. Somehow, they appeared all the more fearful for their lack of reaction. None but the runemasters whose lore commanded them dared stand near. Even the horses, dogs, and hawks that the Kellar employed in war gave the rune constructs a wide berth.

  The bustle parted around the knights to reveal Princess Litiana haranguing some luckless page as he fled back towards the inner gate with an armful of flags. She was wearing a brigandine in her usual clash of bright colors, with a large arbalest of Loriman make in both hands and hanging against her chest by a shoulder strap. Her dark hair had been tied back with a colorful string of ribbon.

  Fredric had never seen her looking closer to her natural element.

  “You should be in the keep,” he said.

  “You should be in the keep,” said Litiana. “You’re the lord of the castle. I’m just your wife, and a lord can always get another one of those.”

  Trevin cleared his throat and leant in. “There can be only one woman for this man, my lady. He is quite taken by you, I fear.”

  Litiana sniffed. “That is disappointing.”

  In spite of the battle, Fredric flushed.

  “Indeed, my lady,” said Trevin, “I’m afraid you will have to refrain from dying today after all.”

  “Did you at least kill some dragonkin with that thing?”

  Trevin brandished Unkindness like a proud father. “Some. Though I fear your husband outdid me when he blooded one of the greater beasts.”

  Litiana turned to look Fredric up and down. “I will be impressed when its head is on our bedchamber wall. I want it to be the first thing I see when I wake tomorrow morning.”

  Before Fredric could think of an answer a gibbering shout, part manic laughter, part tormented shriek, drew their attention skyward. A demon careened over the walls, pursued by a blizzard of arrows.

  Litiana raised her arbalest, sighted down the track and loosed.

  “Curses,” she swore, as the bolt sailed wide and the demon continued its erratic flight towards the next gate.

  “Go back to the keep,” Fredric told her.

  “If I had hit that thing we would be having a different conversation.”

  “Brant can keep order here.”

  “Pffft.”

  “And so can I.”

  “Respectfully, sire,” said Trevin. “I should escort you both back.”

  “These are my walls! I won’t ask another to hold them in my stead.”

  “Where is young Grace?” said Trevin.

  “In the keep, with Chamberlain Salter and the other old people,” said Litiana.

  “Without guards?” said Fredric.

  Litiana looked offended. “I made sure she was armed.”

  Fredric’s mouth dropped open.

  Their daughter was a noble, an heir to a barony: it was expected that she would take on responsibilities young, but not quite as young as the families of the Torue Albes seemed to demand of theirs.

  Trevin chuckled.

  Litiana winched her arbalest. “It may not come to that. There is a rumor going around that we are going to win.”

  “Aye, my lady,” said Trevin with a wry smile. “I heard that one too.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Archerax

  Castle Kellar, North Kell

  A new moat encircled the keep, an ever-tightening ring of glowing metals and burning stone. Ash filled the sky and covered the moon. Screams rose from the tortured city like smoke. Only the castle itself, perched high on the rocky shoulder of the Howling Giant Hills like a moribund falcon of gray stone, was unburnt. Its walls bristled with spears and bows. The hated spear-throwers sat ensconced in towers a hundred feet high. The gate itself, supposedly a castle’s weakest point, resisted the flames that the hybrids hurled at it. The metals gleamed after every assault as though poured afresh from the cast each time. Even the wood was unmarred. Some rune magic rendered them proof against dragon fire. But it was dragon magic that allowed them to defy him, and Archerax would see it unmade.

  His nostrils smoked as he pondered.

  “I promised the Uthuk witch that Kellar would fall ere the dawning of the fifth day, and lo, it shall. Even if it is by the murder of my own claws that it must be done.”

  He raised his head on its long neck and split the night with his call.

  A moment later the green dragon, Grievax, settled onto the ruin alongside him. She beat her wings slowly, as though unwilling to set great weight on her leg.

  “You are injured,” said Archerax.

  Grievax hissed. “Dragonslayer’s Heir,” she managed, in the halting dragon speech she had learned from the elder hybrids. “He has claws of his own.”

  “Such is the reason that I have flown so far from the molten hearthlands of Mennara’s Heart. To return you, of course, kindred of mine, lost childe of Shaarina Rex, and to lay low this savage outpost of the dragons’ rightful dominion, but to end him also, and his hated line, before the storm from the Heath rises in full.”

  The green dragon panted and fumed, as eager as a hatchling and as stupid.

  Not unlike the Uthuk Y’llan.

  “But you have failed me,” he said. “The Dragonslayer’s Heir has barred his gates and now we must unmake his fastness stone by stone.”

  “It will be done, lord!”

  “You assured me that this one was soft and would not hide behind walls while his city burned.”

  Grievax hissed, but did not respond.

  “Prove your worth to Levirax now. Make me an entrance. I will deal with the Dragonslayer’s Heir myself.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Fredric

  Castle Kellar, North Kell

  The gatehouse’s left-hand tower exploded into rubble and flame. Fredric raised his shield and flinched back. Lumps of burning masonry rained over the bailey like meteors. Smaller debris rattled off shields and helms and rooftops. Larger chunks smashed men and flagstones indiscriminately. A quarter of the tower’s height was gone, gouting flame like a volcano, the immense forest-green drake that Fredric had wounded fanning the flames with each beat of its gargantuan wings. Arrows by the hu
ndred bristled its tough hide already, and no sooner had it alighted than a seven foot-long bolt from a ballista pierced its chest. The monster issued an eardrum-rupturing scream, sending a plume of hot breath rolling across the rampart towards the right-hand tower. Archers screamed as they burned. Another bolt pierced the dragon. The creature arched its long neck back and bellowed.

  And then fell.

  Its landing crushed another ten yards of the curtain wall. It thrashed violently, once, like a dog with something stuck in its back, flattening a hundred spearmen and the entire span of wall, and then fell still.

  Fredric looked at the destruction in horror. Not even during the reign of Margath the Unkind had the inner walls fallen. “The wall is breached!” Fredric yelled.

  Spearmen rallied to him, forming up in deep ranks and locking shields. Rune-golems lumbered forward, visible through the thickening pall only by the magic blazing through the joints in their armor. Whatever decided to test that breach was in for the fight of its life.

  Fredric raised his sword high. His borrowed horse paced under him. “Kellar has stood for two thousand years. It stands today. Kellar!”

  “Kellar!” his army roared, as the dragons came.

  They came from above.

  Ignoring entirely the breach that had drawn the human army’s attentions the hybrids descended like autumn leaves gathered by a storm; greens and yellows and silvers and reds swirled as they flew. Soldiers screamed as they shifted to address the new threat, bending the formation’s discipline as warriors stationed to the flanks and rear lifted their shields.

  Somewhere close by, a second dragon bellowed.

  Fredric snapped to life, a lifetime of training to lead his people taking over. “Archers!” he yelled, turning in the saddle to project his voice wherever it might be heard. “Archers. Thin them. Infantry to me. Rear units form schiltrons. Forward units disengage and reform at the second gate.” From the vantage of horseback, Fredric watched as the battle slowly began to conform to his command. Units drew back into tight rings of spears, stabbing up at swooping hybrids while others hurried back, clattering past Fredric where he still stood with Trevin and Litiana in front of the main gate before streaming out into new ranks like steel poured into a mold.

  Fredric himself was untested and unproven, or so he had always felt until this point, but the blood of legends was in him, and it stirred at the sight before him now.

  The initial shock had been overcome, and the dragons would break themselves on Kellar discipline and Kellar stone as they had always done.

  “Now – drive! Drive! Them! Back!”

  A flying hybrid in armor the color of molten rock swooped for him. He was a raised target on horseback, harder to protect with spears and evidently important. Fredric ducked its spear thrust and cut it down with a counter from his sword. Another shrieked, circling, waiting, and then dove. There was a twang as Litiana shot it. The bolt from her arbalest punched through metal and scales alike.

  Fredric turned to her.

  She nodded.

  “Go back to the castle,” he said. There was an authority in his voice and a stature to his bearing that had not been there before, and she took a backward step even if she did not immediately obey. He would protect her, not that she needed it, but so that there would be someone left to protect Grace should he fall.

  Turning back to the battle, he swept his blooded sword up overhead.

  “Show them Kellar steel!”

  A formation of spearmen had pinned a mob of dragon hybrids in place. More of the hybrids were landing to reinforce them, hoping to overwhelm and overrun the human formation. A rune golem waded into them before they had the chance, setting to work with a gigantic axe in each of its four hands and a sound like a thousand lumberjacks working a single tree. The construct emerged from the melee a few seconds later, splattered in blood and surrounded by broken blades. Elsewhere a lance of knights, their heraldries impossible to make out in the gloom and dust, colors all turned to gray and all armor to brass by dragonfire, thundered around the southern edge of the battleground, sweeping away hybrids and scattering them back to the skies. Archers shot the creatures down the moment they were airborne, spearmen hurrying up in the knights’ wake to reclaim lost ground and push the hybrids backs to the wall. Even if the dragons themselves had made no use of it, the breached wall was impossible to ignore. There were more hybrids still out there on foot, not to mention the Uthuk Y’llan.

  The rune golem looked around for more creatures to kill, thinking inscrutable thoughts born of rock crystals and rune-magic, the cracks in its rugged brow glowing with a faint blueish light such that they almost resembled eyes.

  It turned ponderously towards the breach.

  What it sensed there or how it weighed its decisions, now that it had briefly been given autonomy to make them, Fredric refused to try to imagine. The magic, frankly, terrified him in a way no monster could.

  A dragon roared.

  The archers still left on the wall whirled, but too late, as a second dragon blasted its breath across the gatehouse’s right-hand tower and swept overhead. Fredric craned his neck to follow it as bits of ballista rained down over the bailey. For one brief moment peace fell as every man, woman, and beast in Castle Kellar paused in their efforts and did the same.

  Here was a true monarch of dragonkind.

  The dragon descended on the bailey unopposed.

  It stretched out its wings and straightened its back. It was almost as great in stature as the tower that burned against its back, its wings broader than the entire span of the gatehouse and the breached wall combined. Brave knights cried out, all pride and valor vanquished by the expression of such noble terror. Veterans of a dozen battles broke and ran before the great monster had fully settled.

  Fredric felt himself quaver.

  The strength left his arms. His weapons lowered. He had been wrong to think himself the equal of this.

  He had been so wrong…

  “Dragonslayer’s Heir,” the dragon announced, its voice thick with the awful majesty of power. “I am Archerax the Great. It is my honor to be your doom.”

  Claws gouged deep into the flagstones as it took a grip on the ground, and then attacked.

  It was a massacre.

  There was not the strength in all of Terrinoth to deny such a beast.

  Blocks of spearmen were swept imperiously aside. Archers were contemptuously ignored, their arrows snapping off its scaled back. A rune golem with a siege-ballista mounted on its back moved to confront it. The dragon swatted the construct like a beetle.

  “Die, spawn of Margath!” Trevin Highgarde yelled, spurring his terrified horse into a charge and hewing Unkindness deep into the dragon’s hip.

  Archerax reared and bellowed.

  Stone cracked. The metal points of spears bent.

  Fredric’s hands flew to his ears and he screamed.

  “Insolent flea,” said Archerax, as Trevin fought to restrain his mount. “Blood kindred to Margath am I, but no lesser than he. Cower, tin man. You stand before a sovereign such has not trodden the Land of Steel since your elder age. Gather all the tools of your ingenuity and your theft, they will not avail you now.”

  The grandmarshal raised his sword for another swing.

  Archerax struck it from his hand. The blow would have stricken stone. While the knight screamed over his broken limb, Archeron wreathed him in fire.

  Fredric watched in horrified disbelief as the ashes crumbled.

  All his life he had thought Trevin Highgarde indestructible, the last thing that would be left standing when the world failed, and the one he had always imagined he could entrust his daughter’s crown to if he fell.

  Unkindness clattered to the charred stones. Its magic alone was proof against whatever destruction Archerax could inflict, but it was glowing red with the heat, the smoke of Trev
in’s final grip curling from its hilt.

  With a cry Litiana raised her arbalest and loosed.

  The heavy bolt thudded into Archerax’s neck and pierced the scales.

  The dragon turned to her.

  Before Fredric could react she bent to scoop up a spear that a fleeing soldier had dropped and charged.

  As though slapped across the face with a steel glove, the fear of watching this play out snapped him out of his terror of the beast. He raised his shield, his face turning deathly stern, and he spurred his horse into a charge. The warhorse overtook Litiana a second later and Fredric hacked his sword into the dragon’s flank. The Rune of Fate blazed as it sought out the weakest point in a monster without weakness, but there was no harm it could do that Unkindness had not done. Litiana yelled as she rammed her spear up into the pit of Archerax’s foreleg. The dragon growled, pulling the spear from her grip as he raised his foot and then brought it down with crushing weight across her legs.

  Fredric felt as though he had been run through the chest with Unkindness’ still-hot blade. “No!” he yelled, striking the dragon’s side again and again in a frenzy.

  Turning from Litiana’s still body, Archerax struck his snout across Fredric’s shield. Power burst from the runic device and was broken. The runestone embedded in the metal exploded. The discharge hurled Fredric from his saddle.

  Archerax grunted and shook his head, armored lids blinking slowly, then idly snapped forward his neck to rip Fredric’s horse from the ground and hurl it bodily into a nearby wall.

  Fredric dragged himself back.

  “All that is yours or that you hold precious I will take until there is naught left to you but your life – and then that too will be mine,” said Archerax. “Heir to Dragonslayers you may be, but Roland you are not. No winged horse of the elves have you to match me in flight. No Soulstone Shard have you to leach the might from me as we battle. Both were lost in Margath’s fall, and no craft do I see about me by which they might be replaced. The lesser descendants of unexceptional men you are. I will dismantle this citadel piece by piece and when I am done there will be left not a single stone to mark you.” A huge, smoking black tongue emerged from behind the dragon’s fangs. He licked his lips. “And then I will find the hole where your offspring cowers and I will eat her.”