by ML Spencer
“What’s that?”
Aram stood to look, and just as he did, the entire hill shuddered. A shadow raced over them, and suddenly Agaroth roared and lunged skyward—
—to be slapped back to the earth by a dragon pouncing on top of him. Agaroth roared in anger, twisting his body to right himself as the smaller dragon clamped onto him with its powerful talons and caught hold of his neck with dagger-sharp teeth. Agaroth thrashed his powerful neck in an effort to dislodge his attacker. His tail whipped furiously, beating at the dragon clinging to his back. He succeeded in jarring it loose, but the creature just pounced again, latching onto Agaroth with teeth and talon.
Aram raised his hand and started to bind but dropped the strands when another dragon hurled out of the sky, knocking Siroth off the hillside. Shocked, he scrambled to gather the remnants of his scattered weaving, but before he could pick it up, Markus stepped in front of him, raising his sword.
Five figures were climbing the hill, approaching their position: three men and a woman bearing weapons and shields, as well as another, blue-cloaked figure carrying a sword that glowed with dark strands of power.
Aram had seen that sword before, just as he’d seen the man before. But reconciling the two of them together in one place took him valuable seconds.
The fear that seared Aram’s nerves at the sight of Sergan Parsigal was almost crippling. All at once, he was back in the well staring up the shaft at this monster’s face. His breath hitched, and he took a jarring step backward.
The sorcerer’s eyes fell on him, and a smile bloomed on his lips, the same sardonic grin Aram remembered from all those years before. His gaze went to the sword in Sergan’s hand and he felt his courage slip.
Sergan was holding a Baelsword, and the look on his face told Aram that he intended to use it. Aram glanced in Agaroth’s direction, but the dragon was still fighting a battle for his life, and another dragon was diving toward him to join the first.
Markus stood ahead of him, turning slowly, first one way then the other, as Sergan’s four Shields spread out to approach them from all sides. All four looked strong and proficient with the weapons they held. Any one of them would be capable of threatening Aram, if they could get past Markus. Aram raised his star-steel blade, knowing it would serve him far more than magic, under the circumstances.
“Well, hello again!” Sergan said, taking a step closer.
Two of the male Shields were converging on Markus from different angles while one hung back warding Sergan. The woman skirted the edge of the hilltop in a broad circle, seeking to position herself behind Aram. Pressured, Markus started backing up, but then thought better of it and held his ground. Aram was having a hard time dividing his attention between Sergan and the black-haired woman with the sword who was inching ever closer.
Behind them, Agaroth let out a snarling roar that broiled the air. Both dragons had wrestled him to the ground, but he wasn’t beaten yet.
Sergan said to Markus, “You made a poor choice. I would’ve made you great. You could have had anything you wanted. Instead, you chose the halfwit.” He curled his lip, shaking his head. “What a godsdamned waste.”
His Shields had stopped moving and stood their ground, just out of striking distance of Markus’s blade. The woman, however, was still edging around the perimeter of the hill, sword raised, her attention riveted on Aram.
“Now you’re going to die,” Sergan scolded Markus, “and I’m going to spend the rest of my life milking your friend of every drop of essence I can wring out of him.” He drew the Baelsword back over his shoulder.
His two Shields struck out at Markus simultaneously, just as the woman swept forward, lunging at Aram.
Aram pivoted toward her, raising his blade to block, but something grabbed his arm, jerking it forcefully back. He lost the split second it took him to recover, and he couldn’t avoid the weapon coming at him. The sword grazed his chest, scraping across his dragon scale armor with the sound of a whetstone sliding down the length of a blade.
He wrenched his arm back, bringing with it strands of glittering aether that hung from his hand like a broken spider’s web. Sergan had intervened, and Aram was vulnerable without a Shield. In front of him, Markus was hard-pressed to defend against two skilled swordsmen coming at him from both sides, and their dragons were both engaged in battles for their own lives.
Sergan had planned this ambush well.
Aram attacked, weaving a whip of aethereal lashes that struck out at Sergan with scalding tongues of flame. The Shield between them deflected all but one of the lashes, which managed to get past him and score Sergan on the cheek. The sorcerer cried out and brought a hand up to the cauterized wound that branded his face, cold ire and magic blazing in his eyes.
Aram couldn’t weave a second attack because he was too busy blocking the woman’s sword, moving through the forms drilled into him in the training yard. But the woman he fought was more skilled, moving with the grace of someone who had practiced with weapons from an early age. She came at him with solid strikes powered by her balance and momentum, which more than compensated for her inferior strength. Her movements were brisk and precise, and she shifted through forms as fluidly as a dancer.
Aram was forced to retreat further from Markus, barely deflecting her lightning-quick cuts. As he backed away, he purposefully kept the woman between Sergan and himself, using her intentionally to Shield anything the sorcerer might hurl his way. But it didn’t take Sergan long to realize his strategy. The sorcerer stalked forward, skirting the perimeter of the hill. As he walked, he brought a vial of essence to his lips, drinking it down.
Sergan raised his hand, his eyes glowing with the unholy light of stolen magic. At the same time, the woman came at Aram with a crisp series of attacks.
The wall of solid air Sergan conjured smacked into him with the force of a cyclone, lifting Aram’s body and hurling him across the top of the hill. He struck the ground hard, losing his helm in the process. He lay flat on his back, his vision exploding in glittering white sparkles before darkening. He clung to consciousness by his fingernails, but he’d had the wind knocked out of him, and he couldn’t move. For seconds, he lay on the ground, stunned and helpless.
They were seconds he didn’t have.
The woman fell upon him, driving her knee into his chest. At the same time, the edge of her sword kissed the skin of his neck. Aram gaped at her, his lungs burning for breath. The woman’s face was growing dull and dark as his vision faded, and he would’ve passed out had she not eased her weight somewhat. He drew in a great, choking breath, his sight returning in time to see Sergan coming forward, the Baelsword lowered at him. Aram spun a complex braid, but before he could release it, the woman’s sword pressed into his neck.
Suddenly, the woman gasped, her eyes going wide. Her sword retracted from his neck ever so slightly.
Aram stared up at her, confused, until his gaze fell upon the tip of the blade protruding from her chest. She fell on top of him, sliding forward off the end of Markus’s sword.
The elation Aram felt was short-lived, for Markus sank to his knees, his gray tabard saturated with blood all down the front of him. His sword spilled from his hand, and he slumped the rest of the way to the ground, his blood-drenched hand groping at his chest.
“No!” Aram gulped.
He heaved himself off the ground and lunged for Markus. But Sergan’s boot caught him in the chest, knocking him over. The same boot took him in the jaw, snapping his head back and dropping him to the ground. Dazed, Aram felt something take hold of him, dragging him backward. His arms were pinned by a painful weight, then, the next thing he knew, a cloth was being wound around his face like a bandage, blinding his eyesight so he couldn’t bind.
He struggled desperately, but he couldn’t shake the weight pressing him against the ground. He had to get to Markus, had to stop the bleeding—every second counted, and each second that passed could be one too many.
A thunderous roar shook the
earth, overwhelming Aram’s hearing. The weight disappeared from his back, and Aram tore the cloth away from his face just in time to see Agaroth take hold of Sergan and fling him into the air. The sorcerer’s body smacked the ground on the edge of the hill, where he lay moaning while the dragon crouched and opened its glowing maw.
WHOOSH!
A torrent of brilliant, roiling flames erupted from Agaroth’s mouth, devouring the hilltop. The sound of the inferno was deafening, and even from behind the dragon, Aram could feel the raw heat of the fire scorching his cheeks. He turned his face away, squeezing his eyes closed, as the gushing blast continued for blistering seconds before finally dissipating.
When Aram looked back, all that was left of the hillside was a large area of blackened, smoldering ground with flames still licking along the margins of the destruction. If there were human bones there, he didn’t see them. He doubted even bones could have survived that blast.
Mindlessly, he scrambled to Markus and rolled him over onto his back. Markus was unconscious, his blood spreading across his tabard. Aram ripped the material down the front then fumbled with the buckles of Markus’s armor, pulling his cuirass off and casting it aside. Beneath it, Markus’s arming shirt was saturated with blood like a cloth soaked in wine.
Panicked, Aram drew his knife and used it to saw through the padded shirt, revealing a ghastly wound in Markus’s chest. It was a puncture as wide as two of his fingers, and blood bubbled from it at every breath with a horrible wheezing sound. Aram could tell by the pallor of his skin that Markus was already in shock.
Tearing off his mantle, Aram wadded up the fabric and pressed it hard against Markus’s chest. Cold panic filled him as he watched the fresh material dampen with bright red blood. He wasn’t a healer like Calise, and even if he were, it wouldn’t do any good. Markus was Impervious to magic, even the kind that could save his life.
“Hang on!” Aram begged. Everything he remembered about field dressing slipped from his mind, and the only thing he could think of was pressure. He had to maintain pressure.
“Agaroth!” he called. “Siroth!”
Agaroth spun to face him, wings splayed and spines raised. His blazing gold eyes settled on Markus, and he breathed a fiery snort of rage. An image passed through Aram’s mind of a black dragon with an injured wing, and he knew at once that Siroth would have a hard enough time flying himself back.
“Help me!” Aram gasped, wrapping his arms around Markus and dragging him toward his dragon. With the help of a large rock and the judicious use of the leading edge of Agaroth’s powerful wing, he managed to get Markus over the dragon’s back and climbed up behind him, strapping them both in.
“Fly fast!” he whispered, more of a prayer than a plea. He clutched Markus tight as the two dragons surged into the sky, heading back over the battlefield toward the hills on the far side.
Chapter Ninety-Seven
They touched down on the edge of the encampment, where the tents of the healers were located. Seeing them coming, those on the ground scrambled to clear a space wide enough for them to land. People rushed forward to help lift Markus down from Agaroth’s back, laying him on the grass, where healers converged on them. Aram crouched at Markus’s side, keeping pressure on the wound through blood-soaked bandages. From behind them, he heard the growls of an enraged dragon and realized it must be Siroth, despondent over the condition of his rider.
Calise appeared beside them, gently removing his hands. She lifted the sodden cloth, exposing the still-bleeding puncture. Clamping both her hands over the wound, she closed her eyes and summoned her magic.
She cursed and pulled back.
Aram felt a cold terror grip him in a glacial fist. He grimaced, a sob of helplessness tearing at his throat.
Applying pressure to the bandages, Calise called back over her shoulder, “Someone get me a square of leather and a compress! And Wellspring water!
Markus groaned, but otherwise seemed unconscious. Aram moved back, giving her room to work, and watched from the crowd of onlookers.
Someone came running with the items Calise needed, handing them over. She upended the container of Wellspring water over a square of leather then poured more water into the wound to clean it. Then she bent over Markus, holding the leather square in both hands.
“Breathe out hard,” she ordered, and Markus must have heard her, for the wound gurgled and foamed as air gushed through it.
Quickly, Calise pressed the leather over the rent, covering it with absorbent cloth and binding his chest tightly with bandages. They put Markus on a stretcher and were about to carry him to the tents, but Aram stopped them.
“Give me a moment,” he said, sinking down at Markus’s side. Taking his best friend’s blood-wet hand, Aram leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, for he knew he might never see him again.
“You better fight just as hard now as you did on that battlefield,” he rasped, his throat clenched, his eyes burning.
Markus opened his eyes and smiled weakly, squeezing his hand. He stared up at him with a gaze suddenly fierce and determined, conveying a message that Aram had no trouble understanding: that no matter what happened here today, their friendship was the one thing the enemy could never take from them. Aram couldn’t hold the tears back as he let go of Markus’s hand and stood back, watching the healers carry him away.
He stood and stared after him, then wiped his eyes and started back toward Agaroth. The sounds of battle were growing closer and louder, and he feared their soldiers were losing ground.
“Aram!” Calise cried. “Where are you going?”
He paused, turning back. His gaze ran over her, taking her in, from her blood-slicked arms to her sweat-dampened hair, and he couldn’t remember admiring anyone as much as he did Calise at that moment. She walked over to him and reached up to touch his bleeding cheek where Sergan’s boot had kicked him in the face.
Aram flinched back. “I’ve got to get back out there.”
Calise shook her head, her eyes widening. “You can’t!”
Before Aram could argue, he heard someone behind them exclaim, “By the gods! What is that?”
Glancing toward the sound of the voice, Aram saw that a small crowd had gathered not far away, their attention fixed on something down below. He ran toward them, fighting his way through the crowd to where he had a decent view of the entire plain.
The battlefield spread before him, a large swath of denuded, dark ground. Most of the combatants were collected in about a dozen nodes, where the fighting was most intense. Corpses of men and animals littered the field, and scavenger birds blotted the skies above it, their insistent cries combined into a wall of noise that rivaled the clamor of battle. Smoke rose from all across the plain where fires had been set, and in places where the fighting had been the thickest, the bodies were piled into hummocks. At the base of the hill, a sparse line of defenders were being driven back by a fresh enemy charge.
But that wasn’t what had captured the bystanders’ attention.
Hovering above the battlefield was a black Greater Dragon even larger in size than Agaroth. Upon its back was a dark figure armored in lacquered plate, holding a shield in one hand and a Baelsword in the other. The dragon descended upon the battlefield, soldiers and therlings scrambling to clear an area for it to land. It touched down upon the plain with a terrifying roar and a frightening display of its massive wings.
Its rider slid heavily from the dragon’s back then strode forward into the cleared space and simply stood there, helm tilted, gazing toward them.
Toward him, Aram realized with a shiver.
He was too far away to see the dark warrior’s eyes, but he could still feel them. It was a sensation like worms trying to burrow through his eye sockets, and he had the impulse to claw at them.
“What is it?” someone gasped.
“It’s the Archon,” Aram answered, for he had seen that terrible figure before during his Trials. “Kathrax.”
That thing had
killed his father. And now, he felt certain, it had come here for him. Kathrax wanted him, though he didn’t know why. He couldn’t tell whether the Archon desired merely to slay him, or if Kathrax had some other terrible purpose for him in mind.
A powerful feeling came over Aram, the urge to go down there and confront the Archon face-to-face. No. Not to confront. To surrender. It was something he should do, because it was the right thing, the reasonable thing. The longer he delayed, the more uncomfortable he became. He shouldn’t be here, staring out across the battlefield. He should be down there, walking across it toward his master.
“Gah!” Aram spat, realizing what was happening.
He shook his head vigorously to rid his mind of the intrusion. People around him glanced at him strangely, their eyes full of worry. Trembling, he turned and strode away, feeling as though his skin were crawling with maggots. He had never felt such an invasion before. The Archon’s mental touch had left him feeling filthy and vulnerable.
After cold, solitary seconds, Agaroth’s presence returned to dominate his mind, helping Aram shake off the last of the lingering feelings. The dragon was livid, enraged at the enemy’s attack on his rider. He reared back and roared, his hot breath searing the air.
Aram paused, glancing back to regard his enemy. He could feel the Archon’s strength, and he knew he was no match for it, not alone, not without Markus. He also knew he had no choice but to face it.
Fear is your enemy. Don’t surrender to it.
His father’s voice echoed in his mind, solidifying his resolve. He gathered his courage, knowing well that without a Warden, he wouldn’t have much of a chance against Kathrax. But, like his father before him, he had to stand and face him anyway. Glancing sadly at the line of tents where they’d taken Markus, he set his course for his dragon.
“No, Aram, you can’t!” Calise cried, catching his arm. “Not without a Warden!”
Aram didn’t know what to do or say. He didn’t want to lie to her and tell her he’d be coming back. So he conjured a sad smile and said, “I’m sorry. I am. But I don’t have a choice.”