He fell to his knees, tripped by the elf next to him. Lalania fell into his arms, narrowly missing being impaled on his sword. Around him the elves were going to ground, pulling the shield wall above them for protection from the sky. He glanced up and understood why.
Winged death was diving on the field in a complex swirling pattern, a dance with dragons instead of ballerinas. They raked the ground with long burning sweeps of flame. Christopher had prayed for artillery and been rewarded with an air strike. The elves huddled under their shields and hoped no one missed. Christopher crawled closer, snuggling up against a silver-clad body with undignified intimacy.
After a dozen breaths, Argeous spoke. “Now.” The elves cast aside the shields, leapt to their feet, and charged the center. The burning field was ironically dimmed; the fire-strikes had consumed everything in their path instantly, leaving only gray ash. There was still a battle raging, however. The dragons had taken care not to splash the black hemisphere, and the creatures on the edge continued to fight inward, heedless of the death around them. At least until the wave of elves crashed into them from behind.
Christopher climbed to his feet and helped up the elf he had been lying on. It turned out to be Lalania. She wiped mud off the lyre.
Argeous was the only elf left beside them. He raised his hands for a spell, looking down the street they had come up. Christopher turned just in time to see a column of halberd-bearing lizardvolk get torched by the white dragon rocketing overhead. She moved with tremendous speed and vanished into the cloud of smoke rising from the field.
“Let us find a more defensible position,” Argeous suggested. The lizardvolk, or at least the ones not already dead, were running around like headless chickens on fire, but Christopher could see them slowly reorganizing their diminished numbers back into a battle group.
The three of them went to join the rest of their company. Two elves staggered out of the black sphere dragging Cannan between them. He was a mess, covered more in blood than in his armor, which was missing most of its scales.
“I fear he will expire when the rage leaves him,” one of the elves said.
“Probably,” Christopher agreed. He reached down and touched Cannan’s wild-eyed face. The man tried to bite him. Christopher ignored the feeble threat and started casting healing spells. “Anybody else?”
A number elves presented themselves. Christopher shared out what he dared to spare. Cannan recovered his senses and stood up under his own power.
“I cannot see so well from inside the sphere,” the big man said. “It made fighting somewhat more challenging.”
“How much longer will it last?” Argeous asked. “We could still make use of it.”
“The rest of an hour,” Lalania said. “Go on, take it. I was told this was its final charge, and as Cannan noted, we are blind inside.”
“Thank you,” said an elf from the center of the sphere. Up close, Christopher could dimly see through the null-stone effect by the light of the fires. The elf held the amulet aloft and a dozen more gathered around him. Together the group moved off at a full run, heading for the center of the city.
“We lost one,” Cannan said quietly.
“I know,” Argeous said, walking over to where the sphere had been. In its absence, Christopher could see a silver-clad body lying on the ground, its well-formed, finely featured head half-severed from its fine white neck.
“Help me strip her,” Argeous told Cannan. “Quickly now.”
The man and the elf rolled the body out of her armor while Christopher watched, disturbed. He had thought the elves too disciplined for such battlefield antics. Argeous surprised him, though. Once the woman was uncovered, the elf produced a dagger and began to cut her underclothes open. Before Christopher could object, Argeous moved on to cutting her body open, dragging a huge gash across her torso just under her breast. The elf shoved his hand inside, searching. His fist came out bloody and clenched around something small enough to hide in his palm. Christopher guessed this was the focus of the spell that automatically reincarnated elves when they died. Kalani had let that fact slip once; he imagined it was the sort of thing elves preferred others did not know, so he pretended not to see. Argeous touched the dead girl on the forehead with his other hand and whispered a cantrip, draining her tael into a purple stone. Both items went into a pocket inside his cloak as he stood up.
“The armor is for you, Ser,” Argeous said. “Your own has suffered, and we do not have time to repair it.” The elf ignored the dead body, as if it were no more than a log on the field.
“Let’s find another place to change,” Lalania suggested, changing the subject before Christopher could broach it. Cannan bundled the chainmail under his arm and they went forward, following the path of the other elves.
18
FIRE AND FURY
Christopher was not sure they were going in the right direction. The buildings ahead were being subjected to sustained fire strikes by wheeling dragons. On the plus side, he didn’t really need the darkvision potion anymore because the heart of the city was well lit now. In the negative column, however, had to be accounted the sad fact that buildings kept falling down around them.
One of the golden dragons felt the destruction wasn’t fast enough. It landed on a tall tower a hundred yards away and began gutting it with huge claw strikes. After a few moments, the tower gave way. The dragon followed it to the ground, spreading its wings at the last minute to land gracefully.
A smaller dragon, a green one, joined it. Together the creatures flayed the ground, tossing up debris and bodies in a wild spray. Three more circled overhead, occasionally flaming targets that moved to threaten the landed dragons.
“I must leave you now,” Argeous said. “My role is about to begin. We have found the heart of the lair.”
Before Christopher could speak, the elf simply vanished.
A massive ball of white exploded in the face of the two digging dragons, freezing the moisture out of the air and sending snow sparkling down. The gold shook it off and roared, then dug harder. The green drew back and staggered off, crunching smaller buildings in its wake. It was replaced by a much larger blue dragon. The new dragon breathed into the hole they were digging with a stream of light that blinded like an arc-welder. Even at this distance, Christopher could feel the static discharge of electricity play over his skin.
A small group of elves hurried past. Alaine was with them, dressed in silver chainmail covered in blood. She glanced at the bundle under Cannan’s arm.
“Use it well,” she told him. The elves ran on, heading for the excavation.
Cannan stepped out of the shreds of his armor. Christopher put away his sword and helped the man into the chainmail, although he needn’t have bothered. It slid on like a second skin, held in place by the smallest possible number of straps and catches.
“Are we winning?” Christopher asked. “It feels like we’re winning.”
“This has all been preliminary. The true battle is only now joined.” Cannan was staring at the dragons in the distance. “You should go. But I fear Lala and I are outclassed.”
“I’m practically out of spells,” Christopher said. “I did a lot of healing. Without magic, I’m just another sword.” He strongly suspected that even with his rank he was no match for the elven swordsmen.
“If I still had the lyre I would be able to help,” Lalania grumbled. Christopher could tell she hated being out of the spotlight.
“I think you did just fine with it,” he told her. “You saved a dragon’s life.”
“We all did,” she said. “It took all three of us.”
In the distance, the excavation erupted. Sparkling bolts lanced out of it, larger than the ones Christopher had seen before. If those had been rifle shots, these were cannon. Dozens and dozens of them ripped into the blue dragon. It rose up, standing briefly on its rear legs. Christopher could see the bolts tearing through its body and coming out bloody holes on the other side. The dragon clawed at the
air, trying to gain purchase on nothing at all, and fell heavily to the side. There was no mistaking that fall. It was dead before it hit the ground.
Five more dragons rushed in, led by the white. With them in a group, Christopher could assign a sense of scale. The white was considerably larger than the rest. All of the dragons pounded at the ground, tossing up paving blocks the size of small cars. The rain of debris began destroying the surrounding buildings. Dragon fire and spell energy poured back into the hole.
Then it stopped, suddenly. Three dragons shrunk out of sight while the others watched intently.
“The elves have gone in,” guessed Cannan.
Elsewhere in the city, dragons still roamed, burning and swooping. They seemed fiercer than before, if that were possible to imagine.
Two dozen halberd-bearing lizardvolk marched around the corner. Hissing and spitting, they charged. Christopher drew his sword and held his ground next to Cannan. Lalania ducked behind the remains of a wall, her thin blade in hand, waiting for a chance to stab someone in the back.
“Something for swords to do, then,” Christopher muttered.
The three of them huddled in the basement. Half-collapsed, the stone wall facing the street actually lying in the street, it still offered a defensive position. Christopher summoned up the last of his magic to heal the bleeding gash across Lalania’s face. It might not have been the worst of their wounds, but he could not bear the thought of her wearing a scar for the rest of her life.
“Bloody trolls,” Cannan grunted. “I should have brought hand grenades.”
“I should have brought a cannon,” Christopher said. “But there was no place to hide it on that stupid wagon.”
“I should have brought a silk pillow,” Lalania retorted. “So I could put it over my head and be spared your petty misgivings.”
“Or lunch.” Christopher’s stomach rumbled. “You should have brought lunch. I think the elves forgot we have to eat.”
“We are in the middle of a city. If you need food, we can surely locate some.”
He was out of magic, though. He couldn’t make sure it was safe to eat. For that matter, he didn’t want to know what they ate around here.
“Do you still have spells?” he asked Lalania.
“No,” she sighed. “I ran out an hour ago.”
Cannan frowned. “We have not seen an elf in some time. Perhaps we should consider retreat.”
Assuming they could find their tunnel and win through whatever forces were there, they would just find themselves in a cold forest hundreds of miles from anywhere. “How would we get home?” he asked. “The elves were our ride.”
Lalania pinched her face. “We need only survive until you renew. Then your magic can heal us, feed us, and transport us. How did you forget this?”
For all his reliance on magic, when he got tired, his abilities seemed to slip his mind. It was like trying to count change in a foreign language. At the end of a long day, you always fell back to your native tongue.
“It’s been a long day,” he said.
“Then let us end it,” Cannan said. “We have delayed long enough. We should approach the lair and see if the war is won.”
That seemed like a bad idea if it hadn’t been. On the other hand they could still see the occasional dragon flying overhead, so presumably their side hadn’t lost.
His stomach rumbled again. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do that.”
They picked their way carefully through the rubble. What little opposition they met seemed more interested in running away than fighting. Only the trolls fought for the sake of violence, and the supply of the regenerating creatures was steadily diminishing. The prevalence of flame probably had something to do with that.
A green dragon, one of the smaller ones, passed overhead and then banked to come around again. It found a street wide enough to land in, on account of the buildings on both sides being smoking ruins. The dragon waited for them to make their way over to it.
“I am glad to see you still alive,” Lucien rumbled. “The Masters are dead; the field is ours.”
“Nobody told the trolls,” Christopher said.
“No,” Lucien agreed, “nobody told them. They will have to be rooted out and burned, one by one. A tasteless, thankless task. That will probably fall to me.”
Christopher had noticed that Lucien was, in fact, the smallest of the dragons present. Considering that not too long ago Lucien had been the biggest creature Christopher had ever seen, that was quite a change in status.
“What about the lizards?” Christopher asked, thinking of the household his party had spared.
“They are already fleeing. A tragedy in the making. They are illequipped for survival above ground; it has been untold generations since any of them have seen the sun. They will starve, and drown, and die of a thousand dangers. Unless they find civilizations to loot, in which case they and many others will die by violence.”
Christopher had once had his house invaded by mice when a neighbor, notorious for his lack of housekeeping, had moved away. The animals, used to a steady diet of abandoned pizza boxes, had come looking for new markets once their unwitting benefactor had decamped. As annoying as the mice had been, they did not arrive with crossbows and magic.
“They should stay here,” Christopher suggested.
“Orbius would eat them all,” Lucien said. “For that matter, most of the others would too. Jaime’s destruction has burned through all of their good will.”
“But not yours?” Lalania asked carefully.
The green dragon sighed, a long and windy affair that knocked over a loose-hanging door. “I cannot help but think of Kalani and the ulvenmen. Goblins are irredeemable, but dragon-kin might not be.”
“Have you mentioned this idea to Alaine?” Christopher asked.
Lucien snorted, emitting a cloud of smoke the size of a small wagon. “I may be the smallest dragon here, but I am not a hatchling. I know better than to bite my own tail.”
Christopher nodded, thinking how unwise it would be to tell your girlfriend that you thought her daughter was right.
“Which is why,” Lucien continued, “I want you to say it for me.”
“Our lord is not known for his diplomacy,” Lalania said sweetly. “Perhaps, therefore, not the best choice.”
“On the contrary,” Lucien said, lowering his right wing to the ground, where it formed a ramp onto his back. “She already expects the worst of him, and hence he has nothing to lose. Come now, let us be off before the trolls let hunger overcome their survival instinct.”
Christopher looked dubiously at his companions, each of whom was looking at him with the same expression.
“It can’t be any worse than your cloud spell,” Cannan said with resignation. He climbed onto the dragon’s back, trying to find handholds among the scales.
As it turned out, Cannan was wrong. There was a very large difference between driving a fast car without seat belts, seats, or doors and being a passenger in that car driven by someone else. Particularly when that someone was Lucien. The dragon didn’t fly so much as make a large and extended quarter-mile long hop with the help of his wings. They went up with a sickening lurch, clawing at his scales for dear life, only to have their stomachs thrown into their mouths when he fell into a dive and swooped to the lip of the excavation. Christopher lost his purchase at the last moment and fell the last ten feet, landing in a clanking heap.
Lucien looked down at him curiously. Christopher picked himself up while his companions dismounted, looking as green as the dragon. Jenny lay curled up like a cat a dozen yards away, a mountain of white wearing a Cheshire smile.
“Argeous,” she announced, “we are ready.”
The elf floated up out of the gaping hole the dragons had clawed into the ground. The rest of the dragons gathered around, landing on the ground in a large circle around Jenny. Oribus, the larger yellow one, perched on the remains of a tower, where he could look down on the rest of them. Several mem
bers of the troupe, still in human form, followed Argeous out of the hole through various means. One flew, carrying another, and one simply climbed the raw earthen walls.
Alaine was the only other elf to join the meeting.
“We have not made a full accounting,” Jenny said. “There are still minions to harvest and buried secrets to uncover. Yet the bulk of the treasure is taken and ready to be divided.”
“What need of council?” Oribus said. “We had an agreement. Simply stick to the terms.”
“Of course,” she answered. “Your part was honestly done, and I intend no change to your share. But we have an unusual situation. One of our party made a deal for a fixed amount, which might have seemed fair before but now seems ungenerous.”
A blue dragon spoke with a rumble. All of the dragons rumbled; they couldn’t help it. They were simply too large to make any other kind of sound. “We are not in the business of generosity. Nor should we discount the wisdom of allowing the greater part of this tael to pass to the greater good.”
“Indeed,” Jenny said. “And yet, what were the precise terms?” She looked to Alaine, who seemed mildly surprised to be called on.
“‘My seventeenth rank. And a free hand out from under their control.’” The elf did that annoying elven thing of quoting Christopher in his own voice.
Oribus shrugged, causing several bricks to fall off his tower. “The Masters are dead. No hand is freer than that. Pay him his rank and have done.”
“But more may come. This demi-plane, as grotesque as it is to gaze upon, will remain a lure. It is simply too strong a position to leave unattended. Nor, as we all know,” she said, looking at Christopher when she spoke, making it clear that her words were for his benefit, “can we destroy it. Such a task is not within our power.”
World of Prime 05: Black Harvest Page 17