“Why can I feel it?” Gideon practically begged from his side on the dirty forest floor.
An unholy roar shattered the night sky and Melkora watched the undead dragon begin to fly west toward Cobblestreet and Talonrend. As the dragon travelled farther away, the mind numbing pain in their heads subsided to a dull throb.
“The dragon…” Gideon breathed. He knew beyond a doubt it was the dragon’s mind that had brought him to his knees.
“Lady Scrapple’s mind has been bound to the dragon,” Vorst said with confidence. She didn’t fully understand how she knew, but she had felt it with her very being.
“Why could I feel it?” Gideon asked a second time.
“Why could I not?” Melkora added.
“The dragon must only affect the minds of those connected to magic,” Vorst said. “Perhaps my connection to Lady Scrapple is starting to return.” She did nothing to hide the sadness in her voice. She had tasted so little of freedom that to return to the hive would be a fate worse than death.
Gideon slowly rose to his feet. The dragon flew far enough away from Kanebullar Mountain that he was able to think clearly once again. “We can’t take any more risks,” he said. “They know we’re coming. Even if it takes several days to reach the north entrance, we have to get there. If we’re caught by another patrol on this side of the mountain…”
“I know,” Vorst said. The other two nodded in agreement. “If we move quickly, we can reach the north entrance in two days.”
The bone dragon roared again in the distance and something lit up the sky. Melkora couldn’t be sure. It looked like fire on the horizon that could only mean one thing—Cobblestreet was under attack.
THE GUARDS ATOP Terror’s Lament gathered at the eastern wall and strained their eyes to see the growing smoke on the horizon. Cobblestreet was far from Talonrend, but the entire village burned. The smell of fire made its way on the wind to Talonrend and the Templars prepared for war.
Apollonius inspected his men from atop the parapet that watched over Castle Talon’s drawbridge. Every man of fighting age left in the city had been rallied in front of the castle. The Templars, several hundred of them in gleaming armor, knelt at the front of the militia and listened to their leader.
“Our scouts have confirmed what everyone has heard by now. The rumors are true,” he told the men. From atop the parapet, his booming voice made up for his lack of experience and carried the full weight of his authority. “A great skeletal dragon has come down from Kanebullar Mountain to besiege us once more.”
Murmurs flew through the crowd and dozens of the untrained men audibly gasped, but none of them fled.
“Those of you who have returned from the western road know an army of orcs approaches as well. Let them come!” Apollonius drew his short sword that identified his office and held it high above his head. “We have fought them before and our mighty walls still stand!” The men cheered and drew their own weapons and banged them against their armor and shields.
Below the parapet, the door to Castle Talon creaked open and the crowd went silent. Herod, supported by the arms of two young priests, shuffled out of the castle. He was too weak to call out to the men, but his presence alone inspired them.
“They will try to come over our walls again,” Apollonius shouted. “We will shoot them down again!” The men roared and cheered. “We expect the dragon to arrive before nightfall. Set your bolts and arrows aflame and kill the beast!” Apollonius had no idea if metal projectiles, on fire or not, would cause the dragon any harm, but he had to tell them something. The men needed some sort of strategy to protect their hope.
“When the orcs arrive,” he continued with a bit of increased confidence, “they will never climb our high walls!” That was a promise Apollonius felt he could keep. He was not a military genius by any means, but he could not imagine any land army summiting all three sections of Terror’s Lament without catastrophic casualties. If they did manage to get over the walls though… It was not a possibility Apollonius was ready to entertain.
After the lieutenants had received their individual orders and dispersed to organize their men, Apollonius made his way down to the drawbridge to speak with Herod. “How are you feeling, sir?” the young officer asked.
“Have you ever felt the inside of a grave?” Herod’s wound bled through his silk bandages and grotesque black ooze dripped onto the flagstones. “I’ve always said this place would fall to a dragon,” he remarked. “I just never thought it would be during my reign.”
“We’ll hold, sir,” Apollonius reassured him. “The walls will not be breached.”
“My brother loved these walls.” With the help of the priests, Herod walked over to the moat and propped himself up with one of the drawbridge chains. It was too cold for any life to be seen in the water and the edges of the moat were slick with ice.
“Is it safe for you to be out of your chambers?” Apollonius asked, more to the priests than Herod.
The prince ignored his concern and kept staring at Terror’s Lament. “Lucius put everything he had into the creation of the walls. Every morning, the king would take two of the guardsmen and run atop the inner wall. The walls are eight miles long in total—how many men do we have to guard them?”
Apollonius counted the divisions in his head. “A handful over two thousand fighting men, if memory serves.” He thought of the hundreds of militiamen that had left with the refugees after the first battle. Some of the soldiers had undoubtedly left for their homes in the villages along the Clawflow, but almost all of them had gone west in search of a dream. No matter where they had gone, they had surely died.
Herod stifled a cough in the back of his throat. “How many will be stationed atop the walls?”
“Half, my liege. The rest will be either held in reserve or used as needed to sally forth and destroy any siege equipment the orcs might bring.” Apollonius had made his men scour the city for as many crossbows, hunting bows, bolts, and arrows they could find. Still, he was not sure there would be enough for a thousand men to fire more than two volleys. They would have to make every shot count.
“Good. Tell the men to conserve their ammunition. I don’t want to waste a thousand bolts against a dragon if the crossbows won’t take the beast down.” Herod wrapped his cloak tightly about his shoulders to ward off the cold.
“How does one go about killing a dragon made of goblin bones?” Apollonius’ question felt sarcastic and foolish, but he was desperate for an answer.
Herod pointed to the tall tower that stood at the center of Talonrend. “Let the priests and paladins handle the dragon. Their spells are better suited for such tasks than mundane crossbow bolts and burning arrows.”
Apollonius wasn’t sure he liked the answer Herod gave him, but it was something. “I will speak with the Tower at once, your majesty.”
“Don’t bother assigning any guards to the castle, Apollonius,” Herod firmly ordered. “If they get over the walls, I’ll be as good as dead anyway. We can’t afford to spare a single man for me.”
Apollonius saluted the prince and began walking toward the Tower of Wings. If truth be told, he had never considered assigning soldiers to defend the dying prince. Castle Talon employed a dozen or more of its own guards and the prince was right: they would need every last man to defend the walls.
SEAMUS SAT ON a barrel of supplies in the southeast outpost and watched smoke curl up against the winter clouds. He didn’t understand what it meant, but he had heard the other soldiers, the real soldiers, talking about a dragon. As far as he was concerned, dragons were just as unlikely as finding the Green City. They were the beasts of legend drunken warriors would discuss over a pint of ale.
At the back of his mind, a subtle voice still guided his actions. For the first time in his life, Seamus felt worthy. He wasn’t sure why he felt the way he did or what it meant, but he never wanted to lose it.
Soldiers came and went through the small outpost and gathered or delivered supplies as th
ey were instructed. All day long, Seamus leaned against the parapet and watched the smoke grow higher and a small speck flying above the ground grow larger. By the time food had been brought to the soldiers atop the walls for lunch, there was no mistaking the shape of the bone dragon that soared toward the city. In less than an hour, it would descend upon Talonrend and Seamus would finally get a chance to fulfill his destiny.
The bone dragon approached and Seamus grabbed Gideon’s sword. He handled the weapon by the blade, careful not to cut himself and even more careful not to touch the handle. He could sense something magical about the sword and he knew when he touched it, he lost enough of his self-control to make him do terrible things.
With Nevidal in his hands, Seamus felt the ancient pull of destiny call to him once more. He felt it in his soul, a vibration deep within his aging bones that urged him to glorious deeds.
A furious gout of black flames cascaded into the base of Terror’s Lament and utter chaos broke loose on the walls. Most of the soldiers were stationed on the innermost wall of the three that comprised the defenses, but some of those on the outermost portion were burned alive. The dragon, a hulking monstrosity with a wing span well over three hundred feet, hovered at the height of Talonrend’s walls and continued to spew fire.
Seamus knew he had to run. It wasn’t cowardice that moved his feet, but Vrysinoch’s subtle murmurs within his skull. Holding onto Nevidal like a mother fleeing a burning house with her child, Seamus ran west along the wall. He sprinted as quickly as his legs could carry him.
The men guarding the walls leveled their crossbows at the mighty dragon and waited for the signal to fire. Apollonius held his own crossbow tightly in his hands and watched the dragon rear back and prepared another gout of flame. When the beast’s maw was fully open, Apollonius screamed to his fellow soldiers and their bowstrings hummed in response. Five hundred bolts soaked in lamp oil sailed out from the interior wall and nearly all of them struck the dragon. Unfortunately, only a handful of the missiles actually buried themselves in the dragon’s bones. Without any sinew or flesh, many of the bolts skimmed across the boney ribcage and fell down to the ground without much effect.
Apollonius smiled when the dragon released another wave of punishing black flames. He dropped to his belly behind the crenellations and waited for the blast to end. Screams echoed all along the wall from his soldiers. Some of the men set aflame leapt from the high walls to their deaths. Apollonius peeked over the parapet and saw what he had hoped for: the dragon’s hot breath had ignited the oil covering the few bolts that had stuck in its bones and the beast burned. It wasn’t a raging inferno, but small pockets of flame began to spread on its body.
With bated breath, Apollonius desperately prayed the dragon would somehow be hurt by the fire and retreat. Although the beast roared in what Apollonius hoped was pain, it was able to put out the small fires with only a few beats of its huge wings.
“Ballistae!” the young leader called out. Soldiers manning several large ballistae mounted along the wall aimed their shots and fired. Four of the heavy bolts, each as long as a man and topped with barbed steel, crashed into the dragon’s ribs and shattered bone.
The beast wheeled through the air and backed off considerably, but only one of the ballista bolts was still lodged in its body. Apollonius had hoped to sink several of the anchored bolts into the monster from both sides and use counterweights to rip it apart. As the beast flew higher over the walls, the bolt still in its ribs pulled taut and ripped the ballista from the walls with a violent explosion of wood and broken stone.
In an instant, the man who had been operating the machine was yanked from the wall to his death.
“Reload!” Apollonius called out. It took several painfully long seconds for the cranks of each ballista to span a new bolt. As the men turned the machines, the dragon swooped down and breathed a devastating line of black fire onto the interior wall. Everywhere he looked, Apollonius saw soldiers burning alive and falling from the parapet. He knew he had to order a retreat. His only options were to surrender the wall or die in a painful blaze of black fire.
“Fire!” he called to the ballistae before most of them were ready. Several bolts tore through the air just above Apollonius’ head and two of them blasted great chunks of bone out of the dragon’s wings. The beast roared again and flew higher into the sky.
Apollonius knew that the men wouldn’t survive long enough to fire a third time. “Retreat!” he yelled. In a flurry of motion, the men grabbed onto ropes that had been fastened to the crenellations and began rappelling down the side of the wall. Some of the soldiers close to the only door on that side of the wall scrambled down the tight staircase, but the heat in the cramped area was intolerable.
When Apollonius reached the bottom of the wall, he ordered the men to fall back to their next defensive point. All through the streets of the city, firebreaks had been created with ditches and hastily filled moats. The dragon swooped down below the walls and breathed fire out upon the roofs of houses and businesses. The wooden structures exploded with black flames.
“To the catapults!” Apollonius ordered. His men had moved several small mangonels to strategic positions through the city’s eastern quarter and each of them was ready to fire a payload of jagged rocks into the air.
The dragon wheeled low and bore down upon Apollonius’ position. He gave the command to fire and the catapults launched hundreds of rocks at the flying beast. The dragon recoiled and diverted its course just before unleashing more punishing flames. The houses next to Apollonius and his men were consumed by fire. Not wasting another moment, Apollonius ordered his men to retreat further into the city.
The brave young leader was out of options. He had placed his hope in the ballistae on the walls, but the men hadn’t been given enough time to properly train. Most of their shots had missed and as a result, the dragon was inside the city unleashing apocalyptic havoc.
“INCOMING!” A LIEUTENANT on the western wall called out. Soldiers lifted their crossbows and pried their eyes from the destruction of the city below. Fires raged all throughout Talonrend and the men defending the eastern portion of the city had been quickly overrun.
Seemingly from everywhere at once, winged demons clutching heavily armored minotaurs rose up and assaulted the walls. “Fire at will!” the officer commanded. Crossbows all along the wall clicked, thrummed, and delivered their deadly missiles into the oncoming horde of monsters. Their shots were mostly effective, but there simply weren’t enough men. Too many soldiers had been placed on the eastern wall in anticipation of the dragon.
One of the winged demons flew directly for the officer. He reloaded his crossbow as quickly as he could and lined up another shot. He pulled the trigger and sent a steel-tipped bolt into one of the beast’s wings. The demon screamed and started to lose altitude.
The officer hooked the end of his crossbow around the toe of his boot and started cranking the crossbow to reload. He moved at a feverish pace, but the demon was quicker. Before its wing finally gave out, the demon surged toward the parapet and released its cargo. The minotaur fell several feet through the air and managed to grab at the stone crenellation to keep from plummeting to certain death below. The officer slammed a bolt into the track of his crossbow as quickly as he could and leaned over the edge to line up a shot at the minotaur before he could climb up the wall.
The crossbow fired and the bolt, crooked in the track, flew wildly and ricocheted off the minotaur’s armored chest. With one great heave of unbelievable strength, the minotaur pulled itself over the parapet. It towered over the lieutenant like a mountain of forged steel. Its helmet was black and its horns, long ivory protrusions coming from holes in the sides of the helmet, were capped with golden spikes.
The monster pulled a giant pike from its back that sported a small axe head on one side like the ornamental halberds the guards of Castle Talon sometimes carried. With determination that barely hid his fear, the officer dropped his crossbow to the floo
r and drew his short sword.
The beast charged the young officer and jabbed with the point of his pike. Focusing on the deadly spear-like tip, the man brought his sword down quickly and parried the weapon away from his gut. Unfortunately, the officer had no shield and the minotaur knew exactly how to utilize his weapon. The minotaur slid the pike several feet past the man and turned it so that the axe blade acted like a hook. With a single pull, the minotaur yanked the blade toward itself and sank the bottom of the axe head into the man’s back. He screamed in pain and flailed his sword but the minotaur’s armor was far too thick.
The beast lowered its head and pulled again, wrenching the man forward violently. The officer’s body jolted and splattered the minotaur’s helmet with warm blood as it was impaled upon two sharp horns.
Shaking enthusiastically, the minotaur ripped the corpse from its horns and tossed the tattered human remains from the wall.
SEAMUS WATCHED THE officer get impaled from the safety of the southwestern outpost a quarter mile away. He saw dozens of winged demons get shot from the air, but still dozens more landed and brought raging minotaurs to the top of the wall. The defenders were hard pressed. Less than seventy minotaurs had made it to the top, but each of them could easily kill ten or more men before falling.
Nevidal was hungry in his hand. He gripped the cool metal of the wrapped hilt and waited for the perfect time to strike. He felt the insatiable desires of the blade. It wanted to drink minotaur blood. Nevidal burned with ire that energized Seamus. The poor farmer had always considered himself muscular from his life of hard work, but with the sword in his hands, he felt like a god. His muscles bulged and threatened to rip the shirt under his stolen armor. The longer he waited, the more powerful he became. Divine energy surged through his veins and his vision sharpened.
The Goblin Wars Part Two: Death of a King Page 21