The Dreaddrac Onslaught (Book 4)

by C. Craig Coleman

  Just then, a great freight wagon came tearing around the bend in the road at full speed, racing to get out of the storm. Dreg saw the coachman focused on the smoldering barn with its last coals steaming and smoking. He don’t see Miss Earwig, he realized. Dreg jumped up as the six horses and the heavy wagon trampled over her before the driver could stop the horses. Horrified, seeing the unidentifiable thing in the road, the man whipped the horses, and the freight wagon rushed on to the south.

  Dreg hurried out to the lumpish pile in the road. She was a purple blob lying there. Dreg had seen the sight before. I know she’s still alive, he thought. For a powerful witch, she sure has a bunch of accidents.

  Dreg just scraped her up and rolled the mushy lump to the side of the road until he could find what had been her mouth. He stuffed mushroom mash into it. All the while, two red pupils stared out from horrible yellow eyes as if the face would be screaming if it could. Earwig recovered; she always recovered.

  “We’re riding something to Dreaddrac,” Earwig announced. “I’ve had time to think about it, and I’m going to make something to haul us to Dreaddrac. The idea came to me when I saw the fence post dance off down the road. I’ll animate something!”

  Dreg rolled his eyes, wildly shaking his head, but Earwig wouldn’t take notice. I’ve seen enough of witching to know whatever it is she’s aiming to make, it ain’t gonna be what we get, he thought. The poor man started to imagine what would happen and stopped himself before he abandoned sanity.

  “There now, don’t you get yourself in a tizzy, Miss Earwig. You get some rest and don’t think about such things in your condition.” I ain’t sure I can fight off what might come from her trying magic again.

  Next morning, when Dreg awakened, he found the sorceress limping about, leaning on a crooked stick, searching for something to animate. I had hoped I’d done got her mind off that idea, but I see the hag’s possessed. With a sigh, he rose and made something for them to eat. Most likely we is gonna need all our strength to get away from the thing she’s about to make. He shook his head as he shook the frying pan.

  After eating, Earwig was again ‘on her mission’, and eventually, to Dreg’s despair, she assembled a mass of small stones. She looked around at Dreg with that dreadful smile of self-satisfaction that turned his stomach. “You’ll see this will be my greatest creation!” she bellowed.

  Dreg rolled his eyes and moved away. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  The witch stood near the pile of rock that she’d carefully laid out in the pattern of a flattened body with four legs extended, two rocks for head and neck, and one rock for a tail for good measure. With that, she drew her battered and bruised carcass up to full height and raised her arms as rods to draw the earth’s energy to her wand. She confidently cast her spell in a voice to command even stone.

  To Dreg’s surprise, the stones began to shake, their lines blurred and blended. The whole took on a more supple appearance. In a poof, a small horse stood before them! There were a few problems, but the thing was animate, no question about it. In her haste and enthusiasm, Earwig had placed the leg rocks in the wrong order, and the front left hoof was the size of a water bucket. The horse couldn’t raise it and stood there attached to the unmovable hoof.

  “Well, this one doesn’t have fangs or angry red eyes,” Dreg said. No need to point out the thing can’t move, he thought.

  “Yes, well, perhaps I should transform him again and fix the leg. After all, you can see I’m quite good at animation.” Earwig stood up straight and sucked up her gut.

  Dreg glared at the concentrating witch. “Maybe you should leave it be.”

  Again her arms shot up and out to draw the earth’s energy. She thrust her wand at the thing, casting the undo spell. The horse immediately toppled back to the ground as the rocks from whence it came. Groaning, Earwig realigned the rocks in the correct order. Then she again cast her spell, and again a horse formed. She smirked back at Dreg, hiding in the bushes. “Surely you can acknowledge my greatness.”

  Dreg watched the horse. I just ain’t seen what’s messed up yet.

  “Come on now, you know you’re impressed with my powers. Dreg, you must acknowledge and proclaim my greatness.”

  “Give me a few minutes. I wants to see for myself this thing’s a working horse.” I’m only a helper, but I do learn from experience. Experience done taught me there ain’t much chance this thing, whatever it is, is gonna haul us to Dreaddrac.

  “It’s a simple spell actually,” Earwig said all puffed up, even glowing. “Anyone could do it.” The nauseating smile spread over her face and hung there, annoying Dreg to no end.

  She ain’t gonna learn me that or any other spells all the while I works for her as apprentice. I don’t want to be a wizard anyhow.

  Earwig was facing Dreg, chattering about her greatness, when Dreg saw a ghoul racing full speed from the woods behind the smoldering barn rubble. It leapt on the rock-horse and bit into the neck. Its nasty yellow teeth shattered on the rock. Stunned, it jumped off, staring at rock-horse. It backed up two steps, holding its bloody mouth, then turned to Earwig. “You done this! You burned my barn and knocked out my teefs!”

  The witch’s marbled skin looked much like decomposing flesh. Dreg saw vengeance and appetite on the ghoul’s half rotted face. He jumped up and pointed at the ghoul as Earwig finally stopped chattering and turned around. The ghoul was pouncing when Earwig turned. Her outstretched wand hand struck the ghoul, knocking him across the clearing.

  “Oh crud!” At first startled, Earwig then realized her victim was an angry, hungry ghoul. She waddled to the unconscious creature at the roots of the tree he’d struck. She looked down at the ghoul, then back at Dreg. “Even though they’re on our side, they do look horrible rotting like that, don’t they?”

  Dreg rolled his eyes, stepped closer, and leaned forward to take a better look at the unconscious corpse. “I never seen one up close before. I wondered if they was really them undead in rotting bodies. If this is one, the description was dead on. What we gonna do with him?”

  “Well, we can’t leave him there. He’ll come to and stalk us again. No, we need to make use of him or finish him off.” A sudden twinkle came to Earwig’s eye. “I wonder if my incredible magic could convert him to something useful.”

  “Maybe you done enough today, making the horse from them rocks.”

  “Rubbish!” Earwig turned to the rock-horse and pointed. “We have an excellent horse that won’t break wind. I can bend this ghoul to my will and make him go retrieve my precious treasures.”

  “Aren’t you afraid the fanged rat-horse will eat the ghoul?”

  Earwig’s triumphant smile collapsed. “Small loss.” A torrent of excuses why the rat was to blame for the prior failure followed. “This magnificent horse proves I’m a great witch.”

  I’m sorry I ever brought it up, thought Dreg. He agreed with everything she said to get her to stop the endless excuses and shut up. Still babbling justifications, Earwig’s arm unintentionally backhanded the ghoul attempting to stand behind her. His head smashed against the tree once again, and the living corpse slumped unconscious once more. Dreg shook his head and tied up the ghoul until Earwig shut up and decided what she wanted to do with him. The last trauma had knocked the corpse’s arm off at the elbow. Dreg lifted the forearm to show Earwig but said nothing.

  “Oops!” Earwig said through pinched lips and an embarrassed, coquettish pose. “I don’t know my own strength.”

  Dreg tossed the forearm in the ghoul’s lap. He tied the body to the tree so the rope went through to the ribs in case the flesh fell off. I don’t want that thing wandering around, dropping body parts here and there, while tearing out our throats in the coming dark, he thought.

  “Tonight I’ll think of something special for our friend here,” Earwig said. “Meanwhile we need a cart for the ride to Dreaddrac.”

  “A cart, yes, we needs a cart,” Dreg mumbled, then jerked upright. Frog’s toenails! I’
ve slipped up and encouraged her to use magic again.

  They both scrounged around until Dreg found an old wagon wheel that had rolled away from the barn and was saved from the fire by the living vines that covered it. The apprentice freed it and rolled it back to the clearing. When Earwig saw it, she beamed and placed a board she’d found on top of the wheel, just so.

  “My boy, these are the makings of a fine cart. Now we’ll have a horse, a cart, and a servant to wait on us as we make our way to the Munattahensenhov,” the witch said. She rubbed the stubby fingers of her fat hands together, while gazing back and forth between the wheel and the ghoul. “Oh yes, a fine cart and servant.”

  “Uh huh,” Dreg mumbled. He thought a moment. Your sense of self-preservation is screaming inside to run for your life. Nope, too late.

  “Now let me see,” Earwig said. She looked at the ghoul, but it had recovered consciousness and picked up its unattached arm with the other hand. It was staring at the appendage. Earwig, flushed red and turned to the wheel, then Dreg. “I’ll make the cart first.”

  “Now, Dreg, you stand the wheel upright in the clearing and move back away from it.”

  Dreg propped up the wheel with the board and ran for the cover of the woods.

  Earwig drew her lumpy self up and extended her arms once again to absorb and focus the energy around her. She went into a trance and rattled off an incantation with true conviction. At the end, she shot her crooked wand down at the wheel, and an orange bolt shot from it.

  The wheel stood upright on its own and shook in the fire light. In a wavy vision, it shimmered and divided into two exact copies of the original. After that, Earwig looked back at the woods and cast a huge grin at Dreg. Again, she shot another bolt of energy at the wheels. The rotting wood in the spokes became new hard wood, and the rusty iron band around the wooden rims shed the flakes of rust and sparkled as new forged. Earwig squealed and clapped her hands, knocking sparks from her wand in the process. The witch pushed her luck and cast one more spell, turning the wheels a brilliant blood red.

  Dreg was impressed for the first time in a long time. He stepped out of the brush. This is the first time I seen the witch get any of her magic right, he thought. Maybe she’s got over her curse?

  “Can you make the plank into a cart?” Dreg asked.

  Earwig puffed up once again, her hands shaking with excitement. “Place the plank between the two wheels and stand back.” The witch again raised her hideous bulk up and cast another spell. But she stood mute.

  “What’s wrong?” Dreg asked, seeing her hesitation. He stepped forward, but she motioned him back with her free arm.

  “The spells merged in my head for a moment,” she said, “Nothing to worry about.” She turned back to the cart and mumbled to herself, “What harm can come of it anyway? It’s just a cart, that can’t be difficult.” Self-confidence restored, she cast her spell. Earwig and Dreg both held their breaths. The board rose and expanded until it filled the space between the two magnificent wheels with a complete, if fragmented, cart. Earwig jumped up and down in her excitement, her gelatinous body gyrating here and there with ripples of undulating flesh.

  “I did it! I did it!” she repeated over and over, clapping her hands at her success.

  Dreg said nothing, just rushed to find the rock-horse and harness it to the cart before something horrible happened to the pieces of this puzzle. The rock-horse, having no emotion, followed Dreg’s lead. When the horse and cart were ready to roll, Dreg helped Earwig up on the seat after tying the semi-conscious ghoul, still holding its detached arm, to the back of the cart.

  “I hate to drag that thing in the dirt behind the cart, but I’m not riding with it on the cart behind me, tied up or not,” Earwig said adamantly. She looked back at the living dead, then turned to Dreg. Dreg nodded in agreement. “If it loses some of its parts, so be it. That will teach the ghoul not to attack a lady.” The horse plodded forward and ambled back down the road to the stream where they’d lost their boxes of Earwig’s treasures.

  When they reached the stream, Earwig shot wizard-fire at the ghoul’s remains that still had a good arm and a good leg. Bouncing on the road had deprived the creature of its other foot, half its tattered skin, and one eye. Undisturbed by the changes, Earwig commanded the ghoul to search the stream for her boxes of ingredients and most especially her spell books.

  As the ghoul limped into the water, the rat, still hiding after Earwig’s earlier transformation, came to the burrow entrance. Rats and ghouls compete for the same bodies and tend to be secondary food sources for each other. Still affected by the spell Earwig put on it, the rat dashed out with unusual daring and grew in size as it ran toward the living corpse. The rat’s teeth grew again into fangs and the eyes turned blood red as the rodent leapt at the shredded ghoul.

  Dreg and Earwig looked on in horror as the rat, now half the size of a man, seized at the ghoul’s throat, attempting to tear it out. Being dead, the ghoul seemed not to notice its open throat exposed to the neck bones. The two fought viciously in the stream.

  Earwig slammed her clinched fists on the cart seat. “That rat monster is interfering with the ghoul’s mission to find my spell books.”

  “Do something to that rat ‘fore it turns on us,” Dreg said.

  Earwig drew herself upright on the cart seat, extended her arms once again, and shot wizard-fire at the two combatants, but it missed the rat and knocked off a large chunk of the ghoul’s flesh beneath its ribcage.

  “Be careful, Miss Earwig, the ghoul is on your side,” Dreg said, fiddling with the reins to the horse.

  Earwig chewed her already gnawed off finger nails.

  “I must be careful; can’t afford another mistake.” She looked at Dreg and nodded her head. “This will subdue the rat.” She mumbled her spell and shot her wand at the fighters that were ripping each other apart.

  “Oops, wrong spell. I can’t get them all right, you know,” Earwig said. She turned red and fidgeted. “I do hate working under this kind of pressure.”

  The spell turned out to be a hybrid of two spells used earlier. The rat began to turn to stone, while the rock-horse harnessed to the cart turned into a huge fanged rat. The rat-horse gnawed the harness and raced off up the road to freedom. In the midst of all the magic flying about, the duplicate cartwheel began to shrink, and before Earwig could stop the decaying spell, the cart rested at a forty-five degree angle on one rotting wheel.

  Neither Dreg nor Earwig said anything about the mix-up. Dreg hitched the ghoul’s sticky remains to the listing cart and they started back up the road to Dreaddrac once more.

  “Well, at least we have a ride now,” Earwig said. Her nose scrunched up. “I must admit the stench of that rotting thing makes me miss that gasbag nag you found.”

  “Uh huh.”

  The one-armed, leg and a half corpse crawled along, dragging the listing cart north up the road in the darkness. The wheel squeaked, and the cart boards creaked as the magic that created them began to slowly unravel. The two passengers clung to the cart’s upper side to keep from sliding off until their arms and bodies ached from their twisted positions.

  “I miss Zendor,” Dreg let slip.

  “So do I,” Earwig said as the groaning ghoul remains dragged the cart through another pothole, jostling the two riders nearly off the seat. Mercifully, they encountered no other travelers on that slow, painful passage through the night.

  11: An Army Moves North to Relieve Botahar

  King Saxthor entered the grand audience hall of Helshian Court Palace from the private council chamber behind it. He stood looking out over the generals and admirals assembled before him, perhaps for the last time before the unfolding war. The hall was filled beyond them with richly attired ambassadors, high nobles of the realm, and palace servants awaiting the king’s instructions. The shimmering metals and braid ropes of the generals’ uniforms, the plumed helmets, and clinking sword scabbards, and the nobles’ silks, velvets, and jewels were a fine c
omplement to the polished marble walls, columns, and kingdom’s map displayed in colored marbles on the mosaic floor. Saxthor studied the faces.

  This magnificence may not be seen again for a very long time. Are these generals and admirals the men that will stop the hordes pouring out of the Munattahensenhov at this moment, he asked himself. There’s General Socockensmek conferring with General Sekkarian down front before the throne. And over there’s Admiral Agros consulting with the Sengenwhan Admiral behind them. I can’t remember the Sengenwhan admiral’s name; I must ask the chamberlain.

  Other supportive generals and admirals deliberated with provincial governors and ministers. Most, Saxthor had inherited from his mother and father. Many, he didn’t even know. His thoughts were interrupted by the chamberlain, stamping his staff of office on the marble floor.

  “All bow before his majesty, King Saxthor!” bellowed the chamberlain as Saxthor stepped forward and took his seat on the throne. He nodded to the chamberlain, who then ordered the guards to close the bronze doors.

  “We welcome you all to this conference on the state of the kingdom and the developing threat to the north,” Saxthor said. He looked across the hall at all participants for emphasis. “We command you to speak nothing of what’s said here outside this hall lest we panic the general population.”

  The assembled military and ministerial leaders of the kingdom mumbled briefly, turned to the king, and bowed deeply.

  “Many of you know Graushdem is under attack in the north and Sengenwha has fallen once again to Dreaddrac’s armies to the northeast.” Saxthor waited for the strained chatter to subside. “We think King Grekenbach of Graushdem will give General Vylvex’s army quite a fight in the north,” King Saxthor said. “What say you to this analysis?”

  “What of Hador, Your Majesty?” Someone in the crowd asked.

  “Hador has been bypassed.”

  Muffled chatter rose from the great hall; the faces of nobles and courtiers were twisted as the participants looked to each other in disbelief.