For the first time, the Horde force could see Duffy and Soraya.
They were paralyzed, staring. Suddenly, an ogre burst out laughing, and raised an axe with a head the size of Duffy's chest. The beast-man flung the weapon. Spinning head over haft, it arced toward the silver apparition, and went through without touching anything. Duffy felt the breeze it caused as it passed harmlessly inches from his leg. The axe head buried itself deeply in the ground. The ogre stared from his missile to the dragon and back again. His mouth fell open.
"Fools!" Soraya boomed. "Ye cannot touch us, for we are the spirits of Liaya and Verrol! We bear the Spear of Truth! We defend this place with its light. Flee, or die!"
Gibbering in fear, some of the takkin turned lithely and dashed down the path into the woods, never to return. The rest stood and stared defiantly at Soraya and her rider.
"Ready your spear, Verrol," Soraya announced loudly. Duffy couched the washing pole against his side, and hoped fervently whatever spell was holding him up wouldn't run out of virtue. As he watched, the homely rod became a lance, sharp pointed and beautiful in proportion. It gleamed with righteous silver light. Duffy let out a war cry. Together, man and dragon swooped in toward the horde.
No being, however stupid or stubborn, would stand still while one of the most fearsome weapons in the land was charging toward it on the back of an angry dragon, let alone in the hands of a legendary ghost rider. The files of takkin and ogres broke apart, and each warrior fled in a different direction.
That was the moment the other villagers had been awaiting. With a wild cry, Sandor the dwarf blacksmith jumped out of a tree onto the head of an ogre. He pounded on its helmet with his largest hammer while the manbeast whirled around, blindly clutching at his passenger. The clanging sounds of hammer on helm alternated with the ogre's cries for help. Sandor, grinning like a skull, locked his short legs around the ogre's neck. In a moment, he knocked the evil warrior's hands out of the way and managed to undo the fastening on the helmet. The next hammer blow lacked the mellifluous clang of metal upon metal, but it was far more effective. The ogre staggered and toppled. Nimbly, Sandor rolled off before his victim hit the ground, and looked around for another tree to climb.
"We go this way, Duffy!" Soraya warned him.
The invisible hand clutching the back of his clothes shifted him sideways, and Duffy found himself charging toward a cluster of takkin. From nowhere, the besieged lizard men were pelted with stones ranging from pebbles to handsized rocks. Duffy caught a glimpse of Gillea and her friends standing on the roof of the smithy with a large heap of ammunition. As the takkin ran away from the legendary ghost, the children followed, leaping from roof to roof, tossing stones, garbage, old birds' nests, and whatever came to hand.
"This way!" Varney cried. "Drive em this way!" The old miller beckoned from the narrow alley that led between the mill and the house next door. The takkin saw what Duffy intended, but were unwilling to dive underneath Soraya's feet to escape. It might be safer to risk fighting humans than the ghost. One daring lizardling tried to slip around Soraya's wingtip. Duffy swept the mock Spear of Truth down and caught the beast in the chest. Suddenly, fire ran down the rod's length, and the takkin's armor burst into flames. Screaming, the lizard man dropped to the ground. Duffy was so startled he almost dropped the pole.
"Hold on," Soraya said. Duffy swept his "spear" around in an arc, urging the takkin into the trap.
The lizard men were canny warriors, but the villagers were prepared and on their own ground. Experienced swordsmanship was no match for the anger of the besieged farmers. As Duffy herded his prisoners toward Varney and his cohorts, he heard screams and splashes from the other side of the wall. The men were throwing or forcing the takkin into the millrace. The powerful current of the river could drag a cart horse under the inexorably turning paddlewheel. The takkin emitted desperate cries as their heavy armor weighted them down. Women with straw forks and hooks jabbed at any hand or head that showed itself above the water's edge. Varney and two of the old men armed with ancient polearms held off two more takkin who had eluded the trap. Duffy gasped as one lizard man whisked his sword in an arc and swiped off the axe head from one farmers weapon. The old man jabbed his attacker in the face with the stub, and got the sword blade in his ribs for his trouble. Duffy gasped.
Soraya roared, and an insubstantial looking silver arrow appeared transfixed through the lizard's eye. The warrior toppled to the ground beside its victim. By anger and main strength rather than skill, Varney took care of the other takkin.
The dragon's great head swiveled bonelessly over its shoulder.
"We are needed elsewhere," she said. She turned in her own length in the narrow gap, nearly brushing Duffy into a wall. He clapped his legs together so they disappeared into her body, and opened them out again as soon as she was back on the green.
Soraya lifted her feet off the ground. The spell keeping Duffy aloft raised him, too, and the two of them glided swiftly into the forest toward the sound of screaming and fighting.
An ogre lay in a clearing nearest the path. He reached up to grab weakly at Soraya's legs as they flew over him, then collapsed, as if the effort took too much strength. The rodent poison had begun to do its job. Two down, and two more to go.
The three children minding the snares and branch slings were clinging for their lives high in the branches of a tree. Below them, a third ogre was shaking the trunk to make them fall out. The invisible hand keeping Duffy in the air lifted him straight up to where the children huddled. He held out his arms to them. The smallest, a little girl, started to lean away from the bole towards him.
A dagger whisked between them and buried itself, humming, in the bark. Soraya, left on the ground, stalked the ogre, growling at it and manifesting terrible images of the heroes of Good. The ogre continued shaking the tree, unafraid of a ghost. Duffy was scared. They needed a distraction for him to free the children.
"Yoo hoo!" the Wanderer called out. "Hello there!"
The ogre stopped and looked back and forth. Ferali appeared standing on a rock only two paces away from the manbeast. She waved at it. It dove for her, but she was no longer there.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said, turning up beside him, her hands busy at his waist. "And what a pretty belt buckle that is. Mind if I have a look at it?"
The ogre roared and reached for her with both arms. Fernli backed up. The ogre took two steps, and fell over his great feet as his sword belt slid down around his knees.
"Oh, thank you so kindly," the Wanderer said, again standing on her rock. She had the buckle in her hands, and was examining it with care. "This is very old, did you know that? I bet this is something from your grandda, or could it be your great-grandda?"
The ogre threw aside its belt and went after Fernli with its axe.
Nimbly, the Wanderer skipped along from branch to stone to clod of earth with the ogre in heavy pursuit. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, Duffy clasped the children in his arms, and called out to be lowered to the ground. The two small girls were weeping, but the boy was game for more adventure. His eyes were shining.
As he set them upright and took his place once more astride the ghost dragon, he heard a shout and a splat! followed by roared obscenities. Soraya turned her head back toward him, her eyes glistening.
"The Wanderer is resourceful," she said.
"I recognized it," Duffy said, grinning. "She led him into the midden pit."
"Sounds familiar," the Wanderer said, intent on her bits and pieces of broken glass again. She seemed to like tumbling them over and over in her fingers. Duffy wondered in some irritation if she liked them so well to be interested in nothing else, why had she spent the fifty !
The fourth ogre, commander of the force sent to level Greenton, found himself almost alone in the midst of the village. The takkin had fled or were being trounced by a ragged, disorganized troop of peasants. His own men were nowhere to be seen. That left him alone to fulfill the task on which Lor
d Voern had sent them. Fire was the quickest tool for destroying houses and killing trapped villagers. From his pouch he took a red-gold amulet in the shape of a dragons head. If only Liaya and Verrol did not come back too soon. . . .
As he approached the houses, tiny arrows rained down on him from the rooftops. All but one of the missiles bounced harmlessly off his armor, and the dart that penetrated was as weak as an insect bite. He peered upward to see who'd fired them. Verrolnspawn, nothing more. The ugly little creatures would roast to death when he set this place alight. With an act of will he ignited the small device and held it to the eaves of the nearest house.
Duffy smelled smoke and cast about to find where it was coming from.
"The green," he called. Soraya's long, sinuous neck arched in comprehension. She lifted her legs, and they flew toward the common.
Smoke was pouring from several rooftops when they arrived. None had burst into flame yet, thanks to the soaking they'd received from the fresh spring rains, but if the fire was of magical origin, it wouldn't remain quiescent long. Cries alerted the guardians to a corner of the common area, where a cluster of children on top of a house were throwing rocks and shooting arrows at a single ogre holding something up under the edge of the roof.
Shrugging off the defenders' missiles, the ogre tramped from house to house. Led by Gillea, the children followed, leaping from roof to roof, screaming defiance at him. They were running out of ammunition, and Duffy could see flames beginning among the shingles atop the first houses the ogre had set alight.
The children had to stop on the roof at the end of the row. There was a gap of a hundred feet between the last low cottage and the manor house, set back among its gardens and outbuildings at the end of the open square. Duffy recalled suddenly how his house had been fired by the last army to march through, and how helpless the child he'd been was to stop the evil army then. This time, he had a dragon on his side, and he was no longer a babe.
"After him!" he yelled at Soraya, leveling the washing pole lance at his side. The silver dragon had but to open her great wings, and they were on top of the manbeast.
The ogre saw the dragon poke its head out of the woods and come sailing down toward him. The spirit of Verrol couched the Spear of Truth in attack position. His pale face was grim.
The commander knew that the warrior and his mount were only ghosts. Praying for protection from the Dark Queen of All Evil, he ran toward the last house in the row, the big mansion. He would finish his task, no matter what. Hopping the low garden wall, he ran toward the house, his amulet at the ready to apply to the wooden rafters of the roof.
Quick as thought, the ghost of Liaya closed the distance, and suddenly the ghost of Verrol leaped out of the saddle toward the ogre commander and cannoned into him.
Not expecting a solid warrior, the ogre was taken by surprise, and toppled over onto the ground. He struggled valiantly against the spirit of the mighty warrior, expecting a divine force and iron muscles. He found his hands were around the neck of a mere stripling, a young humanspawn covered with white powder. Dropping the lance with a clatter, the boy pulled a dagger from a sheath and tried to plunge it into the ogre's chest. Effortlessly, the ogre flipped the humanspawn onto its back and sat on its chest. The boy gasped. The ogre commander chortled.
"Fool me pretending to be a spirit, will you? Well, now you'll be a real ghost! Hope you haunt your own town for the rest of eternity!"
With a horrible grin, the ogre put out two huge hands and squeezed his neck. Struggling for every breath, Duffy forced his foot outward, feeling for the red amulet. He knew it was only inches away from him. Get it away or the village will burn, his brain sang, even as his lungs threatened to tear apart struggling for oxygen. Catching it with the tip of his toe, he kicked it as far away from the ogre as he could. Then he fainted.
He awoke as something cold and wet slopped into his face. Sputtering to clear his mouth and nose, Duffy sat up.
"The High Ones' blessings on you, you're alive," Cara said, on her knees beside him. "That was the bravest and most foolhardy thing I've ever seen a man do in my life. I thought we'd be burying you in my last good bit of bleaching."
"The ogre!" Duffy tried to shout, but his words were only an unintelligible croak. He touched his throat.
"Your would-be assassin," Cara said, moving to one side so he could see past her. Duffy peered at the lump on the village green. It had arms and legs, all right, but the rest looked like a millstone.
"How . . . ?" he whispered, levering himself upright. The fires on the roofs were out, and people were going up and back between the row of houses and rubbish heap with baskets of burnt shingles and scorched wood.
A little ways apart from him, a row of bodies were laid out on the ground. One of them had its face covered by a cloth, but the rest were alive and groaning as healers worked to ease wounds and burns. Most of them were children.
"It was Mikal," Varney said, coming over and helping Duffy to his feet with an assist from a massive arm. "He raised my millstone right out of its frame, across the green, and dropped it right on the ogre's head. It was a wonder it didn't kill the both of you."
Mikal himself lay propped up against the sitting stone, a gash in his side being tended by Duffy's mother.
"I aimed it better than that, Varney," the old man said weakly. Duffy's mother hushed the herb mage gently, and bound a herbal compress in place over his ribs.
"Sure you did," Varney said, cheerfully. "Nicely placed, truly. Crushed the evil bastard like corn in quern. But you'll have to move yon stone back again as soon as you're well. You borry things in this town, you right well bring them back!"
"Right, and I'll be wanting my gnomish invention back as well," said a little voice. With effort, Duffy turned to see the Wanderer standing beside him. She put out her little hand. He scrabbled at his face, and pried loose the wire and glass contraption. She cradled it happily, and put it back in her pack.
"Many thanks, and glad to lend it. I never saw anything so brave as what you did, except for once," the Wanderer continued reminiscently. "Back around fifty years it was, in the great war. A man with a similar looking dagger as you've got there in your belt—can I see it to make sure?" She fixed the little knife with a hopeful eye.
Automatically, Duffy said, "No." He swallowed. It hurt to talk. The Wanderer shrugged.
"Likewise, I'm sure it was the same one." She peered up at him. "Looked like you, too. Probably your grandda, Duffy. A brave man, like you'll be one day. I'll look forward to telling the story of your fighting here today. Out of your weight class, I thought, but no, you downed the big fellow without trouble. The stuff of legends, you are. Ah, but I've got a couple of nice things today. See, a belt buckle, courtesy of the big fellow there under the stone, won't need it any more, and see here, a pretty gold thing to make fires." Clasping her treasures, she smiled up at the humans and Soraya. "I'll never be cold again nights with this to hand, no, indeed."
Gillea appeared with the rest of the force of children who weren't having their burns dressed. She brandished her birding bow and a handful of the short arrows that went with it.
"We have to go after the takkin!" she exclaimed. "Lots of them got away. We're all ready, Duffy. Will you and Soraya be leading us?"
Having scented blood and come away from their first adventure unscathed, the children wanted another taste of action. Duffy was fit enough to go if he had to, but he didn't want to. He glanced at the dragon for direction. Soraya shook her great head.
"You need not. Those dragonspawn will tell the commanders this place is under the protection of Verrol and the Spear, and they'll never come back again, not without the full horde behind them."
"Oh, no!" Duffy croaked.
"Ah, but by then you will have a militia. The town will be organized into a garrison for its own defense."
"And who's going to lead this?" Duffy asked. "You?"
"No," the dragon said mildly, "you."
"Oh, no. Not me."
Duffy raised his hands in protest. Soraya turned a huge, glittering eye toward him.
"Remember your father, to whom I still owe a great debt. It was his wish that you train to be a Knight of the Heart, if your talents and honor are sufficient to the task. I will lead you to my riches once Greenton is ready to carry on in your absence, and that will pay for armor and teacher both."
Duffy found that he was genuinely tempted by the twin thoughts of riches and honor. "Really?" he asked,
"A silver dragon doesn't prevaricate."
"But where does your fortune lie?" Duffy asked curiously.
He noted the amused glint in Soraya's eye. "Are you ready so soon for your second quest?"
Duffy remembered abruptly that he had just ridden a ghost dragon, been instrumental in the defeat of a handful of takkin, and had jumped an ogre in full armor. In reflection, he wondered what in the world he must have thought he was doing. He wasn't a mighty warrior, he was a boy pretending to be a mighty warrior. Hastily he stooped and began to pick up pieces of the debris scattered on the ground, including the borrowed washing pole, now smudged with grass stain and soot.
"There sure is a lot to do here," he said, forcing the words out of his wounded throat. "It could be a long time before this town is ready to defend itself. Years, maybe."
Soraya lowered her head to peer into his eyes, and he felt himself blush.
"Just long enough for you to grow up, perhaps," she said. "I can wait. A ghost has all the time in the world."
THROUGH THE DRAGON'S EYES
by Bill Fawcett
Dragon's Eye Page 8