She barely had time to register the shadows of the other wyverns as they dove at her. She dropped the goat knowing she was going to have to fight her way past these disgusting beasts. She was not as swift a flyer as many of the other types of dragons and knew she could not outfly them.
Another pain flared across her broad back when a second wyvern raked her with its sharp claws, cutting through her glittering scales, tearing a triple row of deep furrows in her flesh, and drawing dark blood. She banked again, and a third wyvern flew past, barely missing her vulnerable wing.
The sand dragon roared in fury and dove at the back of the wyvern that had fatally misjudged his attack. Her almost disproportionately long, hard claws tore into the softer scales of the wyvern. Her serpentine neck snaked forward and clasped the thin neck of the wyvern just behind its narrow, wedge-shaped head. One powerful bite from her strong jaws crushed the bone and cartilage just beneath the hide and muscle.
The paralyzed and dying wyvern plummeted like a stone and struck the ground a few seconds later, spraying a large geyser of sand into the air. A sixth sense warned her of another impending attack. She dipped her left wing and twisted her stout body, flipping over in mid air. The sudden loss of lift sent her plummeting toward the ground but also served to drop her below the clutches of the attacking wyvern. She released a searing blast of fire up at the creature, incinerating its dry, leathery wings and scorching its face and chest.
She could hear the beast screeching in pain as it fell to its death as she righted herself before she struck the sand next to it. Just as she snapped her wings out to regain lift, another set of claws tore into her back, and an even sharper pain wracked her body when the wyvern’s vicious stinger knifed between her shoulder blades. The crippling poison burned as it coursed through her bloodstream.
She dipped sharply left and right, dislodged her attacker before diving for the ground before the effects of the paralyzing poison took full effect. She already felt her muscles responding sluggishly as she raced for the safety of the drifting sands. If she could just reach the ground, she could burrow below the sand and rest, safe from attack, until the poison wore off.
When she was just a few hundred feet up, only scant seconds from safety, she lost all control of her muscles. Her head and tail slumped and the force of the wind pushed her limp wings uselessly behind her. Unimaginable sorrow filled her as she thought of her precious little one alone, slowly starving to death in their dark cave. The poison had set in so thoroughly that she did not even feel the impact of the sand when she struck. Darkness consumed her, and a final tear traced its way down along the fine golden scales of her lifeless cheek.
***
Azerick and Horse approached the closed gates of Langdon’s crossing two days after parting company with Maude and the others. It was midday, but the gates were firmly barred, and attentive guards trained several loaded and cocked crossbows on his casually moving form as he neared the secured gates.
“Halt!” one of the guards commanded from atop the wall. “State your name, home, and purpose in Langdon’s Crossing!”
Azerick shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand as he looked up at the obviously nervous guards. “Azerick of North Haven. I am here to rest the night, get a drink, and purchase supplies for my travels.”
“Will you be traveling back to North Haven on the morrow then?”
“My business lies south for the moment, guardsman, but yes, I intend to leave on the morrow.”
The guard conversed with an unseen man behind the wall and below him and then looked back up as one half of the gate began swinging inward.
“Come forth then but be warned, misconduct will not be tolerated and will be dealt with swiftly and harshly.”
“Can you direct me to a butcher, a baker, and an inn please.”
“The butcher is at the far northwest end of town near the stockyards. The baker is at the center of town along the main street and is just a block down from the High Hopes inn. It’s one of the better inns in town, and tell the innkeeper Charles sent ya.”
Azerick gave Charles the guard an informal salute and headed for the butcher’s first. He smelled the stockyards long before he saw them and quickly located the butcher’s shop at the west end of the stockyards.
A small bell rang when Azerick pushed open the door and stepped toward the empty counter. A few moments later, a heavyset man wearing a bloodstained, white apron and wiping his hands clean on a towel walked in from the back where he had obviously been carving up some deceased animal that would soon grace a successful man’s plate.
“Good day to you, young sir,” the butcher greeted. “How can I help you?”
“I would like to purchase a large quantity of meat to take with me on my travels south.”
“So you’ll be wanting all cured meat then I presume?”
Azerick thought for a moment then shook his head. “Wrap up twenty pounds of your choicest cuts of beef and another fifty pounds of smoked or cured meats for traveling.”
“You want sausages mixed in with that as well or just smoked beef and ham?”
“Sausages, please.”
“It’ll take me a few minutes to get the fresh cuts, sir,” the butcher said even friendlier.
“Take your time, master butcher.”
Fifteen minutes later, the butcher returned from the back with stacks of wrapped meats and smoked beef, ham, and cured sausages on a metal cart. He displayed the fresh cuts of meat to Azerick before wrapping them tightly in clean, waxed linen and stacking them on the countertop. He placed the cured meats in four, course linen bags and set them next to the wrapped parcels of steaks.
“That’ll be ten gold crowns and seventeen silver swords or the equivalent depending on if you’re paying in Valerian or Sumaran coin,” the butcher announced uncomfortably.
Not many people in Langdon’s Crossing could have afforded such an order, and the butcher was not accustomed to charging individual customers so much. Normally, ship’s cooks and caravan masters made orders of that magnitude. Ship captains would come in and order whole sides of beef for not much more than that, but that was for resale in another city. Plus, last year’s raid was still putting a pinch on most of the economy, particularly butcher’s and millers since they got hit the worst.
Azerick calmly counted out eleven gold crowns and told the butcher to keep the change. The butcher thanked him then watched in amazement as Azerick placed the entire order into a bag not much bigger than the sack that contained two of the large smoked hams, and the sack did not even appear full when he easily carried the seventy pounds of meat out the door. Azerick doubted he would consume half the store of food before he returned to North Haven, but his near stranding in the middle of the desert convinced him that there was no reason to take any chances.
A feed store was logically built just a short ways farther up the road, so Azerick bought Horse a twenty pound sack of molasses-soaked oats for the road and a five pound bag for when he stabled him at the inn. He headed for the middle of town and saw evidence of the attack it had suffered a few months back on some of the buildings. He found the bakery without a problem. It was one of the few buildings with a large brick chimney rising over the rooftops.
Azerick purchased several loaves of bread and added them to the magical bag. He spied the inn on the corner of the next street over and, as he and Horse drew near, he saw how the High Hopes got its name. The inn was rough looking like most of the sun-beaten, sandblasted buildings, but bright paint covered the cracked wood in an attempt to make it look fancier than it really was. Azerick likened it to an ugly woman in a beautiful dress. It may get her a dance or two at the ball, but no one was going to take her home.
A stableboy rushed out to take Horse’s reins as Azerick rode down the wide alley toward the stable behind the inn. He handed over the reins, Horse’s small bag of oats, and a silver piece with instructions to thoroughly wash and brush him down and feed him half the bag of oats now and the rest first th
ing in the morning.
The inside of the inn raised Azerick’s opinion of the establishment a notch or two. Being protected from the elements, the paint on the walls was a single smooth coat as opposed to the multiple layers of repeated touch-ups on the outside.
“Good afternoon, sir, what can I get you?” a slender man with a huge moustache asked when Azerick stepped toward the bar.
“Do you have beer?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll take a beer, a bath, and a room before dinner in that order,” Azerick told the innkeeper.
He paid extra to have a tub taken to his room and filled instead of using the common bath. He wanted to lie and soak without interruption until his skin turned as pruned as an old man. Azerick laughed as he soaked when an image of Allister came unbidden to his mind. He found that he missed his friends and his students.
These sentimental emotions were new to him, and he did not quite know what to make of them. He had wrapped himself in the security of solitude like a suit of armor. Only Delinda had managed to breach that armor since he lost his home and family, and it had left him vulnerable and nearly destroyed him. Taking Ellyssa in was a calculated risk to secure a home away from others where he could avoid most everyone and focus on his studies and her training. Then the floodgates opened, and he was surrounded by a multitude of people. He found that allowing his friends and people who cared about him close to him was a source of strength as well. It provided purpose beyond simple survival and the will to fight for something greater than himself.
He started when he realized he had fallen asleep. The room was heavily shadowed as the very last of the sun’s light dipped below the horizon.
Well, I have certainly achieved an acceptable level of wrinkles, Azerick thought to himself as he looked at his craggy skin.
Azerick enjoyed a decent and properly prepared meal; a good change from the trail food even if the food had come from his own larder. He was no chef, and despite the quality of food he had brought, it was still not as good as a meal prepared in a proper kitchen by a skilled cook.
The evening crowd was loud and boisterous, made up mostly of cattle drivers and other hardworking, dusty folks, but the spirit was good natured and filled with camaraderie instead of hostility bordering on violence as in many of the lower class bars in rough towns.
The innkeeper was not lying about the quality of his brew. It was quite good, so Azerick weathered the audible assault on his ears and enjoyed several glasses before retreating to his bed, feeling the effects of the beer but not to the point of it being uncomfortable or debilitating. After that night with Rusty, he had vowed never to drink nearly that much again.
He slept deeply and contentedly, waking only after the sun was fully over the horizon. He dressed in his freshly washed clothes, ate a quick breakfast, and bought two small kegs of beer to take with him before retrieving Horse and riding back out into the hot desert to demand answers, and possibly justice, from an entire enclave of wizards not known for their friendly welcome or pleasant treatment of unexpected guests.
***
Ulric marched his men toward the east wall of Groveswood to “liberate” the wealthy nobles from the clutches of the raiders that had been looting and terrorizing its prestigious citizens for the better part of the day. Groveswood had a large guard force that did an excellent job of keeping the thieves and commoners out of town, but they were poorly equipped to take on five hundred mounted mercenaries who lived for battle and mayhem.
Ulric sent a messenger into the city to inform Kayne that he would be driving him out that night and to have his men prepared to depart with their substantial plunder. Once the night fully arrived, Ulric led his men through the lightly guarded gates. Kayne’s men held the gates not to keep Ulric out but to keep any citizen of Groveswood from fleeing the town and sending for help until they were ready for them to do so.
The battle at the gates was quick, and Ulric rode at the head as his army raged through the streets “battling” the invaders wherever they found them and routing them out of the town’s west gate. Within an hour, not a single raider remained inside the town’s walls. The “dead and wounded” were taken away in the Duke’s wagons where Ulric promised to dispose of the corpses and captives alike so that they would not sully the pristine air of Groveswood any longer.
The mayor lauded Duke Ulric as well as bestowing the town’s highest honor upon him for their deliverance from the hands of the invaders. Ulric nearly choked stifling the laughter at the irony of the award.
The pillaging had not been bloodless, but it had been acceptably controlled. As per Ulric’s directive, Kayne and his men killed only a small number of the lesser citizens, those merchants with minimal political influence that he had denoted as expendable. There was more than enough degradation, humiliation, brutalization, and assault to help properly enrage the citizens and bend their favor and gratitude toward the Duke.
Duke Ulric found Kayne and his men at the agreed upon campsite, well off the traveled roads where anyone would chance upon them. Once again, Ulric failed to spot the sentries that he knew Kayne had posted at several points leading up to the campsite. He found Kayne and his officers still tallying and recording the wealth of treasures they had carted off by the wagonload during the night. Once he had an accurate accounting, Kayne would then distribute the plunder among his men as their contract and pay dictated with the bulk of it going to Kayne himself.
“It looks like you fared quite well, Kayne,” Ulric called out as he approached with his men.
Kayne handed the ledger and quill to one of his trusted men and strode toward the Duke, smiling brightly.
“Aye, we certainly did. May I presume that you fared equally well in your own way?”
“You may, Kayne, you most certainly may. I must congratulate you once again on you and your men’s excellent performance. You are going to make me have to change my rather poor opinion of mercenaries.”
Kayne chortled loudly. “Don’t do that, Ulric. No other mercenaries are Hell’s Legion. Stick with your first opinion; it will serve you better in the long run. Care to share the next step in your grand plan, Duke?”
“Now is the time to call up your infantry and support personnel. Coming from the south, they should have no problem marching as far north as Southport, even in the winter, unless you know a place farther south that will be warmer to sit out the remainder of the cold season. It would have to be out of the way enough to minimize accidental discovery but close enough to move north on short notice.”
Kayne rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “There are canyons in the Bloodstone Mountains where I could hide them. They could reach Southport in two weeks at the latest. When do you plan to use them?”
“Jarvin has sent out three armies to secure the roads between the four major regions. I had hoped to trap at least one of them between our two forces and destroy them within the month, but I fear I risk tipping my hand too soon. I will have to march on North Haven afterward and put her to siege immediately after we crush Jarvin’s army, and I do not relish the thought of besieging that city in the winter. I expect to bring her down within a matter of weeks if not days, but it would be foolish to risk getting stuck outside the walls during their horrendous winters.”
“So you plan to have us take North Haven first thing in the spring, before they can bring in their harvests just in case she proves to be a harder nut to crack,” Kayne mused, stroking the small wedge of hair on his chin with a finger.
“Precisely. I would like you and your cavalry to winter in Southport as my guests. I can integrate you into my own forces, and no one will suspect your identities so long as your men do not bring undo attention to themselves. Then, under the cover of night, I will send you out on small raiding runs just to keep Jarvin on his toes and force him to maintain his patrols. When I decide to crush them, his army will be tired and their morale low. From there, we will ride to North Haven and bring that frigid bitch and her fiery daughter to heel!” Ulric cr
owed.
CHAPTER 5
Brandon heard the unmistakable sound of splintering bone and drew his cutlass, turning slowly in circles. “Carter…Carter, are you okay? Damn it, man, answer me!”
Brandon saw the dark silhouette approaching through the fog. He knew right away that it was not Carter. The man was easily a head taller and a good deal wider than even the big oarsman was. It was not until the figure was within three or four feet that the guard could make out the man’s features. He was tall, his long blond hair was braided into several unruly ropes down the back of his neck, and he wore nearly no clothing at all. How the man managed to not freeze to death was beyond him.
The big man reached out at Brandon as if to embrace him in a brotherly hug. Brandon swung his cutlass with all his might, discarding any attempt at skilled swordsmanship and severed the giant’s left arm at the elbow. The only thing more disconcerting than watching the pale limb drop nearly bloodlessly to the ground was that the Northman still did not make a sound, did not cry out in pain, shock, or rage. The man did not even change the blank, seemingly unseeing stare on his ashen face.
“Alarm!” Brandon shouted as he tried to reverse his stroke, but he had swung with so much force that it carried his blade too far to his left to bring it back around, and the mute creature clubbed him hard in the left side of his head with his remaining arm.
The blow sent Brandon crashing to the ground, his ears ringing like church bells, and his vision full of dizzying, flashing lights. He watched the big Eislander stalk silently toward his prone form and raise a big, fur-lined boot to crush his head like the shell of a snail. Brandon tried to grasp his cutlass in his nerveless hand through the haze of pain and his concussion, but it was so numb it may as well have belonged to someone else.
The long steel head of a pike burst through the shirtless chest of the man that had just killed Carter and nearly himself. The force of the thrust sent the big man toppling to the ground, yet he was impossibly trying to regain his feet as John stepped on his back, pulled the big pike out, and thrust it home a second, then a third time when the man refused to die.
The Sorcerer's Path Box Set: Book 1-4 Page 111