by Jon Hollins
And then it simply lay there, dead on the ground.
A great cheer arose from the lung of every man, woman, and child still able to breathe upon that battlefield. The sound swallowed Balur, chewed him, and spat him out, reeling from the magnitude of what was happening.
What was happening?
They were winning.
Were they winning?
The dead lay around like felled wheat. Everything was fire and blood. Two dragons were down but three remained. Shock and awe was slipping away through blood-slick fingers. The tide of battle teetered on a blade’s edge, on the point of a dragon’s claw.
The red dragon burst free of a gnarled knot of soldiers swarming over it. It caught women and men beneath its massive paws, trampled them to the ground. It rose up, roaring, belching fire, launched itself into the air, to take the place of the yellow.
Catapult stones went flying, but the red was wise to that now. It twisted out of the way of the first, the second. They crashed down into the human army, obliterating life, smearing it across the mud. The dragon caught the third stone, spun with the weight of it, hurled it down to the ground. Screams rose from frail human lungs.
The green dragon arched up out of the battlefield, swept up in an arc, dripping blood and bodies. It streaked low across the field of battle, arrows clattering off its thick scales. Fire lashed out of its mouth, swallowing the fringe of the battlefield. First one catapult went up in flame, then a second, and another. It left a line of five pyres at the edge of the field.
The black stayed on the ground, pacing in a circle. The wall of flame rose around it, a perfect circle, growing higher and higher. Spears, and arrows, and men were all immolated.
The red came crashing down to land, using its own body as a battering ram. Lines of soldiers tried to break, to turn, to run. Bloodthirsty comrades pushed them forward. Both groups died messy deaths. The red dragon kicked off for the sky once more.
The head of the black dragon lashed out through its circle of fire, dragged mouthfuls of screaming soldiers back.
The green swept back and forth, breathing fire the whole while, like a child erasing chalk from a board.
Then the griffins fell upon it. There were fewer of them now. Perhaps half of the force that had started the battle. But they were still a black clot of feathers, rage, and claws that swept out of the night and landed en masse on the dragon’s back. Their beaks rose and fell. Their claws peeled back great skeins of scale and flesh. The green dragon screamed, roared, immolated its own body in great gasping streams of fire, but it fell to the ground before all the griffins did, nothing more than a chunk of meat.
85
Flights of Fancy
This couldn’t happen.
This wasn’t happening.
Kithrax denied it utterly. It was some gods-hexed hallucination brought about by inhaling fumes from the volcano.
Then a bronze spear landed in a gash already scored in his side, and the pain was so much it made the world shimmer before his eyes. He screamed. Pain, and rage.
This couldn’t happen.
It was.
It had all seemed so simple. Their armies poised to smash everything and everyone. One final day of relaxing, and flirting with Scourrax left to him, and then he could leave them all behind for another year. And they’d had the prophet’s pathetic, obvious spy brought before them, and it had been so much fun to watch her quake.
And then… then she had said the prophet was stealing all their gold. And she had just been… insulting them. Insulting him. And it had just been too much. That, and Horrax’s foul halitosis washing over him. And so he had gone to rain down death. He had gone to put the fear of everything he and his fellows were into every human in this gods-hexed valley. He had risen to raze the world of this cursed, poxing prophet.
And he had done it. He had killed the little shit stain of a being.
And… And…
Gods, they had had the audacity to attack. Attack him.
At first he had almost laughed. Watching them throw themselves at him. Like so many moths drawn to his flame. But then Horrax had gone and died. And some part of his mind was cackling with glee, because it was Horrax. Fucking Horrax. That unpleasant turd of a dragon, so long a thorn in his side, had been killed by… these people, these peasants, these unworthies that died so easily in front of him. But as part of him cackled, another part of him screamed that something was very wrong here, that this should not be happening, that these people could not do this.
Part of him had been afraid.
But fear was laughable, was ridiculous, was beneath him. He could not be frightened. That would be like the lion fearing the lamb. So he bit, and he chewed, and he roared, and he spat fire, and killed, and killed, and killed so that they would see his dominance. So that they would understood how paltry and fleeting this sensation of victory was.
And then Scourrax fell, her sleek, twisting body falling limp to the ground. Her yellow body a massive, twisting monument to this violation of the natural order of things.
And it was not as if he had loved her. That was not it at all. There had been no dependence of that sort. At least not on his part. She, he could believe, had needed him quite desperately, but that had been a one-sided affair. But in that moment he had experienced a pain he had not expected, a tearing in his chest utterly different from and utterly dwarfing the pain in his flanks and wings.
And that had been two of them dead. Not just Horrax. Suddenly this was not some hideous aberration in the fabric of reality. Suddenly this was a groundswell of change. Suddenly the world was in free fall, a helter-skelter, pell-mell slide into madness. And he roared again, bit again, slashed again; he painted the world red with fire and blood. He smashed back against this abrupt change in the momentum of the world.
And somehow, against all he could believe, it was not enough. And now Quirrax lay dead. And now he and Bruthrax were the only dragons alive in Kondorra. They were an endangered species.
And this could not be.
But it was.
He reared up on his hind legs, spread his wings, let them see the size of him, the majesty, the glory. He made them see who it was they attacked. A god, or close enough. They had him before them. They did not need this absurd false prophet. Why did they not see?
Why did they not see?
There was a great jagged pain in his guts, and his roar of defiance became a scream of pain.
Lightning slashed out of the sky in a brilliant white flare and scoured a second line of pain down his chest. A third came. A fourth. He flailed backward, muscles convulsing. He fought for control of his jackknifing body. Another blast of lightning crashed into his cheek. He could smell the skin cooking, scales peeling away. Disfigured. His body defiled.
It was his magicians. The ones he had hired, had paid for with his own coin. They were doing this to him.
“Traitors!” he screamed. “Ingrates!” But the words burbled out of his ruined face, an ugly grunt. And he realized he sounded just like Horrax. And in his pain, and his horror, he wept. After all he had done for this valley, after he had shaped it into everything it was. He was their fucking lord. Their master.
He collapsed under the onslaught of lightning bolts, lay twitching on the ground. And as the soldiers closed in around him, he was unable to defend himself.
86
Red of Tooth and Claw
Balur watched as the black dragon was finally taken down in a spectacular display by the Consortium mages. Only the red was left now—a massive brute, seventy yards of knotted muscle, scales so thick that they bore scratches but almost none of the creature’s own black blood. It laid down wave after wave of fire, scorching the fields, leaving swaths of charred corpses.
Balur’s frustration was almost overwhelming. Red fringed his vision. Every time he was almost upon a dragon, was almost on the point of burying his steel in its guts, some other fucker was getting there first. There were just too many people. He had seen the grif
fin take the brown creature’s eye, and had tried to force his way through the scrum of howling soldiers, but they were simply packed too tight. A few people scrambled over their fellows, but they were small and light. When Balur tried to do it, he just squashed people. Stupid frail people.
“I am being the fucking prophet!” he bellowed. “Be letting me through so I can be wreaking my holy vengeance!” But no one could hear him over the roar of the battle. And so he had struck out toward the nearby yellow dragon, now fighting against the tide of the battle. And just as he had raised the clock hand above his head to hack deeply into her side, she had taken to the skies, and not come down until those cowardly fucking catapults hiding at the back of the battlefield had killed her. He had almost cheered when the green dragon had set them on fire.
And then the green had turned back to the battle. It had turned back toward him. As if it saw him standing there. He had raised his clock hand, pointed between its two eyes.
“Be coming at me, you fucker.” He had whispered it. Words impossible to hear in the clamor and press of the fight. But it had known. He had known it had known. There was no need to push against the crowd now. The fight was coming to him on bright green wings. His moment of glory. The moment that would be written down and passed along in stories for years to come. The battle that parents would tell their children about. The story that would drown him in women.
And then those motherfucking griffins. A gods’ hex on whichever horny, cursed eagle lost to the mists of time had given in to the desire to shove itself inside a lion. And may Betra spit on the memory of that slut whore lion nursing her fucking brood all so that now, centuries later, they could all shit on his dreams.
The green dragon had dropped to the ground dead.
He wasn’t even fucking surprised when the wizards took down the black dragon. Of course they did. Whores, all of them.
And so there was just the red. A titanic beast. The army charged and broke itself against him again, again. Walls of the dead formed around him. He came smashing through them, spraying corpses and flame.
Paltry lightning flashed, but the wizards had spent their power. The red beast shrugged off the attack. The few remaining griffin riders marshaled their steeds and flew at him. He took to the skies, and their corpses fell like so much rain. Spears glanced off him. Arrows lay at his feet, snapped in two.
And finally the human army seemed about to grind to a halt. They had almost nothing left, and what they did have seemed paltry in the face of this titanic beast.
And finally, watching the slaughter, watching the cursed griffins fall, Balur felt the finger of destiny pressing down on him.
This is it, he knew. This is being my moment.
And almost as if one of the gods had reached down from the heavens and pushed them apart, the soldiers opened up a path from Balur to that red dragon.
He put his head down, raised his clock hand, and charged.
87
Living the Dream
It rose before him. A mountain of flesh. A cliff face of rage. It roared and slashed. It breathed gouts of flame into its attackers. It sent a score to their graves with each exhalation. A few soldiers clung to its back, hacking desperately at the thick scales.
Balur put his head down, doubled his pace. Every part of him thrummed with the certainty of his movements. Every part of him moved with absolute alignment to his purpose.
Above him the dragon jerked its head, sighted on him, inhaled.
Balur threw himself to the right, rolled. Fire engulfed the world behind him. Heat tore at him. But he was on his feet, running.
“Come on!” he roared. “Be coming on, you fat motherfucker. You small-pricked excuse for an iguana!”
There was no way for the dragon to hear him above the press of battle, above the screams of dying men, the army desperately trying to press in. But he knew: The dragon heard him.
He ran into a roar like a solid wall of sound. It was not the first wall he had smashed through. He kept running. He kept his grip upon the clock arm.
The dragon lowered its head, roared, opened its jaws to greet him.
Lette was dead.
Dragons were dead.
And Balur did not give one single fuck.
It slashed a claw at him. He rolled, jabbed with the clock hand, felt it lodge between two scales. He was hoisted off his feet by the brutal force of the dragon’s blow. His body snapped like a whip in the air, but he didn’t loosen his grip on the lodged clock hand.
He crashed to earth, was dragged with violence through mud and muck and half-baked bodies. Still he held on, feeling the blade tremble and shake, still wedged in between the toes of the massive dragon, slowly working its way deeper. The dragon raised its foot. Balur dangled from it, pistoning his body, wrenching the clock hand from side to side, trying to saw his way deeper, to the meat of this beast. It would know his name.
The dragon prepared to stomp.
With a snap the clock hand tore through the scales and bit deep into the flesh of the dragon. It squealed, jerked its foot instinctively away from the ground. Balur’s body flipped like a top. He twisted on the blade desperately, trying to wedge it deeper, but then it came free, and he was sailing, somersaulting through the air.
He landed upside down, feeling his jaw snap tight, tasting blood, feeling his spine creak and groan.
The dragon’s severed toe landed beside him.
Together, both Balur and the dragon roared.
The dragon opened its mouth and the world filled with fire.
Balur rolled backward, desperate, almost hopeless. There was nowhere to go. The churned, blood-soaked mud of the battlefield saved him. He was coated in the sodden stuff, it caked onto him as he rolled, not fully absorbing the furnace heat of the dragon’s flame, but taking the lethal edge from it. He was left half-baked in a hard shell of earth.
He burst free, snarling in pain and rage. That it would try to cook him. As if he were being nothing more than some sacrificial meal brought before it. As if he had not sawed flesh from flesh. As if for all its days it would not remember him at every step. Now there would be being no days for remembering. Now there would be no mercy. He would rip its heart out with his teeth even if he had to claw his way down its gullet to do so.
The dragon hesitated, startled at Balur’s survival, his ferocity. If not dead, he should be a shuddering mass of wretched wounds, not this whirling dervish of hate. Balur took full advantage, ran flat out, hurled himself at the dragon’s injured leg, held defensively beneath its body. The dragon jerked back, but Balur launched himself into the air, sank a hand into the exposed meat of the injury. The dragon screamed, flailed, but Balur, brimming over with hatred, clung on. Desperately he hauled himself up. He clutched the dragon’s ankle. It kicked. He still held on.
All around, men and women of the human army were starting to stare. Their attacks faltered. Everything was coming down to this absurd, outmatched battle. They stared at the severed toe in the dirt, a totem of the impossible ferocity of Balur, and the impossibility of his task. He simply could not hack the beast apart into piecemeal chunks.
Could he?
Neither combatant seemed to care. Balur had managed to find purchase, braced against the talons and ankle of the dragon, and was hacking determinedly away at its calf. Sparks flared off the dragon’s scales with each blow. The dragon scratched and clawed, and flailed, but Balur wormed his way deeper, out of range.
With a howl, the dragon shook its whole body and launched itself into the air. Balur felt the ground dropping away as an abstract thing. He was too focused on his task. He would be ending this monster. It would be knowing his name. Everyone would be knowing his name. Even the gods. Just as soon as he hacked its cursed leg off.
The creature jackknifed beneath him, and for a horrifying moment he felt his grip loosen. Freed from the need of supporting its own weight, the dragon no longer held its foot in a way that braced Balur so tightly. He clutched desperately at the limb, the b
lood haze of battle fighting against his deeply ingrained desire for self-preservation. He satisfied himself by biting at the wound he had been gashing in the dragon’s leg. He would gnaw his way through this tree trunk of flesh if he had to.
The world spun around him as the dragon lurched and flailed. Balur’s legs shook free from their perch, flapped in the air. He redoubled the strength of his grip. He dug his jaws deeper, felt a scale crack beneath the pressure of his teeth.
Blood burst into his mouth, hot, stinging. He gagged and spat. Fucking dragon even tasted like piss. He licked at the air whirling about his head, but all he could taste was gore. Grimacing he took another bite. He would not be forgotten.
The contorted dragon finally managed to fold itself almost in half in the sky. It scrabbled at Balur with its hind legs. He felt its claw score a deep gash down his back. His arms spasmed and for a moment he was in free fall before he caught himself, clinging desperately to the dragon’s ankle.
The battlefield whirled beneath him, a dizzying blur of faces. An arrow lanced past his ear, clattered off a scale near his arm.
“Be stopping your shooting at your prophet, you imbeciles!” he yelled into the whirling wind. He doubted it had much effect.
He strained to pull himself higher against the bucking whirling of the dragon. His fingers were slipping, arms finally tiring. He should let the clock hand go, use the hand to get a better grip, and yet if he did, then what was the point of being up here? He needed the sharpened slap of metal to ram into the dragon’s skull and scramble its brains. So he held stubbornly on, fighting to get a leg up, to gain a foothold.
Which is why, finally, he lost his grip, and was sent tumbling into the night sky.
88
We All Fall Down
Balur tumbled, arse over elbow, through the night. So this is being it, he thought, and he had no regrets. This was a good way to die. Soaked to the bone in his enemy’s blood. The taste of his enemy upon his tongue. There was glory in this. He would be in the Hallows with Lette soon, and together they would kick the arses of all the dead for all eternity.