by Garon Whited
She did, reluctantly, and they cranked open the gate. I told Firebrand to damp it down until we got to the wizards. It seemed irritated, but obeyed.
I’m getting better at bravado. I wasn’t sure in the least I would make it to the wizards.
The idea, for me, was to nail the wizards. They didn’t know I was the only wizard in the keep, otherwise they could have done any number of unpleasant things to the remaining defenders. All they knew was their earlier seeing-spell was hammered like a glass nail. Prudence is a good quality in a wizard.
And, being prudent, they would be working on a way to neutralize Bronze. I can’t have that.
One good thing about my sortie was the potential to rout a whole army. If the wizards went down, the rest of the army would be much easier to deal with. Hidden in a fog, they would be uncoordinated and uncertain. This would act in my favor and allow me to kill anyone nearby without worrying about masses of slings and spears. With Bronze to provide mobility on the battlefield, I thought I could whip tendrils through a lot of people, kill some, terrify the rest, send most of them running, and kill anyone who stayed to fight.
Nice plan. What bothered me was the old maxim: “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”
I was afraid. It would be my first war.
I galloped out through the opening gate. Everyone on the wall stood up and saluted with whatever blade was handy; Verril held an arrow, point up, in his fist. That, at least, made me feel a little better.
We thundered ringingly over the fog-shrouded bridge and hurdled the bonfire on the far side in one great leap. We paused in the darkness and fog beyond to get bearings. I looked through the fog with thermal vision, trying to spot the wizards’ campfire. Things looked a bit strange through my spell; everything was a pearly gray mist beyond fifty feet or so, with an overlay of colored figures. The people were human-shaped blobs of dull red and orange; the campfires were bright yellow.
Something out there was five times the size of a man and blazed white. I tried to remember anything besides the bonfire that could look like that. I didn’t really remember anything in that area, though. Whatever it was, I’d get to it later. First things first.
Bronze changed gaits, stepping as delicately as she could to minimize the noise. Firebrand stayed unlit, but I could see the yellow-white glow of heat in my thermal sight. I guided Bronze toward the campfire I’d picked out from the wall; I was fairly sure it was the one the wizards were clustered around.
A sentry shouted at us; I have no idea what he asked, but he didn’t ask again. Bronze dropped into her regular gait like a semi shifting gears and I took his head off with Firebrand. We rumbled up to full speed and charged through the scattered encampment. I spread my tendrils out, reaching as far as I could and drawing as hard as possible on anything we touched. Bronze held a straight line for our target and went through men, equipment, and carts on the way.
Screaming started almost immediately. People did not have time to scream at seeing us; between the night and the fog, we were invisible. Instead, they screamed when my tendrils touched them and cut cold lines through their living spirits.
There was nothing gentle or kind about this. I was out to cause terror. If they ran, they would live. If they fought, I would die. Killing soldiers wasn’t as important as making them go away.
The wizards, on the other hand, were too dangerous. As Brynon said, I was in charge. The keep was my responsibility until someone superior to me in authority took over. It was my job to make sure the men under my command survived long enough for me to be relieved.
I doubted the wizards wanted to die, but they weren’t leaving me a lot of options. That irks me. I don’t like killing. But, since it was a choice between them or us…
They heard the cries and they knew something was up. I can only assume they used some sort of magical vision as well; they attacked before I even entered the light of their fire, which resolved my moral dilemma nicely.
Lightning danced in the sky and came down, missing me to the left and the right, never quite striking; all my hair stood up from the static charge as my defensive spells deflected the bolts. A ball of orange fire rolled grandly through the air toward me, roaring, and I pricked it like a soap bubble on Firebrand’s point; Firebrand gulped it and blazed into vivid flames. Banshee screams assailed my ears and I was deafened; I hadn’t anticipated a sonic attack. One spell pierced my heart with a biting coldness and I knew it froze solid in my chest. Freezing vital organs was another thing I hadn’t anticipated, but also didn’t much mind; I’d thaw by morning.
Bronze lowered her head and dug in, racing for them; that ball of fire had cut a clear lane through the fog. I shouted and raised Firebrand; it streamed fire like a banner in the wind of our passage. The wizards stood and stared, dumbfounded at my survival, and I rode them down. A fistful of tendrils lashed at them, draining whatever I could from all of them and ruining any attempts at spells. Firebrand rose and fell, chopping and searing, while Bronze cornered like a barrel-racer to bring me to every one of my targets. As Firebrand cut down one, it freed tendrils to lash into others. Then another died by the sword, and a third, while the rest shuddered and swayed; a pair went to their knees, gasping. I killed another with a cut through the neck before finishing the rest by drinking their lives.
I dismounted and took their blood, lifting bodies and drinking from their throats; I was sure there would be a lot of hacking and killing before the night was over. It’s quicker to drink the blood of a living man; the heart pumps it for you. One has to squeeze the blood out of a dead man, but it can be done.
Bronze kept busy, circling me for the moment and killing anyone that came too close. The encampment was in chaos as people shouted and ran about. I drew the mist around us, thickening it, and Firebrand dimmed; my sword was waiting and watchful, like a cat waiting for bugs to show themselves.
Without their leaders, the mob of viksagi had no discipline, no clear chain of command to give them organization and direction. I knew this because the wizards knew it. They had planned this for years, this invasion of the rich, warm southlands.
I tossed aside the last husk of a wizard. Now for an army…
I reached out with a whirlwind of dark, spell-driven tentacles, questing ever outward, like ripples spreading on a pond, touching every man I could within a considerable distance. These I drew upon, taking what power they possessed, drinking of their spirits as a thirsty man drinks from a fountain. I drank, and drank, and my reaching spirit swelled huge, reached even farther afield with the power drawn from many men. Many, many men; more than a single village, more than I could easily count. They shuddered, they screamed, they fell, and they slowly died.
The viksagi have their own culture, old and rich as it is, even if they aren’t as technically or magically advanced as Rethven. For long moments, I knew their ways as I knew my own. They seemed to buzz and hum, frightened and confused, before they sank into silence within me. With a spell spreading my tendrils wider than they could normally go, I took them in faster than I could assimilate them; there were seconds of time when each man was momentarily aware. Then… silence.
I moved to snatch up a body, sank fangs in the neck, and drained him quickly. Hot blood, still driven by a heart unaware of death, poured down my throat and made me strong. Let them see now. Let them know what they face, now that I have power. Now they can see, now they can run. I tossed the husk aside and summoned a wind to disperse the fog. Let them see.
As I fanged another throat, there was a profound, snarling roar. I lifted my head, unmindful of the blood that trailed down my chin.
The second siege engine, or what I had taken to be a wagon full of it, shuddered and exploded; the blaze of heat and light was visible like a sunrise through the remains of the fog. The wave of heat dispersed much of the concealing mist and I had a good look at what caused it.
The thing was some forty feet long, serpentine, and covered in scales. It had four legs and walked like a cat, for all
it looked more like an armored snake. The legs were very short, little longer than my own, but tipped with hand-like claws and piercing talons. Wings, great leathery things, unfolded and folded again, stretching. Flames dripped from its mouth like liquid and left spots of brightness like burning paint.
I looked hard at it, and I could faintly see the fading remains of bindings the wizards had once laid upon it.
They had bound a dragon. Now it was loose. And angry.
It looked around; the survivors were fleeing as though their lives depended on it, which was not far wrong. Then it centered its gaze on me. I wasn’t running; instead, I mounted Bronze.
“You will die,” it said to me. Its voice was a deep, snarling hiss.
“I just freed you from your bondage,” I countered. “You owe me.”
“I owe you nothing, little human, and I will gladly devour you.”
I wished I knew how far it could spit flames. I rode forward anyway. If I ran, it might catch me—and it was certainly going to kill something. Screaming hordes of terrified troops scattering over the landscape might be worthwhile to it, but I didn’t want to risk it might decide to take up residence in the keep.
Although, that would tend to keep everyone on their own side of the river.
Still, attacking it probably wasn’t very smart. All I can say is I drank a lot that night and I was feeling it. I can see now I should have thrown spells at it, grabbed it with tendrils, run like hell, almost anything else. Nevertheless, a knight riding into the teeth of a fire-breathing dragon appeals to the romantic in my soul.
Okay, and sometimes I’m stupid.
It watched us come and reared up, wings spread. It gaped that tooth-filled maw open and blasted a white-hot lance of fire at us. I had Firebrand out in front of me and the flames engulfed only the blade. Firebrand drank the flames like I drank living spirits.
This startled the dragon rather badly. Well, I didn’t blame it for a second; it was damn surprising the first time I saw anything like that happen, too.
Then I hit it, striking hard and fast in passing, and scored it deeply along its chest. Thick ichor welled out, sizzling as it hit the ground, and it screamed loud enough to crack the clay pots around the campfires. It turned its head away from us, spinning, before we had a chance to do more than pass it with that first cut; the tail whiplashed out and swept me from Bronze’s back. I landed with a heavy thud, and the beast threw itself on me, snarling rage and animal fury, to claw and bite, rend and tear.
Too bad I had Firebrand, and hard lessons delivered over months. That deadly point found lodging against and within that scaly chest as the dragon threw itself down on me.
The claws found me, of course; they tore through my armor, dug deep, and opened my flesh; but I’ve been carved open before. Even with a mortal wound, the dragon might manage to shred me, but I was fairly sure I’d be better by morning—there was a lot of blood yet to be had on this battlefield.
It lowered its head to bite me, but I twisted Firebrand and it threw its head back in a ringing scream. The claws still held me, still moved, trying to rip me apart, and I daresay they would have had I been mortal. But it was weakening already, and I could feel Firebrand doing something—something very much like swallowing the flames of a burning building. Inside a dragon? Consuming its inner fires, perhaps?
Bronze came at it from behind, but the tail was still whipping wildly; it knocked her sprawling in a clangor of metal and ruined encampment. That made me angry.
I reached out with the tendrils of my spirit, to kill it quicker, and seized upon its dwindling life.
Again, there were both good and bad points to my brilliant idea.
Firebrand was already drinking up the fire that was the dragon, absorbing it as it had absorbed the flames. It was the first time both Firebrand and I ever tried to consume the same thing. We touched, my sword and I, and we must have marked each other, for as the dragon’s legs gave way and it collapsed atop me, I drank as my sword drank, with my mouth burning in the ichor that flowed from the dragon’s breast. There was no thought to it.
It was too much, much too much for me to hold—or too much all at once. The dragon still lived, it still shuddered and twitched, and the claws still buried in my chest sent shivering waves of fiery pain through me with each tremble. It was an agony to endure as I drank—and that drinking was a pleasure so pure as to be pain.
I could think of nothing else to do, except to drink and drink and drink, to let it heal me, and to pass on, as quickly as I could, everything I could not hold. I drank a dragon and channeled it as I might channel power into a spell, feeding it to a hungry sword. How it burned! The blistering and charring of my lips, tongue, and teeth was as nothing to the fires that flowed through my soul! It was like breathing flames and swimming in them, feeling fire pumping where blood should be. It was the most terrible and awesome thing, this pain beyond all recognition.
The dragon died. The final life-spark passed from the scaly beast and into me. Gone was the rush of delight and pleasure; now there was only a burning in my heart and soul. Whatever else I had of its spirit, I poured into Firebrand, pushing it out of me as hard as I could, forcing the pain out, out, OUT!
My lord?
When the pain was gone, so was I.
I floated in nothing, a non-existent figment of the imagination, myself. It was actually quite pleasant, non-being. I floated in nothing, I drifted without space, I was-and-was-not.
Had I been more lucid, it would have driven me mad. But was I not half-mad already, being trapped between life and death?
Then, in the nothingness that was not even a blackness, simply a nonexistence, I felt or saw something that did exist. A darkness, like a thunderhead, rolling and roiling, approaching. It was a form of blackness, churning with colors of cruelty, hunger, and pain, bubbling with rage. It towered before me, a seething figure of impenetrable murk, stained with the tears and blood of innocence and innocents. Manlike, yet not a man. A figure carved from noxious black vapors
You! it said, or thought, and I writhed under the whiplash of that word. You dare to interfere! Each word, each haughty thought, was a blow of pure agony. I had no body to break, no flesh to rend, yet I felt the thrice-distilled essence of pain as the mass of darkness regarded me. Within my soul, if that is what it was, I knew this was only the barest taste of what it could do.
But it was not alone. A wall of fire sprang up, blazing like the hearts of stars or love, yellow-white and blinding, trapping me between the light and the dark. Or putting me there again; are not all men caught so?
He is not yours to punish, I heard, and was immediately soothed. The lancing pains that drove holes in my being faded, and the holes mended flawlessly, better than new. He also belongs to me.
I have brooked your interference far too often, said the darkness. I have him, and I will punish him! You would use him to tip the balance—
You do not have him, the flames contradicted. You merely lay claim to him by your power in his blood. He is his own.
You know you cannot take him from me, glowered the cloud. We are too well-matched. I will not allow you to put him back on the field.
Then I shall not.
—what?
I will not. I will merely prevent you from stopping him from going back.
The black cloud laughed, a mocking, cruel laughter that rang in my mind like brass gongs.
How will he return, then? He knows nothing!
The Huntsman was there, spear shining in the light, half a dozen hounds at his feet. With his appearance, the non-place took on a touch of place-ness, seeming to have something of directions and a sense of space.
“I will take him.”
WHAT? boomed the figure. You do not dare—
“He is a hunter, is he not?” interrupted the Huntsman. “Never tell a god what he will dare, for anything can be hunted.”
The cloud paused. Is that a threat, godling?
“I never threaten,” remarked the
Huntsman, “but I do advise caution.”
You are a fool to risk yourself for this thing!
He shrugged. “Perhaps I am. Nevertheless, I cannot stand idle while you threaten one who honors me. You know that.”
There was the lady. From a distance, I could have described her; up close, she was ever-shifting and impossible to discern. I know that sounds impossible, but it was true; impossible things were happening here, and my ability to think critically about them was only slowly beginning to recover.
“I will stand with him,” she said, in a thousand different voices, all beautiful and terrible at once. She seemed to carry something. One moment it was a scroll; the next instant, it was a spear. Her appearance, apparel, voice… everything about her was in a constant state of flux.
Why? asked the darkness. This conflict is nothing to you.
“Because of all the gods that have ever been, I am held foremost in his heart.”
Your concern for one will be your ruin, the darkness remarked.
She fell silent, but smiled.
A third figure swam into my view, this one only remotely humanoid. It was streamlined and powerful, with great eyes in its almost-human head and a heavy tail, like a merman.
“There are worlds within worlds,” it/he remarked. “He is no child of the deeps, but he has been kind to them, and they remember him in their prayers.” It was not a language I knew; it was not the tongue of the fish-men I had met. It sounded guttural, older, more primal; yet at this time and in this place, I understood.
The darkness paused, considering that. You will not risk yourself and your children for him.
“You speak much of risk,” was the reply, “for one with four opposed.”
The cloud growled, but the sea-man smiled at it with a mouth full of teeth like a shark’s. The darkness gauged us all for a small eternity. I could feel a weighing of forces, a calculation of powers.
You are all fools. She will not be content with a single turn of the wheel.