The Last Battle

by Chris Bunch

  He vanished into the darkness silently.

  Hal wandered the small camp, unable to sleep.

  He found Uluch with the dragon kits. Two of them were curled, asleep, and the oldest was being crooned to by Hal's once-orderly.

  He saw Hal, greeted him without embarrassment. Once he'd been almost servile in the way he talked to Hal. No more. Now it was as though he was an equal.

  "They'll be ours, tomorrow."

  "I hope so."

  "No bare hope, sir. 'Tis a certainty."

  Glad that at least one man was sure of himself, Hal went on.

  Aimard Quesney was sitting, staring at the remains of the fire.

  "You realize," he said, "that all of this is quite damned hopeless. They've got us outnumbered, what, ten to one?"

  "Or more," Hal said cheerfully.

  "Always good to be following a man who's confident," Quesney said, and stood up. "Oh well. I guess this land without a name's as good a place to die as any other."

  He waited to see if Hal had any reply, heard none, so grunted good night, and went for his bedroll.

  Hal decided that was a way to pass the few hours remaining until they were to fly off, and found his own blankets. Around him, Babil Gachina was rousing the non-fliers, and talking to them in low tones he couldn't make out.

  Kimana Balf had her bedroll next to Hal, and was lying on her back, staring up. He saw her eyes were open.

  "Well?" she whispered.

  "Well what?"

  "What of the morrow, fearless leader?"

  "I'd rather not be there for it," Hal said. "I'd rather be safe at home, cowering under the bed."

  "Would you? Really?"

  Her voice was serious.

  Hal looked for something else light to say, couldn't find anything.

  "No," he said honestly. "No, I wouldn't be anywhere else."

  "And that," she said, "is the idiot I've come to love."

  She kissed him, and rolled on her side, away from him.

  Love? Hal had never heard her use that word before.

  He thought about it, and was, suddenly and surprisingly, asleep.

  Someone was kicking Hal's foot. He rolled back an eyelid, saw the bulk of Chook standing above him. He was totally awake, sat up.

  "There's tea," the cook said. "Anyway, herbs brewed up."

  He didn't wait for a reply, but went on.

  Hal got up, washed, and had some of the bitter brew Chook had made. There was also fried meat and tubers for those who wanted it. The thought of food roiled Hal's stomach.

  Chook paid little attention to his duties, stropping his great cleaver, and stringing his crossbow.

  Hal saddled Storm. The dragon was already awake, and seemed eager to go.

  Around him the other fliers readied their mounts.

  Some, the newly trained, tried to bite, or tail-lash their riders, but no one was struck, the dragons being as sleep-numbed as the men.

  Babil Gachina waited nearby with the half a dozen men, nonfliers, who'd be part of his newly created ground force.

  Chook joined them, looking somber, with his cleaver and a great butcher knife stuck in his waistband.

  Hal tried to think of a noble speech, couldn't come up with one. So he looked at his tiny army, shadows in the darkness, and said, "Let's show them what we're made of," and walked toward Storm.

  There was a pointless, ragged cheer, and his men and women followed.

  As Hal pulled himself into the saddle, Babil Gachina clambered up behind and wordlessly extended a strip of thick cloth. Kailas bound it around the man's eyes. Gachina winced as if he'd been lashed, but remained silent.

  Others of the ground force were already mounted on other dragons.

  Hal forgot about his passenger, and gigged Storm into his stumbling takeoff run.

  As the dragon cleared the ground, he suddenly screamed, a defiant challenge.

  The scream was echoed from the ground, from the biggest of the dragon kits. Hal had an instant to wonder how a beast that small could make that great a noise, and then Storm was in the air, the other dragons following.

  Half of Hal's force stayed low, following him toward the hills, the other half, led by Farren Mariah, climbed for the heights.

  Hal had learned, in his thousand battles, that no plan survives the first sword-clash. Particularly if the plan is complicated and clever.

  He kept his tactics simple:

  He would deploy his ground fighters just short of the red and blacks' valley. Then he, and his fliers, would strike the demons at low level, before dawn, when they were still sleeping, or whatever demons did when they were lying down. He'd try to get as many of them on the ground or taking off as possible.

  His second element would attack from on high, and wreak as much havoc as they could.

  From there… from there it was strike where you could, when you could.

  Flying low, Hal saw, on either side of him, at a great distance, wild dragons, flying north. He counted more than twenty in one group before he lost track.

  He wondered what the hells they were doing about when it was still night.

  Then they were in the mountains, climbing, and there wasn't time for anything but war.

  Kailas brought Storm down on a hilltop, shrouded in predawn blackness. He turned and pulled the blindfold off Babil Gachina. The hulking thug was pale-faced, and swallowing. But he slid off Storm without hesitating, and called for the others.

  Since Hal had considered them skirmishers at the most, he didn't waste time, but kicked Storm into a takeoff.

  He looked up as the dragon lurched into the air, and, far above him, saw a flood of dragons, high up, the rising sun just touching them.

  There were too many for them to be Farren Mariah's element. He could only hope Mariah had climbed above them.

  Hal cocked his crossbow, one of the enchanted quarrels dropping into the firing slot.

  Storm was looking down, and saw still-motionless red and blacks below.

  Hal kicked him in the ribs, and the dragon tucked his head and wings, and they went into a dive.

  Kailas blatted on his trumpet, looked behind him, and saw his element was following.

  But the ground was now very close. He pulled Storm up, less than fifty feet above the ground.

  Below was a dragon, just rearing.

  Hal whispered the fire-spell catchword, fired, spitted it through the neck, and the demon had an instant to scream before it exploded in greasy fire.

  Another red and black died to the side from someone else's shot as Hal reloaded and found another target. He shot, missed, had time to recharge his crossbow and put his bolt, its tip just bursting into flame, into the dragon's chest.

  He reloaded again, whispered, and killed another demon, and they were past the red and blacks' camp.

  He brought Storm up, and back around, this time only a dozen feet above the ground.

  There was a red and black fanged head level with his, and he shot at it and flew through the burst of flame.

  Other red and blacks were dying, and then, almost beside him, one of his own was caught with a tail-lash, and smashed into the ground, its rider spinning away.

  Unbidden, Storm pulled up, and Hal was about to shout a command when he saw the red and blacks that had been in the heights swarming down on them.

  Storm hooked one of them with a wing claw, ripped down its neck with his talons, and Hal killed it with his crossbow.

  A shadow loomed over him, and he ducked, just as Aimard Quesney's beast gutted the red and black, and it died, screaming.

  Storm was climbing, and Hal saw two dragons on Kimana Balf. Storm drove at them, just as Balf brought her dragon in a tight circle, its fangs closing on a demon's throat, then letting go as the red and black screamed and went down.

  He came in from the side on the second red and black, had time to shoot it twice before the monster blew up.

  All was chaos then, and Hal had no sense of time as he and Storm, one being
, one killing machine, tore in and out of the swirl. He almost shot a dragon, realized it was ridden, and swept past Farren Mariah, whose monster's jaws were slathered with a dark ichor.

  Kailas saw men trot into the valley, taking time to kneel and shoot carefully into the demons. Babil Gachina and his handful were engaged.

  Storm was turning hard, closing on a red and black, and Hal saw Garadice, his dragon with a wing torn away, caught in the jaws of a red and black, going down.

  Storm flared his wings, a red and black missed him, and Hal killed it.

  There was nothing in front of him, and Hal brought Storm back on the melee. There were smoke flares here and there on the ground, and dying, wounded dragons, with human bodies sprawled beside them.

  A red and black dove on a standing man. It was Chook. The cook ducked a claw-strike, smashed with his cleaver, and the demon howled pain.

  In the center of the slaughter-ground a circle of fire grew from nowhere, its flames gouting out, as if windblown.

  Red and black dragons poured out of it, almost on top of each other.

  Hal realized how few of his own monsters were still in the air, and how many demons were still attacking.

  He had an instant to know defeat.

  There were too many of them, and as he thought this, he saw Aimard Quesney caught at the waist in a red and black's jaws, and torn apart.

  Storm, as if recognizing doom, screamed, that same great scream he'd unleashed when they took off.

  Then he dove on a pair of red and blacks.

  His scream was echoed, louder, from both sides, from the sky above, and then three wild dragons swooped in, and tore at the demons.

  There were other dragons around them, paying no heed to any of Hal's ridden beasts, but driving into the red and blacks.

  The scream was still echoing, as if taken by a hundred other dragons, and the demons were swarmed by wild monsters, torn and butchered.

  What had summoned them—Storm's screams, those odd dragon kits—Hal would never know.

  The ring of fire flamed higher, and Hal saw, from a thousand feet above him, a ridden dragon diving on it.

  It closed, and Hal had an instant to recognize Uluch, standing in his stirrups like a lancer, coolly sending bolt after fiery bolt into the circle.

  He smashed into, through it, and the circle flashed into a huge ball of flame.

  Then it, Uluch and his dragon were gone, as if they'd never been.

  Hal brought Storm around, to see a single flash of flame as the last demon died.

  There were no red and blacks in the sky.

  There were dragons, wild dragons around him, more than he'd ever seen before, more than he could have imagined.

  They swept back over the valley, making sure of the victory, then climbed, like wild geese heading for home, and were flying into the mountains.

  That great scream died slowly into silence.

  Then there was nothing in that blighted valley but the bodies of dragons and men.

  There were fewer than half a dozen dragons still in the air, all with riders.

  Storm screamed into the silence, and Hal felt it was a cry of sorrow.

  Sorrow and triumph.

  36

  Storm bobbed happily near the shore of the Hnid's atoll.

  Hal sat on the beach, watching him, wishing that men could forget the past as quickly as dragons did.

  If that was true.

  But at least they didn't show their grief, if they felt it.

  Kimana Balf's dragon lifted above the roofed island, splashed in for a landing near the shore.

  The last passenger on the shuttle waited dumbly until Kimana undid his blindfold, then Babil Gachina waded to shore, where Chook stood.

  A pair of Hnid surfaced, and dove back and forth in happiness, seeing their… whatever they thought the giant Gachina was.

  All was quiet, all was happiness on the island.

  Hal wished he could feel the same, but with few more than a dozen survivors of his expedition, joy came hard.

  The survivors of the final battle had returned to their camp, trying to celebrate their victory.

  But they knew there was another struggle ahead—somehow reaching Deraine.

  They'd begun one step at a time, shuttling supplies, men and women east in single-day hops.

  They'd seen no more red and black dragons, and, to Hal, the land seemed cleansed.

  Now it would be safe.

  Safe for what?

  For dragons?

  For men to swarm west and colonize, making the creatures of this land their prey, their food, or their tools?

  That didn't seem right to Kailas.

  He wondered what he should, could do… and his rather bleak mood broke as Kimana Balf brought her dragon on to the beach, and a handler led it to where the other surviving monsters were being fed and watered.

  "Are you brooding?" she said cheerily as she walked to him, and sat down.

  "Nice, soft, warm sand," she said dreamily. "Not moving. I could lie here for a week."

  "You'll not be allowed," Hal said. "As soon as Farren Mariah and his crew come back with whatever they've been able to scrounge off the wrecks, we'll all be at work."

  "At least we won't be riding dragons," Kimana said. "Or fighting anybody."

  "Maybe not," Hal said. "At least, not for a while."

  "You really think we'll be able to build boats? Boats that'll make it all the way back home?"

  "I don't know," Hal said. "At least some kind of big raft."

  "Suddenly, riding the dragons sound like a better idea," she said.

  Hal made a face.

  That was the other part of his plan.

  Those few surviving dragons would fly east as far as they were able. Then they'd land on the sea, and let the current carry them on, as dragons had left this world before.

  But this time, they'd have their fliers sheltering on their backs, under their folded wings, as Hal had discovered dragons would do.

  At least, the dragons they'd come with. Hal had decided to free the newly tamed creatures before they left.

  That is, if they wanted freedom.

  Most of them seemed fairly content in the company of man.

  The others could join the wild dragons, three or four of whom had followed the remains of the expedition across the coastal waters.

  Hal had hoped to see the three dragon kits, who'd vanished when the men had returned from the demons' valley, but without luck.

  He wondered if they'd been real dragons, or spirits, and realized he'd never know. Bodrugan had chanced a spell, but found out nothing.

  "After we get home," Kimana said confidently, "what do you want?"

  "A hot bath," Hal said. "With real soap. A bottle of good wine. Bread. Dripping with butter. A meat pie.

  "A nice warm bed, with a roof over it."

  "That's all?" Kimana asked, disappointed.

  "A bed with you in it."

  "That's better." She scooped sand into a pile.

  "Do you think we're ever going to come back here?" She caught herself. "Am I allowed to think of us as us?"

  "Of course," Hal said, and realized the words came easily. "I mean, to the us. As far as coming back here… right now, I think I've had enough adventuring.

  "A nice quiet mansion, with servants doing all the work," he said.

  "I've never had that," Kimana said.

  "Past time you try being rich," Hal said, and kissed her.

  Three thoughts, none of them spoken, came to him:

  It was past time for Hal Kailas to stop being alone.

  Maybe it was time to visit that hotel in Fovant with Kimana and a bunch of books.

  And maybe it was time for the Dragonmaster to start learning how to master, or at least live with, people.

  About the Author

  Chris Bunch became a full-time novelist following his twenty-year career as a television writer. A military veteran, he was the Locus bestselling author of Star Risk,
Ltd., and such popular works at the Sten series, The Seer King, The Demon King, and the Last Legion series. He passed away in July 2005.