by Doug Niles
Once they had reached the top of the trees, the elven formation strung into a long line, flying swiftly away from the Dark Knights’ camp. Porthios was grateful for the absence of moonlight as he gradually led the group higher and higher into the air. Puffy clouds wafted past, blocking out many of the stars, and he hoped that these, too, would work to the elves’ advantage.
Gaining altitude steadily, Porthios led the flying formation around a large mass of cloud. Here, screened from the invaders’ view, they spiraled into a rapid climb and finally headed toward the enemy’s camp. They flew at an altitude far above the monotonous spiral of the flying dragon. Maintaining utter silence, they winged closer and closer, veering only enough to keep one or more clouds between themselves and the Dark Knights.
Finally the outlaw prince and Stallyar emerged from a gap between two clouds, and far below he saw the outline of a large blue dragon. The serpent was gliding, wings lazily outspread, with the dark outline of a rider on the saddle between its shoulders. Both dragon and Dark Knight had their attention focused on the ground, which was just what Porthios had been hoping for—indeed, had been counting on.
The griffons tucked their wings, one by one other plummeting after their leader. Porthios drew his sword in a silent gesture while Stallyar, who knew the plan as well as any of the elves, targeted the neck of the monstrous serpent. Wind whistled past, rasping against the prince’s skin, and he felt certain that the knight must soon hear his approach. But even as the target grew larger, until the dragon’s wingspread seemed to span the full width of his vision, both dragon and rider held their attention on the still, dark hilltop below.
Just before the two fliers collided, Porthios leapt from his saddle, landing hard on the back of the dragon. The wyrm uttered a startled gasp as Stallyar’s talons scraped his head, while the elf’s sword, a weapon toned and hallowed by generations of the finest elven artisans, was darting toward the back of the armored knight.
But perhaps that dragonrider had heard his attacker an instant before contact. In any event, the man twisted away, grunting as the sword scraped past his shoulder. He had a short-bladed sword in his own hand, and he made a powerful thrust, rocking Porthios back on the rough spines of the dragon’s backbone. At the same time, the wyrm ducked into a dive, and the elf felt himself sliding toward a broad, leathery wing.
Frantically he reached out, grasping at anything he could touch. His hand closed over the back of the knight’s saddle, and his sword slashed wildly. Steel clanged as the two weapons met, and then the dragon tilted back, twisting and hissing as it tried to pull the griffon off its neck. Porthios was pushed forward with the shift in momentum, and he thrust unerringly, feeling the sharp blade punch through the man’s breastplate, then cut through gristle, flesh, and bone.
Without a sound, the knight toppled away, and now more griffons were plunging past. Elven swords sliced the wyrm’s wings, hacking scales from the supple neck, gouging deep into haunches, flanks, and tail. Still grasping the saddle, Porthios leaned forward and stabbed downward, slicing deep into the wyrm’s shoulder, feeling the dragon twist convulsively. Eyes wide, the elves saw gaping jaws, a neck twisted impossibly as the creature lashed around to bite at him.
But then Samar was there, the warrior-mage riding Bellaclaw and bearing the slender dragonlance. The keen silver edge sliced through the dragon’s neck, gouging deep, nearly severing the hateful head. Porthios was washed by a warm spray, and he realized that blood was gushing from the deep wound on the monster’s neck.
And just like that, the dragon died, never uttering a sound louder than the irritated hissing that had greeted the first attack. The massive wings swept upward, pushed by air pressure as the lifeless shape tumbled toward the ground. Sheathing his sword, Porthios flung himself into the air, flailing wildly, grasping at Stallyar’s reins as the griffon dived past. Pulling himself into the saddle, the prince jabbed his feet into his stirrups and looked around with a sense of exhilaration. The rest of the griffons were diving with him, wings tucked, though they weren’t dropping as fast as the slain dragon.
Still, the camp on the hilltop was now growing underneath them. His eyes skimming the trees, Porthios spotted a glimmer of flame, then several spots of brightness, like living sparks that danced and sparkled in the dry woods. He heard shouts of alarm, saw agitated activity, and knew that the timing of the attack was working perfectly.
Dragons bellowed, and knights shuffled out of their bedrolls, cursing and grunting as they hastily slapped on their weapons. The blue dragons were gathered at the hilltop, and they huffed and snorted impatiently. All of their attention, as far as Porthios could tell, was focused on the fires that were now growing to encompass an arc around a third of the base of the hill.
The slain dragon crashed to the ground in the middle of a bivouac of the army’s brutish warriors, and these blue-skinned creatures bellowed and howled in fury and surprise. Some of them even turned on the corpse, stabbing with monstrous spears or hacking with swords, obviously unaware that the creature was dead.
Then the griffons plummeted like deadly hailstones into the middle of the dragon camp. Abruptly the night was split by the flash of lightning, though the first bolt missed the attackers to cut deeply into the flank of another blue dragon. Porthios wielded his sword from Stallyar’s saddle, striking down a knight who tried to raise a massive, two-handed sword. The silvery griffon galloped forward, ripping into the wing of a dragon with his sharp beak and claws. The elven captain slashed the keen steel blade, cutting another rip out of the wing.
The griffon pounced quickly away, just a hairbreadth of space before the wyrm’s massive talons smashed into the ground. Instinctively Stallyar darted to the side, and a moment later a blast of lightning scored through the night, streaking past, crackling through the air and sizzling the skin on the back of the elf’s neck. Porthios ducked, already feeling the imminent, killing blast of the next lightning bolt, but now the dragon was distracted by other griffons and whipped about to slash at new attackers that worried its wings, flanks, and tail.
Stallyar spread his wings and leapt high, while Porthios had a sickening impression of another griffon’s wing, torn from the bleeding body and floating grotesquely in the air. An elf screamed, the sound hideous as a dragon bit down and gored the unfortunate warrior in two. But dragons and knights were howling, too.
Another man stood in the griffon’s path, and Stallyar reached down, tearing away the fellow’s scalp with a single, vicious bite. Another knight charged in from the right, and Porthios chopped hard, feeling his sword cut through a steel helmet to gouge deep into the skull below. The man screamed and tumbled away, dropping his sword to clasp both hands to his bleeding head.
Flames flickered across the hilltop, the lingering effects of lightning sparking through the air, while other sparks, scattered from campfires and fanned by frantic wings, tumbled across the ground and ignited tufts of dry grass. Dragons still roared, and here and there griffons shrieked in pain as they were caught by massive talons or reptilian jaws. Bodies twitched, and men and elves moaned in pain. The scene was nightmarish, a chaos of horrible sounds, garish fires, and gruesome injuries whirling across the dusty hilltop. Out of nowhere, a hot breeze arose, fanning the little fires into furious blazes, swirling the thick dust through the air until it clogged mouths, eyes, and nostrils.
A dismounted elf tumbled past Porthios, and a blue dragon head lashed like a striking snake in pursuit. The prince’s sword chopped down, gouging the flaring nose, but the wyrm bit down and the fleeing elf was cut in two. The dragon shook its head like a dog worrying a rabbit, and Porthios stabbed upward, carving deep into the blue-scaled neck. Now the serpent reared back in surprise, bloody jaws gaping for another strike.
From the flank, another griffon dived in, tearing at the monster’s face, and Porthios saw Samar slip from his saddle, sliding down the dragon’s side, stabbing deep with his lance. The two elves charged in as more griffons clawed and snapped at the wyrm’
s face. With a powerful stab, the prince thrust his blade through the scaly breast, twisting with all his strength. A gout of chill blood soaked him as, with a convulsive shudder, the great serpent tumbled forward.
Porthios tripped, falling on his back as tons of slain lizard pressed him down. He felt strong hands on his shoulders, and he kicked frantically, barely squirming free before the monstrous form crashed to the ground.
“Thanks,” he gasped as Samar let him go and turned to face the attack of a charging knight. “That’s twice you’ve save my life.”
The other elf had no time to reply as he parried the human’s savage blow. The knight’s face was twisted in an expression of grief, and Porthios wondered for an instant if this man had been the dead dragon’s rider. If so, his sorrow only increased his fury, for his second blow knocked Samar’s lance from the elf’s hand. As the loyal Silvanesti fell backward, Porthios lunged in from the side, piercing the man’s flank and then pushing the blade upward to cut the blood vessels around his heart. Soundlessly the knight fell across the foreleg of the dragon, his own warm blood mingling with the cool fluid that still gushed from the blue’s torn chest.
A bolt of lightning crackled through the air, knocking Porthios flat and blasting a griffon and its rider into charred flesh. Stirred by the dry wind, white feathers whirled past, bright in the firelight and deceptively gentle as they settled to the ground. Another dragon pounced, shaking the ground with its weight as it bore an elf and his mount to the ground. With savage bites and tearing claws, it instantly reduced its helpless victims to gory flesh.
“Fall back!” cried Porthios, realizing that the dragons had recovered from their initial surprise and were now making a methodical attempt to eradicate their elven attackers.
The cry was repeated from every elven voice within reach as the warriors leapt into their saddles and griffon wings pulsed, aiding the powerful legs in vaulting the creatures into the air. Some of the elves flew overhead, and these shot arrow after arrow at the dragons, aiming for the sensitive eyes, desperately trying to hold the pursuit at bay long enough for the attackers to take to the air.
Porthios found Stallyar, seized the reins, and then heard a groan of pain from underfoot. He looked down to see an elven warrior, missing one of his arms at the elbow but desperately trying to push himself to his knees. The captain grabbed the fellow by his good arm, pulled him across the griffon’s withers, and silently urged Stallyar into the sky.
Burdened by the extra weight, the griffon didn’t try to leap straight up. Instead, he raced across the hilltop, hurling himself into the air at the edge of the crest, straight into the teeth of the hot wind. Immediately white wings spread wide, catching the air.
Then, with the keen instinct that had so often saved his own and his rider’s life, Stallyar banked hard to the side and dived. Porthios leaned flat across his mount’s shoulders, clinging to the wounded elf with both hands as a lightning bolt hissed through the air over his head. He felt the searing heat on the back of his neck, sensed the world canting crazily as the griffon leveled out his flight, and then the hilltop was behind them. Another bolt spat outward, but sizzled into nothingness before it could reach them.
Laboring hard to gain altitude, Stallyar banked through a wide circle, and then dived into a thick column of smoke that was rising from the woods at the base of the hill. Ignoring the searing heat, blinking the tears from his eyes, Porthios looked down as the flier broke from the other side of the massive cloud.
He saw that the Kagonesti attack had ignited a great conflagration. Like his griffon riders, those elves were falling back but leaving chaos in their wake. Bellowing brutes raced back and forth, batting at flames that singed their skin, striking at shadows that seemed to move with living purpose in the light of the dancing, shifting plumes of fire. Casks of oil exploded with billowing towers of roiling heat, and from a stack of burning crates came the stench of charred beef as the army’s food stockpiles were incinerated.
Here and there a wild elf lay on the ground, his bloody corpse hammered with mindless violence by the brutes, and Porthios felt a stab of grief as he realized the horrific toll of this battle. But the wind whipped the flames higher, carrying the fires across the dry grass of the hillside, and everywhere the light showed an army disrupted by chaos. As Stallyar’s flight took him around the hill, he looked back to see saw Dark Knights turning their weapons against brutes, and other brutes smashing at their own comrades.
On the far side of the hill, he saw the effects of the third prong of his attack. Here the Qualinesti recruits, their numbers stiffened by a few of his bandit veterans, had waited until the rest of the camp was assaulted before they struck. A few fires flared here and there, and he saw that many brutes lay dead in the ruins. From the arrows and cuts in their backs, he suspected that—as he had planned—this part of the camp had been taken by surprise, ambushed while they looked toward the distractions of the first two attacks.
Finally the griffon was flying over the dark forest. Around him, Porthios saw other winged shapes, more of his Qualinesti who had escaped from the hilltop. Wondering what toll the morning would bring, the elves swept away from the Dark Knights toward their rendezvous in the deep woods.
“So that’s why they were so angry?” Aerensianic said with a ground-shaking chuckle.
“Who?” asked Silvanoshei.
“The blue dragons. You see, they came sweeping down the coast the next day. They were blasting the trees with their lightning, doing everything they could to find the elves. And they were in a most foul state of temper.”
“Did they find your lair?”
“In fact, one of them poked his nose in here … not as far as the first bend. I gave him a blast of poison, and he backed right away, albeit with some very unfriendly words.”
“Didn’t he come back with more blues? Surely they had you outnumbered,” Samar suggested.
“Indeed … but by then, I think they were concerned with business farther to the east … in the city of the elves.”
A Day of Shame and Tears
Chapter Thirteen
By evening, after one day of trying to recruit, Gilthas had concluded that the elves of Qualinost had no stomach for defending their city against the incursion of the Dark Knights. After sending a message to his mother, pleading with her to come to Qualinesti, he had spent the day going from house to house or speaking loudly at the intersections of the city’s main streets. In most cases, the elves were far more concerned with their own fate than in anything they could do to help the nation as a whole.
Rumors of the invasion, of course, had spread like wind through the city, and the Speaker was met with many panicked questions, demands for protection, and a level of fear that seemed likely to grow into hysteria. Everywhere he went he found people hiding their valuables, boarding up their splendid houses, disguising beautiful wives and nubile daughters as filthy hags. The mood among almost all of the elves was that if the Dark Queen’s army was drawing close to the city, there was no hope of preventing Qualinost’s fall.
A few, including some of those who still had pride in their homeland and a sense of the elven role in Krynn’s history, had scorned Gilthas’s proposal that they join him in fighting the invaders. One of them, the young Senator Queralan, had almost spat in his face, declaring that the young Speaker lacked the honor to sit upon the throne of Qualinesti and that, as such, he was unsuitable to serve as the city’s military leader. Instead, Queralan had said, he was making plans to flee with his family and household servants into the forest. There he would resist the occupation in whatever manner he could devise.
Shamed and humiliated, Gilthas had almost wept as he left the young noble’s lofty crystal mansion. How could they misunderstand him so? Why wouldn’t they even give him a chance to show that he could be a leader?
Indeed, almost no one had been willing to take up a sword and gather with the Speaker at the Hall of the Sky. Now, at sunset, the appointed hour for the meeting, barely t
hreescore Qualinesti had gathered, and nothing about these volunteers gave him confidence even in this small fighting force. A few of them were veterans of the War of the Lance who had fought with Gilthanas and Laurana against the armies of the Dark Queen thirty years before. They were still young, though several had been so grievously wounded that they moved like cripples, or were missing an arm. And one of them was blind!
Dejectedly Gilthas thanked them for answering his appeal and told them that he would summon them again if they could be of use to the city. After sending them home, he trudged wearily through the city until he came to the Tower of the Sun, where—as he had expected—many members of the Thalas-Enthia were gathered, awaiting news.
Gilthas learned that Rashas’s spy, Guilderhand, had returned to the tower just before the Speaker’s arrival. Feeling more like an eavesdropper than the nominal ruler of this august gathering, he pushed through the doors and stood near the wall of the chamber.
Rashas stood atop the rostrum, and Guilderhand had just been led to the second-tier step. For once the spy was dressed decently—in the robes of an elven senator, as a matter of fact!—though the garb could not conceal the man’s essentially furtive and clever demeanor.
“Elves of the Thalas-Enthia,” Guilderhand began, “I have met with the leader of this army, a bold Knight of Takhisis called Lord Salladac I have been able to learn, through observation and surreptitious interviewing, that he is regarded as a man of integrity and honor, of great pride and of utmost savagery in battle.”