“He was no emissary, he was my prisoner,” I corrected. “And I needed his optic nerve, anyway. I learned much from our talk, more than Shereul realizes. Whatever the risk, it was worth the attempt.”
We both looked out over the wall and ditchwork at the sea of goblins, and for a moment I felt like I was back at Boval Castle. I was tempted to recollect that hopelessness, but this wasn’t Boval. This was Timberwatch, and I had the cream of the Northern Alshari nobility defending the wall. And a highly-motivated magical corps. And other tricks up my sleeve.
The goblins were chanting, just as they had at Boval. But it was more organized than the siege. Trolls beat great drums made of entire oxhides with the trunks of trees to keep time. Individual units were chanting at different times, but in cadence. I could feel the waves of emotion splash over them. If you get any large group together and get them doing the same things you can generate that kind of emotional power – religious magic does it all the time. And I knew their shamans were manipulating that power, turning it into something useful. But mostly they were just steeling themselves for the assault.
“Can you understand what they’re chanting?” Lenguin asked me, quietly. I think he was a little afraid – he was trembling – but he was trying to strike a brave pose to inspire his men. I guess it might have worked from a distance.
“I don’t know the exact meaning, Your Grace, but I imagine it translates loosely to ‘We’re better than you are!’” offered Master Thinradel, dryly. He had come in behind us, his court finery replaced with a well-made black leather hauberk. He had acquired a proper mageblade from somewhere, too.
“I defer to the wisdom of the Court Wizard,” I shrugged. “Even if I could translate it, it doesn’t mean I would understand it. The gurvani language is replete with idioms that belie a simple translation. Although I imagine a working knowledge of their epics would be helpful.”
“Those beasts have epic poetry?” asked Thinradel.
“They once had as an advanced culture as we enjoy,” I pointed out. “And the natural gurvani may yet prove helpful to us. But Shereul tainted the gurvani of the Mindens with his hate. And with that taint he is teaching them to learn our ways, better to destroy us. But it would be very helpful for us to understand them better, if we plan to survive this war.”
“I intend to stop them here and now,” vowed Lenguin, firmly, in unconvincingly. “After today, no goblin will dare step foot in Alshar.”
“Your Grace, while I share your enthusiasm, I must disagree,” I sighed. “Even if we defeat them today, the war will go on. And on and on, until the Dead God is truly dead. And I have no idea how to do that. Nor does anyone else. At best, we buy time to organize better against him. Get the other Duchies to assist. But there will be no ultimate victory today.”
“What shall be our next move then, Marshal Minalan?” he asked, disturbed.
“We hold the wall, we hold the line, and maybe we skirmish with them on their western flank, until our next great spell activates. Then we attack from all sides. We still have several thousand cavalry over there in good order. And several eager warmagi.”
I pointed to the hill, off in the distance, beyond the dark river of gurvani. Azar and Horka and their knights had ringed a small rise and done what they could to fortify it. There were only four thousand left – with a small corps of Redshaft’s mounted archers as auxiliaries – but they were effectively keeping the gurvani from getting to the river.
Alone, they weren’t enough to even wound the massed legions that faced us, but they were keeping the horde from bringing their full force to bear on the line just by being there. With Wenek and his clansmen boxed up in the Pearwoods, the cavalry were really the last tactical force I had at my disposal. Everyone else was manning the line. Even Lord Lardbutt of Timberwatch had his disreputable-looking vassals behind the wall, looking grim as they clutched at their axes.
Lenguin sighed impatiently. “I dislike leaving the initiative to the foe,” he said, sourly. “And I am not by nature a patient man.”
I could empathize – but before I could say so, the big mercenary captain entered the enclosure, tossing his axe to one of his aides who caught it without blinking.
“May I remind His Grace of the Warlord of Tressa’s famous words,” Bold Asgus said, as he took stock of the line. “ ‘In battle, the initiative lies with he who think he has it’.”
“You are correct, Captain,” Lenguin smirked humorlessly. “But might I remind you what happened to the Warlord in that battle.”
Asgus shrugged and grinned. “It is nonetheless true, Your Grace. Marshal Minalan, I have inspected the lines. They are as strong as mortal men can make them. There are attacks across the field at three or four places where the trolls have been taunted into moving beyond their own lines, but apart from that they keep their distance.”
Outside the goblins’ chanting was growing louder and more regular, and I began to pick out individual words in their guttural tongue. One part of the host was chanting “Shaug!” followed by three drum beats. Then the other part would scream “Garak!” The timekeepers were increasing the pace with every third repetition, which was as annoying as it sounds, and just a little intimidating.
“It is nearly time to strike,” I said, knowing that Taren shouldn’t need more than another twenty minutes to activate his spell. “Ensure everyone has water, and is prepared for close combat. Thirty minutes, at the most, until we think we have the initiative.”
Asgus nodded, but he seemed distracted by something outside. The shouts from the gurvani were separated by a mere beat now, but that wasn’t what had captured his attention. It was a dark shape in the sky to the northwest. Something was coming down toward the battlefield – something quite large.
“That is,” the mercenary added in quiet wonder, “if the initiative is ours to take.”
“Shaug! Garak!” the goblins screamed one last time, and then burst into wild cheers. What horns they had among them they blew, until the noise was a horrible cloud of anger and hate and victory. The shape dove, descending upon our brave cavalrymen out in the field below the escarpment, who scattered in terror from its horrible visage.
And at last I understood. Shaug. Garak. A cognate of the Tree Folk word, shaqueratha, a term which figured prominently in the older forms of epic poetry among the Alon.
It’s usually translated by scholars as ‘dragon.’
Chapter Forty-Two:
The Dragon Descends
Timberwatch, First Day Of Autumn
The Alka Alon have had the legend of the dragon in their myths for centuries – I remember reading about them in some elementary translations back at the Inrion Academy and being utterly fascinated by the idea of a beast so large and terrible. They played a major role in many of the ancient epics, but dragons figured prominently in the Carhuratha Varaenthada epic, which detailed the rebellion of some clan of Tree Folk against their lawful lord over some imagined slight and led to a war of sixty years and the deaths of tens of thousands. Dragons were used as guardians and as forces on the battlefield, and were by all accounts ferocious in combat.
But the texts always referred to the existence of the great worms in the past tense. Indeed, they were noted as “extinct” in every human-derived text on the subject I’d ever read.
The sinuous black shape that fell from the sky and landed on the rise in front of us didn’t look very extinct. Its great wings were forty feet from tip to tip, and its long tail was almost as long. The head was half the size of a horse, and was encrusted with horns and spikes which hid its shiny black eyes in its head.
For all of its bulk, it was fast. It landed on the rise and took less than a dozen heartbeats to clear the area around it of men and horses with a few snaps of its jaws and a lash of its tail. The screech it made drove the horses mad, so only the most steadfast of mounts could bear it. Not that it did them much good. The dragon was a powerful engine of destruction, and its hide was thick and hard. It began slaying all
who came against it until it made a nest of tangled bodies and armored limbs torn from their sockets.
“Dear Ishi, mother of us all,” whispered Lenguin as he watched the dragon claw its way through one knight after another, ripping men in half like a cat in a nest of mice. “What unholy horrors has this Dead God unleashed on the world?”
I couldn’t answer. I was caught between staring in horrid fascination and wanting to do something – anything – to help. But a river of angry gurvani stood between me and the fight, however, and besides . . .
. . . it was a dragon.
The Alshari nobility it was attacking didn’t run blindly away. Hundreds took up arms and charged the beast, but even a mounted knight at full gallop, lance couched and murder on his mind couldn’t hit a target that refused to sit still. The dragon was fast, as fast as a dog in a fight, and it leveled all who stood against it as fast as they came. Arrows peppered its hide as the Nirodi archers emptied their quivers into it, but to no avail. Lances and javelins snapped off against its thick black hide. Swords were useless, if they could be brought close enough to bear on the worm at all.
“Minalan! What can we do?” Bold Asgus asked, his eyes as wide as I’d ever seen them. He was an old soldier with a lifetime of campaigns behind him, but a dragon on the battlefield was new in his experience. He looked at me, stricken. “We must get to them!”
“How? And do what?” Tyndal asked, from behind me. “Die? Is that a, a—”
“It is, indeed, a dragon,” stated Master Thinradel, authoritatively, almost eagerly. “A young one, too, not more than a hatchling—”
My turn to stare. “How do you know about them?” I demanded.
He looked back at me, surprised. “Are you being serious? Didn’t you know western Alshar was once a nesting-ground for them? You can still find their skeletons in remote locations all along the Mindens. There are even several very good accounts of the last few live specimens in the Great Palace Library in Falas.”
“I thought they were extinct!” I admitted. “And I’m really wishing they were at the moment!” At least half a hundred men had fallen before the worm’s claws in the first few moments, and the rise in the distance boiled w
“It was always a possibility,” the Court Wizard of Alshar admitted. “But there were many who thought that there were other species on the other side of the Mindens, wherever that is. Apparently Shereul has found some way to succor them. That’s quite difficult, if the lore can be relied upon.”
“Does the lore say anything about how to slay one?” asked Lenguin.
“Alas, there’s not much about that,” he agreed with a sigh. “That’s even more difficult. Apart from Sir Grevasilo of Borde slaying the aging, sickly dragon known as Northeye back during the Magocracy. And that was with a poisoned sheep and a two-handed axe.”
“What can we do?” Tyndal repeated, in despair. I considered contacting Azar or Horka, but I decided against it. They were probably quite aware of the dragon in their midst, and might resent the intrusion.
“I think we’re about to have troubles of our own,” suggested Lenguin, peering away from the dragon’s terror and toward the legions of wildly cheering gurvani. The dragon’s attack was some sort of signal for the goblins, and within a few minutes of the attack the goblins began charging across the line and into our ditchworks, the trolls leading the way. Our men weren’t quite caught off-guard, but the sight of a huge black saurian shredding the flower of Alshari knighthood in the background was a little distracting. As the screaming hordes threw themselves at our ditches and walls, our spears were hard-pressed to keep them from overwhelming the defenses and gaining the wall.
In moments there was battle at every point along the great defensive line, like a small fire that suddenly erupts into a wild blaze. They hit the wall and the ditchwork with everything they had. In some places goblins actually made it over the top and amongst the men, but they were quickly beaten back. The great trolls through huge bundles of boughs and logs into the ditches and pulled down sections of the barbican, and a few even made it through the line – but we’d gotten better at fighting the beasts since yesterday. The infantry were getting better at entangling the troll’s limbs with ropes or nets, and then hack at him with axes until he stopped moving. Still, a single breach in the wall forced us to expend reserves to shore it up, and after ten minutes of watching our enemy nearly overwhelm us,
Asgus and the other captains were busy shouting orders after that, and Lenguin, his men and I mostly stayed out of their way. But soon there wasn’t much room for orders. It was fight and kill and try not to die, and any grander strategy was forgotten.
I looked out at the wall in front of us. The command post had attracted the attention of a number of trolls and shamans, and the goblin infantry, who were throwing themselves into our spears with great enthusiasm. To see that kind of naked ferocity that close to us was disturbing, like being on the bank of a raging river and knowing you could fall in any time.
“Let’s go see to the defense,” Lenguin said, quietly, as he groped for his helmet. “They can use our swords there . . . and I feel useless here.”
“But, Your Grace!” the Captain of his guard said, alarmed. “To be that close to peril—”
“Bah! It matters not whether we face it here or on the wall – and if I can inspire the men to fight harder by being amongst them, then all the better.”
Sir Daranal didn’t look happy at all, but he gave a curt nod and loosened his sword in its sheath before descending the ladder before his liege.
“Perhaps I can make up for some of the grief I caused last night,” he explained to me on his way down. “If nothing else, I’ll blood my sword. You see to your spellcraft, Marshal. When shall we strike?”
I looked around at the command post. Asgus had the direction of the defense well in hand. The dragon continued to harass the cavalry, keeping them from being useful. Until Taren had his spell ready, there was really nothing else for me to do.
“Actually, I think we’ll join you, Your Grace,” I decided, tiredly. “I had too little sleep last night, and it will become apparent enough when the time is right to traverse the line and take the fight to the horde. Besides, a little magic in the mix added to the mess in front of us just might be enough to hold them until then. And I could do with the exercise,” I added.
* * *
There was plenty of fight for us all, when we finally made it to the wall. Goblins weren’t quite pouring over, but they were coming in splashes of a dozen or a score at a time. The infantry always managed to close or counter the breach, but that left plenty of mischief-making gurvani to contend with. As the Duke and his party made it to the wall, a big cluster of two-score had successfully forced their way to the top, and required a firm and furious discussion to deal with them. My new mageblade – Twilight, I recalled fondly – was soaked in goblin blood before we made it through the invaders and to the top of the wall. Even Lenguin struck a few blows with his overly-ornate blade.
It was hot work, and bloody, but the mindless fighting made me forget about the increasing hopelessness of the situation for fifteen minutes or so. Every furry black head I removed seemed to be replaced with two more, even more eager to kill me. Tyndal and I stood back to back at one point and had to kick half a dozen of the vicious little buggers off of the top of the barbican they had scaled. Every time I started to feel as if I would be overwhelmed at any moment from the ferocity of the attack, I glanced up worriedly at the dragon eating our cavalry in the distance. Compared to at least five tons of belligerent saurian, stabbing goblins was easy.
We also had the chance to repel some particularly nasty spells. Twice some shaman tried to animate the dead corpses at our feet, and twice I delivered a counterspell potent enough to stop his efforts. And Tyndal saved my head once when he deftly deflected a magical bolt of some sort that seemed to be aimed at me. But for the most part we eschewed spellcraft in favor of steel. It was too difficult to cast effectively in t
he cramped quarters above the ditch, and the possibility of hitting friend as well as foe was all too real.
I had almost forgotten the grand strategy, so busy was I trying to beat back the onslaught. But at some point I felt the tenuous beginnings of psychic contact in my head, and after I gutted a well-singed specimen of goblinhood I paused and allowed the voice to manifest in my head.
We’re ready, Minalan, Taren thought to me. I can release the spell at any time, but . . . well, Pentandra says we should wait another fifteen minutes.
I groaned audibly, but in my mind I shrieked. Breega’s perky nipples, why?
Because those reinforcements you’ve been expecting have arrived. They made quite the stir at the southern pickets. But Pentandra has explained the situation to them, and they’re making their way toward the front.
I instantly whirled around, and peered toward the quiet south. Most of the camp was deserted, with every man on the wall who could be. But marching down the rough road that we’d worn in the soil in the last few weeks was a column of infantry that seemed to stretch back so far into the distance I couldn’t see the end of it.
“Finally!” I gasped, suddenly feeling the smallest hint of relief.
“What is it, Master?” Tyndal asked as he dispatched another ambitious goblin with a talent for climbing.
“Help has arrived,” I pointed out. He peered where my finger directed, and likely used magesight to see more clearly. I watched as his eyes got wide and a huge grin spread out on his face.
“Is that . . . ?”
“Yes, finally,” I agreed. “If we can hold out here another fifteen minutes, they can get into position for a real offensive. Run back to Bold Asgus and tell him that we need to prepare for a serious push over the wall in about a thousand heartbeats – and I’ve got fresh troops for him to send in!”
Tyndal ran off, Slasher flashing wetly in the afternoon sun as he returned it to its sheath and leapt down from the barbican with impressive grace. That boy was daily turning more and more into a man – not just a man, but a warrior. It did my heart good to see it, too. With his ancestral home in the hands of the goblins, his family all but dead, and everyone he knew huddled in a refugee camp a thousand miles south, one wouldn’t be surprised if a boy like Tyndal crawled into a hole in his mind and never came out. But here he was, killing goblins and casting spells like a warmage, when a year ago he’d been shoveling shit in a stable.
The Spellmonger Series: Book 02 - Warmage Page 76