“You’ve done well, my friends,” Ilfedo stroked Seivar’s chest and then Hasselpatch’s. “Now … I want both of you to go to the forest and wait until the fight is over.”
“Master!” Seivar protested.
But Hasselpatch reacted by flying off of Ilfedo’s shoulder and circling his head. “We will not leave you, Master.” Then, in evident rebellion, she landed on a startled Rose’el’s shoulder.
The tallest sister cautiously stroked the bird’s chest.
Ilfedo knew the Nuvitor too well to try and change its mind. With a resigned sigh, he faced the town and walked toward it. The five sisters flanked him on both sides, their expressions hardened, their hands tightening around the leathern grips of their rusted swords.
Rose’el’s mouth froze in a frown and she glanced at Hasselpatch. The Nuvitor remained perched on her shoulder.
Pushing the sisters and the birds from his mind and focusing on the fight ahead, Ilfedo put on a burst of speed to reach the serpents first. He could see their forty-foot lengths gathered a quarter of a mile from his position. The first of the serpents’ prisoners was plucked from their midst as he approached, tossed into the air by one of the vile creatures. Ilfedo’s heart flamed within his chest as the helpless individual was ripped in two by a pair of serpents that raised their heads, one grabbing the legs and the other taking the torso.
Like a living firebrand, Ilfedo rushed upon the Sea Serpents. Seivar launched from his shoulder, pecking out the eyes of the first serpent to turn and face him.
“Come on!” Ilfedo screamed, laying about him with the sword of the dragon. “Face a real challenge! Face me and die, you cowards!” His blade opened the blubbery forms with ease, spilling blue serpent blood on the ground.
Standing back as the serpents turned to face him, he pointed his sword’s blade at them and willed destruction upon them. Five of the creatures fell immediately beneath a torrent of fire thrown from the sword’s blade.
Uniting with his blade in a mental bond, he half-closed his eyes, sensing rather than seeing his opponents around him. The serpents lashed out with their fangs and swung with their tails, stabbing at him. But he evaded them, ducking under their blows.
Three of the creatures slithered around him, working together against him. Their numbers were overwhelming. A few of them would have been difficult enough; now he felt a hundred pairs of white eyes focusing on him.
The townspeople in the serpents’ midst ran for freedom. Some were killed by the massive bodies thrashing around and over them.
Ilfedo’s blade sank into the serpents’ bodies again and again, ending their vile existences as fast as his sword arm could move.
A tail slapped into his back, throwing him to the ground. He rolled, landed kneeling, and pointed his weapon at the attacker. His fingers clamped harder around his sword handle as fire shot from its blade and raged through the air, felling the serpent into a crumpled heap.
Some of the serpents slithered after the fleeing people. Their fangs stabbed downward, impaling over half of the group’s number. Men, women, and children screamed. They fell to the ground, twitching horribly as the serpents’ venom spread through their bodies.
The five sisters screamed and one by one knelt on the ground. Tears poured down Evela’s face and shone in Laura’s and Levena’s eyes. A dozen sea serpents rose around them with fangs exposed, drawing their heads back to strike.
Even Rose’el dropped her sword to hold a little girl who’d been poisoned. Her eyes brimmed with tears. Caritha’s face riveted on the bodies before her.
“My sisters, what are you doing?” Ilfedo stabbed another serpent between its white eyes, swung the sword in a long arc, slitting open three more serpents’ throats.
As the serpents’ bodies slumped around him, he leaped over them and ran to the ring of serpents preparing to strike Dantress’s sisters. He landed in the sisters’ midst, loped off a nearby serpent’s head and sent flames from the blade into several others.
“Seivar, Hasselpatch,” he yelled at the top of his lungs as his faithful companions flew at the serpents, “go for help! There’s nothing you can do here!”
Tearing out a serpent’s eye, Seivar screamed into the air and shot away. His mate set off in the opposite direction. Ilfedo knew that the birds would split up to cover as much territory as possible and bring whatever aid they could. In the meantime? In the meantime he was alone with five weeping women whose help he had been counting on.
“My sisters, rise!” He glanced at Evela, her shoulders quaking.
In that instant one of the serpents lashed out with its tail. The blow took him by surprise, sprawling him on the ground. The sword fell from his grasp and the armor vanished, leaving him unprotected.
Hissing with new confidence, the Sea Serpents lashed out at him. One of their fangs reopened his old shoulder wound, and he felt the venom swell his limbs.
Looking around for his sword, he spotted it not a dozen feet from his position.
One serpent’s eyes followed his gaze. It rested its tail over the sword and opened its mouth in what resembled a sneer. Its fangs glinted with venom as sunlight struck them.
“No you don’t.” Ilfedo rushed sluggishly forward, clasped his hands together and used them like a club, striking the serpent’s nostrils.
The serpent snapped at him, but he dropped to the ground in a roll. He forced his arm under the serpent’s tail, cutting his skin on the rough scales in the process. His fingers touched metal and closed around the vine-wrapped handle of his sword.
The metal blade rang as he drew it from under the serpent’s scales. The flames leapt up, engulfed him, and clothed him in the armor of living fire. Immediately his wounds staunched. The poison seemed to surrender to the energy the sword sent through his body, warming him, renewing him.
He poised his blade point up, and drove it through the serpent’s lower jaw, aiming for the creature’s brain. It dropped to the ground. The blade of his sword slid from the serpent’s head, dripping blue blood.
Flames roiled around the blade as he gripped it with both hands. The smell of death filled his nostrils.
The serpents pulled back, stunned by his sudden victory.
“My sisters,” he said again, this time shaking Caritha’s shoulder, “now is not the time for this! I need your help. Now rise and fight!”
DEMISE OF THE SERPENT KING
Caritha heard Ilfedo pleading with her and her sisters to rise and aid him against the Sea Serpents, and she wanted to, but never had she been thus surrounded by death and suffering. If only Dantress were here, she would have known how to draw the venom from the victims’ bodies. But Dantress was gone. Dead.
The strongest among the sisters had fallen prey to an early death. What was worse was the fact that Dantress had allowed it to happen.
No. Caritha stopped herself. Her younger sister had done the right thing. Just looking at the innocent child she’d brought into the world proved that. If Dantress were here, she would rise, the sword of Xavion in her hand, and fight alongside Ilfedo. If she were here, she would tell Caritha and the other sisters to do the same.
The time to mourn was not now.
Summoning all her strength, rising from among the dead and dying, Caritha raised her rusted sword. She deafened her ears to the pleas of those around her, turned her eyes away from the suffering, stepped over the bodies of the dead women, children, and men. And she drew upon the power in her dragon blood until she felt it turning her sorrow into anger to fuel her for the battle.
Around her rose her sisters. They stood with her and she felt their anger, their lust for justice, their cold determination as they turned their dark eyes to the serpents’ white ones.
Ilfedo was having difficulty fending off all of the beasts on his own, despite his skillful maneuvering and use of the sword’s flame-casting ability. He met two serpents head-on, grappling with them in a strange wrestling match. His blade stabbed through one side of a serpent’s head and emerged
out of the opposite eye. Fire shot from the exposed sword tip, turning the other serpent’s neck into a pillar of flames.
Wordlessly, the sisters advanced toward the serpents, slowly, patiently biding their time. Caritha wiped fear from her mind, feeling the strength of her dragon blood combine with that of her sisters.
Five of the massive Sea Serpents moved against the sisters. Their jaws hissed open; their long fangs glistened in the sunlight as they raised their heads a dozen feet in the air.
The sisters formed a close-knit line as a gust of wind flung their long, dark hair across their faces. Caritha ignored the distraction and lowered her sword to point at the serpents. Her sisters copied her movement and touched their blades together with hers. Drops of blood fell from the weapons as blue energy sizzled along the rusted metal. A beam formed and shot toward the approaching serpents.
Severing the heads of the two nearest serpents, the beam continued on, leaving deep gashes in the necks of the other three.
Wide-eyed, a dozen of the creatures’ companions slithered backward. But others attacked viciously. The sheer number of them overwhelmed the sisters. Caritha saw Rose’el, Laura, and Levena disappear down serpents’ throats. She would have intervened, yet the other serpents crowded around her and Evela.
Without the other three sisters, Caritha and Evela had to fight an impossible battle. Ilfedo frowned as he caught sight of them, but he was too engaged in his own battle with a dozen more of the creatures and wasn’t able to come to their aid. At least the creatures’ carcasses were piling up around the man faster than they could replenish their numbers.
Not even half of the hundred or so serpents that had first met Ilfedo’s attack were still alive. His feet stood in a river of blue blood, lit by the brilliance of his sword and armor.
Caritha stabbed the body of a nearby serpent, but the creature hardly twitched. The blade probably felt like nothing more than a nasty prick.
Its head swung around as if to move away. She lowered her sword, looking about for a next target. The options were vast, the serpents many.
But she had underestimated the wounded serpent. Its body had encircled her, separating her from Evela. She tried to jump as it tightened the coils around her. She was too late. Its body clutched her in a deadly embrace, squeezing until her breath was forced from her lungs in a burning gasp.
Her feet lifted off the ground as the serpent raised her into the air with its coiled tail. Several pairs of big, round white eyes feasted on her as other serpents raised their heads to witness her demise.
Her captor slipped its long, forked tongue out of its mouth. The twin tips of its tongue cooled her neck as they touched her. She looked down the long, red tongue and found herself gazing with helpless fascination down the serpent’s gaping throat.
Beside her, another serpent captured Evela and hung her upside down from its tail. The youngest sister struck at the creature with her sword until it managed to pin her arms to her sides. “Let go of me!” Evela yelled before the serpent tightened its grip.
Caritha struggled for air. If she didn’t breathe she would black out.
One of the Sea Serpents rose beside her and opened its mouth as if to receive her. Suddenly the scales on the back of its neck rose as if pushed from inside its body, and the rusted point of a sword stabbed through.
The serpent’s eyes seemed to pop out of its sockets; its jaw opened as if in pain. But the rusted blade divided the back of its neck with an incision several feet long that laid bare the white vertebrate of its spine.
Rose’el rose out of the serpent’s body as it fell. She stood inside the incision and spat. “All right! All right,” she growled. “Fine—humph! Take that, Ugly!” She glared at another serpent, lunged for it. “You want a chunk of me, too?”
Almost at the same moment that Rose’el’s blade cut into another serpent, two more of the creatures fell dead. Caritha gasped for air. Her captor seemed frozen by Rose’el’s actions. Its hold on her relaxed—though only by an inch—and its mouth opened and closed several times. But it was enough for her to catch the air she needed and to see that Laura and Levena had also killed their would-be-slayers.
The group of serpents surrounding them slithered away from the sisters. Caritha counted twenty of them racing for the sea. A mere twenty more now remained to contend with. And these looked at the sisters and tried to avoid Ilfedo’s attacks.
He dispensed with two more of them, sent three more scrambling to the water, and launched himself onto Caritha’s captor. The sword of the dragon in his hands made mincemeat of the creature, dividing it into several sections before it had time to react.
Caritha breathed deep. She held her sword with both hands and joined her sisters, cutting the serpents at every opportunity.
The waves that crashed onto the shore seemed to explode as a wedge-shaped head punched out of the Sea of Serpents. Ilfedo paused in the midst of his battle, catching his breath.
The seawater rolled off of a shiny black body sliding onto the shore, stretching to a length at least twice that of any sea serpent he’d encountered. Great bumps covered its face and its nostrils spouted water from its forehead as its white eyes bulged from the side of its head. The dent in the ground which the creature left behind was so deep a man could stand in it. Yimshi’s rays played off the gigantic serpent’s white, scaled chest as it forged ahead.
As if responding to their master’s domineering entrance, the surviving Sea Serpents stopped their retreat and struck with new energy, trying to bring the sisters down.
Ilfedo was torn between facing the approaching menace and helping his sisters. But if the monster joined its companions, he could only imagine how short the battle would be.
Ilfedo raced across the field. Standing halfway between the sisters’ battle and the monster, he quelled his trembling body.
With a head the size of a small house, the Sea Serpent rose before him, its head looking down upon him from the equivalent of a four-story building. Its lips curled up, and its jaws dropped open. Half-a-dozen fangs dripped thick black venom, spotting the ground with puddles of the sticky substance. Each of the monster’s fangs was the length of a spear and the thickness of a small tree. Lesser teeth of shark-like quality filled the rest of its mouth.
Ilfedo felt light-headed just looking at the thing.
His fingers tightened around the sword of the dragon, and courage swelled his being. His armor flashed with light as if he were a miniature sun. Flames twisted around his sword’s blade, rising to the tip and feeding into the air.
“Back!” he said to the monster. “Go back into the sea where you belong! And take your minions with you!”
The gargantuan serpent lashed out a purplish, forked tongue. It did not touch him or his sword. Its eyes turned lazily in the sisters’ direction, and it spat a wad of venom from its mouth. The venom struck Evela’s face and upper torso. Her hands clawed at the venom, trying to wipe it off in order to breathe.
With a snap of its massive jaws that sounded like a small clap of thunder, the monstrous serpent looked back at Ilfedo as if waiting to see how he would react to the unexpected assault.
Racing to Evela, Ilfedo touched his sword’s blade to her face. Its flames baked the venom into a crust. He dug his fingers into it, breaking it from her mouth. She held onto his arm, coughing. Prying off what remained of the venom, he gently pulled her hands from his arm, noting that her lips bled where he’d torn away the dried venom.
Turning, he strode back to the enormous serpent. “You will return to the sea,”—he let flames shoot higher from his blade—“and there you will remain … or I will hunt your species to extinction.”
“Hard words, thou brave warrior.” The serpent ended with a hiss.
Ilfedo gazed into the malevolent white eyes. It can talk? He lowered his blade a few inches and took a step backward.
“Before thy kind roamed this land, warrior, I dwelt in this sea. Before thy ancestors laid claim to this soil, I ruled it.�
� The serpent’s tail lifted into the air and then smashed the ground. Ilfedo set his feet wide to maintain his balance. “Now I have returned and all that herein is, I claim to be mine. Even as all in the sea is mine, so is this land.
“Knowest thou not that I am King of the Sea Serpents?” Its fangs touched the ground as it lowered its head to gaze into his eyes. “I have battled the ancient dreads of Subterran, yes, even the Glorigathans and the Dudans … the Water Skeels, also.
“Thou presumest to stand before me, little warrior, to do battle with me. But I can crush thee as an insect. Go thy way, leave now, and I will let thee go. I admire thy initiative, little warrior, but to stand against me thou hast neither the strength nor the means.”
“But I am standing in your way.” Ilfedo poised his sword to aim its point at the monster’s head. “And for the crimes your minions have committed against my people, you will pay with your blood and they with their lives.”
“Thou art brave, little warrior, to speak thus against me and mine.” The creature hissed, pulling back its head and opening wide its jaws. A blade-like fin unfolded from its head, rising from the tip of its snout and arching back to the base of its skull. It lowered its voice. “I do not leave brave enemies standing. I prefer thy death so that I may never confront thee again.”
Ilfedo remained steady as the creature postured for attack. His life was on the line here and the odds seemed … towering. But when he considered the possibility of his own death, all he could see was the familiar face of she whom he loved. Death could only bring him back to her. It could only end his heart’s ache and bring him to meet the Creator.
No, he had nothing to fear from death. He had nothing to fear from anything. And to die defending those who could not defend themselves was a far better way to leave this mortal existence than to die of old age.
He faced the King of the Sea Serpents and held forth the weapon given to him by the albino dragon. His eye blinked involuntarily as a sunbeam reflected off of the silver band on his finger. The Eternal Band, its flame extinguished. He’d kept it nevertheless. It displayed to the entire world that his heart belonged to someone special. In his eyes it also stated that he would never give his heart to another.
Offspring (The Sword of the Dragon) Page 6