A smaller dragon, a youngster just like Mikle, all skin and bone, darted out from the brawl, his eyes on the food sack.
Balack watched as though in slow motion as Mikle brought out his pistol with shaking hands. He yelled something, but the young dragon carried on.
Mikle pulled the trigger.
The shot silenced all noise and sent a ringing through Balack’s ears.
The younger dragon lay spread-eagled on the ground, blood mixing with muddy water.
“That’s for my brother,” Mikle cried. He turned the pistol towards the rest of the dragons. “Back off. Back off now—” But the dragons were leaping towards him. The boy was lost and more shots fired wildly.
Knowing he had only moments, Balack spun around and jumped, grasping onto the rough, wooden support beams of the platform, splinters digging into his skin. He began to climb.
A final shot from below, then screaming. It ended with the sound of tearing flesh, cracking bones, the great pop of a joint ripped from a socket.
Balack felt bile rise in his throat, and it was all he could do not to retch.
He wasn’t out of danger.
Not by a long shot.
With a yell of exertion, he heaved himself over the last portion of the wall and onto the platform, rolling on his back across it, seeing the sky above whirl into dark wood and back again.
Bows twanged. Guns fired.
Voices bellowed. Death screams dominated.
“You alright, sir?” a huntress said, helping him upright.
“Dranus’ arse, no, I’m not fine,” Balack said. “None of us are fine.” All around he saw dragons running, storming towards their position at the centre of the camp. Most of them were too busy fighting amongst themselves for the remaining food, but some were making straight for the hunters or Chevaliers left on the ground.
Battle had come, and instinct brought his bow into one hand and three arrows into the other. He notched one, drew, found a target. The torn arm of Mikle arced up and over the writhing dragons, with red tears in the muscle. Nothing Balack did could convince himself that those weren’t bite marks.
He hesitated, unable to loose his arrow. It was all too much. Too sudden.
“Sir?” The huntress looked for orders.
He was meant to be the Hero of the Bastion. What kind of hero was he now?
Hooves beat into the slush, thundering above all else. Gellick was approaching from the south, riding at the head of his company, sword drawn.
“For Brevia!” he cried before slamming into the knot of dragons. Scores of pistols cracked. Horses whinnied angrily. Swords screeched from scabbards and thunked wetly into the surprised, unarmoured dragons.
Yet the horror was spreading fast.
In every direction dragons were stirring, and given a chance, they’d have cleaved through the humans, cavalry or no. Even those who were left after the impact of the horses pulled some of the knights from their mounts, tossing them like rag dolls before a blade or musketball could end their rampage.
Balack lowered his bow, running to the stairs. “Back now,” he called at the top of his lungs. “Back to the city.”
“Balack,” Gellick shouted, cutting his way through. “Get on.”
Balack scrambled atop the horse, holding the Chevalier around the waist. He saw other Chevaliers make room for passengers, even though the fighting was drawing close in around them.
“Ride now, to the city,” Gellick bellowed. A horn blasted from behind and with a lurch they were off, charging up the mud tracks towards the main gates.
Balack knew he was in some form of shock. His mind inexorably turned to those humans still out there in the camps, those who would not make it to the walls before the bloodlust had spread.
Long, cumbersome wagon trails clogged the road leading to the gates, which had been left wide open.
“Abandon your carts,” Gellick cried as they rode passed. “To the gate. Flee to the gate.” All the Chevaliers took up the call of retreat and flight without explanation. Balack only hoped that nobody would tarry.
As the company rode through the gate, hooves clopping onto firm stones, there came a moment of relief.
Balack swung himself down, fighting to keep control of his breath as the full horror began to reveal itself to him.
With the gate half blocked by lumbering wagons, they couldn’t shut it quickly. And if they couldn’t bar entrance to the city—
A distant roaring rent the air – thousands of howling, snarling beasts. No, not beasts. It was the dragons, only he had never heard them sound less human.
Gellick looked stricken. “Not even in my worst dreams did I truly fear this.”
Balack rounded on him. “Maybe you ought to have—” He wanted to say more but caught himself. Now was not the time. “Back to your barracks with you. We’ll need every mounted Chevalier you have.”
Gellick nodded, turning his steed northwards. “Company, heed the orders of the Hero. I shall return.” He galloped off as the roaring from the camps grew louder.
Balack craned his neck to try and spot the deck of the gatehouse guards. A pudgy-faced man was looking fearfully down at him.
“What are you waiting for?” Balack yelled. “Ring the fucking alarms. Every bell and trumpet. We need the garrison. And start closing the damned gate. Chevaliers, bring your horses. We need these carts moved.”
The perilous process began, though not as hastily as need demanded.
“Make a corridor first for those fleeing,” Balack said. With a route freed of obstacles, streams of hunters, soldiers and some remaining Chevaliers crossed the threshold of the city. Most bent over double, panting, or vomiting against the base of the city walls.
“Don’t just stand there. Move. Let others through or help clear the way.”
He pulled back and tried to form some semblance of defence upon the road: upturned wagons forming hasty palisades, for all the good they would do. Something twigged in his mind and he turned towards the Rag Run, the closest populated area to the gates.
“Get the civilians out,” he commanded a group of young hunters who were shaking half to death. “Get them out, further east or across the river if you can.”
One side of the looming doors had shut fully, but the other was only halfway there, a stream of humans still desperately trying to make it in before the storm hit. The roaring grew louder with each passing second. Through the gap left in the closing gate, just over the downward dip of the road, Balack saw the dragons moving like the rush of a swollen river.
The gap in the gateway narrowed, but he feared the dragons would close the distance first.
And even as that gap shrunk to a sliver, as the humans on the other side screamed at being trapped beyond, Balack saw the dragons charge up behind them, running the stragglers down like bulls trampling upon grass.
The cruellest part was that the gate had very nearly closed when the dragons threw their weight against it. Gears creaked, groaned and the gap began to widen. The dragons’ starvation and weakness was Balack’s only source of hope to make it through this.
He notched an arrow, glancing at the hunters and soldiers by his side, who were all too few.
Bells rang loud and hard across the city.
Hands emerged from behind the slow closing gate, gouging into the wood.
Balack found the strength to let his arrow fly this time. A true shot. Its head buried into one of those distant hands. Each shaft he sent felt like a betrayal, and yet everything had changed in mere minutes. All the world was crashing down.
With a deafening crack the gate was at last pushed inwards, the hinges breaking. The dragons were in. There was something almost demonic about the way they swarmed forwards.
A hundred pitiful defenders raised muskets and bows, while a cannonball thudded down a long barrel.
Balack swallowed his last hope. “Fire!”
Chapter 24
GARDENS OF BLOOD
“After the islanders sacked the city, people found it hard to return to the shores. They called it the Bay of Blood, where the worst killings occurred.”
— From Tiviar’s Histories
Cassandra – The Palace – Brackendon’s Chambers
BELLS RANG.
Kymethra furrowed her brow and darted to the window, cracking it open. The clanging grew louder, emanating from all around the city. Footsteps scurried on the floor above. Panicked voices called from the hallway and the grounds outside. Cassandra’s mind raced. A city-wide alarm meant an attack.
“But it can’t be demons,” she said, as though working it through aloud. “We’d have heard. There’s no way—”
A series of distant cracks rang, a light yet unmistakable patter of musket fire.
Kymethra unlatched the window fully and threw it wide open. “I’ll go see what’s happening.” She jumped outside, morphed into her eagle from and swooped over the trimmed hedges of the palace gardens before veering out of sight.
Cold sweat gathered on Cassandra’s neck and palms. Her first instinct was to find Oranna and Thane, her sword was a total afterthought.
Wailing snapped her back to reality. Brackendon had woken up, his hands clasped tight over his ears against the pitched bells, his face screwed up. She ran to the window, intending to close it. Then she thought of Kymethra. The witch would need it open to enter again should Cassandra leave before she returned. Yet the ringing only intensified and Brackendon sobbed harder. Pity welled up in Cassandra. She left the window open and was by his side in a heartbeat, trying to take his hand.
“Naaoooooo.” Brackendon batted her away. Snot bubbled from his nose, pooling with saliva at the corner of his mouth.
“Brackendon, Brackendon,” Cassandra said in a panic, unsure what she should do to help him; if she could even help him.
He opened his eyes. The silver irises remained pure as ever, yet the whites were bloodshot, if blood was black that is. Brackendon stared at her, trying to work out this face before him.
“I don’t – I don’t—” he began before descending into incoherent babbling.
He didn’t recognise her. Cassandra felt crushed by that. They hadn’t been close, but she’d liked to have been. She had hoped to sit with him for hours, as they’d done in that cart speeding to Val’tarra, letting him fill the many gaps in her knowledge or spar with him over which writer had argued best. That would never be now.
Brackendon entered a fresh spasm. He flailed with his hands, struggling to decide where he should place them.
“Here,” Cassandra said, falling to her knees by his pillows and closing her own hands over his ears. “That better?”
He quietened down, gripping his bony chest in one spot and then the next. Then he settled. The bells were still clanging, so Cassandra took extra care in adjusting her position, so as not to lift her hands away. With some wriggling, she managed to sit upright, leaning her back against the headboard, and allowed Brackendon to loll his head into her lap. With one hand, she kept his left ear protected, and with her free hand she lightly patted his remaining white tufts of hair as though he were a sick kitten.
It seemed demeaning to treat him so, but his whimpers slowly lessened. So she kept it up, all the while keeping her own ears pricked for any sign of —
A blast sounded, short but powerful, its echo long and deep. A cannon. That had to be cannon fire. Brevia was under attack, but from whom? Where?
Brackendon moaned again.
“It’s okay,” Cassandra said. “It’s okay. Whatever it is won’t get us here.”
The wizard craned his neck to look at her, staring up with inquisitive eyes. A silver sparkle twinkled within them and for a moment he looked every bit the man he’d been: calm but fierce when pressed, wise but not a preacher, softly spoken yet passionate in his words.
The twinkle died, and he closed his eyes, breathing lightly.
Cassandra didn’t move. She didn’t want to risk waking Brackendon and, in any case, she was afraid. The gunshots became more frequent and louder. The fighting was drawing closer to the palace itself. Demons couldn’t move that quickly. Which meant only one thing.
The dragons were attacking them.
And they were heading right for Arkus.
There came a tap at the window and the hinge creaked as Kymethra returned, morphing back to herself in the space of a breath. Her look confirmed Cassandra’s fears.
“Why?” Cassandra croaked.
“No clue,” Kymethra said. She looked shaken, staring off into the middle distance. “The Rag Run is on fire. The city gates are broken. Dragons are pouring into the southern city. Cass—” she said, as though only just noticing another person in the room. “They’re coming for the palace.”
“What can we do? Inside the palace is surely safer than outside it.”
Kymethra didn’t answer. She was looking at Brackendon. “What happened?”
“He didn’t like the bells – he was in pain, I wasn’t sure what to do so I—” she was rambling, trying not to listen to the crack and patter outside the window. She thought she could even smell the gunpowder now, but that could have been her imagination pulling a cruel trick.
“It seems to have worked,” Kymethra said. She joined Cassandra, sitting on the other side of Brackendon. Cassandra let go, passing him over as though he were a baby and he winced as the bells briefly refilled his ears. Kymethra positioned three fingers above his ear and he calmed while she groaned from the effort.
“I’d go out and help in some way, if I could. But I can’t risk him losing control.”
Cassandra rolled off the bed. “I should go. Arkus will want us all togeth—”
Steel screeched and men cried from the very corridor outside their room. Soldiers hurried in one direction while heavier, faster footsteps pounded further down the hall. Musket balls zipped by the open doorway as Cassandra scrambled to slam it shut. She locked it out of instinct and backed away, scanning for anything she might use as a weapon.
Perhaps the dragons would simply pass on without trying to enter, or the soldiers would push them back.
The heavy footsteps drew closer and closer, until, almost right outside the door, they crashed into whatever lay in their path. Fresh screams, breaking bones and squelching sounds mixed into one horrible note.
The proximity of the violence upset Brackendon more than the bells. He thrashed, knocking Kymethra’s elbow up into her own face. Then he got to his knees upon the bed, swaying and mewling.
“What’s that?” someone growled from outside.
“In there.”
The dragons didn’t even try the handle.
Cassandra dove out of the way as the door came hurtling inwards, kicked with the brute force of two tall dragons; older men by the looks of them, but with a maddened glint in their eyes. Their feet and legs were caked in mud, their torsos in blood. Sticky, dark gore dripped from the hands of one of them.
Brackendon pointed and howled.
“What’s this?” one asked, stepping inside. Several others followed him. They sized up Cassandra, a small woman, Kymethra, another small woman, and Brackendon, a crazy old man, and shrugged. Not a threat in their eyes.
“Any food?” the dragon barked.
“Awayyyyy,” Brackendon said, pointing a long finger at the dragon.
“Shut up, old man.”
Another dragon bounded forwards, the one with blood on his hands. “Snapping his neck should do that.” He took a stride forwards before a comrade stopped him.
“Leave it be, there’s been enough killing. We came for food.”
The bloodied dragon snorted. “We’ve found none so far. And it doesn’t help that the air stinks with their fear.” He
scanned the room again, his eyes landing upon Cassandra. “Wait. I recognise that one. That’s their little princess.”
The older dragon looked to Cassandra with widened eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Yeh, take her.”
Cassandra scrabbled to her feet, but the dragons were on her quickly. She shrieked and kicked to no avail, but managed to sink her teeth into the arm of one of the dragons, biting hard enough to break the sweaty skin and taste warm blood.
The dragon yelped, dropping her. But Brackendon yelled loudest of all.
“Gooooo. Leeaaaveee.” He faced a palm towards the bloodied dragon, sending him hurtling against the wall. There was a snap and the dragon’s neck bent at an angle.
Enraged, the remaining dragons started towards Brackendon.
“Stop,” Cassandra screamed. “Leave him. I’ll come with you. Just leave them.”
The older dragon nodded to this. “Let the old man be, boys.” He glanced to the dragon with the broken neck. “That one had gone savage. Better he got a quick death.”
With that, he took Cassandra by the arm and manhandled her out of the room. Bodies were strewn up and down the corridor, humans and dragons both. The humans had fared worse. Where the dragons had neat bullet wounds or cuts, the humans had been torn apart, smashed with sheer force, bone and flesh pounded into the black carpet which now oozed blood with every step they took.
“Naaaoooooo,” Brackendon cried behind them and an invisible force blocked the dragons’ path.
Cassandra turned to look back up the corridor, as best she could in her captor’s embrace, and found Brackendon standing outside his room, legs wide apart, his quivering arms outstretched. Kymethra sprang from the doorway, trying to pull him back inside, but whatever magic he wielded kept her at arm’s reach.
The dragons growled, but the look on Brackendon’s face made them hesitate. His eyes had turned pure silver with thin black slits, the skin on his face withdrew closer to his bones, casting his features into menacing shadows. His hair was all on end and his robes billowed behind him, though there was no wind to speak of.
The Dragon's Blade_The Last Guardian Page 28