Smila and Darg flew in. They were also immune to this mist and they succeeded in taking out several of Merlin’s beasts, either eating them whole or downing them with their breath attacks—a stream of ice and frost from Smila, and one of jagged stones the size of baseballs from Darg—but the majority of the Questlings broke back to their ranks, which still hovered over the tent.
Artie’s army was much closer to Bercilak’s two halves now, and Artie yelled, “Numinae, get Greenie off those posts!”
Tiberius took off, and as he drew close, Numinae rose in the saddle and shot two jolts of green at Bercilak. His lower half hit the ground running, making its way to the upper half, which lay on its back, its fingers twiddling wildly. When the legs reached the torso, they fell over, and Bercilak’s hands grabbed his hips and pulled his body, such as it was, back together. The knights couldn’t see any of this, but they could see a green flash of light in the brush, and then a few seconds later Bercilak was up and running toward them, waving his arms like a madman.
“Is he trying to call us off?” Dred asked.
Artie frowned. “I don’t know.”
Before they could reach Bercilak, though, the Questlings screeched all at once, and the tent flaps flew open. Artie and the knights could see nothing but blackness inside. But then a dozen very large sabertooth/rhinos, like the one they’d fought in the Kingfisher house, bolted out of the tent and ran full tilt down the slope. Three of them had riders, but the animals were so fast, and their stride so violent, that these riders flopped along more like dolls than soldiers.
“Sami, Erik—go and meet them!”
Sami, who rode the largest bear, kicked his animal. It bolted forward at full speed, followed by six more bears. Erik jumped into a frenzy and grabbed the scruff of a large wolf as it took off, leading a pack of five lupines. Together, the wolves and bears broke through the wall of dragonflies, and made headlong for the onrushing sabertooth/rhinos.
“Double time!” Artie commanded, and the whole of his army stepped faster.
“Show yourself, Merlin!” Artie cried to the heavens, but there was still no sign of the wizard.
And then a light flashed on the far side of the plain, up high on St. David’s Head, forcing the knights and creatures to close their eyes momentarily. When they reopened them, the tent was gone, and finally they saw what they were about to tangle with.
It was an army easily four times larger than theirs, organized into tight squares of foot soldiers. In between the lines of pikemen and swordsmen were columns of more sabertooth/rhinos.
“There’re a lot of them, lad!” Thumb said.
“Sure are,” Lance added. “But at least they don’t look that big.”
It was true. It was hard to tell at this distance, but the human part of Merlin’s army didn’t appear to be all that horrifying. The animals and the Questlings certainly were, but the soldiers just . . . weren’t.
It was at this moment that Bercilak came within earshot, yelling, “Sire, sire, sire!”
“Oh no,” Qwon said, as she peered into the mass of people they were about to engage.
“They’re children, sire! The wizard has enslaved an army of children!”
Artie’s heart sank as he raised the binoculars to his face. Bercilak was right. Artie scanned as many faces as he could, and all of them belonged to zombified boys and girls his age or even younger.
“We’re about to face a bunch of Otherworld gamers!” he yelped in disbelief.
“You’re joking. That’s an army of Dr Pepper heads?” Kay asked.
“Yes,” Artie said. “Bercy, head to the moongates, near that blue dragon. Help her guard our flank, and find a weapon.”
“Yes, sire. Thank you for coming for me, sire. The wizard is—”
“Don’t mention it. Now go!”
Bercilak took off for the moongates. Artie turned his attention back to the battlefield and saw Sami and Erik fighting the sabertooth/rhinos. Sami jumped from his bear and skidded into the ground, punching two of Merlin’s creatures square in the nose and sending them soaring, their faces crushed. Erik launched from his wolf and flew into an immediate rage, and pieces of tiger and rhino went flying too. The bears and the wolves attacked ravenously. Their teeth flashed and their hides shook as they went about taking down their much larger but slower adversaries. The second skirmish of the day would belong to Artie and his knights.
In the breakaway group of sabertooth/rhinos, Artie could just make out the three riders who he now knew to be children. Their movements were clumsy but harsh as they swung great swords and spears in all directions. Sami disarmed two, and another got caught in Erik’s rage before cartwheeling out of the melee.
“Don’t hurt them!” Artie yelled.
“What?” Shallot asked. “How are we supposed to fight?”
“Numinae! Relay the message!” Artie shouted. “These guys cannot be hurt! Anyone who kills or seriously hurts one of these kids will have to answer to me personally! We are responsible for them, do you understand?”
“Yes, sire,” Numinae hollered, and then he and Tiberius moved out to spread the order.
Just then, Merlin’s army let out a war cry and broke into a dead sprint.
“Smash it!” Shallot said in protest.
“The animals, the Questlings, and Merlin are fair game,” Artie shouted. “Immobilize the children, but, I repeat, do not hurt them! They’re just innocent kids!”
“Fairies, come,” Shallot barked, running to Chime and vaulting into the saddle strapped to her neck. “Take the wolves and meet these poor souls. Full-up scentlocks! Nothing moves! All animals die! Go!”
Before Chime could make a break for it, Kay jumped behind Shallot and wrapped an arm around the fairy’s ultra-slim waist. Shallot gave Kay a hard look, but Kay didn’t care.
“Don’t worry, sister. I’m going to stuff my nose good. Scentlock away. Now let’s fight!”
Shallot cooed at Chime, and the golden dragon, which was by far the most beautiful of all the dragons, spread its slender wings and glided into the air.
Qwon and Dred fell in close to Artie and jogged up the incline. Sami and Erik had regrouped with the bears and wolves and ran across the field to meet the others. When Tiberius and Numinae were done informing everyone not to hurt the children, they broke toward the front line, Aquilia joining them. As soon as they got in range, the two green dragons sprayed the kids with their black smoke-rock breath, freezing them in basalt midadvance. These children would be fine. The rock breath didn’t even hurt, and being frozen had the added benefit of protecting the kids from whatever craziness might happen once Merlin showed up. Smila and Darg, their attacks more purely offensive, refused to engage the children at all, and darted forward to meet the Questlings.
The black dragon snorted and reared fifty feet to Artie’s left, plainly eager to join the fight. “Stay with us, Snoll. We’re going to need your strength!”
And then the two armies crashed together.
The sounds of marching and lashing rain and wind were gone, replaced with steel on steel and tooth on tooth and claw on claw. Qwon raised Kusanagi and slapped away sword after sword, knocking several children onto their backs with the blunt end of her katana. When she reached a little clearing in the action, she planted her feet and asked Kusanagi for wind, fierce and howling. The blade blew out and away, and she sprayed the kids and beasts with a gale, disabling scores in one fell swoop.
Dred planted his back against Qwon’s, wielding the Peace Sword to disarm children and slice the legs off as many sabertooth/rhinos as he could.
Lance, riding high on a bear, shot arrow after arrow into the eyes of Merlin’s creatures. Many died; many others were struck blind and sent into furies that set them on their fellow creatures. These were dangerous, as they posed a threat to the children, so Lance finished them off immediately. When he was greeted with lulls in the action, he placed flashbang arrows in the crowd, knocking some of the smaller kids unconscious and diverting ani
mals toward Qwon’s gale or a hovering dragon, which would pick the creatures up and tear them to pieces.
Near Lance, Bedevere and his own saber-toothed tiger fought alongside a pair of Sylvanian she-wolves. Bedevere hadn’t wasted any time activating his phantom arm. He used it freely to punch children this way and that, knocking them out cold on contact. With his real hand he expertly wielded his devastating claymore, slaying any animal that got too close to him. The she-wolves likewise concentrated on the creatures, slicing off noses and biting into necks.
The children, in spite of their zombie state, were decent fighters. It was not easy for the knights to exercise restraint in fending them off, but they tried their best. As for those who suffered an errant blow, or found themselves underfoot of a blind hybrid creature, Tiberius would freeze them in basalt, preserving their lives until the battle was over and they could get help.
After several minutes of frenzied fighting, Lance reached the bottom of this quiver. All he had left was an infinite arrow—which literally had Merlin’s name on it, since Lance had whittled it into the shaft during the muster—and three fireballers. He looked over the battlefield. The fairies had driven a wedge into Merlin’s ranks, leaving whole platoons frozen in strong scentlocks. Chime sprayed any Questling that got too close to her with her glitter breath, and the unlucky monstrosities disintegrated into showers of fairy dust that blew away on the wind. But the Questlings fought back. Around half seemed to possess breath attacks of their own, and these came in many different varieties. There were fire and ice and smoke, as anyone would expect, but also oil and spikes and thorns and shrapnel. Darg and Smila were trying to deal with these, but there were so many Questlings that it was difficult.
At one point, as these two dragons broke into the clouds to regroup, a flock of Questlings giving chase, Lance saw an opportunity. He pulled his bow back and called, “Snoll, light it up!” The black dragon swung its massive feathered head as Lance aimed his fireballer, and let it fly. When the arrow exploded among a group of breath-enabled Questlings, Snoll shot a huge ball of black oil at them. The sky detonated in oranges and yellows and blues. All of the Questlings in this area burned to a crisp, and fell wailing and dying. Several more also caught fire and began to whirl around in a panic, but the rush of air only fed the fire and made their burning worse. Snoll used these as targets for more oil balls, and when they hit, each Questling burst like a winged bomb overhead.
“Lance—there!” Artie yelled. Up the hill a few fairies were engaged with the two largest sabertooth/rhinos, each animal easily as big as a double-size elephant. Lance strung his penultimate fireballer and pulled the bow extra hard. The arrow raced over the field and went into the soft side of one of the creatures, stopping somewhere in its guts. A few seconds passed and then the thing just blew up, sending blood and skin and bone all over the place, and catching the other sabertooth/rhino off guard. This attack provided just enough time for the fairies nearby to gather themselves and finish it off.
After ten minutes of fighting this way—an eternity in close-range, hand-to-hand combat—Artie was able to take a break. He was covered in blood and sweat and grime. His body ached. The graphene shirt had taken more than twenty hits. His nose had been broken along with at least two ribs. “Thumb!” he called. The little man bounced here and there, checking on the well-being of felled children. “Have we won this round?”
Thumb stopped. “Aye, lad. We have.”
There were still about a hundred children farther up the field, but the dragons and fairies had broken their ranks. Qwon’s storm also was doing a lot of work, cutting a wide swath up the middle. Artie realized that Kusanagi was the most powerful of all the Seven Swords, Excalibur incuded. Not only was it simply an awesome sword, but this storm thing was the bomb.
As Artie thought this, Qwon let the storm go. It rose from the ground into the clouds and disappeared. As soon as it was off, she joined Dred to check on the hapless kids, helping those who needed assistance. Merlin’s earthbound creatures, almost to the last, were either dead or maimed. Wails of dying things echoed over the landscape as the dragons picked off whatever was left. Darg, the silver dragon, had suffered a cut on his wing, and he lumbered over the scrub and rocks spraying his breath where it was needed. Chime, too, had a bad gash along the length of her tail, and as she flew overhead, blood trailed from it like fuel leaking from a plane.
But all in all they were okay. So far, they were winning.
Except . . .
“Where is Merlin, Tom?” Artie asked.
“I don’t know, lad.”
Artie had to find him. He ran toward the black dragon, a finger pointed to the sky. “Snoll! We’re going up.” The black dragon growled in anticipation. “Numinae, Tiberius—join us in the clouds!”
“Yes, sire!” Numinae leaned forward, and Tiberius bolted headfirst toward the vortex that swirled in the middle distance.
Artie slid his fingers into the quills around Snoll’s neck and pulled himself on. The dragon picked its head off the ground, and Artie held tight. He dug in his heels. Snoll let out his wings and launched upward.
The temperature dropped as soon as they gained some altitude. As they rose higher, Artie searched for Kay, who, with Shallot, rode Chime. When they saw each other, their eyes locked. Even at a distance of four hundred yards or more, they suddenly could feel each other and make out each other’s faces as if they were only a few feet apart. Something about the rush of battle had restored their connection. There was no explaining it—it was simply magic.
Kay looked triumphant but confused. Artie knew that Kay thought Shallot was the traitor—that was why Kay had decided to stay close to the fairy. Artie wanted to tell her that she was wrong, but couldn’t. Besides, there was still a chance that they could beat Merlin without resorting to Artie’s risky surrender plan.
As Artie and Snoll passed out of view and into the gray cloud cover, he held up his hand, indicating that Kay, Shallot, and Chime should stay near the others. He hoped that they would.
Then, for a few seconds, grayness surrounded them before a large blot grew on their left, pressing through the mist. It was Numinae on Tiberius. The forest lord had a swirl of green energy in both hands, and his legs had melded with Tiberius’s neck. They were as one. “Into the vortex, sire?”
“You know it!”
The dragons clicked at each other and bolted forward. Rain streaked their bodies and faces. The dark clouds spun in front of them, and then lit up as a crack of thunder rang out.
And then, the vortex stopped spinning, and the rain shut off, and the wind ceased to blow. Tiberius and Snoll came to a dead halt. A thousand feet away, the sky lightened.
There you are, Artie thought, his nerves tingling. Come and get me.
28
IN WHICH THE DRAGONS ATTACK MERLIN HEAD-ON
Artie expected the clouds to part, and to have Merlin appear before them riding some kind of conjured fiend.
Instead, a jolt of electricity surged between Snoll and Tiberius. The air smelled of ozone and singed flesh and hair as both dragons banked defensively. Numinae let his spell fly. Blindly it slammed into the clouds, and the sky lit up in greens and yellows. Snoll peeled through a barrel roll and when he’d righted himself, the air was clear. Clouds stretched as far as the eye could see below them, but above them visibility was unlimited.
And what they saw was not a welcome sight.
Artie yelled, “Is that a—?”
“Hmmph. A real Questing Beast, lord kingling.”
The creature was like the Questlings but huge, and its size made it about a hundred times more grotesque than the little ones. Its black-eyed gaze bore down on them, and its leopard claws pawed the air as its massive wings flapped up and down and up and down.
“Merlin!” Artie shouted.
“Child.” His eyes were like fire, and even though his skin was covered in the sangrealitic ink, images crawled across it like writhing insect larvae.
Artie pulle
d Snoll’s neck feathers, and the dragon darted forward, Tiberius immediately following. They snaked through the air, slaloming past each other. The Questing Beast just waited.
Smug wizard, Artie thought.
When he got in range, Snoll breathed a steady stream of oil at Merlin and his monster. But before it could do any damage, the Questing Beast unhinged its jaws and let out a jet of freezing-cold water; when the two liquids met, the oil broke into pellets and fell to the clouds below.
Water? Artie thought. Why would we be scared of water? Snoll strafed the Beast, trying to gouge its side with sharp hind claws, but the Beast slid away and kicked at Snoll with its stag hooves. Rib bones cracked under Snoll’s left wing, and the black dragon cried out.
Numinae and Tiberius attacked the other flank. Tiberius blew puffs of black smoke all around, which hung in the air like flak explosions in a World War II movie. Numinae threw a flurry of rapid-fire spells at Merlin, hoping to overpower him. At first Merlin fended them off, knocking them out of the sky with orange counterattacks. Then a few broke through and hit Merlin, but he just laughed as though Numinae’s onslaught was nothing. He absorbed the hits like a sponge soaking up water. As the Questing Beast dodged Snoll on the other side, Tiberius blew a giant cloud of smoke, aiming to encase the right wing of the Beast in stone and send it and Merlin falling to the ground. But the Beast was unfazed. It finally beat one of its wings, and the smoke wafted harmlessly away. Tiberius did manage to whip the hindquarters of the Beast with the barb on his tail, but the result was not much more than a flesh wound.
The dragons regrouped side by side. Artie yelled, “All it does is breathe water! Hit it again!”
Snoll and Tiberius each let out massive breath attacks. Numinae shot a burst of energy into this mix, and Snoll’s oil lit up in green flames. These twisted together like a braid, shooting at Merlin and the Beast at lightning speed.
But when it reached them, Merlin held up his cane, and the attack hit an invisible barrier. It curved around the Beast’s head and fell away.
The Dragon King Page 20