The Sword and the Dragon

by M. R. Mathias

  All things considered, King Broderick decided that he could better manage the defense of Dreen from afar. In truth, he was as cowardly as a man could be. He was afraid for his life. Along with the rumors of Westland’s new Dragon Queen, he was beginning to hear tales of the wizard Pael’s display of destructive power on Wildermont. He had no intention whatsoever of getting caught up in something like that here. Thus, as dawn rose on the day his scouts expected the lion hordes to come calling, he and a dozen guards, along with two dozen handpicked horses from the Royal Herd, started south towards Stroud.

  Pael stood alone, on a ridge looking down over the city of Dreen from a distance. The wind ruffled his silky, black robes, and threatened to blow the hood back from his chalk-skinned head. The gold worked embroidery on the belled sleeves and collar of his garb glittered in the morning sun like star-fire. Far below, and to his left, Lord Brach led a long, winding snake of some eight thousand men, out of the mountains, toward the irrelevant red wall. Inside the walls, Pael could see the Valleyan soldiers swarming like maggots on old meat. The fact that Lord Brach’s snake wasn’t spreading out, or marching toward one of the gates, was confounding them. Pael wished that it was Xwarda below him now, instead of Dreen, so much so, that his actions were mechanical, and his mood dismissive. The manic joy he had found while destroying Castlemont was absent, the exhilaration of the raw demonic power he possessed seemingly forgotten.

  In a moment, he would breach the wall for Lord Brach’s men, so that the hungry snake might feed on the maggots, but now Shokin was forming an idea in his head. The idea made him regret sending Inkling, and those poisoned men to sea so far to the south, but only for a moment. When the idea fully bloomed in his mind, he laughed aloud, because neither the three ships full of men, nor the Imp King leading them, mattered anymore.

  There might be joy in this day yet, Pael told himself.

  He had just come up with a new plan of action, one that wouldn’t force him to have to wait out the winter here in Dreen. If it worked, he could take Xwarda, and gain the power of the Wardstone long before the snow started to fall. He would be able to launch his assault on Xwarda in days, not months.

  As he transported himself down to appear before the big red wall of clay, he couldn’t help but laugh again. This time, the manic glee was abundant in his countenance.

  The idea was wondrous. It would take a bit of quick work to pull it off, but he could manage it. Knowing this, it created a sense of urgency about him. This day would be a grand one after all. Riding his high spirits, and the possibilities of the days to come, Pael unleashed a blast of searing energy into the wall before him.

  The hole it created was enormous, easily wide enough for a half dozen wagons to ride through abreast of each other. The force of the blast, and the debris that it sent flying into the city, left a swathe of chaos and death, deep into the refugee crowded streets. Lord Brach and his winding snake of men came charging in to fill the void, and the battle was under way.

  Pael could’ve started blasting away groups of Valleyan soldiers, and large portions of the overcrowded city itself, but he chose not to. Instead, he cast another sort of spell, and he cast it not only on the Valleyans, but on the Westlanders as well. The second spell, an old favorite of the necromancer Priests of Kraw, was the same spell he had recently used, in its singular form, to resurrect Roark. Pael wanted this battle to play out. The more casualties here the better. Spell weary, after casting the long and powerful incantation of reanimation, Pael used the last bit of his energy to transport himself back to his elevated perch. From there, he watched the battle unfold, while he worked out the details of his new idea.

  As soon as Lord Brach got the first few hundred of his men into the breach, the Valleyans threw open a nearby gate and charged forth. It made sense. With a massive hole leading into the city not far away, keeping the gates barred was pointless.

  Cavalry met cavalry, in a shining clash of armor and steel. The red and yellow checked Valleyan banner whipped proudly in the wind. The dark shield upon it was an ancient and constant reminder to defend the horse herds. The golden lion on its field of green roared and reared back at them as the Westlanders pressed forth intensely.

  A troop of cavalry broke free from the middle section of Westland’s procession, thus ruining the snakelike appearance of the army. The group raced away to meet a knot of Valleyans that had come out of some unseen gate around the wall. The Valleyans were charging to attack the Westland flank. The collision of men, animals, and sharpened steel happened at a full gallop, and the sound of it was sickening. Men and horses screamed in protest as they were slashed, pummeled, and crushed in the violent explosion of natural force.

  Arrows filled the sky like streaks of windblown rain. The Valleyan archers up on the walls made full use of the advantage they had over those below them. Lord Brach ordered his archers to shoot at them, to make cover for the men trying to get into the city. He sent other troops of archers to fill the open gateways with flying death. The ranks of pikemen, and the untrained slashers, were ordered to crowd the breaches and get through any way they could manage. Before long, the battle was raging on both sides of the wall.

  Inside the wall, the Westlanders pushed into the Valleyan crowd, inch by bloody inch. Then, a man went berserk, wildly hacking into the knots of people, felling bodies like wheat before a scythe. From the roof top of a structure, near the breach, a brown robed mage rained streaks of fire down upon the invaders. The men writhed and burned as they fell. They were replaced immediately though, by others pressing into the space.

  Outside, the sheer number of Valleyans that had come out from the other open gates, had broken what remained of Westland’s serpent formation into knots and clumps of frenzied battle. A large skirmish was forming, about a thousand yards out from the wall. Valleyan riders, carrying long jousting lances, were charging into the mix of foot soldiers. They were skewering Westlanders and then withdrawing at will. The length of their weapons allowed them to stay out of range of their victims’ blades, and their superior warhorses were quick, well trained, and knew their duty well. Most of Westland’s archers had been ordered to the front, to cover the penetration into the city, but a few squadrons remained, and they were doing their best to slow the assault of the fearless and greedy Valleyan spearmen.

  The gateway nearest the breach had become choked with fallen bodies. The Westland archers had done extremely well there. Already, it was next to impossible to get a horse out of the opening, and the clog of Valleyan riders trapped there were falling in droves to the Westland foot soldiers who had stormed the breach.

  The brown-robed Valleyan mage had been joined by another, and together they created several bonfire-like piles of smoldering Westland flesh. They had become so effective at charring away the bodies of Lord Brach’s men, that Pael decided to intervene. He didn’t want the bodies of the dead all burnt and ruined. He needed them.

  Pael appeared with a crackling pop, right amongst the Valleyan archers along the top of the wall. A cheer erupted from the Westlanders who saw him. Rumors of Pael’s might had followed Lord Brach’s army as it marched through the mountains. Those who had seen, and survived the leveling of Castlemont, had made Pael the hero of that particular battle.

  With no regard for the archers firing arrow after arrow at his person, Pael gazed out across the two hundred or so yards of clanging bloody steel and death that separated him from the two brown-robed magi. Arrows exploded into splinters, as they hit the invisible field of energy that surrounded the demon-wizard. Some of the arrows glanced off, and continued into the knot of men on the opposite side of him. Some of the arrows just passed right through. Either way, they were of no concern to Pael, for they could not find his flesh.

  With a wave of his hands, and a muttered word, he pointed at each of the magi in turn. Seconds later, green flames erupted at their feet, and licked slowly upward, until each man was consumed in a white-hot inferno. A few heart beats later, when the fire died away, onl
y a whirl of ash and dissipating smoke remained.

  As quickly as Pael had come, he was gone again. Without the magi to thwart them, the Westland surge broke loose into the city. A stream, of almost two thousand bloodthirsty men, came riding or charging into the general populace, unhindered. More were on their heels.

  After Pael reappeared on the ridge, he studied the battle below. Not the logistics of the formations and the chaos that threatened them, nor the way the soldiers fought. Pael watched the way they died. The idea he had earlier, had just refined itself in a pleasing way.

  He cast a ward of protection over himself, sat down, leaned back against a boulder, and dozed as the battle raged into the afternoon.

  The spell of mass resurrection he had cast earlier cost him more than he had expected it to. He was drained and needed the rest. As he slept, the demon dreams of Shokin shed even more light on the evolving plan he had conceived. When he woke, feeling sharp and refreshed near sunset, the continuing battle below was of little concern to him. What he needed was a book that was back in his tower library. Before he could go there though, he had to make sure that Lord Brach was fully aware of what he was to do when this battle was finished.

  The sudden shock, and fear in the faces of the men Lord Brach was giving orders to, and the smell of hot ozone that reached his nose, told Lord Brach that Pael had just appeared behind him. Without batting an eyelid, or showing the fear and unease that the wizard instilled in him, he dismissed the men, and turned to face his kingdom’s greatest weapon.

  Brach was no fool. He knew that Pael was the true force behind King Glendar and the conquest over the eastern kingdoms. He didn’t like it, and he was far too intelligent to oppose it, but it didn’t matter anyway. The teeth jarring jolt of Pael’s touch on his shoulder, killed him instantly.

  The wizard caught him as he slumped down, and though there was no need to do so, he spoke the words of a spell into the corpse’s ear.

  Pael didn’t have the patience to wait until dawn when the mass resurrection spell he had cast would take effect. Sluggishly at first, then slowly growing into his full strength, Lord Brach regained himself. Where the tiny, white glimmer of life had just been in his eyes, there was now an ember, a little red sparkle of evil instead.

  As soon as Pael flashed away, Brach ordered his men, all of them, to storm the breach. It was an alarming order for the captains to swallow, but none questioned their commander. As they formed, and pressed their way in, those waiting to squeeze through, were left exposed. The Valleyan spearmen outside the wall were left to pike them apart at will.

  Long after sunset, when the last Westlander had gained entry into the city, the Valleyans found that there was nothing else to do, but follow them in. It was a strange scene they found inside. As battle upon battle played out in the city streets, handfuls of Westlanders, at the command of their leader, were dragging the corpses from both sides back into the buildings and alleyways, as if trying to protect them.

  The Valleyan fighters didn’t stop to question this occurrence, as they were still outnumbered considerably. It was all they could do to stay alive and find a way to keep the Westlanders from getting deeper into the city, where most of the innocents, and the horse herds were.

  Eventually, the Westlanders found some of the fenced pens where the precious animals were being guarded. Lord Brach ordered that the horses all be killed, and several more groups of his men broke loose from the main body, and started running them through with brutal efficiency.

  The surge of anger this action sent through the ranks of the Valleyans, caused a resurgent rally of their defense just before dawn. But when the sun finally did break the horizon, the sounds of battle died away, and were replaced by shouts and screams of utter terror. The battle resumed then, but it wasn’t Westlander against Valleyan anymore. It was the dead against the living. The corpses were rising and engaging those still alive with a jealous fervor.

  Dead horses stampeded through the streets, and broken bodied soldiers limped, or crawled with determined expressions on their faces, each trying to kill or maim the living men that mocked them. Before long, only the dead and the undead could be found in the red city of Dreen, and they were all forming up, following the orders of Lord Brach, to begin the long march directly to Xwarda.

  A few men made it out of Dreen alive. One of them was King Jarrek’s elite Redwolf guardsman, Brady Culvert. Wearing his red plate armor like a shroud, the son of Marshal Culvert had warned King Broderick of the coming of Westland’s forces, then dutifully stayed on to lend his sword.

  He fought beside the Valleyan soldiers all night long, but when dawn broke, and the dead started rising, it was every man for himself. He battled like a cornered animal and eventually won free of the encroaching death, and wild necromancy that was taking place inside the walls of Dreen. He had witnessed firsthand the awakening of the dead, and now found himself terrified and fleeing eastward ahead of them, as fast as his still living horse could carry him.

  The idea that the evil force, that had destroyed his homeland could have grown stronger, was beyond the grasp of his reason, but it had. These soldiers couldn’t be killed, because they were already dead. They probably wouldn’t need rest or food, and they would fight on mindlessly, while arrows and steel tore apart their lifeless flesh. What was worse was that they were going to Xwarda next.

  Knowing that was where King Jarrek had gone to seek aid gave Brady reason enough to get there and warn them. He would warn those along the way as well. As much as he wanted to put his steel to use against them, he understood that it would be a waste of effort. He had to get to Xwarda and give testimony to the insane magnitude of the evil that followed him. He only hoped that he could stay ahead of the undead army, and if he could get to Xwarda in time, that they wouldn’t think him a lunatic for his tale.

  Chapter 46

  “How far away is it, Hyden Hawk?” asked Vaegon.

  “Not very far,” Hyden answered grimly.

  Grrr’s hackles rose and he darted into the thicket, beneath the forest canopy at the northern edge of their camp. He growled, and then peeled into a series of savage barks. The other wolves wasted no time going to him.

  “Someone – no – a group of people approaches,” Hyden spoke the feelings that Grrr’s warning conveyed to him and the wolf pack.

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth, then the sound of jangling tack, and the nervous whinny of a horse, come to his ears. Oddly, Hyden heard Grrr’s growling tail off into a whimper of confusion, before it ceased all together.

  A pair of riders moved confidently out of the trees. Another was behind them, and two more followed. The camp was so crowded by then, that the last two men had to stop more in the trees than in the clearing.

  The person in the middle of the other four was a woman. She was draped in glittering chain mail, which was belted at the waist with a large, steel-plated girdle. She wore no helmet. It was dangling from her saddle horn. Her hair was in a long, fat yellow braid that trailed over her shoulder and ended somewhere near her bosom. She wasn’t young, but was far from being considered old. It was hard to say, but she was probably quite shapely under all that armor, at least Hyden thought so. Her fair-skinned face was probably beautiful as well, but her narrow-browed scowl was hiding its potential. She looked to be the one in command, sitting atop her gray horse, with its fancy cropped mane and even fancier saddlery.

  The four men with her were rugged looking. The two in front were cloaked, and dressed in uniform leather woodsman’s attire, all shades of gray, brown, and green. Their bows were drawn. One had an arrow trained on Vaegon. The other had his pointing at Hyden’s heart.

  The two men behind the woman were armored as well as she was, though theirs was in far worse condition, as if it had been put to its proper use on more than one occasion. They wore their helmets with the visors up, and though they were crowded, and still mostly in the forest, neither seemed to be worried about it affecting the swing of their drawn blades
.

  Besides feeling the full anticipation of the coming dark-winged creature he had just seen through Talon’s vision, Hyden was aware that the wolves were completely silent, and nowhere to be seen.

  “Where are my white furred friends?” he asked sharply. His bow was drawn, and held as steady as the other men’s, but his arrow was aimed at the woman’s heart.

  She spoke a strange word, and snapped her fingers. Instantly, Grrr’s whine of confusion seemed to start from halfway through. Then, the wolves were leaping back into the camp, taking on aggressive stances, and growling savagely at the intruders. By the amount of distance Grrr kept from them, it was obvious that he was wary. His feelings were conveyed to the other wolves by his posture. More than once, he glanced at Hyden for some indication of what he should do.

  “You picked a bad time to come upon us lady,” Mikahl said, with polite urgency. His face was a study in raw emotion. “Some dark and deadly beast approaches our camp as we speak.”

  “A trick!” One of the leather clad men up front barked.

  “Just like them little buggers,” agreed the other.

  “Silence, rangers!” the lady commanded. Then to Mikahl, in the same demanding tone, “Why are you here? It isn’t wise to sneak into a kingdom that is under attack. Willa the Witch won’t be pleased by your trespass. You don’t look like Valleyans, or Seawardsmen, for that matter, and you travel with wolves and an elf. Who do you align with?”