DW01 Dragonspawn

by Mark Acres

  The night was dark and the moon had already set; the army was more than a mile ahead on the road. Once she was out of the area of the camp, Marta moved freely over the grassland without fear of being seen. She made her way to the small stream that had provided water for the camp, then worked her way southward along its banks until it meandered into a copse.

  There, in the shelter of the trees, Marta laid her bundle on the stream bank and stripped off her clothes. She stepped into the stream and gave herself a quick, bracing cold bath. When she came out of the water, her large folds of fat were covered with gooseflesh. She knelt by the bank. Her hands dug in the mud at the edge of the water, and she smeared it thickly on her face and hands.

  That done, Marta carefully unpacked her large sack and laid out the garments she had so carefully collected. First came the tunic. It had been a tight fight, but she’d let it out at the seams and filled in the gap with a strip of bright red material that did not match. No matter, she had thought. No one will see it unless I’m dead or dying. Next she drew on the breeches she’d swiped from the tailor’s stores—a pair made of soft brown cloth and big enough to fit her, for they had belonged to the fat wagon driver who did nothing all day except drive the wagon and swill down heavily malted beer. The boots she’d stolen from a soldier who’d passed out drunk two nights ago; it was not hard to find a pair that fit her well.

  The mail shirt, helmet, spear, small round shield, sword, and dagger had been more difficult to obtain. She chose not to think about the compromises she had made to get these items; instead, as she donned them, she thought about her late husband, Albert. She remembered how handsome he had looked, even on the night that he died. She remembered his severed head, lying in the mud, impaled on the spike of a morning star. She remembered how much she wanted to defeat the Black Prince who’d burned his mark into her back, how she wanted to slay him with her bare hands, to rip his heart from his chest and shove it, still beating, down his throat.

  At length Marta finished. Only one touch remained. Marta grabbed a hunk of her hair and with the crude dagger, not nearly sharp enough, she cut it off short. She repeated this procedure until her hair was no more than a ragged crown upon her high forehead. Satisfied, she donned the helmet and began clanking her way downstream toward the soldier’s camp. One more footman had joined the army of Argolia.

  King Ruprecht’s skittish white stallion pranced daintily in front of the three legions of Heilesheim. Cheers broke out from the ranks as he passed by, cheers that in truth were more directed toward Culdus, the large man on the steady gray war-horse that trotted solidly behind the king’s mount.

  It was a perfect day for battle. The sun was up, the sky was clear, and the air was cool but not cold. There was enough of a breeze to flutter the banners and standards, making them easier to see, but not so much that the archers would have difficulty with their aim.

  Culdus allowed himself a smug smile as the king in his gleaming white armor with black dragon crest emblazoned on the cuirass fought to control his skittish horse. With each loud hurrah the horse would startle, back step, and almost rear into the air, making the young rider, trying so hard to look magnificent, appear ridiculous instead.

  At the risk of upstaging the king, Culdus acknowledged each round of cheers with an upraised hand. After all, he thought, it was not the king who brought them this far and who would lead them to victory today. It was he, Culdus, who designed the most magnificent military system the world of men had yet known.

  Only two things were spoiling the day for Culdus. The first was this ridiculous parade-ground display. The king had demanded it, saying that his parading before the army in full array in front of the enemy lines and allowing the enemy to see him cheered by his troops would dishearten the enemy soldiers. Probably nonsense, Culdus thought, but he did not object except for the delay. The sun was up; it was time to attack.

  The second cloud on Culdus’s horizon was the League of the Black Wing. The wizards and their specially trained wyvern riders had joined the army on its march northward from Kala. Now, in center of each legion block, a small contingent of mages stood, their fire and lightning spells ready to sow havoc in the enemy ranks. As if those would be needed, Culdus reminded himself. For the attack, against his advice, was to open with an air assault by the wyvern riders. This alone might be enough to break the enemy and send his forces fleeing back to Clairton. Culdus opposed the move for two reasons. First, he wanted to test his system on a large scale. This would be the greatest battle of the war so far, with fully twenty thousand enemy troops from all over the Holy Alliance arrayed against Culdus’s well-honed legions. It would be pleasing to see what his men could do without all the claptrap of magic. Second, Culdus did not want the enemy forces to be routed too soon. In addition to the three legions deployed in battle array on the front, two more were even now marching from the west. If the delicate timing worked correctly, these two legions would fall on the enemy’s right flank at the height of the battle, insuring the destruction of the foe. If the Argolians ran away too soon, many would live to fight another day.

  Culdus reined in his horse and gazed across the field. The great red and gold banner of the King of Argolia and his Royal Guard stood at the center of the enemy’s deep lines of mounted horsemen. That line stretched about a thousand yards across the field, with occasional gaps between the forces of the different noble commanders. Culdus was both pleased and surprised to see that the enemy’s foot soldiers, instead of being deployed behind their knights, as was normal, were thrown in clumps out in front of the enemy’s main battle line. There they stood, obviously poorly organized, just awaiting an attack that could scatter them like sand in the wind.

  Culdus’s own three legions were deployed in their block formation, with the center legion about two hundred yards forward of the flanking legions. This triangular wedge, Culdus knew, was extremely flexible and capable of responding to a threat from any direction save the rear. But this time there would be no threat to the rear. The wagon camp was heavily garrisoned with a detachment from the reserve legion, and south of Clairton an enemy force would find nothing but waste: burned fields, ruined villages, and pillaged towns.

  King Ruprecht, having completed his parade across the front, rode over to Culdus, who had already taken his place at the front of the center legion, the Eighth.

  “Well, Culdus, a fine day for it, is it not?”

  “Indeed, Your Majesty. Now the sun is well up. Shall we begin?”

  “”Very well. Give the signal.”

  Culdus turned and shouted to the standard bearers at the front of the Eighth Legion, “Raise the standard of the League of the Black Wing!” The youth passed the order on, and quickly a huge green banner with the black dragon crest was held aloft from the center of the Eighth Legion.

  From a position to the rear of the Heilesheim forces on the crest of a small knoll, a scout saw the banner and in turn shouted the command to the wyvern riders of the League.

  Malak, Orgon, and Barak leapt to their feet.

  “At last!” Barak cried. “At last, the League goes into battle. Riders, to your mounts!”

  The field behind the knoll was covered with two hundred of the deadly reptiles who lolled in the sun, awaiting nothing. At Barak’s order their masters began the process of kicking and cajoling the giant lizards to their feet and the sometimes dangerous process of mounting them. Barak lost no time in rousing his beast and climbing into the leather-covered wooden saddle secured to the monster’s back.

  “As we agreed, brothers,” he shouted to Malak and Orgon, “I shall lead the first attack.” The two older mages were only too happy to let Barak have that honor.

  Gradually the flight began to form, as the greenish-black beasts extended their leathery wings and with ferocious flapping took to the sky. Their riders were of two kinds. One hundred were mages, armed with spells they would cast upon the enemy from on high. The
second hundred were men-at-arms, drawn from the ranks of those most desperate for glory, who had mastered the skills of archery, spear hurling, and even fighting with longswords while mounted on their disgusting lizards. Each rider knew that his mount, too, was a formidable weapon. The mere sight of a wyvern in flight, its body and wingspan both approaching twenty feet, would terrify many a foe. The creatures’ talons were sharper than most swords, and their mouths were lined with teeth whose sole purpose was to rend flesh. Finally, the long, serpentine tail of each beast carried a poisonous stinger. Men struck by it who survived the shock of the blow would die a painful death over a period of several minutes.

  With Barak guiding them with hand signals, the riders circled low in the sky until all were airborne. Once aloft, they formed into three lines, like cavalry, and mounted higher into the morning sky. There, ahead, they saw the three great legions looking like a wedge made of square blocks. And beyond, they saw the enemy lines, with his infantry out front like wheat, waiting to be threshed.

  Barak raised his magic staff, a hefty piece of wood about six feet long, high over his head and then lowered it toward the enemy lines. He pulled back the reins of his wyvern, and the beast mounted higher in the sky, preparing for the moment when it would suddenly lower its head, tilt its body forward, and dive down upon the hapless enemy.

  From the Argolian ranks a cry of astonishment arose as the formation of wyvern riders burst into view, rising in the sky behind the enemy’s carefully formed ranks.

  “Flying beasts!” went the cry along the lines. The horses of the knights in the front ranks began to whinny and paw the ground; only with difficulty could their riders hold them in their ranks.

  Bagsby stared in disbelief as the winged creatures edged higher in the sky. “What in the name of thousand demons?” he shouted.

  “Wyverns,” Shulana answered from her position by his side. “Flying beasts distantly related to the dragons of old. Watch for their tails—the sting is poisonous.”

  “Your Majesty,” Bagsby called, suddenly alarmed for the sovereign’s life, “you should quit the field at once!”

  “Nonsense,” shouted the king in reply. “Have your Guard stand their ground; our priests will deal with this. Only see that the infantry doesn’t panic!”

  Bagsby glanced at the priests who stood directly behind the king. Already their arms and eyes were raised to the heavens, and the names of the gods of Argolia tumbled from their lips in rapid succession as divine aid was sought to repel the airborne foe.

  “Be calm,” Shulana counseled. “It’s the footmen who are in the greatest danger. We cannot afford for them to panic.”

  Bagsby wheeled his mount and looked down on the plain where the infantry were already starting to slowly move back toward the line of friendly knights. Their ranks were in disarray, and the archers, rather than preparing to fire death-dealing volleys into the air, were preparing to run.

  “Stand!” Bagsby shouted to the Royal Guard as he spurred his own mount, a chestnut provided by the king, and rode hell-for-leather down the front of the hill, waving his sword in the air.

  He plowed into the ranks of the disordered infantry. “Form ranks!” he cried. “Form up and stand! Archers, form line and ready to fire! Stand fast! The gods themselves are coming to fight for you!”

  The presence of a knight on the field reassured some of the footmen, but the mass looked upon Bagsby as though he were a madman. Then the storm of magical attack broke upon them all.

  The wyverns dived earthward, gaining speed as they plunged, their wings fully extended. One hundred mages pointed their wands downward, and brilliant orange, yellow, and blue streams of magical fire shot forth ahead of them, streaking toward the Argolian foot soldiers.

  “Fireballs!” Bagsby shouted. “Drop to the ground, drop to the ground!” Bagsby’s mount circled about in the mass of men who, seeing flaming death dropping toward them from the heavens, began to drop their weapons and run pell-mell toward the imagined safety of their knights.

  The fireballs hit only seconds later, with devastating effect. The entire one thousand yards of the Argolian front was engulfed in balls of flame to a depth of more than one hundred yards. Countless hundreds of the infantry were instantly incinerated. Thousands more fell screaming to the ground, rolling and slapping themselves in an attempt to extinguish their flaming tunics, breeches, and hair. Bagsby’s horse plunged to the earth, and the little thief felt the fall coming in time to hurl himself off the horse and land beside it rather than beneath it. In the next instant the horse was a mass of burning flesh, and Bagsby’s pants were aflame beneath the scorchingly hot plate mail he wore. Like countless others, Bagsby began to roll in the grass, hoping to put out the flames, gagging and choking on the greasy smoke that roiled all around him.

  “For Heilesheim!” Barak cried high in the sky as his wyvern led the mass downward. The first line of the beasts soared through the smoke, dropping within a few feet of the ground. Unfortunate men screamed as the razor-sharp talons of wyverns ripped through their body armor, pierced their sides, and, grasping them firmly about the ribs, lifted them into the sky. More men writhed and screamed as the horrid stinging tails dropped down out of the thick smoke, plunging into backs and stomachs to pour in their deadly, burning venom.

  Bagsby put his head down and crawled in the direction he hoped was toward his own lines. This, he thought, was disaster.

  The wyvern-mounted archers had just set their bows and were in the last portion of their dive when the Argolian gods answered the prayers of the priests.

  Bagsby felt the ground shake violently; he tried to hug the soil, but his body bounced up into the air nonetheless, to land again quickly with a thud that drove the burning breath from his pain-filled lungs. Then he felt the wind.

  Barak screamed aloud in terror as his wyvern, at the head of the flight, was suddenly tossed backward in the air, spinning head over tail. The roar of the wall of wind that hit him was so great that he could not even hear the cries of the riders who came behind him. The great lizards were tossed randomly in the air like dust in a whirlwind, and their riders, almost to the man, toppled from their mounts to be carried away by the air itself, until both wyverns and men were dropped to plunge to the earth far below, where many met their death.

  Culdus swore a mighty oath as the helpless wyverns were smashed back toward his tightly packed legions, a few crashing down to their death right in the midst of his formations, burying men beneath them. The wind ripped through the ground forces as well, taking with it the loosely held spear or bow, and toppling Culdus’s own horse and the horses of the mounted nobles in their ranks behind the great infantry wedge.

  “Damn all wizards and priests!” the general shouted. “You see, you see,” he cried, fighting to rise to his feet, “what comes of allowing wizardry in battles!”

  “I see defeat,” the king shouted back, straining his throat to make himself heard above the howl of the wind, “unless you act swiftly.”

  Culdus tried to gain his feet again, and once more the wind tumbled him back to the ground. A third time he tried to rise and found to his surprise that he could. The wind was dying. It had had the beneficial effect of clearing the smoke of the fireball attack, so the field of battle could now be clearly seen. A great patch of scorched earth littered with burning corpses extended across the front of the Argolian lines, but the main cavalry force was still intact. Dying wyverns and their riders screamed and bleated in pain and terror, but to these Culdus paid no heed.

  He raised his right arm and shouted, “The legions will advance!” Those few drummers who still had their instruments began to beat the pace, and slowly the great block formations, still roughly in their wedge, began crawling forward, their front bristling with the deadly points and hooks of the eighteen-foot-long pikes that made them so effective.

  Bagsby, meanwhile, had reached the top of the hill, where two lacke
ys sent by the sub-commanders of the Guard to find him helped him to his feet. A great cheer erupted from the Argolian knights as the little man staggered over the top of the hill, his face and armor black with greasy soot.

  King Harold still held his position at the center of the line, and before the cheering had stopped, Bagsby found himself on a fresh mount at the king’s side, with Shulana discreetly taking her station on his left.

  “The gods fight for us today,” King Harold suggested.

  “Yes, but our footmen are all but gone, and the enemy advances,” Bagsby replied, coughing from the smoke he had inhaled.

  “Whatever happens now, hold the Royal Guard as a reserve!” the king commanded. All around the king and Bagsby the chants of the priests rose heavenward again.

  “What now?” Bagsby wondered.

  “Thunderbolts from your god of war,” Shulana said quietly.

  “Eh?” Bagsby replied. But even as he spoke the sunlight that had drenched the field disappeared, and Bagsby shot his gaze skyward to behold thick, black thunderheads forming.

  Culdus, too, saw the clouds and had some idea of what the enemy intended. Whether the attack took the form of fire or lightning, his tightly packed masses could hardly survive such a strike.

  “Deploy!” he shouted. “Deploy!”

  Only the Eighth Legion in the center of the wedge heard the shouted command. Their few drummers quickened their beat, and the formation began to break apart, each battle moving toward one flank or the other, as the six thousand men attempted to transform themselves from a giant block into a line three ranks deep extending across a front of nearly a thousand yards, with the archers and wizards tucked behind the front lines.

  The legion was in the midst of this maneuver when the lightning fell from the sky. Thunderbolts of pure energy thicker than the most ancient trees fell from the black clouds, forked, and plunged into the moving bodies of the Heilesheim men. The earth itself rebelled against this onslaught of pure energy, spewing up great clods of mud and rock. Dozens of men were burned to death; still more stumbled and fell into the ten-foot-deep pits the bolts opened in the earth where they hit. But even worse, the legion began to lose its tightly disciplined formation. The men, blinded by the lightning flashes, deafened by the thunder, and stumbling into the pits, could not find their positions to form the battle line.