by T. O. Munro
“Our purpose is to draw him closer for a killing shot, remember,” Mitalda admonished.
“But what if we miss.”
“I didn’t miss,” Bulveld said flatly. And then, even across the length of the bailey and beyond, Niarmt saw a flare of blue white light against the Dragon’s flank. Then as the creature’s head jerked round in surprise, its jet of flame scorching the empty air, she saw a second spell burst in the angle of the Dragon’s wing. The great lizard roared, its voice a rumble of thunder rolling across the fortress.
“We hurt it!” Niarmit cried.
“I am afraid we have done so such thing, Niarmit, not yet,” Thren corrected her. “There is no spell nor weapon that can penetrate a dragon’s hide. We have merely been saying hello.”
“Now!” At Bulveld’s command they drew a third arrow and launched it at the hovering beast. The dragon must have caught a flicker of the arrow and tracked its source, for it gave a powerful downbeat of its wings propelling it towards Niarmit’s vantage point, just before the enhanced missile burst in a shower of ice along its neck.
“I think he heard us.” The leaner Bulveld said as the beast soared towards them, beating its way over the bailey and climbing.
“Wait for it,” Mitalda cried.
Niarmit watched the dragon, claw its way higher even than the top of the tower, circling around the pinnacle of Quintala’s fortress at a distance of a hundred yards or so.
“I can try for an ear shot,” Bulveld called out.
“No!” Mitalda commanded. “A mouth shot is surer, wait until that presents itself.”
After a couple of wary circuits, the dragon swerved away heading north.
“The coward’s running.” There was disappointment in the stocky Bulveld’s voice as the winged serpent clawed further and higher.
“No he’s not.” Mitalda’s observation was scarcely out of the great queen’s mouth, before the reptile flicked his tail over and performed a lightning quick mid-air about face, so that he was now facing and heading downwards in a steep dive towards the tower top.
“Get ready.”
The beast was closing at a great speed, his mouth opening. Within the gaping maw, Niarmit saw a flicker of flame from two glands either side of its throat and then the dragon breathed out and a jet of flame bathed her. The stone blistered, but she and those within the Helm felt nothing more than a mild warmth.
“I can’t see the target.” They all shared Bulveld’s complaint, their field of vision filled with harmless yellow and white heat and then it was gone and the dragon too. The arrow unloosed on the string, the reptile diving down out of shot.
“Next time,” Thren offered his reassurance as the dragon beat its wings powerfully, climbing for another turning pass.
“This time!” Bulveld made his own emphatic assurance.
The dragon jinked round again with an agility that would have credited a mouse, never mind something larger than most buildings. Niarmit leant her own meagre strength to the drawing of the bow. As the dragon’s jaw gaped opened Bulveld directed her eyes, focussed on the aiming point at the roof of its mouth. The flames came, but the king adjusted his aim for the movement of the beast that had covered them in fire and the arrow was loosed into the midst of the heat.
There was a burst of blue within the white and yellow, a hiss a splutter. The flame vanished, specks of warm water sprinkled on Niarmit’s face. Vision returned as a scaly tail shot past them.
“Did we get it?”
Niarmit swung round to catch sight of the dragon. It had levelled out of its dive and was climbing once more, though with more effort than before. “It doesn’t look like its brain has been destroyed by a shower of ice,” she said glumly.
“My aim was true,” Bulveld said indignantly.
“The spell must have gone off prematurely,” Mitalda suggested. “Once the arrow passed beyond the protection of the Helm, the flame destroyed it and set off the iceball in midair. Between the fire and the ice, it would have given the beast nothing more than mouthful of warm water.”
The great queen’s analysis was born out by the dragon’s spluttering climb. Water dripped from its jaws, as its chest heaved in a spasm of coughing.
“We must wait to loose the arrow until its fire has quite passed, then catch it with the projectile before it has closed its mouth again.”
Thren coughed a modest disagreement with Mitalda. “Or better still we catch it in the second before the fire is first launched. His flames last until he is passed us.” The modified proposal got a murmur of assent from Mitalda.
“That’s an eye blink of opportunity, young Thren,” Bulveld remarked as the dragon shrugged off the inconvenience of a mouthful of water and resumed its powerful climb for the height from which to make another diving pass. “A fast moving target, a split second shot, you ask much.”
“If you can’t make the shot, then you are no grandson of mine,” the taller Bulveld chided.
“He’s coming,” Niarmit cried.
“I see,” Bulveld the grandson replied as they bent their collective strength to draw the bow.
“Wait until his mouth opens, watching, waiting.”
Niarmit and her ancestors waited as the dragon swooped in, faster and steeper than before, but he didn’t open his mouth, or aim for them. “He’s diving too steeply. He can’t control it. He will crash.”
“No Niarmit.” There was horror in Thren’s voice. “He is controlling it. He means to crash.”
And then the serpent slammed into the tower beneath their feet. A thunderous collision that had the tower top sway left and right by as much an entire diameter. The arrows scattered across the stone, the bow fell from Niarmit’s hand and the floor of the tower tilted at a crazy angle which had her sliding towards the parapet. The creature must have hung onto the stone, its claws ripping huge holes in what was little more than an overgrown chimney, for a blast of heat erupted from within the tower, a tongue of yellow flame shooting through the narrow hatchway by which Niarmit had ascended onto the roof.
What little strength was left in the battered wizardstone quite vanished as the internal bracing of wooden beams and poles was turned to instant ash.
“Oh shit!” Niarmit felt her stomach leap upwards as the floor beneath her turned to dust and she was falling.
“The Helm,” Thren was calling. “Hold the Helm on your head.”
All thought Niarmit had of clinging to the bow or the last pair of enchanted arrows was banished into irrelevance as gravity claimed her for its own, dragging her downwards. In the choking cloud of dust, she found herself tumbling past the dragon’s side, the serpent having flung itself free of the destruction it had wrought.
She tumbled end over end, just one hand to press the Helm upon her head the other reaching into empty space while Thren mumbled a hurried spell. At last she felt her descent slowed as she fell through an opaque mist of dust, she had no idea how far she had fallen, or what lay beneath her until, just when she thought the ground would never come, she met it. Or at least she hit the dusty rubble of the base of the broken tower. The slow falling spell which Thren had cast had reduced her downward speed to little more than a brisk walking pace, but even so a brisk walk into a pile of rock is an unsteadying experience. She fell forward, arms outstretched to cushion the harsh landing on unseen obstacles. She tripped and rolled, curling herself into a ball to minimise the bruising effect of hard rock beneath the layer of dust, and then at last she came to a halt.
Standing up all was silent in her head, as silent as the enveloping cloud of dissolved wizardstone. She checked quickly that all her limbs still functioned, that all bones remained in their proper alignments and proportions. There was an aching lump on the back of her head that surprised her at first for the Helm should have shielded it, and then she realised with horror, the Helm was not on her head. It had to have fallen free in the last battering roll down the rock pile.
She gazed around, stupidly found herself calling the names of the monarchs of
the Helm, though there was no way they could hear her across the planes.
The dust was clearing, settling or evaporating and as her circle of vision expanded she caught a glint of steel further up the stack of rubble which had been the base of the tower. She scrabbled up the uneven rock pile, frantic for the artefact she had once foresworn for ever and which was now her only safety.
A movement behind her, stones and then rocks sliding over rocks made her flesh crawl. Despite herself she stopped and looked round, over her shoulder.
The dragon had landed within the circle of walls of the inner bailey; the peaked summit to Quintala’s fortress now held only a pile of rubble in token of her folly. The beast crawled across the broken stone, its great head barely thirty feet from her. She was paralysed by the sight as it opened its mouth.
She had gazed before down the creature’s throat, seen the tiny jets of flame behind its back teeth which would ignite the volatile mix of its breath, and the pair of openings by each jet one for the flammable fluid it secreted the other for the rushing air from its lungs to ensure the mixture made a flame so hot it could melt steel and warp stone. But before when she had seen that sight, she had been wearing the Helm, protected by its dweomer.
Niarmit glanced round at the great Helm of Eadran, perched tantalisingly out of reach. In an awful instant she realised the alignment of serpent, queen and Helm was almost exactly the same as the one Maelgrum had intended when he had set the dragon against her. Not only would the dragon’s next breath destroy her, it would chase her fleeing soul across the planar bridge into the Domain of the Helm and destroy that too.
She flung herself sideways, determined to break the destructive link and at least spare her ancestors from her fate. She felt the wind of the dragon’s inward breath and braced herself for the instant immolation which Haselrig had assured her was at least a swift end.
There was a shout, a clang of metal on metal and a blast of heat as the dragon’s fire swept not at her, but past her. As she rolled, she looked and saw a steel spear fall from the dragon’s eye, flicked away by a bat of its eyelid over the surface of its impenetrable cornea. The jet of flame was playing across the top of the inner gatehouse. Kimbolt stood bent over a scorpion, working the windlass to reset the giant crossbow and launch another steel spear.
“Kimbolt!” she cried. “Down!” The seneschal flung himself flat out of sight behind the embrasures just as the flame reached the wooden siege engine, which immediately erupted into flaming kindling.
Shaken free at last of the paralysis of dragon fear, Niarmit lunged the last few strides for the Helm, pulling it onto her head as she rolled down the far side of the slope of broken rock and stone.
“What happened?”
“What’s happening?”
A cacophony of ancestral demands greeted her re-connection with the Domain of the Helm. “See for yourself,” she growled, rising to her feet and calling a challenge at the dragon.
“Where’s the bow?”
“Where’s the arrow?”
“Hush, Bulvelds,” Mitalda commanded. “Let me concentrate.”
“Hey, you, lizard!” The dragon’s ears, mere pits in its skin at the point where its jaw met its skull, flared a little wider as it tried to trace the sound. “Yes, you.”
The dragon lunged, surprisingly quickly for something so large, but as before in the cavern beneath Morwencairn, the blow of its claw stopped short with a crackle of energy as the protection of Eadran’s Helm held good.
It opened its mouth then, drawing in a houseful of air to ignite. Through the communion of the Helm the five monarchs stared into the gaping maw and the vulnerable upper palate that was their target.
“If I had the bow and the arrow now,” Bulveld moaned as they braced themselves for a blast of harmless fire. “By the Goddess even Santos could hit it from here.”
“The bow’s on the far side of this rubble, buried about two foot down,” Mitalda announced. “Let’s get over there and get digging.”
The blast of fire never came. Instead, as they turned Niarmit’s body where Mitalda had directed, the dragon swept its claws through the loose rubble beneath them. Niarmit, tumbled again in a spray of falling rock. With some difficulty she kept the Helm on her head while rolling through another battering by rock and stone.
“Lost it again,” Mitalda cursed.
“Can you cast your ice-ball spell on anything other than an arrow?” Niarmit demanded as her grasping fingers lighted on something thick and cold.
“What have you in mind, Queen Niarmit?”
“How about this?” Niarmit raised the steel spear infront of her. It took the additional strength of the Bulvelds to manage the heavy weapon with any ease.
“That will work.” The great queen’s will worked the fingers of Niarmit’s hand as the dragon shuffled round for another attack. Just as the great beast’s head lowered towards Niarmit, Mitalda announced the spell complete.
Niarmit held the spear above her shoulder one handed, like a javelin, grateful for the help of the three kings. The dragon looked at her blinking slowly.
“Come on, you bastard,” Bulveld’s scream broke from Niarmit’s lips. “Come on, open your ugly mouth and try and breathe a little fire on us. Come on!”
“He’s not going to,” Thren decided. “He’s not going to offer us the shot.”
The dragon evidently agreed with the kinslayer’s bane for, with mouth firmly closed, it set to clawing at the ground infront of its tormenting prey. The rock and earth shook making Niarmit sway unsteadily. “He knows he can’t hurt us while I wear the Helm,” she cried. “He’s going to keep shaking us until the bloody thing falls off again.”
The dragon added its snout to the work of its claws, and then for good measure lashed at the far side of the low hillock with its thunderous tail. Niarmit staggered and fell to one knee, still holding the spear one handed, but feeling the Helm slip forward on her head. She had not stood on a surface so unstable since the shipwreck all those months ago, the event which had halted her flight to Oostport and the Eastern Lands.
She staggered upright as the dragon crashed its jaw with such force into the ground infront of her, that she was flung up in the air. She landed knees bent just feet from its nostrils, its baleful eyes watching for the slightest slippage in the protective artefact.
“Come on!” She saw an opportunity and sprang upright. “Jump.”
The monarchs leant their strength to her legs and she leaped and landed squarely on the dragon’s nose. With a roar it lifted its head as she ran between its eyes, sliding across its swaying scaly skull, hand scorched by the hot steel of its armoured plating, and then she was slipping past its ear. With a twist and a lunge she flung the spear deep into the opening, the thrust given added force by the weight of four other monarchs’ wills.
And then she was sliding and falling as the dragon raised its head still further with a roar and she fell from him onto the ground with a blow that drove every gasp of breath from her body and shook the Helm free from her head.
The dragon was howling as it swung its great head round, the last few inches of the butt end of the steel spear still visible protruding from its ear. Niarmit, alone with her thoughts once more, was quite spent. No part of her body would answer to her will and she gazed up in blank acceptance as the dragon raised its head, opened its mouth to draw in air to fuel a killing breath of fire.
And then there was a dull whump a flash of blue and white light behind the steel glass of the dragon’s eyes and its head fell forward like a toppled temple, crashing into the ground just feet from Niarmit’s prone body. It struck with enough force to lift and shift her two feet in the air and as many again back. This time, when she hit the ground, Niarmit decided she would really rather just stay there.
***
The setting sun was silhouetting the mound of Colnhill as it sank towards the western Horizon. The tower was gone, the dragon too. Quintala prowled her camp in magnificent solitude. Rondol was
doubtless celebrating her misfortune in company with his shaven headed mistress. Either that or he was wise enough to avoid all contact with her in the moment of her humiliation and his vindication. Being shown to have been right all along would not save him, indeed it was more likely to condemn him.
Haselrig too had eschewed her company, skulking in the outer reaches of the camp. Doubtless he was delighting in sharing news of the disaster with Maelgrum, even as the sun’s light faded on a day of abject failure for the half-elf’s plans.
Only Mazdurg dared approach her, the scarred orc chieftain entirely lacking the skills to sense her mood and beat a sensible retreat. But then it was not his emotional awareness that had brought Mazdurg to this high command.
“Orders, lady?” he demanded.
“We attack,” she snapped. “Tonight.”
“But dragon gone, castle walls still stand, men too.”
“Are you scared, Mazdurg?” she rounded on him.
He shook his head slowly, blinking puzzlement in his yellow eyes. “Not scared, lady no. But we have no ladders. Walls are high, hill is steep. We go there, we just die. Mazdurg not scared, but Mazdurg not stupid.”
“And you think I am?”
His silence was the height of orcish eloquence.
“Then you can just fuck off, you dwarf-buggerer,” she shouted.
The orc gave a curt nod, his eyes fixed on the half-elf’s furious face, before backing away. Quintala put her hands to her face, steepled fingers pressed over nose and mouth. She drew in long but ineffective calming breaths, spat out more curses at the dusk and then at last bent her fingers to pull open another gate.
***
Niarmit guessed it had been a long time since Santos had been so happy, maybe an entire millennium. The steward’s face was split in a beaming smile of happy servility. Two more monarchs of the past had joined what was almost a throng in the Chamber of the Helm, and Santos was making delighted introductions. Niarmit racked her brain, trying to place these new arrivals in the pantheon of rulers which her dry history tutor had struggled to impress upon her.