The world came closing in over him like a drawstring sack. Then there was nothing.
Marcherion was determined and ready to fly. He called out to Blaze, but received no response. His wyrm had flown off with Lemmy, Rikky, and Silva. Now beyond the range of the castle’s magical field, he and the dragon could no longer communicate through their bond-link. It was maddening. If the others would have waited just a day longer he could have gone with them.
Zahrellion and Aikira had carried all but two of the witches with them to the Outlands. The remaining Hazeltine were the feeblest of the crones. They were left to watch over Herald, but one of them was eager to help March get down to the star ship crater where the ogres were reorganizing their leather works.
Tkux was happy to help fit Marcherion, in his splint-legged condition, to a saddle and strap him down. The only problem was there was no dragon to fly him around and test it. There was Crimzon, but March didn’t dare disturb the big red wyrm in his stable. Just the knowledge that he would be able to fly when Blaze returned was welcome. Over and again, he tried as hard as he could to call out to his dragon, but it wasn’t meant to be.
Once back in the castle, Marcherion made use of his time by sharpening long, thick-shafted arrows and practicing the words of some spells he had been learning. He struggled to try and walk a few times, but the pain was too much. He could stand still just fine, but the action of stepping sucked the strength out of him. He knew he could sit the saddle once it was mounted on Blaze’s back, though, so he didn’t get discouraged.
He read from a chronicle of nature to Herald’s still form every day, and once thought the old fart grunted. All in all Marcherion was feeling as hopeful as he had in weeks. That changed when his dragon was seen in the sky to the south by one of Tkux’s kin. Blaze was alone, and the grim silence the dragon held as he approached was intense. Silva wasn’t flying alongside the fire wyrm, and neither Rikky nor Lemmy were on Blaze’s shoulders.
Marcherion was pleased to feel that his dragon wasn’t wounded, but still his blood began to boil. The power of the white gold medallion he wore flared icy cold against his chest. Blaze’s vengeful temperament pleased him even more.
Chapter 21
Zahrellion didn’t like the situation in Delton. She didn’t have time to complain, though, because hordes of goblins and trolls came pouring into the city soon after they arrived. There were fewer Sarax here, but still the sky was dotted with them. Some of them bore strange weapons and wore belts and gloves. These Sarax seemed to fly and attack with some sense of organization. Luckily, Aikira brought the bladder sprayers that Rikky forgot when he stormed off with Lem. Zahrellion was so angry with them, and Jenka too, that she paid no heed to the throbbing ache in her chest.
Spring was showing itself, but still the air was frigid. The battle on the ground was a bloody, muddy mess. Against the trolls, the Outlander men held their own. But when Sarax dropped out of the sky and decimated their ranks they began to fall in numbers. Even with salt water streaking up in random squirts, scalding the aliens to the core, the men went down. Several witches of the Hazeltine were dispersed throughout the city. All of them were working with one goal in mind. They wanted to keep the hordes back long enough for the people to flee west to the coast.
It wasn’t working. Already a band of trellkin three score strong was working to circumvent the city proper so that they could get to the western road. There, hundreds and hundreds of innocent people were strung out, with their wagons and belongings strapped to their backs.
Zahrellion saw this and urged Crystal in that direction. The frost wyrm readily complied. Aikira stayed where she was, though, and helped protect the witches and the queen as they desperately fought to buy some more time for the evacuees.
The goblins were lagging behind, their taller kin able to lope across the sloppy terrain easily twice as fast as the rest. Zahrellion knew that she wasn’t going to be able to stop the brunt of the attacking trolls.
Zah did what she could. When they passed over, Crystal sprayed a dozen or more of the creatures with her icy spew. The trellkin stiffened and fell, causing others to stumble over their frozen bodies on the ground. Some of them leapt clear and tore right into a group of fleeing townsfolk. The big white dragon wheeled around sharply and blasted at the next wave of trellkin. She couldn’t stop the attacks that started, but she could prevent the bulk of the creatures from getting there; at least she could for a few moments.
Heartier men, men with weapons and some training, came on horseback. They were thundering down the road toward the area. Zah couldn’t see how many because suddenly a Sarax swept past and ripped a screaming mother from the ground. The woman was so panicked that she didn’t let go of her young daughter until they were forty feet above the wagon train. Zahrellion’s heart sank because she knew her big wyrm couldn’t get there in time. She started to close her eyes and look away as they flew past, but she caught a flash of green skin in her vision.
Crystal blasted a different Sarax, but only froze a portion of its body. It flared brilliant and flashed yellow for a moment, and the part that was frozen shattered into a hundred pieces.
It wasn’t Tkux, Zah saw, but it was an ogre. The creature caught the falling girl in stride. The terrified child was screaming as if the Taker himself had gotten hold of her. Only after the ogre sat the girl down with a knot of other huddling humans and turned to defend them did she quiet. That silence only lasted until she remembered what had just happened to her mother.
The trolls and goblins who engaged the evacuees soon found themselves fighting a more formidable foe. There were only twenty ogres, but they were ferocious. One of the larger of them had a length of anchor chain three times as long as a man. It slung and slammed and spun the heavy steel around, devastating everything in its radius. A Sarax noticed the amount of damage that particular ogre was doing and dove to attack it. Zahrellion saw the Sarax and knew its thoughts, as if she were thinking them herself.
She felt her forehead tingling. She urged Crystal to dive, and her dragon complied. The big white wyrm corkscrewed down sharply and let out an ear-piercing shriek toward the ogre, warning of her coming. The green-skinned creature dove away just as the Sarax and Crystal’s breath impacted where it had just been.
The ogre found itself facing an orc wielding a large double-bladed axe. The orc was savage and buried its blade in the ogre’s shoulder, but the ogre slung its chain around the orc’s head and yanked into a spin with such force that black blood shot into the air where its neck ripped open.
Zah spotted a pair of children running away from the rest of the people. She also saw a swooping Sarax coming to eat them.
“Go, Crystal,” she yelled at the top of her lungs. She began writing characters before her in the sky. A tracer of pink light trailed from her fingertip and lingered long enough for each symbol to form completely before it evaporated. Suddenly, the world buckled as a warbling flow of yellow energy shot from her hand across the sky and obliterated the Sarax. It was all for nothing, because the goblins were coming, and they were tearing into the children’s flesh before Zah could even catch her breath. Soon the whole road was overrun. The people trying to flee the city were trapped and now retreating back behind its modest walls. Zahrellion and the ogres guarded the rest and kept the pursuit from chasing them as they worked their way west as fast as they could. Zahrellion regretted getting caught in the situation. She knew she was needed elsewhere. She wasn’t going to leave these people unprotected, though. Not even the dozen ogres that remained stood a chance of protecting them from the Sarax without her.
Blaze carried Marcherion south to where he’d seen Rikky and Silva consumed in the alien’s magic. Marcherion couldn’t tell much from the scene below him: a dead Sarax, a few footprints, and a lot of muddy trampled valley floor. There was no alien, nor was there a dragon, a Dragoneer, or a half-elf.
There was a trail of footprints that led away, but they ended in a clump of trees and were expertly disguise
d thereafter. Marcherion guessed that it was Lemmy who had gotten away on foot. His dragon didn’t know why the golden-haired mute had jumped off of Silva, but he had. Blaze showed great respect when describing how Lemmy attacked the alien. The red dragon even displayed some fear when describing what had happened to Rikky and Silva.
After circling overhead in an ever-widening circuit, Marcherion spotted a set of tracks that could only have come from the gargantuan creature his dragon had described. They followed these tracks west and north along the foothills and found the creature leaving the smoldering ruins of Indale. It was moving west toward Delton. Marcherion knew better than to give away their presence. He had Blaze stay high in the sky as they watched the eerie-looking doggish thing make its way out of the hills. As the slope of the terrain below lessened, March noticed the gigantic creature picking up speed with its loping gait. It was morphing, he saw, from a doggish form into something more fleet and agile; something wolfish, but with a feline grace of motion.
Its skin remained milky clear and was streaked with green and purple veins. The thing didn’t seem concerned with the elements or the landscape. In fact it looked to have adapted well, as it raced along the slushy lower hills toward Delton.
At some point Marcherion decided that it would be wiser to fly ahead and warn Zah, Aikira, and the witches of what was coming. He wasn’t sure how they would defeat such a thing, and wished, not for the first time, that Jenka was there, and that they were not scattered all over the land. On top of all that he was worried deeply about Rikky. The depth of fear and awe in his dragon’s tone when Blaze had explained what he saw conveyed a sense that the boy hadn’t survived whatever had happened to him. Marcherion hoped Blaze was wrong. He knew his dragon well, though, and that only made him feel worse about the situation.
Chapter 22
Aikira felt like a drone. She did as Mysterian and King Blanchard commanded, and did it in a swift, emotionless manner. Her grief had shut off her mind. She was numb. Her young brother Malkuss, her mother, her father, and her lover, dear Weldon Gimmerwick, were all dead. There had been no survivors fleeing Indale ahead of the horde. Not one.
The chasm in her heart was deep and black. She and her dragon both carried on in a mechanical fashion. Luckily, King Blanchard had no reservations about commanding any of them. With sharp barking orders that sounded thin coming out of Linux’s throat, he organized his wife and the witches. They in turn organized the Outland councilmen, and the mobs of willing men outside. Soon Delton was being evacuated and somewhat defended.
Now the retreat was cut off. The hordes of vermin split around the city and attacked the roads going west. Worse still, Zahrellion and her big white dragon were forced to break away and guard the other portion of the retreat.
That wasn’t bad for the refugees, Aikira reflected. Those people deserved protection as much as the next person. Zahrellion couldn’t just abandon them. Zah wouldn’t do that, Aikira decided, and knew she was correct.
Aikira was alone in the sky, and she had a whole lot of ground to help the men defend. Those who were cut off were being closed in upon. Slowly, they were being herded back into the city where the rest of the trellkin were attacking. The Outlanders had never feared the Frontier, and the defensive walls they’d erected were nothing formidable. From above, Aikira saw that there wasn’t much hope. For every man defending, there were a score or more trellkin.
She made a circle around the perimeter of the enclosing trolls. Golden blasted forth her hot liquid spew, destroying the enemy in great swaths. These attacks only slowed the advance, and Aikira knew she had to warn Mysterian and the councils of their fate. She could only hope that someone would come up with a plan.
She didn’t bother to land Golden out away from the populace. Instead, she blasted a Sarax right out of the sky with the wizardly magic she’d learned from Vax Noffa, then she had her dragon come back-flapping down to the cobbles to land right in front of the Witch Queen’s Inn.
From not so far away, the thrum and following whoosh of a catapult launching a barrel of seawater could be heard. She saw it go arcing away, but didn’t see where it ended up.
Before Aikira’s yellow-scaled wyrm had a chance to settle, Mysterian was bursting out of the doors warning people to let them be. Right behind the old Hazeltine came the tattoo-faced king, Rolph the guardsmen, and Queen Alvazina.
To everyone’s surprise, Rolph shouted out a nonsensical phrase and whirled his arms about, sending a streaking turquoise pulse of energy up into a Sarax that was coming to investigate the dragon. The Sarax held still in the sky for a beat then fell straight down, spinning into a crowd of people.
“You’re encircled,” Aikira said into the silence that followed Rolph’s display of druid magic. “We are far outnumbered, and Zahrellion cannot leave those who got away. I don’t know what to do.”
“Are there not any tunnels or underground chambers?” King Blanchard asked the Outland council members. Aikira saw one of the men’s eyes light up, and knew what he was thinking. There was a tunnel. Several caves in the shaft boasted displays of crystal. Legend said that dwarves used to inhabit it, and that they grew the crystals for the power they somehow generated. Aikira had visited the place once with her parents. The memory hung like a thick wad of tears and mucus in her throat. She knew the dwarven talk was just to attract copper pieces from the curious folk, but she didn’t know where the shaft led. By the sudden change in the councilman’s expression, neither did he, or any of the others.
“It doesn’t much matter where it leads.” Rolph moved next to the king. “We have to get as many people as we can moving through there.”
King Blanchard gave Rolph a cross look, but added a nod of respect. “Round up some of the heartier men. Give them torches and axes. There are bound to be folk who’ve gone down there, too. Find them.”
He looked up at Aikira and she saw a flash of confusion in his eyes. Then she heard the sudden thrumming of Sarax swarming in from behind her. It was all Golden could do to leap clear of the toothy alien creatures. Then the hot static blast of Rolph’s Druid magic nearly scorched them as they went.
The last thing Aikira saw before her dragon carried her clear of that part of the city was a glassine green dome snap into place over the very spot she had just left. Outside of the field, the Sarax began decimating anything they could get hold of. Soon the whole city was thick with goblins, orcs, and trolls. For every knot of vermin, there was an ivory-antlered alien imago commanding them.
There were Sarax, too. So many that Golden and her rider were soon caught in a swarm. One of the Sarax had a pike-like weapon and jabbed it at her. When it touched Golden, a familiar shock flashed through her body. The burst bit straight through flesh and scale, but Aikira cast forth a pulse of energy that sent the foul creature flailing away. It didn’t matter. There were a hundred more there to take its place.
When Marcherion and blaze came streaking down out of the sky over Delton, March saw the strange green dome flash into existence. A Sarax that had been half in, half out of the limits of the field was cut in two. The upper portion of torso and one of its wings slid down the edge of the dome, leaving a dark, shimmering streak. He remembered the other Dragoneers telling him how Mysterian cast forth such a thing to save ships full of soldiers landing to defend Mainsted when Gravelbone was attacking. He wondered why the dome was so much smaller than Rikky and Jenka had described. Then he saw a flash of gold deep inside a swarm of Sarax. Blaze didn’t need direction. The fire drake surged toward Golden with powerful thrusts of his wings. Marcherion’s rage fueled the magic contained in his white gold medallion. As his dragon spewed forth gouts of searing flame, twin rays of cherry shot from his eyes. They sliced through everything they contacted.
March could see that Golden was bitten in at least two places. One of the bites looked severe, but it was near the dragon’s rump, away from her wings. The amount of damage being done by Aikira’s wizard magic was fading. March didn’t cast spells, so he
had never experienced spell weariness firsthand, but he’d heard Jenka complain of it. He’d seen how his fellow Dragoneer was drained to a husk when he’d sealed up the star ship what seemed like an age ago.
Marcherion’s rage caused him to nearly sear off one of Golden’s wings. At least a third of the swarm was littering the city below. Most of the remainder of the alien creatures were dispersing. Only a few were still trying to harry the dragon and its rider. One of these was drenched in dragon blood and seemed intent on finishing the meal it had started.
Blaze carried them right over Aikira, and as soon as they were clear, the fire drake roasted one of the creature’s wings to cinders. Marcherion felt an urge and shouted out a word from deep within. Up from his gut and out of his mouth a lightning-sharp streak of raw power pulsed forth and evaporated another Sarax into a misty wet cloud of black goo.
March looked up, coughing, to see another Sarax dropping at him from above. It never had a chance to get there, for Aikira and Golden went banking around so sharply that they were upside down. The gold dragon’s thinned spew did little to the creature, but its hind claws latched a hold and hurled it away fast enough that neither dragon nor Dragoneer were affected by the thing’s bright, flashing defensive pulse.
“I’m sure glad to see you,” Aikira yelled as her dragon came back around to glide just above Blaze.
“And you. Where is Zahrellion? Have you seen Rikky?” Marcherion asked, his anger slowly turning into concern.
The Confliction (Book Three of the Dragoneers Saga) (Dragoneer Saga) Page 10