Lemmy’s blast knocked the Sarax from the ground. It flailed back once, but its wings snapped open and it managed to land on its feet. Lemmy’s second blue sphere hit, and carried the thing backward again. This time it hit the trees before it could catch its balance.
Lemmy was charging toward it now, another blue sphere forming in his hands. Herald snatched up the sword from one of the fallen rangers, and with the wounded ogre on his heels, charged after them.
Lemmy’s third blast pummeled the creature deeper into the trees, shattering them into splinters where it hit. Then Herald was there plunging the dead man’s sword deep into the Sarax’s guts, over and over again.
Suddenly its skin flared a bright yellow, and a bone-jarring jolt sent Herald flying backward arse first with his hands touching his boots in midair. He didn’t see what happened next because the air was driven from his lungs when he hit the ground. It took a few long minutes for him to recover, but he saw the creature after. He learned that the ogre pounded the monster with a tree limb, until its head was little more than ruined pulp. Rangers were still pouring out of the keep and milling around in amazement.
“Be getting those axes out lads,” a captain shouted. “Let’s cut it apart before it jumps up and gets us again.”
Herald thought that might be a good idea. He’d never seen blood so dark that it was almost black instead of red. And the smell of the thing’s innards was like an oily film that kept coating the inside of his mouth every time he took a breath.
He studied it as they removed its limbs and flattened head, though. Lemmy watched from beside him. After it was in at least six pieces, they went inside the keep and were greeted with pats on the back and congratulations by the relieved men. Lemmy pulled away, found some parchment and ink, then wrote out a message.
The room fell silent when Herald took it and read it out loud.
“Two days’ hike north of the Temple of Dou there is a cavern full of those things,” Herald read. “Two others have escaped that place.” He had to shush some nervous murmurs, and jab a finger at a man, to get the room quiet enough for him to continue. “Vax Noffa, the Outland wizard, has been sustaining their confinement. The three that broke free killed him. Soon, hundreds of those things will be ravaging the land. All the people, even the Outlanders, must be warned. Send the rangers forth.”
The room stayed silent for a moment, everyone waiting to learn more, or find out something about the things, but finally one of the rangers broke the silence.
“Well whatta ya think we should do?”
Herald looked around and realized that he was the highest-ranking King’s Ranger left alive at the keep. Commander Stark had been killed soon after the Sarax attacked and none of his peers would dare try and step over him. Not for the first time since she’d flashed away did Herald wish Mysterian were around. She was the one who always talked with the Dragoneers and told him what they were about. He didn’t let on that he had no idea what to do, though. Like he used to do with the foresters he trained, he began barking out orders.
“Captain,” Herald reached over and touched the man’s shoulder because he didn’t know his name. “Take your men and start digging graves down by the orchard.” He pointed at another man with bars of rank on his vest, his voice growing louder with each word. He was a firm believer that if you were yelling at a man he would get a fire under his feet. “You! Have the dead listed as quickly as possible.” He paused to rub at the missing part of his arse, but only for a moment. “We need to get digging some graves. We don’t want one of the other two bastards sniffing all that gore. And someone tend to the that big green bastard out there...” And so it went.
Lemmy, seeing that warning the people wasn’t on the agenda, left to find another ogre he knew.
The Dragoneers landed half a day’s walk outside of Indale and, while the dragons fed and rested, Aikira took Jenka into the city. He was disappointed to find that the place wasn’t that much different from Three Forks, or Midwal. Wood-planked buildings along wagon-rutted roads. The occasional block structure and cobbled lane graced the cleaner areas, and the urchins looked far better than the street children of Outwal and Port. His misconception that Outlanders were nothing but thieves and pirates was shattered too. Outlanders were just people. Aikira reminded him that almost every one of them had been born beyond the wall, just like he had. He decided he had as much in common with them as he did with the people of the kingdom.
Finding the herb he wanted was no easy task, and he ended up settling for Devil’s Ribbon, which he knew would serve the same purpose as the other in a pinch, but wasn’t nearly as potent, and it had a subtle smell. Aikira didn’t understand why he wanted the stuff, but she went out of her way to help him procure it. She sold a dagger to get the coins they needed to pay for it all. When they stopped in front of a leather shop, and the ebon girl stood staring at the even darker-skinned man working inside, Jenka decided it was time for them to go. He knew why she was so concerned with Indale now, but he said nothing. Aikira followed him away, if hesitantly.
All seemed to be going well enough until the two of them walked up on the other three Dragoneers. Zahrellion was sitting very close to Marcherion and giggling at Rikky’s antics. When Jenka smirked at her, she scooted closer to March. Jenka found himself fuming. It was as if she wanted him to hate Marcherion. He didn’t understand it. March just shrugged. It was all Jenka could do to keep from yelling out in frustration.
Only three of the Dragoneers were in a fair mood, but all of them were now well stocked with provisions and gear. More, they had a plan. Jenka ground his herbs on some rocks with some rum and then stirred the results into a tin cup of lard. He had each of them rub some of the unpleasantly pungent salve on their bodies, promising that they wouldn’t regret the deed. After that, they mounted and took to the sky, flying east toward Weston, but one of them eventually began to fall behind. For some reason Silva was struggling to stay in the air.
Jenka was flying lead because he knew the area well, and Jade liked to fly high above the others. He was too far ahead to see Rikky, though. There was a dusky peach light left in the sky when he spotted the overgrown rows of untended crop fields. Then he saw the burned-out structures that marked Weston proper. He called out to the others what was ahead and the dragons banked north, all of them save for Silva.
Silva started dropping a few feet with every wing beat and then all of a sudden she was unable to do more than glide. They slid through the air past Weston, going east, and Rikky thought he could see the deeper valley that cradled the Strom River in the distance. He looked around and found that not only could he not see the others anymore, but the moon was still so low in the sky that he couldn’t see much of anything at all.
Rikky found he missed hearing his dragon’s voice in his head. He knew that she’d reassure him that she could see. He was a little scared and found that he was squeezing his dragon tear in a white-knuckled clench. Only the slow rush of Dour magic that was filling him kept him from trembling.
The rocky streambed they haphazardly swooped into was lined on both sides by dark russet and gold trees that were on the verge of shedding their leaves. More than once Silva had to tilt and swerve around an extending branch or a narrow gap.
Ahead, there was one tree that arced out over the trickling flow. It was huge in the middle, as if it were a snake the size of a house that had just swallowed an even larger meal. Silva narrowly missed dragging her hind legs across the old dead branches before she carried Rikky to a rough landing in the rocky stream wash beyond.
As soon as Silva came to a stop, Rikky let out a sigh of relief. Then a terrible buzzing sound filled his ears and not even the power of his dragon tear could suppress the dread welling inside him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It wasn’t a Sarax that was making the sound, Rikky knew, but it was no less terrifying to hear. Hornet Hollow always sounded like this. Rikky wasn’t expecting the lower-pitched grinding buzz to join the Hornets’
noise so soon, but there it was. The Sarax appeared ahead of him and was streaking in with its claws and wings extended. It was coming so fast that Rikky could do little other than raise his forearm to shield his eyes from the sight of the impending collision. Silva turned her shoulder to take the brunt of the impact. Then, amazingly, Rikky’s dragon tear responded to his need and shielded them. They felt the kinetic shove and went stumbling back. Silva had to struggle to keep Rikky in his seat, and more importantly to keep from backing into the swollen tree trunk that was just behind them.
Jenka had explained a little bit of how to direct the Dou from the teardrop, but never could quite express what he wanted to convey in words. Rikky sort of understood now, and reinforced his newfound understanding by throwing his hand forth and sending a warbling blue pulse of energy at the Sarax. He missed it completely and it immediately started back at them with powerful, churning strides. The Sarax shot across the streambed like a darting lizard, its wings tucked back and its teeth bared.
For a moment Rikky thought they were too close to escape, but then Silva leapt up just as the Sarax came grabbing at them. Reaching hand claws, as long as short swords, raked the pewter-colored wyrm’s soft underbelly and laid her open, but she rose out of its reach. The Sarax crashed past into the tree trunk, demolishing the ancient hollowed-out bark.
The sound of all the buzzing and screeching that erupted then was intense. Rikky held on for his life, hoping Silva could carry them away fast enough. The cucumber-sized hornets that he knew were pouring out of the destroyed nest were deadly poisonous. Only Jenka’s witchy mother’s repellent salve was keeping him from being stung. His dragon didn’t even have that. After a few long moments of hard flying he started feeling safe. His only hope now was that the other Dragoneers did their part and got away as cleanly. He thought Silva did a fine job of faking injuries and taking them down as perfectly as she did. He had no idea that his dragon was terribly wounded, and Silva was too intent on getting them away from the hornet nests to care about the pain.
In the moonlit darkness, Golden carried Aikira down one side of the valley’s slope, just over the treetops, and when she went zooming past the swarmed and swatting Sarax, she conjured and hurled a swirling lime-green orb of wizard’s fire at the beast. The hornets were focused on the one who had crashed their home, not the dragon that was already moving past them.
When Aikira’s flaming sphere hit, emerald tendrils as tall as the trees erupted into an inferno of eerie light. Wild shadows moved frantically. Huge venomous hornets were everywhere. Already the Sarax had fist-sized welts swelling up in several places on its thick skin. It was all it could do to swat and flap at the bugs to keep them away.
One of the hornets was suddenly consumed in the wizard’s fire. Its life ended in a stark white sizzle of sparkles. In the flash of illumination, Aikira happened to be looking back and saw Zahrellion’s yellow pulse of druid magic impact the Sarax and send it tumbling hard into the ground. As the light died away she saw the stubborn alien spin to its feet with its wings half opened to knock the hornets away. It leapt as if to take flight, but then came Jenka and Marcherion streaking in almost on top of one another.
Two long fletched shafts appeared. The oversized bladed arrows were one of the items Jenka had purchased in Indale. One glanced off of the Sarax’s hardened skull; the other penetrated deeply just under the eye. It roared out at the sudden pain. Blaze blasted forth a spew of fiery dragon breath that was ten times as hot as the green wizard fire. He then banked away and made to catch up to the others.
Jade was shooting through the sky on a dive from a great height. It was the only way the smaller, immature dragon could build up enough speed to fly through the area and avoid the gigantic hornets. After Blaze roasted the thrashing alien, all Jenka had to do was lean over as his dragon swept through. His long, heavy-bladed sword did the rest as it cleaved through the Sarax’s head and shoulder and pulsed a powerful jolt of Dou into the beast. He looked back to see its body crumple before it was swarmed over and crawling with the angry, stinging residents of Hornet Hollow.
Elated from the thrill of defeating one of the Sarax, and eager to share the news of it all, Jenka led the Dragoneers toward Kingsmen’s Keep. It wasn’t far away, and he knew they could be there long before the break of dawn.
When Rikky and Silva started falling behind this time, neither of them was acting.
Herald was outside in the firelight thrown by the staked torch pikes with the bulk of the men. It had been a long day, and more than a score of ranger bodies, and three ogres, had been carried away and buried. There were still bits of flesh and sticky piles of guts and goo on the ground, though. That’s why Herald had the rangers turning the dirt. He wanted the remains of man, ogre, and Sarax under the earth. It wasn’t so much a fear of the other beasts returning that had him commanding the rangers as he was. It was for the men, who needed to be doing more than concocting ideas about the grim state of things. Herald hadn’t told them that they had no real king to be rangering for at the moment, but he kept that in mind as he pondered how he, and the men under him, could best serve the people of the kingdom.
It came as a heart-stopping shock, and a full scale battle nearly ensued, when a handful of blue- and red-robed druids appeared outside the keep in a clearing of freshly turned earth. The poof of dust that accompanied their arrival was like a chalky cloud until it settled. It was an even bigger shock to Herald to find big old King Blanchard standing among them. He would have thought he was seeing things had the bulky man looked any less bewildered by the magic that had carried him to where he was.
The king of men peered across the torchlit yard and wrinkled his huge round face in irritation. “What in the fargin hells are you men doing out here digging around? Who’s in charge?”
Herald swallowed and scratched his head before stepping up. He’d seen King Blanchard’s body get stabbed full of holes. He could tell that what he was seeing wasn’t the real king’s flesh and bones, but the body before him would pass the muster of the rangers. He knew less about illusionation than he did about witches and druids, but he didn’t trust whatever, or whoever it was that looked so much like his king, at least not until King Blanchard recognized him and lit up.
“By the Gods, Herald, we thought that thing killed you and your witch back at the temple.” The king stepped up close and clasped Herald’s hand. For the duration of the contact, Herald saw Linux’s body before him, but when he let go it was King Blanchard standing there, with some relief showing in his heavy-jowled expression.
“Back at it rangers,” Herald commanded. “This ain’t yer concern.”
Herald remembered that he’d seen some of the blue-robed druids striding confidently through the mayhem at the temple, looking for them. The memory made him wary, but he decided that he might have been mistaken about what he’d seen. Those druids might have just been brave, or maybe they were shielded with some lunatic spell he would never comprehend. As if reading his mind, King Blanchard spoke.
“They sent men out after you. No one could find you.” The king seemed distracted for a moment, but recovered soon enough. Now, though, his pleasure at seeing Herald was wearing off. He scowled and shook his jowls before he spoke.
“We have to take Richard down,” he said softly. The depth of pain in the king’s countenance when he said it removed all of Herald’s doubt. It was really King Blanchard, in Linux’s body, illusionated to look like himself, that he was speaking to.
“Taking me down won’t be so easy, old fool,” Prince Richard said from his seat atop the Nightshade. Richard and the black hell-born wyrm had been silently perched on the keep’s lower roof top for a good while.
Just to make its presence known, the Nightshade let out a shrill shriek of warning that was nothing like the buzzing the Sarax emitted, but no less chilling. The sound sent many of the rangers, and a few of the druids, to their knees clutching their ears.
Bows were drawn, and a fist-sized streak of scarlet
flew forth from a red-robed druid’s hand, only to fizzle into the glassine gray shield the Nightshade cast to protect the Crown Prince. Both Herald and the king threw up their hands trying to stop a battle from starting right there in the night. Then, out of the sky, a young green dragon came flapping down to land awkwardly among them. At the edges of the illumination other larger dragons came down as well.
There was nothing but tension and the sound of heavy breathing for a very long time.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Let it be known that I am the rightful heir to my father’s kingdom, and I have claimed the throne,” Richard said commandingly. “That means the rangers and the Dragoneers serve me.”
“I am right here, son,” King Blanchard said.
Jenka couldn’t believe what he was seeing and hearing. He noticed that Marcherion and Blaze were right there beside him, ready for whatever took place. He wanted to be mad at the guy, but found it wasn’t an easy thing to do. Aikira was out away from the knot of people, keeping a protective eye on Zahrellion, but still within earshot.
“You’re not my father, fool,” Richard said matter-of-factly. “You’re a crazed druid disguised as my father. I see right through your feeble craft.”
“Where’s Rikky?” Jenka asked Marcherion in a whisper. March responded by having Blaze rise up as high as he could so that he might see better. The youngest Dragoneer was nowhere around.
“You don’t believe that’s really your king do you, Jenka?” Richard asked in a somewhat jovial tone.
Jenka looked at the sickly looking prince he’d once sworn to save from death. After a long moment he answered. “It matters not whether I believe you, Richard.” Jenka’s tone was icy. “The beast we just killed in Hornet Hollow makes Gravelbone seem like a pixie turd. If we can’t stop them, there will be hundreds more just like them feeding on the lot of you.”
Cold Hearted Son of a Witch: 2016 Modernized Format Edition (Dragoneers Saga) Page 14