“If you be talking about them savage winged bastards that destroyed the temple, we just killed one of ’em too,” said Herald, with some pride in his tone.
“That leaves just one,” Marcherion said as Blaze sank back down. He shook his head in the negative, letting Jenka know that he hadn’t seen Rikky.
“They will do what their king tells them,” King Blanchard growled. “By the Gods, Jenka is a Royal Dragoneer.”
“I have no king,” Jenka snapped. “I was born out here in the frontier.”
“He’s not the king!” Richard yelled in frustration. “I am the rightful heir!”
“If you’re really the king,” Marcherion said boldly, “say what you asked me when my dragon carried you and me to the Temple of Dou.”
“Bah,” the king dismissed Marcherion with a wave of his hand. “I need not prove myself.”
“But you do,” Herald said a bit nervously. “You look like Linux underneath, but you could be Lanxe. I don’t know much, but it would most likely be just as easy to illusionate one, as the other.”
There was a long intense span of anticipation then. The druids all seemed ready to do battle with any who made an aggressive move. The rangers were ready, too, bows drawn, rakes, shovels, and swords raised to strike. They were all looking at Herald, who was waiting on the king.
King Blanchard dropped his heavy head and sighed. “So be it.” He took a deep breath and looked over his huge belly at his illusionary boots. “I asked you to kill my son.”
“Why?” Marcherion asked, half surprised that the man had answered correctly. “Why did you want me to kill him?”
“Because, none of the other Dragoneers would be able to bring themselves to do it.”
Everyone was looking at Marcherion as he nodded that it was what the king had said to him.
“Arrghhh,” Richard yelled out in what might have been anguish. “You’d have a stranger kill me?” He let out a sarcastic laugh, but then his voice grew hard and menacing. “You are no father of mine. If you want any part of my kingdom you’ll have to come and take it!”
“You’re all fools,” said Jenka. “If we fail to contain the Sarax, you’ll not stand a chance unless you’re defending together.” Jenka realized then that the Dragoneers were not doing what they’d promised Crimzon they would do. The third Sarax could be freeing its kin as they argued.
Twin rays of red energy shot forth from the Nightshade’s eyes and cut across King Blanchard. Not only was the man wounded, but the illusion was destroyed, leaving Linux, or maybe Lanxe, lying there in natural form.
“Why?” Jenka asked in a snarl.
“They leached my father’s mind, Jenka,” Richard said. “How else would they know what he looked like?”
Jenka started to argue, but the druid stood up and sent a powerful blast of emerald energy at the prince. “You killed my brother, boy,” Lanxe snarled. “And you killed one of my pets.” This he said to Herald. “Now I’m going to tear your high and mighty kingdom to the ground. I think we’ll start right now with a lesson for all of you.” The mad druid began to disappear then, the other druids, too, but while his form was still visible he chuckled and said, “Look out.”
The Nightshade’s skin and Richard’s armor were so dark that they were twenty feet above them all and winging south before anyone knew they were gone. They didn’t get away cleanly, though. One of the dozens of head-sized boulders suddenly being hurled into the torchlit knot of people nearly knocked Richard from his saddle.
From the fringes of the light, a roaring gust of frigid dragon breath stopped two of the attacking creatures cold. Jenka thought they were Sarax for a moment. He was relieved when Blaze lit up the night by spewing a column of fire high into the sky. In the illumination he saw the attackers were only orcs and trolls. Golden was already killing her second orc, and Crystal was keeping the injured Zahrellion safe enough by blasting anything that came close into solid ice.
Jade used his ability to maneuver on the ground to keep his rider close enough to use his sword. It wasn’t necessary after a few moments as Jenka was effectively sending streaking green pulses of controlled Dour from his blade. They killed whatever they seared into.
Herald snatched a shovel from a fear-stricken forester and defended the boy, and a few others, while dodging incoming stones big enough to shatter men’s limbs.
Marcherion used regular arrows to great effect on the trolls and orcs, while his savage dragon roasted or gnashed as many of the attackers as he shafted. The rangers used what they had and tried to finish the ones March impaled. It was hard to see where the chunks of rock were going to come from next.
An oversized ogre, wearing a collar and huge, mannish armor, used a long crackling whip that glowed like blue lightning. With terrible lashes it drove the last of the orcs at the group, then it turned and loped away into the deeper forest.
It was a messy affair with many a man’s head bashed open and twice as many broken bones. Jade lost a few scales to an orc that didn’t seem to care if it died attacking them. Then something thankfully got hold of the troll that was hurling the stones and ended it.
The battle didn’t last long after that. When Aikira made to chase the fleeing ogre she nearly crashed into Silva and Rikky. Her aggressiveness wasn’t necessary, though. After seeing the pillar of fire Blaze blasted to light the sky, Lemmy came running back through the forest. His warbling blast of blue swirling magic took the hulking beast off of its feet. Then the injured ogre that was still hanging around the keep limped over and helped him beat its magic-ruined kin until it was dead.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The battle was just over and the sun was coming up. The Dragoneers were tired, but sleep wasn’t in their near future. There was an undertone of urgency. All of them could feel it, especially the dragons. Jenka couldn’t stop thinking about Crimzon, and what the crippled dragon had set out to do. They lingered only long enough to look at, and ponder, the collared ogre Lemmy had killed. They did that while Rikky and his mother had a not so private, teary-eyed reunion.
After he’d helped the rangers destroy the Sarax, Lemmy rounded up three ogres that he knew roamed the area. Two of them were now out rousting other ogres to come defend the keep again, as they had after Gravelbone’s hordes came tearing through. The fact that the druids dared put a binding collar on one of their kind had them ready to rile their own numbers to attack the temple. Zahrellion confessed that there were a few others like that in the service of the druids. She’d never seen one use a whip like that. She swore that she’d never seen an ogre mistreated at all. Everyone believed her naivety and she willingly told Herald and Lemmy everything she knew about them.
“Where do we look for the third Sarax?” Marcherion asked.
“Yeah, Jenka. Where to now?” Aikira added.
Zahrellion was about to suggest that they try and set another of Jenka’s clever traps. Jenka proved to be even smarter than that.
“There’s only one of them left,” he shrugged. “Our main concern is that it doesn’t free the others before Crimzon can reinforce the encasement. My mother said that if you want a man to pay you what he owes, and he is avoiding you, all you have to do is go sit on his porch.”
“He has to come home sometime,” Herald barked out a laugh despite the high-strung and somewhat grim mood of the men. He had blood and grime splattered from head to toe and looked quite insane.
“All we have to do is guard the star ship from the last Sarax until Crimzon is finished,” Jenka continued. “When that’s done we can hunt it down and start figuring out a way to destroy the rest of them.”
“You’d have made a damn fine ranger, boy,” said Herald proudly to Jenka. “But I won’t be forgetting your true lineage as I speak to you now. The king may be a captive in that fargin’ temple. We’ll steady things here, and then see what needs doing next. Lemmy and his big green friends will gladly help us with that. I’ll be at your command otherwise.”
The chill of the
morning air had some of the larger corpses steaming away the last bit of their heat. “If you see that old witch, tell her where I be,” Herald added before he turned and started ordering his rangers around.
“To the star ship, then?” Marcherion made a wide-eyed questioning look that implied their need for haste.
“To the star ship,” Jenka nodded. And the Dragoneers flew north at a pace that allowed Silva, with her partially healed wounds, to keep up with them. Their lack of haste was a terrible mistake.
Crimzon used the dwarven ways and sang the old spells of teleportation he’d learned from his mother to get himself to the star ship. When he emerged in the valley a short crawl away from the entrance to the crater, he found that it was snowing. The stuff stung his warm scales and made him itch. Despite his irritation, he took the time to stop and marvel at the structure he and Clover had built above the next valley over. “Life, love, and magic,” he repeated a saying Clover had often said. He took in the castle in the distance. He was pleased with the Dragoneers. He’d long been concerned they’d be like most humans and hate or fear so much that their lives were miserable. These dragon riders were strong and fierce-hearted. They would find a way to destroy the star ship and rid the earth of those terrible things that had ruined his back. Moreover, they would do justice to the years he and Clover spent erecting and fortifying their home.
With his powerful jaws gnashed tight in grim determination, the huge red-scaled wyrm slithered and crawled down into the deep hole the star ship had torn into the earth. He dropped the fist-sized teardrop that his mother had once cried for him from his mouth. Then he picked it up and clutched it in his clawed fist while beginning to sing.
The song was fierce and swift and soon the great fire wyrm’s tail was thumping a tattoo that accented the rhythm of his multi-toned voice. Glory, rapture, and sheer determination went swirling into the melody and fortified its strength with each passing verse. The power of the teardrop was building around him, forming a great well of force that would obey his direction when it was strong enough. For long days this went on, and Crimzon was nearing the point in his spell where he would send the power forth, but it never had a chance to happen.
Crimzon was shocked out of his casting by several blasts of Dou magic that tore deeply into his lower guts. The soft underbelly between his hind legs was opened and some of his slippery tubular intestines bulged out of the wound. He directed the Dou he had built up, before he lost it all together. The multicolored, twisting swirl of force disintegrated several of the red and blue-robed druids of Dou, along with one of the three collared ogres that were attacking him. It widened the shaft on its way out, evaporating stone and dirt, and making the crater opening twice its previous size.
Rock and crumble started caving on his middle. Even though he was too stretched out in the crater to see his injuries, Crimzon knew he was horribly wounded. He started to try his casting again, but another explosion of force tore up through his guts toward his vitals.
He rolled and thrashed and was pleased to feel several squirming things go still as his bulk crushed them into the stone. Then he felt something slicing him wide as it ran up the length of his body. He heard its battle call and knew it was one of the foul Sarax. He tried with all he had to crush it, but it used its sharp claws for traction and ran up and over his body. It was all he could do to secure the teardrop and get it back in his mouth. Then the Sarax was past him and standing before the murky crystal glaze that held its kind imprisoned.
The Sarax dropped into a crouch and opened its wings into a narrow triangle. Using its hind claws, it stretched the leathery wing material tight and bent its forearms over its head. It pounded the wing skins like a drum in a frighteningly quick repetition that vibrated the area around it deep and low. Soon another vibration joined the terrible thrumming buzz, and then another, only these were sounding from inside the star ship and echoing as much across the ethereal as anything.
A druid wearing black robes trimmed in red appeared near Crimzon’s head and Crimzon tried to bash him against the wall. He missed Lanxe but killed two other druids. Something ripped inside him then, and he flopped unintentionally. He sucked in a deep breath and let out a fiery roar at the very same moment the druid unleashed a spell at him. The explosion of pain Crimzon felt caused his flaming spew to only partially bathe the Sarax before him. After that, the world started to close in. His one consolation was that he could feel the Dragoneers entering the range of his ethereal. Before he faded, he called out to them directly, and with a single word told them the only thing he knew that could help them.
Chapter Thirty
“Lusciouxical,” Crimzon’s distressed and fading voice said into the minds of the Dragoneers and their dragons.
The sound caused Zahrellion to jump and nearly fall from Crystal’s back. Marcherion heard the sound for what it was, and Blaze, who was already irritated because of the snow falling all around them, went speeding off with Rikky and a heedless Silva to answer the plea for help. Jade was high above the girls when he started his dive. By the time he was streaking above the treetops past their castle, into the valley of the star ship, they were just getting their speed up.
“What did he say?” Jenka asked his dragon as loud as he could yell.
“It isss a dragon tonguesss,” Jade replied, but Jenka couldn’t understand over the rushing wind.
Ahead, Jenka saw Marcherion send a shaft streaking down into a collared ogre. Rikky sent a blast of Dou from his dragon tear into the vermin that were moving into the newly widened crater. He then surprised them all and rode Silva down in an arc right into the opening.
Feeling like he might be making the worst decision of his life, Jenka urged Jade to follow the silver wyrm.
What he saw inside sickened him as much as it chilled his blood. There was Crimzon’s lower half being devoured by not one, but two Sarax. Several druid bodies lay about. They looked to have been crushed. Rikky blasted powerful flows of Dou, doing great damage to the Sarax he targeted. Ahead of Jenka, more Sarax were struggling to get through the fractured crystal encasement. There was only one opening, though, and the beasts inside the ship were fighting while half in and half out of the clogged hole.
Jenka couldn’t guess how many had already escaped the steel craft, but he knew there were a few. A clawed arm reached out from the wall beside them and sliced Jade’s wing skin as he went past. Jade roared out in pain and dropped to his claws in a run toward Crimzon’s stilled head. The young green wyrm roared out wildly at a Sarax that ducked, expecting flaming breath to roast it. Jenka blasted it with a pulse of emerald Dou from his blade instead.
“What are you doing?” Rikky yelled from not far away.
Jenka had no idea why Jade was trying to wedge his head into Crimzon’s closed maw.
Behind them a woman screamed out chillingly. It was a young, blue-robed druida looking at where her arm used to be. She was being devoured by the Sarax she was trying to command. Jenka blasted at Lanxe, who went retreating into the shadows as quickly as he could manage.
There were two Sarax fighting in the breach, and another working to yank one of them the rest of the way out. Rikky engaged the freed creature and sent it spinning with a blast from his teardrop. It came up and charged him with an impossible stretching leap. Rikky flew from Silva’s back into the grasp of the Sarax. Jenka blasted at it, but missed. Silva, though, spun around and latched onto the creature with savage force.
Jade nearly threw Jenka then, as he snaked his neck between the huge fire dragon’s teeth. When Jade suddenly used his foreclaws to push so that he could pull his head free, Jenka was forced to dive from his dragon’s back to avoid the Sarax that had just come out of the star ship. It tried to rake its claws across Jenka as he rolled to a stop, but a lime green flow of Dour erupted from the big dragon tear Jade was holding in his mouth. The ray of powerful energy melted most of the Sarax into a bloody, floundering mess.
“Clover’s tear,” Jenka said. When he looked
for Rikky, his heart stopped in his chest. Silva was rolling and thrashing in a tangle of fang and bloody claw with one of the Sarax. And there under them was his best friend, lying crumpled in a growing pool of crimson gore. No sooner did he start toward Rikky than a heavy chunk of rock crashed down on Jade and left him lying limp and still on the crater floor.
Outside, Zahrellion, Marcherion, and Aikira made short work of the vermin. The collared ogres that were driving the trolls and orcs were a bit more formidable, especially with the druids that remained raining blasts of Dou magic at the Dragoneers and throwing up shields and defenses for their trellkin fighters. Fire, ice, and a golden liquid spew that caused the vermin’s flesh to slide away in large, grisly sloughs splashed down upon the enemy.
A few Sarax could be seen winging swiftly away. They had no desire to engage the dragons. They wanted to feed. The other escaped Sarax were consuming anything that moved or bled, and that meant the druids, ogres, and trolls were soon fighting for their lives instead of fighting the Dragoneers. The druids began to flee, some of them flashing away, others moving into the forested slope where they seemingly disappeared.
Seeing that Zahrellion and Marcherion had the advantage outside, Aikira went streaking into the crater opening and was quickly blasted off of Golden when the fleeing High Druidon surprised her. Golden crashed in a roll that ended near Crimzon’s open wounds. The fearless yellow-scaled wyrm engaged one of the Sarax feeding there. Aikira crashed headfirst into a wall, but besides a dull ringing throb, the helmet she wore kept her from taking a debilitating injury.
Zahrellion saw Aikira crash and took Crystal low, blasting the last few visible trolls with her icy breath. Zah had her dragon set her down and started into the shaft on foot. She would have preferred the protection Crystal afforded her, but the frigid wyrm was just too large to get far inside, especially with Crimzon’s bulk filling most of the space.
Cold Hearted Son of a Witch: 2016 Modernized Format Edition (Dragoneers Saga) Page 15