The Sword and the Dragon (The Wardstone Trilogy Book One)

by M. R. Mathias

  He sat up, and tried to catch his breath. A few feet away, the one-legged corpse was still trying to come for him. It was pulling itself hand over hand towards him. It was close enough now to chop at Vaegon’s legs with its sword, but was intent on getting closer. Its eyes were dark, emotionless, and set in a decomposing face, that appeared to be smiling a smile of long, greenish-yellow teeth.

  Vaegon gritted his own teeth together, and gained his feet. The pain of his wounds brought out a harrowing yell. Sensing the elf’s moment of weakness, the undead came scrabbling forward quickly, like some sort of grotesque three-limbed crab. Deftly, but painfully, Vaegon sidestepped, and dispatched the undead man, by shoving his blade tip down through its neck, and severing its spine.

  He looked out to see what the flaming horse was all about, and barely had time to register that it was Mikahl who was sitting proudly on its back, before the Choska demon caught him full in the chest with both of its razor sharp claws. The last thing that Vaegon saw, before the world went spinning away in a crazy dizzying whirl, was Mikahl sending a wicked blast of magical blue lightning out of the end of Ironspike’s blade towards the dragon.

  Pael moved through the city by gliding just above the cobbles as he went. The sudden presence of the sword, and the bastard Squire, had scared him, but not enough to deter him from his conquest.

  No one dared approach him, though several arrows came at him true. Those were deflected, shattered, or blown off course, as if they were merely pieces of straw in the wind. He spied what he was looking for, and hurried his pace until the secondary wall stood before him. There was no gate along this section of wall, only a mercantile neighborhood in the inner city. It had wisely been abandoned in anticipation of his coming.

  A large trading house had been built against the wall at the end of the block. Pael wanted to breach the wall here, so that the Highwander soldiers might pour out to aid their trapped comrades. His undead were concentrated on blocking and attacking the areas around the gates. He was doing this because of his wish to keep the battle away from the palace itself. The more soldiers that died out here, between the secondary wall and the outer crumble, the less resistance he would meet inside the castle’s inner wall. He didn’t want to have to tear the palace down to take it. He wanted its splendor for himself.

  He stood carelessly in the street, and cast his spell. A static pulse of energy left his hands, growing in size and strength as it went. The building smashed flat back against the wall, and then the wall itself exploded in a thunderous shower of brick, glass, and wooden shards.

  Satisfied that the breach was large enough, Pael glided away, debating whether not to kill Mikahl in the air, or force him to the ground first. With a long look at the morning sky, he decided on the latter. With a thought, he ordered the Choska to swoop in, and relieve the Squire King of his magical seat while Shaella and her pet dragon were still holding his full attention.

  Hyden burst up onto the roof of the Royal Tower with a rushing bustle, and a few deep heaves of breath. Had Talon not just preceded him, the guardsmen might have blocked his way. Instead, they let the wild-eyed young man pass. Everyone had heard the rumors of where he had gone, and the sight of him, gave even the most hardened guard a little pause. Besides the fact that he had just returned from Dahg Mahn’s Tower, the look of intensity on his face warned that he couldn’t afford to be detained.

  “Your Highness, milady, or whatever it is I’m supposed to call you. I need you!”

  He took a breath, noticing the wide-eyed expression on Queen Willa’s face. He hoped he wasn’t scaring her. In his pack was the big, heavy Night Shard crystal. In his left hand, was the elven longbow Vaegon had gifted him, and a full quiver of arrows hung at his hip. He had no idea how long he had been inside the Tower, or how shocking it was to everyone that he had survived it.

  “Targon said you could summon him with a spell. I… We need him.”

  “You survived Pratchert’s Tower?” The Queen was awed.

  “Aye,” he nodded.

  His air was finally coming back to him, after the incredibly long dash up the four hundred circling steps of her tower. He couldn’t help but smile, and push out his chest a bit proudly. He had seen how many men had failed Dog Mahn’s trials before him.

  “No one has ever returned from beyond that door. By right, the tower, and everything in it, is yours now.”

  Hyden shrugged, and Talon gave an urgent squawk from somewhere nearby.

  “Targon?”

  She shook her head slightly at the impossibility of it all; bastard Kings with horses of fire, an unsophisticated young mountain man, who befriended elves and hawklings, and spoke with Great Wolves, winning his way into Pratchert’s Tower. The only thing that would be surprising now, was if the might of Doon, the dwarven aid promised eons ago, came bursting out of the earth, to answer the call of the horn she had recently blown. She had to chide herself, for thrilling like a maiden, over the wild hope that Hyden and Mikahl instilled in her. Now was not the time to wonder about how and why though. It was the time to do.

  She cleared her head, and cast the spell that would summon her High Wizard, but there was no response. Thinking that she misspoke the words in her haste, she spoke them again, only this time in an urgent and commanding sort of way.

  The wizard’s horribly twisted form flickered on the tiled deck at her feet once, twice, and then the third time it held there. Targon was covered in blood, and his head hung at an odd angle, the neck stretched, and canted unnaturally. He was ripped open from groin to chest, and part of the cavity where his innards should be, was empty. He looked dead, and was most undoubtedly beyond saving, but his eyes fluttered open when Queen Willa spoke his name.

  She knelt by his side, wanting to cradle his head in her arms, but was afraid to cause him pain.

  Hyden stood there, slack-jawed. What were they going to do now? Targon was supposed to provide the means of getting the Night Shard all the way to the Seal. The plan was doomed. The High Wizard couldn’t even speak, to relay his idea to Queen Willa, so that she might play his part. Hyden was overcome with a dreadful sense of defeat, but only until he heard the dragon’s powerful roar fill the morning sky.

  He looked up, and saw in the distance, a brilliant winged horse banking an arc through the sky. Its rider sent blazing, blue blasts back at the massive, red-scaled beast, which had just rumbled the morning with its rage. Hyden couldn’t say what amazed him most about the scene, Mikahl, riding on a winged horse made of flame, or the way the snaky dragon corkscrewed its bulk effortlessly through the air behind him, to avoid the attacks.

  Forgetting the crystal for the moment, instinct took over. All Hyden knew, was that he had to do something to save his friend. He had talked to squirrels, hawklings, and wolves, now it was time to try something bigger. He remembered Vaegon’s tale of Pratchert, focused his concentration, and in his head, he called out to the dragon.

  Mikahl was certain that he had hit the dragon, but it had twisted around his magical bolt of energy like a snake sliding around a tree limb. Its agility in the air was breathtaking. The humongous beast started to snap at him, but paused for a heartbeat. It shot past him, and the woman riding on its back shook a strange looking staff at Mikahl and snarled. She looked angry, and half of her head was bald, and scarred. She was screaming something at the dragon now, but Mikahl’s attention was suddenly yanked away, as his bright horse rose up swiftly on a stall of flurrying wing beats.

  The earsplitting crack of the dragon’s whip-like tail, as it snapped on the point in space where he had just been, brought his mind back into full focus. When he turned, the dragon was darting off towards the castle, on long, powerful strokes of its leathery wings.

  He guided the Bright Horse lower. Vaegon had been trapped on a lone section of wall that was still standing, and he hadn’t looked too well. Mikahl had seen all the blood on his arm, and had watched as Vaegon’s leg had been cut out from under him just before he had knocked the attacker off th
e wall.

  To Mikahl’s surprise, the elf was no long longer up on that part of the wall. In a panic, and with a stomach full of icy dread, he circled lower, around the unnatural plateau, searching the dying battles, and the dead, for his friend. His stomach lurched, and the ice moved to his bowels when he saw the elf. He clinched his eyes shut, hoping that when he opened them, it wouldn’t be Vaegon he saw lying there, half buried in debris, but it was. The patched eye, and glittering hair, left no room for doubt. Without thinking, he made to land the Bright Horse, and try to help unearth his fallen friend, but then realized, as he came in closer, that it was only part of the elf that he was seeing. The lower half of Vaegon’s body wasn’t buried. It had been sheared away, and was nowhere to be seen.

  Sadness tried to envelop him. King Balton, Lord Gregory, and Loudin, not to mention Grrr, and now Vaegon, the only elf in the realm brave enough to stand and fight this evil, had all been killed. How many of the people he loved had to die. Were any of them alive anymore? What had happened to Hyden, Talon, and the other Great Wolves? He didn’t know, and that fact caused an explosion of determination to burst inside of him.

  In response to his growing outrage, the radiance and power of Ironspike’s blade magnified, and shifted from blue to purple, and then to a heated shade of crimson. He spurred the bright horse up into the heights of the morning sky, until he saw the Choska demon. He was pleased to see it coming at him. In a blinding, white-hot rage, he urged his magical mount into a hard gallop towards the approaching bat-like beast, in a sort of midair jouster’s charge. He had had enough. It was time to put an end to this madness.

  Chapter 56

  “The dragon comes!” Queen Willa hissed at Hyden Hawk.

  “Aye,” Hyden replied simply. He gave her a grim smile. “Cast no spells, lady. Tell the guard to stand down.”

  “You’d let it roast us?” she asked incredulously.

  His scowl silenced any further protests, and she did as he bade her.

  “Show no fear. When it is upon us, signal me.”

  He put an arrow to the string of the old elven longbow, and started toward the edge of the tower. Once he was at the parapet, he ducked behind a crenel, and set his eyes on the frightened Queen. In his head, he spoke to the dragon again.

  Shaella screamed at Claret vehemently for flying her away from the one on the fiery Pegasus. Claret just hissed, and suffered the anguish of Shaella’s punishment through the collar. She was glad that Shaella was yelling and screaming at her, because it kept Shaella from hurting her with something far worse. Claret also knew that Shaella could only do so much punishing while they were in flight, so she went to investigate the strange and powerful voice that was calling her away. It hurt her terribly to go against the will of her rider, but the promises the voice was offering her, were too great to be ignored.

  Once Shaella saw the Witch Queen of Highwander, alone on the tower rooftop, gawking up like a child, she forgot the dragon’s punishment altogether, and grew excited. She could complete her father’s conquest, and earn his respect and admiration right here. She urged Claret to take her around the tower. She wanted to keep the witch from reaching the stair house when she snapped out of her stupor, and made a run for it.

  To Shaella’s growing frustration, Claret didn’t circle the tower as she had commanded, but the Witch Queen didn’t break and run either. Instead, Claret made as if to land there, at the tower’s parapet, but stopped at the last moment, to hold in a slow hover. Shaella shrieked out curses at the dragon, as the Witch Queen waved her arms crazily. Shaella cast a spell, and was about to lash out with a blast of static energy, when her heart was stopped dead in her chest. She saw Gerard rise up from behind one of the crenels and loose an arrow directly at her. Realizing that it was Hyden, Gerard’s brother, and not her lover, she tried desperately to get the dragon to dip, or sway her out of the arrow’s path. Nothing happened. She couldn’t find the will to draw breath, as the steel-tipped shaft came flying at her. She was shocked to feel it only graze her just under the ear, and she felt lucky for a fleeting moment.

  In that fleeting moment, another realization struck her. He hadn’t meant to kill her. But why?

  Between the thumping beats of Claret’s wings, she heard the proud and fierce cry of a hawkling, as it came shooting down out of the sky, right past her. It didn’t stop. It kept diving into the shadows below. Suddenly, she was afraid. She gathered all the persuasive power she could muster, and urged Claret to turn away, but the dragon didn’t budge. Then, she tried sending the dragon a clearer, and more painful command through the collar, but found that somehow, her link with the fire wyrm had been broken. In a panic, she reached to her neck.

  Claret felt the connection sever, and roared out with delight. The menacingly triumphant sound was so loud, and powerful, that the Royal Tower itself trembled, as if it were afraid.

  Shaella began to cast a spell. Hyden saw this, and loosed a second arrow at her. This one struck the staff she held, just a fingers breath above her hand. The thumping impact of it caused her to lose her concentration, and forget the spell she was casting.

  “Spell the rider!” Hyden called out to Queen Willa. “Bind her, if you can.”

  At once, Willa did as she was told. The presence of the dragon had her in such a state of terror, that if Hyden had told her to jump off the tower she might have done it.

  Half a heartbeat later, invisible ropes lashed around Shaella, and drew tight. Her arms, and her staff, were pulled hard against her breasts. When she tried to voice a protest, she found that her mouth was gagged as well. She could do nothing, but glare at Hyden as he motioned for the dragon to land.

  Willa backed away in utter fear. Claret’s great bulk, took up three quarters of the tower top, and that was with the dragon sitting upright, and the entire length of its long, thick tail, dangling over the parapet. The tower itself seemed to groan with the weight of her. A glance at where the stair guard had been revealed only empty space. Willa couldn’t blame the man. Running from a beast that had slitted yellow eyes bigger than wagon-wheels, and teeth as long as a grown man’s legs, couldn’t really be considered dereliction of duty, could it?

  In her terror, Willa marveled at the way the morning sun reflected brilliantly off the dragon’s palm-sized scales, and turned them golden; and the way heat, shimmered and radiated off of its body, as if it were a great furnace. A fluttering of little wings, Talon the hawkling’s wings, caught her eye. The bird had something clutched in its claws. It struggled to carry the object up and over to Hyden. He took the offering, and smiled deviously. Talon then flew up, and landed on the half bald head of the dragon rider. He perched there, and puffed out his feathered chest, as proudly as if he were a dragon himself.

  Hyden fumbled with the object Talon had delivered to him. After a moment, he had wrapped Shaella’s collar around his wrist, and tied it off, using his teeth. At once, the mighty dragon lowered its head, and extended a fore claw out, to form a crude stair step up to its back. At that moment, Queen Willa had no doubt that Hyden Hawk was destined to be a wizard of Dahg Mahn’s caliber, if not something even greater. It never occurred to her, that Hyden had taken the Dragon Queen’s dragon without using any form of magic whatsoever. All he had used were his wits, and his skill with the bow. Talon had done the rest.

  Hyden shouldered Vaegon’s bow, climbed onto the dragon’s back, and sat behind Shaella. He gave Willa a confident smile, and sent Talon down to land on her shoulder.

  “Hold off the demon-wizard as long as you can,” he called down to her.

  He reached back, and patted the Night Shard in his backpack. “If this works, he’ll be nothing, but a plain, old wizard when I’m done.”

  With that, the dragon leapt into the air, and veered sharply away to the west. On wing beats, that made the very air shudder, it shot off at an uncanny speed, and disappeared into the distance.

  After Pael saw Shaella and her dragon winging away to the west, he vented his anger on the out
er city. He thought she was abandoning him.

  He cast a spell that buckled the earth away from him, like ripples from a pebble thrown into a pond. A great circle rose and fell, crumbling all in its path as it went. Buildings were leveled, and horses and men were thrown, or crushed. A large portion of the secondary wall, and the inner city beyond it, fell into ruin. For a few moments, the rumbling quake seemed to stop the whole battle. Pael stood, looking up from the epicenter of the destruction. He was seething. His normally slick, white head was aglow with rage, and his arms flailed about like some mad conductor, as he cast spell after spell after spell.

  In the air, Mikahl was in pursuit of the Choska. The big, black demon could barely stay ahead of the flaming bright horse. From the ground, Pael sought to change the odds a bit.

  Several back clouds misted into being, around the angry wizard. Three wyverns took form, and a razor-tusked beast, that looked somewhat like a wild boar, but was as big as an ox, snorted and stomped behind him. At once, the wyverns took to the air. The tusked beast charged off, through the rubble-strewn streets in search of men to kill.

  Pael’s arm suddenly shot forth, pointing up into the sky, and a sizzling bolt streaked away, brighter than the daylight, from his fingertip. It took Mikahl by surprise, and sent him tumbling through space, away from the dying flames of his bright horse.

  At once, the Choska demon dove away if from its pursuer, and swooped down to land beside its master. Pael leapt up onto its lowered neck, and together, they rose back up into the sky.

  For a few long heartbeats, Mikahl fell, like a sack of grain thrown from a window. He had almost let go of Ironspike, but somehow managed to avoid that fatal mistake. With its magical symphony still in his head, he managed to recall the Bright Horse into being. The fiery Pegasus reformed between his legs and caught his fall, but it took a moment to get reoriented with the world, and in that time, Pael, and the Choska, gained position on them.