by Dante King
Chapter 5
Show me a guy who says he’s not at least a tiny bit nervous on his wedding day and I’ll show you a liar.
Happily, I had very little to do with the actual planning and organizing of the wedding itself. This was good for all concerned because I was not much of an organizer, but more of a doer, especially when it came to events that required the choosing of flowers and everything else that went along with a wedding. Luckily for me, I was getting hitched to two of the universe’s more decisive and pragmatic women—a category in which there was some pretty stiff competition.
The wedding only took a couple of days to organize, which coincided nicely with the final preparations that were taking place for our mission to Galipolas Mountain. In that time, I did what all grooms with even a modicum of self-preservation do: stayed the hell out of the way, left the women to their business, and agreed with anything that was asked of me in terms of music, food, clothing, guests, and aesthetics.
Weddings were damn expensive, even in a place like the Mystocean Empire, but thankfully I’d earned a good deal of scales after I’d sold the boot from the battle with the wildmen and the giants.
My coterie and I spent many hours in the practice yards, drilling with swords and spears and bows. It was crucial that we be as well-prepared—and as lethal—as we could be. It wasn’t just about surviving this trip. It was about going there and back again, identifying and gathering the ingredients and items we needed, and then hot-footing it back as quickly as possible to save Wayne.
After the overcast weather of the last week or so, the days had turned bright and cold. They were days unique to the mountains; skies so clean a blue that they looked almost purple at the zenith, air so crisp that your breath smoked as you breathed out each invigorating lungful, sunshine that felt newly minted.
While the lads and I were out there, tucked away in a little private corner of the sparring grounds in the middle bailey and sweating in our practice armor, my squad took the opportunity to inundate me with some of the most moronic and nonsensical advice on women ever to see the light of day.
“Now, boss, if there’s one thing you gotta remember about women,” Bjorn said, “it’s this.” He thrust at me with his spear as hard as he could. I batted it aside with the back of my hand so that it punched into the ground next to me.
“What’s that, big man?” I asked, trying to keep the dubiousness in my tone to a minimum.
“You have to remember,” Bjorn grunted, pulling his spear free and swinging it around his head in an attempt to hit me in the throat, “that as soon as they start yappin’ away about clothes or jewelry or what have you, it’s in your best interest to at least look like you give a shit, even if you don’t.”
The tip of the dulled spear whisked an inch past my eyes. I stepped forward and struck Bjorn a medium-strength blow in the gut, my fist thudding into the padded jerkin he was wearing and knocking him to the floor.
“Women like it when you pretend to be interested in what they’re blabberin’ on about,” the half-Jotunn wheezed from the deck.
Gabby stepped in to take Bjorn’s place and, for a moment at least, I was spared any more brilliant and enlightening advice.
The agile mute was armed with a couple of stout wooden staves, and he came at me like a whirlwind. He spun left and right, going high and low with the staves, while occasionally throwing out a kick to keep me guessing. I parried everything he had with relative ease, judging each strike with a concentration that I did not often apply to my combat training.
One of the staves came down toward my face with force enough to pop my eye out of its socket. I caught it, the wood slapping into the palm of my hand, and wrenched it from the other man’s grip. Thanks to my dragon-infused strength, I barely felt a blow that would have broken an ordinary man’s hand. Gabby went to swing at my kneecap with the other stave, but I stepped my leg back with inhuman speed, voiding the attack, and struck his biceps with a backfist that made him drop the other heavy wooden stick too.
Trapped as he was, Gabby chose this moment to give me a look that said as plain as day, “I actually do have some advice for you.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Go on then.”.
Gabby held up two fingers in front of his face and made that obscene licking gesture that signified, the universe over, eating a girl out. He waggled his eyebrows at me in a way that I interpreted to mean, “When in doubt, munch them out.”
“Very helpful,” I said. I swept the legs out from under our squad’s tracker and sharpshooter with such force that he turned a neat somersault in the air before crashing down on his front in the dust.
The blur of movement in the corner of my vision, a slight scuffing that came to my heightened ears, told me that Rupert Dyer was trying to do a sneaky on me. I ducked and whirled about as Rupert’s blunted knife hissed over my head. After relinquishing the element of surprise, Rupert came at me with his usual lack of technique, attacking in the same manner that a rabid junkyard dog might when confronted by a brightly dressed mailman.
His knife flicked from hand to hand, zipping in and out in thrust after thrust. The man had no rhythm to his fighting style, which made him extremely difficult to predict. He did, however, have a scientist’s knowledge for the body and knew exactly what tendon or artery to nick or slice at any given time.
The blunted practice knife swept in low toward my groin, before Rupert changed his mind in mid-strike and brought it up toward my chin. I clapped my hands on each side of his wrist, making him drop the blade. Before that knife had even hit the deck, Rupert had whisked another one from his sleeve and was driving it toward my exposed armpit. With dragon-enhanced speed, I twisted and jumped forward, pinning his arm under mine. With my other hand, I gripped our ingenious, tweaked-out medic by the front of his armor and lifted him easily off the ground so that his feet were dangling uselessly.
“What about you, Rupert?” I asked. “You got anything even mildly helpful before I dive headfirst down the aisle?”
Rupert kicked me in the stomach with a booted foot. He connected with my abdominals and let out a little whimper. Kicking a dragonmancer was like kicking a wall.
“Uh, well, I’ve heard that a way t-t-to keep them interested is, when they write to you or send you a messenger drake, to wait three days before you send a drake back,” he said.
I sighed.
“Excellent,” I said, and dropped Rupert at my feet. “Remind me to never come to any of you for advice on women ever. Unless I’m in the market for a divorce, maybe.”
* * *
The wedding ceremony was held in the largest hall of the Academy and was a magnificent and grand affair. It was clearly also a bit of a public relations exercise on behalf of the Martial Council, and not just a celebration of all things romantic.
Evidently, the Martial Council wanted to show the dragonmancers, particularly the new recruits, that they looked after and supported them in ways other than military. It was a slightly clumsy, but good-natured, attempt to show that we were all one big, happy family. A family that fought for one another. A family that came to celebrate life’s joyous moments, even as they put their lives on the line to protect the Empire.
The hall was a huge, sweeping space, filled with carved wooden pews. Enormous stained-glass windows encircled the top quarter of the building, from the roof to the balcony area that ran around the hall. The floor was polished white marble, veined with gold and silver. Above us, the ceiling was covered by an enormous and intricate mosaic crafted out of gemstones, depicting an armored dragonmancer flying across a mauve mountain range.
As far as decorations went, the hall was a confection for the eyes to feast on. Flowers festooned the surfaces, lush vines and colorful creepers ran up the pillars in the central aisle, and messenger drakes swept around and through the rafters overhead, occasionally letting off bursts of colorful flames.
The congregation was made up of dragonmancers mostly, with the Martial Council and the Overse
er taking up pride of place at the very front. There were also, of course, a few coteries present. Those belonging to me, Elenari and Saya, as well as some of the squads of our closer friends. I couldn’t have cared less who was allowed to come to the wedding—the more the merrier was my policy. However, the Martial Council had decided, as politicians and bureaucrats do, that it would serve the Empire to make the occasion a select sort of affair. It was important, or so they said, to emphasize the importance of the dragonmancers and, indirectly, the importance of the mission to save their line. The way they achieved this was by by restricting the guest list to only a couple of dozen of of higher-ranking members of the regular army in attendance.
I was attired in my usual dragonmancer combat gear, as there was no other raiment deemed more honorable than the clothes worn by the most elite troops in the Mystocean Empire. In honor of the occasion though, my armor had been polished to a mirror sheen, my chainmail freshly oiled, my boots buffed until every last molecule of dirt had been removed, and my shirt and breeches were newly tailored from the finest cloth.
As I walked down the aisle, I caught sight of those people who I had come to view as my best and closest friends in this world.
There were the lads, of course; my coterie of dangerous and loyal misfits. Rupert, Gabby, and Bjorn all looked somewhat awkward in their finest clothes. As I walked past them, Gabby gave me a thumbs-up, Rupert doffed his ridiculous Robin Hood-style hat, and Bjorn grunted a couple of gruff words of encouragement, or commiseration, at me.
Further down the row was the all-blue Knowledge Sprite, Penelope. She was looking lovely in a gown of shimmering cerulean that reminded me of summer seas.
I spotted the bright white hair and blood red eyes of Sergeant Milena and Lieutenant Kaleen off to one side. Kaleen had her usual sardonic smirk in place while Milena’s face was as inscrutable as ever.
The gorgeous blonde dragonmancer, Amara, who reminded me somewhat of a leaner, less muscular Saya, was sitting dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief and smiling at me as I strolled on by.
Next to her, taking up enough room for four and with their short legs kicking backward and forward in the air like a couple of kids, were Big Greasy and Old Sleazy. Big Greasy, wheeler-dealer and merchant extraordinaire, was dressed in his usual tight-fitting suit of red velvet that made him look like a boil that was about to burst. Old Sleazy was, surprisingly, bereft of his usual apron bearing the slogan: Sex, Drugs & Sausage Rolls. Instead, he was attired in a hideous, moth-eaten chartreuse-colored suit. His chef’s toque though, was still perched at a rakish angle on his bald, green head.
Preceptor Tang and Preceptor Ipheca, my tutors in Combat Theory and Arcane Practice respectively, sat in aisle seats chatting casually with the men and women next to them.
Claire the Seer was there, of course, looking resplendent dressed in all-white. Her mismatched red and blue eyes glittered as they took in the hall and all those in attendance. She, more than anyone else, was attracting the most stares from the assembled soldiers and Academy bigwigs. I assumed that this was because she rarely came down from her orchard up in the foothills of the mountains surrounding the Drako Academy.
Nina, the dark-skinned Sea Elf, and Viessa, the fiery-tempered, shaven-headed Drow sat at the back of the giant hall and pulled theatrical sad faces at me when I caught their eyes.
Before I stopped at the front of the congregation and took my place on the dais. I also saw Tamsin. The hobgoblin was dressed in a flowing dress of shimmering yellow silk that matched her eyes and accentuated her figure. She was sitting behind Renji. The pretty Djinn had her silver hair coiled artistically around her head. Her silver teeth gleamed as she hit me with one of her dazzling smiles.
I came to stand between the two Lorekeepers, Dasyr and Tanila, who were dressed in deep purple robes and had been named as the officiators of the wedding ceremony. Their tiger-striped hair had been brushed into styles that resembled manes. Their long, furry tails whipped lazily through the air behind them as they watched me approach the dias.
I had to admit that nerves did have me in their grip a little. Once I was in position at the front of the hall, my three squad members eased themselves out of their seats and walked down to take up their station behind me.
As I waited for the music to spark up and for Saya and Elenari to appear, I thought of every trick in the book to ensure that I didn’t succumb to my nerves and pass out on the spot. In the end, I elected to go with advice that John McClane is given at the very beginning of Die Hard—make fists with your toes.
I had no idea if it would work at keeping me calm, but at least it kept my mind off the massive crowd of onlookers who were staring at me.
I scrunched my toes up in my boots and relaxed them again. I exhaled quietly through my nose. Give me a hoard of bloodthirsty wildmen and ten giants to deal with any day.
Suddenly, with an abruptness that must have scared the hell out of any birds that were passing overhead outside, the bells in the tower above us began to toll. One time for every Empress and Emperor who had ever ruled over the Mystocean Empire.
When the reverberation of the last toll had almost faded away, there was a deep resonant braying of trumpets from somewhere up in the rafters.
As if on cue, a flight of drakes of all different colors swept down from on high. They converged and merged and flew with the same entrancing fluidity as a flock of starlings. They flowed and streamed around the mighty pillars that supported the roof of the hall-cum-chapel, a shoal of iridescent fish swimming through the air. Then, in a rustling rush of leathery wings, they shot up the central aisle that I had just come down. They swarmed in a multitudinous ball at the back of the hall, forming a living, swirling globe of dragons.
The music swelled. Drums thundered amongst the trumpets and the clashing of cymbals. Somewhere, in the very heart of the rising crescendo, I thought I could just make out a lone flute playing.
The tempo of the music picked up. The mass of swirling drakes increased their speed so that they became little more than a kaleidoscope of brilliant color.
Then, in a final crashing climax of glorious sound, the music abruptly ceased with a great crash of cymbals and gongs. The drakes, in perfect unison, dispersed like a hundred fireworks shooting off in different directions.
And there, standing where the drakes had been circling and swarming, were Elenari and Saya.
Damn, but I could not think when I had ever seen a smoother entrance than that.
The two women glowed with an inner radiance. At first, I thought it might be magic. Then, I realized that it definitely was magic, but not the flashy kind that we saw around the Drako Academy. This was the more subtle everyday kind. The kind that existed back on Earth, if you only bothered to open your eyes and see it.
Elenari was dressed in a gown the color of new leaves under morning sunshine. It swept around her, drawing the eye from the leaf-patterned hem at the chest to the long, revealing slit that ran up her left leg. She wore dragonmancer-style boots, though they looked to be crafted from some sort of super supple bark, rather than the traditional leather. All in all, she looked like some forest creature emerging from the woods at the dawning of the world; an elven princess with flaming red hair and eyes that looked both far and deep.
Saya was dressed in a less organic dress, though no less alluring. It looked to be made of sequins that flashed and sparkled as the two women made their way down the aisle, sending motes of light flickering out over the assembled crowd. However, as she got closer, I heard a faint jingling coming from her as she moved. With a smile, which she returned, I perceived that what I had taken to be sequins were actually minute scales of armor.
I should have guessed that, even at a wedding, the Amazonian-looking blonde would have showed up ready for war.
As my two fiancées advanced down the aisle, Amara stepped in behind Saya and Penelope took up a position to the rear of Elenari. The two women followed along behind the brides in what I assumed were the role
s of bridesmaids.
When Elenari and Saya reached the dais on which I stood gawping at them, they ascended regally and came to stand by my side.
It was fortunate that the ceremony did not require me to say anything romantic or witty at that point because I was like a deer in the headlights in front of those two stunning females.
Elenari grinned and said in a very quiet voice, “Mike, close your mouth!”
My lower jaw snapped shut, and I smiled.
I didn’t pay much attention to the ceremony once it began. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested, it was just that I couldn’t keep my mind and eyes off the two stunning warrior women in front of me. It seemed so strange and wonderful that these two paragons of female beauty could also be a couple of the most ruthless, capable, and admirable warriors under the Academy’s roof.
Not for the first time, I was staggered by my good fortune.
Lorekeepers Tanila and Dasyr launched into the ceremony with as much dignity and pomp as the occasion apparently required. The wedding of dragonmancers, of course, had not taken place for a very long time, and I could tell that the two tiger-like dragonmancers were intent on doing the moment proud.
Thankfully, even the weddings of dragonmancers proved to be fairly quick and pragmatic affairs. Warring and fighting, it seemed, had left just as little time for elaborate and long-winded ceremony back then as it did now. I figured that for elite troops such as ourselves, the last thing anyone wanted to do was get all dressed up, get the band together, spruce up a venue, and then get told that you were off to fight on some distant battlefield.
I pledged myself to the two women in front of me, swearing to protect them and watch their backs as I knew that they would watch mine. I gave them my oath that I would stand and fight by them, no matter the odds.
I was sure, after my chat with the Overseer and the promise I had made her, that this was exactly the sort of thing that the Martial Council had not wanted to hear.