Bladedancer

by Michael Wallace

  Narina struggled to keep hold of her weapons as she went down under a thundering weight of ice. She struggled once again to get herself clear. The dragon loomed above her, batting its wings and spewing more snow while trying to stomp her into the ground.

  She’d enraged the monster, that much was certain, yet it didn’t seem seriously injured. The various attacks had done enough to send it on a murderous rampage, but not to weaken it. Or so she thought at first.

  It was only when the dragon reared and grabbed at its flesh that she realized it might be in pain. A swipe of the claw shattered arrows and spears sticking out of its hide, but then the claw stopped at something that penetrated its chest. The claw wrapped around the object, and shadow leaked between massive knuckles that looked like dirty green ice. Narina reached out with her sowen to find out what was causing the monster distress.

  It was Katalinka’s master demon blade. She must have thrown herself through the air and shoved it in, then been unable to get it clear before it knocked her away. Narina clenched her teeth and sent her sowen forward to drive the blade in deeper, or at least keep the dragon from ripping it free.

  For a moment she seemed to be succeeding, forcing it in fraction by fraction, but then the dragon bellowed with rage and twisted its claw. There was a cold sort of hole where Narina had been working, and her sowen lost its target. The dragon snapped off the protruding part of the sword and cast it aside.

  Narina could only gape, thinking how the dragon had broken a master demon blade. That sword was made of steel forged in the bladedancer temple, folded dozens of times, and imbued with all the power a sohn could deliver. Narina’s sister had worked on that blade for years, first in the training required to develop the necessary skill, and then the final weeks of effort to produce the weapon itself. Yet the dragon had snapped it in two like it was a dry branch.

  Narina looked around desperately for help. The fires were extinguished, and no more arrows and spears were to be found. Katalinka had one sword—the weaker one—and Miklos was still trying to heal himself from the blow that had shattered his arm. Narina had no allies, nothing but her own powers and her own demon blades.

  For a brief instant, she caught the monster’s intent through the gale. It was going to let out another blast. The first one had already done so much damage that it was hard to imagine how the temple warriors would survive a second. The only thing holding it back now was the embedded point of her sister’s sword, which the dragon kept clawing at, trying to pry free. The distraction had bought Narina a few precious seconds.

  She had to lure the monster away from here. But how?

  A bell rang from up the hillside. It came from the sanctuary, which confused her. Nobody should be there. Everyone had gathered here to fight. Who could it be?

  A shifting of sowen to her right drew her attention. Kozmer stood there, about twenty feet away, buried to the waist in snow. He kept his head down and eyes closed in concentration as he sent out his sowen in waves, which rolled up from the forge toward the sanctuary. It was the elder who’d been ringing the bells, using nothing but his sowen. Now he opened his eyes and shouted at her, trying to raise his voice above the gale.

  “What?” she cried.

  He met her gaze, and she stared back, catching a hint of his thoughts.

  The shrine. Go. Draw the dragon. It will follow you. Fight it. Be the sword saint and you can win.

  “How do I do that? Kozmer, tell me!”

  The dragon took a couple of steps toward her, and she fell within the swirling, aura-devouring vortex surrounding it. Kozmer was still trying to talk to her, but he’d taken several steps backward in response, and his sowen couldn’t penetrate the void.

  What could he possibly mean? The sword saint? That was ridiculous. She couldn’t kill the Great Drake, not at the shrine, nor anywhere else. All their fighting so far had only annoyed the beast, not even done a tenth of what it had taken wave after wave of demonic assault to inflict on the lesser two dragons.

  But the elder was right in one regard. The dragon faced no remaining threats except for Narina, who had started the battle. The monster would fight her, determined to destroy her before it returned to Manet Tuzzia to continue its destructive work. If she ran from here, she might at least save the lives of her companions.

  Narina sheathed her swords, turned, and fled.

  As she sprinted across the snow and up the trail, she thought it might be better to make her stand at the mill or the baths or even the high meadows, assuming she could reach them. She knew why Kozmer was ringing the bells; he wanted her at the shrine. The bells would strengthen her, along with the auras of the building itself, and she knew the training sands intimately. What better place to make a last stand?

  But her stomach felt sick at the thought of the dragon landing in the courtyard. How would the shrine survive the battle? Their predecessors had built and maintained it over generations. It was a sacred legacy, and she couldn’t put it at risk. Yet even as she told herself this, another thought came, unbidden, to her mind.

  The shrine can be rebuilt. Your friends cannot.

  The dragon bellowed in rage behind her, still apparently trying to claw out the shard of Katalinka’s sword. If only the weapon had penetrated several more inches it might have done real damage. Either way, it was buying her time to arrive at the shrine and get settled, fortify her sowen, and take position on one of the stones to ready her final, hopeless defense.

  The bells had died to a hum when she reached the shrine and staggered across the raked sand. The building had resisted most of the storm, and only a light dusting of snow coated the roof and the training grounds. She cast her sowen down to the forge to make sure that the bells hadn’t ceased tolling because Kozmer had fallen. No, he was still there and alive, as were most of the others, now organizing, pulling back from the wreckage.

  The Great Drake let out another roar. Clouds were still gathering overhead, growing thicker and darker with every passing moment. The monster wasn’t simply struggling to remove the sword point, but gathering its strength at the same time.

  She withdrew her sowen and was shocked to discover that the auras of the shrine were disturbed by movement. Someone else was here. Once again, she was baffled by the discovery, as every temple warrior seemed to be at the forge. And then she recognized the man’s aura and let out a groan.

  “Andras? Come out where I can see you.”

  The ratter appeared against the railing of the walkway surrounding the training ground. He was pale and shivering and looked terrified.

  “What the devil are you thinking?” she asked. “You should be somewhere safe. The cottages, or the. . .wait. Where is Ruven? My God, did you leave him alone with that ice in his chest?”

  “He’s in the baths. I was with him, but I had to leave.” Andras’s hair was wet with partially melted snow, and it let out a little shower as he shook his head. “A voice called to me. In my head. I think it was Kozmer.”

  She groaned again. “Why would he do that?”

  “He said it was urgent, life or death. That I had to run down here and find you. He said to tell you how the rats escape. And to tell you that you are a rat.”

  “That makes no sense. Are you sure you heard right?”

  Andras’s brow furrowed. “Pretty sure, yeah. He was losing his voice. I couldn’t hear the end very well.”

  Kozmer must have used all his strength to communicate with the ratter, and it had failed before he could clarify his message. Andras and Kozmer may have built a connection, but casting thoughts wasn’t something easy to do, and the elder had already used his sowen multiple times, including ringing the bells at the temple. Knowing why he’d failed to leave a clear message didn’t make it any less frustrating.

  “Rats?” she said. “You mean when you hunt them with the dogs? But they don’t escape. You chase them down and kill them.”

  “Not entirely true.” Andras sounded more confident, even as his gaze flickered up to the heav
ens and the gathering clouds. “Some rats always escape, a handful who make it to safety.”

  “How?”

  “They hide, they flee into the weeds before the lurchers run them down. Very few, but some always get away. Like peasants when the crowlords fight—they can’t kill us all.”

  “I can’t run away and hide, Andras. We have to stop the dragon. Don’t you see? It’s the only way to end this. It’s the only way to save your son. Is there anything else you can think of?”

  “Yes, there’s one other thing the rats do.”

  The ground rumbled. A confusion of auras swirled up the hillside following the wooded path. A knife-like sensation pricked at her gut. There was a deep, bellowing roar, now coming from overhead. The ratter staggered back from the railing and clapped his hands over his ears.

  “You have to tell me,” she pressed. “How do the rats. . .Andras! Look at me.”

  “They bite!” he cried. He was staring at the sky now, unable to turn his gaze from the monstrous shape appearing in the clouds. His face was slack with terror. “Rats fight back. Right at the end, right when they’re grabbed. They bite as hard as they can. Sometimes it works. If they get a dog on the nose, it lets them go, and sometimes they escape.”

  The dragon broke from the clouds, wings spread as it descended. Its mouth opened wide and revealed the blackness within. Andras screamed, and if not for her tightly coiled sowen, Narina would have done the same.

  “Run!” she cried, and gave him a push with her sowen.

  She didn’t have time to see if he’d follow her command, nor did she have any more assistance to give him, as she needed every scrap of her power to resist the snow and ice that thundered down on her. The attack broke through the defenses that had protected the shrine to this point, and the roof groaned and cracked from the weight of ice hammering onto it.

  She drove away the worst of the attack from her immediate surroundings, holding out even as her sowen took punishment. It was already starting to fray, when there was a second, even louder cracking sound. She looked up through the buffeting wind and snow to see the dragon perched atop the roof of the shrine with its wings spread. The weight of the monster buckled the main support beam, and one of its feet had crushed through the roof as it landed.

  The dragon turned its head about, drawing in great sniffing breaths. Looking for her. Once again, the powers she’d gained in her fight for dominance over sohns and crowlords had served to shield her from its gaze. She waited until its head turned away, its gaze fixed on what could only be Andras fleeing for his life up the hillside, then jumped for the tallest of the three standing stones on the enclosed training ground.

  Be a rat? Be a sword saint? How did that even make sense? One was vermin on the land, the other its supposed hero and rescuer. How could she be both at the same time?

  The dragon swiveled its head in her general direction—apparently deciding that she must be somewhere on the training ground—and opened its mouth to draw in another breath. Narina couldn’t let it blast her again; her sowen had not yet regained its strength from the last time. She drew her swords and leaped for its chest. It reacted with the speed of a lizard snapping at an incoming fly, and she had to twist away to avoid being grabbed by its jaws. She landed on the roof and ducked clear as the monster’s tail slammed down, crushing tiles and splintering the main support beam. She attacked the nearest leg, thinking to hamstring it.

  She sent her sowen into the blade as she swung, and shadows flared from the edge. It struck the dragon with all her force, bit through scale and hide, and then stopped before it cut deeply enough to do any damage. She jerked the blade free, leaped over a grasping claw, and landed on the monster’s forearm.

  Narina scrambled up its arm to the shoulder, then jumped for the head, narrowly avoiding another snap of its jaws. Remembering how she’d blinded both the giant scorpion and the demon lord, she went for its right eye.

  She ducked her head, thrust her blades ahead of her, and leaped forward. The points of her swords slammed into the dragon’s eye with a screeching sound like metal on stone. The eye was as hard as an emerald, but not brittle, and she did it no damage. But she’d struck it so hard her entire body seemed to be vibrating. She fell off, flailing, as the dragon made another lunge at her with its jaws. She got clear in time and scrambled across the roof.

  For the next few seconds, Narina was jumping and rolling and ducking as the dragon stomped across the top of the shrine in an attempt to squash her. It smashed holes in the roof with every step. Finally, it did enough damage that it fell through the broken roof and got its wings caught in the wreckage, but she was too far away to attempt another attack.

  The dragon roared, and the walls of the shrine exploded as it flailed about in an effort to break loose. Soon, the main building was obliterated, with only the surrounding wings left intact. The dragon was still impeded, but working to free itself.

  Narina leaped clear and landed on the training ground, now covered with snow. She ducked broken masonry and shards of wood thick enough to take off her head, and swatted away a few of the smaller pieces with her swords. She leaped back to the tallest of the standing stones, desperate to get any sort of vantage point while the dragon smashed apart the rest of the main building as it broke into the clear. Her left arm ached from her elbow to her shoulder. She seemed to have twisted it.

  Be the sword saint. Be a rat, too.

  What did that mean? Demons take her away, what was she supposed to do?

  Rats fight back. They bite as hard as they can. Sometimes it works.

  Yes, that was it. Narina had to fight the dragon and deliver an injury painful enough that it would fly away and leave them be. Send it wounded back to its lake, where it would join its companions in a generations-long sleep that would end this epoch of chaos and destruction. But how?

  Her strongest blow had not delivered any noticeable damage. No more, in fact, than her flying, stabbing attack at the summit of the volcano. In that first attempt she’d stabbed downward with all her force and only managed to bloody its nose, and then what? Scratched its hide? Taken a feeble swipe at its eye, only to see her swords bounce off like it was made of stone?

  Other temple warriors hadn’t done much better. Even the bombardment of hot arrows and burning spears had done little more than annoy the monster. Apart from a few broken crystalline feathers on its back and wings, there weren’t even visible marks or burns or wounds on its hide.

  The dragon dug at its chest with one clawed hand, while the other pushed aside the rubble of the central shrine so it could break into the training ground. It opened its mouth and sucked at the sky. Clouds swirled down from the mass overhead, turning into a howling cyclone as it drew them in.

  Narina focused on the spot on its chest, where it had torn at the scales to try to get at the tip of Katalinka’s sword, several inches of which remained embedded below the flesh. That, right there. The only true wound it had suffered.

  You’re a rat. Bite as hard as you can.

  The dragon continued to pull clouds into its lungs. Its chest swelled as it drew in the entire storm, complete with flashing, rumbling green lightning disappearing down its maw. She couldn’t wait until it finished. The resulting blast would flatten what was left of the shrine, knock down the surrounding forest, and bury what was left in several feet of snow. And she would be the first victim of its attack.

  Narina couldn’t hold up her injured left arm, not well enough to fight, and she dropped its sword to the ground. It was the demon blade she’d forged that frenzied night of her recovery, putting all her mastery into its construction. It wouldn’t serve her now, not with her injury.

  Instead, she concentrated her sowen into her father’s demon blade, the one she’d wielded since his death, when she’d come down from the mountains to deliver Lord Balint’s weapons, and all of this had begun. She gripped it in her right hand, used her left to stabilize it, and took aim at the dragon as the creature clamped its jaws shut, th
e storm completely swallowed. The dragon swung slowly, almost lazily in her direction.

  She jumped from the stone.

  It was a leap she’d made dozens of times before, attacking her sister or others in sparring sessions, and she called on what was left of the shrine’s auras to guide her flight. With it came the power of her sowen, the abilities that had grown throughout the summer and fall as enemies and innocents alike had fallen before her blades.

  Even with all her strength, she wouldn’t be able to force her weapon in much deeper than her sister had managed. But within the existing injury lay the top few inches of Katalinka’s master demon blade. The dragon itself had snapped off the blade and left the point embedded in the flesh.

  Narina turned her sword at the last moment to match the angle of the monster’s existing wound. She blasted her sowen into her weapon and rammed it into the hole left from the earlier attack. Her sword followed the path Katalinka had opened, struck the embedded point of the broken sword, and drove it deeper. Her own blade was embedded to the hilt by the time it stopped.

  There was a tremendous hissing sound, and a blast of what looked like steam from the wound in the dragon’s side. It struck Narina in the face and turned to ice, burning her skin with the intensity of its chill. She seemed to have driven the point of her sister’s sword so deep that it had punctured the monster’s lung.

  The Great Drake threw back its head and blasted the swallowed storm toward the heavens in a bellow of pain. The wind that emerged howled like something possessed. The dragon gave a massive spasm, roared again, so loud that Narina’s head felt struck with a hammer, and batted its wings.

  She was already falling, having lost her grip on her father’s sword the moment the icy wind hissed out of the hole in the dragon’s chest, but now something struck her across the chest before she hit the ground. Whether it was a wing or claw or even the monster’s tail, she didn’t know. She went flying, her vision blackening from the force of it. Her entire body felt numb, and she was barely aware that she’d come to rest. Her body felt twisted and wrong, and her vision had narrowed to a pair of pinpricks of light. Snow and ice slammed down on her, and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move at all.