The Dragon Prince

by Rex Jameson

  Henry roused Constantine and Corbin Shelby. Allen Bigsby blinked wearily before using his hammer as a crutch to raise himself from the ground.

  “It’s time to leave,” Cedric shouted.

  “Where are we going, dad?” Sylas yelled.

  “As far as we need to go,” Cedric replied over the roar of the holy shield.

  “Croft Keep?” Henry asked.

  “If they’d let us in,” Cedric said. “Perhaps farther north: Velia, Suway, or Nydale.”

  “Are we retreating?” Sylas asked, obviously disappointed. “Are we leaving the southern states to their fate?”

  “Fate is not something to be altered by a small group of men surrounded by demons and undead,” he replied. “We need reinforcements. We need to rest and recuperate or the southern states will truly be lost.”

  “The dark elves—” Sylas started.

  “The dark elves are not coming,” Cedric said. “If we wait here for Prince Jayden, we’re dead. We must go. Perhaps we will join the dark elves and help with their fight against Demogorgon. My brothers and sisters, Orcus will fall, but first, we must be restored. This place—this desolate land of wood and stone—is not where we die. This is not where Orcus claims us! Trust in me…” He thought of her for a moment, flabbergasted at the woman he now truly put his faith in. “Trust in the Holy One!”

  Sylas nodded. Allison put her arms around her son and Sarah. Then, she put her helmet back on.

  “We go east!” Allison shouted. “Everyone grab your things.”

  Across the barrier, Orcus perked up. He no longer leaned against his staff. He looked to the south and then back at the paladins. The undead stopped attacking the bubble and seemed distracted by the same thing that had grabbed the attention of their demon lord.

  “Something’s happening,” Cedric said.

  Red light glowed on the horizon.

  “Sun’s coming up,” Henry said.

  Cedric shook his head as sweat poured down his face. His efforts to hold the shield were faltering. He was exhausted.

  “That’s south,” Cedric said. “Those are flames. The forest is on fire.”

  The men and women in the paladin group pressed themselves against the mountain and moved within the bubble to the east. Cedric struggled to walk with his colleagues as he held the blades. He wished he could bind the blades together, so he wouldn’t have to work so hard to keep the bubble formed, but everything they had tried had failed. Wood, leather and branches lit and smoldered. Metal melted eventually and was in short supply anyway. Bindings around the handles just wouldn’t hold. Too much torque and repulsive force caused the swords to eventually point in opposing directions, attached at the handles and no longer touching blade-on-blade. The group had almost perished thrice in the attempts to get such a contraption working.

  The undead began to shriek and Orcus and Julian barked orders before the vampire ran into the woods to the south. A few minutes later, a ruckus sounded from the east and trees began to crash down in the path the paladins had hoped to take. A mighty roar echoed across the valley as a wave of massive green and brown-skinned warriors bounded across the fields and mossy forests with axes and hammers raised high. They crashed into the stunned undead.

  “For Great Light!” one of the barbaric attackers screamed into the fiery eyes of an undead soldier.

  “Orcs?” Cedric asked in amazement.

  He stopped pressing the blades together and marveled as a seven-foot orc with a red hand sliced an undead man in twain with a great axe. The creature yelled in triumph and then turned toward Cedric with crazed, blood-frenzied eyes.

  “Protect yourself!” Cedric yelled.

  Allison opened her hands to indicate that she wanted her swords back. He threw the Twin Sisters to her, and she dropped his hammer so that he might retrieve it.

  “Come and get it, you bastards!” she screamed.

  She didn’t bring the blades together. Instead, she leapt between Sylas and Sarah and ran a sword into a yellow-skinned orc with dark black hair. The creature gaped at the Light-filled blade as the lightning arced from its wounds.

  Cedric slammed his warhammer into the ground, and the earth erupted in white-hot flames in an arc before him. The orc with the red hand gaped at him in astonishment. Henry Claymore cleaved an orcish man’s arm off and shouted in defiance. The undead routed and retreated as the arcs of lightning grew more frenzied with the anger of the exhausted paladins.

  The orcish leader held up his hands and shouted a command to his men, who all formed a line behind him. The line bulged into a large mob, each peeking over the others to view the paladins. The leader huffed and barked more commands, and then a muscular orc with a staff made of wood and skulls stepped forward.

  “Great Light?” the chief asked the muscular old orc.

  The shaman nodded and pointed toward the undead and the huge demon lord with the goat-skull for a head. “Foul wind,” he said. He pointed at Cedric. “Great Light favors.”

  The chief nodded and huffed.

  Cedric watched the bulk of the undead retreat. They ran south, away from the paladins and orcs. Orcus remained with only a few dozen undead henchman around him. These were not weak like the others. They seemed ancient and more grizzled—like undead lieutenants. Orcus swung his staff and struck the ground three times, and the orc leader pounded his chest as if getting ready for a challenge.

  A blinding light beside Cedric interrupted the displays of dominance, and both sides recoiled. As the light faded, a blonde-haired woman appeared. Light pink lips. Blue eyes. As beautiful as the first time Cedric laid eyes on her at his initiation half a lifetime ago.

  Mekadesh had arrived. The Holy One was here at last.

  “Great Light!” the orcish leader screamed triumphantly.

  “Holy One!” the orcish shaman said. “Great Light!”

  The paladins too cheered her arrival.

  Mekadesh eyed Orcus with malice. She hissed like a snake as she strafed before the orcs. She beckoned to the shaman, but her eyes never left the demon lord.

  “Hello, Mother!” Orcus called mockingly. “Great Queen of the Night. It’s been so long since we last met. I’ve missed you as any true son should.”

  She reached toward the shaman, and he obediently walked toward her. As he came within arm’s reach, she grabbed his staff and yanked it free of his hands. He yelped as he dropped to his knees in prostration.

  With a loud voice, she addressed him.

  “Do you promise me your eternal soul in this conflict with the demon lords?” she asked, still glaring at Orcus.

  “Yes, Great Light!” the shaman promised.

  “Do you promise to bring your sons to me, in the same way you have been brought to me? Do you promise to never dissuade them from taking this path to me?”

  “You’re inducting him into the Order?” Cedric asked with alarm.

  She nodded.

  “Yes, Great Light!” the shaman said.

  “I pledge!” the orc chief pleaded with earnestness. “I promise!”

  She reached out toward him, and he handed her his massive axe without hesitation. She held it, despite its obvious weight, as if it were a toothpick. The rest of the orcs knelt before her, each swearing fealty.

  An arc of lightning shot from the head of the staff and the axe that she held.

  “Go my son,” she yelled to Orcus. “Try to take your dragons, for those too will die before me!”

  Orcus snarled at her as he slammed his large black staff into the ground with each step he made toward the south, away from her.

  “You have some reinforcements,” Orcus called to her. “That’s nice. These creatures you’ve gathered are but mortals. They will fall, just as the deer and the antelopes do. Before long, they will beg me for death—just like your precious Maddox did. Where is your new general? Does he beg for death yet?”

  “The Necromancer will find you soon enough,” she promised.

  “We shall see about that,” Orcu
s said as he disappeared into the trees.

  Cedric fell to his knees as the demon lord vanished without a fight or a further word. This same evil creature had stood there, watching Cedric and his men for weeks behind an army of relentless undead. And yet, she showed up, and he was gone. Cedric looked up at Mekadesh, gratitude flushing his cheeks and brow, and she smiled down at him.

  “You’ve fought well,” she said.

  “We’ve done nothing,” Cedric said apologetically. “We’ve merely stalled them. They are countless—like a swarm of bees.”

  “You have killed many,” Mekadesh said. “With only a few dozen men, women, and children, you have held off an army.”

  Cedric sighed and let all the air leave his lungs. Allison placed a comforting hand on his pauldrons.

  “We all need food and rest,” Allison said, “and our children are still uninitiated.”

  “In due time,” Mekadesh said, “but not here. It’s too dangerous.”

  “You think he’s coming back?” Cedric asked.

  “Something more dangerous and unpredictable is coming,” The Holy One said. “Vengeance. Anger. Pain. It lashes out at the land like a wounded animal. Orcus is deadly but calm and measured. He has a plan. What comes this way is not a plan. It is chaos. I am a creature of chaos, so I have nothing to fear, but you’re not. You all must go to continue to serve me and your world, and so, you must leave this place for now.”

  Allison nodded and leaned back into Cedric’s arms.

  Mekadesh whispered in a language that Cedric didn’t understand. She held up a hand, and a loaf of bread appeared. She passed it to Cedric, who broke off pieces of it and shared it with each person in their party.

  “Eat, but then you must go east,” Mekadesh said quickly. “Ashton needs you.”

  “But the people of the southern lands fight the undead alone!” Henry Claymore said.

  “If they want to live, they must flee also,” she said. “There’s nothing in Southern Surdel that will save them from the demon lords. Ashton searches for a weapon that will. You must join him.”

  “And you say it’s to the east?” Cedric asked. “Where is it, so we might cross his path sooner?”

  “Only the Eye can see the truth now,” she said, “I only know that it is buried within the earth. It leaks the water of creation. Search for water with no source. A lake where it shouldn’t be. That’s where you’ll find the Hand of Maddox. Now, we must go!”

  “We must rest or our muscles will fail us,” Allison said. “We haven’t slept for days. We haven’t eaten anything but mushrooms, grass, and bark for weeks.”

  Mekadesh nodded in understanding. “You’ve fought well,” she repeated. “Perhaps, it’s time for others to carry the load for a while.”

  She threw the glowing axe to the orc chief, and then motioned him toward Allison.

  The orc nodded in understanding, but Cedric was confused.

  “Bloodhand,” the orc said, thumping himself on his chest as he marveled at his glowing axe.

  He nodded to Cedric as he passed him and then picked up Cedric’s startled wife and tossed her over his shoulder.

  “This is—!” Cedric protested, but Mekadesh put a finger over her lips and shushed him.

  One after another, the orcs walked over to the paladins and hoisted the holy warriors one-at-a-time over their shoulders. They marched east with their burdens without further orders or complaints.

  “You’ve fought well,” Mekadesh said once again. “Do not worry further. You’re in my hands now. Rest. We’ll speak more on the way to Edinsbro.”

  “I can walk,” Cedric protested as a young, broad-shouldered orc offered to pick him up.

  “Ogdorn,” the seven-foot orc said, slamming his brown chest with a massive fist. “Chief son. Much honor mine.”

  Mekadesh nodded to Cedric, who grunted as he allowed the huge creature to lift him like a sack of potatoes. Cedric’s armor jostled as the orc bounded over the fields and through the trees, fast as a deer. He had always been a light sleeper—the smallest jostle or cry from a child in the night would wake him immediately. But something strange happened as he watched his men and women hoisted atop the backs of heavily-muscled orcs behind this one called Ogdorn. Cedric’s eyelids fluttered and then closed.

  A warmth emanated through him, almost certainly from the red-blooded, great muscular man beneath him. The jostles became nothing more than the tinkling of bells in his ears. The danger of the past three weeks melted into the safety of the present and the hope of the future. And Cedric slept the whole day through.

  18

  Southern Reinforcements

  Apprentice blacksmith Clayton Achates rode into Dona on an unusual mount—one of only three horses of its kind that had been available in Perketh. When his hometown had been put to the sword, the Red Army had killed man, woman, child, and even animals that had been tied down or kept in pens. This horse was one of the few at the inn to be murdered while tied to the posts outside the stable. Like the people in Perketh and Dona, the horse had been resurrected by Clayton’s friend Ashton when he reanimated every recently dead thing in town.

  He could have taken a normal mount to Dona—dozens of such creatures had returned after the fire—but he hoped the sight of a resurrected horse might make the reanimated people here feel even more kinship to him and warmer to his cause. The survival of Perketh and the remnants of Ashton’s Army required him to use every possible advantage to persuade the people of Dona to join him and work as a unified people, whether against a king intent on killing him because he had been labeled unnatural or demons with hordes of undead who simply wanted to destroy the world.

  Before he left his hometown, Clayton had taken the best armor Nathan had available in the stockpile—at least, the best armor that would fit his huge frame. He wore a full visor with bevor and gorget in the close helm style of the King’s Guard. His shoulders were broad in polished pauldrons—the kind fitted for protection in close combat rather than jousting from horseback. He bedecked himself in gauntlets, greaves, front and back breastplate. Even his new horse Crassus had been armored with plating along his flanks, side, and head. To anyone who looked at the horse and rider, they looked regal—someone to be followed and respected.

  Clayton held a tall pennant with an icon designed by Molly Frankens, a signmaker of Perketh. Children had taken the design and made twenty of the flags to be erected along the newly built wall around their city. The emblem showed a cloaked man held aloft by ten open palms. Molly wanted to call the symbol The Rebirth of Perketh. Clayton liked the concept as it was certainly close to his heart, but he internally named the work something else: The Call of Ashton Jeraldson. Still, Molly was probably onto something. Reborn sounded better than undead. He refused to call himself the latter. Reborn sounded much less derogatory and shameful.

  The creatures that Orcus led were the true undead. Clayton and the people of Perketh and Dona were something else entirely. Clayton had been healing. Everyone in Perketh was experiencing a similar change, and he was sure the people in Dona had experienced the same improvement—namely, that they were getting better.

  And that sense of progression toward better days ahead had changed him in very profound ways. He no longer wished to return to a deep, eternal sleep inside the earth. He no longer punished himself for being a hideous beast that deserved ridicule. After he shed his shame, he realized that he was a miracle, and he wasn’t alone. Ashton had reached into the Abyss and made the world right again for thousands of people.

  Clayton shivered at the thought of the blackness of the Void he had fallen into. He had only been dead a couple days, but he had experienced a lifetime of nothingness and torment. Any time he had a bad day or cursed the tediousness of repelling the undead at Perketh, he only had to think back to those short moments he had spent in the dark, pointless afterlife from which the demons had built a bridge to Nirendia.

  His only regret anymore was that his wife had been too badly burned to be br
ought back from that horrendous eternity in the blackness. Without her, the world lost much of its luster. He fought his solitude and melancholy by finding new purpose. He couldn’t be with his true love, but that didn’t mean he had to be alone. The Reborn in Dona and Perketh were his people. They shared his experiences. They knew the shock and helplessness of dying. They had felt the same despair that he did when he tumbled into the Abyss, and they knew the joy of being resurrected. And their shared rapture and renewed purpose was all due to one man: Clayton’s best friend Ashton.

  As Clayton trotted through Dona, a crowd followed him between the alleyways. The town didn’t really have a rich district. They didn’t have a skilled blacksmith like Master Nathan or any other famous artisans. They didn’t have a signmaker like Molly. There wasn’t a theater here where children were encouraged to act and play. Dona was a town without hope before the Red Army, and it was even more desolate and destitute after.

  A woman scurried across the street in front of him and then panicked. She must have thought he was King’s Guard. Like Perketh, the citizens here feared reprisals from the royals. For being unnatural creatures, they were more outlaw than subject in the eyes of the Crown.

  Clayton raised his visor so his open wound was visible—so they could see that he was one of them. Then he took off his helmet and bevor completely and placed it on the horse pommel in front of him. He rode straight and strong, hoping to signify confidence and allay their fears. People ran their hands along his horse’s open wounds.

  He ambled into the town square where wooden homes had been rebuilt with the trees from the forest west of Mallory Keep. He could see the laborers pulling carts back to town, laden with logs. As the men came closer, they left their wagons and shuffled over to the square to observe the commotion.

  Clayton slowly circled a central well on Crassus. He nodded to the men and women, encouraging them to grab their neighbors and join him in the square. He marveled at the mixture of living and reborn. The Red Army had not been as thorough here as they had been in Perketh. The solidarity of the bandits had fractured along the road from Perketh. Every side street and alley had been a new opportunity to rape, pillage, and murder. Only a quarter of the bandit force ever made it to Mallory Keep. The rest were consumed by Ashton’s Reborn as the people of Perketh made their way west in great anger and supernatural vengeance.