As one, lightning rippled through their bodies and exploded from them, guided by the will of the knights upon their backs. The stormhawks were creatures of magic, and they could draw on elemental lightning to hunt their prey, a talent the Knights of the Griffin had turned to the use of the Empire. Massive bolts of lightning ripped down from the stormhawks and slashed into the milling goblins, killing hundreds of the creatures. Dirt fountained up from the impacts, burning goblins tumbling through the air. The knights riding on the griffins loosed arrows and Lance spells at the enemy, though those attacks seemed feeble compared to the fury of the stormhawks.
Even over the roar and thunder of the lightning, Tyrcamber heard Master Ruire’s shout.
“Charge!” The Master’s standardbearer loosed a trumpet call, and the knights and mounted serjeants put spurs to their horses. Tyrcamber followed suit, and his mount grunted and galloped forward. They converged towards one of the goblins’ siege camps, which had tents and wagons lined up in uneven rows, their ragged banners flying overhead. The Knights of the Order of Embers worked magic, and a dozen Fire Torrent spells leaped from their hands and slashed through the tents and splashed off the wagons. Fatigue and the dark fingers of the Malison snarled at the edges of Tyrcamber’s mind, but he forced magic through his weariness and cast the Fire Torrent spell himself. The stream of flames slashed from his hand and tore through a wagon laden with supplies and set half a dozen tents on fire. The entire southern half of the goblin siege camp erupted into flames, and more lightning rained from the sky as the stormhawks unleashed their fury. The goblins fled from the storm of fire and lightning, and for a wild instant, Tyrcamber thought they could press onward, driving the Valedictor’s host before them like chaff on the wind.
Then a roar filled his ears, and one of the stormhawks erupted into flames.
Tyrcamber shot a look at the sky. The stormhawks and the griffins scattered as a half-dozen dragons of varying sizes flew overhead, their fiery breath slashing at the air. The smallest of the dragons was no larger than Tyrcamber’s horse, likely a soldier or a peasant who had recently lost control of his magic and been consumed by the Malison. The largest of the dragons was immense, its body the size of a church, its great black wings spreading on either side like the sails of a mighty ship. Scales the color of darkness covered the dragon’s body, and atop the dragon sat a dark elven lord wearing armor of blue and silver, a black cloak streaming behind him.
The Valedictor himself.
Tyrcamber reacted on reflex, forcing more magical power through his weary mind and shaping it into a spell. He sent a Lance of elemental fire hurtling skyward, hoping to blast the Valedictor from the back of his dragon. But the dark elf didn’t even notice. Tyrcamber’s Lance spell struck the Valedictor but shattered into sparks against the spells layered over his armor.
Two of the dragons dove, their wings folding, and unleashed bursts of fire. The flames swept across the battlefield, and horsemen perished, knights and their mounts both vanishing in curtains of fire. Master Ruire’s standardbearer sounded the recall, and Tyrcamber turned his horse as more dragon fire swept across the ground. The stormhawks and the griffins wheeled, turning to face their attackers. Lightning leaped from the wings of the stormhawks, lashing at the dragons. One of the smaller dragons screamed and thrashed in the grip of the lightning, and then plummeted to the ground, its body already swimming with golden fire as it died.
As the duel raged overhead, Tyrcamber galloped towards the gate with the rest of the Knights of Embers and the Knights of Iron. Volleys of magic and steel hurtled from the ramparts, flying towards the Valedictor and his dragons. Dragons were powerful and dangerous, but they were not invincible. Tyrcamber saw several ballista bolts punch into the side of a massive green dragon ridden by one of the Valedictor’s dark elven vassals. The creature let out a furious roar and turned away, its rider guiding the dragon towards the siege camps. A volley of Lance spells hit a smaller red dragon, lightning playing up and down its crimson scales. The creature thrashed and screamed, trying to stay aloft, and a griffin flew past it. The knight on the griffin’s back flung a javelin with all his strength, and the javelin punched into the dragon’s left eye and sank into its brain. The dragon went limp and plummeted to the ground, shrinking into its original human form as golden fire covered its body.
Tyrcamber reached the gate, and he steered his horse into the northern square of Sinderost. He turned away from the wall at once, leaving space for the knights behind him to get into the city. It looked as if most of the Knights of Embers and the Knights of Iron who had ridden forth had returned, though several had perished in the dragon attack. Tyrcamber spotted Angaric in his saddle, wiping sweat from his forehead, and saw that Master Ruire had survived as well.
The gates boomed shut, men-at-arms wrestling the doors’ locking bars back into place. Tyrcamber looked at the sky, fearing that the Valedictor would lead his dragons over the wall, but the attack of both magic and steel had driven him back. Whatever happened in the siege, the Valedictor would not risk his own life unless he had no choice.
Chaos ruled in the square as knights shouted orders, trying to get their men back in line. Tyrcamber turned his horse, steering the animal towards one of the streets to get out of the way. Once the squires came to attend to the horses, he would return to his section of the wall to take command again. Then it would be time to tally their losses for the day, the wounded and the killed, and…
A scream came to Tyrcamber’s ears.
There was so much noise in the square he wasn’t sure he had heard it at first. But it came again from an alley next to the inn, accompanied by a flicker of golden light.
That flicker of golden light made Tyrcamber turn in alarm, and he saw the transforming soldier.
The man slumped against the wall of the inn, blood staining his face and more soaking his tabard. It looked like he had been hit by goblin arrows, one in the chest and another in the stomach. The chest wound was probably a mercy, all things considered. If the Heal spell could not repair a stomach wound, that it would likely take the man weeks to die in intense agony.
But to judge from the golden fire that shimmered in the soldier’s eyes and veins, it was too late for that.
The Malison had taken him, and then man was transforming. Already his body bulged and distorted, his limbs swelling, his skin ripping to reveal crimson scales. At some point during the battle, he must have used enough magic to succumb to the Malison. Or perhaps in desperation, he had tried to cast the Heal spell on himself, drawn too much power, and unleashed the Dragon Curse.
The soldier’s burning eyes met Tyrcamber’s, and his face distorted with pain as fangs burst from his gums.
“Help me,” croaked the soldier, “help me, help me…”
For a moment Tyrcamber remembered the first time he had seen this happen, the day seven years ago when his friend Corswain Scuinar had lost control of his magic during the siege of Tongur and started to transform.
“Help me,” repeated the soldier, and then screamed as talons ripped from his fingers.
Tyrcamber dropped from the saddle, stepped forward, and plunged his sword into the transforming soldier’s neck.
There was nothing else to be done.
Once the transformation had taken hold, it could not be stopped. The soldier would transform into a dragon, and with the Valedictor so close, he would immediately fall under the domination of the dark elven lord. A dragon within the walls would be a disaster and depending on how much chaos such a creature caused, could lead to the fall of the city.
The soldier sighed and slumped against the wall, the golden fire fading from his eyes and veins. When a dragon was killed, the creature reverted to its original form. But caught halfway through the transformation, the soldier’s corpse would remain twisted, part human and part dragon.
Tyrcamber cleaned the blood from his sword and returned the blade to its scabbard, his heart heavy. He hated doing this, but there was no other choice. Had
the soldier finished the transformation, he would have rampaged through the city until he was stopped. And if the new-made dragon survived, he would have been enslaved to the Valedictor for centuries, perhaps even millennia.
Compared to that, death was a mercy.
Tyrcamber only hoped that when his time came, if he lost control of his magic and started to transform, that someone was there to kill him.
He was so tired, and he felt the dark shadows of the Malison dancing at the edges of his thoughts.
***
Chapter 2: The Emperor
But no new attacks came for the rest of that day, or for all the next.
The failure of the assault on the outer wall and the raid upon the siege camps had disorganized the Valedictor’s host. Tyrcamber stood on the wall and watched the enemy, his men ready for an attack, but none came. The Valedictor’s horde swarmed like ants, goblins and ogres hauling timbers while muridach engineers assembled them into catapults and ladders. To the east, across the River Bellex and in the lands of the duchy of Talgothica that the Valedictor had captured, Tyrcamber saw the goblins working. They were assembling massive rafts equipped with ladders. Sinderost’s outer wall rose from the eastern bank of the River Bellex, and likely the Valedictor intended to attack from both the north and the east at once.
It would be difficult for the Valedictor’s forces to manage such an attack, but it would be just as challenging to defend against it. A great portion of the Empire’s remaining strength was gathered behind the walls of Sinderost. The men of the Empire had been driven from the eastern duchies over the last several years of campaigning, falling back from castle to castle until they had retreated to Sinderost. The men of the Empire could retreat no more. Sinderost was the heart of the Empire, and if the city fell and the Emperor was slain, the Empire would cease to exist. The remaining Dukes of the western Empire would become independent warlords, and the Valedictor would conquer them one by one.
Sinderost had to stand, yet Tyrcamber did not know how to save the city.
Still, if he had to fight a defensive battle, he was glad to do it here. The Imperial capital had the strongest walls in the Empire, and the city’s storehouses held sufficient food to last for years. Every attack on the northern wall had been repulsed, inflicting massive casualties on the goblin and ogre soldiers. Yet the Valedictor’s hordes seemed endless, and an army could only take so many defeats. The men of the Empire had been driven from the eastern duchies and into Sinderost, and morale was low.
Yet it seemed that morale was just as low among the enemy. For two days after the failed attack, the Valedictor’s army seethed outside the walls. Three times Tyrcamber saw groups of goblins and muridachs come to blows, and the last brawl was so severe that one the Valedictor’s dragons took flight and breathed fire upon the melee.
Peace was restored to the enemy camp soon after that.
Tyrcamber wondered if the men of the Empire could turn that discord to their advantage. They were a long, long way from Urd Mythruin, and the Valedictor’s supply lines had been stretched to their limit. For that matter, the Valedictor’s army was composed of different tribes and nations of goblins, ogres, muridachs, and umbral elves that all hated each other. Without the Valedictor’s iron hand, they would turn on each other in an eyeblink.
Though Tyrcamber could not think of a good way to turn that to the advantage of the Empire.
On the third day after the failed attack, the Emperor summoned the chief lords and knights of the army to a council of war. Tyrcamber was neither a preceptor or an officer of the Order, but he was a Knight of Embers, so he accompanied Master Ruire as part of his bodyguard. Sir Angaric Medraut was one of the bodyguards as well. For once the usually ebullient Sir Angaric looked tired. Angaric was one of the most powerful wizards in the Order, and he had used his magic again and again in the last few days to help repulse the assaults from the Valedictor’s forces. He had to be feeling the strain of keeping the Malison at bay, of the constant magical activity.
But Angaric perked up as they left the New City of Sinderost and came to the Old City.
Sinderost’s New City had been built up gradually over the last eight hundred years as the Empire expanded and grew. The Old City, though, predated the Empire itself by millennia. Once it had been the cloak elven city of Cathair Sindar, the seat of an elven kingdom that had ruled a large portion of the central Empire. In time, the relentless assaults of the Dragon Imperator had worn down the strength of Cathair Sindar, and the remaining cloak elves had fled, taking refuge in the hidden city of Cathair Kaldran. The Dragon Imperator and his vassals had never bothered to raze the abandoned city.
Then the first Emperor Roland and his army had arrived here, drawn through a wild gate from Old Earth. They needed a place of refuge, and the empty city of Cathair Sindar had been available. So Cathair Sindar became Sinderost, and the Empire had exploded across the face of the world, struggling against the dark elves and their armies until at last the Dragon Imperator had been slain.
And now the Valedictor had claimed the Dragon Imperator’s throne and threatened to destroy the Empire.
Despite his bleak mood, Tyrcamber looked around with interest as they passed through the inner gate and into the old city. The inner wall was built of the pale white stone the cloak elves used in all their construction, and inside the wall stood slender towers and sprawling palaces of white stone crowned with gleaming domes. The first Emperor had claimed the entirety of Sinderost as his personal demesne and granted various lords and merchants the right to houses and towers as it pleased him.
“And there,” said Angaric, “is the house where my ancestors were granted their titles and lands.” Angaric was fascinated with history, and inevitably a visit to the old city of Sinderost prompted a lecture on the topic, even though Tyrcamber had served as a squire in the Imperial Palace for years.
That had been only ten years ago, but it seemed like an eternity had passed.
“And over there,” said Angaric, pointing at a mansion of white stone within a courtyard, “is the motherhouse where the Order of Embers was founded.”
“Yes, I know,” said Tyrcamber. “We were there when we arrived at Sinderost.”
He almost said when they fell back to Sinderost but stopped himself. A dozen serjeants accompanied Master Ruire as they strode deeper into the Old City. Tyrcamber was a Knight of the Order, and he had to set an example for the soldiers of the Order. That included keeping morale up.
Though optimism was a polite fiction. The common soldiers knew just as well as the nobles how badly the Empire had been losing the war with the Valedictor.
“It is part of our duty as Knights of the Order of Embers to know the history of the Empire,” said Angaric. He grinned behind his beard. “Besides, you need to read more.”
“There’s been so much spare time for it lately,” said Tyrcamber.
“Then I shall endeavor to fill the gaps in your education,” said Angaric. “Really, you need me to look out for you. Remember that business at Falconberg?”
“Since we were nearly killed by muridachs and then almost had the Shield’s mansion burn down on top of us, yes, I remember it quite well,” said Tyrcamber in a dry voice.
“Well, after that, you could have bedded Sigurd Rincimar,” said Angaric. “She was giving you that dewy-eyed look women get. All you had to do was crook your finger, and she’d fall into your bed. Instead, you left the banquet early, and she wound up marrying the Count of Eichenfel.”
Tyrcamber hid his smile. What Angaric didn’t know was that Sigurd had also left the banquet early, and she had said farewell to Tyrcamber most enthusiastically. But what Sigurd had really wanted was a powerful and wealthy husband, so as a favor to Tyrcamber his sister Adelaide had arranged for Sigurd’s betrothal to the Count of Eichenfel, one of the vassals of the Duke of Roxaria. According to rumors that Tyrcamber found entirely believable, Sigurd ruled the Count’s household with an iron fist while her husband busied himself hunting and f
ishing.
Though Tyrcamber supposed the Count was with the army of the western dukes now.
“A good point, sir,” said Tyrcamber. “Without your counsel, I would be lost indeed.”
Angaric gave him a suspicious look, but then resumed his lecture on the history of Sinderost.
They came to the southernmost tip of the city, where the River Nabia joined the River Bellex as it flowed south to the sea. Each river was nearly half a mile wide this far south. Combined with Sinderost’s ancient walls, it provided for a strong barrier against any attackers, which was why the Valedictor’s hosts had focused their attacks on the northern wall of the New City so far. But Tyrcamber knew if he climbed to the top of the eastern wall and looked over the River Bellex, he would see goblin engineers cutting down trees to build rafts and ladders. Once they were ready, they would launch an assault across the river, no doubt at the same time as another assault from the north.
Was the city strong enough to fend off a powerful attack from two directions at once?
Tyrcamber didn’t know. They had beaten back the attacks aimed at the northern wall so far, but he wasn’t sure if their soldiers could withstand attacks from the north and the east at the same time.
But he suspected they were going to find out sooner rather than later.
Then the sight of the Imperial Palace and the Square of the Empire pushed away his worries, if only for a little while.
The Imperial Palace filled the triangular southern tip of the city, the River Nabia flowing past its western wall and the River Bellex past its eastern wall. It was a soaring castle built in the cloak elven style, with gleaming white walls and soaring domes and towers. The highest slender tower rose nearly four hundred feet from the ground, and the watchers the Emperor kept there had given the defenders ample warning of the enemy’s movements.
Malison: Dragon War Page 2
