“Cease, or forfeit your life!” Balif declared.
Zannian, face twisted in fury, grabbed the blade with his bare hand. Balif snatched his sword back, cutting the raider’s hand to the bone, then raised the keen blade high —
“No! Don’t!” Amero cried, waving his hands. “The green dragon is here! We need Zannian alive!”
He didn’t know if Balif heard him or not, but the elf lord brought his sword down in a fast diagonal slash.
Zannian’s hands flew to his face, and he stumbled back, blood pouring between his fingers. Balif advanced.
Amero leaped over fallen friends and foes shouting, “Stop! Balif, don’t!” He collided with the elf, knocking him away from the man writhing in the mud.
“Let me finish him!” Balif demanded, eyes wide with battle rage.
Amero held him fast and explained Zannian could be valuable barter if Sthenn gained the upper hand.
Balif lowered his sword. The fire left his eyes, as he gazed impassively down at the beaten man.
Amero knelt in the mud and wrestled with Zannian. It didn’t take him long to determine that the raider chief had lost one eye, possibly both, to the elf’s savage slash.
Their leader down, nearby raiders wheeled their mounts and rode away. In less time than it takes to tell, the battle at the south end of the knoll ended. Nomads chased the escaping raiders a short way, only to be called back by Karada’s lieutenant, Bahco. The young warrior, unhorsed early in the fight, had spent much of the battle dodging raider spears. Once the enemy was defeated, he had found a horse and taken control of his band again. Bahco decided he wouldn’t risk losing more men and women by trying to hunt cowardly raiders in the pouring rain.
As it was, few raiders escaped. Those who high-tailed it over the knoll ran right into a fresh contingent of nomads under the redoubtable Pakito. The giant had led his third of Karada’s band all the way across the valley, arriving in time to cut off the remnants of Zannian’s raiders.
Pakito and Bahco hailed each other as they rode up to greet Balif.
“Well, elf lord, you look like you’ve had a hard day!” Pakito said heartily.
Unamused, Balif replied, “Harder for those who died.”
Bahco, a sling around his neck to support his sprained right arm, asked, “What of the Arkuden? Does he live?”
Balif pointed to the two men at his feet. One was an unconscious Zannian. The other was Amero. The Arkuden was squatting in the mud, catching rain in his cupped hands and using it to wash the raider’s lacerated face.
*
In nine successive attacks, Karada had been unable to break the ring of ogres. She led each foray herself and tried all the maneuvers she knew to shatter the monsters’ resistance. They rode straight in, circled left and right, threw spears and axes, yet nothing made any lasting impression. Ogres went down, and some undoubtedly perished, but Ungrah-de remained, as durable as stone. He bled from a hundred wounds, and still he fought on. Taking an axe from one of his fallen warriors, he wielded a weapon in each hand, shredding any nomad foolhardy enough to come within reach of those two terrible stone blades.
Pakito had ridden off with the right wing of the band, leaving his chief to battle the ogres. It hadn’t seemed like such a challenge at first; after all, she’d slain an ogre with her sword earlier. Surely two hundred nomads could wipe out a dozen or so of the creatures.
The storm hadn’t helped. Horses lost their footing as they churned around the monsters’ ring, pounding the loose gravel into the mud. Standing in place, Ungrah’s warriors did not face that problem. Still, as midday came and went, the ogres wearied and stood with shoulders hunched, hairy hands braced on their thighs during the short intervals between waves of nomad attacks. Karada thought a few more attacks would leave them too exhausted to continue.
She forgot about Pakito and Bahco, forgot Zannian and his raiders, and even let the ever-present shadow of Amero slip into the background of her thoughts. The world shrank to this muddy hill. Her only task was the destruction of Ungrah-de.
Into the haze of rain, mud, and war rode Beramun, shouting, “The dragon, Karada! I saw it! He’s here!”
Karada glanced skyward. “Duranix?”
“No, the green dragon – Sthenn!”
One hand shot out like a striking viper, snagging the front of Beramun’s shirt. Karada dragged the girl close and hissed, “Are you sure?”
Beramun nodded, wet, tangled hair molded to her skull. “I saw him, in the clouds! He is there!” She didn’t take time to mention the jade-colored mark on her chest and how it seemed to be sensing Sthenn’s presence.
Karada scanned the roiling, cloudy sky and saw nothing, yet she knew Beramun was no excitable child, like Mara. If she said she saw a dragon, it must be there.
“We must finish this quickly, before the dragon can intervene! Find Amero if you can, and tell him what you saw!”
She released Beramun and shouted to her warriors, “Once more! Form up, once more! This time we’ll take them!” Her voice was raw from yelling. “Give me two groups! We’ll hit from two sides at once!”
Stunned by her deep-rooted fear of Sthenn, Beramun sat frozen on her mount, the nomads’ horses jostling her to and fro. Her dark eyes were huge as she stared at the nomad chieftain.
“Beramun!” Karada said sharply, and the girl jumped. “Find Amero! Do you hear? Find Amero!”
The girl nodded once and set off at a gallop.
For a moment, Karada stared after her. The darkhaired girl was one she was pleased to call friend. Strong, loyal, and free-minded, Beramun was gifted with beauty even the nomad chief could envy. Karada had never thought much about her own looks, though she’d known some beautiful men. Pa’alu, the author of her curse, had been handsome, in a lean and wolfish way. The rebel Sessan, with his blond hair and easy laugh, was pretty, even if he had loved the wretch Nacris. Scarred and hard of mien, Karada knew she was not beautiful, nor was that something she worried about. Yet Beramun made her wonder what it would be like to be beautiful.
As Beramun disappeared into the pouring rain, Karada recalled herself to the battle at hand. Her borrowed mount danced as she flung orders left and right.
*
Find Amero.
Karada’s command echoed in Beramun’s mind. Desperately afraid that Sthenn would swoop down on her at any moment, she held on to that simple command as a drowning man clings to a floating log. Unconsciously, she kept looking up, but there was no sign of the dragon.
It was no mystery to her why Sthenn might be overhead and yet not intervene to save his followers. The cruel, perverse dragon was probably enjoying the horrific battle. Every stroke of sword or axe weakened the nomads. Sthenn was probably reveling in the pain and death.
As the ceiling of clouds parted briefly she spied something large moving against the wind. Claws, scales, and wings... breath caught in her throat when she realized their color wasn’t green.
Bronze! Duranix was aloft, battling his ancient nemesis! Now she had good news for Amero!
*
At that moment, Karada was hurtling across the valley toward Ungrah-de. She led her half of the warriors north, while the other half rode wide to the south. Their movements were plain to the ogres, who rose from their crouching rest and prepared to face the circling onslaught. Holding her nicked and bent elven blade out straight in front of her face, Karada stared down its length at the ogre chiefs broad chest. Most of his trophy skulls had been knocked off, and his leather and stone armor was slashed and peeling. Karada aimed the point of her sword at the base of Ungrah’s thick neck. She imagined four spans of bronze penetrating his spotty, grayish hide, piercing veins and muscles as it went. Leaning forward, she thumped her heels against the sorrel mare’s flanks, kicking the gasping beast for more speed. Though she didn’t know it, she was screaming. Everyone in the fight forever after would remark on how she screamed on and on, uninterrupted.
Ungrah waited for her, arms crossed, an axe lying on each
shoulder. When she drew near, he raised both weapons, holding the smaller one forward to ward off her sword while keeping his own massive weapon back to chop her down.
Her sword never found Ungrah’s throat, and his axes never touched Karada’s flesh. For when the two were almost in reach of each other, a column of fire struck the ground between them. Witnesses on the village wall described the bolt as white as mountain ice and broader than an ox. It forked in all directions, but the center branch touched the ground between the hard-riding nomad woman and the mighty ogre chief.
The world exploded around them. Stones and mud flew, and the sound of the thunder deafened everyone.
Falling free from the clouds came two enormous dragons, one green, one bronze, so closely entwined they might have been one creature had not their hides been of such radically different hues. They plunged to earth, twisting and turning in deadly embrace, and crashed down on the exact same spot where the lightning bolt had struck a few heartbeats earlier.
Nomads and ogres scattered. Just before impact, the green dragon freed his head from the tangle and shrieked in skull-splitting agony. Then they hit.
Yala-tene shivered to its foundations. Inside the wall, weakly built houses collapsed. Boulders caromed down the cliffs, and avalanches rumbled through the mountains ringing the valley. A torrent of blackened mud was flung high in the air, and when it came down, it drenched everything, even the captured raiders in their pen beyond the nomad camp.
All fighting stopped – all fighting between two-legged antagonists, that is. Rearing up out of the crater created by their crash, Duranix bared his gleaming fangs and roared. The sound echoed through the valley. Sthenn’s long tail was wrapped around the bronze dragon’s throat, squeezing tightly. Duranix sank his foreclaws into the green dragon’s tail, cracking his corroded scales and rending the ancient flesh beneath. Sthenn flailed in pain, and his tail whipped free. Clawing at the torn-up soil, Sthenn came slithering out of the crater on his belly.
The green dragon was grievously hurt. One wing was clearly broken, bent backward at a sickening angle. Livid burns earned from Duranix’s lightning breath dotted his back and flanks, and fearsome wounds leaking dark blood ran along his brisket, belly, and tail.
Duranix did not emerge from the hole undamaged. One of his eyes was battered shut, and his face was terribly disfigured. Two talons on his right foreclaw had been torn off in the struggle, and some of his wounds were already festering from Sthenn’s fetid, pestilent claws.
Sthenn wriggled free and crawled rapidly away from his tormentor, eastward toward the nomads’ camp. But Duranix was far from finished with him.
The bronze dragon used his longer rear legs to catch the fleeing Sthenn in a single bound and seize him by his right hind leg and tail. Enormous muscles straining, Duranix hauled the loathsome beast back.
During the dragons’ battle, the constant sheets of rain gradually slackened and finally quit. A circle of blue sky had formed over the warring dragons. Sunlight slanted in, striking Duranix’s bronze hide, making it glint like gold.
“Zannian! Nacrisss!” Sthenn hissed as he was dragged backward. “Help your master, now!”
“No one can help you!” Duranix bellowed. “This is the end, old wyrm!”
When he released Sthenn’s tail to grab his other hind leg, the green dragon rolled quickly, snatching his leg from Duranix’s grasp. He lashed out, biting Duranix’s throat. He was powerful, but old, and his decayed fangs broke on Duranix’s heavy scales. Next thing he knew, Duranix was on top of him, huge incisors sunk into Sthenn’s long neck. The green dragon thrashed wildly in pain and panic. He managed to get one foot against the bronze dragon’s belly, and with all the strength left in his febrile limbs, he thrust Duranix off.
Duranix flew backward several hundred paces, stopping only when he crashed into the wall around Yala-tene. The heavy masonry sagged, then collapsed along the bronze dragon’s entire length. Terrified villagers fled to the far side of the village.
Sthenn could not fly. Though only one wing was broken, the skin of the other was shredded. Quaking, he crawled slowly away to the west. He kept looking back over his tattered left wing, and when Duranix rose from the rubble of the broken wall, Sthenn fell on his belly.
“Enough!” he quavered. “Let me be, you stupid hatchling!”
Duranix shook off his hard landing, spread his wings, and made a gliding leap. He alighted in front of Sthenn. The green didn’t try to attack but coiled himself in the mud in a tight ball.
“If you kill me, Duranix, what reason will you have to live?”
Standing upright, the bronze dragon planted his right hind foot on the groveling Sthenn’s head.
“I’ll find a reason,” he said coldly.
All through his massive body, the bronze dragon’s muscles knotted. His clawed foot gripped the green dragon’s narrow skull, each bronze talon embedding itself. Sthenn let out a shrill scream. His tail whipped from side to side, striking blows against Duranix’s back that would have crippled a lesser creature. Duranix stiffened and tightened his grip. He leaned to one side, putting all his great weight onto his foe. Brittle bones as old as the towering mountains began to crack. The grind of splintered bone could be heard throughout the valley.
“This is for my mother,” Duranix snarled, bearing down even harder. “For my clutchmates... for Blusidar... for all the innocent creatures you’ve tormented and murdered over the centuries.
“And this is for me!”
The great talons closed remorselessly. Filthy ichor gushed around them. The loudest crack of all reverberated off the cliffs, and Sthenn’s tail ceased thrashing.
Duranix slowly opened his claw and backed away a short distance. He came to rest on all fours. His wings were folded tightly against his back. He stayed that way, not moving, not blinking. He might have been cast in cold bronze for all the outward signs of life he displayed.
The last clouds flew away on the south wind, and the late afternoon sun filled the valley with bright warmth.
From different parts of the valley, small parties of people converged on the crouching dragon. Beramun and Karada arrived together, riding double. From the village came Amero, Lyopi, and the surviving elders of Yala-tene. On Amero’s heels came Balif, alone. From the raiders’ riverbank camp streamed prisoners, freed by the five men Hoten had sent away from the battle. At their head was Jenla, the old gardener. When she and Tepa caught sight of each other, they rushed forward, weeping, to engulf each other in a fierce embrace.
Karada and Beramun met Amero and his people well before they reached Duranix. The nomad chief dismounted and dropped to the ground. Without a word, she approached her weary brother and threw her arms around his neck.
Amero pulled back. To his surprise, he saw his sister’s cheeks were streaked with tears.
“It’s all right,” he said. “We’re alive. Don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying,” she retorted. “It’s the rain.”
Balif appeared beside Beramun.
“Greetings! You’re well, I see,” he said in his usual courtly manner.
“I feel like I’ve died many times today,” she replied.
He looked past her to the sibling chiefs. “An amazing day!” said the elf. “I’ve seen dragons before, but never two at the same time, much less joined in mortal combat! I thought Karada was dead when the dragons fell out of the sky. From where I stood, it looked as though they landed directly on her.”
“They did,” Beramun said, smiling wryly. “Don’t you know Karada can’t be killed?”
The four of them rejoined the elders and freed captives. Jenla was regaling her friends with tales of her captivity. After greeting Jenla, Amero moved on, anxious to see Duranix. Karada followed him, but when Beramun tried to go too, she sternly ordered her back. Lyopi remained behind as well.
Brother and sister closed on the motionless dragon.
An awful stench, like a corpse too long unburied, filled the air around the green dr
agon. Thick, black ichor dripped from Sthenn’s wounds, staining the ground. Amero wondered if anything would ever grow in soil polluted by the green dragon’s blood.
He gave the carcass wide berth, coming up on Duranix’s right rear flank. Karada, less intimidated, strolled within arm’s reach of Sthenn.
“Duranix,” Amero said quietly. “Can you hear me?”
“Of course I can.” Though he spoke, Duranix remained motionless, his uninjured right eye fixed on his ancient enemy.
“What are you doing? Are you hurt?”
“I’m keeping a vigil.”
At that moment Sthenn shuddered and expelled stinking yellow bile from his nostrils. Amero recoiled, prepared to flee, and Karada stepped quickly away.
“It’s still alive!” she declared.
“Ssstill,” Sthenn hissed.
“Why don’t you finish him off?” Karada asked sharply.
Duranix said, “He doesn’t deserve it. Centuries before you were born, he sat on top of my mother’s body and enjoyed her death. How many days did it take, Sthenn?”
Breath rattled through the dying beast’s rotten lungs.
“Ten? Eleven? How long was it before she finally died?” To the humans he said, “I’ll stay here until he’s dead.”
There was no reasoning with him, and Amero was too spent to try. Brother and sister turned to go. Before they did, Sthenn roused himself to speak.
“I have a gift for you,” he wheezed. He was so feeble the simple sentence took him a while to voice, but Amero stood by, waiting for him to finish.
“Don’t listen to him,” Duranix said. “He lies.”
“He’s right,” agreed Karada. “Leave him, Amero.”
Amero could not leave. There was a tingling pressure inside his head, like a headache yet unborn. He realized it was Sthenn, trying to touch his mind the way Duranix did.
“Say what you want to say,” Amero told him. Though disgusted, Karada remained with her brother.
Sister of the Sword Page 17
