The Dragon Arcana: The Cardinal's Blades: Book Three

by Pierre Pevel

  ‘Quickly!’ she said before dashing into the turret, smoking pistol in one hand and her rapier in the other.

  Notre-Dame itself was under threat.

  All up and down the front of the cathedral, Black Guards and louves were now desperately resisting the enemy: on the forecourt before the main façade’s three portals; in the twin recesses of the gallery of the Virgin; beneath the archways of the Grande Galerie where a number of winged dracs had landed, and even on the walkway that ran across the top of the upper gallery, linking the two main towers.

  La Fargue followed the mother superior and closed the door of the turret behind them, pushing the bolts home. Then they dashed down the narrow spiral staircase inside the tower housing Notre-Dame’s enormous bourdon bell and the magnificent wooden frame from which it was suspended. At the bottom, a small door opened and a winged drac entered. Surprised, Mère d’Aussaint took a sword blow and backed away. La Fargue leapt to her rescue, split the drac’s skull open, and pushed him back outside. But others were arriving just as the bourdon gave a deafening peal. The captain rushed towards them and forced them back along the Grande Galerie.

  ‘Close the door!’ he shouted to the leader of the White Wolves.

  Mère d’Aussaint, one hand pressed over her wound, shut the door behind La Fargue, stranding him alone on the gallery. He was condemned to do or die, but the vital task now was to protect the bourdon.

  Inside the cathedral, in the furious fighting between dracs and Black Guards near the remains of the Red portal, Marciac rushed towards Keress Karn as the red drac, with evil glee on his face, pulled his blade from Leprat’s body. The Gascon struck with fearsome power, forcing Karn to parry and back away. But then the drac recovered and, while not managing to gain the upper hand, he ceased to retreat before the Blade’s assault.

  A bitter duel began.

  Attacks were met with parries. Counters were followed by ripostes. The red drac knew how to fight and kept a cool head. His fencing was the kind learned on the battlefield: effective and without flourishes. Tense and focused, Marciac realised they were evenly matched. So he thought of Leprat and, careful not to let himself be blinded by anger, he drew renewed strength from the memory. His arm became the instrument of vengeance. His strokes were powerful, precise and formidable, and Karn started to grow worried. He wanted to call for help, but their confrontation had taken the two adversaries far up the ambulatory, away from the main mêlée. The red drac could do no more than defend himself. And while his moves became more and more frantic, but less and less accurate, the Gascon’s never varied in their effectiveness.

  At last, Marciac knew the moment had come.

  Twisting Karn’s blade with his own, he sent it flying away and, body stretched, he slipped the point of his sword beneath the disarmed drac’s chin. Then he plunged his gaze into that of his vanquished enemy and, brusquely pushing his shoulder forward, sank two good inches of steel into the drac’s throat. Keress Karn tossed his head backward and stumbled, his hand against his wound, unable to staunch the thick, heavy blood spurting out.

  The Gascon watched him fall and die.

  La Fargue rapidly took stock of the situation: it was not to his advantage. The dracs had taken control of the Grande Galerie and a handful of Black Guards were now retreating into the north tower. There was no one left on the side of the south tower, other than a few dead bodies and himself.

  The captain of the Blades placed himself en garde with his back to the door, determined to sell his life dearly. He held the grip of his sword with both hands. Glared at the dracs approaching him. Took a deep breath.

  And charged with a warlike scream.

  He stunned the first drac with a violent blow, felled another by smashing the guard of his sword beneath his chin, brought his Pappenheimer down on a skull to the right, on a shoulder to the left, and into a belly straight ahead of him. He had taken his adversaries by surprise but their riposte was not long in coming. He was forced to parry various attacks by cut and thrust, received a wound to the arm which he did not feel in the heat of battle, followed by a blow to the head that left him stunned for an instant. He retreated, delivered two killing thrusts of his own, and then felt a pain in his thigh and a burning in his side. He withdrew again, still battling away, and felt his back bump into the tower door. At which point he knew that his moments were numbered. He squared up to his enemies, nevertheless, breathless but standing firm, his eyes sparkling and his face spattered with drops of blood.

  Ready to meet his end.

  Yet the dracs hesitated. The final stroke did not come.

  The battle had turned in favour of the defenders inside Notre-Dame. The dracs sensed it and didn’t know what to do. The fighting had already ceased out on the forecourt. Winged dracs were launching themselves into the air from the gallery of the Virgin as Black Guards arrived by way of the north tower. Pistol shots rang out, fired at the indecisive dracs in the Grande Galerie. This threat persuaded them that safety lay in flight and those who could jumped over the side and flew for safety. The others fell before pistol balls or to the swords of the guards who retook control of the gallery.

  Victory seeming assured, La Fargue let himself slump down the door he had defended so well and sat on the ground, exhausted, his head bowed and his wrists resting on his raised knees.

  Soon, someone approached him.

  ‘Happy to see you again, captain.’

  It was Laincourt, with a bruised face and a bloodied rapier in his fist. Even more surprising, Saint-Lucq was just behind him, busy turning over drac bodies and planting his sword in their hearts. Their borrowed wyverns had landed on the north tower of the cathedral and they had helped defend it until the counterattack came from the Saint Georges Guards.

  Accepting the hand that the young man held out to him, La Fargue got up with a grim face.

  ‘Are you wounded, captain?’

  ‘Nothing serious. But you’re a sorry sight, Laincourt.’

  ‘La Malicorne did me an evil turn. If not for Saint-Lucq, I’d be either dead or praying I was, right now.’

  La Fargue turned to the half-blood, who was gazing at him. They exchanged nods. The one said: Thank you for being here. And the other: You’re welcome.

  ‘What are your orders, captain?’

  His answer was lost as the Primordial bellowed, suddenly very near.

  Marciac returned to the Red portal and its corpse-strewn rubble. Having successfully defended the forecourt of Notre-Dame, Reynault had retreated back inside the cathedral. This allowed him to send a portion of his troops into the towers to retake the galleries, but also to send some of them to rescue those defending the Red portal. And so Karn’s dracs were defeated and repelled. Nevertheless, the explosion of their mine and the subsequent assault had achieved the desired effect: interrupting the prayer of the Chatelaines gathered in the choir and ending the ritual that allowed the Notre-Dame bell to keep the Primordial at bay.

  The defenders had won a bitter victory, then. And one which announced certain disaster.

  But Marciac cared nothing for any of that.

  Kneeling, he gently lifted Leprat’s head and the musketeer opened his eyes slightly.

  ‘It … It hurts less than … than it usually does,’ he said in a weak, hoarse voice. ‘That … That means it’s serious doesn’t it?’

  The Gascon did not know what to reply.

  Brushing the hair, now sticky with sweat and blood, out of his friend’s eyes, he nodded and tried to smile.

  ‘DRAGON!’

  Not everyone had the reflex to dive for cover when the cry rang out.

  Swooping between the twin towers of Notre-Dame, the Primordial belched fire over the Grande Galerie, taking the Black Guards by surprise. Many were set ablaze and men tumbled over the walls, screaming.

  ‘Good God!’ swore La Fargue. ‘But how …?’

  He stood up and, incredulous, looked at the dragon now making a large loop above the Ile de la Cité. The bell still tolled,
but did not seem to bother the giant creature. Evidently, the Chatelaines’ magic was no longer working.

  Which meant the cathedral was doomed.

  ‘Inside!’ ordered the captain of the Blades. ‘Everybody inside, quickly!’

  The Primordial was already coming back.

  Taking their wounded with them, the guards retreated into the towers. La Fargue, Laincourt, and Saint-Lucq did the same, the half-blood closing the door at the very moment when, beating its wings slowly and hanging in the air before the Grande Galerie, the dragon sprayed it with a long incandescent burst that incinerated the dead bodies and ate into the stone like acid.

  Its work done for now, the Primordial resumed its flight.

  The last defenders of Notre-Dame assembled in the nave, around Mère Béatrice d’Aussaint. There were only twenty of them, including the Blades, and most of them were wounded. All of them were exhausted. They had fought, suffered, seen brothers-in-arms fall and they sensed that it had all been in vain.

  They had no more doubts when the bell ceased to toll.

  The Primordial was triumphant.

  ‘We need to evacuate,’ said La Fargue.

  ‘Flee?’ asked Reynault d’Ombreuse, offended by the idea.

  ‘The Primordial is going to reduce this cathedral to ashes, and there is nothing you or I can do to prevent it.’

  ‘The captain is right,’ agreed the White Wolves’ mother superior. ‘We must be able to fight other battles.’

  A makeshift bandage enveloped her wounded shoulder. She was pale and her features were drawn, but her gaze shone with a fierce determination. Very calmly, she thought and then said:

  ‘We can reach the episcopal palace via the sacristy. It will keep us out of sight of the dragon.’

  Reynault nodded and went to give the orders, while the mother superior took hold of La Fargue by the arm and confided:

  ‘If you can, hold here. One hope remains.’

  ‘I know, mother.’

  Sure of its victory, the Primordial slowly circled Notre-Dame.

  Intoxicated by its own power and restored liberty, it bellowed triumphantly. The Heresiarch no longer dominated it: it was as if he had been washed away, submerged by the simple and brutal emotions that guided the primitive dragon. It could indulge its primary instincts: to fly and to destroy.

  The Primordial sent a few playful balls of fire that exploded across Paris, set fire to the windmills on Saint-Roch hill, and amused itself by burning the trees in the Tuileries park. But in the end, it returned to Notre-Dame. It gathered speed, aimed for the great rose-window that adorned the cathedral’s main façade and, tucking its wings against its body, smashed through it in an explosion of multicoloured glass, to land heavily inside.

  The Blades were waiting on the steps of the choir. La Fargue was in the middle and Laincourt, Saint-Lucq, Marciac, and even Leprat were at his sides, although Leprat, dying, could barely stand and gripped the Gascon’s shoulder. They all had their rapiers in hand because they could not imagine, at this hour, perishing any other way.

  Intrigued and wary, the enormous black dragon advanced with a slow, heavy step, its feet smashing the flagstones each time they struck the floor, its scaly tail lashing the rubble behind it.

  It halted, stretched its neck out and lowered its head, decorated with its distinctive faceted jewel, to examine the five men closely.

  The Blades did not make the slightest move.

  In the silence, the Primordial’s powerful breathing filled the devastated cathedral, sounding like a forge. It spent a long moment observing the pathetic creatures that were blocking its path and giving every appearance of defying it.

  In a hoarse voice, it managed with difficulty:

  ‘WH … WHY? … FU … TILE …’

  ‘Because it is not given to everyone to choose the manner of their death, dragon,’ replied La Fargue without blinking.

  The idea that a being might sacrifice itself was perfectly foreign to the Primordial. It considered the five men standing before it, as if their attitude obliged it to ponder the necessity of killing them.

  And suddenly the dragon turned round and moved away, with a waddle like that of a big lizard, climbed the cathedral’s great organ – which it broke beneath its weight – and slithered back outside through the ruined rose-window.

  Agnès stood alone on the forecourt littered with the bodies of dracs and men. She was armed and dressed as a White Wolf of Saint Georges: high beige boots whose upper folds covered her knees, lined riding breeches, a slit robe, a heavy belt that cinched her waist, ample sleeves, thick gloves, a wimple which framed her face in an oval, and a veil. She bore the cross and dragon of her order over her heart, but where the dragon was embroidered in black on the uniforms of other louves, hers was scarlet. She had drawn her sword, which she held point down, slightly apart from her body. The blade and the pommel of her sword were made of gleaming black draconite.

  There she waited.

  Behind her the small church of Saint-Christophe was burning.

  The Primordial examined Agnès carefully without coming too near. It was uneasy. Recent experience had taught it to be wary of louves, but this one was different. It sensed an immense, extraordinary power inside her. A power that was perhaps superior to its own, although such power could not possibly inhabit a puny, frail body such as the one it saw before it.

  It sensed the power of an Ancestral Dragon.

  The great black dragon bellowed, and the louve did not react in the slightest.

  And then it leapt.

  Agnès immediately plunged forward in a roll as the dragon passed over her, and came up with her sword to slit its belly open. The draconite blade sliced cleanly through the scales and into the flesh beneath, which sputtered as if eaten by acid. Agnès stood and turned. The Primordial also spun round brusquely, with a powerful heave of its muscles. They stared at one another again, but now the louve had her back to the cathedral. The dragon was in pain. Furious, it crouched down, bellowed once more, and belched.

  In a single movement, Agnès put one knee to the ground and turned her blade point down. Eyes closed, she was already praying when the flames reached her, and they parted around her like waves before the prow of a ship. The dragon persevered, breathing out a river of screaming, turbulent flames. The air itself seemed to catch fire. The corpses around her were devoured by this furnace and turned to piles of ashes that were immediately swept away. The paving stones blackened, then glowed red with the heat, and shattered. The flames striking Notre-Dame’s façade rolled over the stone and exploded like the crash of fiery surf on a rocky shore.

  But it was to no avail.

  Exasperated and tired, the Primordial gave up. It ceased belching fire and watched the louve stand up unharmed, while the cathedral doors burned behind her. Agnès raised her eyes and looked deep into the terrifying and abysmal gaze of the archaic dragon.

  It understood that she felt no fear and gave a long, mournful growl.

  ‘Now it’s my turn,’ said the louve.

  Abruptly spreading her arms, she cried out words of power and the air vibrated and crackled around her.

  Discharges of energy shot forth around her as a white form detached itself from her body, a white form that grew and grew, becoming immense. She was liberating her spectral dragon, summoning its power. And it reared up and deployed its wings before the increasingly frightened, mesmerised Primordial. In a trance, her arms outstretched to either side and her head tilted back, Agnès began to levitate as sparks of light whirled around her, as gusts of wind whipped her sleeves and the flaps of her robe, as the night tore open and a low roar swelled in volume …

  And this time it was the Ancestral Dragon who belched flame.

  A white fire descended upon the Primordial and submerged it in a dazzling inferno. The black dragon struggled but could not escape the blast. In its violent contortions, it smashed in the façade of one of the houses bordering the forecourt, causing the building to collaps
e, and with a mighty swipe of its tail it completed the destruction of the Saint-Christophe church. It screamed and moaned, a prisoner of the torments inflicted upon it by the sacred fire. And suddenly it arched its back and remained still, for the brief second it took for the jewel on its brow to explode into pieces.

  The Primordial’s lifeless body collapsed with a final, heavy thud.

  Alone in the magic study at the Hôtel des Arcanes, the Heresiarch slumped on his back, his gaze staring and wide, and his brow split by a deep wound. Black blood ran from his nostrils and ears as he breathed his last.

  All was quiet and still again on the Notre-Dame forecourt.

  Agnès re-sheathed her sword.

  Then, turning away from the smoking body of the Primordial she entered the cathedral through the central portal whose doors had been completely consumed by the flames, crossed the silent, devastated nave with a calm step, and found La Fargue and the others beneath the cross of the transept.

  Grave, silent and still, they had gathered around Leprat who lay dead on the steps to the choir.

  3

  With the dawn came a fine, fresh rain.

  It did little to fight the fires, but it was as though a soothing balm had been applied to the wounds of Paris. The population wanted to see it as a sign, welcoming it with hope and gratitude. Having rung a sinister tocsin the entire night, some church bells celebrated the shower with more joyful chimes.

  It was still raining when Agnès found La Fargue in the courtyard of the Hôtel de l’Épervier, which had been reduced to charred and smoking ruins. The captain stared at the wreckage without really seeing it, but did not turn away when he heard Agnès approach on horseback and dismount.