by Peter Last
Feddir’s anger made him hard to control, and at first he resisted Senndra’s orders to fly south, preferring instead to drop down and eradicate as many of the enemy soldiers as he could. Senndra was persistent, however, and in the end, the dragon complied with her command.
Soon they had left the enemy army far behind, though the evidence of their destruction was obvious for as far as the eye could see. Buildings smolder, animals and people lay dead on the ground, and trees had been slashed down. Everywhere the earth screamed of the massacre that had just occurred, but there was no help, no one to serve justice. It took all of Senndra’s power to keep flying south and not return to attack the enemy.
Further south, the wreckage was just as bad, if not worse, than it had been before. Burned-out houses, towns, and cities were marked by columns of smoke rising from the land. All of the trees had been slashed and hacked down, and the humans and animals who had not escaped lay dead in the dust. Even the grass had been turned to dirt by the hundreds of thousands of feet which had marched across it. And just when Senndra thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did.
The next city she flew over appeared to be one of the first to be hit by the army. It had been burned clear to the ground, and a good portion of its wall had been knocked down, but what caught Senndra’s eye were the rows of sticks that stood in front of the city. At first she could not tell what they were, but as she drew closer, she just about vomited with the realization. Scores of people had been mutilated and impaled on spikes in front of the city, sending a message to the world: this is what happens to those who oppose Molkekk. When Senndra could no longer bear the sight, she pressed her face against Feddir’s neck and kept it there until they were well past the city.
As the dragon and rider approached the Vänern River, there was still no sign of life, and hope of finding any slipped away altogether. Then, just as they were about to turn back toward Belmoth, they spotted activity in the gap between the Vankor and Rebel Mountains. They dropped in for a closer look, fully expecting to find another army of Molkekk’s men. Senndra was shocked to see two elfin flags, an ogre flag, the flag of Gatlon, and the flag of Belvárd hanging from the walls of the main tower of the outpost which stood in the pass, while the flag of Magessa flew from the pole at the structure’s center. A mixture of feelings welled up inside of her- surprise, relief, thankfulness. She hadn't realized until now how bleak the whole situation had seemed, but now there was hope. No matter how small the force might be, there were still soldiers in Magessa who were resisting the advances of Molkekk's hordes. Excited at this unexpected good luck, Senndra ordered Feddir to drop, and the dragon immediately began to spiral downward. As they came nearer to the ground, they were able to see thousands of figures working to fortify the pass, bringing stones in from one of the mountain ranges and building a wall with them. When they noticed the dragon, they scattered in fright but came out of hiding when Feddir didn’t breathe fire at them or attack them in any way. Feddir landed, and the men approached with their weapons drawn, obviously ready in case he suddenly decided to attack. Feddir let out a soft purring which Senndra recognized as a chuckle. He sent her a scene of him blowing fire on all of the soldiers, and their armor doing them no good.
“Of course their armor wouldn’t be of any help if you actually decided to attack them,” Senndra told him in a low voice. Then she had a sudden thought. “Can you actually produce flames now?”
Feddir let out another low purr and twisted his head around to look back at Senndra, pulling his lips up from his teeth in a smile. Other than this action, there was no answer, but Senndra understood. Her dragon could breathe fire with the best of them. She smiled at the unexpected good news, slid off of Feddir’s back without another comment, and approached the leader of the soldiers, making sure the symbol on her uniform was in plain view. She stopped at the leader’s order and identified herself upon request. Finally the soldiers allowed her to approach, though they still eyed her and Feddir with suspicion.
“Can I please speak with your General?” she asked. “I have been sent from Belmoth and have information that may be of help to him.”
“Sent from Belmoth, huh?” the leader said suspiciously. “And why would a dragon rider come from Belmoth? Last time I checked, there were no dragons there.”
“Well, your information is at least a week old,” Senndra retorted. “The academy for dragon riders was attacked, so we evacuated down the mountains to Belmoth. Now please take me to your General, or admiral, or whoever is in charge.”
“I’ll need more proof than a uniform before I take you to him,” the leader said. “You could easily have taken it off one of our dead soldiers.”
The statement silenced Senndra. What could she do to prove she was who she said she was? Really, there was nothing other than her uniform that distinguished her as a warrior of Magessa. She noticed one of the soldiers talking to the leader and strained to hear what they were saying, though she gave no outward indication of her effort.
“It’s the brown dragon, sir,” the soldier said. “They say its rider was one of the ones who came to Saddun when the dwarves attacked. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“So now just because the rider of a brown dragon was supposedly at Saddun six months ago, we should believe this person?” the leader asked.
“He’s not a brown dragon, sir,” Senndra called out. “He’s the brown dragon. There’s only one of them known to exist at the moment. From what I hear, he’s actually only the second one in recorded history. Send a message to your leader and tell him that the brown dragon and his rider are here. Hopefully they will know who I am.”
The leader of the soldiers was silent for a moment, but he could see nothing better to do. After a moment of indecision, he called one of his men and whispered in his ear for a few seconds. The soldier nodded and hurried away toward the fort. Senndra walked back to Feddir who had spread himself out on his side, exposing his underbelly to the sun’s rays. Senndra sat on the ground just behind his front leg, leaning back against him and closing her eyes. It was an old dragon rider’s trick; it put the soldiers around her at ease, but at the same time she was able to see what was going on through the images that Feddir sent to her. As it was, the soldiers didn’t do anything except keep a good distance from the dragon.
With nothing else to do, Senndra decided to question Feddir about his previous ambiguous statement. She sent him an image of him breathing fire along with a quizzical expression. He responded with surprise and puzzlement.
“Who was the dragon in that image?” he seemed to be asking.
Senndra responded with a feeling of sternness and presented the image again. Feddir sighed, and Senndra could feel his embarrassment. He erased the image of himself breathing great streams of fire and replaced it with one in which a small tongue of fire was coming out of his mouth.
Senndra now understood why he had avoided her question and even had not told her to begin with when he first found that he had any flame abilities whatsoever. Even if it was irrational, he was embarrassed that the other dragons were able to sustain large fire jets for minutes at a time while he could hardly create any flame at all. Senndra promised not to tell anyone else, but was herself ecstatic. Once dragons were able to create fire, the ability expanded quickly. If he followed normal development cycles, Feddir would be able to fight with his flames in a matter of weeks if not days.
Feddir was still embarrassed but less so than before. Senndra smiled to herself and made herself more comfortable against Feddir’s side. She hadn’t been there for more than half a minute when Feddir sent her another image; three people were coming toward them from the castle. One of them was obviously an ogre, she could tell even from this distance, but the other two could have easily been humans, elves, or orcs. Not that it mattered much to Senndra, but she liked to know what she was going into so that she didn’t get surprised.
She waited until the men were only a hundred yards away before rising from her sp
ot beside Feddir and brushing off her clothes. Feddir lifted his head to look at her, then glanced at the three men approaching. They didn’t impress him much, and he didn’t even bother getting up.
Senndra rolled her eyes at the dragon and took a deep breath, finally turning to face the three men who were now only a stone’s throw away. The one on the left was an ogre as Senndra had decided before, and she was now able to identify the one in the middle as an elf and the one on the right as a human. The human appeared familiar to her, though she couldn’t quite decide who he was or where she had met him before. Perhaps at Saddun. His appearance was so different even from what she had seen in her vision that it wasn’t until he was less than twenty feet away that she finally recognized him.
******
Josiah had heard about the brown dragon before, and as he approached, he scanned the beast from head to tail. Rumor was that the dragon didn’t have scales and couldn’t breathe fire, but the sun glinted off the beast’s side, disproving one of those rumors. All in all, the dragon appeared to be a healthy specimen, and Josiah tried to guess its age. He was not very familiar with dragons and as far as he knew, it could be twenty years or six months. He turned his attention from the dragon to the rider and had a strange feeling they had met before. In fact, it was probable they had met, he decided. There were dragon riders at Saddun during the whole fiasco with the dwarves half a year ago. Recognition stunned him for a moment as he realized who the rider was. This was Senndra Felling, daughter of the famous elfin warrior, Jothnial. Josiah had fought beside her in the dwarf attack and, as he recalled, she was a force to be reckoned with.
“Yes, I am already acquainted with General Pondran,” she said with a glance at the emblems of rank affixed to his uniform. “Though last time I saw him, he was not a General.”
“Yes, that makes sense,” Nathan answered. “He was just recently promoted, though I must say that the governing authorities probably won’t recognize his promotion as valid.”
“They’ll probably just demote him like they did last time,” Senndra said with a smile on her face. “But it looks like he’s doing better than he did last time, though,” she added with a glance at his shoulder. “Last time he didn’t even get to wear the rank patches.”
“What do you mean ‘last time’?” Nathan asked. “You mean this isn’t the first time he’s been a General?”
“There was that one time though technically I was an Admiral, not a General,” Josiah answered quickly. “I guess I never mentioned it, but when the dwarves attacked Saddun, and we set out after them…well, let’s just say that the General wasn’t ready for battle, much like the rest of us. The only difference was that he split at the first sign of danger. The commanders needed someone to combine all the armies and decided I was the best man given the situation, and the ogre General agreed. It didn’t last long, but I didn’t really care. I brought as many of my men out of the battle alive as I could; that’s all that really matters.”
“I would tend to agree,” Nathan concurred. “Anyone who wants the rank just for the power that it brings is not a good person for the job. That being said, perhaps we should make sure Josiah remains a General,” he added with a wink at Senndra.
“No dice, General,” Josiah shot back. “I’ll happily go back to being a commander as soon as I can. Like you said, they’re the ones who have all of the fun.”
“Do you have time for refreshments?” Levvy asked Senndra, before his companions could get into a long discussion. “While we’re doing that, perhaps you could give us the information that you said you had.”
“Yes, I guess I have time for that,” Senndra said.
“Could I have the honor of escorting you?” Josiah asked with a small bow.
“Why certainly, General,” Senndra answered and placed her arm through his. Then the three Generals and Senndra turned and headed toward the castle.
Six
The trio stepped onto the newly constructed drawbridge of the outpost which spanned a freshly dug ditch. Senndra looked down as they crossed and saw that the ditch was about ten feet deep with pointed stakes in the bottom and steeply slanted sides which butted up against the walls of the outpost. Altogether it would make a reasonable defense against the invaders.
“Welcome to Castle Far Point,” Josiah said as they stepped off the bridge and under an arched gateway.
Heavy wooden gates on either side were reinforced with metal strips and studs, and in front of them an iron portcullis hung open. Immediately inside the gatehouse was a courtyard of moderate size. The number of soldiers patrolling the area and the walls had been decreased to a minimum, freeing as many of them as possible to work on the fortification of the pass.
Across the courtyard, a solidly built door led to the keep. The foyer they stepped into was very small and immediately emptied into a larger room with few furnishings. A ladder was bolted to the far wall and led to a trapdoor in the ceiling. The group passed through a doorway on the left, entering a dining room where they sat down at a table. Josiah and Levvy disappeared but returned moments later with two pitchers of water and some glasses. Josiah also held a plate of food which he placed in front of Senndra.
“We’ve already eaten our midday meal, but you look like you could use something after your trip,” Josiah commented. Senndra hadn’t remembered until that moment that she hadn’t even had breakfast, nor had she noticed how hungry she was. She was acutely aware of her hunger now, however, and after briefly thanking Elohim for her food, began to eat. As she was eating, the others made small talk, occasionally asking her questions but mostly leaving her alone; however, when she had finished eating, their attention immediately shifted.
“Tell us about this information you brought,” Nathan said and took a drink of water.
“After listening to you talk, you may already know a lot of it,” Senndra said as she pushed her plate away. “You already know about the enemy army and that they’re moving north, pillaging the land as they go.”
“Yes, but how far are they going?” Levvy asked. “We still don’t know how much time we have before they come back to attack us.”
“You’ll have plenty of time,” Senndra answered. “When I saw them they had almost reached Angárd and didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry. My guess is that they’ll loot as much of Belvárd as they can before they come back, unless something changes.”
“I would almost rather have them back here attacking us, instead of preying on innocent people,” Josiah commented. “There’s not much we can do about it though, and according to what Senndra said, we may have several weeks to prepare. That is, unless there are any more of Molkekk’s soldiers around that we don’t know about; though I would find that hard to believe, given the number of troops already here.”
“Even Molkekk has a limit to how many soldiers he can sustain at one time,” Nathan agreed. “I don’t think that he could have many more than half a million.”
“You don’t know, do you?” Senndra asked in unbelief, looking from one General to the other. “Of course, I guess that’s understandable, since you’ve been cut off from new information for the last several weeks.”
“We don’t know what?” Nathan asked.
“Saddun wasn’t the only city attacked by Molkekk,” Senndra answered.
“What?!” the Generals exclaimed all at once. “What other cities did he get?”
“If you mean how many did he capture, the answer is none,” Senndra said. “Well, unless you count the dragon academy.”
“What happened up there?” Josiah asked, a worried expression on his face. “I thought you came from there.”
“No, the academy was attacked by dragons and griffins, probably at the same time as the assault on Saddun,” Senndra informed him. “We drove off the enemies and then evacuated to Belmoth before they came back. Unknown to us, we had just stepped from the pot into the fire; hundreds of thousands of Molkekk’s soldiers were knocking on the gates of Belmoth. With our dragons added to
the force already at the city, we held our ground and even, with Elohim's help, were able to drive them off. That’s why they sent the dragon scouts down here, to see if the same thing had happened to the east.”
“You mean Molkekk could have fielded as many as a million soldiers?” Josiah asked in astonishment.
“We were never sure how many were attacking Belmoth, but that’s possible,” Senndra answered. “We also have some inside information that he has more troops to reinforce the ones already here.”
“Elohim save us!” Nathan exclaimed. “Where in heaven’s name did he get so many soldiers?”
“Who knows where people like him get their followers,” Levvy answered in his gravelly voice. “He probably offered them riches and glory. There are many that would take that bait.”
“How are we going to defend against them?” Nathan asked. “They have just as many men as we thought they did, and they could be getting reinforcements of who knows how many soldiers.”
“The situation really hasn’t changed that much, if you think about it,” Josiah responded after a moment. “We already suspected the number of their army, and the addition of a few extra soldiers won’t really tilt the battle too much in their favor. After all, what are a few thousand among half a million?”
“Plus, we now have time for our own reinforcements to arrive,” Levvy added.
“That’s right,” Senndra agreed. “When I take this information back to Belmoth, they’ll almost certainly send a squadron of dragons to assist you. I’ll also spread the word on the way back that you need assistance.”
“We have already sent out our own messengers, but any help you can provide would be appreciated, particularly any dragons you can bring,” Nathan assured her. “If we had a functioning air force here, it would go a long way toward being able to hold them off or even defeat them.”
“Yes sir,” Senndra said, then added, “By the way, how many men do you have here? If I had the exact number, it would probably help convince people that you need help.”
