As Iron Falls

by Bryce O'Connor

  At his left, Syrah Brahnt’s gaze followed his own, though Raz doubted she could make out much given the riders were still winding their way through the sands some mile or two away. All the same, the Priestess of Laor waiting with him quietly, the ghostly complexation of her face, bisected by the black cloth that covered her ruined right eye, making her seem a specter from within the layers of dark silks that hung over her white hair and slender frame.

  On Raz’s other side, Karan Brightneck, Syrah’s companion and one of the army’s best scouts, watched along with them in equal silence. The young atherian had finished her report several minutes prior, supplying Raz with the facts he’d needed. Two hundred and fifty men, all mounted, bearing no city colors but clearly dressed for battle. The timing and approach of their assault was clever enough, he had to admit. With the Moon in their eyes most sentries would be night-blind to the riders until they could make out the muffled sound of hooves against the sand.

  Unfortunately for this attacking force, though, it seemed the fringe cities had underestimated the atherian outriders Raz’s generals kept scattered for five miles in every direction about the army at all times.

  At his right, Syrah gave a faint “oh…” as her one human eye finally made out the cloud of approaching dust. Judging the time to be right, Raz lifted his left hand from his belt and pointed two fingers to his left, then his right. At once he heard quiet orders being given behind him, immediately followed by the crunching of dozens on dozens of boots and clawed feet against the sandy hill behind them. He saw Syrah and Karan glanced back beside him, but Raz’s eyes stayed fixated on the westward.

  He'd thought they would have to reposition to intercept the soldiers, but Karan and the other scouts had done well in selecting this place. The horses would pass along the valley below within the next few minutes, unless the riders abruptly chose to take a different path, which seemed unlikely. Raz knew what their intention was, and to needlessly waste time shifting course at the last minute would be more foolish than clever.

  As though reading his mind, Karan finally spoke from where she was still crouched at his left.

  “Are they mad?” she whispered, more to herself than to either Raz or Syrah. “Not even three hundred, and they’re charging right at fifty thousand.”

  “They’re not intending to wage an all-out battle,” Raz told her quietly, still following the trail of sand as it continued to near. “The Mahsadën aren’t that foolish, and two hundred and fifty horses are too valuable to sacrifice.”

  He left it at that, wanting Karan to figure out the rest.

  It didn’t take long.

  “A shock troop,” she said with an understanding nod. “In and out, with minimal casualties.”

  “And maximum chaos,” Raz said, hiding a smile. The female was always quick on the uptake. “It’s a good tactic against a larger force. If they’d succeeded on taking us by surprise, it would have left the generals and I with few options to our advantage. If we ignored them, they would strike again, whittling down moral even if the toll on our numbers was negligible. If we chased them, it would allow the fringe cities more time to prepare and gather their forces to rebuff us.”

  “We could have sent contingent after them?” Karan offered, her clawed fingers playing with the leather cuirass about her torso. Even these months since the fall of Karesh Syl, she and many of the other former slaves were still unaccustomed to wearing anything other than dirty tunics Raz and Syrah had found them in. “Hunt them down.”

  “Which is what they hope so most of all,” Raz said with a shake of his head. “To catch them, we would have to send out our own cavalry, at a ratio of at least two-to-one to guarantee a victory. Best-case scenario: we lose half our mounted troops, which is a blow no matter how large the army might be.

  “… And worst-case?” Karan asked after a moment, frowning up at him.

  “Worst-case,” Syrah spoke up for the first time, answering for Raz, “they have a larger force waiting somewhere in the dunes. A thousand foot-soldiers, maybe twice that. Our riders fall into a trap, and not only do we lose five hundred men, but the horses as well.”

  Raz nodded in agreement, leaving Karan to ponder these deductions as he looked around at Syrah.

  “Ready?” he asked her.

  The Priestess glanced at him, and gave him a small, regretful smile. It hurt him, that smile. It hurt him because he knew where the woman’s mind was taking her. Even in the limited glow of the Moon and Her Stars he could make out the rose-shade of Syrah’s left eye, and the light of life that gleamed there. It was dimmer now than when they’d first met nearly ten years prior. In the last few weeks it had regained a little of its shine as Syrah had found purpose treating the injured among the army and tending to the health of the half-starved slaves that made up much of their ranks, but it was still a sunken light, a guttering shadow of the brightness he loved and missed. For the hundredth time in as many days, Raz vowed silently to himself that he would see that warmth return again, even if he had to pull the Sun Himself out of the sky to do so.

  Then Syrah nodded, indicating she was prepared for her role in what came next, bringing Raz back to the task at hand.

  He allowed himself another couple of seconds to take her in, then forced himself to turn away.

  “Karan,” he said, resting his free hand on the young atherian’s head affectionately as he stepped past the female, “keep an eye on her.”

  Karan nodded at once, her face set, one hand already on the hilt of the sword at her hip. Over the last few months she had been working hard with him on mastering the weapon, along with the long-dagger strapped to her forearm, and Raz was confident he was leaving the Priestess in good company.

  With that, he leapt from the dune ridge, landing along the steep incline of the hill and masterfully riding the slipping sands down towards the base of the valley below.

  Captain Bahrek Lest of the Dynec guard was feeling more and more confident with every passing minute. For the last two hours, as dusk came to an end, he and his men had been riding at an even pace eastward, careful to stay low between the dunes and keep the Moon at their back. At first Bahrek and been almost rigid with fear in his saddle, trepidation consuming him despite the fact this assault for was his idea, and he had even volunteered to lead it personally. Maltus Ameen, the šef in charge of Dynec’s standing army, had accepted the proposal readily, and granted him command of five contingents of fifty soldiers each. Over the course of the next two days Bahrek had gone from brimming with pride at the opportunity to prove himself to the Mahsadën, to feeling sick every time he thought about the folly of his idea.

  Now, however, as the glow of Raz i’Syul Arro’s camp grew broader with every passing minute, Bahrek felt the strength of the men behind him, felt the power of their horses in the soft thundering of hooves against sand. They had done well staying in the valleys and dips of the sand plains, but all the same Bahrek had feared they would be spotted before they could get near enough the Dragon’s army to strike. As they closed the final mile, though, no cries of alarm or warning horns sounded out, and Bahrek felt the thrill of anticipation surge through his limbs. They were going to make it. Even if the sentries nearest the camp caught sight of them, it was too late to prepare a proper defense. They might lose a few, but the damage they would cause would be a hundred-fold if they could escape without issues.

  Silently, Bahrek reached over his shoulder to unsheathe the curved scimitar that was the standard blade of the Dynec soldier. The order was a silent one, predetermined before they had even ridden out from the city that morning, and he heard the hiss of steel over the hoof-beats as the officers behind him drew their own blades, followed in a wave by the soldiers that trailed them.

  Not long, Bahrek thought to himself as he led the way around a bend between the sands, grey eyes on the glow of the thousands of campfires that burned against the night sky. Not long now.

  He felt the exhilaration course through him again, and the man forced hi
mself to calm, taking a deep breath of the cold air whipping past his face. He needed to keep a level head. This was not some rogue troupe of bandits or sarydâ who had earned the ire of the šef, like the groups he had hunted down a hundred times. No. Raz i’Syul Arro, the Monster of Karth, the Dragon of the North, was an altogether different sort of beast, and Bahrek needed to remember that. In all of three months, the city-states of Perce to the south had fallen to Arro and his army of slaves. From there, word spread fast that the Dragon had turned northward, his eyes very clearly set on the fringe cities that surrounded the Cienbal desert. Within a handful of weeks, notice came that the atherian’s forces and crossed the border into the sand plains of the South.

  Bahrek grit his teeth at the thought, picturing the lizard-kind at the head of his run-down army as the soldier led his men around a bend in the valley. If Arro thought Dynec and the other Southern cities would fall as easily as Karesh Syl and Karesh Nan, then he was far more a fool than the stories said. He half-hoped the atherian would show himself tonight. If Bahrek’s assault happened to be the one that rode the Dragon down, there would be no end to the rewards Maltus Ameen and the other šef would place upon his head. Maybe he would even be called to Miropa, to be praised by Adrion Blaeth himself…

  “Captain!”

  The hissed alert chilled Bahrek to the bone, dragging him from his momentary lapse of concentration. He whirled in his saddle, intent on weeding out whichever idiot had been fool enough to speak out loud, but of the four lesser officers at his back, not a one was looking at him. Every one of their faces, pale in the ghostly light of the Moon, was fixed ahead of them, and it took a moment for Bahrek to recognize the shock etched into their feature, hidden by the dark. He turned forward once more, fearing what he would find, and the sight had him choke back a gasp of surprise.

  There, not two-hundred feet ahead, a single figure stood as little more than an indistinct black outline in the night, calmly waiting for them along the very path they were following. The details of the person where hidden in the shadows of the dunes that rose up on either side of Bahrek and his riders, but the hulking bearing of their form was enough to send a stone plummeting from the captain’s throat into his stomach. All at once, the thrill and excitement that had been building up in Bahrek’s gut drained away, replaced by nothing short of panic.

  “TRAMPLE HIM!” he bellowed over the pounding of the horses, forgoing his own silence and bringing his scimitar to bear even as he felt his palm sweat.

  There was a roar of ascension of the soldiers behind him, and Bahrek spurned his horse forward even faster, barreling towards the figure. Two-hundred feet to go. He could make out the shape of some massive, staffed weapon slung over the stranger’s shoulder. One-hundred and fifty. The outline of a thick, dark tail shifted along the pale sand about the figure’s feet. One hundred left. Steel gleamed in the evening light, shining from beneath a heavy fur cloak. Only fifty feet now. The cloak shifted, and the silhouette of the man seemed suddenly to broaden inexplicably, as though the shadows all around him and formed a wall at his back.

  No, Bahrek thought with a lancing fear that pierced his heart, not a wall…

  Wings.

  WOOOSH!

  All at once, the darkness of the night was banished in a roar of heat and brilliant light. Bahrek’s horse screamed and pulled up short, nearly sending the man toppling over the animal’s neck as a veritable barricade of white flames erupted seemingly out of nowhere not fifteen feet in front of him. Sand and dust was kicked up as the horse’s hooves fought the give of the loose ground, and behind him Bahrek heard the shouts and curses of the other men mixing with the shrill, terrified neighing of their own mounts. His head spun, and he battled his own confusion as the charged dissolved into chaos within seconds.

  “HOLD!” he howled as he tried to piece together what was happening. “HOLD! IT’S A TRAP! FORM UP! FORM—!”

  Zip. Thud.

  Before he could finish the order, one of his officers shrieked in pain, tumbling from his horsed and clutching at his stomach. Bahrek had just enough time to make out the fletched shaft buried above the soldier’s hip when the sound of a dozen more arrows whistled over the snap and crackle of the fire, and he cursed as he threw himself out of his saddle. A projectile that must have been meant for him crunched into the sand not far away, and he heard more shouts of fear and agony rising from among his soldiers.

  “Captain!” someone was shouting. “The ridges! They’re up on the ridges!”

  Bahrek turned his eyes skyward, still careful to stay tucked behind the thick body of his horse as more arrows screamed through the air. Sure enough, illuminated by the wall of fire off to his left, he could make out what looked like dozens of dark-skinned men in mismatched armor looming over them, bows twanging with each release, shouting their war-cries as they rained death down into the Dynec soldiers. They fired with amazing accuracy, their arrows streaking down to thud into Bahrek’s men one after the other even as they scrambled to dismount.

  “CEASE FIRE!”

  The command rang like an eruption over the cacophony of the massacre. At once the thrum of the bows ended, and even the screaming horses seemed to quiet, struck dumb by the fierceness of the order. Unable to help himself, Bahrek turned along with his surviving officers in the direction the voice had come. Before their eyes, the white flames that had cut off their charge flickered, then parted, like a gate opening from some fiery underworld.

  Even though Bahrek knew what it was that was going to step through, the foreknowledge did nothing to quell his horror as the figure appeared, dark and foreboding against the brilliance of the magic as it collapsed once more behind him.

  Raz i’Syul Arro was, without exception, the most fearsome presence Bahrek had ever born witness to. The soldier had seen his fair share of atherian in his time—Dynec being a frequent hub of slave traders and head-hunters on their way too or from Perce or the Seven Cities—but never in his life had he encountered a lizard-kind that would have held a candle to the Dragon. Arro stood an easy seven-feet tall, his lithe form built for speed and power, the dark scales of his arms and legs not hidden by metal armor or leather wraps taught with roped muscle. His hands were gloved in steel-clawed gauntlets, and he held his massive, twin-headed spear easily at his side as though she weighed nothing more than a walking staff. On his hip was looped a strange looking, long-handled axe, as well as a dagger, and the hilt of a sword protruded over his right shoulder. His wings, extended some six or seven feet on either side of him from beneath of fur mantle that trailed behind him as he walked, were blood-red and spidered with dark veins in the light, the same color as his spined ears and the crest of leathery skin that rose like a bladed sail along the back of his neck and head.

  If all that wasn’t enough to bring the world to a standstill, though, the Dragon’s eyes managed have managed it all on their own.

  They were gold, of a brighter shade than most Bahrek had seen in his time, but there was something sharper and cooler about them the he couldn’t place at first, something almost alien. The vertically slit black pupils took in the chaos of the writhing horses and gaping soldiers impassively, and only when they settled on him, still at the head of the surviving force, did the captain see with stillness in them, the steely edge that was not quite hunger, but something more than base cruelty.

  They were the eyes of killer, a demon who Bahrek suddenly realized had likely delivered more souls to the Moon in his time than all the present soldier would ever have managed combined.

  “You.”

  Bahrek blinked, then felt his stomach flip when he realized that not only was the Dragon still staring right at him, but the beast had also lifted a metal-clawed finger of his free hand to point in his direction.

  “I’m assuming you’re in command of these men?” Arro asked him, dropping his hand and starting to move in Bahrek’s direction. As he did, the nearest horses whinnied shrilly and began to shy away, shuffling back to put as much distance between
themselves and the atherian as possible. Bahrek couldn’t blame them. Though he had the support of his archers on the dune ridges overhead, the Dragon himself was moving alone within reach of more than two-hundred of Dynec’s finest. It might have seemed mad, but Arro stepped forward with such confidence, Bahrek wasn’t even sure he could muster up the courage to raise the scimitar he suddenly remembered he was still holding. The atherian didn’t seemed the least bit bothered by the dozens of blades surrounding him, gleaming in the light of the white fire, his eyes no leaving the captain even for a moment.

  “Well?” the Dragon snapped when he stood not five feet from Bahrek.

  The sharpness of the demand brought Bahrek to his senses. Keeping one hand on the flank of his horse to shield his left side from the bowmen above, bringing his sword up defensively.