“It went away to the left, Captain,” said Janker. “Maybe three hundred yards along there.”
I thought I knew where Janker was pointing at. The street itself was a mess of rubble and bodies. I wondered if these people had been foolish enough to creep along here to watch us combat the Wyrm, or if the creature had killed them before we engaged it in the river. Either way, they were dead.
Nearby parts of the town were still in flames, and we were closer to them now. I could see the smoke rising into the blue sky from buildings that were only a few streets away from us.
“Think it’s making for the Farmer’s Market, Captain?” asked a soldier by the name of Grogs.
“I doubt there’s anything there for it, Grogs. And I don’t think it knows the town well enough to have a specific destination.”
I made the signal to Craddock and Sinnar and they pulled the men into squads again. Each squad started its way down the street at a half-run, with shields ready. We kept the squads apart to avoid bunching, having already learned what the dragon could do to men who stayed too close together. I didn’t want it to charge down the street at us and trample us in our dozens. I’d seen enough to know that it wasn’t a mindless animal and didn’t know how far its intelligence went. I was soon to find out.
My own squad was third out of six and we set off at the run, twenty yards behind the men in front. We’d gone maybe a hundred and fifty yards towards the side street that Janker had indicated when the sound reached us. There was a loud, whistling suction and I felt the air move as it was pulled by me, towards the far end of the street. I knew immediately that we’d been tricked.
Ahead of me was Lieutenant Craddock’s squad and they moved in perfect unison as they changed their course and ran into a side street. Ahead of Craddock, I watched as the lead squad did the same, turning on their heels and scrambling towards the narrow alley.
I looked around frantically for cover and discovered that we were exactly mid-way between a street to the front and a street to the rear. With relief, I saw the men behind us heading towards the cover afforded by this other side lane.
This had taken only a few moments to occur after the dragon’s intake of breath. One hundred and fifty yards distant, a huge black-scaled head came smoothly into view, carried by the powerful muscles of its dead flesh. Without pause, it opened its mouth and I was sure I saw a look of satisfaction in the yellow eyes as the black flame poured from its mouth, gushing down the street in a storm of darkness and death.
We hunkered beneath our shields – forty of my men huddled behind the slabs of dark grey metal that we had relied on for as long as the First Cohort had existed. The darkflame struck at us like a battering ram, undeniable in its force and its thirst. It licked around the gaps in our shields, finding its way above and around. Our shields were staunchly made, but they lacked the power held in the blades of our swords. I felt my own shield sag and melt as the dragon’s breath turned it a dull orange and charred away the leather bindings and straps.
The darkflame struck with a power I had not felt since our lady had first sought to destroy me. The darkness pulled at my flesh, seeking life within where there was none to find. The creature’s breath did not only have the power to suck out life, and its heat was unbearable. The tattoos that covered my body glowed with a brightness that I had never before experienced. My eyes were closed but I could feel the intensity of my wards as they fought to keep me alive against the magic that assailed me.
The men around me shouted their defiance and through my closed eyes I could sense their own attempts to rebuff the darkflame’s clamouring assault on their existence. I heard several low, dull popping noises that my brain told me was the armour of the men around me bursting at the seams and splitting apart.
The darkflame washed over us for what seemed like forever. My own armour split and cracked and heat covered my skin, leaving no part of me untouched by it. Inside my mind, I refused to huddle and I opened my eyes, rather than hide from the sight of the flames. The swirling onslaught of darkness was met by the glow from my body, the strength of my own will powering my wards and sigils. I started to laugh as I realised that I had triumphed over Xoj-Fal’s flames.
Abruptly, the darkness was gone. One moment it was there, the next split-second it was gone. My laughter froze upon my lips as I saw the charred remains of the men in my squad. I was not the only one to survive, and saw at least a dozen who stared defiantly along the street at Xoj-Fal, as if their hatred alone could destroy Warmont’s First. We had not all repelled the onslaught. More than twenty of the First Cohort would not be marching with us again, each frozen in their final resting pose. Some were crouched with their heads held upwards, others had been battered to their sides by the force of the attack. I would not say that they did not have the strength, for we all stand on each other’s shoulders and should any of us fall, the burden of failing is shared amongst the living, not the dead.
The dragon had doubtless hoped to destroy the majority of my soldiers with its surprise attack. When it saw that it had killed only a fraction of us, it emerged from its hiding place, bringing down most of a two-storey building as it wrestled itself into the main street again.
I knew what it planned and waved the remaining men of my squad to take cover. The Wyrm started to charge, its claws digging up great clods of the street as it gained speed. Hobble shoulder-charged a wooden door near to him. It racketed open and he fell within, three others of my men behind him.
“Move!” I shouted to two others. They seemed lost, somehow and stared ahead at the approaching dragon as it filled the street in front of us. I wasn’t close to the door through which Hobble had vanished and I rolled to one side, taking cover in a different doorway. There were others of us still in the street and from my periphery I saw as they, too, did their best to escape the charge. The names of the two men had now registered in my mind, having finally been assigned enough priority to take form in my brain through the tumult.
“Jakes! Swagger!” I called finally, hoping to break them from their reverie.
It was at that moment that I realised what they were waiting for. They were not lost, nor confused by the beast’s assault. Their faces held that look of absolute serenity and clarity that I had seen before in men who had already determined that their deaths were a certainty. Perhaps they had seen something in the darkflame that we had not. As Xoj-Fal thundered along the street, the noise of its feet climbed to a crescendo as its immense weight sent out shockwaves ahead of it. The walls around me shuddered as I pressed back into the doorway I used as refuge. With movements smooth and sudden I saw Jakes and Swagger each draw their blades. It was as though there was no intervening time between their hands being empty and then holding the rune-scribed metal in their hands.
As the Wyrm hurtled by, Swagger and Jakes dropped low, their swords held upwards in threat. Swagger was crushed by a foreleg when he swung his blade, his body pulped flat on the stones of the ground. Jakes rolled under the second foreleg and rose upward, just as the dragon’s gait brought its body downwards to meet the wickedly-sharp point of the sword. The beast’s own weight drove its belly all the way down until only the hilt of the weapon remained visible, with Jakes hanging onto it with both hands. Then, he was gone, carried along by Xoj-Fal’s charge, while the dragon roared its fury.
When the last of the creature’s tail had gone past me, I ran back into the street, just in time to see Jakes fall close to the dragon’s hind legs. One of the mighty limbs caught him a glancing blow, which nevertheless dashed him against a wall. Had the darkflame not destroyed his armour, he might have regained his feet, but the collision looked fatal. Hoping that he would live so that I could clap his shoulder that evening, I put the matter of his life or death aside.
“Sinnar! Craddock!” I yelled. “After it! Fuck the formation, split the men through the side streets!” I heard two acknowledgements and I ran along the main street after the dragon. The men who’d been following my squad were already a
head of me, running with their swords and shields ready.
Xoj-Fal was now back at the river where we’d first engaged it. It had lacked the purchase to halt its rush and had smashed into the semi-ruined structure of a building it had pulled into pieces earlier. My eyesight was good and I saw a metal hilt protruding from its belly. It did not bleed and I was not able to see the damage that Jakes had inflicted underneath, but could only hope that he had managed to open a large rent in its stomach. The unrestrained impact with the building had not even dazed Xoj-Fal and it scrabbled as it tried to turn again.
Lieutenant Sinnar ran beside me. “It’s a tough fucker, isn’t it?” he asked with his familiar grin.
“It could probably teach Bonecruncher a thing or two, I reckon,” I said.
“We’ll not fit that head in our trophy cabinet,” he stated. I started to wonder if we did indeed have a trophy cabinet somewhere that the men hadn’t told me about.
We reached Xoj-Fal, but didn’t stop running until we’d got past its tail – neither of us wanted to take a blow from that. I leapt up and whirled my sword around my head, bringing it down in an arc and cutting open a new wound in the creature’s flank, to add to the dozens it already had. The men had mocked me in the past for my leaping attacks, but I was certain that they added extra force to my blows. I’d have been a fool to try it in a crowded field of armed men, but here I noted with satisfaction that I had cut deeply.
I wasn’t sure at first if it was my imagination, but as the Wyrm pulled itself from the ruins of the building it had collided with, I thought that it did so with a reduced vigour. I looked at its eyes to see if I could discern anything from them, to see if I could glean anything that I could translate into a human emotion. Whatever its expression was, it was inscrutable to me, though the hatred was palpable. Hate is the easiest of all emotions to identify and Warmont’s First hated us to its core, though I had little doubt that it hated everything.
I struck it again with my sword. Those great, yellow eyes focused on me and I knew that I was to be its next target. Up until that point, my battle-trance had eluded me. I didn’t know if it was because I hadn’t needed it, or if it was because I had not so far then been the creature’s primary target. A forelimb raised high above me and I watched it, my brain focusing on nothing apart from the claws with which the dragon hoped to decapitate me. The limb descended, appearing to slow down as my instincts and experience took over. I rolled to my side at the last possible moment, raising my sword so that the beast’s claws would strike my blade first and push me under the water of the river to safety. It worked and through my water-clouded vision I watched the sparks fly from my runed blade as it cut away a single claw, while the power of the impact drove me two feet to the river’s shallow bottom.
I didn’t hesitate and surged out of the water again, thick rivulets of it coursing from me as I stood. The dragon had not forgotten me and it had its damaged claw raised again, ready to smash me whilst I was unbalanced. The eyes looked down and this time I did get a sense of its emotion. It knew I was the leader of these men who had thwarted its will and now it felt a deep satisfaction as it anticipated the feeling of crushing my body.
The killing blow did not land. Before the claw could begin its descent, I saw a black line blur across my periphery. In my battle-trance I realised what it was, even in the tiniest fraction of a second before it completed its trajectory. Suddenly, a black-feathered arrow appeared in Xoj-Fal’s right eye, the shaft sunk deep into the vulnerable cornea. We had not been able to reach its eyes from our position on the ground, but whoever the archer was, they had aimed true.
Xoj-Fal reared up and made a noise that started as a grunt, before it turned into a roar. The claw that had been intended to deliver my death, was pulled away as the dragon tried to discover what had struck it. The claw snapped the feathered shaft away, but the rest of the arrow remained in its eye.
The beast surprised us again, and spun in place until it faced down the length of the river. The great wings unfurled and I knew that it had had enough of us. A few men were swatted back by the wings, but they were quickly on their feet again, hacking at whatever skin they could reach. Beneath the great span of its wings, we looked even tinier against this powerful creature. The light of the day seemed almost as though it was blocked out, and when the wings descended, the rolling gusts of air buffeted us and threatened to knock us from our feet.
Those who were able to retain sufficient balance renewed their efforts, and we were able to cut at its flesh without fear of a return attack. It tipped back onto its haunches and we hacked at it as much as we could. I think many of us hoped that we could use this last opportunity to slay it before it escaped, but we were disappointed. Our numbers were great and our strength undiminished, but even so we could not do it enough harm to prevent it from taking wing. The wings flapped three times and the dragon lumberingly took to the air. Even as I joined five other men in cutting away one of the toes from a hind leg, my suspicions that Xoj-Fal used more than just its wings to fly were confirmed. There was a dirty power flowing into it of a kind I didn’t recognize at all. It was different even to how the Emperor’s power manifested itself. Xoj-Fal was older than any of them and the origins of its magic lost to all except itself.
Soon it was out of our reach and the tattered wings continued to swirl the surface of the river as the dragon laboured up into the sky.
“Shit, it’s going to burn this place to the ground now,” said Sinnar from close by.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so, Lieutenant. I think it’s had enough.”
I was correct. As Xoj-Fal gained altitude and flew off to the south-east, I remembered stories about dragons being cowardly creatures, prone to fleeing if hard-pressed. In my head, I dismissed these stories – only the stupid sacrifice themselves for nothing. Xoj-Fal was not the noble creature of the tales, but it had been the toughest opponent we had faced. I was sure that it hated us, but I could not bring myself to feel the same about it.
There we stood, all of us from the First Cohort, and watched Warmont’s First as it flew away from us, becoming gradually smaller until eventually even the sharpest eyed amongst us could no longer see it.
“Good work, lads,” I said to those around me. As I said the words, I saw pieces of our armour submerged here and there in the water. And nor was it just armour, for there were also good men from the First Cohort amongst the pieces. For some reason, it reminded me of my nakedness – the darkflame had burned away everything from me and left me with just my sword.
“Let’s get our dead. We’ll bring everything back with us,” I ordered.
“Yes, sir!” Chant said. “Let’s toast them all a hundred times. They’ve earned it.”
I moved away from him, my eyes alighting on Shooter on the opposite bank. He had his black wood bow held casually in one hand. Sprinter was with him.
“Nice shot,” I told him. “You only had one chance.”
He didn’t answer me, but Sprinter spoke.
“Warmont’s men are coming, sir. They’ll be here in the morning.”
There were several suitable responses and I chose one. “Fuck!”
Twenty-Three
We drank our toasts that afternoon and remembered our fallen. The Grask seemed especially bitter, as if its taste reflected our feelings about the irreplaceable loss of the men. There was one piece of good news, in that Jakes still lived, even having stabbed Xoj-Fal in the underbelly and then being thrown into a solid wall for his troubles.
“You daft sod,” Beamer told him affectionately. “What’d you go and do a thing like that for?”
“I don’t know,” Jakes responded. “When its flame hit me, it took away all my anger. Or at least, something inside me took away the anger. All I had left was this calmness that I needed to try and kill it. To stop it killing any more of us.” He looked down at the floor.
Beamer put an arm around Jakes’ shoulder. “You did real good,” he said. “One of the bravest thi
ngs I ever saw.”
A few of the other men clustered around and hugged Jakes or reached out to take his hand. They were joined by more and more, with some men simply reaching over to touch him on the head or the shoulder in a show of their appreciation for what he’d done. Beamer had been right to say that Jakes’ actions were daft, but I couldn’t condemn them, even in my own head. We occasionally have an epiphany and it can happen at the strangest of times. I joined the others, pushing my way to the front, until I could clasp Jakes by the hand.
“I’m proud of what you did,” I told him and we all took comfort from this one man’s actions in the face of the thirty-eight that we had lost.
After I’d left him, I sank into my own thoughts. We’d lost more men in the last few weeks than we’d lost in the five decades before. We would never be able to replace them and I worried that if the fight against Warmont lasted for years, we’d become so worn by attrition that we would cease to exist.
“Don’t worry, Captain,” said Craddock, sensing my mood. “We’ve knocked off four of Warmont’s Five so far. The old bastard will be shitting himself now and who’s going to bring him his little girls when we’ve killed all his men tomorrow?”
I tried to smile, though I suspected the attempt was only partially successful. “Warmont’s a tough old bastard, you know. He’s managed to last this long without even a wobble. A crafty man, that one. And not easily fooled.”
“Do you think we’ll see him take to the field?” asked Craddock.
“He’ll have to – eventually. If he doesn’t, the Emperor will send someone who will. And whoever Malleus sends, he’ll send him with troops. I don’t think Warmont wishes to relinquish his grip on power yet. He’ll be dead in months if he can’t feed.”
“That soon?” asked Craddock in surprise.
I shrugged. “Months or years, perhaps. Last I heard he was feeding almost every day. Eventually it’ll be twice a day, then five times. All to keep the decrepit old husk from decaying into dust. We can’t starve him though, and we can’t outlast him. The only hope is to keep defeating the men he sends until his cities and his coffers run dry.”
Soldiers' Redemption (First Cohort Book 1) Page 26
