by Greg Curtis
No sooner had he said it then he had to duck as a particularly nasty looking skeleton with a rusty axe came out of nowhere to try and take his head off. How did they keep doing that?
Of course he didn’t have time to wonder about that as he drew his sword in a hurried fluid arc and tried to sever the thing’s head from its neck. It was a good strike, but not good enough, and all he managed to do was half sever its head until its skull hung at an odd angle to one side, but refused to fall off. Naturally that wasn’t enough to stop it and he had to duck hurriedly once more even as the undead nightmare took another swipe at him with that heavy looking woodsman’s axe.
“Duck!” He barely had time to drop to one side as a spear came out of nowhere and finally ripped the grinning skull off the skeleton's neck, just missing his ear in the process. But he didn’t complain as Junga pulled the spear back with the skull still attached and the skeleton’s body collapsed to the ground in front of him. He had to dodge quickly though as the rusty axe along with the skeleton’s hand unexpectedly came free and threatened to take his foot off.
Still that proved useful as when he turned and straightened he found another of the nightmares wandering up on them and quickly managed to separate its head from its corpse. This time though it was a zombie, and the ichor it left on his good steel blade made him wince with disgust. The smell of its rotting flesh was enough to turn a man’s stomach, and the sight of that black slime that had once been flesh and blood covering his blade was somehow worse.
“Fire!” Someone, he thought it was Aidan, called out the warning even as he turned and saw the burning ball of oil soaked cloth flying over his head, heading straight for the advancing enemy, and for once it hit perfectly. Whoever had come up with the idea of the home made fireballs was a blessing from the gods as far as he was concerned, but the torturous longbow system they used to fire them was a mess. The huge cloth balls were too heavy and they made the accuracy of the missiles very poor.
This time though luck was in their corner and he watched happily as a zombie and the two skeletons on either side of it caught fire. It wouldn’t stop them. Not for a while anyway. But it did ruin their day as when they fire caught hold the undead seemed to lose whatever they called vision, and scarcely half a dozen heartbeats later he watched as the zombie started wandering off in another direction, completely blind. The skeletons were made of tougher stuff, having no eyes remaining, and they marched straight at them, still on fire, but he knew that as their bones burnt, and for some reason they burnt exceptionally well, they would fall apart. The traces of tendons and sinew that held them together didn’t like fire.
Sure enough he watched as one of them lost a leg at the knee and promptly fell over. It didn’t kill it though, even if it was undead, and instead it just lay there on the ground, burning away, and trying to get up.
“Keep firing!”
He gave the command and watched as three more of the flaming missiles flew overhead, and for once two of them found their targets. Half a dozen more of the undead caught fire and finally he knew some hope as he saw the advancing line of undead gaining some holes. That was good, but what wasn’t so good was that were three or four more lines behind them.
Easily a hundred undead were marching on them, that after the first line had been broken, and there were only twelve men to hold them back, some of them wounded. Things did not look good.
They needed a dragon. A single dragon could wipe out the entire force with maybe a couple of blasts. But of course they were all somewhere up north, destroying the main armies of the necromancer which were apparently all but endless, and now filled with liches and bone dragons. Those that slipped past, and there were so many of them, had to be dealt with by the patrols scouring the lands. But there weren’t enough of them either. Especially now that they’d emptied the more northern towns of Calumbria.
Dunston, Silver Falls, Winston, Heart Lake, Aston and so many more, tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people uprooted and sent packing in their wagons with little more than the clothes on their backs. It was a terrible thing to see, a terrible thing to ask of the people, but still so much better than the alternative, and he had heard the terrible tales of what the enemy had done to the Soolleni Woods. Many thousands dead, the cities of Nightfire and Wildhearth destroyed, the people homeless. At least in Calumbria they’d managed to save the people.
Despite his dislike of abandoning towns, it had also yielded some advantages. Each town had in itself formed a small force of rangers as they fled, mostly the town guards and a few others who could carry a bow and ride a horse, and they were also scouring the lands, hunting down undead. What they lacked in equipment and experience, they more than made up for in rage as they took their vengeance on the walking dead. A ranger patrol, especially a properly trained elven patrol, and there were several in the region, would be welcome about then too. But with so much land to patrol, so many places where the undead could slip through on their relentless march south, they were few and far between.
Even a wizard would be good, but they had lost their only spellcaster a week before, along with two other men. The undead might have no intelligence to speak of, but somehow they still seemed to find ways to slip around armies and creep up on people while they were sleeping. They could set a good ambush too. Someone was directing them.
Wondering about that though was a matter for another time. For the moment they just had to survive.
“Take cover behind those rocks and for the Goddess’ sake keep firing.” Taking his own advice he started retreating back up the hill to the escarpment where they could find a little shelter, and watched as his men did the same. Some were injured, but at least none were dead, this time.
But even if they survived this encounter, there would be another. And another. Some days he had to wonder if there would be an end to this, or if there was no hope at all.
**************
Sounds woke him, the sounds of metal on bone, of people yelling and horses neighing, and Alan was briefly annoyed by the intrusion into his dream. Then he realised the sounds were those of people dying, that there was a battle nearby and his sense of duty returned to him.
Alan stood up, shook himself off and discovered he had four feet and a couple of wings. He had apparently slept transformed, and that was usually something he avoided for simple confusion. But the greater confusion was when he shook his body and discovered his head and tail took some time to follow the movement of his shoulders and hips. But then that was because his neck was extremely long and sinuous, his tail much the same.
He looked down, something that was surprisingly easy to do as he somehow bent his neck around so that he could stare straight at his own chest from a foot or more away, a disturbing perspective, to discover that he had taloned feet and scales. Glistening, multicoloured scales that sang with their own magic. He knew within him that with just a thought they could change colour to match any surroundings they chose to, allowing him to blend into the background, or to send a warning to any predator foolish enough to come close, and he also knew from the feeling of strength coursing through him, that any predator thinking of making a meal of him would be foolish indeed.
“Streuth I’m a dragon!” Except that even as he uttered, or tried to utter the words - he realised his new mouth wasn’t designed for speech and what came out sounded like a series of belches - he knew he wasn’t. Dragons were vast creatures, magnificent and powerful, he was surely no larger than he had been as a griffin, after all his backpack was still fitting, and his magic was also the same as before. Also dragon scale’s couldn’t change colour as far as he knew, while his shone with every colour of the rainbow at his slightest whim.
He experimented with them for a few moments, stunned at the brilliance he could achieve in the sunlight, until the sounds of battle brought him back to the moment. He had work to do.
Without thinking about it he leapt into the air, exactly the same way he did as a roc, and discovered th
at despite the strangeness of his new form, everything worked as it should. It was a matter of moments to track the sounds as his ears seemed to be able to pin point the direction of a noise, any noise, and its distance, and he flew there, revelling as he always did in the joy of flight. It wasn’t a long flight.
A small party of soldiers, human soldiers, were being waylaid by a group of undead, perhaps a dozen skeletons and as many zombies, and behind them several more lines of undead waiting to take their place. The soldiers were trying to keep them at bay with arrows, some of them flaming missiles, and a useful rock formation which they had taken shelter behind. The sight of the unnatural creatures was what really bothered him as it raised his ire. It also raised the dorsal plates on his back and neck which until then he hadn’t known he had.
The instant he was in range he coughed at them, an almost instinctive action that he would never have imagined doing before, and was staggered to see a pillar of fire surely a hundred paces or more long simply stream out of him and engulf the undead. There were screams of course, not those of the undead since they didn’t make any noises, but those of the soldiers as they saw the ground in front of them simply explode with fire, and had to scatter before it or be burnt. But the undead themselves did no such thing, and within the blink of an eye they were all burning brightly. It was a sight that filled him with satisfaction. Such things did not belong in the world. He was even more satisfied when he saw them stop moving. They were blind in the flames and not knowing where their enemy or duty lay, they simply stood there and burned.
Several more coughs wiped out the other waves of the undead even as they stood there waiting their turn to attack, and he knew that when the first wave was gone and it was their turn to attack, they would be too far gone to walk. His fire was surprisingly hot. Soon, he knew with a feeling of righteousness, they would only be ashes, and the soldiers, whoever they were, were safe.
He could have, perhaps should have stopped then, landed, changed back into his human form and found out who they were, what they were doing on the mountain, the state of the war, and above all else how long he had slept, but he didn’t want to. Instead, still revelling in the unexpected power of his new form, he did a few acrobatics in mid-air simply because he could, and then headed off for his cottage. It was there he hoped that he would find the answers he needed. But just in case they needed its protection, he left the soldiers an inferno to watch over them, again surprised at how easily the magic simply came to him. The Lady had really taught him some powerful magic.
Half an hour later and just at the entry to the great Haellor Forrest which encompassed his home, he discovered a second party of undead, another small patrol, and he took satisfaction in leaving them in the same flaming heap as the first group. But they still troubled him. Undead, two parties, in his forest, almost bordering on the human land of Calumbria; that said terrible things about the power of the necromancer as he had stretched forth his hands.
His home when he reached it, was much the same as it had been when he’d left it, heading out on his mission to the ancient city, and yet he noticed that the gardens had been tended to. Ashiel, and he suspected her mother, had been busy, and that pleased him. The gardens were as much as the house itself, his home. But they weren’t around to thank and neither was anyone else. The house had been deserted for days at least. There wasn’t a trace of heat in the hearth, any foot prints that might have been left in the deep grass or soft earth had been washed away by time and rain. He had been asleep for many weeks at least he realised and but for the lady’s magic coursing through him, it could have been far longer.
The Huron village was his next concern, as he knew that they were not only at least half a dozen leagues closer to the gorge and the necromancer, they were surely a prized target for him, a chance to defeat his ancient enemies, and a people with a knowledge that threatened him. Of course with the dragons watching over them and his elementals as well, they should be safe against even a massive army, but the necromancer could raise just such a force if he needed to, and with bone dragons in it, a deadly one.
He set off for the village without even landing at his home, and on the short trip started raising his own army of infernos. He’d decided pretty quickly that he was never going to fall prey to the bone dragons again. Deep down inside they still scared him.
By the time the village was in sight, easily two dozen infernos were flying at his side, something they hadn’t really been able to do before, but then they too had somehow been improved while he slept to become a powerful strike force, and as he crested the final hill to look down upon the dragons flying high above and the smoke rising from below, he knew he was going to need them.
“Defend the village and the villagers.” His new mouth might not be able to speak the words, in fact he was speaking the dragonesque tongue as the language seeming to come naturally from his mouth, but his summoned elementals seemed to understand his intent as he watched them streak off like arrows just above the tree tops, heading into the battle, while he in turn sought height and the peace he needed to raise more. A lot more. He was going to need them.
For as far as he could see in every direction, the forest was filled with small fires where the dragons had incinerated another bunch of undead, but at the same time he could feel the slow moving waves of the rest as they made their way toward the village, almost making ripples in the forest itself with their strides. There were big things among them too, great undead creatures he hadn’t seen or heard of before and which he could only just make out the tops of. Mammoths perhaps or the remains of even larger terrible thunder lizards that hadn’t walked the land in tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of years, and they were simply knocking the trees over in their slow charge.
For half an hour and then an hour, he did nothing more than simply glide in a small circle above the forest a few leagues from the battle, as he raised his infernos, and the ease and the numbers with which they came was astounding. Easily sixty or seventy more had been sent off screaming into battle without anyone seeming any the wiser, before he decided on a change of attack and started concentrating on lightnings. With the wind rippling around under his wings and the gentle breeze flowing all around, they were just as easy to summon, just as deadly, and twice as fast.
He watched the first leave him, a blast of pure whiteness far faster than any arrow that had ever been given flight, and then saw the explosion of white fury as it found its first target a heartbeat later. Even from a league away it was devastatingly powerful, and he knew he had a weapon of indescribable strength and speed. Even before he’d summoned the second, a matter of less than a minute, the first had caused half a dozen more explosions of similar power, right across the forest as it hunted down and destroyed the most powerful undead it could find.
By the time another hour had passed and another sixty or so lightnings had been summoned and released, the entire forest for leagues in every direction was a never ending explosion of whiteness and even the dragons were starting to look a little less busy. They still flew overhead, circling and looking for targets, and they still sent balls of fire down into the enemy, but not with the same frantic haste. One of them even had the time to come and see who was creating all the fuss.
It was a gold he soon saw, S’roth the very same gold that had stood with him at the battle with Afri and the rebels and had unexpectedly asked him what to do when things had gone strangely. He looked just as uncertain now.
“Who are you little one? What are you?” His voice which was normally like thunder was suddenly much more pleasant to Alan’s ears. A gentle deep bass rather than an endless booming, and he realised it wasn’t only his mouth that had transformed.
“I am Alan Feralis Great One. I just have a new form.” It was strange, his voice, which had seemed so damaged before, was suddenly making sense to him and the dragon. But then it was designed to speak their tongue.
“Yes. New form, new strength, even a new essence. I hardly recognise y
ou little one, and I do not know how this can be possible, but it is you. I feel you. Besides, where have you been?”
“Asleep S’roth. The Lady had a purpose for me and once she had finished with me I slept and awoke in this form. How long has it been and are the Huron safe?” Finally he had found someone who could tell him a little of what had passed and he took the opportunity to ask what he desperately needed to know.
“Two and some months as your people measure time and the villagers are safe. But they now reside in our new lair, the village itself is empty. We just left it as a target for the undead one to waste his armies upon.”
“He has armies to waste.” It was only the truth and they both knew it.
“Come, Sera must see you little one. She must know the truth of your words, the meaning of what has happened.”
“I will gladly come S’roth, but after I have finished with this battle. I am still strong, the sun is still high, the wind still fresh, and I must continue to raise my armies until I can no longer. The more I raise now, the quicker the necromancer’s army will be driven back.” And though he didn’t say it he could have added the sooner that they could bring the battle back all the way to him at S’mon Gorge. Though he knew it was shameful to disobey Sera even in as little as delaying doing what she hadn’t asked of him, he knew he had a greater duty, and it was the defeat of the undead one. That was why he had been brought back to waking in this shape, and he had to obey. Even when the lady had finished using him directly as her tool she had still laid the commands upon his soul to make certain he remained her servant. Not that he minded.
