The Dragon Lords: False Idols

by Jon Hollins

  And yes, that was in the memory. In the rage. That denial. That the cup would not be his, could not be his.

  But there was the cup. There was Barph’s Strength. The wine and the blood.

  He almost remembered now. He was so close …

  Emotions in him. Memories of emotions.

  Memories of rage.

  Quirk moved as if in slow motion. All the world in slow motion. The dragons’ wings spreading. Their skin rippling. Muscles stretching taut. Their teeth stained yellow. Their tongues bright red. Quirk’s teeth. Smiling. Uncertain. Unsure. Proffering the cup. Proffering it to … to …

  He tried to focus on the soldier. Tried to bring him into focus. But the pain in his head was too great now. The world was splintering. Sharp fragments of light and madness. He grasped desperately at the pieces, tried to put them back together.

  Quirk moving like molasses. Almost still.

  Proffering the cup.

  Proffering it to …

  To …

  Not him.

  Denying him.

  Turning away from him.

  His wine. His blood.

  And the rage tore through him like a knife through flesh. He was eviscerated by rage. His was left hollow and gasping by it. By the scale of it. Years of rage. Decades of rage. Centuries of rage. All of it at once. Too much of it, bursting through his seams. Too much to hold. Too much for his mind.

  He moved. Maybe he had already been moving, his body slightly ahead of his fracturing, fragmenting mind. His body holding together just a little longer. But he could feel it coming apart. Trying to hold the rage was too much for it. It couldn’t take it. The skin at the edges of his mouth was tearing. His grimace was too large for this paltry frame of flesh and bone.

  A sound was coming out of him. Not a scream or a howl. Just sound. It was being expelled. He could no longer hold it. The integrity of his being was coming apart.

  With nerveless fingers he seized the cup, tore it from Quirk’s hands. His arms were shaking. His bones felt like rubber. And he was so close. But this was it. This was the moment he had been waiting for. The memory had been waiting for. This stupid fucking body would not fail him now. It could not.

  He was on his knees, trying to lift the goblet. And it was so heavy. As if it held an ocean of wine. Of blood. He tried to get his mouth beneath it, tip it. Wine was spilling from the cup, a great torrent of it, splashing over his stomach and knees. He wanted to paw at it, to put just a fingertip in it and put it to his lips. But he couldn’t let go of the cup. Not now. This was it. This was it.

  He was shaking, and shaking, and shaking. He fell backward. The goblet was an anchor weight crushing down on his chest.

  He screamed. He heaved. A roaring screamed in his ears.

  A drop of wine splashed upon his lip.

  It was as if he had never tasted wine before. It was as if he had never drunk before. It was as if he had never breathed before. It was as if the world was dirty, and rotten, and infected and he had never known before, as if he had forgotten what purity tasted like. And now he tasted it. He tasted beauty. He tasted joy. He tasted love. It was white heat in his veins. It was summer sun sluicing through leaves. It was lightness.

  He rose. It was so easy. So easy. All the aches and pains and petty frailties sloughing away. The concerns of physicality were a discarded coat, cast into a corner to be forgotten forever. He rose, and he rose, and he rose. He grew. He swelled.

  People were staring. All around him they were staring. They were dropping to their knees. They were crying out.

  And he laughed, laughed even as he drank, as he drained the chalice to its very last impossible drop, braying and spraying as he did so. Because it had worked. Everything had worked.

  Because he remembered.

  48

  WTF?

  Will stared. He didn’t understand. He didn’t understand anything.

  He had walked upstairs for three days. He had been drunk for one of them. He had been hungover for the next two. He had actually begged Lette to kill him at one point. She had thought it was funnier to not do it. He had arrived in Vinter. He had discovered that against all the odds, Quirk had held up her end of the bargain. She had helped Firkin win the city. He had heard that the dragons’ army was marching. That it was almost on them.

  So, as much as his knees had begged and pleaded with him not to do it, he had run for the city walls. He had yelled at the top of his lungs that he needed to find Quirkelle Bal Tehrin. And he had been sent to her. He had given her Barph’s Strength. She had given it to the army. It had all worked.

  Except he knew that Barph’s Strength didn’t.

  It couldn’t. If it did, how could he feel so bad? And the men he watched drink Barph’s Strength became … drunk. That was it. There was nothing else. And Will simply couldn’t believe that if you ran them through, they wouldn’t still fall, wouldn’t still bleed out, wouldn’t still die.

  And then, out of nowhere …

  No. He didn’t understand at all.

  He tried to piece it together. Firkin had been over by the makeshift barricades at the top of the wall. He had been … what? Will really hadn’t been paying much attention to him. There had been too much else going on, and Firkin, for once, had been being quiet. He thought Firkin might have grabbed his head perhaps. Another headache?

  And then … Then he had been running at Quirk, screaming like a banshee. His face had been full of hate. But as he got to her … He had gripped the goblet, but he’d been in some kind of fit. He’d collapsed, pouring the wine all over himself. And the cup never ran dry so it had just poured, and poured.

  And then …

  And then …

  Then shit just got weird.

  Firkin had … he had …

  He’d stood up. Will had seen that. He’d stood up as if everything was fine, and he had drunk more. That was definitely one thing Will had seen.

  But he’d seen something else as well. Something layered over that image of an old man picking himself up, and grinning, and taking a long, long drink from a jewel-studded goblet. As if the images from his left and right eyes had not agreed.

  He’d seen …

  What the fuck had he seen?

  Firkin had … grown. He’d grown … younger? Or more … virile? Will wasn’t sure that was a word he particularly wanted to associate with Firkin. But in that second image there had been an undeniable sense of energy to the old man. A youthfulness, even while his body … Well, it had not exactly stayed the same. Because he’d also grown … and … well, just grown. Up. Wider. Broader. Beyond six feet. Beyond Balur’s towering eight feet, he had grown. Twelve feet. Twenty feet. He stood as Lawl’s champion had stood. He was massive, and laughing, and drinking. And everyone was staring. Everyone had their neck craned up at that massive second image stuck on the world over the first. So it wasn’t just Will going mad. It was everyone.

  And there he stood. Firkin. Massive. Towering. He had flung the goblet away. It had bounced, and even as it had glittered and spun, Will had seen that it was empty. All that infinite river of wine was gone.

  Firkin had laughed. It had been a massive, booming sound. Will had felt it as much as he heard it. Not in his sternum, where he expected it, but in his head, his thoughts. It had been a wild, capricious laugh that seemed to infect him, to make him want to run and scream naked through the night, cackling as he went. It had been a mad, mad joy. It had reminded him of the way he had felt drinking Barph’s Strength.

  Was that what the wine was meant to do? Was that what Firkin had promised them it would do? Why in the name of all the gods would it only work on Firkin?

  Now, looming over all of them, Firkin turned to look out at the oncoming army. The hundreds of thousands of men. The dragons that still dwarfed him. Both Firkins turned, the massive one and the small one together in perfect harmony. And both of them laughed.

  Will clutched at his head. There was a buzzing behind his eyes, and pain in his head.
>
  And then Firkin gripped the edge of the makeshift battlements with both his normal and his massive hand, and like a man hopping a fence, flung himself over the wall. Just casually leapt down thirty feet of brickwork, like it was nothing.

  And maybe it was. Maybe the massive Firkin was the truth. Maybe the Firkin whom Will had always known, was a lie.

  Will rushed to the edge of the battlements. They all did. Every man, woman, and child standing there clutching whatever scavenged weapon they had found surged forward. They all looked down. And Will half-expected to see Firkin’s broken corpse lying spread-eagle on the ground. To see it was all some mad illusion … delusion.

  But no. No, there was Firkin. Straightening up. And up. Taller now than ever. Thirty feet tall. The height of the wall. His lank hair was blowing in the breeze that buffeted up against the great wall. Faintly, down below, Will could also see the smaller Firkin, still there, but fainter now, less present than that strange, vast version of his old friend.

  Then Firkin was striding away, taking huge steps through the surrounding fields, leaving footprints that would later collect water like small ponds. And with each massive stride it was harder and harder to see that smaller version of Firkin, and the massive version became more and more true, until it was all Will could see. And it was still growing. Forty feet now. He had hands that could rip a man in half. And the dragons were still massive, massive creatures, but a little less massive now.

  The dragons’ army seemed to hesitate as Will watched, as all of Vinter watched. And this was but one man come against them, and they could swarm him and kill him with ease. But still … such a man. His beard like a waterfall down his chest. Sixty feet tall now, still growing.

  The three dragons howled challenges to this creature that had come to defy them. Even from two miles away, Will could feel the air thrum with the volume of their scream. But Firkin just laughed. Seventy feet tall now.

  What was going on? How could this be true?

  He should be doing something, Will thought. All of them gathered here in Vinter—they should be taking advantage of this somehow. But all they could do was watch in wonder.

  The dragons swept toward Firkin. All three of them. Like arrows loosed from bows. Massive heads held out straight on massive necks. Massive wings beating at the air. Massive claws poised to eviscerate.

  The slate-gray Theerax was in the lead. Will remembered him from the camp in Batarra. Remembered the scale of him up close. Remembered the heat of his flame scouring through the world. Remembered knowing that he was death. Just the way he’d known Diffinax was death in the Vale.

  The dragon swept out, a mile before his troops, and smashed into Firkin, claws outstretched.

  Firkin caught Theerax about the neck as the beast closed, his two huge hands closing about the dragon’s throat. He pivoted on his back heel, even as the dragon’s claws slashed and hacked at his chest and guts. He whipped the dragon round in a massive arc and brought him crashing down to earth.

  The ground quaked. Battlements tore loose from Vinter’s walls and fell crashing down to the earth. Men fell to their knees. Will’s jaw fell along with them.

  He couldn’t … What … What was happening?

  Firkin stood over the fallen dragon. It writhed on the ground, twisting around. Its jaws opened.

  Firkin delivered a hammer blow to the side of Theerax’s head. The long neck whiplashed to the side. The huge head struck the dirt, kicking up clouds of dust and sod.

  Firkin was still laughing. Ribbons of flesh and blood ran down his chest, but he was laughing.

  Then his back was bathed in flame as the other two dragons arrived. Diffinax. The beast from the Vale. Clouds of his fire coated him. The gold—surely Gorrax, who had tamed Salera—raced through the fire, claws extended, raking Firkin’s back.

  Firkin’s laughter turned to a howl. He staggered forward. Theerax’s gray head darted forward, tore at his ankles. Firkin went down.

  Will gasped. He felt tears at the corners of his eyes. Firkin could have sat astride one of the three dragons and ridden it as a steed, but it was not enough. When one man faced off against three lions, you did not bet upon the man.

  The dragons’ army came to the same realization. They roared. They began to charge once more.

  Firkin was on the ground, grappling with Theerax, trying to get on top of the beast. Its claws ripped and ripped at his skin.

  The pair was occluded by another storm of fire.

  The moment, whatever it was, whatever it had been, was slipping away. Firkin had bought them a few minutes of time. For what, Will had no idea. But they had wasted them.

  “Battle stations!” he roared.

  Everyone stared at him.

  “A fucking attacking army is coming!” he screamed. “Get ready! Get in your battle stations!”

  They had to have battle stations, right? That was what they were called, wasn’t it? He wanted to glance at Lette, but he didn’t have time for her to roll her eyes at him if he was wrong.

  “Ready weapons!” It wasn’t him this time. It was Quirk yelling, Quirk starting to run up and down the length of the wall. “The attack is coming! The attack is coming!”

  The soldiers began to shake themselves, to form up in lines. Will took off in the opposite direction from Quirk. “Form up! Form up!” He grabbed a sluggish soldier by the shoulders. “They’ll take your city from you while you stare!” The man stared after him. Will moved on. Time was slipping away with every footstep the oncoming army took.

  Out in the field, Firkin was back on his feet, had one dragon by the tail while it clawed at the air and his face. Will could see his friend’s back, remembered seeing the flame and claws scraping it. It was hard to tell at this distance, but the injuries appeared remarkably slight. His clothes were ragged, yes, but there was only a fine tracery of red line, and pink skin exposed. None of the brutal damage Will would have expected.

  Did Firkin have a chance? Was it Barph’s Strength? If only they’d drunk more, would it have worked? Was that the secret of Firkin’s success?

  Though, right now it didn’t look exactly like success.

  A dragon dug its claws into Firkin’s back, picked him up, carried him two or three wing beats through the air, then sent him plowing face-first into the earth.

  The dragons’ army was spilling around the wrestling, writhing knot of bodies. Firkin lashed out with a massive hand. He kicked and stomped his way to standing. Around him, soldiers’ lives ended in bloody ruins. But the others didn’t stop running. They didn’t try to swarm him, or stab him. Their gods were fighting this unexpected champion of Vinter. It was a conflict that was out of their league. And they had faith after all.

  A dragon landed on Firkin’s face, roaring fire, scrabbling with claws.

  Maybe, Will thought, the army was right.

  A troupe of men near him on the wall seemed more organized and less obscenely drunk than some of the others. Will paused in his madcap dash down Vinter’s walls.

  “What …” he managed, sucked down air. “What defenses do we have?” The lead soldier cocked a head at him, glanced at the other soldiers, clearly puzzled why someone would ask when they were arrayed before him.

  “Archers?” Will managed. “Catapults? How in the Hallows do we stop them coming up these walls?”

  The soldier looked down at the sword of his hand. “We stab them when they get to the top.”

  “That’s it?” Will was incredulous. Quirk had always given the impression of not being completely fucking useless after all.

  “There are archers strung out along the wall as best as we could manage, sir,” said a taller soldier, one bearing a mustache on his upper lip the size of a baby seal pup. “But the bow isn’t a popular weapon in the city, sir.”

  “Not a …” Because popularity was so important in defending your city from ravening hordes. “You see that giant oncoming fucking army?” Will double-checked.

  The soldier shrugged. “Sorry, sir. I
t’s just it’s hard to hit something with an arrow after your fifth or sixth drink in the morning.”

  If the city could have spared the defenders, Will would have had a go at flinging the man off the wall to his death. Why did it have to be a city of Barph worshippers? Why couldn’t it have been Lawl worshippers? Discipline-loving death worshippers. An army made of the cult of Lawl’s black eye, with a bunch of white-eye healers packing the streets behind them? Then at least when they all died, Will wouldn’t have had the nagging doubt that it was actually of stupidity.

  Out in the fields Firkin had torn the dragon off his face. He had it by the neck and was flailing it into the earth again and again. Theerax was angling in, bathing his side in flames. Diffinax wheeled above, ready to descend.

  The army’s vanguard was only a few hundred yards from the walls. Long ladders were balanced on their shoulders. A few desultory arrows flicked down from the walls, mostly going well wide of their targets.

  The time for preparing was no longer upon them. If the army wasn’t ready, there was no way Will could get them there at this point.

  “Shit,” he swore. He looked down. He really needed to start carrying a weapon with him. “Someone give me a sword.”

  A large number of soldiers looked at him with very little sympathy.

  “A knife,” he yelled at them. “A dagger. A club. Any-fucking-thing!”

  “Here.” Someone shoved something at him. He grabbed it, felt the weight of it, looked down.

  “Is this a fucking ladle?” he managed.

  “I’m not the one who didn’t bring a sword to a giant battle,” said the soldier.

  Will didn’t have much of a comeback for that one.

  49

  Sour Grapes

  The ladder crashed down against the battlements. Hastily tacked together wood and nails gave way.

  “One of these days,” said Lette, “I really am going to have to learn how to use a crossbow properly.”

  “I am always thinking that a crossbow is being a bit of a Nancy’s weapon,” said Balur. He grabbed hold of the ladder’s top rung, heaved. With a grunt he tipped it backward. From below, a scream drifted up.