“We need to open its mouth,” he said, without preamble. “It’s got to be tender in there. Less armored, at any rate.”
“The last thing I want to see is that mouth open,” Rondal assured him. No, an apprentice shouldn’t be that cheeky with a Master. But discipline wasn’t really our concern right then.
“Perhaps. But it will be our best chance. Unless you wish to volunteer to carve your way into its brainstem through its eyes while it sleeps?” he offered. That idea made Rondal go pale and shut up.
We headed off across the battlefield, avoiding any pitched battles. That many warmagi, that many High Magi, all in one place was a heady power to wield. Once we pushed back against the remaining gurvani, and tried to force them away from their position near the mighty snout, we were able to get within fifty feet of it.
Sarakeem had been busily re-tooling a few of his arrows as we marched, using simple binding spells to attach whatever slivers of snowstone he could get from his comrades to their shafts. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but several seemed to have a lot more snowstone than the single pebble I’d instructed everyone to carry. By the time we were ready to assault the dragon’s head, he had half a dozen ready to go. None were as large as my snowflake pendant has been, but they didn’t need to be.
“Put them all along its upper lip,” Terleman requested of the Merwini mage. I thought the pouring rain would slow him down, but he had taken to that shiny Alkan bow like it was part of his arm. It took him thirty seconds to affix six shafts in a crude mustache across the dragon’s face. Each arrow burrowed into the armor until the snowstone on its shaft was pressed up against the hide.
“Will that do, Magelord?” he asked. “I hope it does, for I am out of shafts.”
“That should be sufficient,” Terleman said, a quiet smile on his face. He called a couple of his stronger men to help, and soon they were casting a spell that was forcing the mighty maw open like a hideous cavern.
“So which one of us is going in there?” Mavone asked, doubtfully.
“None of us,” I said. Penny, have Dara land the Knife near me, please. A moment later the triangular shape fluttered by, then came to a stop at my feet. Taking a spare snowstone from Sarakeem, I affixed it as best I could to the back of the Knife, right in the spot where the control stone sat when it was quiescent. Then I patted it.
All right, have her get this thing into its mouth and down its throat. Slowly. Try not to wake it up. When its half way down, let me know. The Knife went aloft a moment later, floating at waist level before turning and speeding toward the unconscious worm.
“I have a binding spell on it!” Taren said, excitedly. “A strong one. But . . . there’s something . . .”
Finished with the Knife I turned my attention to scrying. It took a moment to get some resolution and understanding of the chaos I was detecting, but it became apparent soon enough that someone was nearby, working to counter us.
“Shit! Shamans!” I swore. “Two or three of them, on the other side of the thing’s head!”
“They could just be defensive,” Mavone pointed out.
“They’re trying to wake that thing up!” Taren contradicted, excitedly. “And we just made it significantly less resistant to magic – even theirs! Min, hurry that Knife up, quick!”
There was a cluster of magic – gurvani magic, which I was primed to detect – nearby, and while the precise nature of the spells they were casting was unknown, you can get a good general feel for such things if you study them. These shamans weren’t trying to scry, they weren’t hanging defensive spells, they weren’t even attacking.
Taren was right. They were trying to wake the unconscious dragon.
The Knife approached the lips and dove into the foot-wide space between the menacing three rows of teeth. “I’ve got to keep an eye on Dara and the Knife . . . Mavone, you, Sarakeem, Rondal and Tyndal go deal with those shamans. Take a few extra men, if you need to. Everyone else, focus on maintaining the binding spells. Wherever you can.”
As they huddled up to prepare their assault, I gathered my team for holding it in place. As an example, I drew upon the magnificent power of my sphere and cast one of the most powerful holding spells I’ve ever cast. I could feel it hook into the beast’s head only lightly, but it did take. So did several others, I could feel around me.
That proved instrumental only a few moments later when, just before Terleman and Mavone led the attack on the shamans, their spell worked. The dragon started to wake up. The first sign we had of this was watching a huge fluttering eyelid, followed by an excited gasp from the beast as it struggled into consciousness. That gasp was potent even if it wasn’t aflame – dragon breath smells strongly of methane, like a barracks privy after a busy night of leave.
“Dear gods!” I heard Planus moan behind me. The stench was overpowering.
“Probably exhausted stomach gasses,” Taren said, thoughtfully. “Ignited in the mouth by some alchemical mechanism or simple enchantment. What I would give to study the beast . . .”
“I’ll let you take it home when we’re done with it,” I quipped. Penny, is Dara in place? I added, mind-to-mind. That thing is waking up!
She’s just about there, Pentandra responded after a moment. Things got difficult a moment ago, she says. It’s harder to maintain the connection once it went inside. The resistance. But the snowstone is helping, she added. I’ve got a hook on the Knife myself.
Tell her to start cutting, I said, anxious about the outcome. The dragon’s head was still magically bound to the soil, but that didn’t bind the rest of his body. The sooner we can incapacitate it, the better.
It took only seconds to see the effect of Dara’s attack from within. The dragon’s eyes opened wide in shock and pain, and quite to both armies’ discomfort it began to panic. Waking up from unconsciousness with a biting pain in your throat and suddenly unable to move your head will make any creature panic. But when this beast allowed fear to rule it, the scrambling it did in an attempt to try to free its head destroyed squadrons of soldiers and scores of gurvani under its bulk.
But we had the head, if only barely. With every passing moment, the dragon’s alarm grew, as the pain in its throat worsened and its panic deepened. Its long neck became more and more stretched as it dug in with its gargantuan hind feet and tried to pull itself free. I could see the slight bulge at the base of its neck where it was having the most difficulty – where the Knife was playing havoc from within.
It wasn’t killing the dragon, though. Oh, it was hurting it, even wounding it, but it wasn’t slaying it, not quickly enough by far. Indeed, the strain on our combined binding spells was tremendous, and a few times I felt my own stretch to the breaking point by the resistant beast.
“We need a bigger Knife,” bemoaned Sarakeem.
“Or an axe the size of a barn door,” I agreed.
“We could try to bind its feet and wings, too,” Jendaran suggested.
“Somehow I don’t think we’re going to have time for that,” I pointed out. “We need to put an end to this, now. Everyone who isn’t holding their binding spell right now needs to attack that area. If we hit it from outside and the Knife is carving from within, between the two we should be able to decapitate the thing.”
And we tried. For almost ten minutes we lobbed whatever spells we could to try to help the Knife break free. But dragons are apparently almost as tough on the inside as they are on the outside. Dara was doing damage, but it was slow going, even for an enchanted flying blade. I tried a couple of the more powerful and damaging spells I knew, but they barely scratched the hide, much less hurt it seriously.
Dara’s nearly stuck, Penny reported to me, a few moments later. She’s still making progress, but there’s a lot of . . . well, blood and such in the way. And the twisting and turning aren’t helping her control much.
I thought furiously while the others gave it a turn, and the dragon began to shake the fuzziness of unconsciousness from its trapped head. Snowstone
was the key. It had to be. Somehow the power of a magic spell had to be concentrated in close proximity to a piece of snowstone a sufficient size in order to deliver the kind of damage necessary.
I watched as one magi after another took a crack at the region. Despite their best attempts, the dragon’s first priority and focus of attention was still its immobilized head, not the tickle in its throat.
Then it hit me. I had precisely the tool I needed. More specifically, I had precisely the man I needed. I turned to Taren and Sarakeem.
“Go find me Sire Cei of Sevendor,” I ordered, “wherever he is on the field. And pray he isn’t dead, or we might all be joining him.”
* * *
Sarakeem found him. Of course Sire Cei was on the far, far side of the battle, helping Baron Arathanial and his gentlemen patrol the field, pick off fleeing stragglers, and occasionally make a foray against the remnants of the goblin right flank. But Sire Cei was hale and well, and dutifully followed the archer when he gave him my orders. It took even longer to re-thread their way around the periphery of the battle to get back to our post, and by that time the dragon was good and mad.
“What can I do for you, Magelord?” he asked, saluting. His pretty armor was dented and scratched in a hundred places, splashed with goblin blood and mattes of black hair. But Sire Cei himself had taken only a few injuries, and he still had his lance and his sword. Indeed, he bore one of the three fine war lances I had given him on the day of his tournament victory.
And a snowstone pendant similar to mine.
“Give me your snowflake,” I directed him. “Then get a big drink of water and prepare yourself for the biggest joust of your life.”
“Magelord?” he questioned. I took the snowstone from him and examined it. Rondal had done a decent job with the sculpting, and had left a hole I could stick my pinky finger through in the center. I focused and worked an enchantment, and soon the hole was growing to twice its size. When it was of sufficient size, I slid it down over the deadly steel point of the lance until the sloping angle of the shaft of the lance held it tight. It was only four inches behind the head. I hoped that would prove sufficient.
“It’s your lucky day, Sire Cei,” I muttered while I worked. “Your special talent with the lance is going to be used to great effect today.”
“But you seem to have the left well under control,” he said, nodding toward the steadily shrinking troop of gurvani. There couldn’t have been more than fifteen hundred of them left, at this point.
“Not against the goblins,” I explained, as I spelled the snowflake to adhere to the lance, then returned it to his hand. “Against the dragon.”
He looked pale. He didn’t nod. He just stared at me.
“If there was another way, I’d do it,” I promised, apologetically.
“If this is what my lord requires of me,” he said, quietly. I could appreciate why he seemed so grave. If someone asked you to single-handedly charge a dragon that outweighed you by several hundred tons, armed only with a sharp stick and a snowflake, you might see it as more suicide than challenge yourself. I felt awful about it, thinking about Lady Estret and Sire Cei’s new step-daughter, waiting back home in Sevendor for his return.
But I looked at the panicking dragon, looked at our scattered forces, looked at the ruined castle, and then I realized that thousands of men would be leaving widows and orphans behind today. There would be thousands more if this dragon was not subdued. If Sire Cei could triumph, even at the cost of his own life, then their sacrifice would not have been in vain. I paused to add a few more enchantments I thought would be helpful, then passed the weapon back to my castellan.
Sire Cei was grim as he accepted the lance. Grim, but the man knew his duty, as the set of his jaw indicated. The first duty of any knight is always to die gloriously in battle. Dying while attempting to slay a dragon all by yourself had to be as close to a divine visitation as a knight could ask for.
“By all the gods, it shall be done, Magelord,” he agreed after I explained to him what I wanted him to do. “If I don’t—”
“You can trust me to take care of them,” I promised, without hearing his inevitable question. “Whatever happens. You have my word.”
That mollified him, and he looked slightly more at peace when he re-mounted his destrier. “Then it shall be done,” he repeated, loudly.
“I’ll walk with you until you’re in place,” I said, quietly. “But we must hurry. I don’t know how much longer we can keep it bound.”
We said little as we came to an empty space in the field that allowed unimpeded access to the dragon’s ensorcelled head. I handed him his helm, tightened his saddle strap and stirrup straps for him, and held a water bottle to his lips before he nodded that he was ready. I drew Twilight and gave him as formal a salute as I could.
“SEVENDOR!” the big mountain knight bellowed as he dug in his spurs. His big brown stallion reared dramatically, and then dashed forward bearing Sire Cei’s armored weight on its back like he was a child.
We all watched in fascination as the lone knight’s steed raced across the hundred yards to the bulging neck. All of the magi could feel the magical wave building almost immediately, and by the time he was within twenty yards you could see it without magesight, a kind of fuzzy distortion effect around his body. He lowered his helm and couched his lance, his aim steady and true.
The second it touched the dragon’s neck, the wave collapsed and transformed. Thanks to the nearness of the snowstone, there was little to impede it . . . and the resulting crack and flash was far in excess of what I expected. Sire Cei and his steed were enveloped in a powerful cloud of smoke, steam, dust, blood and gas, and disappeared from view for a moment. Only when the cleansing rain had intervened did we see if our brave knight had been victorious.
We saw the damage to the dragon’s throat before we saw anything else. Sire Cei’s run had been successful. Between the pressure from within from the Knife and the sudden stabbing explosion of Sire Cei’s lance, even the dragon’s tough skin couldn’t absorb all that energy without succumbing to damage. The neck was torn half-asunder from the body, a great charred hole smoking in the rain.
We found Sire Cei twenty feet away, unconscious and bruised but without apparent serious injury. His horse was not so lucky. I was sympathetic, after losing Traveler, but we could always get him another horse. I was just relieved that I didn’t have to inform Lady Estret that she was a widowed bride for the second time. I just hoped he woke up from his unconsciousness before we made it back to Sevendor.
The Knife cut itself free from the wreckage of the dragon’s neck and sped back to its operator, a shining streak across the dark and gloomy field.
The goblins who witnessed the fall of their dangerous ally were filled with dismay and began to quit the field almost at once. Terleman’s attack on the three remaining shamans had helped turn the tide, too, as they had been attempting to rally their army and summon reinforcements. Terleman and Mavone had dueled two of them before managing to slay them, and even though one escaped (with a handful of snowstone, from what Mavone saw) the dramatic death of the others to the hands of the hated warmagi had been dramatic enough to cow the survivors. For the most part, they threw down their weapons and fled.
The rest of the evening was spent cleaning out the last bits of goblin resistance, chasing them into the wild, and caring for the wounded. That was particularly difficult, as there were hundreds of men crushed or burned from the dragon’s fall. I pressed most of the civilian magi into service as field medics, and was joined by a company of clerics from the local region.
Near midnight the reinforcements from Barrowbell finally arrived, a thousand fresh troops who were willing to stand guard throughout the remainder of the night while the rest of us collapsed in exhaustion wherever we could. I pulled rank, and had Rondal secure the use of an abandoned and partially-destroyed peasant hut in the castle’s village where I walked right past the food and wine my thoughtful apprentice had l
aid out for me. Instead I collapsed next to Penny who had wrapped up in her cloak on the dry dirt floor. It felt as if it was the finest featherbed.
I didn’t feel guilty about sleeping one bit, even though I had a million things to see to. I had helped slay a dragon. I deserved a nap. I was tired.
The next morning dawned cloudy but without the rain that had made the previous day’s battle so inconvenient. After checking with the medics about Sire Cei’s condition – unchanged, still unconscious – as well as a few dozen others I knew who had been hurt, we began to assembled the butcher’s bill. That was difficult to assess in part because there was still a mammoth corpse of a dragon laying on top of possibly scores of men.
As it was, the bill was high. Of Terleman’s six thousand men, less than four remained, mostly horse. His infantry had borne the brunt of the dragon’s flailing, but he still had enough to garrison a castle.
Of course, the castle wasn’t fit to be garrisoned anymore. The tower had collapsed across the road, destroying a few village huts along the way, and the wall was shattered in two separate areas. The bailey was pockmarked with rubble and gouges from the dragon’s talons, and the keep . . . more than half of the citadel was crumbled. What was left wasn’t defensible in any meaningful sense.
“It won’t matter,” Terleman confided in me, as we assessed the damage. “The importance of this castle was strategic, not defensive. It lay along the road through Gilmora. There’s a somewhat smaller castle twenty miles north of here, and a larger but just as poorly constructed castle six miles southwest of here. Those are my alternate commands.”
“Move north,” I advised. “Every time we take a step back and lose ground, it’s a problem. Until we get adequate reinforcements, every foot of ground we re-take in Gilmora is a victory. And you can always fall back to your alternate if you need to. Much harder going forward.”
The Spellmonger Series: Book 03 - Magelord Page 91
