by Greg Curtis
And then finally, just when Sam was beginning to wonder if it was ever going to end, the mages acted.
The first any of them knew of it was when they heard the sound of the wind whistling. It sounded much as it did when it whipped around the sides of buildings in the larger cities. But there were no buildings nearby, no wind either, or at least none that he could feel, and despite his fear, none of the fog seemed to be blowing away. The breeze was blowing either above or outside of the protective fog.
Rapidly the sound became louder and louder, until even where he was, which was presumably a long way from the weather mages, he could hear nothing other than the wind. He couldn't even hear his own voice when he shouted his questions at the sentries. Doubtless they couldn't hear him either. But though he couldn't hear anything and he couldn't see anything either, the one thing he did know was that the attacks had stopped. The sky was no longer turning orange every so often.
Then, just when he thought things couldn't get any stranger, he heard a new sound entering the mix; thunder. It rolled around them as though it was coming out of the very ground beneath their feet, while above them the fog kept turning white with the flashes of lightning. While he had no idea what was going on outside the fog, one thing at least was certain. Wyldred had found the weather mages.
The storm continued unabated for what seemed like ages while Sam and the others stood there and fretted. It seemed impossible that a storm could rage like that for so long. Surely it had to abate eventually? But finally, as with everything else, it began to ebb. First the thunder and lightning seemed to lessen, and then even the roaring of the wind around them began to fade. The battle he realised, was over. He just hoped they'd won. And that not too many people had been hurt. He began praying some more to the All Father, desperately hoping that Ry and her family were alright.
Unexpectedly a gentle rain began to fall on them, falling out of the greyness above, and despite his sudden alarm as he tried to rebuild the fog, the sky above them started clearing. Even as he threw all his magic into turning the rain itself into more fog, the last of his ability was taken away when a gentle breeze came out of nowhere to blow the clouds away. Against that he had no answer. The fire mage had been bested by the weather mages in a magical battle, something that normally wouldn't be possible. But then weather was their bailiwick, not his.
Knowing his defeat, Sam instead released the last of his fog shape, and started drawing ever more fire into him, just in case he needed to launch a fire ball or two, though he feared it would be a waste of time. Drakes were said to be fireproof. But then he remembered the black drake in the test realm after it had been hit by his fire ring. Real or not, that creature had been hurt by his magic, and surely the steel drake couldn't be as tough despite the legends? It was spelled to be fire proof rather than naturally immune as were its flesh and blood cousins.
Shortly after that the skies above cleared completely, and Sam like everyone around him desperately started hunting for signs of the drake. But they couldn't see it. Wherever it was, it wasn't flying above them.
But the caravan had been hit. He could see smoke rising from half a dozen fires, and he knew that where they blazed the steel drake's fire balls had struck. He also knew that people there would be dead and more would be injured. He could hear the distant cries of men and woman searching for their loved ones; maybe even mourning them. It wasn't total devastation. It was nothing like what had happened in Shavarra. And this time the enemy had been destroyed. But it was bad enough. Unfortunately while his instinct was to go to them, he knew there was nothing he could do for them. He was no healer. He was a soldier. His job had to be to find and kill the enemy – wherever he was.
He couldn't even go to Ry to make sure she was alright. His place was with the soldiers. And if she wasn't, what could he do? He wasn't even sure where their wagon was in the confusion all around. There were people everywhere, running around crazily, shouting and crying. More were rushing around with buckets of water as they put out the fires. Horses were running wild too, panicked by the battle. The entire caravan was a picture of chaos and he had no idea where anyone was within it. Logic told him that she was probably fine. There were only half a dozen fires and it was a huge caravan. The odds were surely in her favour. But logic didn't bring him the comfort he craved. He wanted certainty. He wanted to know she was well. And he simply couldn't know that. Not yet. How could he be so powerful and so helpless at the same time?
“Look!”
The call came from one of the guards, and Sam like the rest turned to see him pointing at the distant sand hills, where a still smouldering blackened husk could be seen half buried in them. With a sense of unbelievable relief he realised that the drake was down. More than down, it was dead.
Then, as he saw more people calling out and more hands pointing, he realised it was also in pieces. The storm had torn the drake into three massive pieces, and they had been scattered everywhere. Whatever the mages had conjured up had been more powerful than anything Sam had ever known they could do. Maybe he should stop thinking of them as simply farming wizards.
But then when he turned around to stare at the pieces of the drake, Sam realised that two of them had heads and the awful truth dawned. It had not been one drake sent to attack them but three. Even as the elves all around him were beginning their celebrations, Sam felt a shiver of cold running up and down his spine. Three steel drakes! It was unheard of in the Dragon Wars. Normally they were sent off on their own to harass villagers and keep the various armies busy trying to hunt them down. No more than one had normally been needed. And even at the end of the wars, when it had been discovered that weather wizards could bring them down, they'd been sent out in pairs to attack columns from opposite directions, their prime target the wizard himself. But three? Never.
Which meant one of three things. This new Dragon was very, very angry with them, very worried, or – and the thought sat like a lump of burning lead in his gut – the Dragon had so many of these things that he didn't need to send them out alone. All of the options were bad. Very bad.
While he sat there on Tyla, brooding and worrying about his wife, Sam noticed an exodus of soldiers from the caravan wandering over to the giant steel corpses, and almost on instinct he joined them, heading towards the nearest one. It was partly curiosity. After all, it was the chance to see something close up that hadn't been seen in thousands of years. But it was anger too. He needed to satisfy himself that these things were truly dead.
The elves he guessed felt the same, though unlike him they saw this mainly as a victory. Three steel drakes had been slain, few of their people had been hurt, unlike the last time the Dragon had struck, and now they had the chance to gloat over their fallen enemy and study his remains. Some were singing, many were smiling and talking excitedly among themselves. Many were brandishing weapons as if they meant to attack whatever remained of the drakes. None seemed to share Sam's sense of dread, and he hadn't the heart to break their festive mood. This was a victory and they needed it. Now more than ever they needed something to cheer about as they headed into a wasteland, destined for a life unknown while still carrying the memories of too many loved ones who had passed on. Later he would share his thoughts with the elders, assuming they didn't already know them.
It was a lengthy trip as the creature nearest to him had hit the sand nearly half a league south of them but Sam felt no desire to hurry. Unfortunately the slow trip gave him more time to worry about what three steel drakes attacking an elven caravan of refugees could mean for the future. But in time, when the beast was only a few hundred yards away, his thoughts lifted from the danger posed by the enemy to curiosity about the beast itself.
It was massive! That was his first and only thought for quite a while as he stared at it. To have read the tales and to know the descriptions of the creatures off by heart still didn't come anywhere close to explaining the impossibility of the steel drake before him. It was easily as long as a six horse wagon and as
high as a man on a horse, even lying on the ground. Its back had been broken by the fall and, yet for all that it was still sinuous and sleek. And somehow this enormous creature of steel had flown! He couldn't imagine that. It would have taken at least a hundred and fifty men just to lift it off the ground. Yet he had seen it soaring, if not gracefully, then still in the air.
It was also deadly. He would have known that the instant he saw the head of the creature, even if he hadn't known that it was a fire breather. Its face was the very soul of ferocity and had a permanent snarl locked in to its five foot long jaw. A snarl that showed off all of its hundreds of needle sharp steel teeth, since the creature had no lips to hide them. Nor did it have skin to cover the gigantic talons on each of its four stubby legs. Six or seven feet long, each talon glinted wickedly in the sun, showing its razor sharpness to anyone too near. Then there were the wicked steel spines that began at the top of its head and ran all the way to the tip of its tail, like some sort of crest.
This was a creature that had been built solely to fight. Its main weapon might be the fire storm it sprayed out, but even on the ground this would be a formidable foe. The head on that massively long neck could whip round to bite a man and a horse in half, while the tail could probably decapitate anyone foolish enough to be within striking distance. To approach it as a warrior would be to face the wrath of its terrible talons, and the soldier would have few tools that could even scratch its surface. Axes might not be enough.
The red eyes that he'd seen on the steel rats were also there, but these were the size of dinner plates. What's more they were still glowing, a sign that the creature still had some life left in it. Which was the reason that he and the others stopped some distance from it. Even the bravest knew enough to know the creature wasn't finished yet. Its back might be broken, two of its legs smashed beyond recognition, but it wasn't dead.
Looking around at the other two drakes further down the way, he could see they were both in worse condition, showing the effects of their fall clearly. They had exploded on impact. This one for some reason, had survived. Perhaps it hadn't had quite so far to fall. Perhaps it was simply tougher.
“Stand clear.” Sam called out the command even as he dismounted, knowing that while he intended to get closer, no one else should. If the drake was immune to a fire wizard's magic, so too was a fire wizard immune to the drakes fire, provided he held an ice shield tight around him. Others wouldn't be so lucky. He began drawing the ice as quickly as he could.
It was a strange looking shield. And in fact it wasn't really a shield at all. It was the opposite of one. His fire shield was a wall of fire so hot that it turned anything flammable to ash and melted steel in a heartbeat. And because fire could stream, it could also deflect and repel physical forces. The ice shield was the exact opposite. It was a zone around him where every last scrap of heat and fire had been removed. The water vapour in the air had become tiny little ice crystals that looked like fog. And anything that had even a trace of heat in it would be drawn to it. But if the drake attacked him with fire, the shield would do the one thing that his fire shield couldn't. It would absorb the fire completely. He might look like a man in a personal cloud of ice crystals, but he was completely protected from fire.
Once his shield was in place, he approached the creature slowly on foot. He wasn't going to risk his horse's life in such a contest when he didn't have to. It was enough that he would risk his own. Shivering slightly with the cold and his nerves, he drew his ice shield so tight around him it was almost like a cloak. A frost cloak, that hung in the air before him.
As he walked toward it he watched intently for any sign that the creature was readying its fire. Fortunately there was none. Perhaps it couldn't breathe fire any longer with a broken back? He could but hope.
After what seemed like ages, he came within twenty feet of the creature's head, and stared into its ruby red eyes, knowing with some dread that the creature was staring back at him. It might never have been truly alive but it still wasn't dead, as whatever magic had made it kept it going, and it knew him.
“Do you speak?”
Despite his best intentions his voice came out as surprisingly thin and squeaky, which bothered him. He'd wanted to intimidate the creature. A pointless desire as the creature had no emotions. It didn't know what fear was. He also clearly didn't succeed as the beast failed to respond. But then could it? Could any machina actually speak?
It was a question he couldn't answer, despite the fact that he wanted to. Certainly no golems could speak. They had no intelligence that wasn't that of their master. This thing was probably brighter. But was it bright enough to speak? He doubted it. To speak was to have some ability however limited, to think. And to think was to be able to question, to rebel. The beast's master would never have allowed that. All it could do was obey.
“Can your master speak through you?” It was a better question. Not because the creature understood him, but because it recognised one word; master. That, and the fact that it was now in pieces, would be strange enough for the creature to ask for instructions from him. And that in turn was enough for Sam to feel the magic that was its master responding in surprise and shock. He clearly hadn't been watching his creatures closely. He therefore hadn't realised that the drakes were down, let alone that a mere half elf was approaching one on foot. No doubt he was busy preparing another attack somewhere else.
Naturally his first response, as before, was to attack. It seemed to be the master's only command. But his order was largely disobeyed as the drake found it had no fire in its belly, and couldn't move its head or tail far enough to reach him. Instead it just lay there, moving its head as far as it could on twisted screeching hinges, snapping its remaining teeth at him threateningly, but all in vain. It was helpless, which let Sam breath another huge sigh of relief – quietly. And then to remember that wars were also fought with words.
“Don't think so evil one. Your creature's broken like its comrades and soon you will be too.” He even smiled as he said it, not truly as confident as he tried to appear, but determined to upset the creature's master, who somehow he guessed, could hear every word through his creation. He could even feel the Dragon's shock and rage as he listened to himself being threatened, and futilely ordered his drake to attack again and again. This new Dragon was not a very well controlled person.
“Temper, temper foul child. Tantrums aren't going to help. Or didn't your mother ever teach you that?” This time Sam's smile was genuine as he felt the creature's master losing the last of his self-control when he discovered his creature wasn't obeying him. No doubt he would be throwing things around and foaming out of the mouth like any mad man. And while he couldn't speak through his creation, he could still tell Sam a lot about himself without realising it.
“Well then, don't listen to me. Just know that we now know about your ships. We're tracking them even as you soil yourself, and soon you'll be ours.” The Dragon's reaction was just what Sam wanted, as his incredible rage suddenly turned to outright fear as he heard Sam's blatant lie and panicked. He obviously hadn't realised that they knew of his ships, and he'd never even thought about the possibility of them being followed home. For a brief while Sam felt the Dragon's attention vanish from him, and knew he was busy ordering his creatures around.
Sam could just imagine him issuing commands to his ships not to return to his base ever again, never realising that that was exactly what Sam wanted. With no returning ships he would have that much more difficulty attacking new targets, though from the fact that he could order them, Sam understood that even his great black ships were machina. He also had no idea that he'd just confirmed to Sam everything the shadelings had said.
Sam waited patiently, his smile growing broader. Finally, there was some hope on the horizon.
“We know about Andrea too!” The moment he felt the Dragon's attention returning he threw the statement at him, and got a response he didn't expect – confusion. This new Dragon, whoever he was, didn
't quite know what he was talking about, though after a moment Sam could feel the wheels turning in his mind as he recognised the word. He knew the caverns, knew their history and the Dragon's, he just didn't live there. And a no was as good as a yes to Sam as it also told him more of their enemy.
“We know that you have the knowledge contained within the caverns. Soon it will be ours too, and your machina won't be the only ones waging war.”
It was another complete lie and Sam was almost stunned that the Dragon didn't see through it. Clearly he wasn't a very clever man. He was however, a coward and Sam felt a new wave of fear running through him, a sign that he at least knew exactly what knowledge was contained within the caverns. But this time he gave no orders; there were none he could give. Clearly neither he nor his creatures were anywhere near them, though Sam would have bet every last gold piece he had that the enemy's knowledge came from them.
But then came the question Sam most wanted answered, and he thought he had a way to make the new Dragon tell him. It was going to require all his meagre acting ability, however.
“Oh and by the way, even without that knowledge we will win. The original Dragon lost, and lost badly to our ancestors. He wasn't very bright. We're a lot more powerful than them and you're only a pretender. Someone who found his secrets and tried to use them.”
