The Princess's Dragon

by JManess

  Derek returned his study to the troops hanging back behind the advancing soldiers in Bladen’s colors. He spotted movement that he might have missed had he not been watching. Most of the men remained focused on Bladen, though they wondered why Onian persisted despite the wind that still howled

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  between them and carried Ariva’s arrows beyond their normal range to the enemy.

  Two large carts rolled behind another unit of foot soldiers. Derek wished he could see clearly from this distance, but a shriek tore his attention away from the carts, and a cry went down the line as six death priestesses floated into the sky from the concealment of Halidor’s troops.

  “Damn!” Derek watched the women, in black, flowing robes, their eyes covered by black blindfolds, float up to the wall of wind. They levitated inches from the ground. The cry went down the line, “Morbidon priestesses!” as every soldier shivered in fear.

  The priestesses of the god of death were all blind, their eyes removed when they became initiated into the order so that they may focus always within themselves and increase the strength and accuracy of their death magic.

  Halidor must have held them back, believing that they would not be necessary against Ariva, but it appeared that Onian decided to use them to counter the wizard’s magic. Immediately, the old wizard started casting defensive spells, but even for him, shielding over a mile of soldiers from the powerful death magic occupied him completely.

  The wind wall died down, and Bladen’s troops continued their advance.

  The Arivan soldiers readied themselves, relying on the wizard to deal with the eerie, wraithlike women that hovered over the battlefield, their forms lacking substance and completely unaffected by Ariva’s arrows or catapult artillery. The death priestesses didn’t falter at all as their hair whipped around them with the power of their magic, and they gestured and chanted. They fired spell after spell at the magical shields that the old wizard struggled to hold and repair, his entire attention focused on his defensive spells while a small contingent of warriors formed a physical shield around him where he stood, a highly visible target on the commander’s stand.

  The Arival soldiers met the charge of Bladen’s swordsmen, and many of Arctuor’s men died on Arival pikes. Those that managed to cut through the front lines engaged the veteran mercenaries in a bloody swordfight, the ringing chaos of metal and screaming men sounding out over the field as fighters struggled to retain their footing in the blood-soaked mud.

  Once again, Derek easily dispatched any soldier that neared him. The sight of his battle prowess rallied his men, and they began to chant, “Warlord!

  Warlord! Warlord!” as he hacked, slashed, and bashed the enemy, moving 184

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  with all the grace of a performing acrobat through the mud and piled corpses.

  Suddenly, no more enemies met his sword and Derek looked around to find that Bladen’s men retreated, racing back to their own side with great haste. The Arivan soldiers cheered and heckled the enemy, but Derek felt his gut clench.

  Now was the time for Onian’s endgame.

  He watched the enemy, saw the covers ripped from the mysterious carts.

  High priests of Morbidon gathered around the carts and Derek could not hear their chanting but he felt that he could feel it. Even now, the death priestesses still engaged the wizard, holding him hostage with their magical struggle. Two hideous creatures arose from the massive carts and the cheers of the soldiers died out as they noticed the yellowish-white giants rising up as if from the grave itself.

  “By the gods,” Derek whispered. He’d heard of them, but never in his life had he seen such an abomination.

  “What in the name of the All Gods are those things?” the shaking field captain whispered, coming to stand next to the Warlord.

  “Bone Golems, Morbidon’s invulnerable champions,” Derek replied. The two massive bone golems, their skeletal bodies cobbled together with the ancient bones of the behemoths that once roamed the world, began their disjointed and hideous advance, obeying the commands of the Morbidion priests that raised them. The chains and straps that held their patchwork frame together swung in arrhythmic counterpoint to their motion. Everyone watched the slow advance, the soldiers around Derek crying out in despair or struck speechless by shock and horror.

  “Can we fight them?” The captain asked without much hope.

  “Not without the wizard. The ballista, the catapults—they probably won’t damage them,” Derek replied, as he watched their steadily advancing downfall.

  “What about the priests, what if we kill them?” the captain begged.

  “If we destroy the priests, then the golems collapse, but we cannot get close enough to them to strike. We cannot move past those.” He indicated the blind wraith priestesses just beyond the magical shields protecting the men from instantaneous death. “Nor can an army move past the golems themselves to reach the priests who are also surrounded by thousands of armed men.”

  “What do we do?” the captain asked.

  Derek finally pulled his eyes away from the morbid weapons and met the

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  frightened countenance of the field captain. “We pray,” he answered in a voice laced with doom.

  The golems advanced slowly but it mattered little, every soldier realized that nothing they had besides the wizard himself could destroy the monsters.

  If the wizard let up his concentration on the shields, the priestesses would fire their magic into the army itself. So the soldiers of Ariva did the only thing they could do—they watched and waited.

  When the skies darkened overhead, few even bothered to glance up, certain that the shadows merely mirrored their future demise. However, when skyfire struck the enemy camp and the images of the death priestesses shrieked and flickered out, many soldiers looked up at the storm clouds spinning above them in shock. The wizard nearly toppled forward as the pressure from the priestesses’ magic disappeared.

  Derek regarded the boiling storm clouds as the men around him speculated whether the wizard had found some way to fire off an offensive spell. Suddenly a shriek rent the storm-shadowed sky. The sound shivered off every man’s nerve endings, striking fear into the hearts of the bravest warriors. All except Derek, who’d personally heard a sound similar to that not that long ago. He broke into an anticipatory grin, forgetting the battlefield, the bone golems, and the enemy in favor of a monster he despised even more. He sheathed his sword and abandoned the field and the startled troops, racing for the ballista, just as the clouds parted and a huge violet-blue dragon descended from their concealment.

  The creature shrieked again and swooped past Ariva’s army, winging toward the enemy as skyfire sparked along the dragon’s wingtips and shot into the enemy troops. Volleys of arrows from Ariva’s archers trailed the beast. The dragon dived on the bone golems who continued to march mindlessly. It raked its claws over the right-hand construct and caught a chain in its claw, snapping the metal links and sending a yellowed collection of arm and hand bones to the earth, where they continued to crawl toward the Arivans. The dragon summoned more skyfire and the bolts struck the creatures, sparking off their chains and melting straps but failing to slow their advance.

  The dragon shrieked again in frustration, flapped its wings to pull itself farther into the sky, and surveyed the enemy. When next it dove toward the enemy it struck at the enemy soldiers themselves, many who had already started running in terror from the swooping monster. Like Ariva’s arrows, Halidor’s 186

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  missiles bounced harmlessly off the creature’s scaly hide. The dragon swooped in for another pass and this time, its skyfire struck several of the Morbidion priests. They collapsed in an ashen heap, and the right golem faltered, ground to a halt, and then slowly toppled forward, crumbling into dust as it struck the ground.

  Shou
ts of rage erupted from Onian’s command post as the dragon took another pass and killed the remaining priests, and the second bone golem joined its companion in eternal oblivion.

  The Arivan soldiers watched the dragon attack their enemy with surprise and confusion. Was this not the very dragon that killed their princess? What was happening? One man suffered no doubts or confusions as he lifted the massive ballista bolts that trailed ropes onto the weapons as easily as another might load a crossbow. The artillerymen stood to the side watching their Warlord react to the dragon like a man possessed. It normally took two men to load each ballista. By the time the golems struck the ground, both ballistae stood primed and ready to fire.

  “Aim for the monster’s wings. When it passes this way again, fire without hesitation. Do not fail me in this!” Derek yelled to the artillerymen, and they jumped to do his bidding, waiting for the dragon to pass overhead.

  Derek raced to a supply chest where the army kept their chains and ropes and started pulling lengths of chain from the chest, shouting for soldiers to aid him. When several soldiers came running to obey his command, he barked out his orders. “When we ground the dragon, you must cast these chains over the beast and keep it from rising. Use as many men as you need, the creature will prove impossibly strong. You must hold it down and stay away from its tail.” The men nodded, beads of sweat breaking out on their fearful brows.

  Derek grabbed another chain, this one bearing a loop of heavy links on the end. He raced back to the ballistae just as the dragon banked away from the enemy and lifted into the sky toward the clouds still roiling there. “Come on, you foul beast. Come and get me,” he whispered, willing the dragon to pass overhead.

  The dragon turned, going in for another pass at the enemy. Determined to gain the most momentum to its charge, it began its dive over the Arivan army.

  As it passed overhead the ballista bolts shot up into the air, ripping through the monster’s wings and catching on the bones of its wingtips. The creature

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  shrieked in pain and rage, and Derek shouted to the men, “Grab the ropes and pull, damn you! Pull!”

  The men grabbed the trailing ropes just as the dragon attempted to gain altitude and pulled as hard as they could. The dragon lifted them in the air and more men grabbed on until the weight of soldiers kept the dragon from escaping, and they managed to drag the beast toward the ground. The creature struggled in fear, its spiked tail sweeping back and forth, knocking men from their feet as they waited to cast the chains over the beast. It clawed and kicked, but the men bearing it to the ground remained out of reach and soon they held it close enough for the other soldiers to cast their chains. They secured the bucking monster as it struggled against confinement, and Derek laughed in the face of the creature’s obvious distress. Blood poured from its wounded wings and the white of broken bones showed through the ripped membrane.

  Derek approached the creature’s head with his own chain and avoiding the thrashing skull armed with spiked ridges and lethal horns, he cast the chain over the creature’s neck. Calling for more soldiers to pull the chain to one side, he released it to them and drew his sword, striding toward the pinned creature, its head cocked painfully, the vulnerable throat ring Derek had read about lay exposed.

  “Now I take revenge, you monster. I will have your blood!” he shouted just as he raised his sword. Derek noticed nothing during his struggle with the dragon. He didn’t hear the shouts of his own soldiers, nor did he hear his generals telling him that Onian even now regrouped. He didn’t notice the old wizard frantically gesturing and casting some unknown spell, nor did he see the king poking his head from Derek’s own tent.

  Then something happened that even he could not ignore. Another roar shook the battlefield; this one knocked men and horses to the ground with its power. A black shadow, darker than the storm clouds, blotted out the sky, and the rushing wind from the beat of massive wings whipped up the ground as men screamed and ran for cover.

  Derek looked up and saw a dragon on fire; flames flowed along the monster’s ebony scales. It hovered above him and the violet dragon, and it appeared at least twice the size of the other. The only thing Derek felt as he faced the creature was frustration and anger at the interruption. He’d waited so long for this revenge and now this other monster intended to stop him. He 188

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  glared at the goliath and shouted, “I will have my revenge!” then he raised his sword to strike.

  The black dragon roared again and all around the battlefield the ground split open and molten rock spilled out. From one end of the pass to the other a giant chasm opened and a river of fiery death bubbled free. Men raced away from both sides of the chasm; Onian’s next charge retreating before the molten wave that rolled over those stragglers that failed to move fast enough. The black dragon drew in a breath at the same time that Derek raised his sword and suddenly the wounded dragon burst into brilliant light that blinded Derek and caused the black dragon to swallow its flames in surprise.

  Derek blinked away the tears of pain from his eyes and looked at where the monster he meant to kill once lay, finding instead the tiny nude body of a badly wounded young woman buried beneath a tangle of chains, one massive chain bruising her delicate throat.

  Derek dropped his sword in shock. “Sondra?” he whispered, then leaped into motion, racing to the woman and throwing the chains off of her, pulling her barely conscious form carefully into his arms as he fell to his knees beside her. Derek couldn’t believe his eyes; Sondra lay limply in his arms, wounded but alive. He touched her cheek with one bloodstained gauntlet, hardly daring to trust what he saw. Her own eyes fluttered open.

  “Sondra, it’s me. I’m here, you’re safe now,” Derek promised, his voice rough as he lowered his head and placed a gentle kiss on her unresisting lips.

  Her torn, bleeding arms went around his neck, embracing him just before she lost consciousness.

  A sound shook him from his joy. The black dragon roared again, enraged.

  Derek glanced up to see that the beast still hovered above them, beating its wings to maintain its altitude. It watched him with glowing red eyes as it drew in another breath. Derek knew he did not have time to move Sondra away from the monster’s fire. He looked down at her again, and then curled himself around her, tucking her beneath him as best he could, hoping his own body would shield her enough that she might survive the dragon’s breath. The fire never came and after a moment, men started pulling themselves up off the ground and searching for their comrades as the sky emptied, both the black dragon and the storm clouds disappeared as if they’d never been. The gaping chasm at the pass, where even now a black crust formed over the molten lava,

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  and the destruction on the field stood as the only testament to the amazing events that took place just moments before.

  Derek called for a healer and pulled off his cloak, wrapping it gently around Sondra. Several healers and his generals arrived at the same time and he reluctantly handed Sondra over to the surprised priestesses who carefully carried off her battered and bleeding body. The king raced up, puffing slightly.

  “Who was that woman? What just happened here?”

  “Your Highness, somehow … in some miraculous way, Sondra has returned to us.” Derek replied, his own voice soft with wonder. The king’s eyes widened in hopeful shock.

  “You mean that woman was my Sondra?” The king stared toward the healer’s tent where the priestesses of Vivacel carried the woman.

  “Yes, Your Highness. Go see for yourself.” Derek replied, unable to curb the happiness tingeing his own voice. The king hurried off.

  “Milord, this is wonderful news,” General Josef replied. Derek turned to him, his face luminous. He nodded silently with agreement; there really wasn’t much else he could say. The general continued, “The black dragon disappeared and the bone
golems are no more. A chasm of molten rock separates us from our enemy and my scouts report that both Barselor and Bladen’s troops even now pack up their camps. Only Halidor’s troops seem determined to remain behind. The engineers already speculate that it will take many ten-cycles for the chasm to cool enough for either us or Halidor to bridge the gap. What are your orders, milord?”

  Derek wanted only to race to the healer’s tent and reassure himself that it really was Sondra who lay there, but he still owed his duty to Ariva.

  “Pull the bulk of our men back to Passton and send them on temporary leave. I want an accountability report; I want to know about every man that came to this battlefield and what their status is, dead, wounded, or still standing.” The general nodded in agreement as Derek continued. “As soon as the healers say that we can move the wounded I want them firmly ensconced in Passton’s temple to Vivacel until they recover.”

  “Who will guard the Pass, milord?” the general queried.

  “Leave the surviving mercenaries to guard the pass. They cannot return to their own homes until we can bridge it and they committed to serve Ariva until we determine ourselves out of danger. We are still at war.”

  “What about their payment?”

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  “They have already agreed to accept ginacite in form of payment, and they know that we now hold it ready for them. Once we declare the war over they will receive their due. Until then, we will continue to provide their food and supplies as if they were active citizens of our own army. That should satisfy them for the short term.” Derek knew the mercenaries would not be pleased if the waiting dragged on for too long.

  “Very good, milord. I shall relay these commands at once. Will you remain at Passton?”

  “No, General Josef,” Derek glanced toward the healer’s tent. “I will return to the capital city until the chasm cools.” The general nodded and hurried off.