Dragons of a Fallen Sun

by Margaret Weis

  Galdar did as he was commanded. He and the other Knights blocked the path of the retreating soldiers, ordered them to join their comrades who were starting to form a dark pool at Mina’s feet. More and more soldiers were pouring through the cut, the Knights of Neraka riding among them, some of the officers making valiant attempts to halt the retreat, others joining the footmen in a run for their lives. Behind them rode Solamnic Knights in their gleaming silver armor, their white-feathered crests. Deadly, silver light flashed, and everywhere that light appeared, men withered and died in its magical heat. The Solamnic Knights entered the cut, driving the forces of the Knights of Neraka like cattle before them, driving them to slaughter.

  “Captain Samuval,” cried Mina, riding her horse down the hill, her standard streaming behind her. “Order your men to fire.”

  “The Solamnics are not in bow range,” he said to her, shaking his head at her foolishness. “Any fool can see that.”

  “The Solamnics are not your target, Captain,” Mina returned coolly. She pointed to the forces of the Knights of Neraka streaming through the cut. “Those are your targets.”

  “Our own men?” Captain Samuval stared at her. “You are mad!”

  “Look upon the field of battle, Captain,” Mina said. “It is the only way.”

  Captain Samuval looked. He wiped his face with his hand, then he gave the command. “Bowmen, fire.”

  “What target?” demanded one.

  “You heard Mina!” said the captain harshly. Grabbing a bow from one of his men, he nocked an arrow and fired.

  The arrow pierced the throat of one of the fleeing Knights of Neraka. He fell backward off his horse and was trampled in the rush of his retreating comrades.

  Archer Company fired. Hundreds of arrows—each shot with deliberate, careful aim at point-blank range—filled the air with a deadly buzz. Most found their targets. Foot soldiers clutched their chests and dropped. The feathered shafts struck through the raised visors of the helmed Knights or took them in the throat.

  “Continue firing, Captain,” Mina commanded.

  More arrows flew. More bodies fell. The panic-stricken soldiers realized that the arrows were coming from in front of them now. They faltered, halted, trying to discover the location of this new enemy. Their comrades crashed into them from behind, driven mad by the approaching Solamnic Knights. The steep walls of Beckard’s Cut prevented any escape.

  “Fire!” Captain Samuval shouted wildly, caught up in the fervor of death-dealing. “For Mina!”

  “For Mina!” cried the archers and fired.

  Arrows hummed with deadly accuracy, thunked into their targets. Men screamed and fell. The dying were starting to pile up like hideous cordwood in the cut, forming a blood-soaked barricade.

  An officer came raging toward them, his sword in his hand. “You fool!” he screamed at Captain Samuval. “Who gave you your orders? You’re firing on your own men!”

  “I gave him the order,” said Mina calmly.

  Furious, the Knight accosted her. “Traitor!” He raised his blade.

  Mina sat unmoving on her horse. She paid no attention to the Knight, she was intent upon the carnage below. Galdar brought down a crushing fist on the Knight’s helm. The Knight, his neck broken, went rolling and tumbling down the hillside. Galdar sucked bruised knuckles and looked up at Mina.

  He was astounded to see tears flowing unchecked down her cheeks. Her hand clasped the medallion around her neck. Her lips moved, she might have been praying.

  Attacked from in front, attacked from behind, the soldiers inside Beckard’s Cut began milling about in confusion. Behind them, their comrades faced a terrible choice. They could either be speared in the back by the Solamnics or they could turn and fight. They wheeled to face the enemy, battling with the ferocity of the desperate, the cornered.

  The Solamnics continued to fight, but their charge was slowed and, at length, ground to a halt.

  “Cease fire!” Mina ordered. She handed her standard to Galdar. Drawing her morning star, she held it high over her head. “Knights of Neraka! Our hour has come! We ride this day to glory!”

  Foxfire gave a great leap and galloped down the hillside, carrying Mina straight at the vanguard of the Solamnic Knights. So swift was Foxfire, so sudden Mina’s move, that she left her own Knights behind. They watched, open-mouthed, as Mina rode to what must be her doom. Then Galdar raised the white standard.

  “Death is certain!” the minotaur thundered. “But so is glory! For Mina!”

  “For Mina!” cried the Knights in grim, deep voices and they rode their horses down the hill.

  “For Mina!” yelled Captain Samuval, dropping his bow and drawing his short sword. He and the entire Archer Company charged into the fray.

  “For Mina!” shouted the soldiers, who had gathered around her standard. Rallying to her cause, they dashed after her, a dark cascade of death rumbling down the hillside.

  Galdar raced down the hillside, desperate to catch up to Mina, to protect and defend her. She had never been in a battle. She was unskilled, untrained. She must surely die. Enemy faces loomed up before him. Their swords slashed at him, their spears jabbed at him, their arrows stung him. He struck their swords aside, broke their spears, ignored their arrows. The enemy was an irritant, keeping him from his goal. He lost her and then he found her, found her completely surrounded by the enemy.

  Galdar saw one knight try to impale Mina on his sword. She turned the blow, struck at him with the morning star. Her first blow split open his helm. Her next blow split open his head. But while she fought him, another was coming to attack her from behind. Galdar bellowed a warning, though he knew with despair that she could not hear him. He battled ferociously to reach her, cutting down those who stood between him and his commander, no longer seeing their faces, only the bloody streaks of his slashing sword.

  He kept his gaze fixed on her, and his fury blazed, and his heart stopped beating when he saw her pulled from her horse. He fought more furiously than ever, frantic to save her. A blow struck from behind stunned him. He fell to his knees. He tried to rise, but blow after savage blow rained down on him, and he knew nothing more.

  The battle ended sometime near twilight. The Knights of Neraka held, the valley was secure. The Solamnics and soldiers of Sanction were forced to retreat back into the walled city, a city that was shocked and devastated by the crushing defeat. They had felt the victory wreath upon their heads, and then the wreath had been savagely snatched away, trampled in the mud. Devastated, disheartened, the Solamnic Knights dressed their wounds and burned the bodies of their dead. They had spent months working on this plan, deemed it their only chance to break the siege of Sanction. They wondered over and over how they could have failed.

  One Solamnic Knight spoke of a warrior who had come upon him, so he said, like the wrath of the departed gods. Another had seen this warrior, too, and another and another after that. Some claimed it was a youth, but others said that no, it was a girl, a girl with a face for which a man might die. She had ridden in the front of the charge, smote their ranks like a thunderclap, battling without helm or shield, her weapon a morning star that dripped with blood.

  Pulled from her horse, she fought alone on foot.

  “She must be dead,” said one angrily. “I saw her fall.”

  “True, she fell, but her horse stood guard over her,” said another, “and struck out with lashing hooves at any who dared approach.”

  But whether the beautiful destructor had perished or survived, none could tell. The tide of battle turned, came to meet her, swept around her, and rolled over the heads of the Solamnic Knights, carried them in a confused heap back into their city.

  “Mina!” Galdar called hoarsely. “Mina!”

  There came no answer.

  Desperate, despairing, Galdar searched on.

  The smoke from the fires of the funeral pyres hung over the valley. Night had not yet fallen, the twilight was gray and thick with smoke and orange cinders. The mi
notaur went to the tents of the dark mystics, who were treating the wounded, and he could not find her. He looked through the bodies that were being lined up for the burning, an arduous task. Lifting one body, he rolled it over, looked closely at the face, shook his head, and moved on to the next.

  He did not find her among the dead, at least, not those who had been brought back to camp thus far. The work of removing the bodies from that blood-soaked cut would last all night and into the morrow. Galdar’s shoulders sagged. He was wounded, exhausted, but he was determined to keep searching. He carried with him, in his right hand, Mina’s standard. The white cloth was white no longer. It was brownish red, stiff with dried blood.

  He blamed himself. He should have been at her side. Then at least if he had not been able to protect her, he could have died with her. He had failed, struck down from behind. When he had finally regained consciousness, he found that the battle was over. He was told that their side had won.

  Hurt and dizzy, Galdar staggered over to the place he had last glimpsed her. Bodies of her foes lay heaped on the ground, but she was nowhere to be found.

  She was not among the living. She was not among the dead. Galdar was starting to think that he had dreamed her, created her out of his own hunger to believe in someone or something when he felt a touch upon his arm.

  “Minotaur,” said the man. “Sorry, I never did catch your name.”

  Galdar could not place the soldier for a moment—the face was almost completely obscured by a bloody bandage. Then he recognized the captain of Archer Company.

  “You’re searching for her, aren’t you?” Captain Samuval asked. “For Mina?”

  For Mina! The cry echoed in his heart. Galdar nodded. He was too tired, too dispirited to speak.

  “Come with me,” said Samuval. “I have something to show you.”

  The two trudged across the floor of the valley, heading for the battlefield. Those soldiers who had escaped the battle uninjured were busy rebuilding the camp, which had been wrecked during the chaos of the retreat. The men worked with a fervor unusual to see, worked without the incentive of the whip or the bullying cries of the masters-at-arms. Galdar had seen these same men in past battles crouched sullenly over their cooking fires, licking their wounds, swilling dwarf spirits, and boasting and bragging of their bravery in butchering the enemy’s wounded.

  Now, as he passed the groups of men hammering in tent stakes or pounding the dents out of breastplate and shield or picking up spent arrows or tending to countless other chores, he listened to them talk. Their talk was not of themselves, but of her, the blessed, the charmed. Mina.

  Her name was on every soldier’s lips, her deeds recounted time and again. A new spirit infused the camp, as if the lightning storm out of which Mina had walked had sent jolts of energy flashing from man to man.

  Galdar listened and marveled but said nothing. He accompanied Captain Samuval, who appeared disinclined to talk about anything, refused to answer all Galdar’s questions. In another time, the frustrated minotaur might have smashed the human’s skull into his shoulders, but not now. They had shared in a moment of triumph and exaltation, the likes of which neither had ever before experienced in battle. They had both been carried out of themselves, done deeds of bravery and heroism they had never thought themselves capable of doing. They had fought for a cause, fought together for a cause, and against all odds they had won.

  When Captain Samuval stumbled, Galdar reached out a steadying arm. When Galdar slipped in a pool of blood, Captain Samuval supported him. The two arrived at the edge of the battlefield. Captain Samuval peered through the smoke that hung over the valley. The sun had disappeared behind the mountains. Its afterglow filled the sky with a smear of pale red.

  “There,” said the captain, and he pointed.

  The wind had lifted with the setting of the sun, blowing the smoke to rags that swirled and eddied like silken scarves. These were suddenly whisked away to reveal a horse the color of blood and a figure kneeling on the field of battle only a few feet away from him.

  “Mina!” Galdar breathed. Relief weakened all the muscles in his body. A burning stung his eyes, a burning he attributed to the smoke, for minotaurs never wept, could not weep. He wiped his eyes. “What is she doing?” he asked after a moment.

  “Praying,” said Captain Samuval. “She is praying.”

  Mina knelt beside the body of a soldier. The arrow that had killed him had gone clean through his breast, pinned him to the ground. Mina lifted the hand of the dead man, placed the hand to her breast, bent her head. If she spoke, Galdar could not hear what she said, but he knew Samuval was right. She was praying to this god of hers, this one, true god. This god who had foreseen the trap, this god who had led her here to turn defeat into glorious victory.

  Her prayers finished, Mina laid the man’s hand atop the terrible wound. Bending over him, she pressed her lips to the cold forehead, kissed it, then rose to her feet.

  She had barely strength to walk. She was covered with blood, some of it her own. She halted, her head drooped, her body sagged. Then she lifted her head to the heavens, where she seemed to find strength, for she straightened her shoulders and with strong step walked on.

  “Ever since the battle was assured, she has been going from corpse to corpse,” said Captain Samuval. “In particular, she finds those who fell by our own arrows. She stops and kneels in the blood-soaked mud and offers prayer. I have never seen the like.”

  “It is right that she honors them,” Galdar said harshly. “Those men bought us victory with their blood.”

  “She bought us victory with their blood,” Captain Samuval returned with a quirk of the only eyebrow visible through the bandage.

  A sound rose behind Galdar. He was reminded of the Gamashinoch, the Song of Death. This song came from living throats, however; starting low and quiet, sung by only a few. More voices caught it up and began to carry it forward, as they had caught up their dropped swords and run forward into battle.

  “Mina … Mina …”

  The song swelled. Begun as a soft, reverent chant, it was now a triumphal march, a celebratory paean accompanied by a timpani of sword clashing against shield, of stomping feet and clapping hands.

  “Mina! Mina! Mina!”

  Galdar turned to see the remnants of the army gathering at the edge of the battlefield. The wounded who could not walk under their own power were being supported by those who could. Bloody, ragged, the soldiers chanted her name.

  Galdar lifted his voice in a thunderous shout and raised Mina’s standard. The chanting became a cheer that rolled among the mountains like thunder and shook the ground mounded high with the bodies of the dead.

  Mina had started to kneel down again. The song arrested her. She paused, turned slowly to face the cheering throng. Her face was pale as bone. Her amber eyes were ringed with ash-like smudges of fatigue. Her lips were parched and cracked, stained with the kisses of the dead. She gazed upon the hundreds of living who were shouting, singing, chanting her name.

  Mina raised her hands.

  The voices ceased in an instant. Even the groans and screams of the wounded hushed. The only sound was her name echoing from the mountainside, and eventually that died away as silence settled over the valley.

  Mina mounted her horse, so that all the multitude who had gathered at the edge of the field of the battle, now being called “Mina’s Glory,” could better see and hear her.

  “You do wrong to honor me!” she told them. “I am only the vessel. The honor and the glory of this day belong to the god who guides me along the path I walk.”

  “Mina’s path is a path for us all!” shouted someone.

  The cheering began again.

  “Listen to me!” Mina shouted, her voice ringing with authority and power. “The old gods are gone! They abandoned you. They will never return! One god has come in their place. One god to rule the world. One god only. To that one god, we owe our allegiance!”

  “What is the name of thi
s god?” one cried.

  “I may not pronounce it,” Mina replied. “The name is too holy, too powerful.”

  “Mina!” said one. “Mina, Mina!”

  The crowd picked up the chant and, once started, they would not be stopped.

  Mina looked exasperated for a moment, even angry. Lifting her hand, she clasped her fingers over the medallion she wore round her neck. Her face softened, cleared.

  “Go forth! Speak my name,” she cried. “But know that you speak it in the name of my god.”

  The cheers were deafening, jarred rocks from the mountain sides.

  His own pain forgotten, Galdar shouted lustily. He looked down to see his companion grimly silent, his gaze turned elsewhere.

  “What?” Galdar bellowed over the tumult. “What’s wrong?”

  “Look there,” said Captain Samuval. “At the command tent.”

  Not everyone in camp was cheering. A group of Knights of Neraka were gathered around their leader, a Lord of the Skull. They looked on with black gazes and scowls, arms crossed over their chests.

  “Who is that?” Galdar asked.

  “Lord Milles,” Samuval replied. “The one who ordered this disaster. As you see, he came well out of the fray. Not a speck of blood on his fine, shiny armor.”

  Lord Milles was attempting to gain the soldiers’ attention. He waved his arms, shouted out words no one could hear. No one paid him any heed. Eventually he gave it up as a bad job.

  Galdar grinned. “I wonder how this Milles likes seeing his command pissing away down the privy hole.”

  “Not well, I should imagine,” said Samuval.

  “He and the other Knights consider themselves well rid of the gods,” Galdar said. “They ceased to speak of Takhisis’s return long ago. Two years past, Lord of the Night Targonne changed the official name to Knights of Neraka. In times past, when a Knight was granted the Vision, he was given to know his place in the goddess’s grand plan. After Takhisis fled the world, the leadership tried for some time to maintain the Vision through various mystical means. Knights still undergo the Vision, but now they can only be certain of what Targonne and his ilk plant in their minds.”