Chris Wraight - Master of Dragons

Kelemar took up his helm, fixed it in place and drew his longsword. He held the blade up to the obscured sun.

‘For Asuryan, Ulthuan and Tor Caled,’ he said, his voice steady. All around him his retinue did the same, raising their blades through the murk.

He turned to Liandra, a resigned expression on his face.

‘I’ll take my place at the gatehouse now,’ he said. As he spoke the stonework around him trembled — the front rank of dwarfs had made it to the foundations. ‘You have all you need?’

Liandra raised her staff, the one she’d been given after her rescue from the Blight. ‘It will do.’

‘Then Isha be with you, lady.’

Liandra inclined her head. The first shouts and screams of combat drifted over from the walls.

‘And with you, lord.’

As Kelemar left she turned, raised her staff, and kindled the first stirrings of aethyr-fire along its length. Ahead of her rose a sheer wall of rage, a heat-drenched surge of focused violence, repeated in rank after rank of implacable dawi warriors, all now surging towards the walls like jackals crowding a carcass.

She ignored the tight kernel of fear in her breast, ignored the avian scream of the griffons as they swooped into the fray, ignored the murmured spells of the mages around her, and prepared her first summoning.

It was about survival now.

‘For Ulthuan!’ she cried aloud, and her staff blazed with light.

Imladrik rode east. Below him the forest passed in a smear of speed. The endless trees looked like waves on the ocean, infinite and without permanent form, a swathe of dirty grey-green under a cloud-pocked sky.

Draukhain had sung little since their departure from Tor Alessi. The dragon seemed in contemplative mood.

So you will leave, then? the creature sang eventually.

I need more troops, I need more dragon riders. Only the King can grant me those.

He will not do so willingly.

No, he doesn’t grant anything willingly.

In the far distance the mountains rose up, their vast peaks little more than claw-shaped marks on the edge of the world. Draukhain exhaled a gobbet of black smoke from his nostrils. He was flying fast, though comfortably within his capability.

You know, of course, that Ulthuan is in the west? he sang, sounding amused with himself.

Imladrik sighed. Like everything he had done since arriving in Elthin Arvan, his current course felt far from wise. It was driven by necessity, though; by loyalty, and by a hope he hardly dared entertain.

Oeragor is my city. I should have gone there at the start of this.

What can you do there now? Too far to help.

Not for you, great one. Imladrik peered ahead of him, as if he could see out across the Arluii and into the great Blight, the semi-desert that separated the temperate northern lands from the lush and mysterious south. It should be abandoned, its people escorted to the coast. I will oversee this, then go to Ulthuan. To Tor Vael, then to Lothern. The arguments will begin again.

Draukhain’s head dipped, his shoulders powering smoothly. The ivory-skinned wings worked harder, scything through the air.

Always arguments with you.

So it seems. Imladrik shook his head. I need to breathe the air of the Dragonspine again, if only for a short time. I need to think.

Draukhain discharged a growling fireball in approval. Good. Good. I will breathe it with you.

Imladrik watched the forest slide underneath him, mile after mile of featureless foliage. The dream of taming it, of turning it into a fragranced land of beauty, now seemed worse than foolish.

This has nothing to do with the fire-child, then? asked Draukhain, impishly.

Nothing.

You mean that?

Imladrik did not reply. It was impossible to lie, almost impossible to dissemble. In truth he didn’t know what he would do if Liandra were still alive. The reports of a druchii abomination might have been true, they might have been false. He had tried to persuade himself, and Caradryel, that he didn’t care and that his first duty was now to the war, but the arguments were weak. Possibilities wore away at him, eating into what little sleep he could muster.

This flight was a final act of duty, a last display of responsibility before the war would consume him utterly. Yethanial had been right — Elthin Arvan made his moods dark, however hard he tried to counteract it. Once Oeragor was evacuated he would return west, rebuilding the bridges he had let fall into ruins. Thoriol, Yethanial, Menlaeth — they were the souls he needed to cleave to. They were his blood-ties, the ones whose faces he saw in his dreams.

This will be the last ride to Oeragor , he sang, remembering how much labour it had been to create and how many plans he had once had for it. It had been years since he had even seen it. Let us try to enjoy it.

The gates buckled, struck from the outside by the first kick of the ram.

Kelemar, waiting with his knights in the inner courtyard, steeled himself.

‘Stand fast!’ he cried, watching the wood tremble and splinter.

Above him on either side the walls rang with the clang and crack of combat. Ladders were already appearing on the ramparts, each one thrown up by iron-clad dawi gauntlets. Rocks sailed high over the parapets, crashing into the towers beyond and sending rubble cascading down to the streets.

The ram thudded into the gates again, bending the bracing-

beams inwards with a dull boom.

Kelemar tensed, ready for movement. His best infantry stood around him, all ready for the charge. They would have to meet the dawi at speed, trusting to the charge to repel them. Once the dwarfs were inside the battle was lost.

On either flank of the courtyard stood two rows of archers, bows already bent. In the centre stood the swordsmen. All held position, hearts beating hard, waiting for the inevitable crack of timber.

The third impact broke the braces, sending tremors running along the stone lintel and shivering the doors. Dust spilled out of the cracks in ghostly spirals. The roar of aggression from the far side grew in volume — a hoarse, guttural chant of detestation.

‘On my command,’ warned Kelemar, seeing the nervous twitches of those around him.

The battering ram crashed into the gates a fourth time, smashing through the centre and slamming the ruined doors back on their tortured hinges. Broken spars tumbled clear, rolling across the stone flags like felled tree trunks.

‘Let fly!’ cried Kelemar.

The archers sent a volley out at waist height. The arrows spun through the debris, finding their marks with wet thunks . Some dwarfs made it through, stumbling into the open over the broken timbers; many more were hurled back, throats and chests impaled.

‘For Ulthuan!’ roared Kelemar, charging at the breach.

His troops echoed the shout, sweeping alongside him in a close wave of steel. Kelemar made the ruined doors and swung his blade into the reeling face of a dwarf warrior, already hampered by an arrow sticking from his ribs. The sword bit deep, angled between helm and gorget, spraying blood out in a thick whip-line of crimson.

More dwarfs clambered through the ruins bearing axes, mauls, hammers. They pushed the yard-long splinters aside, backed up by the brazen blare of war-horns.

Kelemar barrelled into one of them, kicking him backwards before plunging his blade point-forwards into his stomach. The dwarf’s armour deflected the blade, sending it pranging away, and Kelemar nearly stumbled. He caught a cruel-edged maul swinging low at his legs and just managed to twist clear. One of his own knights then cracked a blow across the maul-bearer’s face-plate, throwing him on his back where he was finished off by a third.