Douglas Niles - The Dragons

This was the spearhead of a vast army, but for many weeks, the weary brutes had been embarked on a fruitless campaign against an invisible woodland foe. They had found one elven camp, long abandoned, but had encountered none of the sylvan warriors who were their quarry. Now, bored and apathetic, the brutish troops plodded listlessly through the summer heat.

A braying cry rang through the woods, like the sudden call of some trumpet-billed bird. Then the sound was repeated, and again, with a force that made clear this was no winged creature of the forest. The ogre halted, growling suspiciously as his eyes peered into the shadows. Movement slashed across his vision, too quick for the brute to recognize, but then he looked down and grunted in surprise.

A short arrow jutted from his chest. Another of the shafts struck him in the belly, and two more in the neck. With a gurgling, choking cry, the lead ogre fell face first onto the path.

Other ogres charged past the corpse of their comrade, bronze swords upraised. Three of the monsters advanced abreast, growling and snapping at the dense foliage, until a hailstorm of arrows greeted them. Death showered silently from the woods, slaying the trio, more arrows striking the brutes that were farther back in the file.

Then the wild elves were everywhere, attacking in answer to the sound of the ram’s horn. Axes chopped and spears jabbed as the painted braves swarmed from the woods on both sides of the trail, striking ogres in their sagging gullets or muscled backs, slashing necks and hamstrings with quick, deadly blows. Shouts and cries from ogre and elf mingled with the clatter of blows, the deadly din of battle.

In seconds, the veteran ogre company dissolved into chaos. Those brutes still alive and unwounded turned toward the rear, stampeding down the path in a bellowing mass of terror. The wild elves killed those who fled too slowly, but showed little eagerness to press the pursuit. Soon the ogres who led the rout-those who had been at the rear of the marching column-slowed their pace to a shambling trot. The immediate threat was past, they sensed.

Until they came around a bend and found a massive, silver serpent coiled in their path. The lumbering ogres came to an abrupt halt, but before they could reverse their course, a blast of frost swirled from the gaping jaws. Icy air wilted the trees and slew the monstrous troops in a gusty wave of frigid death.

When the last of the ogres had been slain, the silver form shifted as Darlantan assumed the white-bearded body of the sage. Wild elves emerged from the brush and gathered around, looking at the frozen corpses littering the forest floor.

“It was a good trap,” Kagonos announced approvingly as the wild elves gathered around the dragon in the depths of the forest clearing. “My braves counted more than a hundred slain, versus none of our own warriors.”

“That is indeed good news,” Darlantan said, momentarily wearied by the weight of wartime memories.

For many winters since the departure of Aurican, the elves had remained in the deepest woods, harassing the ogres who dared to penetrate into those forest homes, hiding from the chromatic dragons beneath the overwhelming canopy of trees. A long period of wet seasons prevented the drying that would have allowed the ogres to burn entire forests away, and the elves continued to take their toll among the enemy invaders. Kagonos himself led many sudden strikes, his painted Elderwild warriors appeared from the woods like apparitions, slaying ogres, pillaging treasure and supplies, then vanishing into the forest pathways.

Sometimes Darlantan joined in these strikes in the guise of a lean elven warrior. He fought using his hands or elven weapons, killing ogres with the stab of a spear or the twist of his powerful fingers. Often he employed a great, jagged-edged longsword that he had claimed from a slain enemy. There was no counting the number of brutish ogres who had been fatally gashed by that implacable blade.

During these years, Darlantan camped with Kagonos and his braves, stalking under the trees, using his sensitive nostrils and hearing to aid the wild elves in their seeking of prey and enemies. Of course, the keen senses of the elves were nearly as fine as his own, and Darlantan had grown used to young Elderwild braves calling his attention to a nearby doe or alerting him to the surreptitious movement of an enemy column.

Still, the elves accepted this strange warrior, followed him as he killed on his relentless quest for vengeance. Darlantan devised intricate ambushes, attacks that inflicted great damage on the foe while protecting the braves of the tribe. Leading these assaults with reckless abandon, the silver dragon in elven guise would strike hard, kill many ogres, then vanish before the brutish warriors could organize a counterattack.

At other times, Darlantan assumed his natural form and took his war to the dragons of the Dark Queen. He prepared ambushes of his own, and since Aurican’s departure he had killed serpents of blue and black, of green and white. He became a mighty dragonslayer, vengeful and swift, attacking with power, speed, and implacable determination to surprise and confound the enemy serpents. He remained always alert, ready to foil even a teleporting dragon from making a surprise attack, and word of his deadly presence spread rapidly through the ranks of the Dark Queen’s wyrms.

Always he hoped to strike at red Crematia, but that wily and hateful serpent consistently avoided the silver dragon’s traps. Instead, she left for Darlantan many signs of her destruction, cities and villages and towns of elvenkind laid to waste. She delighted in the slaughter of whole herds of livestock. After selecting a few morsels for her own feast, she inevitably incinerated the rest of the hapless beasts with an expulsion of her hellish breath.

Still, in return, Darlantan laid waste to many an ogre’s lair, becoming a scourge of the clans, viewed with every bit as much abhorrence by his enemies as the elves regarded Crematia and her villainous kin-dragons. He blasted marching columns of the brutes with his frosty breath, collapsed the caves and dens of their lairs with his brute strength.

Too, he aided the army of Silvanos-now under the command of the fierce and vengeful Quithas Griffontamer and the diminutive but resolute Balif-when it took to the field against the ogres. Though the elves fought under divided command, their tactics were effective. Quithas led his flying archers, mounted on fleet griffons, through a series of fast raids, while Balif led the troops on the ground, appearing when they were least expected, fighting solidly when the ogres expected them to run, and vanishing when the ogre chieftain Blacktusk, scion of Ironfist, drew up his legions for an offensive.

After the successful ambush, the elves once again scattered to the deep forest, and Darlantan took flight over the Plain of Vingaard. On the third day after the battle, he came upon a skirmish raging around a small, isolated farmstead. Hundreds of ogres had the place surrounded, while a small band of defenders had raised wooden barricades and sealed themselves into a compound of stone-walled courtyards and wooden barns.

The silver dragon flew low, blasting the attacking ogres with repeated explosions of lethal frost. The warriors within the makeshift fortress counterattacked, driving the rest of the brutes away as the silver serpent settled onto the muddy, trampled field.

One of the defenders approached the silver dragon without visible fear. The warrior was not, as Dar had first suspected, an elf. Instead, this leader had a thick beard and was wearing a costume of crudely tanned furs. The silver dragon knew that this was a human.

“I am called Tarn Iceblade,” said the warrior. “We thank you for killing the ogres.” He bowed quickly, then regarded Darlantan with sparkling, ice-blue eyes.