Douglas Niles - Kagonesti

Ash recognized Sir Kamford, with Sir Blayne galloping at his side. A monstrous blue swept toward the two knights and in an eye blink the Kagonesti raised his bow and let a steel-tipped shaft fly. The arrow struck the dragon in its face, and with a roar of irritation the creature jerked its head to the side, spitting a hasty lightning bolt into the rocks before the elven archer.

Tumbling backward, Ashtaway smelled the acrid scent of the lightning strike, but realized that he was still alive. The flying dragons had all swept past, and though they quickly swerved around for another pass, most of the riders had gained the shelter of the tunnel.

Staggering to his feet, the wild elf looked back across the field. Kamford and Blayne waited beyond the gate, holding their wild-eyed, snorting horses in place with firm tugs at the reins. Apparently unconcerned with their own safety, they waited to watch the last of their men flee toward shelter.

"Start closing the gates!" cried Ashtaway, fixing his eyes on Highbulp Toofer's awestruck face. Blinking, the dwarf squinted in concentration, then shouted something to his fellows. Grunting from the effort, but working with surprising unity, the little fellows began to turn the great wheels. Ash saw the doors swivel inward, though he was dismayed by the slow progress of their movement. The gap remained plenty wide enough to allow a dragon, on foot, to press inward after the retreating Knights of Solamnia.

A trio of knights, fleeing from the far end of the camp, seemed like the last of the riders. Ash looked at the doors, which still closed with painful slowness, then back to the three knights. Lying low across their horses' necks, the men kept their eyes fastened on the refuge, refusing to look at the death wheeling through the skies, diving toward their tails. Kamford and Blayne reined in their horses just outside the gate, staring in desperate hope at the last of their fleeing companions.

Ashtaway heard Sir Kamford's groan of dismay as two dragons, a white and a blue, dove toward the three knights. Lightning crackled, the bolt of energy vanishing into a sudden cloud of frost with an intense hiss. The stench of burned flesh rose even above the stink of the lightning, and the cloud dissipated to reveal the garishly frozen, incongruously blackened corpses of the three men and their horses.

The blue dragon swooped toward the tunnel mouth as the white tried to pull up and away, but the frost dragon moved too slowly. The trailing coil of its tail struck the blue's wing, sending the creature careening off to the side. The two serpents crashed into the ground with a shudder that Ashtaway felt through his moccasins.

Still another dragon, a white, dove toward the iron doors that gradually inched shut as the last of the fleeing riders disappeared inside. Sir Kamford and Sir Blayne were the only two knights still exposed to danger.

"Go!" cried Blayne, suddenly leaping down from his saddle. The knight drew his monstrous sword and slapped the flat of the blade against the flank of Sir Kamford's horse, sending the animal galloping inward, carrying its cursing rider into the darkness of the tunnel.

Ashtaway leapt to the doors, seeing that they were about halfway closed-still not enough of a barrier to halt a plunging dragon.

"Go, elf!" cried Sir Blayne, stepping away from the doors to face the diving dragon with his upraised blade.

Words caught in the Kagonesti's throat as Ash tried to urge the knight inward. He understood the man's sacrifice, knew that it was necessary, but in that instant wanted desperately to change his mind. Blayne had been an arrogant boor, he remembered with a pang of guilt, but there would be no faulting the man's courage.

Ash dove through the narrowing portal, hearing Sir Blayne's voice rise in a roaring challenge. "For the Oath and the Measure!" he cried, stepping forward and chopping savagely at the white's looming snout.

The serpent reared back, avoiding the blow, and the elf waited for the killing blast of frost, hoping that the deadly chill did not penetrate too deeply into the shelter of the tunnel. Curiously, the beast did not belch its murderous breath. Perhaps the monster had expended all its frigid exhalations against the fleeing knights outside.

In any event, the creature closed on Sir Blayne with wicked talons and crushing jaws. The knight's blade flashed again, and then, finally, the closing of the tunnel doors blocked the scene from view.

Gully dwarves clustered around Ashtaway, clinging to his leggings, grasping for his hands. The little creatures stared upward, horrified, at the snorting horses and grunting, cursing knights, who tried to dismount in the utter darkness of the tunnel.

"Why you bring them here?" Toofer asked in a hoarse whisper-a voice loud enough to resonate through the enclosed tunnel.

"These are my friends-and yours. You helped save them," the wild elf explained.

"But horses, too?"

Ashtaway wasn't listening. He saw Sir Kamford, numb with shock, staring at the huge doors, where the faintest trickle of light spilled through the crack in the center. Somewhere behind the elf another knight groaned as two comrades worked to set his broken arm.

The Pathfinder stepped to Kamford's side and, hesitantly, laid a hand on the man's shoulder. The knight sighed, shook his head in resignation, and turned away from the heavy iron doors.

"Our fight will make the lords proud," declared Sir Kamford wearily.

"And you? Should it not make you proud as well?" asked the wild elf.

"Aye, my friend, but with the pride comes a weighty measure of grief."

"Was this a victory against the Dark Queen?" Ashtaway asked, remembering the great fires, the scattered livestock-and the fallen knights.

"A bloody fight, but a victory indeed," Kamford agreed. He blinked, trying to see into the depths of the stygian tunnel. "At least, a victory if we can get out of here. Do you know? Are we in a trap or an escape tunnel?"

"Come over here. There's someone you have to meet. I think he can show us the way."

"Go out here," Toofer said, pointing to a pair of large iron doors blocking the end of the roughly carved tunnel. The gully dwarf halted in his tracks, arms crossed firmly across his chest, as if he couldn't wait for the elf and his human companions to be gone.

Ashtaway stepped forward, Sir Kamford at his side. The knight held aloft the last of the sputtering torches that had illuminated their world during the long, often confusing march through the tunnels under the great mountain.

The portals before them resembled strongly the doors Ashtaway had discovered in the valley above Sanction- though the elf sensed that their long subterranean march had carried them well south of that dark and smoldering city. They had been underground for approximately three days, Ash guessed, though they had seen no glimpse of the sky in that time and thus had no real grasp of the duration of their sunless trek. The wild elf also deduced, based on long stretches of gradual downhill slope, that the war party had descended a considerable distance from the entrance on the mountainside.

"Go on. Git," urged the Highbulp, all but pushing the knight toward the door.

"What's outside?" Ash asked suspiciously.

"Usual stuff. Air, mountains, sky. Ground where horses can poop and not stink up tunnel."

The latter concern, the elf thought with a smile, was strongly on Toofer's mind. Though the gully dwarves had displayed a remarkable lack of fastidiousness in all aspects of their lives, the presence of the knights' mighty steeds in these enclosed tunnels had apparently proved too much for even their less-than-delicate sensibilities.

Sir Kamford called several of his men forward to work the door-opening mechanisms-capstans, he called them. The first glimmerings of daylight soon crept through the opening portals, causing the men to blink and shield their eyes until they could adjust, once again, to bright illumination.