Ed Greenwood - Death of the Dragon

Boldovar smiled and raised the bloody mass to his mouth-then pitched over forward as Battlelord Steelhand and his men barreled into him from behind. Their swords rose and fell in a tempest, hacking the ghazneth into a mangled black mass. It hardly mattered. The wounds closed almost as fast as they could inflict them. The Mad King pushed the bloody mass he was holding into his mouth and broke into a maniacal laugh, then began to chew and swallow.

Tanalasta felt the strength leave her legs and slumped to the floor. The pain was all gone now. There was a cold numbness up under her ribs, where Boldovar had ripped her life out, and a warmer, happier emptiness down in her womb, where she felt her baby sliding out into the world even as she faded. She reached down and felt its head, waxy and warm and tiny. It was all she would ever know of the child. The ghazneth had sealed her doom when he ate whatever it was he had eaten, for even the finest healers in the kingdom could not save her without all of her organs.

But the child would survive, and through the child, Cormyr. Tanalasta bore down with what little strength remained to her and felt the child slip completely free. It snuffled and began to cry. She tried to raise it to her breast, but could not.

“Boldovar…” she gasped. “King Boldovar the Mad. I grant you… the thing you desire most.”

Boldovar threw off one of Steelhand’s warpriests, then raised his head to glare, crimson-eyed, at Tanalasta. “Quiet, trollop!”

“King Boldovar the Mad, I grant you my pain.”

The darkness drained from Boldovar’s face. He did not stop struggling, but his efforts grew ineffectual, and little pieces of his body began to fly off beneath the impact of the warpriests’ blades.

Tanalasta raised her fingers-as much as she could do to signal a stop-then said, “Enough. Just hold him.”

The blows stopped, and the warpriests stamped their hobnailed boots down on his arms and legs to hold him in place.

When Tanalasta did not speak again, Battlelord Steelhand looked over and seemed to realize there remained one thing he could do for his princess. Leaving Boldovar to his subordinates, he kneeled at Tanalasta’s side, then took the infant from between her legs and laid it on her breast.

“Thank you,” Tanalasta said. She looked back to Boldovar and, to her surprise, found that the next words were not difficult to say at all. “King Boldovar, as an heir to the Obarskyr crown and a direct descendant of your sister’s line, I forgive your betrayal and absolve you of all crime against Cormyr.”

Boldovar’s eyes flashed their old crimson. He opened his mouth as though to speak, then simply crumbled into black dust.

Steelhand looked back to Tanalasta. “You’ve done well, Princess.”

Tanalasta tried to nod, but made it only as far as lowering her eyes before the last of her strength left.

Steelhand smiled, for as a High Priest of the War God Tempus, he had seen a thousand warriors die and knew a good death when he saw it. He placed a mailed hand under the infant’s naked bottom and boosted it higher on the princess’s chest and guided her nipple into its mouth.

“Well met, little one,” he said. “And long live the prince.”

Alusair had only two hundred men left, and half those were wounded. The rest of her company had already fallen to the teeming hordes in… wherever they were. She had no idea where that might be, except that it was dark and full of little green goblins. The company was down to one iron-tipped arrow per man, and they were holding those in reserve. After an all-night chase-except that nobody really had any idea what “all night” meant in this city of darkness-she had finally come to some high ground and decided to make a stand.

They had built a low stone breastwork and lit the perimeter with magic lights, but the little buggers just kept charging up the stony slope, wave after wave of them armed with little iron spears and little iron swords. Alusair’s dragoneers were well-trained, proficient with their weapons, and in good condition, so they cut down most of the creatures at the breastwork. Still, even her men weren’t perfect, and every three minutes or so one of the tiny bastards slipped through to drive a spear through the belly of one of her soldiers. Soon enough, she would lack the manpower to defend the barricade, then the hordes would come pouring in and finish them off.

Alusair had been in worse situations-much worse. “Ready the fall back!” she called.

The Steel Princess raised her sword to signal the retreat-then cowered in shock as the cavern erupted into a deafening roar of thunder. Blinding sheets of lightning crackled up the slope, clear-cutting whole swaths of goblins and turning the ground into a slick black mess of gore. The enemy charge simply vanished, and in the flashing light that remained, Alusair saw a circle of ramshackle stone walls, broken at odd intervals by the crooked windows and tilted doorways of the vast goblin city.

Rushing out of the tunnels were the next wave of goblins, brandishing their little iron swords and clambering up the slope over the entrails and blood of their predecessors. Alusair ignored the mad charge and continued to scrutinize the passages, looking for the source of the strange lightning storm. There were only a handful of magicians in Faerun capable of such a flurry of magic-and only one who had good reason to help her.

Instead of Vangerdahast, she found a dozen men in rusty chain mail rushing out of a tunnel far to her right. They were all soaking wet and carrying iron maces, screaming supplications to Chauntea even as they raised barriers of thorns and bubbling mud between themselves and the goblins.

Alusair sighed in disappointment but decided that if she could not have Vangerdahast, a dozen Chauntean priests would have to do. She waved her sword toward the small party and commanded, “Prepare to support with bow fire by number.”

Half of her dragoneers exchanged their swords for long bows and nocked arrows. When the first goblin broke through the priests’ barriers and raised his sword to hamstring the group’s wiry leader, a single iron-tipped arrow sizzled down from the barricade. It took the little warrior square in the ribs, knocking him from his feet and sending him tumbling down the slope backward. The priest raised his mace in salute, then-of all things-it began to rain.

At first, Alusair did not know quite what to make of the storm. The rain came in driving sheets, with forks of light-fling dancing every which way and peals of thunder rolling across the cavern roof. Rivulets of water poured down the slope along courses that had never held a trickle before, and Alusair began to wonder if she had somehow come under the influence of Mad King Boldovar.

A dark figure burst from the tunnel behind the priests and she finally understood. So far, they had only identified six of the Scourges mentioned in Alaundo’s prophecy, but here was the seventh-floods and storms-chasing a group of Chauntea’s priests up the slope in front of her. She could not understand how either of them had come to be in that cavern any more than she understood how she had, but her course of action remained clear: help her allies and attack her enemies.

“There’s a ghazneth!” Alusair yelled. “Every man, ready iron arrows. Fire on my command only!”

A soft clamor echoed through the cavern as every man along the line prepared his bow. Amazingly, the goblins fell back at the sight of the ghazneth-perhaps feeling he could handle a mere two hundred humans alone.

Alusair was determined to prove the error of their ways. If she accomplished nothing else in this dark place, she was going to teach these little green-skinned discipline mongers to respect the human way of doing things. She waited until the priests had closed to within a dozen steps of their breastwork, then lowered her sword.