Wayne Batson - The Rise of the Wrym Lord

Aelic began to search the wagons and carriages. Antoinette has to be in one of them! The battle was heavy around him, and he grew weary as he ran from wagon to wagon looking for, but not finding, Antoinette.

Then ahead, he spotted a wagon pulled to the side of the Forest Road. A tall Paragor Knight stood at the rear of the wagon. He had long blond hair and a gray cloak around his shoulders. In his hand was a wide-bladed sword. It’s Kearn! What is he guarding? Aelic wondered.

Cautiously, Aelic approached him.

The Paragor Knight turned, and his green eyes met Aelic’s. “You!” Kearn screamed.

“Where is Antoinette?” Aelic demanded. He let the tip of Fury drift down, preparing a moulinet.

“Aelic!” came a voice from inside the wagon.

Kearn laughed. “Does that answer your question?”

“Let her go!” Aelic yelled.

“What fun would that be? You come and get her!” Kearn said quietly, and he slashed his heavy blade in front of Aelic.

“Aelic, no!” came Antoinette’s muffled voice. “Aelic, no! Don’t kill him!”

“That’s right, Aelic!” Kearn sneered. “You cannot kill me, or-what was his name-Aidan, yes, that was it. Aidan will lose his best friend.”

Aelic looked to the wagon and back to Kearn. He had to get Antoinette out. He had to save her. But in order to do it, he had to get past Kearn.

Kearn lashed out with a two-fisted blow. Aelic blocked it at his waist. The strike was so hard that Aelic’s ears rung and his hands tingled.

“You cannot kill me, Aelic!” Kearn mocked. “But I can kill you! And here is the marvelous thing about this arrangement. If I kill you, then I slay Aidan also!”

Aelic stood for a moment very still, but his eyes darted as if he was engaged in some silent, desperate debate. Then, suddenly, he sprang at Kearn, unleashing a sweeping backhanded slash. Kearn blocked but had been caught off guard. Before he could duck completely out of the way, Aelic whipped Fury up and opened a gash in Kearn’s cheek. Kearn wiped at the blood with his hand and stared wide-eyed at Aelic.

Aelic held Fury in one hand and stretched out his arm so that the sword’s point was at Kearn’s eye level. “Antoinette and Aidan might not kill you,” he said. “But I have no problem with it.”

F ar ahead on the Forest Road, Mallik and Sir Rogan leaped from the trees into a mass of Paragor Knights. Nock remained high on a limb and covered them with arrow fire. Mallik came up swinging his massive hammer, crushing two enemies against the trunk of a Blackwood. Sir Rogan’s broadaxe felled three enemies as if they were saplings. The two Alleb warriors, with steely, grim purpose, marched side by side plowing up the Forest Road, and none withstood them. Nock leaped from tree to tree, keeping a watchful eye.

“Is your axe full yet?” Mallik joked. “Shall we go home now?”

Sir Rogan stroked his beard, glared at his friend, and thundered up the road.

“I guess not,” Mallik said and raced to keep up with him.

Since the battle began, the three of them had fought their way through more than a hundred Paragor Knights, and Nock had to climb down to scavenge for more arrows. They walked along unopposed for a time, but something about the quiet of the wood was unnerving. And the absence of the enemy, the absence of an attack, was more troubling still.

Sir Rogan stopped unexpectedly and held up his large fist. “There is something on the air,” he said. His voice was low, gravelly, and full of anger. “It is like the burning of many things.” And soon, they all smelled it. With each step up the Forest Road, the odor became more acrid-and the sickening stench was almost too much to bear.

They proceeded cautiously, taking slow, even breaths and straining to hear. Nock noticed that foliage along the road began to appear wilted, and many of the trees had an odd lean. Soon, the smell became stifling, and the smoldering trees on both sides were toppled and charred as if an intense fire had come upon them suddenly. Small fires crackled deep into the woods. The road rolled out ahead, gray and shadowy, but crisscrossed with strange twisting patterns.

“Ah!” Nock exclaimed, pointing to their feet. “The road! Look at the road!”

Mallik and Sir Rogan strained to see, but at first they could not tell what had terrified Nock. Then Mallik leaped to the side. “They are bodies!” he bellowed.

“Shapes of bodies…,” Nock said.

“King Eliam, save us!” Sir Rogan exclaimed. “They have been burned into the ground… reduced to an ashen imprint upon the road!”

“… and bows,” Nock said as he recognized the distinctive shape of the Yewland Braves’ Blackwood bows burned into the road. “My kin!”

“I am sorry, my friend,” said Mallik.

“What has laid low so many braves?” Nock asked, his bow hanging limp at his side.

Sir Rogan knelt by one of the bodies and stared. “It is near,” he said.

“What do you mean by that?” Mallik demanded.

“The Wyrm Lord,” growled Sir Rogan. “It would take more than a regular dragon’s fire to bring down the trees and burn hundreds of warriors into the ground.”

Suddenly, Sir Rogan clutched his axe, looked skyward, and screamed with pent-up rage for the fallen at Mithegard, and delivered an unmistakable message: The enemy had better beware.

Sir Rogan charged up the road. Mallik and Nock followed.

The trail suddenly widened. The knights stopped and stood very still, their eyes locked on a huge, black, iron-framed carriage that sat upon eight enormous spoked wheels and was drawn by large horses. The top of the carriage was crowned with a dozen torches. A tendril of smoke escaped the roof and snaked up into the night sky.

“We should not have come here!” whispered Nock urgently.

“I feel the marrow in my bones beginning to freeze,” said Mallik.

Sir Rogan did not reply.

And then there was movement at the front of the carriage. Someone very tall stepped down. They heard the dull clink of metal and the heavy thud of his boots as he walked slowly toward the back. Hidden by shadow, they could not see his face, only that he had a weapon of some kind hanging at his side-and his eyes flashed red.

He reached up and worked at something on the side of the carriage-metal sliding against metal. A voice came out of the shadows. It seemed to those who listened that the words were spoken from a grave. “Ancient One, how fortunate, three knights-a meal to enchance your strength. Go now and feast upon them. A taste of Alleble’s fall!”

Though they knew they should flee, Mallik, Nock, and Sir Rogan stood rooted in the road as the huge doors atop the carriage swung open. A long, sharp gasp escaped the carriage as if something very large had drawn a breath. It was followed by a low growl that rose like the moaning of a haunted wind until it peaked with a hideous shriek. The sound rattled the Alleble Knights’ armor and chilled their skin.

Nock stared at the top of the carriage, and what looked like a dark tentacle, blacker than the night shadows around it, began to creep out. Then another. And a third-twisting, grasping, reaching. They were not fleshly things, but rather tendrils of dark mist. More began to spill out of the carriage as if it were a cauldron that could not contain its horrid brew. The mist came more steadily, and the road became darker where it swirled.

The tall figure standing beside the carriage laughed. His eyes flashed red, and he seemed to fade into the shadows as something rose out of the carriage and perched heavily upon it. It was a great winged beast, wreathed in shrouds of the swirling mist. The creature was most like to a dragon-wide wings, long neck and tail, and sharp scales armoring the length of its body. But the black mist that swirled all around the creature issued from its jaws and trailed out from its nostrils. Its eyes, smoldering, red, reptilian eyes, stared back with cunning beyond that of other wyrms. In its gaze a deep history lurked, a knowledge of time that no Glimpse could boast. And there was also murderous hatred-malice born out of the creature’s own evil but nursed in the never-ending night of a stone cell beneath the lake of fire while centuries passed.