Miles Cameron - The Dread Wyrm

“Dismount,” Gavin snapped at the young Etruscan man-at-arms. Both of them swung heavily to the ground and pulled heavy poleaxes off the cruppers of their saddles. Angelo had a long axe with a fine blade. Ser Gavin had a war hammer-a single piece of steel that was deceptively small.

Cuddy and Flarch ran along the causeway like athletes in a race. Flarch-one of the company’s handsomest men-never took his eyes off the banking wyvern.

Cully loosed another light arrow and scored against the wyvern, who was too low and slow to manoeuvre.

“Ware!” Cully called. He’d picked up another wyvern coming in from the setting sun in the west, right down the road. Four of them, now.

The squires’ charge was more successful than any of them would have hoped.

The daemon’s ambush-it certainly appeared to be an ambush-had been sprung from too close. There were three daemon warriors behind the first creatures, but they were so close behind that Toby’s charge first trampled the imps-Toby’s immediate name for the toothy monsters which had attacked the mare-but then crashed into the first of the adversaries. The beaked creature was as shocked as Toby, but his axe was faster than the daemon’s and he landed a hasty blow on the thing’s brow-ridge, cutting away a section of its engorged crest. Blood-red, too red-erupted as if under enormous pressure.

By sheer good fortune, Toby’s mate, Adrian Goldsmith, was right behind Toby, his horse on exactly the same line, and Adrian’s unbroken lance took the stunned daemon squarely in the mouth-entered, tore a furrow along its tongue and severed its spine. The lance broke under the weight of Goldsmith’s charge.

Marcus, once Ser Jehan’s page, an older man and not the best jouster, missed his strike and died, as a great stone-headed axe caved in his helmet and pulled him from his horse, but the horse, forced to turn, put both metal-shod forefeet into its master’s killer. Neither blow was mortal for a daemon, but the two knocked the big saurian back a yard or more and cost it its balance as it fell over its dead kin. It never got to rise, as Toby pulled his horse around. The horse did the work and Toby rode out its panicked rage.

The third daemon warrior broke to the left, its heavy haunches powering it as fast as a war horse through the undergrowth. It ran for its life.

And its allies.

Gabriel Muriens slipped off his horse neatly and quickly, freeing his feet from the big iron stirrups, getting his left leg over the high war saddle and putting his breastplate against the saddle’s padded seat as he slid to the ground.

Nell-scared beyond rational thought and yet ready-took the great horse’s reins. She’d just seen more power at closer range than she’d ever seen in her life-six exchanges of levin and fire, whirling shields of pure ops and a sword of light.

Without comment she handed her master his ghiavarina. He began to walk into the woods. Nell thought he looked like a predator stalking prey.

He spared one thought for the fights further down the road, turning his entire armoured body to look into the distance, but he didn’t raise his visor, and then the point of his heavy spear and the beak of his visor rotated back into the deep woods and he went forward.

Nell took the war horse and led it back down the road towards the archers. There was fighting in the woods to the north-the squires. And the archers had all followed the wagon, while the pages had followed Count Zac somewhere.

Nell was all by herself. And there were things moving in the woods south of the road.

After a moment of panicked lèse-majesté , she vaulted into Ataelus’s war saddle. The great horse tolerated her, even sidled to allow her to settle her weight. Horses liked her, and Ataelus knew her well enough.

She moved her weight to bring him to a trot.

The thing-she had no words for it-exploded out of the brush to her left, but she had a heartbeat of warning and Ataelus was ready, weight on his rear haunches, and he sent the thing flying with a right-left hoof combination. The dead thing lay like a sack full of raw meat and teeth.

“Good boy. Pretty boy.” Nell soothed the horse, showing as little fear as she could. Ataelus was quivering and Nell quivered with him. A few yards away, Lord Wimarc stood over the prone priest, and farther along the road, two of the knights were spurring their mounts back-towards Wimarc and the captain.

There was a flash behind her. For an instant, her shadow and that of the horse were cast, black as pitch, on the trees to the south of the road. Even at the edge of her vision, the sheer whiteness left spots.

Without volition, she turned her head after flinching.

Fifty paces away, the captain stood between two great trees. Five paces away was a daemon, his red crest fully erect, his grey-green skin glowing with power, his beak a magnificent mosaic of inlays-gold and silver, bronze and bone. He was taller than a war horse and wore a loose cloak of feathers that sparkled with fire-and which seemed to have been torn.

He also had a large splinter of wood through one shoulder and bright red blood leaked around it.

He had an axe of bronze and lapis. He pointed the haft at the Red Knight and a gout of raw power, unformed ops , crossed the space.

The Red Knight stood in a guard as if facing a more prosaic opponent. His spearhead was down on his left side, and the haft passed across his hip- dente di cinghiare. His spear rose and he seemed-as far as Nell could tell-to catch the unseemly gout of raw power and toss it aside. He stepped forward with a double pass.

The daemon cast again-the same gout of power, this time tinged with green.

The captain didn’t falter. He caught the attack high and flung it down where it burst in a shower of burned leaves and exploding frozen ground.

The lapis axe whirled and a great green shield appeared, heart shaped, traced magnificently in the air by the bronze shaft of the monstrous axe.

The captain closed another pace, spearhead low and haft now high, and as the third attack-three spheres of green-white fire at pin-point intervals-left the axe shaft, the captain’s spear turned a half circle on his forward hand, and the spearhead, glowing a magnificent blue, collected all three spheres in its sweep, and they hurtled into the woods. One blew a head-sized fragment out of an ancient oak tree, one passed all the way through the grove and crossed the road within a few feet of Nell’s head to explode in the thicket behind her, and the third vanished into the sky.

Nell watched her captain close the last pace into engagement range and saw his spear lick out. It passed effortlessly through the daemon’s glowing shield, which vanished with the shriek of an iron gate torn from its hinges. The great saurian, driven to extremes, used his bronze axe-haft to parry the blow.

The ghiavarina passed through the axe haft like a cold knife through water. An incredible amount of hoarded ops exploded into non- aethereal reality.

The storm of power seemed to consume the daemon. It passed the captain the way the sea passes the prow of a ship, and even as the shaman slumped, the captain-subsumed him. The great creature began to unmake from the head down, his very essence leached and his corporeal form un-knitting even as the storm of his own power made his skin boil and explode outward in superheated destruction.

Nell retched.

The nearby oak tree, already damaged by the sorcerous overspill, gave a desperate crack.

The tree fell.

Toby watched the last daemon warrior run. He’d seen enough fights to know a healthy fear- what if he has friends?

He reined in. “Hold hard,” he called.

Adrian was still trying to draw his sword, which, in the hurry of combat, had rotated too far on his hips and was now almost lost behind him.