Morgan Rice - Night of the Bold

Kyra had little time to react. She raised her staff and instinctively threw it. It flew through the air and landed in the dragon’s throat, just as the flames came out. The Staff of Truth stopped and then reversed the flames, and as it did, it consumed the dragon in a ball of flame.

As the dragon began to plummet to its death, Kyra raised her palm and summoned the staff. It came back to her, unscathed, saved before the dragon’s jaws closed. The massive beast, the final dragon, dropped down to the ground, shrieking in a great ball of flame.

Kyra, breathing hard, was thrilled to realized they had won. Theon was bleeding and bruised, looking for more dragons, yet as she flew, she was amazed to see there were none left. She looked down and saw all the dead dragon carcasses littered below, and she realized with a shock she had killed Escalon’s remaining dragons. Finally, the skies above Escalon were free.

Kyra turned to fly south, eager to find her father – when suddenly there came an awful shriek, reverberating in the skies. She peered into the horizon, wondering where it had come from, and what it could possibly be.

It is they , came a voice in her mind’s eye.

Kyra looked down and realized Theon was talking to her in her mind’s eye.

“Who?” she asked.

When all the dragons are dead, the Great Ones will arise. The four great dragons from the four corners of the earth. They have been awakened.

The awful shriek came again, and as it did, Kyra felt herself fill with despair. She knew, even from so far away, that they were coming, and that the battle she had just fought would be nothing next to what was to come.

Seavig led his fleet in the black of night, sailing up the Sea of Sorrow, and the tension grew thick on the silent ship as they neared the port of Ur. Seavig’s heart beat faster as he spotted the sprawling Pandesian fleet, thousands of ships, black silhouettes against the sky, seeming to fill the entire sea. They had the harbor of Ur surrounded, and as Seavig looked out at the city, his heart hurt to see they had flooded it. It was a port he’d remembered fondly, and its destruction felt like a knife in his heart.

Yet the loss of Ur was not his immediate concern; he was focused, instead, on the much greater numbers of the Pandesian fleet. How could his mere dozen ships, he wondered, attack a fleet of thousands? On the face of it, all was hopeless.

Yet during the long sail up here he had been pondering a plan. It was a plan that required stealth, surprise, and the cover of night, in order to do what no sailors had ever achieved before. Seavig had learned as a boy to make do with what he had – that, his father had taught him, was what won battles. And this fleet was all he had, and he was determined to make it work.

They sailed closer, Seavig willing his men to be silent, the only sound audible that of the waves lapping against the hull and the tense breathing of his men. All his men were in position, awaiting his command as they sailed forward, the tension so thick that he could hear his own heart pounding. His ship, leading the way, floated through the harbor, hardly a hundred yards away from the closest Pandesian ship.

If he had one saving grace, Seavig knew, it was that the Pandesians would never possibly expect an attack. Their ships bobbed there, unsuspecting, their sailors fast asleep, the only sound in the blackness the groaning of their ships in the water, the creaking of their ropes. It was just as Seavig had hoped.

They sailed closer, and closer, Seavig’s heart pounding, knowing all his men were looking to him and knowing he needed to wait as long as he could before executing his plan. He had primed them on the way up, and any moment it would be time to execute it.

“NOW!” Seavig finally hissed.

His men all jumped into action. His dozen ships quickly came together, sailing beside one another until their hulls touched. His men quickly threw ropes and grabbed them, ship to ship, yanking them tight to secure all the ships in his small fleet to one another, as one floating mass. Once the ships were secured his men ran across the decks, jumping from one ship to the next, abandoning the ships one at a time and all crowding onto Seavig’s ship. Seavig could feel his ship getting heavier as they did, sinking a bit with the weight of it, protesting, yet still staying afloat.

Soon, of his dozen ships, only one held his men; the other eleven sat empty, as he had planned.

“CUT THE ROPES!” he commanded.

A group of men jumped from one ship to the next, quickly in the night, chopping ropes. As they did the ships began to separate, while the men quickly returned to Seavig’s ship. They all stood there and watched as the ships slowly drifted apart.

Seavig turned and looked ahead, up at the looming hull of the Pandesian warship before him, and nodded to his men. As one, they all soundlessly charged, rushing across the deck, then, as they reached the bow, jumping on board the Pandesian warship.

Seavig led the way. They all moved stealthily across the much bigger Pandesian warship, raising daggers as they raced through the ship and slicing the throats of the sailors standing guard. They felled them quickly, holding their mouths, preventing the enemy from making a sound. Seavig knew that if even one cried out, all would be lost. With each slice, each man he dropped, he thought of vengeance for Escalon.

Within moments, the dirty work was done. His men killed everyone on board, sparing no one, per Seavig’s command. He could not take the chance, outnumbered as they were. They had taken over the entire ship, not a sound uttered, and Seavig turned and looked anxiously to the rest of the Pandesian fleet, hoping no one had spotted them. He was relieved to see they had not.

He breathed with relief. The first step of his mission, and perhaps the trickiest, had been accomplished. They had commandeered a much larger Pandesian warship, and had set their own fleet adrift. Now there was no time to lose.

“ARROWS!” he hissed.

His hundreds of men raced to the ship’s rail, took a knee, and lined up as they drew the bows from their backs.

“FLAMES!” he hissed, as he took a knee and joined them.

He and his men pulled arrows from quivers and touched torches to them. Within moments, a thousand small points of light filled the night.

“FIRE!”

As one, his men all placed their arrows and fired.

The night sky filled with thousands of small points of light, arrows aflame, sailing in a high arc, silently through the night. Their course was not set for the Pandesian fleet, though – it was, rather, set for Seavig’s ghost fleet.

Seavig watched as the small fleet he had sailed here with was suddenly set aflame. The ships continued to drift toward the greater Pandesian fleet, aflame. The flames grew higher, roaring as they ate up the sails, the masts, and soon the ghost fleet became a weapon, a floating wall of fire, unstoppable, heading for the much greater Pandesian fleet.

Seavig watched with great satisfaction as his fleet of fire did what he hoped it would. The first ship’s hull touched a Pandesian warship, and within moments it set it ablaze, its flames licking its rails, deck, then climbing up the sails. The dozen other ships followed suit, some hitting Pandesian warships directly but most brushing up against them just long enough to set them aflame, then continuing to sail, setting more and more ships aflame.

Seavig watched, his eyes aglow, as the night was lit up. Shrieks soon rang out, of surprised men being awakened, burned alive, men stunned by panic. There followed the sounds of splashing, as men jumped below, aflame, to their deaths in the sea.

Then, finally, the sound of bells tolling. And of a chorus of warning horns.