Blood Of The Wizard (Book 1) (15 page)

Chapter 29

Out of deference to Dhal, I occupied a different corner of the dark lodgings than Bik and Andi that
night.  Which is not to say my thoughts were pure.  It would not even be right to say I had remained faithful to the spirit of my newfound longings for her—I had, after all, gotten bear-cat crazy on the sleeping skins of a massive she-elf.  But that night was different.  Not only did they know Dhal, but there was one in particular that looked a bit like her.  So, as I settled in for some sleep, I kept a respectable distance.  Indeed, I fear I slept nearer poor Halvgar, which is a sorry business for a stout young Cutter to admit.  But it is a good thing I did.  I truly believe he would have forgotten to eat, let alone try to get some rest, had I not been there to lug him forcibly downstairs to where a pair of maids was roasting a goat.

Often I had seen the
elf women writhe and pose like cats in front of him along our journey.  It’s perhaps shameful, but often I would go across the camp fire and nod to a particular nice-looking she-elf, noting the obvious  to him, because I thought he could use the distraction.

“
Lynx, musk ox, fox, sea bear.  All keep a fellow warm at night, would you not agree, Halvgar?” I would ask, while the she-elves eyed me with suspicious curiosity.

“
Certainly, certainly,” Halvgar would answer.  “But wrap yourself in marten, little brother, then talk to me about the rough hides of goats and horses!”

I had nodded when he said this.  And we had both had a laugh.  But only now,
with Bik and Andi eyeing me playfully across the dark room, did I realize the cruelty of my words—all my efforts to distract him had only been drawing his focus more fully to his beautiful Shiri.

I had almost dozed when disaster struck.  One of the goats, playfully jumping about the castle’s top the way goats will do, found some loose mortar.  The beast pawed, almost like a person, struggling to keep himself from toppling over.  But it lost its strength and fell, dropping one hundred feet and breaking its forelegs on the seaside rocks, where it began squalling like a child.

For a moment, my heart felt on
ly pity for the crippled animal, which struggled to stand, only to fall under the awkwardly bent legs.

Halvgar grabbed the head of an excellent axe and drew it from its sheath.  With one eye cocked, he grunted as he tossed Loni and Fhal aside, bellowing like bull.

“Come, Fie!  We have to end that beast’s wailing.

Suddenly, my sternum was as tight as a drum, and it was only pulling tighter as I drew my own axe and went running behind him.  We charged down past snoring dwarves, who bounded upright , brandishing their own weapons and thundering about what the devil was going on!

There was no time to answer.

Scrambling outside, we both crashed on the slippery stones, but Halvgar was up, quick as a sneeze, rounding the corner.  He had to leap from stone to stone in the dark, an affair even for treacherous than is sounds with unsheathed, heavy steal axes.

Finally, we reached the flat rock where the goat still struggled bravely to stand on its busted legs, and Halvgar leapt to it and seized it by the scruff, burying his axe firmly in the skull.

It fell over in an instant, as silent as the stones around it.

But we were too late.

Chapter 30

It was the middle of the night, and it was almost three miles away, but we saw it clearly, as clearly as a waking nightmare.

The full moon was shining over Heir’s Sea Peak.  As the mists of my anxiety began to congeal, I gathered my hooded robe around me and watched a large black, slithering speck emerge from the base of a cliff.  From such a distance, it seemed to move slowly, and there was no noise whatsoever but the break of the pewter-colored sea.  But as it wound up the sheer wall, the lines became more distinct in the moonlight, and we saw the great reptilian body, halting and crimping.  The scales glinted here and there like black armor, then the great wyrm of old, swollen and terrible, crested the cliff and paused. 

Now the rest of the fellows had emerged, along with each one of the warmaids.

Uncle Jickie spit out what sounded like a laugh. 

“
Well now, is that not a sight, my lads?” he said.  “I haven’t seen a full moon that beautiful in some time!”

Delthal and I looked at him sideways, but Halvgar and the rest grinned in understanding
as, far off, the great serpent launched into a low, sideways roll, listing out over the ocean, almost seeming to plunge into the water before soared upward in circular sweeps, rising over the sea.

And suddenly, everything in my head slowed.  Random shouts began to rise.  A long, low barking of orders rose as coarsely as a beast’s grunts.  The sounds rolled through my stupefied head, and the great tumult of activity exploding around only amplified the odd feeling. 

At last Delthal pulled me from my stupor.

“
Bows, my lad!  We’ll shelter in the castle and flower its damn hide!”

One last time, I cocked an eye to the monster, floating even higher in the night sky.  The heart, I reminded, is located at the same spot on any four-legged beast, just behind the shoulder—the left one, should such a shot present itself.

I scampered back into our meager stronghold, shaking with adrenaline now.  I grabbed up my bow and both quivers of arrows.  I nocked an arrow before I even found a window, and the one I found was perfect.  Near the middle of the castle, the window was wide, but not too wide, and the mortar and stones on the side seemed sturdy enough. 

It was coming this way now, like something that had broken through hell’s levees, it claws dangling limply beneath that tremendous reptilian belly.

Breathy moments stretched as we looked out to it.  I could only see four warmaids, plus Kenzo and Delthal, and we were all as silent thieves.  Just out of bow-shot, its figure thickened, glistening with the wet look of a snake.  The horns were raised, and it began shrieking now.  It was a roar to make a demon hide, shrieking and echoing out over the ocean.

In the next instant, the shuffle and clank of war roared from the fellows in wild calls.  The rooms of above me and below me were alive with their curses.

The dragon was just out of bowshot now. 

“
Hooold,” I roared, knowing our supply of arrows was damned thin for such a foe.

Once more, it blistered the air with its roaring.
I drew my bow up and pulled back.  I breathed, peering down the ash shaft.  Then, even in all the commotion and thunder, it all seemed to hush.  I became conscious only of the beast’s undulating path as it cut through the airs.

“
Hold.”

The goats outside were yelping like dogs now, a noise I had never heard in my life.

“Hooold.”

Its enormous wings surged and flapped, curling the air with the tremendous leathery noise.

“Loose!”

Arrows hissed from all of us at once, flitting through the moonlit air, and as they pounded the beast’s flesh, it shrieked and raised its head to us, sending a spray of terrible blue fire
.  But the heat did not reach us, and dozens more arrows launched from our bows.

The beast lunged away, curving in the air, so close to the castle that the wind blew through my beard.  A hundred or so arrows had been shot at it, and still we screamed wildly, launching missiles into it
s retreating hide.  But I could see not a single shaft protruding from its flesh!

Surely, I thought, this was just a trick of the eye.

The ground itself seemed to shake as the beast roared once more, turning now and rising.  The maids to either side of me fired without cease.  They were quicker than I was, and they were more steady and less winded.  Bows plopped and arrows thudded out in the dark as the dragon began to come at us once again.  The maids brought their shields to their sides with their feet, continuing to fire, but I had not even thought to bring mine upstairs.  And now, with the dragon drawing closer, I saw the wisdom of their choice as it flashed enormous dagger-like teeth. 

I grimaced, and I continued to shoot, and shoot again.  I was already running low on arrows.  But I could do nothing about it, except keep at it, firing arrow after precious arrow.  I struck the beast haphazardly.  My arrows pinged off its backs or slammed into the horns that ran down the length of its neck. 

I managed to fire one into his shoulder, but it did not even flinch or veer, it just kept coming as if it had been pricked with some small needle.  And as it came nearer still, it spilled that terrible blue fire once more, engulfing my left arm.  It rose over the castle as I wheeled back to slap out the singing fire down my arms.  I fell back, the entire castle shaking with yet another roar from the dragon.  When I did, I discover that my first quiver of arrows was empty.  Half my missiles were already gone! 

Then something writhing on the floor caught my eye. 

It was Kenzo—Mighty Kenzo, by far the strongest among us, had been downed.  His face was charred, and his massive chest was shirtless, black and bubbling like liquid tar, smoldering from his neck to his groin.  The very skin had been melted away at places, revealing seared strips of gore and the white, smoking bone of his sternum. 

The beast rose and turned outside, not two hundred yards away.

“Kill me, Fie!”
Kenzo barked.

As the dragon roared, I faltered, grabbing my axe.  I rushed to him, but faltered again.

“Thundering hell…” he rasped.  “Oooh, kill me, lad.”

His mouth covered in blood, he nodded to me, imploring me to get on with it.
  And as my axe dropped, it was almost as if I was watching the scene outside of my own head.  I had turned him over.  The blade dropped on the back of his neck.  His head fell away with a quick thud.

In the next instant, fire whipped through the windows again, but Delthal and the warmaids were quick, and Delthal covered my backside with a shield
.

T
he maids already sent wooden sheets of the missiles up, which began thudding into the beast again.

“
Dammit back to ye spot, Fie!  Lead, old boy! 
Lead!
”

I returned to the window to see arrows
still slamming into the dragon’s gut from above and below us.  This time, it felt them. 

It landed and writhed, roaring and bellowing fire in every direction before it turned and charged the castle in a shivering burst of speed.  It exploded into the walls as if attacking the structure itself, rocking us off our feet.  The warmaids spilled to either side of me, sprawling across the floor as Delthal landed atop me with a thud.  I rose to discover one of the maids lying on the stone, a flake of stone jutting from her breast.  She was rolling in pain.  Blood was flowing freely from the tear in her chest plate, and she was gasping for breath.  The other
s went to her, and together they rose to remove the armor.  Forgetting myself and the advice Delthal had barked, I rushed to help.

But everywhere along the walls, stone was crashing, dropping to the floor, and where there was no stone, the beast’s black scales slithered, wrapping the castle so completely that it blotted out the thin moonlight.

Stones too weak to stand the squeeze of it exploded in on us.  Stones the size of a torso scooted in and jutted toward us.  Timbers crashed over our heads, the dead, round timbers began poking downward like spears before splintering and shooting at us with a great rumbling snaps like trees sheered in half. 

Now figures dropped from the floors above us, pounding to the broken stone floor in agony.

“Spears!” I roared.

The great grinding noise deafened them to my cries.

“Your spears, fools!  Grab ye spears ‘for I shove mine up ye’ arses!”“

Jickie, Halvgar, Frobhur and more than a dozen warmaids, their wounds less grave than they had first seemed, each grabbed their spears, shoving and poking upwards at the exposed skin of the dragon.

Uncle Jickie shook his head, jabbing as he roared, “Work the same spot all the way through till you break your spear on its bones, my Merries!” 

Halvgar and Frobhur raced to an area they thought was behind the shoulder, working the spears with heaving stabs, and for several hopeful moment
s it was just so much macabre sport.  They sent spearheads under the metallic scales, deep into the briny black flesh.

“
Heave,
heave it on in there good!
” one of them shouted, laughing like a wild savage.

Debris still burned about our feet, and this too was thrust at the monstrous wall of flesh.  But as the enormous forked tongue appeared overhead, we all froze, then ran like goats as the tremendous head that crashed in on us from above.  Two of the maids were bitten in half as we scampered like mad to escape.

But the great wyrm had choked off every possible way with it constricting body.  A third warmaid was bitten, and he managed to get her spear through the beast’s cheek before the two-foot teeth left only her feet behind. 

“
Axes!”

Someone else was bitten, and I thought
at first it was Uncle Jickie, because he roared out such a cry that despite all the crazed and hellish fury of that moment, I turned to him.  But he had not been bitten.  It was a cry of war, and I saw him chopping, then swinging crosswise to split the beast’s eye in half with his axe.

The warmaids fell back as far as the limited space would allow, and now they were firing their bows sideways as much as upward, pincushioning the beast’s long purple tongue, which I also chopped with my blade. 

I feared we were fools, fighting for nothing, and that all our struggles would soon be over, because all that the beast had to do at that point was engulf us in flame and it would be over.  But either it could no longer produce its terrible fire, or instinct kept it from billowing its fiercest weapon in such limited space for fear it my singe its own hide.  Whichever the case, its blood flew from our axes in thick splatters now.  Then we noticed it was stuck—the collapse of the castle had pinned one of its wings in a pile of huge boulders.  Roars rose up from each of us, and the warmaids were almost singing as they ran out of arrows and filed in beside us with their swords.  Then the last of them came rushing alongside in a great living wall of hacking steel.  Streams of blood spilled, and the floor became wet and sticky with it. 

But then, at the edge of victory, the floor collapsed.  I heard the beast roaring even as the stones groaned beneath our feet, and we fell fourteen feet beneath the earth.

I remember hitting the ground awkwardly, at an angle.

Then everything went black.