Driving the pair of monstrous beasts forwards with cruelly barbed goads, the beastmasters loosed ululating cries from strange horns and yelled jagged words that could only be commands.
“Khaine’s blood,” hissed Finubar, drawing his starmetal sword. “Hydras!”
Tyrion could not take his eyes from the king’s weapon, its blade curved in the manner of southland warriors, and golden like the last arc of sunset. The blade had been a gift from one of the coastal potentates of Ind, a land of exotic spices and strange ritual. Finubar had saved the life of the king’s daughter, and had received this wondrous blade in return. No smith trained in the Anvil of Vaul could unlock the mysteries of its creation, but the power of the magic worked into its blade was beyond question.
“Some heavy meat for Chayal to cleave,” grunted Korhil, unfazed by the sight of so terrible a pack of monsters. His White Lions hefted their heavy axes, resting them on their shoulders with nonchalant ease.
Tyrion took a calming breath as the dark presence of the Sword of Khaine eased into his thoughts. With that blade in his grip, these beasts would be carved into bloody chunks in moments. He forced thoughts of murder from his mind and sought the peace Teclis had taught him, the state of mind that allowed him to fight unencumbered by doubt, free from anger and able to find the space to kill with complete precision.
“I am the master of my soul,” he whispered under his breath. “Aenarion’s curse is not my curse. I wield my blade in the service of my kind and my home. No thought of selfish gain, no lust to rule, no urge to slay shall guide my arm. I am Tyrion, and I am the master of my soul.”
He felt Korhil’s gaze, but ignored him, feeling his heart slow and his senses sharpen to the point where he could pick out the individual faces of every single druchii warrior in the advancing army.
“They are so like us,” he said.
“They are nothing like us,” said Korhil, and Tyrion blinked, not realising he had spoken aloud. He did not allow Korhil’s gruff voice to distract him from achieving oneness with his sword. Its grip grew hot in his hand, and he smiled as though welcoming a long lost friend.
“Eagle’s Claws!”
At Tyrion’s command, the castle’s bolt throwers spoke with one voice, and three long shafts streaked towards the hydras. One plunged into the flank of the most eager hydra, yet even the power of such a weapon could only drive the point a hand span through the creature’s scaled flesh. Another skidded clear and the third was snatched from the air by a darting, draconic head and bitten in two.
“They’ll not be stopped by bolts,” said Korhil.
“No,” agreed Tyrion.
More bolts leapt from the war machines, swiftly followed by a volley of goose-feathered shafts from the archers leaning over the parapet. Volley after volley billowed up into the sky as archers in the courtyard loosed over their comrades’ heads. These fell among the druchii warriors, but most thudded home in heavy wooden shields or bounced away from burnished helms. A hundred, two hundred, three. Enough arrows to fell these invaders thrice over hammered down, but barely a handful died. Answering flurries of repeater crossbow bolts clattered against the walls. Iron-tipped bolts shattered on the hard stone, but screams of pain told Tyrion that many were finding their mark.
Tyrion lifted a sapphire blue amulet from around his neck and kissed the smooth stone. Encased within the blue gem were woven strands of golden hair, preserved like flies in amber, and he felt it respond to his touch.
“Be with me, queen of my heart,” he said. “Watch over me this day.”
Arrows hammered the druchii line, and more were falling as the enemy cast down their shields and heavily armoured warriors ran towards the walls bearing scaling ladders. The first hydra was limping badly, two heavy bolts jutting from the rippling swathes of muscle around its neck. The second beast was being driven at the gateway, and its heads coiled back over its shoulder.
Tyrion knew what would come next.
“Get down!” he yelled.
The many heads of the hydra shot forward with their mouths gaping wide. Ashen smoke and fire belched from the guts of the monster in a torrent of volcanic destruction. Like a frothing wave of evil red light, the fiery breath of the hydra broke against the walls of the castle. Sulphurous flames billowed over the ramparts and asur warriors screamed as their tunics caught light. Flames rippled along the wall as the first beast exhaled its volatile breath of fire and fumes.
Asur warriors dropped from the walls, blazing from head to foot as the monster’s fiery breath consumed them. Tyrion coughed and spat as black smoke roiled around the parapet, instantly turning day into night. Sunfang shone brightly, a beacon in the darkness, and he vaulted to his feet as he heard the smack of wood on stone.
“To arms! The enemy is upon us!”
A druchii helmet appeared in the embrasure, and Tyrion removed it with a brutal thrust of his blade. The headless body dropped from the ladder, as another druchii warrior clambered up to take its place. He died screaming, and Tyrion leapt into the gap between the merlons, bringing Sunfang’s blade down in a two-handed sweep.
The ladder split asunder, spilling armoured warriors into the seething haze of fire and smoke that boiled at the wall’s footings. Tyrion watched the druchii die, trying to maintain his equilibrium in the face of so much death. He turned from the destruction he had wrought as yet more ladders thudded into the length of the wall. Druchii leapt over the parapet and formed fighting wedges to allow the warriors behind them to gain the walls.
Swords and axes clashed as the ancient enemies spilled bitter blood. Beside him, Belarien slew druchii with cold, economical thrusts and slashes. Without the skill of Tyrion, his friend killed the druchii with the classic sword strokes of one schooled by the best. There was no flamboyance to his killing, simply the efficient blows of a killer.
Finubar fought with his golden sword, slaying the druchii as quickly as they climbed the walls. The Phoenix King was a fine swordsman, but his talents were those of peace, not war, and the White Lions were called upon to protect their liege lord on more than one occasion.
The White Lions fought like the grim hunters they were, each hacking blow measured and merciless. Their axes clove through druchii armour with ease, and they bellowed coarse Chracian insults at their slain enemies. Korhil’s axe wove a silver web of destruction around him, the twin blades crashing through armoured plates, breaking bones and slicing flesh with horrifying ease.
Even as he slew enemy warriors, Tyrion couldn’t help but be impressed. Korhil was a giant, broad shouldered and more powerful than any elf Tyrion had known, and he wielded his axe with a speed that belied his massive form. A duel between them would be a dance of blades to savour.
A druchii blade scraped over Tyrion’s chest, and he spun around, driving his elbow into his attacker’s face. A bronze cheek-guard crumpled and the warrior staggered. Sunfang plunged through a crimson breastplate and the warrior screamed as the weapon flared with power, burning him alive from the inside.
Tyrion kicked the charred corpse free of the blade and danced down the length of the wall, finding the spaces between the fighting to stab, cut, slash and chop as he went. He flowed into the gaps, always with enough time and space to take the killing blow. Belarien followed him, but could barely keep up with his incredible skill and speed.
The castle wall shook and the fighting stopped for the briefest second as a trio of monstrous heads on sinuous necks appeared over the battlements. One darted forward and an elven warrior was snatched up in its jaws. He screamed briefly before the teeth bit through his armour. Fire spewed from the jaws of the other heads, and an entire section of the wall was suddenly empty as Tyrion’s warriors burned in the searing fire.
“With me!” shouted Tyrion, charging along the ramparts towards the beast as its forelegs, each the thickness of a tree, grasped the stone of the parapet. A dozen elven warriors followed him, readying long-bladed lances to fight this giant creature of nightmare. It hauled its bulk
up and onto the walls, screeching as its masters jabbed its hide with their barbed goads. The rampart crumbled beneath its weight, cracked masonry falling to the base of the wall.
Tyrion sprang onto a piece of crumbing stone and leapt towards the nearest head.
Sunfang flared with dazzling brightness as Tyrion brought the magnificent blade around and clove through the beast’s neck. The head flew clear of the stump of neck, and the monster roared in pain. Tyrion landed lightly and rolled, slashing his sword across the beast’s chest. Blood frothed from the wound, and the rampart split as the beast’s claws tore at the walls.
Elven lances plunged into the hydra’s body and drew spurts of stinking blood, yet even as the blades plunged home, wounds already inflicted stopped bleeding and the scaled hide reknit. Tyrion swayed aside as a head snapped down, bringing Sunfang down like an executioner’s blade. Another head was severed, and Tyrion knew that this wound would never heal. No living thing could withstand so incredible a blade.
“Tyrion!” cried a voice amid the monster’s screaming roars of pain, and he spun around as the second hydra hauled its enormous body onto the walls. Flames rippled around its body, hazing the air with the hellish heat of a forge of the damned. Finubar and Korhil appeared in the swirling morass of smoke, as a heaving breath of fire and heat erupted from the hydra’s reeking jaws. Tyrion threw his arm up before him as the battlements were engulfed.
The flames roared and heaved like an ocean of fire, and Tyrion wept at the sound of elven screams as his warriors died around him. Their bodies burned like warlords of the northmen on their pyres, consumed by the monster’s infernal breath. But the armour of Aenarion had been forged in the depths of Vaul’s Anvil, quenched in the blood of the mightiest dragons of ancient times and shaped with hammers touched by the smith god himself. No magical by-blow’s fire could defeat its protection, and Tyrion stood like an invulnerable god before its hellish breath.
Tyrion saw Finubar and Korhil further along the wall, sheltering in the lee of the sagging parapet and swathed in the Phoenix King’s dragonscale cloak. Korhil rolled away from the king and beat out smouldering embers in his cloak before swinging his axe to bear once more. The hydra’s heads swayed above them, hissing; jelly-like ropes of saliva drooling from its smoking jaws.
Finubar ducked a snapping bite and thrust his blade into the hydra’s mouth. He uttered a word of power and molten light filled the hydra’s skull, streaming from its eyes in golden fire before the head exploded in a welter of boiling blood and bone. Korhil swung Chayal in a mighty, two-handed sweep, cutting another head from the hydra’s body with one blow.
Tyrion turned back to the beast he had first fought, its one remaining head coiled away from him as it dragged more of its bloated body onto the wall. Cracks split the rampart, and Tyrion felt the wall shift beneath him as its foundations crumbled. A mighty foreleg smashed down, but Tyrion had seen it coming and dived beneath the blow. Nimble as a cat, he sprang to his feet and thrust Sunfang up into the beast’s belly, wrenching the sword to open a wide tear. Dark fluids gushed from the wound, drenching Tyrion in stinking, Chaos-touched blood that ran from his armour as water from a fowl’s back.
The beast’s body shuddered, yet its head remained beyond his reach. It spat a mouthful of corrosive bile at him, but Tyrion swatted it aside with his blazing sword. As the creature reared up to slash its front legs at him once more Tyrion aimed his sword at its head and felt the powerful surge of magical energy pulsing in his blood.
“In Asuryan’s name!” shouted Tyrion, and a blazing spear of white light erupted from the sword blade. The hydra screeched in agony as the furnace heat burned the flesh from its skull and boiled the brain in its head. The blackened stump flopped lifeless to the wall, and its body slid from the rampart as its life was extinguished.
Without waiting to watch it fall, Tyrion turned in time to see Korhil and Finubar despatch the second hydra. The White Lion’s axe was drenched with the hydra’s blood and the Phoenix King’s cloak smoked from the heat of the battle. Korhil bellowed a Chracian victory oath, as Finubar shouted for fresh warriors to defend this portion of the castle.
The wall was a blackened ruin, stripped of merlons and embrasures by the attack of the hydras. If the druchii came at this portion of the castle again, there would be no protection for the defenders as they awaited the enemy scaling ladders. Tyrion saw Belarien driving the enemy from those sections of the wall the hydras had not demolished, and breathed a sigh of relief to know that his friend had survived this attack.
The druchii fell back from the battle, limping, bloodied and broken. They had thrown their all into this assault, but they would be back with warriors fresh and eager to swarm over the walls of the castle. Arrows punched through the backs of the fleeing druchii, but they were few and far between.
A crossbow bolt smacked into a stump of rampart, reminding Tyrion that even in victory there was danger. He darted over to Finubar and Korhil, as more elven archers took up position on the wall. Both warriors were spattered with blood, but how much of it was their own, Tyrion could not tell.
“Not so terrible now, are they?” beamed Finubar, between breaths.
“No, but there will be more of them, my king,” said Tyrion. “And this castle is ruined.”
Finubar squared his shoulders, immediately catching Tyrion’s implication. “I will not yield, Tyrion. We fight on. We must.”
“We will not,” stated Tyrion, as the calm spaces in which he had fought faded away.
“You defy your king?” demanded Finubar.
Anger, hot and urgent and bloody filled Tyrion. “I will not throw my warriors’ lives away in a battle I cannot win.”
Before Finubar could speak again, Korhil said, “The prince speaks the truth, my king. The walls offer no protection, the gate is burned and there are few enough left alive to fight for it.”
The Phoenix King said nothing for long moments before letting out a sorrowful breath. He nodded reluctantly as he took in the cost of repulsing this latest attack. Scores of elven warriors were dead, and many more were horribly burned. At best, a hundred warriors remained to defend the walls.
“I know,” said Finubar. “Yet if this castle is lost, then so too is the Emerald Gate. I do not relish my legacy to be the first Phoenix King who allowed the druchii within the Straits of Lothern.”
“You have no choice,” said Tyrion, feeling the pulse of an ancient and malevolent heartbeat keeping time with his own. “War seldom allows us the luxury of doing as we might wish. We must do whatever it takes to survive.”
“We must do more than survive, Tyrion,” said Finubar. “We must triumph.”
The captain of the White Lions stepped between the two warriors, pulling at the fur of his cloak as he put a hand on Tyrion’s shoulder. “I think I understand what Prince Tyrion is proposing, my king. It’s like when I hunted Charandis. I drew that great lion farther and farther away from the mountains for days on end until his strength was weakened and I could choke the damned life from him. So you see, my lord, we’re giving them the gate, and drawing them into the Straits of Lothern. It’s a killing ground. We draw the druchii in, and hit them from all sides. Even as they come at the Sapphire Gate, every fortress along the length of the straits will be hammering them with bolts and arrows and magic. And if Aislin and Seablaze want to sail out to fight the druchii, they’ve got the perfect opportunity to earn some glory. Trust me, it will be a slaughter.”
Korhil turned to Tyrion and fixed him with his cold gaze. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” said Tyrion with relish. “That’s right. A slaughter.”
CHAPTER SIX
EMBERS
No song of the elves was older than dragonsong. The red-lit caves beneath the Dragonspine Mountains echoed with the ringing chants of fire mages as they sang of ancient days, when dragons soaring over the highest peaks were as common a sight as doves in Avelorn. Hot steam and a magma glow suffused the glistening rocks of the caves,
and braziers burned with aromatic oils said to be pleasing to the senses of dragons.
Ghostly figures moved through the cavern, exhausted mages whose voices were hoarse with singing the songs forgotten by all save the line of dragonriders. Hidden by the acrid smoke, vast forms of scale and claw and wing lay coiled around the hottest vents, their mighty chests rising and falling with the slow rhythms of their ancient hearts.
The dragons of Caledor slumbered on, and none could reach them.
The old songs of valour could not rouse them from their dreams, and the clarion call to wake fell upon deaf ears. As the mountains had cooled, so too had the ardour of the dragons to shake themselves from their centuries of sleep. Only the younger dragons awoke now, and even that was becoming rarer and rarer.
Prince Imrik sat cross-legged before a great split in the rock, through which hissed a curtain of sulphurous smoke and the heartbeat of creatures older than any now living could remember. His white hair hung in wet ropes around his thin face, and droplets of sweat ran down his cheeks like tears. He had sung every song of elfkind, even the secret ones taught to him by his master so long ago.
Nothing was working, and though the naysayers of Lothern woefully claimed the fire of the dragons had gone out, Imrik refused to believe that, not when so many still lived in these mountains. A species as noble and ancient did not just slip away as their hearts cooled.
He knew things these naysayers did not.
Once, as they had flown through storms raging around the Blighted Isle, Minaithnir had told him that the dragons of Ulthuan would all die together in the last battle against the Dark Gods. It had been an uncharacteristic pronouncement, one perhaps brought on by the proximity of the Widowmaker, and the dragon had made Imrik promise never to repeat his careless words.
Imrik had told no one of Minaithnir’s grim prophecy, but he held to its promise of a reawakening as he gathered his strength for another song. His brazier had burned low, and he threw another handful of heartleaf into the flames. The plant burned white gold, and its light had been used in ancient times to guide dragons to their riders in times of war. As the flames took hold and the aromatic leaves filled the air with the pungent tang of sulphur and blood, Imrik felt the presence of another elf.