Master of Dragons Read online

  Thoriol notched his first arrow and pulled the string taut. The dwarfs were a few dozen yards below him, their attention fixed on the spearmen ahead of them. Thoriol screwed his right eye closed and lowered the point of his arrow just in front of a dwarf warrior lumbering up the steep bank of rubble. He let fly, and the dart thunked heavily into the dwarf’s chest. It was enough to send him toppling backwards and into his comrades.

  More arrows fizzed down from both sides of the breach. Baelian sent a shaft into the eye-socket of a bellowing dwarf champion – a breathtaking feat of marksmanship. Other darts found their mark, pinning the dwarf advance back and giving the spearmen space to advance across the open wound and pull reinforcements up in their wake.

  Thoriol’s heart pumped strongly again. Fear ran hard through his veins, though tempered with something else, something wilder and more elemental.

  Excitement? Am I truly exhilarated by this?

  He could smell them, they were so close. He could hear the wet shlicks of the arrows biting into flesh. At such range the elven shafts were utterly deadly, capable of stabbing through all but the very thickest plates of armour.

  He notched a second arrow, then a third, watching with grim satisfaction as each found its target.

  But the dwarfs were not liable to stumble blindly into a slaughter. Crossbow-wielding warriors crouched low in the rubble and aimed up at the archers on either flank. Soon the air was filled with the snap and whistle of bolts. Thoriol ducked down as one flew past him, almost snagging his trailing shoulder.

  Still kneeling, he notched another arrow. Just as he lifted his bow to take aim, he heard a strangled cry. Turning to his right he saw Baelian stumble forwards, a quarrel sticking proudly from his throat. The company captain, at the forefront as always, must have presented a tempting target.

  Baelian managed a final look in Thoriol’s direction. The scars on his face writhed as he struggled to breathe. Then he collapsed, falling over the edge of the parapet and down into the rock-choked breach below. His body hit the rubble hard; soon it would be under the boots of the advancing dwarfs.

  For a second, Thoriol was dumbstruck. Baelian had seemed invincible, immune from the fear and filth of battle.

  ‘Let fly!’ came Loeth’s voice, thick with rage.

  The others leapt to obey. Thoriol felt fury surge up in his breast. For the first time, he was angry rather than scared or thrilled.

  Ignoring the danger, he stood up straight, drawing his bow with a savage expertise he would never have considered possible during the crossing from Lothern.

  ‘For Ulthuan!’ he cried, sending another arrow spinning into the line of advancing dwarfs. Even before it had found its target, he was reaching for another.

  Salendor rose up to his full height at the very edge of the precipice. Below him the walls fell away in three vertiginous cliffs, each one towering over an ocean of fire and turmoil. He felt the hot wind rush across his face, laced with ashes and magic. As the sky darkened to dusk he felt power well up within him once more, swelling to the flood, ripe to burst from the tips of his calloused fingers.

  The winds of magic raced around him, swirling and eddying with increasing force. Aethyr-essence crackled in the air, snarling with semi-sentient fervour. On either side of him other mages cast their battle-spells. Bolts of vivid, rubescent force shot out into the gathering dark, sweeping past the burning towers and slamming through siege towers, clusters of ladders and knots of enemy fighters.

  For all its potency, the magefire was not unopposed. Salendor could feel the deadening effects of the dwarfen runesmiths countering every attempt to raise fresh magic. He could sense their dreary chanting, stilling the vital winds of magic and making them listless. In the wake of such work it was hard to pull the requisite power from the aethyr, to drag it into the world of the senses and make it do its work.

  Salendor grimaced, feeling the physical pain of the summoning. His lungs ached from chanting the words, his hands bled from gripping his staff. The siege had become a gruelling test of endurance, a clash of two equally deadly and equally implacable enemies. The entire lower levels of the city were now furiously contested, the many breaches in the walls glowing like a ring of embers. Vast blankets of smoke hung over the lower city, brooding across sites of slaughter. Every so often another war engine would ignite, exploding in an angry bloom of crimson, or another watchtower would crumble under the relentless onslaught of the stone-throwers, dissolving into yet more shattered masonry.

  Salendor whirled his staff around his head, using the growing momentum to add to his summoning. The winds whipped up around him, sparking and surging. Soon he had his target: a battering ram being dragged up to the main gates, covered in metalwork protection and warded by powerful runes of destruction. Though the sigils were carved in the dawi tongue Salendor could sense their malign power well enough.

  ‘Othial na-Telememnon fariel!’ he shouted, dragging an aethyr-mark out from behind the veil. His staff burst into blazing silver light and he loosed the fire, sending it snaking down through the burning towers. The magical beams homed in on their distant target unerringly, spiralling through the chaos before smashing into glittering shards across the battering ram’s housing. Each shard burrowed deeper into the metal plates, dissolving iron and pulverising timber.

  Lit up by silver explosions, the battering ram made an appealing target for the surviving archers. First a flaming bolt hit it, then several pitch-dipped arrows impacted. With its thick outer shell compromised, the barbs tore deeper into the mechanism within.

  The battering ram’s progress ground to a halt. Soon the entire structure was listing, its immense axles broken, its back aflame.

  Salendor grunted with satisfaction. That would set them back.

  His satisfaction did not last long. The gatehouse was relatively secure, but elsewhere the situation was deteriorating. More breaches in the outer perimeter had been inflicted. One looked particularly bad – a huge gouge in the stonework with dawi actually clambering up the ruins. He could just make out valiant clusters of archers clinging to the two ragged edges, pinning the invaders back. A bold stand, but precarious.

  His fellow mages were tiring. One of them, Eialessa of Eataine, as powerful a spellcaster as he had ever seen, looked out on her feet. Several of the others had pale faces and sunken eyes.

  ‘Where are the damned dragons?’ Salendor asked aloud, tilting his head to the heavens. Imladrik had been gone for hours – it was becoming absurd. ‘Where is the lord of this city?’

  Nothing but darkness and tattered clouds answered him. The sky was streaked with sullen red glows, interspersed with occasional sharp flashes of magelight.

  But then, finally, he sensed a change on the air. Something stirred, a rush from the west, the echo of something very, very high up.

  He saw nothing. The sky remained dark and mottled. The fires continued to burn, adorning Tor Alessi in a corona of sullen anger.

  For all that, Salendor could not suppress a smile.

  ‘Ah,’ he breathed, raising his staff once more, forgetting his fatigue and remembering anticipation. ‘Now, my stunted friends, we shall see.’

  Imladrik pushed Draukhain higher. The first pinpoints of starlight clustered on the extreme eastern horizon, glowing in a deepening sky. It was perishingly cold. The other dragons coursed and wheeling around him, wings rigid for the glide. Telagis’s emerald wings glinted in the dusk as he swept past Draukhain, bowing his head in submission as the greater drake’s shadow fell across him. Imladrik could sense the dragonsong of the other riders, whispering to their mounts, holding their immense power in check.

  Down below, far below, his city burned. He could see the flare and pulse of the flames, barred by black lines of smog and ruin. The sun still shone in the west but was setting fast, making the tips of the waves looked like burnished bronze.

  Why do we wait? sang Drau
khain. The kill-lust was high in him; Imladrik could sense it pressing on his own mind.

  I am preparing myself, Imladrik replied. It has been a long time since you and I went to war.

  Nonsense. We have been killing druchii for months.

  They are different.

  Draukhain snorted. Bonier, perhaps.

  Imladrik looked down, peering through the layers of drifting smoke. The vision was hellish, like the opening maw of Mirai in the depths of the gathering night.

  The dragon knew well enough why they paused. Draukhain knew almost everything about him – the shape of his moods, the tenor of his thoughts. Sometimes Imladrik wondered if keeping secrets from his mount was even possible. Some things had been surrendered a long time ago – the right to a solitary mind, the right to an undisturbed sequence of mortal thoughts.

  I do not wish this to be a slaughter, Imladrik sang.

  Then do not ask me to unfurl my claws at all.

  I am serious. We must drive them from the walls, but limit our wrath to that.

  Draukhain flexed his pinions, preparing for the dive that would take them hurtling into the battle below. Even now, you harbour dreams of ending this?

  Imladrik smiled bitterly. Not any more, but they are not daemons. Kill in proportion: that is the maxim.

  Proportion! sang Draukhain contemptuously. Aenarion would have laughed to hear it.

  And look what became of him.

  Draukhain spilled a savage, metal-grating noise from his smoking jawline. Then we hunt.

  Imladrik rested his blade on the dragon’s shoulder bone-spur and tensed for the shift.

  Aye, Draukhain – we hunt.

  He gave the mental order. His mind connected with those of the five other riders, and for a moment they were locked in silent communion. He felt the hot presence of the Caledorians, so similar to his own; he felt Heruen and Cademel prepare for the dive. He saw the varicoloured wings pull in tight, their iridescence furled.

  For a moment all six dragons teetered on the brink, their riders sitting back in the saddle. Then the steepling fall began, and the drakes shot earthwards.

  Imladrik felt the wind race past him. Draukhain took the lead position, racing down like some gigantic falcon, already breathing heavily with an iron-furnace rattle in his lungs. Gaudringnar followed closely, shadowed by the swift Rafuel.

  Tor Alessi rushed up towards them, rapidly growing in size. Imladrik held his position carefully, watching as the three lines of walls separated and became individually visible. He picked out the flashes of magefire in the pinnacles and the staccato delivery of the bolt throwers. He saw the fires burning along the parapets in the lower city, throbbing and flaring in the gathering dusk.

  Draukhain growled with joy. By then he could smell the dawi. He extended his wings again and began to sweep into the attack run.

  Hunt well, sang Imladrik to his companions, knowing that once the dragons were amongst the enemy they would each fight alone. That was ever the way with them: they were solitary predators.

  The summit of the Tower of Winds shot past, the first of the tall towers to be reached. The drakes split, cascading like lightning across the city. Imladrik caught sight of Salendor standing on one of the highest platforms. The mage-warrior looked elated, and saluted him as he passed.

  Then Draukhain plunged down further, snaking through the thud and shriek of projectiles and beating his wings harder.

  The walls, sang Imladrik, gripping tight against the push of the wind. Drive them from the walls.

  Draukhain powered towards the nearest breach, the clap of his wingbeats like thunderbolts. The dawi did not see him coming until far too late. Even then, what could they have done? Run? None of them were fast enough. They had scoffed at the legend of the drakes and now their mockery would kill them.

  Imladrik guided the dragon towards the largest of the rents in the eastern flank of the city – a huge hole in the stonework the width of a hawkship’s sails. Dwarfs were battering away at a thinning line of elven defenders, pushing gradually into the lower city.

  Draukhain roared, making the residual bulwarks of the twin wall-ends shake further. In a spiralling flurry of dislodged stone, he crashed into the dwarf front rank.

  It was like being hit by a tornado. Dawi were hurled into the air by the impact, plucked and dragged from the rubble by Draukhain’s claws or slammed clear by savage downbeats. The lashing tail accounted for dozens more, sweeping them from their positions and sending them cartwheeling, broken-backed, into the seething mass beyond the walls.

  Then the fire came. Draukhain twisted around, still airborne, spewing a massive, writhing column of dragonfire that crashed across the stonework like clouds tearing around a mountain summit. Even the staunchest of the dwarfs fell back in the face of that, clawing at terrible burns as they staggered clear.

  Imladrik rose higher in his seat, riding the swerve of his mount. He bent his mind to the task of dragonriding, adding his consciousness to Draukhain’s own, melding his awareness with that of the mighty drake. They were like twin entities bound within a single gigantic physical frame.

  Draukhain snapped his wings back and thrust clear of the breach, leaving a trail of smouldering carnage in his wake before pushing out into the horde of dawi beyond. Staying low, he punched into them like a ploughshare breaking into soil, blasting blue-tinged sheets of flame across the reeling lines before plucking the most defiant of them from the earth and flinging them high.

  All across the beleaguered city the tale was the same. Each dragon hit the attacking armies at once, devastating the vanguard and driving deep into the supporting troops behind. These drakes were no drowsy, gold-hoarding wyrms of the eastern mountains – they were Star and Moon dragons, the most powerful beasts in all natural creation, sheer engines of destruction, avatars of primordial devastation. The dawi had never seen the like, and they shredded them.

  Imladrik felt the lust for killing swell up within him. The taste of dawi blood came to his lips as splatters of gore streaked across his silver helm. A savage smile half-twitched on his lips, teetering on the brink of spreading.

  Retain control, he sang, guiding Draukhain further into the press of dwarf bodies. He could see siege towers up ahead, all ripe for destruction.

  Draukhain hurtled low over the battlefield, raking the oncoming hordes. The dwarfs who attempted to rally were first bludgeoned with dragonfire, then gouged by Draukhain’s jaws and talons, then swept aside with the disdainful flicks of his immense tail. Crossbow bolts clattered harmlessly from the dragon’s scaled hide. Axes and warhammers were wielded too slowly to make an impact; even those that connected did little more than bruise Draukhain’s armour.

  Imladrik nudged his mount and the dragon climbed a little higher, thrusting clear of the struggling infantry lines and up towards the first siege tower. The dwarfs mounted on its flanks behaved with characteristically insane bravery, holding their positions and loosing a whole flock of quarrels at the approaching monster.

  The pitiful scatter didn’t even slow them. Draukhain flew straight into it, smashing through the upper platforms and bursting clear of the far side in a rain of broken spars and planks. The entire structure blew apart, flayed into splinters by the thrashing tail and crushing wings. By the time the dragon wheeled back around for a return pass, nothing remained but dust, corpses and crackling firewood.

  Back to the walls, sang Imladrik, struggling not to give in to the powerful urge to slay with abandon. Part of him wished to drive onwards, to carve a gorge of slaughter between the bloated flanks of the enemy all the way to the baggage trains. Part of him wished to push on towards Morgrim himself, to punish him for his lack of imagination.

  You become the dragon; the dragon becomes you.

  But he had to resist, to retain command. Draukhain swung about, angling hard over the disarrayed dwarfs and powering back towards the
burning city. Imladrik spied another breach in the outer walls and marked it mentally. He could make out iron-clad infantry labouring in the ruins, driving up a long slope of rubble to get into the city beyond. He saw lines of elven spearmen facing them from the interior, supported by archers perched precariously on the half-ruined walls either side.

  This would be simple – another clean sweep, driving the dwarfs back out onto the plain and picking them off. After that the assault could slow: the walls would be secured and the dragons could take up stations above them. The lesson in power would be enough – even Morgrim, stubborn as he was, would have to pull back in the face of it.

  As Draukhain arrived at the breach, though, the dragon suddenly pulled up sharply.

  What is it? sang Imladrik, looking about him concernedly in case some stray barb had somehow penetrated the dragon’s armour.

  Your blood is on the walls.

  For a second, Imladrik had no idea what he meant. The dragon soared higher, clearing the breach before banking tightly over the eastern wall-end.

  Imladrik looked down. Several dozen archers still manned the intact ramparts overlooking the ruined section. Several more lay on the parapet surface, their light armour pierced with quarrels.

  I do not under– began Imladrik, then broke off.

  Draukhain dipped lower and broke into a hover, his massive body held immobile with all the poise of a kestrel.

  I sensed it, sang Draukhain. For once, his voice was neither sarcastic nor wrathful. Your blood.

  Reluctantly, fearing already what he would see, Imladrik peered into the lambent shadows. One of the archers, the one closest to him, had had his helm knocked from his head. Imladrik recognised the face even amid the fire and murk. For a horrific moment he thought he spied Yethanial there, her bruised features twisted in pain.

  Then, in a moment of no less horror, he saw the truth. It was Thoriol, prone, his robes wet with blood, his eyes closed and unmoving.

  ‘What madness–’ he started, before being shocked into silence.