A Sword for a Dragon (51 page)

Like lightning, Lagdalen took up the guard’s spear and prepared to thrust it home. Ribela spoke sharply, “Be merciful, Sister Lagdalen, this poor man is a slave to the demon that rules here. He knows not what he does.”

Lagdalen swallowed and gripped the spear tightly, but she did not plunge it home. The wasps hovered around her for a few more seconds and then returned to attacking the poor guard, who rolled on the floor, groaning.

Then she reversed the spear and rapped the fellow hard on the back of the head with the butt. She was not gentle. He went limp. After a second or so, the wasps stopped stinging him, however, and unconscious, he felt no pain.

The wasps circled up to the vent at the top of the cell and returned to their own affairs.

The door swung open. They locked it behind themselves after dragging the other guard inside and wiping away the blood. They took the men’s swords and then slid away down a marble passage. There were guards at one end, so they doubled back and went down another long passage with many doors.

At length, they found themselves in a partly ruined section. There were guards here, but not on this floor. They came to a broken stair. The steps down were gone, but the flight going up remained. Looking down through the stairs, they glimpsed more ruins and eventually a pile of rubble.

They climbed the stair, which accepted their weight, and reached a higher floor. They could see at once that it was in some disrepair. There were empty rooms and rooms with fallen ceilings and no doors. They concealed themselves behind some rubble mounded up in the center of a large room. Lagdalen went in search of some wood for a small fire. Ribela became very still and set to summoning some of the wild mice that lived on this floor in considerable numbers.

She had already made up her mind as to what she must do. She had to call upon the Sinni. No human witch had the strength to battle such a thing as that which lay in the pit: Gammadion, being of a heavier world.

The dragonboys went first, skipping quietly forward through the hall toward the guards, their bows at the ready. They were not seen immediately. Quickly they closed the range. At fifty feet, they rarely missed a target. When they were a third of the way across the hall, the guards finally looked up, a shout went up. Swords were drawn. A few steps later, the boys fired and arrows sprouted from the eyes of three guards, who dropped like stones.

The rest charged them with sword and spear.

But now the dragons had emerged from hiding and lumbered forward with Captain Kesepton in the lead. The guards saw these great bulks loom up behind the dragonboys, and their mouths dropped open. They turned tail and ran back to the doors to call for help.

More arrows flicked among them, and they tried to make a stand by the doors, but then the dragons were upon them. Men went down where they stood or else they fled inside.

The doors were torn asunder, and lead by the Purple Green, the dragons surged within. They found themselves standing above a vast space, overhung with shadows. They heard the surviving guards calling alarm as they ran down the stairs to the main floor.

In the center of the great flagstone floor was a wide circular hole, a pit of nothingness that appeared to go straight down for an unknown distance.

Surrounding one half of the pit was a raised gallery with seats for several dozen.

Standing near the pit were gathered some fifty men, all in black garb, with subtle differentiations of white bands, red arrow markings, and the like. At the base of the stair from the doorway were another dozen guards, plus the three survivors, who were in little condition to continue with the dragons.

The dragons started down the stairs. Dragonboys put arrows into the guards faces.

The men standing by the pit were the elite of the power groups around the reborn god and his Temple. There were magicians and military officers from Padmasa, agents of the Doom in Axoxo, local commanders and the priests of Sephis, distinguished by their shaved heads and the gold edging to their robes.

All of them were staring openmouthed at the huge intruders now coming down the stairs from the entrance. Great swords gleamed in dragon hands. A guard staggered and fell with an arrow in his skull. The power elite of Dzu emitted a collective scream of fright.

A couple of priests even toppled off the edge and fell into the pit with shrieks of woe. The men drew their swords and fell back in a crouch toward the walls.

The dragons reached the floor of the chamber, dragonboys bounced down among them. Kesepton stood in front of them and raised his sword.

They charged.

The guards were all fighters and they were hypnotized, with a fanatical belief in the reborn god. They put up a fight, but were swept aside in half a minute by arrows and dragon sword.

The power elites had scattered to the walls where they crouched, swords drawn, eyes widened in shock. The remaining priests had scrambled up into the gallery and run to the rear.

Relkin kept them under guard with his bow.

The men around the walls were not eager to attack. They looked for ways to get past Chektor and Mono, who guarded the stair to the doors and gradually they slid down the wall to that end.

Kesepton looked into the pit. What they had come to destroy was down there somewhere. The question was how were they going to summon it to battle?

He vaulted up beside Relkin and called to the priests.

“Does any of you speak Verio?”

Several nodded.

“Then tell me how to summon the thing in the pit.”

They cringed and hid their faces from him.

“The god Sephis will rise soon, and he will take you all,” said one who wore a gold filet over the black and gold robes.

“The god will take them,” said the others in a monotone response.

“Tell me how to summon your god, or I will have to throw you down to him.”

But they would not look up.

Kesepton was about to step forward and threaten them more directly when he felt a presence. Something had changed in the room, and he turned his head. A single figure in a black cloak stood on the landing by the doors.

It turned, came swiftly down the stairs, and strode toward them. Eyes glowed like red glimmers of Hell beneath the hood. A great shadow was growing up around it, so that it seemed as tall as the Purple Green.

It stopped in front of them. They saw the horned face and the human skull within the shadow, and it laughed at their expressions of shock.

“So,” it snarled, “the armies of Argonath come down to this little ragtag band! A small pack of reptiles, a man and three boys. This is the best they could manage. This is their great blow to destroy us?”

The hands came out of the robe, they too were tipped in green-black horn.

“Hah!” It raised the hands high above its head. “You dare to tread here on this hallowed ground?” They felt a tension rising in the space around them.

“The great one will take you. He will enjoy you. He will feed on you for days.”

Relkin shuddered. The thing spoke Verio with a chilling precision. He started. Swane was nudging him with an elbow. “What the hell is that thing?”

“How should I know?”

“Well, you’re supposed to be the one who knows all about these things.”

“I never made such claims.”

“I see a man to kill,” said the Purple Green.

“Wizard of the enemy,” spat Kesepton.

“What is it, Captain?” said Swane.

“ Tis something from the Masters of the Dark, that is all I know.”

“We kill it then,” rumbled Bazil.

But the Mesomaster uttered a series of loud, harsh phrases. There was a flash of light, and a red orb of energy grew between his hands while sparks sizzled in the air around it.

He raised this orb toward the dragons, and from it came a beam of reddish light that struck at the nearest dragon, Vlok, and caused him to bellow from the surprise. He put his shield up against any further flashes and cursed loudly in dragon speech.

The other dragons raised their shields and peered around them. Vlok had taken no hurt. They took a long step toward the being. Dragons were notoriously immune to the magical arts of humans.

The light flashed at them again and again as Gog Zagozt drove home his most potent mental blasts. The boys and Kesepton were down on their knees, grasping their hands as they caught ricochets of these mental blasts. The men back against the wall were similarly occupied. Humans were all too sensitive to such things.

But the dragons took another long step. Gog Zagozt realized that what he been told about dragonish imperviousness to magical effect was actually true. He took a step back.

The swords were longer than a man and could cut through a tree with a single blow. Dragons weighed two tons, and the giant in the middle of the group obviously weighed a lot more than that.

The Mesomaster had not known the feeling of fear in a long time. He found it unnerving. With a shriek, he summoned the great one in the pit.

Let these resistant dragons face their own nemesis! The dragon swords swung, and the Mesomaster darted back with more hastily screamed commands.

The darkness in the pit roiled. Gog Zagozt flung himself back up the stairs, dragons at his heels.

And a silence fell. The dragons were suddenly aware of another force in the room.

The reborn god was rising from the pit—an immense serpent, clad in golden plates of malacostracan armor. It soon towered above them on a body as thick as the Purple Green’s, but many times longer. Eyes the size of dinner plates, with peculiarly dull charcoal surfaces, stared down at them. An enormous mouth, lined with sharp teeth, opened and let out a great hiss. A sulfurous odor filled the air.

Below the head, there were four grasping arms, each tipped with three talons. These clutched angrily in the air and the thing flowed forward, over the lip of the pit and straight toward them. It tried to hold their gaze, to hypnotize them as it had enslaved so many men, but the dragons were immune to its power.

The dragons fanned out to form a
V
to receive it. Chektor and Vlok on the flanks, while Bazil and the Purple Green waited for it face on in the center. Kesepton prowled behind the dragonboys to keep away any interference from the dozens of armed men crouched along the walls.

Arrows flashed in to bounce off the armor plate. Others stuck around the rim of the eyes or inside the mouth, the only apparent soft spots. The great monster hissed again even more loudly.

Dragons rushed forward and struck down with their swords. The blades rang off the golden plate armor, and the dragons fell back slightly bemused. It was rare that such blows did not penetrate.

A red light glowed momentarily in the center of the great, dead-looking eyes, and then with the speed of a striking snake, the long body lashed sideways, hammered into Vlok, and sent him rolling. Swane jumped backward just in time as that body whipped around, and the big jaws snapped shut on the spot where he’d been standing.

Vlok was just pulling himself back on his feet when the head swung down on him and the jaws closed. Vlok gave a scream of agony and desperately worked his sword into the side of the monster’s mouth.

The thing gave a convulsive shake, and Vlok flew fifteen feet through the air and landed with a heavy thud that shook the whole place. Vlok did not move.

Swane ran forward with an inarticulate scream of rage and flung himself up onto the monster, stabbing futilely at its armor plate with his short sword. The thing plucked him away with one of its forearms and would have bitten him but for the arrival of the Purple Green, who shoved forward, rammed his shield into the demon’s face, and hewed down with his sword so powerfully that it sank an inch into the neck armor. There was a spray of yellow ichor that covered the Purple Green from head to toe. The monster dropped Swane, who scuttled away bruised but not broken, and turned its full attention on the Purple Green.

The Purple Green had never faced anything larger than himself since he’d been a bantling and challenged the previous dragon lord of Hook Mountain. This creature was larger than anything that had walked on Earth since the days of the ancient reptile lords.

Still the wild one’s heart did not quail. Fury too great for any thought of self-preservation had overridden the dragon mind. Nothing but death could end it now.

The battle cry of all Hook Mountain dragon lords rang again and again from the walls and ceiling of the chamber of the pit. The sword came down and bit deeply into the monster’s side.

At the same time, old Chektor swung in and slammed his shield into the demon’s serpent face. Teeth splintered and the head was forced back, but the huge body lashed out again and struck Chektor away, as if he was some four-ton game ball, and sent the Purple Green rolling backward, too. Relkin dodged out of the way of the wild dragon, fired on the hop, and saw his arrow bounce off the monster’s unblinking eye. The great head darted down at him, but the intended strike caromed off a dragon shield and went wide.

A long white-steel sword gleamed as it rose and fell, Bazil hewed down with Ecator, and the blade sundered the gammadion’s armor and went deep.

The monster’s neck arched, and it snapped down at Bazil going for a grip across the back of the neck, but Baz spun quickly enough to get his shield up between the giant jaws before they could close. The thing took a grip on the shield with its teeth, shook its head, and lifted the leatherback off his feet for a moment before Bazil thrust Ecator into the monster’s throat. Well made was the blade Ecator, a bane to all things of the enemy, and it sliced through the armor plate cleanly.

The monster released his shield and pulled back. The great head circled, the eyes coldly examining the dragon still standing. The others were starting to get to their feet.

It struck again, the jaws snapping shut just in front of the dragon to distract him while the body lashed around, sweeping at him with twenty tons behind it. Bazil could not evade it, but he could spring up to meet it, get his feet on it, drive the sword home, and hold on to the hilt. He lost his shield in the process, but Ecator sank in as Baz clung there and was borne upward as the monster turned to bring its jaws to bear. Frantically Baz jerked the sword out of the monster’s flesh and slid back. The sword came up between them. The great jaws slammed shut just out of reach. The monster coiled itself.