Samual (66 page)

It was daylight when Sam finally reached Fall Keep. And he was glad to see at least some of it still standing in the sunshine even if night would have been a better time to attack. Mostly that was because he was aching from having ridden for so long. Moose were not good riding animals even when you had magic. And though he could keep the animal calm, he could do nothing about the hardness or shape of its back or its natural gait. He couldn't simply create a saddle for it either. Three days on the back of a moose was hard on a man. But unfortunately there were no horses around. No doubt they had all been taken as people fled the realm.

Still, the beast was actually quite quick when it wanted to be, and they had made good time. Thus far there was no sign of the rats.

The Dragon had beaten him here – but then he was in a light wagon being pulled by a pack of steel wolves that could run night and day without pause. He had always been going to beat him here. Luckily he had not got far with his repairs to the walls. They had begun; the Dragon had started using his magic to shape the stone and lift the walls up. But he had not yet had time to complete the job.

As for the wolves, they were patrolling the walls. Sam could see them through the massive hole where the gate had been. A hole he had created. A small wall of steel teeth and claws replacing the missing stone. But they would not last long. The elders had said the Dragon had come with an army of only a hundred and fifty to two hundred wolves. It had been what he had presumably thought would be his personal protective squad as he rode to claim his prize after his army had captured it. Now it was his entire army. It was also about to get smaller. Much smaller.

Sam was still nowhere near his full strength. In fact he had the strange feeling that his fire would not return as powerfully as it had before, but he still had enough magic to launch a fire ball at the wolves standing in the remains of the gate. A moment later at least a score of the steel beasts were gone. His fire ball was nowhere near as hot as it should be and it would certainly never knock over a city wall as his best ones once had. But the wolves weren't the most powerful of the machina and it was more than a match for them. The Fire Angel had announced his arrival. Even if he was no longer the master of fire he had been.

“War Masters,” he spoke to the window in the air beside him, “can you give me some targets to aim at please.”

The Window of Parsus was an incredibly useful tool he thought. Especially when your enemy was hiding behind huge walls that he couldn't see through and didn't have the strength to knock down. And so as he watched the window abruptly streak away from him at great speed heading for the keep, he felt a small thrill of victory. The Dragon had never prepared for this.

Soon the window was back and the war masters had a list of targets for him to hit. Naturally he sent fireballs at all of them, surprised at how easy it was. And a few moments later when they returned from checking out the damage he'd done he was given the welcome news that at least two score of wolves were gone.

A third of the Dragon's army – gone before he'd even approached the keep! Sam suspected the troll blood had to be hiding somewhere inside the city, trembling with fear. Soon though Sam silently promised him, he would no longer be afraid.

Over confidence though was always a mistake. A lesson Sam learned anew when he heard a sound he had not expected to hear. Cannon fire. Obviously the Dragon had been busier than he'd realised.

Sam raced for cover behind a farm house, annoyed at his oversight. But thankfully the cannon shot came nowhere near him. It wasn't surprising in hindsight he supposed. The Dragon might have raised the cannon into position and loaded them, but he had no one to aim and fire them. An army of steel wolves could not operate war machines. He was just firing them wherever they sat.

How was he lighting them though?  The Dragon had no fire magic as far as he knew. Only nature and earth magic. Had he set up some elaborate fuse system? Or was he running along the walls himself with a torch in his hands?

Either way it didn't matter. The front walls had once had thirty or forty cannon on the ramparts. And Sam had heard thirty or forty blasts. Now that the cannon had been fired they had to be reloaded. Who did the Dragon have to do that? Only himself. That meant that for the moment they were useless.

Once again the Dragon had struck too early. If he'd had any military training he would have waited until Sam was in his sights before firing. But he hadn't and so he'd weakened himself.

But he still had more soldiers that Sam hadn't prepared for. And they began with the three steel drakes that he had used to decimate Fair Fields with. Sam had forgotten about them. Everyone had. But as he watched them climb into the sky from somewhere within the keep, he remembered them anew.

Luckily Sam had a weapon too that the Dragon didn't know about. And when he pulled his sword and aimed it at the nearest of the three drakes, he knew the Dragon was going to be upset. Some time ago he'd found out that the steel drakes weren't nearly as fire proof as they were supposed to be. That was a weakness. And by focusing the fire scythe spell, he planned on exploiting that weakness.

When the closest drake was within two hundred paces he released the spell and played the thin ray of fire over its wing. The wing was the drake's most vulnerable point since the metal there was thinnest and without a wing the drake couldn't fly.

It took a few moments for the spell to cut into the wing as he wanted, but then he was heartened by the sight of a small explosion in it, followed by the sight of the drake tumbling out of the air and then hitting the ground where it exploded properly.

The second drake proved just as easy to destroy. But the third was too close. It laid down a blast of heavy fire at the building he was hiding behind, knocking over its front walls and setting it ablaze. But then it made the mistake of continuing to fly over the burning building. Right over Sam's head. In a heartbeat he had a perfect target as the drake flew away from him, and Sam took advantage of it.

Heartbeats later the third drake came tumbling down out of the sky, only to explode when it hit the ground, sending shards of burning metal flying in all directions. They were actually more of a risk to him than the flames the drakes had launched.

Three drakes down, sixty wolves destroyed. The Dragon had to know he was in trouble. It was time Sam thought to make him understand that. Because the more frightened he was the more mistakes he would make. It was time to let him taste fear.

Sam sent the window flying back in to the city, but this time with only one target for the war masters to find. The Dragon himself. He was in there somewhere, hiding; hoping he would not be found. It was time to take that hope from him.

While the war masters searched the city, Sam set about restoring the magic to the fire scythe spell. It was a very effective spell and he wanted to have it ready when he needed it. He was nowhere near his full strength, so he needed to be prepared for whatever awaited him.

The war masters returned with a target for Sam just as he had finished restoring the spell to its full power. Apparently the Dragon was hiding in the wine store abutting the west wall. It seemed like an odd place to hide Sam thought. The wine store had only half height walls with poles supporting the clay tile roof above them, and there was nothing in them. No furniture, no food, no drinking water or places to bathe. It really was just a place where barrels of wine were stored. But if the war masters said that that was where the Dragon was, Sam was happy enough to take them at their word. Immediately Sam sent a stream of fireballs aimed at the inside of that wall. And then waited to hear back from the war masters. 

When they reported back though it was to tell him that the Dragon was out in the open in the front courtyard and running around in a blind panic as he looked for new places to hide. There were also a number of wolves racing for the gate and presumably toward him. Sam saw it for the diversion it was. The Dragon needed to stop the fireballs landing on his head. But still, as another score of wolves rushed through the front gate, Sam was more than happy to destroy them. The more he got rid of the less the Dragon had left to call on. It was a simple equation.

The Dragon quickly settled on a new direction to run – away from Sam – and when the war masters told him that, Sam smiled. In that moment he knew that he had the Dragon. If he had run behind the pile of rubble that had once been the keep and into the city itself, then it meant he was no longer watching the front wall. It gave Sam the chance to approach the keep.

Sam began his approach, walking slowly up the road toward the gap where the front gate had been. And despite his certainty that he was safe he was relieved when no cannon fired at him and no wolves attacked him, even though he took his time covering the half league or so.

Just inside the remains of the gate he stopped, spotting a few wolves in the courtyard. They quickly fell to his spells, long before they had a chance to reach him. It was scary seeing the huge steel monsters almost the size of snap wolves running at him, but he was a soldier. He had been trained to deal with fear.

So another half dozen more wolves perished while he crossed to the side of the keep and the crudely repaired staircase leading up to the ramparts behind the walls. Going up the ramparts was his plan for dealing with the wolves. Because unlike the rats the wolves couldn't climb. They could ascend stairs which was why he was so keen to destroy the stairs after he'd reached the ramparts, but they couldn't reach him. Meanwhile he had complete access to the outside of the city. He even crossed the gap in the wall he'd created along the side of the courtyard, simply by using his magic to create a stone bridge.

After that the battle was his. He walked the ramparts which completely surrounded the city, destroying wolves wherever they appeared, while the war masters used the window to keep finding targets for him. It was slow – Fall Keep was a good sized city and the Dragon had plenty of burnt out buildings to hide in – but in only a few hours he was sure another sixty or so wolves had perished.

What did that leave the Dragon with he wondered? A pack of fifty or so wolves at most, he figured, and because his fireballs were levelling buildings one by one, they had fewer and fewer places to hide. It was only a matter of time.

Of course over confidence was always a weakness, and once again Sam had to remember that when he saw a shambling figure in rags – a beggar – suddenly walk around a corner. Why was the man here? The city was deserted. Or so he had thought. The walls were gone, the buildings burnt out. There was no food left. No resources. No riches of any kind. Multiple armies had threatened to invade it. And currently there were still steel wolves loose in it. Wolves that would surely kill anyone they saw. So why was there a beggar wandering the streets? Who was he going to beg from? How was he even still alive?

And were there others? He hadn't seen any, and the war masters looking on through the window hadn't reported any either, but that didn't mean there weren't any. They could be hiding in the ruins of their homes. In fact with the wolves running around the city, that was probably where they would be. While he was bringing the houses down on their heads one by one.

Sam didn't like that last thought very much. How could he level the city building by building and conduct a battle if there were innocent people in it? He could kill them. And what did he do about the one he had spotted? He had to get him out of the city obviously. But he also had to find any others. And both were impossible to do when he was standing on the battlements on the walls high above the houses, raining down destruction on them.

Sam sighed heavily, knowing his duty. And then he used a little Earth magic to extend a stone walkway from the rampart he was on to the roof of the nearest house. From there it was only a short jump through the already broken roof and then down through the house's internal staircase to the ground and the street outside. From here on he would have to face the wolves on the ground, one by one. He would have to search the houses before he destroyed them. And he would have to hunt the Dragon on foot.

But first he'd have to find that beggar he'd seen and get him out of the city.

That proved harder than he'd expected. By the time he'd made it to the street the beggar was gone. He'd either turned a corner or ducked into one of the houses, and since Sam hadn't seen which, he was going to have to check both.

Sam continued walking down the street, checking the buildings as quickly as he could and calling out to anyone who might be in them.  As he'd expected his actions drew the wolves to him. Those that were left had taken up positions hiding in the burnt out ruins. A man alone on the ground would have looked like an easy target. So they charged him and he destroyed them one by one, though it was harder than it should have been. They were much faster on the ground than the rats and more cunning as they waited until he got close before rushing at him.