The Rage (7 page)

The volley of crossbow quarrels, arrows, and sling stones hurtled upward. Dorn loosed a shaft he’d carried in his quiver for five years, just as Pavel had saved the scroll that called flame from the sky.

The black wyrm lurched as the missiles struck it. Dorn prayed it would plummet. He was sure he’d hit it, and if so, that one injury might be enough to kill it all by itself, for that was what the arrow had been enchanted to accomplish. But no such luck. The reptile was evidently too hearty to succumb. The great wings kept beating as it wheeled and lit on

a rooftop. Something in the way the creature crouched and wove its leprous-looking head warned Dorn that it was casting a spell.

He loosed another arrow, and Will slung another stone. Those among their frightened troops who’d managed to ready a second missile followed suit. Dorn’s instincts warned him the stinging barrage hadn’t been enough to shake the black’s concentration. It was going to complete the conjuration.

“Get down!” Dorn shouted.

He and the others crouched behind their improvised ramparts. Will noticed one idiot still standing paralyzed with fear. The halfling grabbed him by the belt and pulled him down.

Alas, it didn’t help. The black had opted for magic that barricades didn’t hinder, at least if the spellcaster had the high ground and the fortifications were open at the top. Dorn’s vision blurred, and he felt faint. But only for a second, and the effect lost its grip on him.

Others were less fortunate.

“I’m blind!” wailed Ailon Finch.

Dorn peered over the top of the barricade just in time to see the dragon launch itself into the air. Having blinded its foes, or many of them, at any rate, it likely meant to plunge into their midst and slaughter them with tooth and claw. It wouldn’t waste any more sorcery, or another blast of corrosive breath, on men it had already incapacitated.

“If you can’t see,” Dorn bellowed, “run!”

The gods only knew how sightless men were supposed to manage that, but there was nothing more he could do for them. He barely had time to snatch up the new hand-and-a-half sword he’d commandeered from the watch’s little armory. It was a lackluster weapon compared to the enchanted blade he’d lost to the ooze drake, out there was nothing to be done about that either.

The black wyrm crashed down in the midst of its adversaries’ defenses, its pounding wings and lashing tail scattering

the component parts in an instant. Men screamed, crushed and impaled beneath its talons. Up close, like the ooze drake, the black gave off a vapor that burned the eyes and nose, and Dorn had no potion to shield him from the worst of the discomfort. Bearing it as best he could, he hacked at the dragon’s ribs then, when it spun toward him, came on guard in his usual manner, iron limbs forward.

The black struck. He leaped backward, just out of range, and clawed furrows across its snout. It hissed and raked at him with its right forefoot. Horribly, it had the still-living Ailon Finch jammed on the talons of the left one. The wretch shrieked every time the reptile took a scuttling step.

Dorn didn’t dodge quickly enough. The strike shredded his brigandine but failed to breach or even scratch the iron underneath. It slammed the wind out of him, though, and flung him reeling backward. The dragon’s jaws surged forward, reaching to snap his head from his shoulders. The fangs might not penetrate the metal armoring the left side of his neck, but they’d have no difficulty cutting everything else.

He struggled to recover his balance, got his feet planted, and swung the sword with all his strength if little skill. The blade sheared deep into the wyrm’s lower jaw. The pain made it recoil, and Will was underneath it, thrusting his own newly acquired short sword repeatedly into its chest. It screamed and went into convulsions, thrashing and rolling, shaking the earth, crushing crippled and dying men.

It nearly flattened Will, too, before he scrambled clear. “We won!” the halfling gasped

Dorn supposed they had. Yet the judgment seemed a mockery, an obscenity, for the dead lay everywhere. There was, however, neither time to mourn them nor berate himself for leading them to their doom. He glared at the survivors who were still fit to fight.

“Form a column,” he said. “This wyrm’s finished. Now we have to find the next.”

They stared back at him as if he was insane.

“Surely,” one of them quavered, “we’ve done enough”

“While we were killing this drake, the rest of them entered the town. Some of your women, children, and old folk are still there, or so close it makes no difference. We have to buy them more time to get clear.”

A man with a pox-scarred face shook his head and grumbled, “Not me, metal man. I’m done”

He turned and ran toward the edge of the swamp. Two others followed, leaving half a dozen. Dorn supposed he ought to be grateful that any of them were still brave—or foolish—enough to remain.

Will gave them a grin and said, “Thanks be to Brandobaris! Now that we’re rid of the weak and gutless, the rest of us can really have some fun”

With the halfling ranging ahead, the company skulked through streets reverberating to a cacophony of roaring, screaming, and crashing. Dorn felt alert—he was so tense it could scarcely be otherwise—but under the frazzled tautness lay grinding fatigue. How many more battles would he have to fight? How many more wyrms were there? He’d made out four separate dragon’s voices screeching across the Flooded Forest, but there could be even more. A lot more.

He told himself to forget such questions, to concentrate on meeting the requirements of one moment at a time. He’d fight the cursed drakes as he came to them, and if he died doing it, well, what did it matter? It was how he’d always expected to perish.

The sounds of destruction and terror grew louder. Will peeked around the next corner then raised his hand signaling a halt. He crept back to join his human comrades, who clustered around to hear what the halfling had to say.

“Another black,” he whispered, “bigger and older than the last.” Which meant even more powerful. “It’s hunkered down outside a temple of Tyr. From the sound of it, some fools tried to hole up inside instead of running away like we told them.”

“Has the wyrm broken through the wall?” asked Dorn.

“No. Maybe the priest said a prayer to hold it back for a moment.”

Dorn turned to his militiamen and said, “We’re going to sneak up on the thing and do our level best to be quiet. It doesn’t matter that it can’t see us around the corner or that the folk inside the shrine are making a racket. The drake could still hear us if we’re not careful. When we get up there, we’ll spread out so it can’t target us all at once, then start shooting”

“Our arrows didn’t kill the last one,” a man armed with a crossbow and a boar spear said.

“They softened it up,” Dorn replied, “and that’s usually what it takes. It’s hard to slay a wyrm the way you’d kill a man with one solid stroke to a vital spot. You have to chip away at them.”

“But you can kill them,” said Will, brushing one of his lovelocks away from his eye. As you lads ought to know, since you’ve done it once already. So, shall we go bag another?”

The militiamen’s eyes were wide with fear, out the cowards had either perished or fled already, and those who remained muttered their assent. The hunters led them creeping forward.

When Dorn peered around the corner, he winced. The black was even bigger than he’d expected, so huge it filled the street like a stopper in a drain. He tried to find a shred of comfort in the thought that its size made it virtually impossible for it to take flight swiftly from its present position. The surrounding walls would prevent it from spreading its wings.

The skull-faced wyrm lifted its foreleg and batted at the face of the temple, an unassuming structure built of logs chinked with mud, with the god of justice’s scales-and-warhammer emblem painted on the door. The wall shattered.

“Go!” said Dorn.

He and his comrades scrambled forth, formed a ragged line, and as fast as they were able, started shooting at the behemoth.

The skull dragon rounded on them, and the darkness deepened around it, cloaking it in murk to spoil their aim. Fortunately, Will was ready for that particular ploy. He whirled his sling and hurled a stone Pavel had enchanted for him, a pellet shining as bright as a tiny sun.

The missile landed at the reptile’s feet, where its radiance countered the unnatural gloom.

The black glared, however, and a second obscuring haze rose between it and its attackers. For a second, Dorn imagined it was simply more conjured darkness. Then he heard the buzz and felt the first stab of pain, as a swarm of stinging flies enveloped his little band.

Once engulfed, Dorn could scarcely think for the relentless harassment and could see no farther than his arm could reach. As he stumbled forward to escape the cloud, he was certain the dragon was poised to deliver a follow-up attack to whoever emerged.

Sure enough, the instant he, Will, and a couple of others blundered into the clear, the black hissed and snarled an incantation. On the final word, the surface of the dirt street convulsed, crumbling away beneath Dorn’s feet and shooting up before him, plunging him and his comrades into a steep-walled trench. Long neck arcing, the dragon peered over the top of it. The half-golem could tell from the black’s attitude that it was about to spit acid, and floundering in the loose earth at the bottom of the hole, its targets would find it all but impossible to dodge.

Somewhere up above, a soprano voice sang. The sound was clear and sweet, utterly unlike the skull drake’s rumbling, sibilant conjuration. Yet Dorn sensed that it too was spellcasting, and when the black spread its jaws wide, nothing jetted out. It simply made a retching sound, as if the corrosive spew had caught in its gullet.

Its head spun around, clearly seeking the impudent soul who’d robbed it of one of its greatest weapons. The other sang a lilting arpeggio, and a barrage of snowballs streaked up and battered the black dragon. It seemed too puny an attack to affect such a horror, but the wyrm roared, stung or perhaps simply even angrier than before.

Dorn and Will sent an arrow and a stone hurtling up out of the pit. They each hit the dragon, but probably fortunately, failed to draw its attention back to themselves. It wrenched itself around, its tail sweeping across the top of the ditch and spilling loose dirt over their heads. Then they couldn’t see it anymore.

“Up!” said Dorn, and he and his comrades started climbing the side of the pit.

Will, his burglar’s skills standing him in good stead, reached the top in advance of the others. Dorn crawled out second. His iron claws had proved useful for scooping handholds.

He scrambled to his feet and peered down the street. Forked tongue flicking in and out, the dragon was casting about, twisting this way and that, seemingly still seeking the spellcaster who’d attacked it. By some chance, Dorn saw her instantly. It was Kara, crouching low inside the window of a post-and-beam house.

Uselessly, Dorn suspected. If he’d spotted her, the wyrm likely had, too. It was simply making a show of searching while it eased into striking range, at which point it would try to pounce and take her by surprise. He opened his mouth to shout a warning out was too late. The black dragon pivoted and hurled itself against the facade of the house. The impact smashed the wall and brought a goodly portion of the roof tumbling down. Kara vanished, buried in clattering rubble. The reptile scrabbled at the wreckage.

Dorn readied his sword and dashed forward, bellowing to draw the dragon away. Will charged, too, half-pausing every few strides to sling another rock.

The wyrm wheeled and sprang to meet them. No one could simply stand and receive that charge. The creature’s momentum would bull him over. But as Dorn had already noted, the black was so huge, it virtually filled the street. He scarcely had anyplace to dodge to. He flattened himself

against a wall then flailed at the dragon, first a backhand blow with the knuckle spikes, then a cut from the bastard sword. Meanwhile, Will dived and rolled past its stamping forefeet and under it belly, reared up, and thrust his blade in.

The dragon spun around toward Dorn. It didn’t seem fair that something so gigantic could turn so fast in such close quarters, but almost as nimble and flexible as a serpent, it managed. Its jaws snapped at him, and he met them with iron and steel.

He managed to cut it three times, while arrows and crossbow bolts slammed into its scales. A couple even penetrated instead of glancing off. The militiamen were still fighting, albeit from a distance. He didn’t blame them for that. Given a choice, he wouldn’t have closed with the leviathan, either.

It bit at him, and he sidestepped, then sensed the attack was a feint. He tried to avoid the true attack, but it was hopeless. He’d already dodged right into it. The wyrm reached around the metal part of him to slash at the vulnerable flesh behind. Its talons jerked him to his knees before ripping free. It didn’t hurt, not yet, but he knew the drake had cut him deep.

Possibly so deep that he had only a few heartbeats left before he lost the ability to fight. So he’d better make them count. No longer bothering to shield himself, gripping his blade with both hands, he threw himself forward in an all-out attack. Maybe the dragon didn’t expect such savagery from someone it had just mauled, for it failed to snatch its head back quickly enough, and the hand-and-a-half sword bit deep into its neck.

The wyrm’s eyes opened very wide. Then its legs slowly gave way, laying it down with a sort of ponderous softness. His strength slipping away, Dorn collapsed alongside it.

Will scurried up to him. Gritting his jaw with pain, the halfling cradled what was usually his sword arm against his chest but still carried his blade in his off hand. The weapon was bloody from point to guard.

Bruised and filthy yet still lovely, Kara limped along behind the small hunter. A poniard made of crimson flame burned in her hand. Evidently she’d dragged herself clear of the half-demolished house and resumed attacking the dragon with her magic.

Will crouched over Dorn, inspected his wounds, then awkwardly uncorked and held a flask of healing elixir to his lips. The half-golem gulped the bitter, lukewarm liquid down. He didn’t feel the surge of renewed vitality he sometimes did, but presumed the stuff was doing him some good.