The White Dragon (15 page)

Eric thought at first that the Akun cleric would attack him with this
Kingmaker
blade, but he held it in such a manner that was non-threatening. Eric did as requested and drew his own blade, holding it in front of him.

Dour continued to scowl and walked over to the edge of the room where a mass of rock and stone stuck out in a block pattern from the wall where it acted as a supporting pillar. It was massive and made from solid rock and mortar to hold the stones firmly together.

“Now what?” Eric asked.

“Hit the wall point-first,” Dour instructed him.

“You want me to stab the rock wall with my sword?” Eric asked.

Dour rolled his eyes. “Yes, you can wield a blade, can you not?”

Eric returned the nasty look and narrowed his own eyes to boot. Taking his blade, he thrust it point-first with the expected result. It hit and jarred his arm as the tip barely scratched the rock face. “So what?” Eric said.

“Now do the same with this.” Dour offered the magical blade again.

Eric took it after sheathing his own sword and, preparing for a similar result, he plunged the magical sword, point first, into the rock pillar. It sank almost to the hilt and caused Eric to step forward, as he wasn’t prepared for the blade to cleave the rock as if it were butter. “Agon help me,” Eric said, surprise and awe in his voice.

“Agon is weak. It’s blasphemy to invoke her name in the Father’s temple,” Dour said.

Eric pulled the blade back out, inspecting it. The blade showed no damage, and it still gleamed in the candlelight. Stepping toward the pillar, Eric used his free hand to feel the rock where he had penetrated it with steel. There was a slit the size of the blade directly on the face of the stone.

“Now you know,” Dour said, turning and walking back to the table where the sheath lay. “Any true warrior worthy of
Kingmaker
would have known its power. It would have been felt immediately upon taking its hilt.”

Eric didn’t like being lectured like a school child. “Well, I thrust it into the rock wall and still didn’t feel anything special about the blade.”

Dour didn’t hesitate. “Like I said . . . worthy.”

“You made your point,” Eric conceded.

“Did I?” Dour asked, offering Eric the finely crafted leather sheath for the blade. “Your small brain must understand that dragon scales can’t stop
Kingmaker
any more than that stone pillar.”

Eric nodded. Taking the sheath and placing the tip of the magical blade into its opening, he finished storing the sword and tucked it under his arm. “I understand.”

“Good,” Dour said. “Now I’ll share something interesting with you, knowing that you’ll tell your Balarian assassin that you hired.”

Eric understood the implication of the cleric. He thought the Balarian was working directly for him, though that was the furthest from the truth. “I’ll be sure to pass on whatever you share.”

“For some reason,” Dour began, “one of my clients not only overpaid for the Kesh staff, but threw in a rather nice incentive for our temple to ensure that you received this blade—”

Eric interrupted. “What do you mean overpaid?”

“You don’t think a Kesh staff, precious and expensive as it is, is worth as much as
Kingmaker
here, do you?”

Eric had no idea what a Kesh staff was worth, much less some ancient, magical blade. He could only shrug and play along as if he knew something. “Of course not,” he lied.

“Someone wanted you to have this blade, and for a specific reason as well,” Dour said, bringing a hand up to his chin and stroking it in contemplation.

“It’s your client. Don’t you know who this someone is?” Eric asked, not minding a chance to learn something about the former sword’s owner.

“Of course not,” Dour explained. “My clients use surrogates for barters. They would never reveal themselves, but . . .”

Eric didn’t care; he was all but ready to jump on Dour’s bait. “But what?”

Dour seemed to enjoy leading the mercenary on. “Only a Kesh wizard could offer something as rare as
Kingmaker
.”

“You think a Kesh magic-user owned this blade?” Eric asked, using the common and somewhat derogatory term for a Kesh wizard. It was purely by habit, being an Ulathan, and the slight could have been fatal if given in different company.

Dour ignored the slight. “Do you know the number-one cause of death for a Kesh wizard?”

Eric thought for a moment, trying to think what, if anything, caused the death of Kesh wizards and mages. He drew a blank. “Tell me.”

“Other Kesh wizards,” Dour said, staring at Eric.

Eric immediately thought to his own battle with a Kesh wizard—well, battle if one could call stabbing a man in the back a battle. “Interesting,” was all that Eric could muster.

“Don’t play a fool with me, mercenary,” Dour began, turning to grab the cloak and throwing it at Eric, who caught it and started to wrap the sheathed sword in it. “For you to secure a Kesh staff and critir, you had to have killed a wizard, at least. What you obviously don’t realize is that you angered half of all of Kesh’s wizards and pleased the other half.”

Eric finished wrapping the sword and tucked it back under his arm. “Half?”

“Yes,” Dour said. “It’s not the half that you pleased that you need to worry about. Instead it’s the half that you angered. Now did the Balarian tell you the rules of the hunt?”

Eric wondered if the use of the word hunt had anything to do with his own mercenary band. “What rules?” he asked.

“The twin sisters have risen by now.” The cleric referred to Tira and Sara, the moons of Agon that rose a couple of hours after dusk and set about the same amount of time before dawn. “When they set, you are fair game.”

“That’s only a few hours from now,” Eric protested.

Dour grinned evilly. “Quite correct, mercenary. Now I’m still trying to figure out if a wizard wanted you to have this blade for some specific purpose, or simply overbid knowing that he would kill you shortly thereafter and retrieve his payment.”

“He can do that?”

“Yes, he can,” Dour said, motioning to the door with his head. “You may wield
Kingmaker
for a few short hours. Best to make the most of them before you die.”

The trip to Moartown was uneventful. Rosterman packed their belongings and shuffled back to oversee the inn and tavern that once recently belonged to Gabby. She hoped that Boris would treat her staff with at least a modicum of respect, all things considered.  Part of her would miss it and part of her would not. She struggled with both parts at this particular moment.

When they arrived they immediately unpacked and stored their belongings in the modest cabin that Lucius owned. There was only one spare room and Alexi was used to staying in her own quarters. She graciously declined Lucius’ offer to put her up in his own room while he slept in the simple common room on a sofa type piece of furniture. Instead they headed to one of the nicer inns in town to secure her a room. It was while they were there that the town’s alarm bell rang, alerting them of danger.

“What in the Nine could that be?” Gabby asked, walking from the counter outside into the main street that served Moartown. Both Lucius and Alexi followed her.

The town was built at the base of the Western spur of the Felsics, far enough down the Highstone Pass so that the snow would melt and the ground around it, though rocky and steep in places, would thaw and turn green as mountain grasses grew and high elevation shrubs flowered for the warmer summer months.

The town bell had been moved to the keep once Duke Uthor had commissioned it a couple of decades earlier. The soldiers stationed there were looking east towards the high peaks and snow covered caps of the immense mountain chain that circled several realms in the central part of Agon’s main continent. It rang continuously as archers readied themselves and soldiers ran across the keeps parapets.

People in the street were pointing in the same direction. As the companions looked up to see what the object of their attention was, they saw far away small, gleaming white specks that rolled down the mountainside far above, at a high rate of speed. Along with the white specks were other white animals, hard to spot at first with their white fur, but distinguishable to even a layman’s eyes, white, winter wolves.

“Run,” someone yelled.

“To the castle,” another exclaimed.

The town started to empty, but the result was becoming more and more obvious to anyone paying attention. Perhaps only half the town would reach the relative safety of the keep’s high stone walls before the approaching army of white reached them. Gabby, Alexi and Lucius were on the north side of town and for sure weren’t going to reach the keep which stood a good hundred yards to the south of the town, a degree of separation done by design at the time. It probably never occurred to the designers so many years ago that an approaching army could surprise the town that quickly.

But there was something more that caught their attention, something that brought true panic to the inhabitants of Moartown. High above, in flight over the approaching white army, was white death itself, a white dragon.

The creature floated lazily in the air, not outpacing the army below it. Instead, it banked first one way, then another, keeping pace with the wolves and ice creatures approaching below at an alarming rate of speed. The dragon almost looked like an albino, white scales and pink flesh at tender points of its body, were easily visible despite the distance involved. The horns on its head were flaired back in an aerodynamic posture and its spiked tail swayed in the wind as if floating along after its immense body. It almost seemed magical to see something that massive flying in the air, but the occasional flapping of its huge wings indicated that it indeed propelled itself through the brisk mountain air.

“Is that what I think it is?” Gabby asked, pointing and bringing a hand up to her eyes to shade them from the rising sun behind the white dragon.

“It sure looks like a dragon,” Lucius said. “This should vindicate Eric for sure.”

“If there are any survivors to report this fact and allow for his vindication,” The Fist said, also shading her eyes with one hand and drawing her sword in the other.

Gabby looked at her, “You’re not very optimistic, are you?”

Alexi returned the gaze, “Not when a dragon is involved.”

The three stood in the street while people ran every which way, bumping them and occasionally falling down as one of them ran headlong into the large holy warrior. Most of the townspeople that were late in running towards the keep realized that they wouldn’t make it and a separation in the stream of people occurred as those in front took their chances in a race for their lives while the rest ran back towards town.

“We need to do something,” Lucius said, looking around at their exposed position.

This brought both women to action. Looking around at the small town, there was one intersection where four large inns were clustered nearby. Most of the buildings were only one or two stories in height, but this one location had three and four stories as the inns had built rooms above their taverns as they grew.

“Over here,” Alexi ordered, running towards the buildings a few dozen yards to their south.

Lucius and Gabby followed and when they arrived, The Fist started to look for something. “What is it?” Gabby asked.

“We need to barricade the streets,” She said, motioning to the four entrances to the boxy type intersection.

“That’s starting to look like a trap,” Lucius said, looking around at the close quarters of their location and realizing he took it for granted that the town was primarily a north-south structure as it was built on the same narrow ridgeline that the trade road was.

Alexi didn’t hesitate. Grabbing the first people she saw, she started to order them to grab barrels, beds and anything else that they could either drag or drop into the streets.

Several people understood immediately what she wanted to do and a pair of men headed for the lone stable at the north end of town to bring up a few carts and wagons that were stored there from a travelling caravan. Three small carts already in the vicinity were moved to the east road and the north and south roads, leaving the west street open.

Several travelers were still in the inns around them and they started to push furniture out the windows, yelling to others to stand clear. Two innkeepers protested at first, then understood this wasn’t something they were likely to survive and started heaving their own property into the open as well.

“It’s not going to be enough,” Gabby said, running to the south end and waving the retreating townspeople into the barricaded section of the road.

“Do we have any choice?” her father asked, also running to help carry a dresser that had cart wheeled out of place.

“Everyone who can wield a bow, head to those two rooftops,” Alexi ordered, pointing to the eastern most buildings. Several men and a few women with bows ran into the buildings while a large group of the townspeople started to congregate in the middle of the street around the Fist of Astor. She stood there in her shiny plate mail, arm bracers gleaming in the morning light, broadsword in one hand, pointing here and there, commanding the town’s resources. Everyone wanted to be near her at this particular moment and Gabby looked at the holy warrior woman in awe. She was seeing a Fist of Astor in full action, fearless and formidable. The historian kept his company well.

Several armed guards from one of the two caravans in town split up at Alexi’s orders and manned the main road, both north and south ends. They pulled people into the quickly rising barricades as they ran, encouraging those who were lagging. Now though they could not see clearly the approach of their attackers, the sounds of howling, baying and growling was becoming louder and louder at an alarming rate. Several people who were still running from the edge of town, where they would have a good view of the approaching army, started to scream, a clear indication that their time was almost up.

“Arm yourselves,” The Fist of Astor ordered and she walked to the eastern barricade and scrambled to the top, bracing herself on the rickety mish mash of a wagon, furniture, tables, chairs, chests, barrels, mattresses, bedding, clothes and anything else imaginable.

The firm orders and calm exhibited by the holy warrior spurred the townspeople into action, every able bodied person that could was drawing, or preparing, a weapon of some kind. Even those who had no proper weapon were readying broomsticks, sharp pieces of broken wood or simple utensil knives.

Lucius walked over to Gabby who had her dual short swords drawn and readied as well. “I didn’t think our time would be this short,” he said, embracing her. His sword was still sheathed and his countenance indicated pessimism and defeat.

Gabby returned his embrace, but frowned at him when they separated to face one another. “Father, I’ve not known you to be this depressed before.”

“It’s alright, daughter. I’ve lost your mother and now I fear I’ll lose you. My only comfort is in the fact that I will die with you.”

Gabby took a moment to glance at Alexi, standing like a beacon of hope on top of the barricade, awaiting her fate with dignity and honor. “You stay close to me father, we’re not done yet.”

Lucius nodded, smiling at her, but he said nothing.

Askia soared behind his mistress, the great white dragon slightly below and in front of him. With a simple motion of her head, she commanded him to close the distance between them. The wyvern tucked its wings in slightly, increasing its speed as it dived downward and forward until he pulled up alongside of her.

“Your orders, my mistress?”

Artika scanned the human settlement below her. It appeared they built a town of some sort high against the mountains, along with one of their favored fortifications made of stone. This humored her greatly, as she often loved freezing the rock with her breath and smashing the fragile remains with her spiked tail. The humans did not understand basic physics with regards to thermal dynamics of various materials. If they did, they would know that their puny efforts to protect themselves were futile.

“I will lead the assault on their stone structure. You take lead on the wooden ones.”

“As you wish, Lady Frost,” Askia said, banking to his right and swooping down above the many wolves and ice devils that were approaching the small town.

The wyvern didn’t notice that he was licking his fangs as he flew.

“So it’s true,” Justiciar Corwin said from the parapet above the main gates of the small keep. His trusted aide, Titus, stood there, along with the town magistrate, who had arrived only moments earlier to discuss several issues.