Twilight of the Dragons (21 page)

V
olak's wall
of fire screamed towards the Iron Wolves, but fell short by inches, the heat scorching eyebrows and fringes of the shocked heroes who lifted arms to protect their faces. Flames scorched the stone. Volak dropped and twisted, accelerating down the street, demolishing two chimneys into a shower of bricks… and then was gone.

“A warning shot?” rumbled Narnok, voice deep, breathing quickly. “She'll be back, and back quick.”

“We
know
that, donkey dick,” snapped Trista. “Just be fucking ready!”

“I'll be ready!” snarled Narnok, as Volak erupted from the centre of the building before them, stones and bricks smashed up and outwards in arcing trajectories, and she hung there before the tower, screaming, as fire blasted out once more, and the Iron Wolves stared at her in horror before suddenly hitting the ground hard and fast as fire washed over their heads and illuminated the night sky and the summit of the Spear Guard Tower and the very world…

Volak's great wings flapped, gave a
boom,
and she banked, and was gone, accelerating down through the fog of her own creation, to disappear amidst the city chaos.

Narnok climbed to his feet. “It's all right!” he said. “I'm all right!”

“She was
right in front of you!
” yelled Dek. “All you had to do was pull the fucking triggers!”

“Hey!” Narnok brushed some soot from his shirt. “She got me by surprise, all right? I can't be mister-bloody-everywhere-vision, can I?”

Dek scowled. “You're joking, right?”

“Guys! She's coming back!” hissed Trista.

“How can you tell?”

Tris pointed. The smoky haze was shifting, as her flight beneath the smoke dragged patterns in her wake, like a shark in the ocean, creating shapes above.

Volak rose from the smoke, and Narnok screamed, and pulled the trigger on the massive crossbow. A massive quarrel sang, flashing through the night air, to skim Volak's wing as she banked, rapidly, a strangled scream erupting from her dark jaws. Although it didn't penetrate, the quarrel sheared free a line of scales which fluttered like errant iron butterflies for a moment, before tumbling beneath the smoke. Black blood spurted out.

And in a flash, she was gone.

“You see that?” roared Narnok.

Kareem slapped him, grinning. “You cut her up!” he boomed.

“Don't get slack,” rumbled Dek. “She's hurting now; she's pissed. She'll be back fast, mark my words. We need to be ready!”

And Dek was right. She came back through the centre of the demolished building, and her eyes were acid, and she breathed, flames flowering like nothing the Iron Wolves had ever witnessed, washing over the tower top and setting fire to the Decimator's huge stock. The roar seemed to go on and on, and it was like the end of the world.

“No!” wailed Mola, lying low, hands over his head, back seared as flames scorched above him. The Decimator's wood burned, and the cups burned, and heavy lead balls dropped to the stone flags with six long, slow thuds.

The fire stopped.

The silence was deafening.

And Volak was gone, leaving a destroyed siege machine in her fiery wake.

L
ong minutes had passed
. The stone tower summit had cooled, but still they could smell scorched stone, burned metal, smoke.

“It's getting cooler,” said Kareem, and lifted his nose to a lulling chilled breeze.

The others stared at him, and glanced about.

“Seems fine to me,” said Dek, looking up at the moon and the stars. “See? All our favourite constellations.”

“No. There's a storm coming,” said Trista.

They looked to the west, and huge clouds towered over one another, tumbling as they fell forward, heading east towards the humbled city of Vagan.

“That's good, right?” said Dek.

“Why good?” asked Trista, with a tight smile.

“The dragon… if it's still alive… well, the storm will mask us; make everything harder to see…”

“Or maybe it uses scent? The scent of our blood? Or sound? Or heat? Dek, maybe it has better night vision than we do?”

Dek scowled. “Fuck me, Trista, you're ever the optimist, right?”

They waited, watching the distant storm roll in. The dragon no longer emerged; she had vanished. Deep down in the city, fires burned below the smoky fog, illuminating from beneath. It was spooky. Otherworldly.

“That's creepy,” said Narnok.

“Worse than your face?” said Dek, with a grin.

“Yeah. Thanks for that, you fucking cuckold.”

The tumbling clouds were blacker than black. Lightning cracked through them, splitting the sky like a ruptured insect egg.

Time rolled back, languorous, as below, the city appeared to sleep.

“Do you think we killed the dragon?” said Narnok, at last.

Trista stared at him. “Do you?”

“We winged it.”

“We might have hurt it. But remember the factory?”

“That was oil. The bitch is fireproof – we learned that one today. But this was steel. Cold, hard steel.”

“We didn't kill it,” said Mola, sombrely. “It'd take more than that. Much more.”

A cold wind blew, chilling them. And now they could hear the rain, as the clouds rolled in and gradually covered the moon and stars. Darkness fell, and the world was lit only by the burning fires below.

“And I know that we are lost, and none can help us now,” intoned Kareem.

Dek nudged Narnok. “Happy little fucker, ain't he?”

“Leave him alone. I know how he feels.”

Lightning broke the sky into triangular segments, thunder rumbled, and the storm came crashing in over Vagan. As the lightning vanished, crackling, so it left blue after-images tattooed against their brains.

Now, they heard the patter of rainfall, which seemed gentle at first. But it was not gentle. It became steadily more violent, slamming towards them in smashing diagonal sheets, and then, with a surge, washed over the Iron Wolves like a great flood, drenching them instantly.

“Are we having fun yet?” smiled Trista, grimly.

“Just keep an eye out for the wyrm,” said Dek, both hands on the massive crossbow. “When she comes in, she'll come in fast. I guarantee it. She's biding her time. Waiting for us to drop our guard. I reckon I know how she thinks.”

“Yeah, right,” scoffed Narnok. “How could you possibly have any clue how a fucking dragon thinks? She's probably a million years old and used to eating us humans for breakfast.”

Dek shrugged. “I've just… been watching her. I understand her. She has a natural cunning.”

“Yeah. I'll give you that one,” said Narnok, and the others nodded, wiping rain from their eyes.

The rain pounded Vagan, and gradually began to erode the smoke. More thunder rumbled, and lightning cracked out, demolishing the spire of a church in a massive blast of sparks and fire. Roof slates and stones tumbled, bouncing down the flanks of the structure. The Iron Wolves watched with wide eyes, taking deep breaths, then scanning the horizon again.

“As if Vagan ain't got enough problems,” said Narnok, “without Mother Nature getting in on the act.”

“There's another cruel bitch, if ever I've seen one,” said Kareem, wiping a sheen of water from his forehead. He gave a twisted smile, as droplets pattered from his massive bushy beard, now a glossy black pelt. His dark eyes gleamed.

“At least she's neutral in her hate and murder. She kills good and evil indiscriminately,” said Dek.

“I've got this great story about my dogs,” began Mola.

Everybody groaned. “Please,” said Dek, holding up his hand, his drenched sleeve flapping, “I love you like a brother, Mo. I'd kill for you, and I'd die for you. But I swear, one more story about those fucking flea-bitten mutts and I'll toss you from this very tower myself.”

“
Flea-bitten mutts
?” Mola whistled, and the huge beasts came out of the relative safety of the stairwell, and trotted to their master, growling at the other Iron Wolves as they passed. Mola fondled their shaggy pelts. In fact, they were barely dog; more between dog and wolf. “These bitches have saved my life on more than one occasion. They are family. My tribe.” He coughed, and seemed to be getting quite upset. Nobody could see his tears through the pounding rain. “They're the only family I have left.”

Trista moved over to him, but Duke growled. Mola rapped his knuckles on the beast's snout. Duke subsided. Trista stepped in close, and gave the stocky man a big, rain-soaked hug.

“We're your family as well, Mo. Don't forget that.”

“Yeah. I love you guys. But you're not the same as my dogs.”

“Really?” She moved back, hands still planted on his shoulders, face kind. “Explain?”

Mola looked up at the towering black storm clouds which now covered Vagan. The rain was still bouncing from his face, but he was so wet he no longer cared – you could only
get
so wet. Then he glanced off across the city. “People are people. They love, they hate, they fight, they fuck, they have babies, they disappoint one another, they stab each other in the back, they betray and steal and basically fuck one another over without a second thought. Men betray their wives, wives betray their husbands, best friends turn bad, work colleagues try their best to fuck over the others in a scramble to the top of the cockroach cockpile shit heap; it's all a barrel of cheap donkey shit. But dogs. No. No, no. Dogs are loving and kind and, most importantly, loyal. Once a dog has its master, or mistress, that dog is completely loyal. It'll kill for you. Die for you. Protect you over everything else. You can beat that dog with a stick, but it'll still come back. A dog's love is unconditional. It doesn't care whether you're human, dwarf, elf, what colour your skin is, what fucking religion you are. The dog loves the person. The person loves the image, the perception, the package. Change the package, and the deal is off. I knew this guy, had the most loving wife ever, but he got his legs cut off on the walls of Desekra. What did his loving wife do? Ran away with his best friend. Even tol' him, she tol' him she wasn't looking after no disabled. That's people, Tris. People can be real bad deep down inside.”

“And dogs can't be?” said Kareem, who'd put down a few rabid specimens in his time. “When dogs turn, they can turn real bad.” He said it gently; it was not a criticism.

“But not on their masters,” said Mola, smugly. “I know these things.”

Kareem opened his mouth to argue, but Trista gave a quick shake of her head. To Mola, dog was god and god was dog. And that didn't even take into consideration his dyslexia.

“I'm going to get more spears,” said Mola, face a frown, and disappeared with his hounds in tow into the depths and bowels of the tower.

The rest of the Iron Wolves stood for a while, in silence, scanning the city. Despite the fog clearing thanks to the torrential downpour, now the clouds had blocked out the moon and stars, and the city seemed even more gloomy and claustrophobic. Some fires had been extinguished, but miraculously, many still burned. These were now the single source of illumination through the entire vast network of streets and alleys. Dark days really had come again.

“Where is she?” muttered Dek, moving the siege crossbow around, as if taking aim. “Come on, you bitch.”

“She's biding her time,” said Narnok, matter-of-factly. “Either that, or we killed her.”

“We didn't kill her,” said Kareem, who was like a dog with a bone when an idea incepted.

“I reckon,” said Narnok, scratching his drenched, heavily scarred face, “and just listen, before you start putting me down, but I reckon there's a good chance we penetrated her armour, and she's either lying down there, bleeding to death, or fucked right off and away, because she knows she can't…”

There came a
whump
.

“…can't really…”

Another
whump
. The air seemed to shift and alter, as something blacker than the velvet darkness arose from the gloomy chasm.

“…conquer us, like.” Narnok turned, as another
whump
made him stagger back, blasted by the force of air from those great, outstretched wings, and Volak was there, big and black and evil. Thunder rumbled. The Iron Wolves stared at one another. Then in sudden panic Dek spun the huge siege crossbow around as Volak breathed in, her black eyes glinting, her lips drawn back over her fangs, fire rolling around her snout, and she prepared to murder with extreme prejudice…

Narnok paused at sentence end, mouth hanging open, like the biggest of village idiots.

Dek hissed.

Kareem drew back his spear…

And lightning crackled from the sky, a great actinic zig-zag, striking Volak with a terrific splash of bright white energy, a strike which split into hundreds of fingers of lightning, crackling through the wyrm's scales, through her limbs, through her body and snout, and spinning her around in a series of tight circles, flames bursting out along her body as she reared, wings folded, and suddenly plummeted to the hard cobbled street far below…

Dek, Narnok and Kareem sprinted forward, leaping up onto the slippery stone battlements. They peered down into the gloom.

“She's down there!” crowed Narnok, triumphantly.

“By the gods, I think it killed her!” grinned Kareem.

“She's all folded up, smouldering, lying still.”

“If only we had some big rocks to drop on her,” said Narnok, idly fingering a facial scar. He looked around at the others. “What?
What
?”

“Just want to make sure, eh?” said Dek, shaking his head.

“Aye, I've watched her get up too many bloody times! I'd feel a little bit better if we could drop some rocks on her evil twisted hide.”

Dek rubbed his chin, and sniffed the air. Again, thunder rumbled from the black, coalescing heavens. He could smell hot metal, scorched iron, cooked flesh. “I reckon that lightning did for her, good. Boff! The power of Mother Nature. So much for your fucking theory, eh Narnok?”