Death of the Dragon

15

“Tears of Chauntea!”Azoun swore. “Even if they raid so savagely and so unopposed as to strip the land bare, fair Cormyr’s northern reaches can’t feed this many goblins! Where are they all coming from?”

The grim, weary officers around him didn’t bother to answer. After hacking a bloody way through two walls of goblins already this day, the king’s army had crested another hill to find the rolling country ahead awash in hooting, chittering goblins. The little humanoids waved their banners tauntingly at the sight of the royal standard, but held their positions as if they were the claws of a well-disciplined foe, rather than charging in their usual wild flood. The way south, it seemed, was blocked by several thousand sharp and waiting goblin blades.

“Hold ranks!” a swordlord snapped, as some of the men ahead surged forward, armor clanking.

“To Talos with orders and ordered formations now!” a nobleman roared, raising his blade. “In at them, and slay-for Azoun and for me!”

Others took up the cry. “For Azoun and for me!”

The king watched them charge to their deaths with frustration and pleasure warring behind a tightly expressionless face. He couldn’t afford swift-tempered, disobedient idiots of nobles here in the field-or, for that matter, flourishing anywhere in the realm-but it did feel good to hear that battle cry, and see the excitement around him as men joined in, waving their blades but holding their positions under the watchful gazes of growling swordcaptains and cold-eyed lancelords.

“Let no true Cormyrean leave this height without orders to do so!” a swordlord roared, and Azoun doffed his helm to let the eyes he knew would be turning his way clearly see him nodding in agreement. He needed capable swords, not glory-seeking corpses. He also needed a way south to Suzail that would be swifter and less bloody than carving his way through all of these waiting goblins.

The war wizards had already agreed grimly that wild nursery tales notwithstanding, the army was much too large to teleport. Not even by draining all their magic items and trying a combined spell, even without ghazneths racing to pounce on any significant use of magic, could they guarantee to pluck more than a few hundred men south. Their best efforts, therefore, could only serve to scatter the army and even slay a few men with the roiling energies of the translocational magic. Even that was assuming nothing at all went wrong, and something would, they all knew. On battlefields, something always did.

There had to be another way. Even if he’d had time and men enough to march wide to the east, his Purple Dragons couldn’t outrun eager goblins, or avoid running into the barrier of the Wyvernwater. That left only the forest. It would be something of a shield against spying eyes and a deadly maze for both his men and any goblins who plunged into it in search of them.

Unless, of course, he had a guide as expert as the foresters who accompanied him on his rarer and rarer stag hunts. That meant finding Duskroon’s, or one of the other dozens of foresters’ cottages, along the edge of the forest. Feldon was a local man…

He turned to the lancelord standing nearest and said crisply, “Swordcaptain Feldon to me, at once!”

The man scurried to obey, and it seemed like the space of only two long, goblin-surveying breaths before Feldon’s familiar ragged mustache was bobbing before him. “Your Majesty?”

“Good Feldon,” he said, “I need the nearest royal forester of skill brought before me, well guarded and in a trice.”

The swordcaptain’s weathered face split in a broad smile. “Would the Warden of the King’s Forest do, my liege? He’s staying at Ilduiph’s stead, not three bow shots west.”

“With all his family? In the very teeth of all these goblins?”

Feldon’s smile disappeared. “Well the way of it’s like this, your majesty,” he muttered. “Lord Huntsilver and Goodman Ilduiph are both of the mind that the royal writ is a shield for all loyal men. If the goblins aren’t there by the king’s will…”

“Then before all the gods, the goblins just aren’t there,” Azoun completed the sentence calmly. “Or at least they dare not attack or despoil save by royal leave.”

Feldon nodded, and Azoun smiled slowly and said, “Fetch them both.” Before Feldon could more than open his mouth to reply, something occurred to the king. “Bid the warden bring his family. Let the ladies be ready to march-without two warrior-loads of jewels and finery each.”

As Warden, Maestoon Huntsilver saw to the state of all the game in the King’s Forest, and all of the royal foresters, too. He was one of the few Huntsilvers capable of doing the crown so useful a service as guiding the royal army through the heart of the forest. Moreover, he was one of the few who probably would want to.

There had been many marriages between the Huntsilvers and the Obarskyrs down the years, but there were Huntsilvers who’d probably laugh to see Azoun IV laid in his grave. Maestoon’s last surviving son, Cordryn, was one of those nobles exiled and disinherited for conspiring with Gaspar Cormaeril in his plot to seize the throne.

Maestoon himself, however-or so Vangerdahast had sworn, after a little covert magical spying-was genuinely ashamed of that, and anxious to return to the royal good graces. Soft-spoken and even effeminate, he was that rare thing: a forester who knew wildlife and how to encourage their breeding. He was also a courtier so skilled with his tongue and so watchful as to always say the right thing in any awkward situation at court.

Maestoon had at least two more troubles than the tendency of his sons to get themselves killed or mired in treason. He had a wife and a daughter.

His lady Elanna, much younger than her husband and a Dauntinghorn by birth, was an ash blonde of thin, sleek, devastating beauty whose dancing had been known to make watching men growl with lust-and who knew her powers only too well. She amused herself by toying with almost every noble she met, setting some against others and all to doing ridiculous tasks and pranks, purely in hopes of tasting her favors.

Maestoon’s daughter Shalanna was a very different bad apple. She played her own pranks, knowing just enough magic to be malicious and dangerous to those she dared to turn it against. That one was fat and sullen, resenting her mother for being beautiful and the war wizards for not making fat Shalanna the beauty she deserved to be, and all young noblemen for courting her for her riches and standing when she knew she disgusted them… and every one else, Azoun supposed, for seeing her as she truly was, both inside and out. Azoun didn’t know which she-viper was worse.

Half his kingdom was under the sway of folk worse than these-the kingdom he was fighting to preserve and would someday die fighting for. Yet it was the only realm he had, and his home, and Azoun knew he’d not trade it for another if his own queen and all the other women in it were Elannas and Shalannas.

Right now, he wished Maestoon joy of them, and hoped he’d not have their blood on his hands a few days from now. He’d hate to give that sort of cold reward to so good and loyal a man.

There came the warden now, smiling eagerly at his king and bustling in his haste to serve.

Azoun watched him come and drew in a deep breath. Yes, there were a lot of good and loyal men in Cormyr he’d not want to hand the cold reward of death to, in the days ahead.

And a few others who must be stone cold insane to want the Dragon Throne for themselves.