Death of the Dragon

20

Alusair let her arm fall and nodded in grim satisfaction as the banner beside her dipped for the last signal.

Obediently, at the head of the valley, a banner dipped in answer.

“Positions,” Alusair murmured almost absently, her eyes on that distant height.

Men moved to their bows and the bristling “flowers” of arrows standing ready in the turf, the few hopeless shots taking up bills and pikes behind the archers. They’d step forward only when the charging foe were mere paces away.

It seemed to take only a few quick breaths before the first smoke drifted up. Alusair smiled grimly.

“Welcome to our cookfires, you eaters of men,” she said aloud, reaching for her own bow. It shouldn’t take long now.

Orcs had no more love of smoke than men and could no more resist ready food and water. Alusair’s men had driven the few stray sheep they’d found down to the ponds in this valley the day before, setting the perfect lure.

Like stupid beasts the orcs had plunged down upon the prize. They even fought among themselves over who’d get mutton for evenfeast. They were down there now, and Alusair had made ready their next meal: massed volleys of arrows, right down their throats.

Smoke was rising in dark clouds now, the breezes driving it right down the valley.

“Waste no shafts,” Alusair murmured, repeating the order she’d given rather more forcefully some time ago. “Fire only at tuskers you can see.”

There came a snarling out of the smoke, then its cause.

Orcs were running hard, some with unlaced armor bouncing askew, but all with weapons out and ready. Red eyes glittered with rage and smoke-smarting pain, seeing the doom to come and knowing there was no way to escape it.

All around Alusair bows twanged and death hummed. The Steel Princess chose a target, sighted, and let fly. She plucked up another shaft from the sheaf standing ready even before her victim threw up its hands to claw at the air, her shaft standing out of its throat, and fell over on its side in the dust. It rolled under the running feet of orcs who stumbled and fell, but kept coming-only to sprout swift thickets of arrows and fall in twisting spasms of pain.

A barricade of writhing orc bodies was growing across the mouth of the valley. The slaughter was as impressive as it was swift. Unless they dared to tarry among the vultures for other orcs to kill while they tore free their shafts to use again, Alusair’s warriors would have very few arrows left to loose at later foes. Not that arrows were much use against the dragon she expected at any moment. Lord Mage Stormshoulder had hazarded a spell to warn her of what it had done to her father’s army, and she had seen it winging across the horizon not long after setting this trap.

As if that grim thought had been a signal, a dark and sinuous shape appeared over the hills on the horizon. Alusair cursed and cried out, “Into the trees! Break off battle and run!”

Some did not hear her through the screams and whistling of arrows and the clang of blades rising from the few places where orcs had managed to stagger through the storm of shafts and reach the waiting line of Cormyrean pikemen, but a horn echoed her order, and the warriors of the Forest Kingdom started to move.

That was when Alusair saw the first dark line of orcs stream over a nearby hilltop, then more, over the next hilltop. Gods, but there must be a thousand thousand of them!

“Move, gods damn you!” she raged, waving her blade. The dragon was growing in size with almost breathtaking speed.

It was going to catch her army on the hillside well shy of the trees. They were right in the open, as helpless as the sheep she’d left for the orcs.

Alusair saw some of her swordsmen scrambling in among the arrow-bristling heaps of orc bodies across the mouth of the valley, and others staggering as they gasped for air in their haste. She saw a few turn and ready their pikes or bows in vain but valiant defiance as the dragon’s dark shadow swept down.

A shadow that was abruptly banished by fire-a long, blinding torrent of flame, unhampered by trees or rock barriers or a dragon harried by spells or wounding weapons-a deluge of searing flame that blackened and laid bare half the hillside, and gave the men on it no chance to even scream.

Alusair could have sworn that the roaring sound coming out of the dragon as it swept past, its belly low enough for her to touch if she’d leaped high, was mocking laughter.

Dark red death swooped up into the sky, wheeled, and came down again. Alusair raised a blade she knew was useless and watched the dragon come.

It spread its huge wings above and behind itself like two huge sails that cupped the air and slowed its racing bulk. Alusair heard the air rippling over them with its own roar in the instant before the dragon pounced.

It snatched up two huge clawfuls of men in its talons and squeezed, reducing the men to bloody bonelessness even as it crashed down on vainly running warriors and rolled, crushing hundreds more with its great weight and flailing, smashing wings. It bit at men as it rolled playfully, twisting to and fro on its back like a gigantic dog. Alusair snarled at it in futility, never slowing her race for the trees.

She half expected the great red dragon to rear upright and start plucking up clawfuls of trees like a petulant child tearing up flowers from a garden. Instead it roared out its triumph in a wordless bellow that rang back from the hilltops and was echoed by orc throats on all sides, before it sprang into the air and flew away, looping and wheeling in the air almost as if it was taunting the surviving humans below.

Alusair crashed into a tree with bruising force, reeled away, and shook her head to clear it of images of horses and their riders bitten in two with casual cruelty and great talons tearing men to bloody shreds of meat.

In the space of a few breaths victory had become disastrous defeat. With a vicious snarling the foremost orcs reached the trees, raising their blades. Alusair shouted to rally her men and moved to meet them almost eagerly. To have a foe she could reach and smite and have any hope of felling was suddenly a wonderful thing.

Snarling, tusked mouths screamed as her blade bit down, and growling orcs were suddenly all around her, black blades singing out. She ducked and hacked and sprang, rolling and twisting like a young girl at play, alone among her foes. Black blades crashed together, skirling past her ear, and one bit sudden fire along her flank, cleaving armor with the force of its strike.

Cormyrean swordsmen were hacking their way to meet her, crying her name. The Steel Princess saw one man-Faernguard, that was his name-take a blade in the stomach and fall to his knees, spilling out his guts in a steaming, bloody flood. He’d barely drawn breath to scream when an orc cut his throat, jerking the head around with brutal ease.

Gods above! And what if the dragon returned? What then?

Alusair stared in horror at the men dying all around her, some of them crying her name. Men she knew-some of them men she’d bedded or gotten drunk with-died in bloody horror. They were protecting her with their own bodies… and their lives.