Death of the Dragon

24

“Keep well apart!” the swordlords shouted, turning as they strode to look at the Purple Dragons trudging along behind them and to gesture with their swords at dragoneers they judged to be gathered too closely. King Azoun almost smiled. It had been well over half a century ago when he’d first noticed that officers seemed to love pointing and gesturing with their blades. Perhaps many of them kept those swords unused and shiny in a diligent search for the greatest effect, so the steel would gleam and flash back the sun impressively when employed in such sweeping gestures.

The scouts were well ahead, their horns lofting from time to time to warn the advancing army of orc and goblin patrols or battle forays. The horn calls most often persuaded goblins to try to sprawl on the ground and await a chance to gut the unwary with knives before springing to their feet and racing away, but usually they made orcs retreat, trading muttered oaths and wary warnings. These retreats inevitably led to larger and larger whelmings in the hills ahead, until in the end, the king’s forces would face a tusker army.

Azoun wasn’t worried about that occurring as any sort of surprise. A massed orc attack would be heralded, he was sure, by the appearance-probably involving diving out of the sky to tear men apart or incinerate them with fire-of the dragon. It seemed odd, really, that the sky had been empty of the vengeful wyrm for so long now.

If only outpourings of magic didn’t bring ghazneths swooping down to the attack. If only he could use the war wizards as they should be used, so he’d know where the dragon was and what she was doing at all times. She might have torn apart Suzail by now, roof by roof and wall by wall, or sunk half the ships tied up to the docks in Marsember, or

It was beginning to gnaw at him, this not knowing, and Azoun was past the age where nothing much made him fret, and even farther past the years when he’d welcomed fresh challenges atop ongoing adversities. He was beginning to be a lion of shorter temper and earlier bedtimes, who ached all too often, and who welcomed the familiar.

He was beginning to feel truly old.

Azoun answered the next swordlord’s shout with a wordless snarl that made the man blink and blanch and mutter some sort of confused apology. Azoun waved it away and dismissed the matter without even looking at him. The King of Cormyr was going to die out here, sword in hand and far from Filfaeril. His body would fall cold in the rolling backlands of the realm without ever warming his throne again or seeing younglings in bright finery take their first awkward strides at court after kneeling to their king. He was-in a shining moment of firmly clasping his sword hilt and lifting his head to stare away over the endless trees and the marching purple mountains beyond-quite content with it all. If he could but snatch magic enough so that he and Faery could look into each other’s eyes one last time, and say proper good-byes that both could hear… it would be all right. Truly. He would not mind dying out here, if die he must. After all, ‘twas the lion’s way… and like it or not, he was the old lion.

A different horn call suddenly floated up from the ridge ahead, and Azoun forgot all about the death and doom to come. It was the signal that friendly forces had been sighted. That could only be Alusair and whatever she’d managed to salvage of her noble blades.

Another, more distant horn replied, ringing out bright and clear. This was Alusair herself, telling all that she was coming in haste, with foes on her tail. All around the king, men drew weapons or checked on the readiness of daggers with a sort of satisfaction. The Steel Princess always brought either battle or revelry with her, and these men were at home with either.

The pursuing enemy would be orcs, no doubt, perhaps accompanied by the dragon. It was time to save Cormyr again.

“You’d think that after all these years I’d be good at it,” Azoun remarked to the empty air, causing more than one nearby helmed head to turn in curiosity then carefully look away again. Madness in one’s king is neither to be admitted nor encouraged, unless desperation descends. “I wonder if I am. While, we shall see. Aye, we shall see…”

In the next moment he saw her, cresting the ridge. Alusair’s armor was glinting in the sunlight and her hair streamed around her shoulders in the usual tangled mess, with her helm-also as usual-off or lost. The Steel Princess was waving her sword just as Azoun’s swordlords were wont to, commanding, directing, and cajoling like any growling swordcaptain.

Prudence counseled a forewarned army to take up a strong position and await the foe, but all around Azoun men were running forward and shouting, excitement lifting their voices. The Steel Princess had that effect on the men of Cormyr who went to war. It was as if the gods touched her into flame, a beacon for men to look to and take comfort in-a beacon that was running up to him now, arms spread wide to embrace him, and with a brightness in her eyes that could only be tears. Azoun thought he’d never to be alive to see those tears again.

“Father!” she cried as she came. “Gods, but it’s good to see you.”

“Old bones and all, eh?” Azoun replied, sweeping her into his arms in a clamor of clashing breastplates.

Her arms were strong, and they rocked back and forth like two bears locked in some sort of shuffling dance for a moment before a laughing Alusair broke away, crying, “Enough! You can still break my ribs. I’ll grant you that without requiring hard proof.”

“While you, lass,” Azoun murmured, sweeping her face close to his with one long and insistent arm, “can still lift the hearts of an entire army. This one of mine will follow you in an instant!”

“That’s good to know,” she said with sudden, quiet seriousness, “because I seem to have lost most of mine.”

“That weight never goes away,” Azoun replied just as quietly. “You just have to know you always spent lives in pursuit of good purpose, and cling to that. Lives used to guard Cormyr are never wasted… though I can’t say the same for those who fall because of royal folly.”

“Am I guilty of that now?” Alusair asked, looking at her father sidelong through the worst tangle in her hair. The words might have been uttered with a defiant toss of her head, but the Steel Princess was listening very intently for his answer.

Azoun did not pause to weigh his words, knowing that to have done so would have been to hand Alusair a silence more damning than any words could undo. “The only royal folly either of us has been guilty of since the present peril fell upon the realm,” he said firmly, “is trying to raise armies to meet our foes in bright and ordered array-when those foes either swoop from the sky to tear bloody havoc from our ordered ranks, or swarm all over the countryside with us in chase, burning farms at will.”

Alusair nodded as sagely as any of the old retired battlemasters Azoun had ever studied under, and said, “I hope that means we won’t try to chase a hundred goblins along a hundred trails at once-or try to lure any goblinkin into an ordered battle up here in these wilderlands.”

“I only wish that were possible,” the king replied. “Try though we might, we can never get all the orcs and goblins to stand on one field and face us-so I can never strike the blow that humbles them.”

“Well,” his daughter replied flatly, “even if that opportunity seems to yawn open right in front of you, you must ignore it.”

“Oh? How so?” Azoun asked, cocking his head to one side. This lass of his was sounding more like a veteran battlemaster all the time. What she said next might tell him if she was already fit to be a trusted leader.

“It’ll be a trap, set to lure you to your doom,” Alusair assured him. “To hold the gathered might of Cormyr out here to be butchered by orcs and goblins beyond counting.”

Azoun raised both eyebrows. “Is our situation so dire?” he asked, still playing a part to draw his daughter out.

“Father, it is that and more,” the Steel Princess told him. She took two quick steps back to a high rock and sprang up on it. Azoun hid a proud smile.

“There!” Alusair snarled, pointing with her sword. “And there!”

Her father looked, knowing full well what he’d see. Scattered bands of goblins, and orcs beyond number were streaming down at the embattled Cormyreans from all sides. The tuskers were pouring over knolls and rock outcrops like rivulets of water poured over dry soil, seemingly endless dark fingers reaching greedily for human lives-reaching on three sides, and soon the fourth. If the Cormyreans didn’t flee like the wind from this place, they’d be surrounded and butchered in vain, leaving all the realm undefended against the dragon and her ravening creatures.

“Sound the horns,” Azoun said almost bitterly. “It’s Arabel for us, though I begin to doubt if even its strong walls will be shield enough. Gods, look at them!”

“The ballistae and catapults on the walls should thin a few hundred out of those,” Alusair mused, “though I’d be happier if we had a blade to use on them that could slay thousands at a stroke. They are numerous, aren’t they?” She gnawed thoughtfully on her lip. “No time to dig fire trenches..

“That water ditch, though,” the king said slowly, “is not finished yet, if I recall Dauneth’s last report. It should be dry.”

“Yes… it should run about a mile west from the walls by now,” Alusair murmured. Their eyes met, not needing words for agreement.

If the orcs could be trapped between the ditch and a hasty line of piled lamp oil jugs and brush, the ditch filled with more oil, and both set alight with fire arrows, ballistae and catapults ranged on the space between could slaughter thousands of tuskers.

“You listen too much to battle boasts, father,” Alusair sighed, knowing it wouldn’t-couldn’t-be half so neat and easy as the king’s leaping thoughts might have it.

“And I’ve been doing so for far more summers with a sword in my hand than you’ve been alive,” Azoun reminded her with a grin, swatting her armored shoulders playfully with the flat of his sword.

Alusair rolled her eyes and barked in a mockery of aged gruffness, “Aye, but have ye learned which end of it to keep hold of, yet?”

The royal response was a mock thrust with the blade in question. Their eyes met over it, they chuckled in unison, and the king turned to his frowning, looming bannerguard and said, “We march on Arabel as swiftly as we can. Pass the order.”

The war captains had evidently been watching. Before the hulking armored man could more than turn, trumpets blared. Men rose, lifting packs and weapons-save for those who’d served with the Steel Princess before. They looked to her, seeing just what they’d expected. Her hand was raised in the “to me” rallying signal, as she strode to where the marchers’ rear guard should be.

Quietly, without any fuss, those men started to move to her. Alusair drew in a deep breath and wondered how much longer they would.