Death of the Dragon

26

“It really doesn’t matter what any of us want, Dauneth,” Alusair snarled, bringing her fist down on the map-strewn table with a resounding crash.

“This city is going to fall!”

The High Warden cast an anxious glance over his shoulder at the closed doors, knowing two local born men-at-arms were standing guard on the other side of them. He cleared his throat, imploring her silence with his eyes.

The Steel Princess jerked her head at a tapestry on the other side of the room. “Myrmeen’s spy’s over there,” she said in a dry voice. “Her ears are the ones you have to worry about.”

Dauneth Marliir grimaced in frustration. “Your Highness,” he hissed, “I’m trying to stop any more panic!”

“Our healing kept Myrmeen alive,” Alusair snarled, “averting the worst cause for panic I can think of-except for the one we lack men enough to deal with: the orcs raging through the streets! Gods, Dauneth, how can you be so dense? And to think that my moth-“

“Daughter,” Azoun said warningly, “enough.”

The King of Cormyr laid a hand on Alusair’s arm and added, “Dauneth is being as loyal and as helpful as he can. Whatever schemes the queen may have had regarding weddings and your sister are neither here nor there. For the record, I think he’s worked wonders, with Myrmeen lying near death and half the old families of Arabel trying to flee with the best of our horses and wagons and mounted guardsmen, while the others snarl at him for not defending them well enough and at the same time try to wring concessions and funding from him as if this crisis was intended purely for their benefit and no officer of the crown could possibly have anything better to do than offer them his ear and fawning attention. He’s not beheaded a single Arabellan yet, nor thrown anyone in chains-not even bellowing princesses. Stand back and let the man do his work.”

Alusair turned a gaze on her father that had raging fire in it. Dauneth Marliir quickly turned away and became intensely interested in the nearest tapestry, trying to stop the trembling that seemed to have suddenly afflicted his hands. The last three days had been a waking nightmare. The sight of orcs raging through the streets was almost as bad as seeing Myrmeen Lhal, the Lady Lord of Arabel, lying white-faced and near death on a litter made of shields that were swimming with her spilled blood. She’d held off dozens of snortsnouts before falling under three black, hacking blades. Those blades had done cruel work before the nearest Purple Dragons could fight their way near enough to protect her… or what was left of her.

“Father,” Alusair said at last, her voice quavering in anger, “let me say jus-“

“No,” the king said flatly. “Words said cannot be unsaid. We lack the time right now for Alusair’s temper, just as we can’t spare it for many other things. Flay my ears later, lass, but for now, be as sensible, prudent, and calm as I hear you always are in battle.”

Alusair’s gasp of rage was almost a sob.

“Give me your wisdom,” the king continued. “You alone know which of your men we can best put to defending this lane here or that section of the ramparts there. I need to know who the hotheaded heroes are so I can throw their lives away fighting in the streets, and who knows how to tend the sick, or remember fire buckets, or how to anticipate where orcs’ll try to sneak to. Do you understand, girl?”

Dauneth clenched his fists until the knuckles went white, wishing he was anywhere but there. The silence stretched, and it seemed a very long time-until it ended, he didn’t realize he was holding his breath-before Alusair said calmly, almost meekly, “Very well. You’re right, Father. Turn around, Dauneth, and help us with these maps.”

The High Warden of the Eastern Marches plucked an old mace and an even older shield down off the wall-almost every one of these older rooms in the Citadel boasted a dozen such relics, or more-as he turned around. He put on the shield, presented the mace to the princess, and said gently, “If you’ll feel better after hitting someone…”

Alusair’s eyes widened, something like savage glee leaping in her eyes. She hefted the mace and, to Dauneth’s surprise, the Steel Princess threw back her head and laughed-as loud and as hearty a guffaw as any man’s. Dauneth stood in confusion for a moment, noting the smile that rose to touch Azoun’s lips, before Alusair returned the mace gently into his waiting hands.

“Well done, Warden,” she said wryly. “Dense you’re certainly not.” She sighed and added, “But Arabel is still doomed.”

“Your Highness,” Dauneth murmured with a courtier’s smooth half bow, “your eloquence has quite convinced me.”

It was Azoun who snorted in involuntary mirth this time. “Enough sport,” he growled a moment later. “Purple Dragons are dying out there.” He strode to the barred doors that opened onto a balcony, and threw aside the bar.

“The maps?” Alusair ventured, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m through with maps for the moment,” the king said shortly, laying his hands on the great wrought-iron door latch.

“Your Majesty,” Dauneth cried warningly, “if there’re ghazneths waiting out-“

“I believe I’d welcome a ghazneth about now,” Azoun snarled over his shoulder, flinging the doors wide.

Nothing dark and powerful flapped at him, or reached out with claws for any of them, as the King of Cormyr strode out onto the old stone balcony to gaze out grimly over the Caravan City.

The balcony was high on the frowning west wall of the citadel. From the citadel to the western end of the city Arabel was either a battlefield or already in orc hands.

Orcish hoots and howls rose above the dirgelike drumbeats that seemed to accompany tuskers everywhere into war. The steady thudding could be heard even above the roaring of flames from the worst fires, and the clash and clang of steel as Purple Dragons waged a valiant house-by-house defense-or, to be a trifle more accurate, a fighting retreat.

Smoke hung heavy over the city. Perhaps it was keeping the dragon away. At least for this they owed some thanks to the stupidity of the orcs, who always seemed to feel the need to burn immediately after the joy of destruction and looting was spent. The orcs were coming on in waves.

“Gods,” Dauneth groaned, coming up beside the king, “is there no end to them?”

“That’s always the problem with goblinkin,”Azoun said with dark irony. “Your scribes are always too busy fighting-and dying-to get accurate counts. Afterward, of course, it no longer matters.”

“I find this inspiring,” Alusair said bitterly, gripping the stone balcony rail as if it was a squalling orc’s throat. “It makes me want to get down there and kill!” She flung her head around to regard her father so sharply that her hair cascaded down over the rail, making her look momentarily like a young lass trying to be seductive, and asked, “So why exactly are we standing up here when we could be of more use down there?”

“Steady,” Azoun said reprovingly, then threw back his head and drew in a deep breath. “Dauneth,” he said to the dark, dripping ceiling formed by the balcony above, “do you concede that Arabel is lost?”

The High Warden of the Eastern Marches cast a regretful look down over the rail, then said firmly, “Majesty, I do.”

“Then we must think on how to get our people out as safely as we can. That means south, one way or another, and I hate the thought of long columns of trudging folk going down the Way. Even if we could spare the men to guide, feed, shelter, and guard them, all my mind shows me is the dragon swooping down at will to pounce and rend and roll and… play, forcing us to fare forth and fight her in ones and twos… and die in ones and twos.”

Dauneth nodded grimly. “And so?” he almost whispered.

“I’ve some measure now of just who we’re defending,” the king said, waving his hand at the floor to indicate the families who’d been gathered into the citadel all the day before and this morning, “and I think we can house them in the Citadel of the Purple Dragons in Suzail, and in the palace, if need be. The women and children, at least, each with a carry-chest of family valuables and our oldest warriors to guard them. The men and boys hungry for blood and glory can stay here and fight alongside the rest of us.”

“You’re thinking of some sort of magic, to whisk folk from here to there,” Alusair murmured. “Might I remind you that any sorcery will swiftly bring down these magic-drinking ghazneths?”

Azoun’s jaw set in a line like the blade of a drawn sword. “I’m thinking of the war wizards of the realm working their mightiest magic ever, because the realm has great need of it,” he said curtly. “Standing in the face of charging foes like any warrior without a hope of ever casting a spell does leaping in to keep the magic working when a fellow mage falls on his face in exhaustion… there is no difference. A portal like the mages of old spun, a door in one citadel that opens into a door in the other, so that all of Arabel can step through it, is what we need. A single step that takes them from here to Suzail, spanning all the miles between, is all that might save them.”

Dauneth’s eyes widened, but the king’s gaze never left the carnage below and his hand never unclenched from its ready grip on the hilt of his sword. “And if the ghazneths come,” he added grimly, “we’ll just have to deal with them. We’ll crush them under iron ingots, dice them with iron blades… whatever it takes.”

Dauneth’s heart leaped at the king’s resolve and stirring words, but he felt moved to ask, albeit tentatively, “What if we can’t stop them?”

“Then,” Azoun said softly, looking at him with something like fire leaping in his eyes, “the strongest Purple Dragons will stand in a human shield around the gate to keep ghazneths away while we get the women out. They are the future of the realm. Our war wizards will scatter, heading to Waterdeep and Shadowdale and Silverymoon and Berdusk-and, by the gods, Halruaa!-and wherever else we can find powerful mages who’ll agree to help in return for a good share of our treasury. After all, if the ghazneths aren’t stopped, no wizard will be safe, anywhere in Faerun.”

Dauneth shivered. “You would really do that?”

Azoun spread his hands. “You can see another choice?”

He let the silence stretch-a silence in which the warden opened his mouth thrice to speak, then frowned and shut it again. A silence broken by a long, despairing scream from the streets below, and a horrific crashing sound as flames ate away support beams, and three floors above a shop collapsed and fell into the street in front of it with a roar.

All three of the people on the balcony turned their heads and watched the first of the flames lick up from the tall, arched windows of the nearby palace, creeping like dark tongues up the ornately carved stone.

Azoun watched the first of its painted glass windows explode into the street in molten tears before he added bleakly, “This is what it is to be a king, Dauneth. You might tell your more rebellious kin that.”

A thin smile crossed the king’s face, and he added almost playfully, “Someday, that is, when we all have time for such things.”

“Now!” a bristle-mustached lancelord shouted, his eyes on the dark form of the dragon gliding through the smoke.

The catapults let go with deep thumps, their rocking making the rampart shudder underfoot as they let go their stony loads. Most sailed short to plummet down into the ruined western city, but a few thudded home. Nalavara the Red wheeled away in anger and vanished behind the smoke.

“Work those wheels!” the lancelord bawled. “She’ll be back, and we’ll look pretty silly if she can just glide down here and tear us to dog meat. Leap to it, lads!”

The sweating crews swarmed over the catapults, sweat-drenched muscles rippling in their bared arms and backs, but Alusair turned away. “Those won’t touch the ghazneths,” she snarled. “Too slow-and probably no harm to them if they do take a load right in the face.”

“We’re ready for them, Highness,” a stern-faced war wizard assured her. “All of us are ready.”

“Oh?” the Steel Princess said, whirling around to face him with one gauntleted hand on her hip and the other holding a warsword it appeared she was itching to use. “And just how do you intend to deal with them, sir wizard? They’ll eat your spells like a wolf biting down a rabbit.”

“If Your Highness pleases to see,” an older wizard said calmly, “the gate is opening right about now. The ghazneths’ll be here soon enough.”

Alusair looked at him, lifting an eyebrow at his confident tone… then her eyes fell to the end of his graying beard. His fingers were locked in it, twisting nervously, already so badly tangled in the locks that most of them would have to be cut out of it.

“I’ll stay,” she said softly, “and be of what use I can.”

An unearthly shriek rose up the nearest vent shaft, from somewhere in the citadel below, and the Steel Princess whirled around to face it. “What by all the waiting hells was that?”

“That,” said the older war wizard, with something that might almost have been satisfaction in his voice, “would be the lady mage’s pain as she opens the spell gate.”

“They’re starting,” the swordcaptain muttered unnecessarily, licking his lips.

“Just stay back against the wall,” the old swordlord growled, “where she told us to stand-no matter what you see. Watch, and be still. Pass the word.”

That was a clear order, so the word was passed, redundant though it was. If the wizards could be believed, a magical door was to open here in Suzail-in the open space right in front of them-and the folk of Arabel would flee from that beleaguered city, flooding into this hall. The warriors waiting here would then step through the gate to Arabel and ply their blades as needed to get every last citizen out.

Every man’s eyes were fixed on the two women standing alone in the center of the cavernous main hall, as they had been since the Lady Laspeera and the sorceress Valantha Shimmerstar had first calmly begun removing their clothing.

Bare and slender, now, they stood on either side of a glowing, pulsing oval of spell light, a blue-white radiance that seemed to throb around their calves as they each raised an open hand. With the small silver daggers they held, they calmly slit open their own palms.

Both sorceresses threw the knives away as violently as a man in fury hurls a goblet, and turned to face each other. From the falling blood, white fire roared into life.

The fire burst forth from their mouths as they moaned, sobbed, then began wailing. A slowly rising ululation became shrieks of pain as the fire leaped across the space between them, becoming blue-white lightning.

“Gods,” the swordcaptain gasped roughly, as snarling bolts of lightning played from fingertips to thighs and breasts, and the two curvaceous sorceresses trembled, their flesh seeming suddenly to waver and flap, as if torn out of shape by gales no one else could feel. As warriors of Cormyr watched with narrowing eyes, the spell light between the two struggling sorceresses became almost blinding.

Lightning suddenly stabbed out from the forming star at the center of the chamber, reaching to the ring of naked war wizards sitting on the floor close enough to the walls for the cowering soldiers to reach out and touch-had any of them dared. The wizards whose nakedness, born of the need to preserve enchanted clothing and adornments from the ravening fire of the mighty magic being attempted here, had attracted rather fewer gazes than the two women standing in the center of the hall. Around the ring, fat, hairy men and sunken-chested bearded younglings alike gasped and wavered as the magic plucked at their vitality, calling forth the fire of their lives to build what was needed.

Their cries of pain joined the rising shriek and were echoed by the gasps of the warriors around the chamber walls, as the light suddenly became a ring. The ring raced somewhere else to become the end of a tunnel, and Laspeera Inthre suddenly threw back her head and sobbed, “Durndurve-anchor me! I can’t take the pain!”

They saw her image rise up over the glowing ring, a large and ghostly projection of the magic. Rings of lightning raced up and down her shuddering arms. Her once bound and coiled hair was wild and free, licking around her shoulders like dark flames, as she threw her head back and wept. Flames spurted from her very eyeballs as Valantha’s ghostly face, also set in pain, snarled through set teeth, “Hold on, Lady! Hold!”

Suddenly Laspeera’s body shuddered and seemed to topple-only to rise slowly and smoothly upright again like a falling sapling righted by a forester’s hand.

“Lady,” a man’s voice spoke, seemingly out of her forehead, “I am here. You have reached me in Arabel. You do us all great honor.”

A slow and crooked smile spread across Laspeera’s face as the pain fell away. She sighed, and the lightning suddenly fell from its wild whirling to coil around her breasts.

“We’re through,” she gasped. “Now the true test begins.”

The warriors grasped their weapons firmly and peered through the still eddying starry splendor of magic at the ring, in case what came through it was a foe.

They saw a grim-faced man-at-arms, the Purple Dragon blazing on his breastplate, looking back at them over his own drawn sword. Behind him was the wide-eyed face of a woman with a babe held against her breast and behind them other helmed heads and staring women. They stood in a room some of the warriors recognized as a chamber in Arabel.

“By the gods,” the swordcaptain said, his voice quavering on the edge of tears, “they’ve done it!”

“For Cormyr!” the first man-at-arms called, raising his sword heedless of the lightning that sprang from the gate to snarl up and down it.

“For Cormyr!” a hundred throats roared from all around the walls. Men surged forward as if a revel had begun.

For in a way, one had…

“Now!” the war wizard commanded, and mages all along the wall clutched their foreheads and shouted in pain. There was suddenly a boulder just above the streaking ghazneth-and a moment later, another below.

As a dark head twisted upward in puzzlement at the sudden lack of sunlight, a war wizard roared in pain, falling heavily to his knees. The two rocks seemed to leap to meet each other.

There was a wet sound from between them, and war wizards all along the battlements reeled and fell. The boulders promptly tumbled from view, to strike the orc-flooded square below with a mighty crash.

“Impressive,” Alusair murmured, picking herself up from where the impact had hurled her, “but look! Another comes.”

The old war wizard didn’t bother to rise from his hands and knees beside her. He merely bent his head, growled something, and the air suddenly held what had to be most of a toppled city house. It smashed into the second ghazneth and hurled it helplessly sideways in the air, crumpled and broken, into the nearest building that was still standing.

As the crash shook the very citadel, the battering stone broke apart into its smaller blocks and rubble and fell away, leaving a bloody smear of ghazneth down the cracked and teetering walls. The building groaned as if it was an old man, then slowly sighed into ruin, spilling down into dust.

“We can’t kill the ghazneths like this,” the war wizard gasped, “but we can certainly slow them.”

Alusair looked down at the dust rising from the square, and half-crushed orcs screaming under scattered stones, and could see no hint of dark wings. “You’re restoring my regard for wizards, I’m afraid,” she said slowly.

The old mage chuckled. “Think of us as big swords who talk back to officers,” he said, his voice still raw with pain, “and you may yet learn to work with us quite easily.”

Alusair shook her head in amusement, then asked the smoke-filled sky in mock despair, “I had to lose a city to learn this?”

“Well,” the wizard gasped, his eyes scouring the sky for more ghazneths, “you could listen to Vangerdahast a little more closely.”

Alusair looked at him sweetly, then uttered a stream of oaths so colorful that the old mage winced and turned his head away-which was when another ghazneth burst out of the smoke.

Guldrin Hardcastle screamed as the curved orc blade burst through his fancy armor, under his right armpit, and thrust up and out of his throat-then he was gurgling forth his own blood too swiftly to scream any more.

Choking, he struggled to cry out to his brother, knowing already he was doomed and furious beyond all imagining that he was going to die here, unpraised, never to claim Hardcastle House as his own and stride into court as the head of

“Rathtar!” at last he managed to find breath to cry.

“Rathtarrrr!”

He’d never felt such pain-a sickening, wrenching burning that threatened to overmatch even the fire of his fury. It was tearing at his guts, it wasHe hacked and kicked, and screamed in pain at what that did to him, even louder than the orc he’d just hewn down… his slayer, dying now as surely as he was. Red-eyed, raging… and fading, fading into a deep purple dimness…

“Die, tuskers!” the Steel Princess roared, her voice as raw and deep as any man’s, her sword and dagger dripping black with orc blood.

She was everywhere along the line, her blade leaping like a fang over the shoulder of this cursing, reeling Purple Dragon, and that blood-drenched, exhausted man of Arabel. Where she went, her hair streaming out behind her, men shouted their exultation and hacked and slashed with renewed vigor. It had been hard, brutal work, cutting their way out of Arabel step by bloody step with the orcs roaring all around them and the dragon swooping down time and again to spew flame or just rake away heads with its claws, as it swept past so low overhead that the wind of its passage made men stagger or crash face first onto the heels of those staggering just ahead.

The king strode into their midst, and his warden led the men and women of Arabel. Many of them were content to carry wounded fellows or the exhausted war wizards who’d worked to hold open the magical gate that had taken so many Arabellans to distant safety. Many of the marchers trembled in fear, kept from utter shrieking collapse only by the spells of the grim-faced, fearful priests who walked with them, as the dragon wheeled and glided over the Cormyreans again and again.

Alusair snarled as she saw a black orc blade burst through the mail of the Purple Dragon ahead of her. As the man sobbed and started to fall, she ran right up his back, binding the blade that had slain him in his ribs, and with the toe of her boot secure on his belt, rose on high to stab down over him, driving her blade down with both hands into the throat of the orc who’d slain the man.

The orc squealed, and the sound he was making became deeper and wetter. He stopped trying to wrench his sword free and sat back onto the trampled ground to die. The orcs all around were roaring at Alusair and straining to reach her with their curved black blades. She roared “Death to you all!” right back at them as her perch fell dead to the ground under her. The dragon’s talons stabbed ineffectually at the air where she had been moments before, raking a bloody toll on the orcs instead of the fighting princess of Cormyr.

The shout came raggedly to her ears in an instant’s lull in the almost deafening clash of arms:

“Rathtarrrr!”

She spun around as she rose, slashing blindly out behind her in case any overbold orc was springing at her back and looked to where she’d thought that shout had come from.

She was in time to see Guldrin Hardcastle go down.

“Rathtar!” she cried, pitching her voice high and shrill to cut through the grunts and roars of orcs and the curses and groans of men rushing together all around her.

A head turned-darkly handsome, as sullen as ever. Rathtar Hardcastle was killing his share of orcs with his resentment borne before him like a shield. He was just one of scores of young, handsome noble wastrels baffled as to what they must do to get the respect they felt Faerun-or at least the court of Cormyr-owed them.

A sort of hope kindled in his eyes as Alusair beckoned him with a jerk of her head, already a stride past him as she cut down an orc with brutal efficiency.

“Come!” she snapped, pointing with her blade as the gape-jawed orc fell away from it.

Rathtar sprang to follow, almost stumbling in his eagerness. When he regained his footing, he found seven orcs or more lumbering into Alusair’s path. The Steel Princess never slowed, her blade singing back and forth as if it weighed nothing and the snarling, stinking orc bodies it cleaved were made of feathers or mere shadows.

The man who did not yet know he was mere breaths away from becoming the Hardcastle heir swung his own blade with enthusiasm. This was something he could do, some way he could prove himself as every bit as much a bright hero of Cormyr as those old and grizzled men in medal-bedecked uniforms who limped sagely around the court, staring disapprovingly at anyone younger than themselves. Why, when he

The last orc fell away under Alusair’s savage charge-gods, what a woman! Rathtar was more than a little afraid of her, even with her shapely behind waggling inches in front of his nose and the sleek line of her flank rippling as she turned to dart her sword tip under a struggling Purple Dragon and into the snarling face of an orc the dragoneer was grappling with.

She was leading somewhere, for some glorious task, no doubt. Rathtar Hardcastle was going to be recognized at last, was going to be-

Alusair spun suddenly, almost casually striking aside Rathtar’s lowered blade as he almost ran it through her, and clapped him on the shoulder just as he’d seen her do to a hundred weeping or pain-wracked Purple Dragon veterans.

“Yours,” she murmured into his ear, and her lips brushed his cheek for just a moment as she spun away, murmuring, “I’ll stand guard.”

It felt like his cheek was burning, where her lips had been. Rathtar reached up almost wonderingly to touch it as he stared down and suddenly, chillingly, knew what this was all about.

His older brother Guldrin, as large and slow-witted as ever, was staring up at him with eyes that were going dull, blood oozing like a dark red flood from his slack mouth.

“Y-you heard me,” Guidrin mumbled, as Rathtar crashed to his knees on dead orcs and reached out for him. His lips twisted. “For once.”

“Are you-?” Rathtar snapped, trying to lift him.

Guldrin nodded almost wearily. “Dying? Aye. You’re… heir now. You with your looks and giggling lasses every night, and… and… oh, gods, have my blessings and make Father proud.”

Much blood fountained from his mouth, and he groaned weakly before gasping, “T-tell him… tell him I died well.”

“I will! Oh, gods keep you, Guld, I will!” Rathtar shouted, finding himself on the verge of tears. Somewhere inches but a world away, steel rang on steel and Alusair snarled at the orc she’d just slain and hurled aside, and at the one behind it who was fast losing enthusiasm for facing this warrior woman with the eyes of flame.

They stared into each other’s eyes for a moment, the older brother and the younger, then… then Guldrin was simply gone from behind those staring eyes.

Rathtar let his head fall slowly among the dead, blinking back hot tears, and spat, “Death! Death! Death to all orcs!”

He thrust aside Alusair as if she was an inconvenient hanging tapestry and plunged into the orcs beyond her, stabbing and slashing like a madman. The Steel Princess raced after him, calling his name vainly and trying to guard his flanks, though she could only reach one.

It was only a few breaths before a black orc blade burst through the flank she was guarding, driven in from the other side, and Rathtar Hardcastle went down on his face without a sound. Alusair cut open the grinning face of his orc slayer as she spun around to race back to safety, reminding herself to stay alive to get to Suzail and personally tell Ildamoar Hardcastle how bravely both of his Sons had fallen in battle. Cormyr owed the loyal old nobleman that and more.

Someone stumbled over backward, arms windmilling in almost comical futility, two orc blades standing out of his back. Ilmreth Illance, another of the men that unpopular family had already lost in these last few years, and probably not the last. Alusair sighed. She didn’t want men to die bravely-she wanted them to live on to ripe old ages and die in bed, happy and safe and prosperous in a Cormyr free of Obarskyr sins and armies marching because of them.

“Arabel may be burning,” she heard a Purple Dragon grunt behind her, “but it’s one big orc oven. I saw one street chest-deep in tusker bodies, their blood running in a river down into the sewers.”

“You’ve caught up to us, Paraedro!” someone else called happily. “You must have run like the very wind.”

“No,” the dragoneer replied sourly, “I walked-butchering orcs every step of the way. Slow work, but if you lot were any slower at slaying orcs, I’d have passed you and been halfway to Immersea by now.”

“Be our guest!” another voice bellowed, over the ringing clang of his sword shattering an orc blade. “We’ve saved plenty of tuskers for you!”

“Aye,” Paraedro replied in dry tones. “I’d noticed.”