Master of Dragons

Chapter Eighteen

Thoriol ran up the steep stairway, taking the steps two at a time. Moving fast was difficult with bow in one hand and quiver in the other — the constant jostling from those around him made it even harder. The entire city was in motion, with troops rushing to their stations under the echoing blare of trumpets. The noise from the war-drums outside was deafening — a grinding, rolling hammer-beat that made the air shake.

The rest of Baelian’s company raced alongside him, Florean in the lead with Loeth close behind. The captain brought up the rear carrying his own bow, a heavy yew-shaft tipped with silver that he’d carried into battle for sixty years.

They ran up another winding stairwell, making the torches gutter as they swept past, before spilling out on to the east-facing outer wall. The ramparts were wide — over twelve feet — but were already filling with bodies.

‘Down here!’ cried Baelian, his voice impatient, directing the company to their allocated place. ‘Faster!’

Tor Alessi’s walls rose up in three concentric layers: an outer curtain that soared up from the plain for over a hundred feet, smooth and pale with only one land-facing gatehouse; then an inner sanctuary wall that rose even higher, ringing the inner city with its clustered spires and mage-towers; and finally the ultimate bastion, a truly cyclopean cliff of ice-white masonry that protected the mightiest central citadel.

The mages had been stationed up there, their bright-coloured cloaks rippling in the wind and their staffs already shimmering with power. Eagle-winged bolt throwers had been mounted on the next tier down. Some of those war machines were gigantic, carrying darts hewn from single tree trunks and bowcords the diameter of a clenched fist. The archers were stationed on the outer perimeter, thousands of them rammed close along the long, winding parapets.

It was a daunting sight, a majestic display of Ulthuan’s glory. The banners of the King and the many asur kingdoms blazed clear under the powerful evening sun, draping the walls in a garland of vivid runes. Thoriol knew thousands more warriors waited within the cover of the walls, ready to advance swiftly if the perimeter were breached. Many of those were regular spearmen detachments, but he’d seen more heavily armed companies waiting in reserve, all clad in high silver helms and wearing ithilmar-plate armour. The entire city was teeming with violence, suppressed for so long but ready, at last, to unleash.

Thoriol slammed his quiver on the stone in front of him, hefted his bow to shoulder height and adjusted position, placing his left foot forward and preparing for the first draw. Only then did he look out beyond the battlements, across the plains that had been until that day empty of life and movement.

All had changed. Marching figures now filled the wasteland, teeming like flies. They were advancing slowly, arranged in long ranks of tight-packed infantry. He couldn’t begin to guess how many there were — the entire eastern fringe of the plain was dark with them. They marched in rhythm to the incessant beat of the war-drums, swaying in perfect unison under stone-dark banners. Some regiments were clad entirely in close-fitting metal plates; others had donned chainmail hauberks; still more wore heavy breastplates over leather jerkins, their warhammers and battle-axes clutched two-handed.

Behind the front ranks came the war machines — huge and grotesque devices of iron, bronze and wood, dragged into position on massive spiked wheels or metal-bound rollers. Thoriol saw stone-throwers, pitch-lobbers, trebuchets, ballistae, battlefield crossbows, grapnel hurlers and other things he had no name for. Each was massive, towering over the hordes that milled around them, crowned with beaten war-masks and mighty iron rune-plates.

Brazier pans glowed angrily under the open sky, polluting the clear blue with snaking columns of dirty brown. The war-horns kept on blaring, overlapping with one another in a cacophony of hard-edged, intimidatory clamour. None of the dwarfs spoke. None of them chanted or sang — they just tramped across the plain, sweeping with remorseless slowness, surrounding the city in a closing vice.

Thoriol swallowed. He could feel his heart racing. Those on either side of him tensed, ready for the order to draw. Some of the archers were veterans of a hundred engagements and kept their faces stony with resolve; others were scarce more experienced than Thoriol and their nerves were evident even as they attempted to hide them.

The dwarfs came on, closing to five hundred yards of the walls. At such a distance Thoriol could clearly see the details on their armour — the sigils, the battle-runes, the daubs and spots of blood. Every tattooed and bearded face was twisted into hatred, warped by a single-minded desire to break the walls, to drag them down, to drown the city in blood.

So many.

Then, with no obvious order given, the host stopped. Every dwarf halted his march and stood perfectly still. The war-drums ceased. The horns stopped. For an awful moment, the entire plain sank into a fragile silence.

It seemed to go on forever. As if in some bizarre dream, the two armies faced one another across the empty land, uttering no words and issuing no challenge.

Then, as suddenly as the dwarfs had stopped, each raised his weapon above his head. Tens of thousands of mauls, axes, short-swords, flails, warhammers and crossbows pointed directly at the walls, each one aimed in ritual denunciation.

Khazuk! came the cry — an immense, rolling, booming challenge. Every wrong, every grievance, was distilled into that one word and hurled up at the white walls of the city like a curse.

Khazuk!

The din of it was incredible, a roar that seemed to fill the heavens and the earth. Thoriol had to work hard not to fall back from the parapet edge, to creep into the cool shade of the stone and escape the horror of it.

Khazuk!

The third shout was the greatest, a mighty bellow that felt as if it would shatter crystal and dent stone. In its wake the war-horns started up again, underpinned by the frenzied beating of drums. The host began to move once more, but this time the shouts of challenge did not stop. Tor Alessi was besieged by it, surrounded by the maelstrom.

‘Hold fast,’ warned Baelian. His voice was as steady as the granite around them. Thoriol wondered if anything scared him.

Four hundred yards. Trumpets sounded on the elven battlements, almost drowned by the surge of noise out on the plain.

‘Prepare,’ ordered Baelian, just as hundreds of other company captains did the same. Tens of thousands of archers stooped for their first arrow, fixing it against the string and preparing for the draw.

Three hundred yards; just on the edge of their range. Thoriol held his stance, feeling like his muscles were about to seize up. He felt nauseous, and swallowed hard.

A second trumpet-blast rang out.

‘Draw,’ ordered Baelian, notching his own arrow.

Thoriol heaved the string to his cheek. He held it tight, feeling the feathers of the arrow’s fletching against his forefinger.

Two hundred and fifty yards. Optimal range. The dwarfs must have known it, but they just kept on marching, still chanting, shouting, challenging and making no effort to evade the storm to come.

This was it. This was the culmination of everything he’d been working for, the final fruits of a foolish flight to Lothern away from the deadening hopes of his father.

Perhaps he might catch sight of me in all this, thought Thoriol dryly. Perhaps he might approve. Perhaps, for once, I might make him proud.

Then the final trumpet-blast, the signal to release. Up until now it had all been a mere shadow-play, a rehearsal, a toothless precursor.

‘Let fly!’ ordered Baelian.

As one they loosed their arrows, and the sky went dark.

Drutheira woke with a start. For a moment she had no idea where she was or what she was doing. Sevekai’s face had been in her dreams again, chiding her for leaving him. She hadn’t had visions of him for a long time, not since Bloodfang’s presence had been in her mind.

It unsettled her. Sevekai was gone, dead, his body rotting at the foot of a mountain gorge. He had no business still affecting her, skulking in her dreams like a spectre of Hag Graef.

It was dark — pitch dark. For a moment she feared she’d slept far into the night, but then, as her awareness returned, she remembered having to tie strips of her cloak around her eyes to blot out the sun. She ripped them off and the light came back as intensely as ever, burning like a brand thrust into her face.

Blinking heavily, she gradually remembered where she was: a shaded hollow under a tumbled cliff of red-brown stone, the best shade she’d been able to find. The cliff wound its way south-east, following the course of an old dried-up river. She’d followed it, unable to stomach the brackish seawater where she had waded ashore and unable to find more promising tributaries.

So far all she’d found was damp mud caking in the heat. The need for liquid was becoming pressing — despite the oppressive warmth she was no longer sweating, and her head felt thick and clogged.

It had been foolish to fall asleep. More than foolish — dangerous.

She looked around her, squinting against the hard light on the rocks. No sign of movement, pursuit or tracks.

Drutheira pushed herself to her feet, collecting her staff and leaning on it heavily. For the first time ever she regretted having spent so long cultivating the arts of Dhar at the expense of all else. It might have been nice to conjure up something to drink. She could have fooled herself easily enough with chimeras of wine or ice-cool water but the effects would not last. The only things her sorcery could genuinely construct out of nothing were destructive — the bolts of aethyr-lightning that tore through armour, the snarls of unnatural flame that crisped flesh and melted eyes.

It suddenly struck her as so pointless, so wasteful. Out here, in the parched hinterland, she was no better than any mortal.

Drutheira started to limp, keeping to the shade of the cliff to her left. Ahead of her the path wound along the foot of the cliff, choked with loose stone. To her right ran the base of the dry riverbed, the far shore of which rose up again a few hundred yards distant in another cliff face. Its twin rock-tumbled edges were far apart, enclosing a shallow dusty bowl between them, but they gradually drew closer together the further she went.

In time the riverbed narrowed to a gorge. The sun sailed westward, still horrendously hot. Drutheira’s mouth became too dry to open without pain. Her lips cracked and bled, and she breathed through her nostrils as sparingly as possible.

The passing hours gave her no fresh indication of where she was. She remembered vague rumours of a vast land to the south of Elthin Arvan. Malekith had been interested in it, saying that he sensed some strange and potent magic brewing there, but that had been decades ago and Drutheira suspected he didn’t truly understand what he was speaking of. As far as she was concerned the place she was in had no magic about it at all, let alone strange and potent magic. It was a forgotten land, a between-place wedged amid greater realms, no doubt destined to remain barren forever.

She caught sight of bushes clustered in the lee of the nearside gorge-wall. They were harsh, dense things — black-leaved, bristling, no more than five feet tall — but it was a hopeful sign. It might even mean water.

She picked up her pace, ignoring the protests from her strained leg-muscles and forcing herself to keep going. She had another day, perhaps two, before the thirst would get her, and she had absolutely no intention of meeting her end in such an undistinguished place.

It was then that she sensed it, hovering close, barely noticeable but wholly unmistakable.

Drutheira crouched low, hugging the rock wall once more and letting its shadow slip over her. She scanned the landscape around her, sniffing, her eyes wide and her senses working hard.

She is close, she thought, recognising the stink of the asur. She could not see or hear any sign of the dragon, but the aethyr-presence of the red mage was definitely hanging on the wind.

The sunlight made it hard to see much at distance — dazzling out in the open, causing the air to shake and shimmer. Drutheira did not move for a long time, hoping her adversary would betray herself first.

Can she detect me? she wondered. It was possible that, in her diminished state, Drutheira’s aura would be less obvious to a fellow magician than in the normal run of things. Dangerous to rely on the chance, but something not to ignore either.

She crept onwards, hugging the shadow of the gorge, her eyes sweeping around at all times, her staff ready. The scent faded, replaced by the wearyingly familiar tang of burned earth. Perhaps she had been mistaken, or perhaps the dragon rider was still aloft, miles away now, her scent carried by the wind.

Then she saw something else, lodged in the thick tangle of black-leaved bushes ahead — a flicker of red, barely visible, quickly withdrawn. Drutheira tensed, wondering if she had the strength for a summoning.

The asur mage was there, somewhere, crouching or lying among those dark branches. Was she waiting for her? Or was she, too, lost in the wilds and seeking some respite from the beating sun?

The more Drutheira watched, the more her conviction grew. She screwed her eyes up, letting a little sorcery augment her already-sharp vision. Something was hidden in the bushy cover, clad in red, prone on the ground as if exhausted. Drutheira tasted the nauseating tang of Ulthuan mingled with the hot metal aroma of dragon.

Drutheira broke into a lope, going as silently as her training enabled. She flitted across the gorge-floor, body crouched low and robes whispering about her.

She was soon amongst the bushes, ignoring the sharp jabs from the thorns as they ripped through her clothes. She raised her staff quickly, kindling dark fire. Ahead of her, only half-obscured by a tight lattice of thorns, was her enemy: out cold on her back, her pale freckled face staring up at the sky, unmoving.

Drutheira pounced, forgetting her fatigue as she crashed through the final curtain of spines, jabbing her staff-heel down at her enemy’s heart.

The metal tip hit the ground hard, jarring Drutheira’s arms. It bit into nothing — where Drutheira had seen a body, there was now just a stained patch of earth, as dry and desolate as every patch of earth in the whole Khaine-damned place.

Too late she caught a fresh stink of magic, tart in her nostrils like acid.

Illusion!

She felt something hard crack into the back of her head and staggered to her knees. She tried to get up again, to twist around and bring her staff to bear, but another blow followed, flooring her.

Tasting blood in her mouth, she rolled over, feeling the staff slip from numb fingers. Her vision was swimming, already shrinking down to blood-tinged blackness.

Standing above her, real this time, loomed the red mage, her hair hanging limp in the hot air, her face streaked with dust, smoke and gore. She looked half-dead. Her right hand clutched a fist-sized rock, one that dripped with Drutheira’s own blood.

‘I-’ started Drutheira, not knowing what to say, her voice cracked and empty.

That was all she managed. The red mage slammed the rock down again, this time into Drutheira’s forehead, snapping her skull back against the ground and making her mind reel in pain.

The last thing she heard before passing out was Eltharin, the hated tongue of her enemy, but one which she unfortunately understood all too well.

‘At last,’ hissed Liandra, her voice heavy with exhilaration, readying the rock again. ‘At last.’

Imladrik stood alongside Salendor at the summit of the inner parapet, watching grimly as the dwarfs assaulted all along the eastern walls. The two of them had said little for a long time.

The dawi had assaulted Tor Alessi three times in the past and had been driven back three times. In the early years of the war, though, the armies on both sides had been smaller and expectations different. The dwarfs had expected to demolish the walls; the elves had expected to defend them with ease. In the event the walls had always held, but at terrible cost in desperate defence and hurried counter-attacks. The proud dawi infantry had been mauled by the volume of arrows, while the equally proud asur knights had been hacked apart whenever they had been caught in the open.

Other cities and holds had suffered, but both sides knew that Tor Alessi was the key to the war. While the deepwater harbour endured the Phoenix King could land fresh troops in Elthin Arvan at will; if it fell then the remaining elven Athels and Tors would be vulnerable, each one ripe to be picked apart in turn. So it was that the dwarfs had come for it again and again, scarcely heeding what it cost in blood and gold.

‘Will they break in this time?’ mused Salendor, watching as more siege engines were hauled into range through a veritable hail of arrows. Some of the asur darts were flaming, and where they kindled the massive war machines collapsed in columns of burning ruin. The battlefield was studded with them, like sacrificial pyres to uncaring gods.

Imladrik shook his head. ‘Not while I command.’

Far below them, a heavily armoured column of dwarf infantry was getting bogged down as it tried to force a passage to the gates. The dawi held their shields above their heads, making painful progress with admirable determination, but still they came up short, choked by their own dead and mired in the bloody mud.

‘Arrows will not hold them forever,’ observed Salendor.

A volley of bolt throwers on the second level opened up, hurling their payloads through the smoky air. The bolts ploughed into the advancing infantry ranks, or lanced into war engines, or collapsed trebuchets in welters of splintered timber.

‘Trust to the walls,’ said Imladrik calmly.

Salendor looked sceptical. ‘Perhaps.’

Even as he spoke, the first stone-throwers reached their positions. Imladrik watched dwarfs run out bracing cables and hammer them into the yielding soil. They threw up massive bronze shields in front of the delicate mechanisms before loading rough-cut stones into the cages and pulling the iron chains tight.

Three of them loosed, almost together. Their lead weights thumped down and their hurling-arms swung high. Three rocks, each the size of a hawkship’s prow, sailed through the air before crashing into the parapet of the outer wall. One exploded into fragments without causing much damage. The second smashed a rent in the outer cladding before sliding down the smooth exterior. The third punched straight through the ramparts, dragging dozens of archers with it and careering on into the towers and winding streets beyond.

‘That’s just the start,’ said Salendor bleakly. ‘They have bigger ones.’

‘Then you had better instruct the mages to take them out, had you not?’

Salendor gave him a significant glance. ‘Dragons would do it faster.’

‘Yes, they would.’ Imladrik did not look at Salendor as he spoke. The plain was pressed tight with bodies, punctuated by rains of arrows and returning strikes from the war engines. Soon the dawi would gain enough ground to install bolt throwers of their own. They might even force their way to within axe-range of the stonework.

‘Will you go aloft, then?’ asked Salendor, doing well to control his impatience.

Imladrik pressed his lips together calmly, and kept watching. Salendor had no idea what he was asking. None of them did.

‘Instruct the mages to take down the stone-throwers,’ Imladrik said coldly. ‘Leave worrying about the rest to me.’

More war engines swayed into position. Several were blasted apart by strikes from the wall-mounted bolt throwers, others were fatally pinned by hundreds of flaming arrows, but more than a dozen made it to join the first three and then the onslaught began in earnest. Rocks, spiked iron balls, flaming phials of runesmith-blessed fire, all were flung at the walls in a swinging, pivoting barrage.

The dwarf advance, though bloody, had not been reckless. The most heavily armoured infantry units had soaked up the earliest swathes of arrow-flights, risking casualties but secure in the knowledge that many of the iron-clad warriors would endure. That had bought time to establish the heavier wall-breaking engines. Now that the defenders had been forced to concentrate on multiple targets, the intensity of the dart-storms at ground level lessened, and the iron-clad battalions began to crawl forwards once more.

Tor Alessi began to burn. As the sun wheeled westward, fires kindled by the rain of rune-fire projectiles erupted into life, resisting every effort to put them out. Explosions flared up on the walls where they impacted, adding columns of twisting smoke to the growing film of murk in the air; others burst out within the city itself, drawing troops away from the perimeter to fight the stubbornly persistent blazes.

Morgrim watched the carnage unfold from his vantage in the centre of the plain. He could not lie — it made his heart swell.

The bickering and hesitation was over. He didn’t know what he would have done if the elgi had not broken the ceasefire. He knew full well that warlords within his own host had been planning similar acts of sabotage, but remained confident he could have prevented them.

Perhaps there was something to Imladrik’s fanciful tales. It didn’t matter any more. So many acts of cruelty had been committed that the need for grudgement was now overwhelming. Even if he had withdrawn his own army from Tor Alessi, others would have come in time. He knew of musters in the mountains to the east, each one already setting off toward other asur outposts — Athel Toralien, Athel Maraya, Oeragor. There was no way he could have stopped all of them even if he had wanted to.

And he did not want to. He wanted the dwarf armies, all of them, to succeed. He wanted the elgi gone, banished back to their strange and unnatural island, their taint wiped from the honest earth of the dawi homeland. Only then could the wounds of the past be healed, old poisons withdrawn, new mines delved.

It all starts here, he thought grimly. May Grimnir curse us if we falter now.

Morek lumbered up to him, his staff acrid with discharged energies.

‘Tromm, lord,’ said the runelord, bowing low.

Morgrim nodded in acknowledgement. As he did so, strange flashes of light lashed out from Tor Alessi’s summit. Morek and Morgrim watched as magefire in all hues — emeralds, sapphires, rubies — spiralled down into the dawi front lines, tearing them up like ploughs turning a field.

Morek regarded the development sourly. ‘Their magic is as flighty as they are,’ he muttered.

A siege tower, the first to come near the city’s gatehouse, ignited, its crown exploding as magefire kindled and bloomed on its protected shell. Flames raced unnaturally through the heavy leather shrouds and timber bracing-beams, streaking down the structure’s core. A few seconds later and it was little more than charred scaffolding, its deadly cargo leaping to safety as the wooden platforms and ladders disintegrated around them. More trundled onward to take its place.

‘Deadly, though,’ observed Morgrim.

His voice was distracted. For some reason he couldn’t take the loss of a few siege towers and trebuchets as seriously as he ought. Something nagged at him, dragging his mind from the conduct of the battle.

‘Where are the dragons?’ he asked at last, out loud though not speaking to anyone but himself. Everything he had been led to believe, not least from Imladrik himself, told him that the drakes were the most potent weapon the asur had.

Morek looked up at the walls contemptuously. ‘We have killed wyrms before.’

The grip around the city tightened. Morgrim saw miners finally reach the base of the walls just south of the gatehouse. He saw more war engines pull into position and begin to unload their deadly contents. He saw fires burst into life on the parapets, sending smoke boiling up into a wearing sky. The light was beginning to wane and turn golden as the sun began its long slow descent towards the ocean. As the shadows lengthened, Tor Alessi looked battered, proud, and doomed, ringed by a veritable sea of ground-deep loathing.

‘So we have,’ he said softly. ‘But keep your runesmiths aware, rhunki. The drakes will fly. Only then we shall truly see Imladrik’s mettle.’