The Black wing

Chapter 22

Maldeev was feeling confident. The highlord sat apart from his four black dragons, who waited restlessly for daybreak on a rocky cliff west of Lamesh. He knew that when the sun crested the horizon to the east, Salah Khan would issue the order for the ground troops to advance on Lamesh's south wall. The sec shy;ond he saw the knights' attention devoted there, Maldeev would lead the dragons in an attack on the west wall. It was a plan the highlord was certain couldn't fail.

The pace of the assault had gone from boring to breakneck in one long night. The draconians, under Horak's watchful eye, had chopped down trees that the ogres turned into makeshift bridges for fording the moat and ladders for climb shy;ing crenelated walls.

Maldeev had flown to this vantage point with the dragons late in the night. Though the steady downpour was an uncomfortable nuisance for the highlord, it seemed to act like a mental balm for the black dragons. They'd dropped into sleep after foraging for food in the mountains farther west.

Wound as tight as a spring, the highlord had been the first to awaken, though he wasted no time in rousing the others to draw a crude battle diagram in the dirt. The plan had changed little from the one drawn up at a war council of officers and dragons the day before the march north. Truly, the only alter shy;ation was to the role of the dragons, and that was as obvious and simple as the dirt in which Maldeev had drawn it.

"Whoever built Lamesh obviously did not consider aerial attacks," the highlord said. "It must have been built during the time your kind was banished from Krynn."

"Technically, we still are," Khisanth interjected mildly. "The Dark Queen's return to Krynn is the point of the war, isn't it?"

"Yes, I guess so." Maldeev's eyebrows raised unpleasantly at being openly addressed by a dragon other than Jahet. Per shy;haps Khisanth had presumed too much from the highlord's willingness to let her respond to the knight's emissary the previous evening. Maldeev had had the messenger slain instantly by Jahet. The highlord had intended the riderless horse to be his answer to the request to let women, children, and old men go free. But Khisanth had insisted that she'd fought the leader of the knights and knew just what response would shake him. Maldeev had allowed it, seeing no harm.

He stood, stretched, and looked again to the sky, which was starting to show signs of dawn between the swollen rain clouds overhead. "Prepare yourselves. It's nearly time."

Atop Jahet, Maldeev was to lead the dragons. Volg and Horak would direct their ogre and draconian troops forward in the initial southern charge, so Lhode and Shadow would pick them up on the battlefield after the dragons joined the fray.

Since Khisanth had no rider, she stood by, almost idly watching Maldeev pull on the last of his war attire, a pair of tight leather gauntlets that flared at the wrists. He pulled something from a small bag tied to his waist and held it to

the light. It was a plain gold ring topped by a smooth, flat cir shy;cle of onyx. At length, Maldeev placed it over the gloved index finger of his right hand.

"New ring, Maldeev?" Jahet asked idly as the dragon shrugged to adjust the ornate saddle he'd tossed up between her wing blades.

"Yes," the dragon highlord said quickly, withdrawing the band almost self-consciously. "Andor insisted I take along a protective ring." He saw Jahet's interest stir. "He is my dark cleric, after all-if s his job to think of such things. I only took it to humor him. You know how I hate magic-didn't even want Andor near this battle." With a shrug, Maldeev wiggled the ring from his gloved finger.

Jahet shook her head slowly. "You already know what a mistake I think his absence is. Wear the bloody thing, Mal shy;deev," she prompted. "What will it hurt? It just may come in handy." Maldeev jammed the black-and-gold ring over the gloved index finger. Jahet looked satisfied, though she won shy;dered at this new, acquiescent side of her soul mate.

"Jahet," Maldeev called to his dragon, tipping his head to indicate that she should turn her ear to him. The highlord whispered briefly, and Jahef s face lit up.

"I'll ask her," she said to the highlord. The ranking dragon turned to Khisanth. "Maldeev has suggested, and I concur, that you ride as our wing dragon." She looked intently at her friend. "This is offered to honor your solo value, Khisanth. If s not an order."

The younger black dragon felt pride swell in her breast. "It would be my honor," she said. Maldeev nodded once and strode away to mentally prepare himself for battle.

"Stay close to us, Khisanth," Jahet whispered to her sud shy;denly, with the highlord out of earshot. "I sense a reckless shy;ness in Maldeev I've never seen before, as if he believes he can't lose…."

Khisanth nodded. She heard a distant noise and cocked a sensitive ear to the west. A trumpet. the knights had sounded the alarm.

"Fly!" cried Maldeev. Jahet dropped her left shoulder to the ground. Using it as a step, the highlord bounded into the saddle and swung his broadsword over his head thrice. Jahet sprang from the ledge, covered the short distance to the ravine below the cliff, and arched into a dive, Khisanth in sync at her left side. Pulling up short just above the gurgling, waterfall-fed reservoir at the bottom of the ravine, Jahet pre shy;pared for ascent.

Not even a feeding frenzy would have stirred Khisanth's senses as much as the thought of what they were about to do. She felt that old, familiar bloodlust in her veins. The dragon drew on that energy for speed, summoned every drop from the farthest reaches of her body to propel her skyward in stunning opposition to the waterfall pounding earthward.

Khisanth crested the cliff face beside Jahet. One hundred knights stood on the walkways between the double crene shy;lated walls, bows in their hands. They were poised in profile to the dragons as they fired arrows down upon the attackers to the south. Khisanth opened her jaws to loose a primal scream that split the humid morning air. The knights spun around in unison at the nerve-shattering shrieks of four bloodthirsty dragons. Most froze, bows dropping uselessly from many a hand at the sight. How she loved the look of panic she caused in the eyes of men! She smirked at the sight of the humans in their knightly finery, trembling in her shadow.

Khisanth kept Jahet locked in the corner of her right eye. The ranking dragon banked left slightly to address the lim shy;ited forces on the cliff wall, compelling Khisanth to hook as well. While Maldeev sliced heads from shoulders and Jahet breathed acid, Khisanth angled herself to the southwest cor shy;ner. Lowering her shoulder just slightly, she swept a fifty-foot stretch of wall clean of fear-struck knights with the edge of her wing. As she swerved away, she grasped the last man in the line with her claws and flung him screaming over the cliff to the ravine below. At a nod from Jahet, they climbed quickly in unison to prevent attacks against their bellies, They dived again into the frenzied throng, scattering men like chickens.

On the opposite wall, Lhode and Shadow were carrying out a similar maneuver. Neither dragon had ever fought in a battle before, but they had practiced this sort of coordinated attack many times on the drill fields and walls of Shalimsha. But those drills had been against dummies, never against a determined enemy. And Tate's knights, while not as pre shy;pared for this battle as they might have been, had spent months licking their wounds after the defeat at Shalimsha and devising ways to fight dragons.

Neither of the two inexperienced dragons expected any shy;thing like what awaited them on the northern wall. After fly shy;ing straight up the cliff wall and blasting acid down the length of the northern rampart, they looped and formed a line, Lhode ahead of Shadow. They raced down the wall picking off the dazed and injured survivors with their claws, wings, and tails. At the end of the wall was a bastion, which they had to swerve to avoid.

Lhode approached the bastion and turned away. Shadow followed, keeping her eyes on Lhode. But as she passed the stone tower, eight men with thick iron grappling hooks ran from the doorway and flung them at the beast. Most of them missed, but two snagged the front edge of the dragon's left wing while a third cut into her leg. Heavy chains anchored the hooks to the walls of the castle. Almost instantly Shadow hit the end of the chains and was flipped tail over head. The chains snapped under the terrible impact, but the dragon tumbled over the wall and fell outside, crashing into a throng of Maldeev's men who were crossing the moat at the base of the east wall.

Immediately archers who had fled the walls at the drag shy;ons' appearance rushed back out and poured arrows into the thrashing monster below them. Rocks pelted down and thumped off the dragon's scaly hide. In her frenzy to regain use of her wings, Shadow crushed dozens of panicking men of the Black Wing, toppled their ladders from the wall and destroyed the makeshift bridges they had thrown across the moat.

Seizing the opportunity, a group of knights and men-at-arms threw open a sally port on the eastern wall and charged out. The attackers there were already in disarray, and this sudden counterattack scattered them back into the town. Twenty knights and sergeants armed with twelve- to sixteen-foot spears rushed toward the thrashing dragon while others held off the enemy soldiers.

Even with these long weapons, the attackers had to get well inside the dragon's wingspan to be effective. A dozen or more were crushed or dismembered by Shadow's flailing wings and tail. But the dragon was impeded by the moat and driven to near panic by the shower of stones and arrows from above.

Slipping inside the reach of her thrashing wing, one knight drove his spear into the dragon's neck. Shadow screeched and belched acid to dissolve the weapon's shaft. But before she could win free, two more men rushed forward and plunged their pikes into the great beasf s heart.

A tremendous cheer rose from soldiers on the wall as Shadow's body fell slack. Her slayers simply let go of their weapons and rejoined the rest of the sortie party as they fell back inside the castle.

Jahet and Khisanth were circling away from the castle when Shadow was snared by the defenders. Their first inkling that something was wrong came when Khisanth spotted Lhode flying by himself, trying frantically to catch up with the two other dragons and the highlord.

"Take us over the eastern wall to see how Salah Khan fares," ordered Maldeev, oblivious of events there.

The dragons climbed briefly to get above the archers in the castle and to better survey the battlefield. Maldeev flew into a rage on seeing the mauled body of Shadow lying in the moat along the eastern wall, amid the wreckage of that attack.

In the wake of Shadow's death, the castle's defenders were solidly in control of the battlements. Pointing with his mace, Maldeev indicated one section of wall for each dragon to attack: Lhode to the north, Khisanth to the east, and Maldeev and Jahet to the south.

Wheeling in unison, the dragons circled the castle once before diving again into the heartened defenders. It seemed that wherever their shadows passed, men felt the fear of burning death. When the dragons' screams reverberated from the walls, those warriors with faint hearts dropped their weapons and ran for shelter. The ones who stood their ground were swept away, others who sheltered behind the battlements were burned and suffocated by acid.

Broken ladders and piles of dead ogres and stone-hard draconians beneath the southern wall testified to the bitter shy;ness of the escalade. Khan had voiced concern about the dra shy;conians being the ones to lead the charge-if they made it to the top and were killed, the baaz would turn to stone and crush anything beneath them on a ladder; a dead kapak would similarly shrivel his fellow troops with acid.

But now that the dragons had cleared the ramparts, ogre and draconian forces clambered freely up and over the walls. Flaming arrows arced overhead and into the courtyard, not discriminating friend from foe, though they did little to the brutish ogres or machinelike draconians.

A lone, anguished cry suddenly cut through the din of battle raging in the inner ward. Khisanth looked up. Her eyes narrowed upon spotting the knight she'd been waiting for. The visor of his helmet was open, showing his face clearly.

Tate showed no signs of fear, only rage. The knight shook his fist skyward, then turned unexpectedly and darted into the arched doorway to the citadel's main keep.

Startled, Khisanth's first instinct was to chase him down and obliterate him from the face of Krynn, once and for all. But something felt wrong, and she realized what it was- she'd lost sight of Jahet. Almost too late, she spotted the dragon and her highlord nearby, locked in close combat with a handful of sword-wielding knights who had put their backs to the southeast tower wall and were now fighting des shy;perately. Jahet was in no real danger, but she couldn't close with one knight without others attacking her.

Neither dragon nor highlord appeared to notice the three archers crouched in Jahef s shadow, barbed tips aimed pur shy;posefully at her underbelly.

Khisanth knew she could neither get around Jahet nor accurately use her breath weapon in time to stop the shots. The dragon did the only thing she could think of-she slammed into Jahet. The ranking dragon was knocked off balance and out of harm's way, nearly dumping Maldeev from the saddle. The highlord grabbed the saddle horn and righted himself. Then he cast a stormy glance at Khisanth, in time to see her take an arrow in the lower abdomen, an arrow meant for Jahet.

Khisanth touched down on the battlement briefly and looked below at the small, feather-tipped stick protruding from her belly. Reaching down with almost clinical detach shy;ment, she snapped the arrow at the base and flung it away. Her eyes turned on the wide-eyed archers who still crouched beneath her. One jumped up and began to run. Jahet's hind claw reached out and snatched him up; flapping her wings rapidly, she flew straight up about fifty feet and uncurled her claws, dropping him into the courtyard. The archer's com shy;rades had only seconds to contemplate his demise. Khisanth unleashed a stream of green acid that reduced them all to shrieking, then silent puddles of half-eaten flesh and bone.

The three remaining dragons were now together on the top of the east wall. Maldeev was formulating a plan for them when his mount murmured, "Griffons!" Khisanth's head snapped up from the sizzling remains of a knight.

Two wooden doors twice the height of a man had been thrown wide open, and several of the lion-bodied creatures with the wings, heads, and forelegs of eagles were poised for flight. On the back of the lead griffon was Tate.

Khisanth had never before seen these creatures, notorious for their obsession with horseflesh. Though shorter at the shoulder than the average human, the creatures' furry yellow thighs looked dense and well muscled. Golden feathers adorned their front halves, from wingtips to razor-sharp beaks. Tate's griffon stepped from the confines of the thresh shy;old and spread its wings to an incredible span of twenty-five feet, the length of a dragon. Emitting the shrill cry of its eagle cousin, Tate's mount sprang into the air, followed closely by four other griffons bearing knights.

"They can't hope to survive a battle in the air against us," scoffed Maldeev.

"They won't have to," observed Khisanth, nodding toward the griffons, who had begun knocking lumbering draconians and ogres from Lamesh's battlements, "if they keep that up."

Maldeev snarled, then dug his heels into his dragon. Jahet and Khisanth tore fiercely after the griffons. To the dragons' amazement and annoyance, the smaller griffons darted away from the cumbersome dragons like startled flies.

"Get them!" Maldeev cried, while Jahet tried desperately to comply.

Laughing aloud at their frustration, Tate tugged his griffon to tuck a wing and bank abruptly to the left. His heels dug in and drove his griffon to sprint away from Lamesh, headed southwest between tree line and cloud. The other four griffons had scattered to every corner of the compass as well. Lhode looked about to pursue, when Maldeev barked, "Lhode, return to Volg and protect your unit. Cover Shadow's unit as well. Jahet, Khisanth, and I will chase down their leader."

Khisanth felt oddly clumsy and ponderous watching the griffon's agile movements ahead of them. The more powerful dragons quickly closed the distance to less than ten feet. Tate watched them approach over his shoulders. Khisanth could see through the holes in his helmet to the fearless look in his dark brown eyes. His hand was on the grip of his sword. Tate's grif shy;fon shrieked and wheeled abruptly to face the pursuers.

"Stand and fight, brave knight," jeered Maldeev, maneu shy;vering Jahet into face-off position.

Tate appeared not to have heard the dragon highlord's insult, or even noticed the human. In fact, he was looking around Maldeev at Khisanth with obvious interest. "I didn't piece it all together," he said to her, "until I got it from the horse's mouth."

"We'll not meet again, you and I," Khisanth said. "I won shy;der, will your brand of knighthood hold you in good stead at the door to your god's domain?"

Tate's eyes narrowed at the presumption of his death.

"The principals of Good are the only things worth living-or dying-for."

"Damn you, Khisanth," Maldeev snarled suddenly, "do your job and kill the bastard!"

Rattled, Khisanth called forth her acid and sent it spraying from her maw at the same time Jahet stretched her right wing forward for a wing slap. Neither connected, as the griffon bearing Tate shot up into a thick cloud. Khisanth could see and hear her acid sizzling uselessly through the branches of a tree beneath her; Jahet and Maldeev tumbled slightly before recovering from the missed slap.

"Follow him!" bellowed Maldeev, nudging Jahet's flanks with his heels.

"We can't chase him through the clouds," snorted Jahet. "We're likely to bump into him and get wounded ourselves. You're letting your rage control you, Maldeev." She looked behind her at the battle at Lamesh. "Isn't it obvious he's just trying to keep us away from the battle?"

"If you'd been doing your job," said Maldeev, "he'd be dead by now, and we'd be back in the fray. Now, think of some way to find him in these damned clouds!" His tone of voice assured that he would not be swayed.

"I've an idea for drawing them out," interjected Khisanth. She spoke quickly to Jahet.

The ranking dragon nodded. "You'd better cast it. My spells aren't what they used to be." Jahet could feel Maldeev shifting in the saddle, growing more impatient. "Do it!"

Khisanth got the idea from a favorite trick of Pteros's; the old dragon used it to entice meals to come to him. She quickly summoned the scent of raw horseflesh from her memory of eating her own mount. Focusing intently, Khi shy;santh envisioned the strong, meaty aroma slipping through the confines of her skull and being swept up by the winds.

"What's that awful stench?" demanded Maldeev, shud shy;dering.

Neither dragon, whose salivary glands were furiously working, could respond. Answering the illusionary scent of its obsession-horse meat-the griffon shrieked like an eagle and flew out of the protection of the cloud, headed right for the waiting dragons. Tate tugged furiously at its rope bit but couldn't compete with the griffon's driving hunger.

Maldeev caught on to the nature of the spell Khisanth had cast. "Brilliant!" he crowed to the dragon.

With wings fully extended, the griffon rushed mindlessly toward the scent, bringing Tate within striking distance.

Struggling to control his mount, the knight pulled a morn shy;ing star from his saddle and swung it around his head. The spiked ball at the end of its chain circled ever closer to the highlord's head. Jahet angled slightly and took the blow her shy;self. The morning star bounced harmlessly off her scales.

Maldeev gave Jahet a two-tap signal and pressed his legs tightly to the dragon's sides. Jahet abruptly rolled over to throw off their opponent. She completed the rotation and squared off again, stunned to see that it had neither unnerved Tate nor increased the distance between them. In fact, the knight had pressed in closer and switched to his sword, wav shy;ing it at the dragon and highlord as if daring them to strike. She couldn't even unleash acid at such close range because the inevitable splash would strike Maldeev. She decided to pivot and hit the knight with her tail.

Khisanth couldn't see how close they were. The roll-over maneuver had put Jahet between Khisanth and Tate. The wing dragon moved to dart around Jahet's head when the sun sliced through the cloud cover. Khisanth was nearly blinded by a flash of brilliant light glinting off something in Maldeev's hands.

Jahet's left wing lifted for a backhand strike at Tate, but she abruptly reared and choked uncontrollably, her red eyes wide. The gagging sounds stopped within heartbeats. Jahet began inexplicably to drop like a rock from the sky, with Maldeev clinging to her back.

The knight and griffon were forgotten as the wing dragon was struck dumb, witless. What had happened to Jahet?

"Khisanth!" she heard the highlord cry.

The sound brought the dragon from her stupor. She blinked and saw that the lifeless dragon and thrashing

human separately spiraled earthward.

Khisanth forced herself into a nosedive. Gauging Maldeev's speed, she focused her sights on a location between his falling form and the treetops, swooping under shy;neath him and into position. The highlord sprawled awk shy;wardly with a jarring thump upon her spine. Maldeev clawed his way to where a saddle would have been.

Maldeev was speaking into Khisanth's ear, but she could scarcely hear him as she watched the body of her friend crash unceremoniously through the canopy of trees below.

"He must have killed her!" Khisanth heard Maldeev at last. He clung to the scales on her neck. "It's an incredible bit of luck that you were riding as wing dragon, or I would have dropped to my death as well."

On the ground, the broken branches settled around Jahef s still, twisted body.

Khisanth's eyes shot skyward to where she'd last seen Tate. The knight was gone. Then her fevered eyes spotted the knight's bright silver armor against the dull sky. He was relentlessly spurring his griffon toward Lamesh.

She engaged all the speed Jahet had envied in her and quickly closed the distance between them. Khisanth was angling herself for a mighty tail slap when Maldeev's voice, high-pitched with agitation, penetrated her pounding head.

"What do you think you're doing? I'm without a saddle back here. Disengage immediately!"

"Then you'd better hang on," she said coldly, and Maldeev clutched her scales. Like a whip, Khisanth's tail snapped against the griffon's lionlike hindquarters. The creature shot forward, its feathered head jerked back hard. Knight and griffon began tumbling earthward. Khisanth shot forward to bat them back and forth between her wings like a cat with a mouse in its paws. The disoriented griffon, its wings broken in many places, began to spiral out of control.

Khisanth snatched the knight from its back and let the creature plummet. She did not even follow its descent, con shy;centrating instead on her own landing. She scarcely felt Mal shy;deev scramble from her back.

Khisanth squeezed the talons of her right claw tightly around Tate, pinning his arms and compressing the metal of his armor. She held him up before her eyes, pushed back his visor, and inspected him as a child would a bug. Almost ten shy;derly the dragon traced a talon along the scars she'd scratched into his flesh. "What a waste. You were in the wrong army," she said.

Though he gasped for breath against the pressure of her claw, Tate's heartbeat was slow and steady. Looking into the dragon's tawny eyes, Tate did not appear afraid. Instead, the knight calmly turned to consider the gray sky. 'The barbar shy;ians say it is better to die on a good day than live through a thousand bad ones. I think, perhaps, they are right."

"You'll find out sooner than I." Khisanth flicked one long talon and pierced Sir Tate Sekforde's brain. The Knight of the Crown didn't scream. Retracting her talon, Khisanth watched the light fade from the knight's brown eyes as his lifeblood spurted onto the claw that held him.

"Now we are even," she said at last. But when the final flicker of life left Tate, the dragon was surprised to discover she didn't feel the great satisfaction she'd anticipated. Instead, she felt strangely hollow.

Khisanth let Tate's body drop to the ground. It rolled to a stop at the feet of the highlord. The dragon looked from the dead knight to Maldeev and back, more than a little disqui shy;eted by the fleeting thought that she'd slain the wrong human.