Bones of the Dragon (20 page)

The Dragon Kahg was the leader of the dragons who served the Vindrasi. Like others of his kind, he had been searching for his missing goddess until the dragon elders gave him the task of ensuring the safety of the Vektan Torque.

Returning to the Torgun, Kahg at last heard the pleading prayers of the Bone Priestess, and he became aware that the Torgun were in a desperate struggle for their lives against raiding ogres.

Kahg was at first annoyed. He’d gone on an urgent mission to check on the Vektan Torque, and now he was going to have to waste time snatching the Torgun fat out of the fire. Undoubtedly this was the fault of that young hothead, Skylan Ivorson. Kahg was grumbling to himself, taking his time materializing to teach them a lesson, when the angry Goddess Aylis struck the ogre godlord with a shaft of sunlight. Kahg saw the bright flash of gold and the sparkle of sapphire and realized in an instant that the ogre wore the Vektan Torque.

Kahg had no idea how the ogre had come into possession of the sacred torque, but he could guess. Kahg did not like Horg, who refused to go raiding, much to the ire of all the Vindrasi dragons. The Heudjun’s dragon had left in a rage, first seeing to it that Horg’s dragonship struck a rock and foundered. Feeling his stature as Chief of Chiefs was diminished by his lack of a ship, Horg had tried to persuade the Torgun to give him the
Venjekar
. When Norgaard refused, Horg sent a raiding party to steal the dragonship.

The Dragon Kahg had angrily smashed their boats, forcing them to swim back. The Torgun never knew anything about Horg’s attempt to steal their dragonship, or there would have been war between the clans.

Kahg could picture Horg bartering the torque for cattle, silver, or even to
save his own skin. The reason did not matter now. The torque held the spiritbone of one of the powerful Five, and Kahg had to help the Torgun recover it. The task was made more urgent by the implication that another of the Five was already in enemy hands.

“Vindrash, hear my prayer.” The words of the Bone Priestess dinned in the dragon’s ears. “Tell the Dragon Kahg of our desperate need.”

Kahg roared into being, astonishing both friend and foe as he burst into life directly above their heads.

Fighting was now hand-to-hand, warrior pitted against warrior. Surprisingly, after that first terrible onslaught had caused their shield-wall to crumble, the Torgun were holding their own. The ogres had brawn and brute strength on their side, but those had been assets only at the start of the battle. Weighted down by their heavy armor, massive shields, and enormous weapons, the ogres were being forced to fight a protracted battle, and they didn’t like it. Their arms were starting to ache. Their leg muscles burned. Their clumsy blows went wide, missing the mark.

Ogres were deemed lazy by humans, but the truth was, as Norgaard had said, they lacked stamina. Ogres were practical-minded, with no concept of honor. Unlike the Vindrasi, they did not consider dying in battle a glorious end. They liked a good fight, so long as they didn’t have to expend too much effort in order to win. These stubborn humans, who were apparently made of iron, not flesh and blood, were taking all the fun out of warfare.

The ogres were not ready to give up yet. Or rather, their godlords were not, and the ogre warriors were more afraid of their commanders than they were of the enemy. The Torgun, locked in a desperate struggle for their lives, greeted the dragon’s arrival with ragged cheers. The ogres gaped at the dragon in openmouthed amazement that swiftly devolved into horror. Most had never seen a dragon or even known such creatures existed.

A dragon took on the appearance of the elements from which he was created. If the Dragon Kahg had been formed of seawater, he would have been glistening blue green with a white crest, like foam-spattered waves. Created out of dirt and desperation, he was an earth dragon. His scales were a dull brown mottled with green. His crest was the gray of jagged mountain peaks, his tail the red color of clay. He was hampered by the fact that he’d come to the battle late. With warrior battling warrior, the dragon dared not use his fiery breath, for fear of harming the Torgun.

Kahg’s first concern was for the ogre who had possession of the Vektan Torque. The dragon saw Skylan running to confront the ogre, and Kahg might have intervened, but Skylan shone with a holy radiance, and Kahg realized the young man had given himself to the god. The Madness of Torval was upon
him. Kahg decided to leave the ogre to the human warrior. He swooped down on three ogre warriors fighting Norgaard’s bodyguards and snatched them up in his clawed feet.

Kahg soared skyward, clutching the howling ogres. When he was high above the trees, he opened his claws and dropped two of them. The screaming ogres plummeted to the ground, their heavy bodies landing on their comrades, smashing them into a jellied mass of blood and bone, brains and blubber.

The third ogre hung on to Kahg’s claw for dear life. Annoyed, Kahg shook his claw, trying to dislodge the ogre. The ogre clung to the claw, wrapping arms and legs around it. Kahg at last stuck the claw in his mouth, sucked up the ogre as though he were a splinter, crunched him to pulp, then spit him out.

Some of the ogres decided they’d had enough. They were already weary of this fight, and now they were being attacked by a fearsome monster, a creature from a nightmare. These ogres threw down their heavy weapons, turned, and began to lumber back toward the sea. The others fought on, but they were rapidly losing heart.

The dragon’s body blotted out the sun. His fierce eyes glared down at his foe. He made another dive, snagged several more ogres, and hurled them onto the ground. Their bodies split wide open, spewing blood and guts. Even the godlords, who had been urging their warriors to stand and fight, were appalled at this gruesome sight. The godlords fled Kahg’s fury, and they took their warriors with them. Within moments of the dragon’s coming, the entire ogre army was stampeding madly for their ships.

Skylan saw none of this. The Madness of Torval was upon him.

T
he ogre godlord watched the human warrior come charging at him across the battlefield and stood waiting for him, not because he relished the idea of a battle of heroes, but because he was bitter, angry, and frustrated. What should have been a resounding victory was turning into a disastrous rout. His men were thundering past him, running for their miserable lives. The only ogre who was staying with him was the shaman, and the godlord wished he would get swallowed by the dragon.

The godlord considered the shaman with his black feathers and his stupid gourd bad luck. He ordered the shaman to go, but the black-feathered bastard remained rooted to the spot. The godlord planned to retreat with his men, but he had not made any kills this day; he’d been too busy trying to beat some sense into his warriors, and he could not leave the field of battle without having drawn blood. The other two godlords, who were always watching for a chance to demean him, would report such “cowardice” to his superiors the moment they returned home.

This young human with the sun-gold hair and the sky-blue eyes was the Chief’s son. He was the one who had wanted to fight them all at dinner. The one who had sneaked aboard the dragonship and slain two ogres and escaped. The one who had killed the boar. This would be a good kill. The godlord would bash in the young pup’s skull and then depart.

The godlord cast a dark glance at the dragon. The ogre was fifty years old, and he had faced dragons before. He knew that the dragons of the Vindrasi had something to do with their famed dragonships, though he was not entirely sure what. He had the vague idea that the ship turned into a dragon, and so he had made certain that the Torgun dragonship was safe in ogre hands.

Then had come the daring raid in the night. The surviving ogre guard could not say exactly what the Torgun warrior had removed from the ship, but it must have had something to do with the dragon, for the ship was still surrounded by ogre vessels, and here was the dragon carrying off his warriors as the eagle carries off rabbits.

Seeing that the dragon posed no threat to him, at least for the moment, the godlord turned his attention back to his foe. The young human advanced on the godlord unafraid, carrying his sword and a dented shield he had taken off a dead man. His long fair hair shone in the sunlight, seeming to surround him with light. His blue eyes were hard and glittering with battle rage.

Some god must love him, the ogre thought sourly, and he strode forward to do battle.

Skylan was caught up in the Madness of Torval, and he did not see the dragon, or the ogres, or his own men. He saw only his foe—the ogre godlord who wore the Vektan Torque around his neck. It seemed to Skylan as if Torval had lifted the two of them up off the earth and dropped them both down on some distant shore where they could fight together, isolated and alone.

Some thought the Madness of Torval sent men careening headlong into battle, witless as raving lunatics. That was not true. Torval had more sense. The madness opened a warrior’s eyes, gave him insight into his foe—how he thought, how he would react, which way he would move.

Ogre and human used far different fighting techniques. Ogres had little use for developing weapons skills. They saw no need. Ogres counted on strength and brute force to strike down an opponent, generally with a single blow. Their weapons of choice tended to be war hammers and battle axes.

Skylan, by contrast, had started learning to fight at the age of four, when Norgaard put a wooden sword into the child’s hands and showed him how to use it. Not a day had gone by since that Skylan did not practice, first with a wooden sword, then with a real one, learning the Vindrasi technique of dividing an enemy’s body into quarters and striking first at one quarter and then another, forcing the enemy to constantly shift position.

He and the godlord squared off. Skylan had to remain constantly on his guard, not allow his foe to hit him. A single blow from the godlord’s war hammer would bring the battle to a quick and bloody end.

Skylan adopted a balanced stance, left knee forward, right leg braced behind, his shield held parallel to the shield of his opponent. Skylan raised his sword above his head, blade pointed down. Fighting a human, he would have been prepared to strike at the face. With the ogre, he was going for the chest.

The ogre held his shield roughly parallel to Skylan and slowly swung the hammer, giving Skylan no indication where he meant to strike. Skylan shifted his weight and made a quick sword thrust at the ogre’s chest. As he had hoped, the ogre raised his shield to block the blow, leaving his legs exposed. Swiftly Skylan lowered his sword, stabbed the blade into the ogre’s unprotected thigh, swinging his shield outward at the same time to sweep aside a blow from the hammer.

If the ogre had struck Skylan’s shield with full force, he would have broken his arm. As it was, the ogre’s leg buckled when Skylan drove his sword into the thigh muscle. The ogre didn’t fall, but he was thrown off balance, and the hammer swing hit Skylan’s shield a glancing blow. Skylan’s shield arm tingled from wrist to shoulder, and he fell back to catch his breath, expecting his opponent to do the same. This was how humans fought. A flurry of five or six attacks and counterattacks and then a fall back. Skylan was astonished, therefore, to see the ogre godlord come after him. Blood flew from the ogre’s wound; saliva drooled from his mouth. The hammer swung at Skylan’s head.

Skylan aimed his sword again at the ogre’s leg. The godlord, anticipating this attack, lowered his shield to block. Skylan kicked the shield aside, which left the ogre wide open, and drove his sword into the ogre’s hip joint, severing tendons and muscle. The ogre godlord crashed to the ground. Howling in pain and rage, he rolled about in agony, wallowing in his own gore.

Skylan flung aside his shield. He shifted his sword to his left hand and bent over the ogre to wrest the Vektan Torque from the godlord’s fat neck.

Pain lanced through Skylan. The godlord had stabbed him in the shoulder with his knife. Skylan slammed the hilt of his sword into the ogre’s face. He felt and heard bone crunch, and the ogre quit moving. Skylan’s fingers closed around the golden circlet that was half-buried in the ogre’s flesh and yanked it free.

He saw, out of the corner of his eye, the shaman flapping his black-feathered arms like an irate bird, waving his gourd at him and chanting strange words. Skylan paid no attention to the shaman. He heard Norgaard’s voice shouting to kill the shaman, but he paid no attention to his father either.

With the torque safe, Skylan drove his sword into the ogre’s neck, cleaving the head from the body. He raised the torque into the air in triumph. He was about to shout a prayer of thanks to Torval, when he was suddenly deluged with warm blood. Blood flew into his eyes. Blood filled his mouth. He tried to wipe the blood from his eyes, but he couldn’t. He tried to spit the blood out of his mouth, but he couldn’t do that either. He couldn’t move his lips or his tongue. He couldn’t move his hands. He couldn’t shift his feet. All he could do was stare at the black-feathered shaman.

The shaman had known better than to try to stop the fight between the godlord and the human. The shaman was permitted to bless the warriors before the battle, but he was strictly forbidden, on pain of death, to take part. In the old days, not so long ago, shamanistic magic among the ogres was known as “death-magic.” Ogre shamans did not necessarily have to kill something for their magic to work, but they did have to make a sacrifice of some kind. Ogres were pragmatic. They knew that life was hard and you never got something for nothing. In the dark days, when they worshipped dark gods, ogre shamans who wanted to raise a dead ogre did so by killing off one of his relatives. Ogres healed sickness in one by inflicting the illness onto another.

When the Gods of Raj took over, they had been appalled by such behavior. Pragmatic themselves, they saw that their worshippers were eventually going to kill themselves off. The Gods of Raj persuaded the shamans to use symbolic sacrifice to replace blood sacrifices. Break a gourd, not a head. The shamans were still in the practicing phase of trying to learn this new magic, which meant their spell-casting tended to be erratic and unreliable, resulting in some spectacular failures. Ogre warriors feared their own shaman far more than they did the enemy, and so shamans were not permitted to join the fighting.