Dragon Ultimate (27 page)

"Cuzo, what do you think?"

"Move some boys with the 145th, take three from each squadron. It's better to have dragonboys with them, you need the archery and the protection from the occasional imp that gets through. Once a dragon is hamstrung by imps he's helpless."

"Right, sounds practical enough. Gink, write out the orders and get them posted at once."

"Yes, sir."

The officers studied the map carefully, checking it against the smaller maps they carried in leather tubes over their shoulders. The Red Rose Legion held the southern half of the position, which stretched out on a front of half a mile. The Red Rose was drawn up in a slightly curved line down to the Little Fish River at the southern end. The northern part of the levee was held by the Argonath Legion, set out in divisions made up of two regiments apiece. There were two regiments held in reserve.

The levee had been fortified with a stockade its entire length, and a ditch had been dug in front and staked. The dragons would fight from behind the protection of the stockade. Men occupied the line between the dragons. Dragonboys would fight behind the dragons as usual, and archers were set at intervals all along the line. Finally there were the catapults, set every fifty yards. It was as strong a line as could be fashioned with less than twenty thousand total effectives.

Behind them lay five and a half miles of swamps and lagoons to the higher ground at the base of the volcano. Fort Kenor was up there, high on the northern side of the cone. There was but a single road back to the fort, and it crossed a number of bridges. This was their greatest weakness, but at the same time it offered a strange strength of purpose. They would hold their line because they had no alternative. To retreat down that road, fighting their way through a Baguti army with the Padmasans behind them would be to risk annihilation.

They were Legion troops, trained from the beginning to fight superior numbers—and win.

"We have recruited two hundred of the best archers to work up and down the line, in addition to the regular troops of archers which will be stationed up and down the line. You'll always have an archer in earshot," Tregor said.

The officers, young and old, nodded grimly.

"We can expect their attack first thing in the morning. I want the maximum watch maintained through the night. There will be a mist, and they will use that to get as close as possible. Half an hour before dawn I want every man up and awake. Extra supplies of kalut will be on hand. There'll be time for sleep later in the day if they don't attack."

General Tregor was not a stupid man and his scouting intelligence was good. Consequently, he went to his cot that night reasonably convinced that he would be ready for the enemy's assault the following morning, at dawn.

All would have proceeded as expected, if he had not been facing in General Munth, an extremely aggressive commander determined to make his mark, and the power of the greatest sorcerer of any age, the Dominator of Twelve Worlds, Waakzaam the Great.

The moon set in the second hour of the morning, two hours before dawn. In the darkness Munth threw two huge assault columns across the river. To guide them were Baguti who had trained extensively for this job. They kept the lumbering trolls and imp columns marching steadily through the shallow waters, over rocky bare islets and stretches of mud.

The Great River was three miles wide at this point in its course, and in the dry season it formed a braid of channels and islets and flat expanses of rock. The guides knew it all, and they performed faultlessly. Through the hours of complete darkness, the assault parties moved swiftly.

As they closed within a mile of the farther shore a strange effect arose off the waters. A faint mist, glowing green, seemed to breathe out of the ground in wisps. As it came it laid a complete silence upon the world and all the noise of their passage, from the splashing of thousands of feet in the water, to the clank of metal, the rasp of wood and leather, all vanished.

They seemed to glide on in silence, and the very moments of time became stretched out, dreamlike, as they moved on toward the Argonath lines. A great wonder spread among them, and with that wonder came a savage hope that at last they would surprise an Argonathi army in its sleep.

Under the deep darkness the Padmasans came on, silent and almost invisible. They passed into catapult range, undetected. Then they passed the range of the best archers and then the crossbowmen and now the stockade wall was dimly visible to the vanguard, a pale barrier stretched across their front.

They were just a couple of hundred yards now from the Argonathi wall and still there had been no response. With a sense of mounting triumph the men in the black mercenary uniforms exchanged cheerful sallies, urged the imps on, even patted the vicious trolls on the shoulder as they went by, ignoring their sullen snarls.

In the vanguard strode enormous albino trolls carrying huge hammers. Behind them came blocks of imps with scaling ladders and pry bars.

They left the water behind and ascended the shingle beach. The scrape of stones was masked, not a sound reaching the sentries on the towers.

And then the huge feet of trolls trod on the petals of a rose that had been scattered there earlier by a witch.

As the petals were crushed so Hadea, the young witch attached to the front line force, broke out of her meditative trance.

There! Something was on the beach, something had broken the invisible cordon she had established. She tried to sense it and recoiled. Enormous sorcery stalked the night, the power was so vast it was stunning to contemplate.

Without further thought she jumped to her feet and ran naked to the command post. The guards almost dropped their spears at the sight of Hadea, stark naked, long golden tresses streaming behind her as she ran up, pulled the cornet off its hook and blew on it, way off note, but loud.

"What ails the witch?" said the guards, but Hadea continued to blow into the cornet with horrible results.

The guards scratched their heads, but men and dragons were waking up. Querulous voices called out from all over the camp, mostly damning the drunk on the cornet to hell and beyond.

She blew it again and again and quite suddenly the men on the rampart felt a strange sensation pass over them, as if a soft blanket had been pulled from their heads, a blanket that had muffled the world. Hadea's tuneless cornet shrieks had broken the spell. From their front was the rush of sounds of a huge army, the stamp of thousands upon thousands of feet, the clank of metal, all coming forward at a rapid pace.

The sergeants were already up there, impelled by that insane cornet. Men were awake all up and down the line now. More cornets shrieked, but now they called the alarm and the "prepare to receive the enemy" in quick conjunction.

Hadea dropped the cornet while the astonished guards turned away. Discovering her own nakedness, she doubled back to her own tent to get some clothes on. The first men to scramble toward the rampart at that point were treated to the sight of Hadea running past them. These men subsequently reached the parapet with their eyes widened and their senses fully awakened.

In the rest of the camp sergeants ran through the lines of tents, turning out the laggards with curses and none-too-gentle taps with a cane. Dragons hauled themselves upright, barely popped an eye before they grabbed their weapons and went out to greet the enemy, some with dragonboys still arranging armor and latching straps and clasps.

The first reinforcements were just arriving on the rampart when the parapet began to shake up and down the line. The heavy trolls had arrived and were beating in the stockade walls with their huge hammers. Scaling ladders thunked up against the wall while a storm of arrows flew up into the faces of the defenders.

In the confusion, men and dragons were all mixed up on the rampart, arrows were pouring in, and the archers were firing back, when suddenly a vast green fire blazed in the west, a light so bright that it temporarily struck blind those who glimpsed it. Coming from behind the Padmasan horde it did the imps little harm, but it flashed directly in the eyes of the Argonathi defenders.

Unable to see, the archers stopped firing. Imps scrambled up the ladders and onto the wall, driving home their crude swords against men who could barely see them to fight. Unhindered by the bowmen or the catapults, the trolls were pounding clown the stockade and scrambling in. Men gave way before this mighty assault. Dragons managed to engage the enemy, and the clangor of dragonsword on troll shield and helm began. But the dragons were still reeling from the light, which continued to pour in from the west, out of a blazing orb low in the sky. They fought tentatively, with their shields up and trolls scored unusual successes early on.

By the time Relkin got his vision even halfway sorted out, he was hammered to his knees by an imp with a sword blow that knocked off his helmet and just about left him unconscious. Somehow, he got back up and found the Purple Green coming with the big Legion-issue sword in motion. He dived below it and felt the wind of its passing. Imps were cleared brutally from the scene, but the sword got stuck in the parapet. A. troll forced its way through a gap smashed open with the hammer. Imps were prying it wider, more imps were coming up the ladders.

Men were recovering. The Purple Green was heaving his sword free, but an imp was coming for him. Relkin hurled himself bodily into the imp and knocked it down. The Purple Green stamped on it even as he heaved his blade clear. Relkin ducked aside as an arrow flew past, and he heard it go thunk against the Purple Green's massive shield. Then Manuel was there, firing straight into the troll's face, allowing the Purple Green to hew it down.

Bazil swung by, sword high, pitching into two trolls that had burst clean through the parapet and onto the rampart. Troll shields were riven by Ecator as Bazil brought the fell sword over and down.

Arrows were still coming in, and now the enemy catapults on Crescent Island were firing. The enemy would happily sacrifice its own if it would help kill dragons. Shalp, a leatherback from Bea, was killed by a ten-foot catapult spear. Trolls broke through where he'd fallen. The stockade was disintegrating.

A brasshide from the Kadein 144th went backwards off the rampart with another of the terrible spears through his guts. Trolls hewed down old Gungus, the wise old leader of the Kadein 64th. These trolls were fighting in trios, one of the giant albino brutes, one of the more usual black-purple kind, and one of the new, more slightly built sword type, which had enough intelligence and speed to wield battlesword almost as well as a dragon.

General Tregor, awake and trembling, found himself with a nightmare on his hands. The terrible green light in the west was blazing again. And the enemy were breaking through in several places on his front. Cornets all up and down the line were shrieking insanely over the roar of battle and the deep bellows of massed trolls that were pushing through the breaks.

"Orders, sir?" said Sublieutenant Gink.

The light cut off as suddenly as it had begun. Everyone was now fighting in what seemed like pitch-darkness.

Dragons, accustomed to hunting by darkness, recovered from this more quickly than men or trolls. At once wyvern swords were in motion, and in moments trolls were separated from their heads up and down the line. The dragons took heart, and their roaring built up to the usual formidable pitch as they resumed the fray.

At one point Relkin glimpsed the monstrous bulk of the Purple Green, unmistakable with the wings strapped tight to his back. He had picked up a troll and held it over his head as he strode deliberately to the parapet, then hurled it down into the oncoming imps.

Then Relkin lost track as imps poured in, and it got very hot for the dragonboys and men on the rampart. An imp arrow bounced off his helmet with a stunning blow, driving him to his knees. Shaking his head, he brought up his bow. An imp was almost on him, leading with its spear. He aimed instinctively and fired almost at the same moment. The spear caught on the end of the bow and though the imp fell past him, the spear was deflected down to the ground just in front of his foot. Relkin looked back and saw the imp was dead while he reloaded without pause. He caught another imp at the rampart's edge, then a third as it tried to spear the dragon from behind.