The Black Wing (26 page)

Nothing had been the same for Tate since Sir Wolter Hed-ing, his sponsor and friend his
father, for all purposes was slain in the ill-fated attack on Shalimsha. Lamesh Castle's
lord knight seemed to have only two moods these past months: anger and shame. Tate had
been so sure Kiri-Jolith approved of the plan. Wolter had advised against it. It was the
only time Tate had ignored Sir Wolter's advice.

That was the greatest part of his shame, which Tate would have admitted only to Wolter.
Tate knew men died in battle. He'd witnessed the gruesome deaths of Sir Stippling's party.
The knight had just never given thought to its happening specifically because of him. Not
to Wolter, anyway. By virtue of his wisdom Wolter always seemed to rise above such earthly
concerns. Wolter would have been telling stories at hearthside in Solamnia, if not for
Tate.

The young knight's anger always focused on the black dragon whose last strike at Tate had
ended Wolter's life. Something about her had been hauntingly familiar. Her odd necklace
had struck an uneasy chord in his memory that the knight was still unable to identify.

Shaking away the unsettling reflection, the lord knight looked upon the new moat with a
glimmer of satisfaction. Anticipating a counterattack, he'd had the foresight to dig the
trench and fill it, despite the muttered protests of the workers. Tate had devoted a great
percentage of his manpower to accomplishing it so quickly, but too soon it would prove its
worth in a land-based attack. Unfortunately, it would do nothing to stop the dragons he
was certain must be lying in wait somewhere. That he couldn't see them only made him more
apprehensive about what they were planning. He was only slightly mollified to remember
that when the dragons entered the battle, he was at least prepared now to fight them on
their own level. The knight made a mental note to feed his own winged creatures, which
he'd been careful to keep out of sight of spies the Black Wing might have sent north.

Tate leaned over the inner wall and yelled into the courtyard, “Albrecht, sound the alarm
in the village. Take a handful of men to gather the people into the safety of the castle.
We have little enough room in the inner ward, so instruct them to bring only their
children, the clothes on their backs, and perhaps weapons, if they're of use. Tell the
gate guards to keep watch for smugglers.” He gave a small motion with his head. “Quickly
now.” Nodding up at his superior, Albrecht hastened off toward the east gate, gathering a
small trail of knights in his wake.

Tate considered calling Albrecht back to order the torching of the village so its stores
wouldn't benefit the enemy, but he decided against it. They would need every hand in the
battle; burning their village, no matter how tactically sound, would earn the lord knight
no supporters among the villagers. Better to let the enemy do that dirty work. Next, Tate
jogged to each of the bastions, starting with those on the southeastern and southwestern
corners, which faced the encamped army of the Black Wing. Tate instructed the sentries
there to watch closely, first and foremost for signs of impending attack, secondly for
dragons, and then for any parties departing from the enemy's main

body. He told their counterparts in the northeast and northwest towers to alert him
immediately if they sighted either dragons or the appearance of wooden mantelets near the
eastern or northern gates to prevent escape. That reminded Tate he needed to get his own
spies out quickly, before the enemy could seal them into the castle. Spotting Wallens
coordinating the stockpiling of rocks and arrows on the south battlements, he put the
knight in charge of selecting and dispersing agents to more accurately assess the enemy's
strength and intent. Tate saw Abel the baker scurrying about, the flour on his apron
turned to paste by the lightly falling rain. The stout man was bossing knights and youths
alike in the filling of pots and jugs of water. The containers were then placed on the
battlements to be dumped on enemy soldiers as they scaled the walls. The light rain was
making it difficult to start fires to boil the pots of water. The blacksmith lent his
bellows to the task, and before long flames stirred and stayed. Long, forked poles were
distributed along the walls for toppling ladders. Bundles of arrows wrapped in oilskins to
protect them against the rain were deposited behind the battlements. Archers checked their
bowstrings, carefully packed inside their doublets or padded armor, to be sure they were
dry. Crossbowmen shook beaded water off their heavily oiled weapons. Before long, the
frightened villagers, grumbling about the rain, began to pile through the eastern gate,
crowding the courtyard. Albrecht set them to work immediately preparing bandages, fetching
and carrying supplies for the soldiers, and rounding up the livestock running loose in the
compound. After everyone was fed a thin stew from the enormous pots that would too soon
hold boiling water for the defense, Tate called an emergency meeting of his four-man
council of knights. Since the great room was filled with displaced villagers, Albrecht,
Wallens, and Auston met with him in the light of a single taper in their barracks. Tate's
batting felt wet and clammy against his skin. “You've all seen, or at least heard about,
the mobile barricades beyond the gates,” Tate began. “We are now sealed in, unless we
choose to try fighting our way out. ”It appears, however, that we are badly outnumbered.
The enemy has a sizable army of humans, ogres, and some sort of creatures no one here can
identify. Prudence demands we assume they have dragons, as well, although no one has seen
them.“ Heads nodded quiet agreement around the table. ”Considering the seriousness of the
situation, I want to send an emissary out to talk to their commander.“ Agreement was
replaced by surprise. ”Surely you don't mean to discuss surrender?“ asked Albrecht. ”No,“
replied Tate. ”But we have a huge number of women, children, and old men here in the
fortress. We must at least try to arrange safe conduct for them away from the battle.“
Auston cleared his throat. ”Sir, I would be honored to serve as message bearer. I've had
some diplomatic experience, settling ethnic disputes with the barbarians in the Est- wilde
region of Solamnia.“ Tate clapped the eager young knight on the shoulder. ”You're just the
man for the job, then, Auston.“ A short time later the knights were reassembled inside the
south gate. Lanterns, spitting softly in the light rain, cast their dim light across the
scene. Auston sat proudly, if somewhat nervously, on his horse. Tate shook the young
knight's hand. ”Come back swiftly and safely." Nodding, Auston touched his helmet in
salute to Tate as he rode out the gate. Two guards hastily closed and barred it behind
him. Rather than wait anxiously back in the barracks, the knights separated to
double-check the castle's defenses. Tate went to the stables below the barracks and fed
the griffons.

The horses had been moved above ground to accommodate the five horseflesh-loving winged
creatures he'd purchased at great expense from a trader. An hour later, there came a shout
from the rampart. A nervous guard peered out and saw a white horse, returning alone in the
pale moonlight. Tate ran from the stables up onto the wall to see what caused the
commotion. He watched with the sentries and knights gathered there as the horse cantered
back to the south gate. Guards flung back the heavy wooden doors and hustled the horse
inside. Snorting, eyes wide and fearful, the white creature circled through the courtyard
and the thronged people there, stopping before Tate, who'd hastened down from the
battlement. The courtyard grew strangely still, as if everyone inside was holding his
breath. The apprehensive lord knight began to search the creature for a note or message of
some kind concerning Auston's fate. The horse itself provided the answer. Its hairy lips
ruffled, and a voice very like Tate's own said through the horse's mouth, “You can't act
like ruffians and expect to be treated like ladies.” Tate visibly paled. “What does it
mean, Sir Tate?” Albrecht asked, noting the expression of understanding growing on his
superior's face. “And what have they done with Auston?” “It means no deal,” Tate said
numbly. “Auston's dead.” “The unprincipled bastards!” snarled the usually contained
Wallens. “What'U we do now, Sir?” Tate tried to rub the weariness from his eyes. “See to
your stations one last time tonight, then get some rest while you can,” the lord knight
said. “Tomorrow promises to be a long, hard day.” Tate was already walking away from the
dazed Albrecht and Wallens, his thoughts on a distant time. Three fingers traced the scars
beneath the whiskers on his cheek. Now he knew why the dragon at Shalimsha had seemed so
familiar. The witch-woman from the ambush . .. Tate didn't understand magic well enough to
explain how it could be done, but he was certain the human fighter was now a vengeful,
black dragon. It was obvious from the message that she hadn't forgotten their encounter,
either. A muscle twitched in Tate's wet cheek. The dragon's quest was nothing compared to
the knight's: to avenge his friend, Wolter. She was a worthy adversary as a dragon, he
mused, recalling the battle at Shalimsha. He found it all very curious how their paths had
crossed and recrossed. He wasn't a man to believe in omens, but if ever he did ... The
Knight of the Crown felt a sudden, overwhelming desire to pray to his patron, Kiri-Jolith.
He'd spent little time in temple since the battle at Shalimsha. Tate told himself he was
too busy reorganizing troops and bolstering morale to devote one of every seven days to
inactive prayer. The truth was, without the old knight to steel his resolve, Sir Tate's
interest in rising to the Order of the Rose had waned. In a secret corner of his soul,
Tate had even dared to wonder if Kiri-Jolith hadn't abandoned him first. As the lord
knight picked his way through the sleeping bodies in the courtyard, he couldn't help
thinking that many were taking their last mortal rest. The thought propelled Tate faster
toward a long overdue talk with his god.

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 second 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 climbing 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 alteration 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. Perhaps 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
circle 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 allif s his job to think
of such things. I only took it to humor him. You know how I hate magicdidn'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, Maldeev,” 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 wondered 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 suddenly, with the highlord out of earshot. “I sense
a recklessness 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 prepared 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 crenelated 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 limited 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 corner. 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 prepared 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 anything like what awaited them on the northern wall. After
flying 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 dragons' 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 bitterness of the escalade. Khan had voiced concern about the dra-
conians being the ones to lead the chargeif 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 desperately. 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 purposefully 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 detachment, 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 comrades 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 threshold 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