The Last Guardian (7 page)

“They?” started Khadgar. There was the rustle of great wings overhead. Medivh headed for the ramparts, and Khadgar looked up.

Great birds descended from the sky, their wings luminescent in the moonlight. No, not birds, Khadgar realized—gryphons. They had the bodies of great cats, but their heads and front claws were those of sea eagles, and their wings were golden.

Medivh held out a bit and bridle. “Hitch yours up, and we’ll go.”

Khadgar eyed the great beast. The nearest gryphon let out a shrieking cry and pawed the flagstones with its clawed forelegs.

“I’ve never…” started the young man. “I don’t know…”

Medivh frowned. “Don’t they teach anything among the Kirin Tor? I don’t have time for this.”

He raised a finger and muttered a few words, touching Khadgar’s forehead.

Khadgar stumbled back, shouting in surprise. The elder mage’s touch felt as if he were driving a hot iron into his brain.

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Medivh said, “Now youdo know. Set the bit and bridle, now.”

Khadgar touched his forehead, and let out a surprised gasp. Hedid know now, how to properly harness a gryphon, and to ride one as well, both with saddle and, in the dwarven style, without.

He knew how to bank, how to force a hover, and most of all, how to prepare for a sudden landing.

Khadgar harnessed his gryphon, aware that his head throbbed slightly, as if the knowledge now within had to jostle that already within his skull to make room.

“Ready? Follow!” said Medivh, not asking for a response.

The pair launched themselves into the air, the great beasts straining and beating the air to allow them to rise. The great creatures could take armored dwarves aloft, but a human in robes approached their limits.

Khadgar expertly banked his swooping gryphon and followed Medivh as the elder mage swooped down over the dark treetops. The pain in his head spread from the point where Medivh had touched him, and now his forehead felt heavy and his thoughts muzzy. Still, he concentrated and matched the master mage’s motions exactly, as if he had been flying gryphons all his life.

The younger mage tried to catch up with Medivh, to ask where they were going, and what their goal was, but he could not overtake him. Even if he had, Khadgar realized, the rushing wind would drown out all but the greatest shouts. So he followed as the mountains loomed above them, as they winged eastward.

How long they flew Khadgar could not say, He may have dozed fitfully on gryphon-back, but hands held the reins firm, and the gryphon kept pace with its brother-creature. Only when Medivh suddenly jinked his gryphon to the right did Khadgar shake himself out of his slumber (if slumber it was) and followed the master mage as his course turned south. Khadgar’s headache, the likely product of the spell, had almost completely dissipated, leaving only a ragged ache as a reminder.

They had cleared the mountain range and Khadgar now realized they were flying over open land.

Beneath them the moonlight was shattered and reflected in myriad pools. A large marsh or swamp, Khadgar thought. It had to be early in the morning now, the horizon on their right just starting to lighten with the eventual promise of day.

Medivh dropped low and raised both hands over his head. Incanting from gryphon-back, Khadgar realized, and though his mind assured him that he knew how to do this, steering the great beast with his knees, he felt in his heart that he could never be comfortable in such a maneuver.

The creatures dropped farther, and Medivh was suddenly bathed in a ball of light, both limning him clearly and catching Khadgar’s gryphon as a trailing shadow. Beneath them, the young mage saw an armed encampment on a low rise that jutted from the surrounding swamp. They passed low over the camp, and beneath him Khadgar could hear shouts and the clatter of armor and weapons being hastily grabbed. What was Medivh doing?

They passed over the encampment, and Medivh pulled into a high, banking turn, Khadgar following him move for move. They returned over the camp, and it was brighter now—the campfires that had previously been banked were now fed fresh fuel, and blazed in the night.

Khadgar saw it was a large patrol, perhaps even a company. The commander’s tent was large and ornate, and Khadgar recognized the banner of Azeroth flapping overhead.

Allies, then, for Medivh was supposedly closely connected to both King Llane of Azeroth and Lothar, the kingdom’s Knight Champion. Khadgar expected Medivh to land, but instead the mage kicked the sides of his mount, pulling the gryphon’s head up. The beast’s great wings beat the dark air and they climbed again, this time rocketing north. Khadgar had no choice but to follow, as Medivh’s light dimmed and the master mage took the reins again.

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Over the marshlands again, and Khadgar saw a thin ribbon beneath, too straight for a river, too wide for an irrigation ditch. A road, then, plowed through the swamp, connecting bits of dry land that rose out of

the fen.

Then the land rose to another ridge, another dry spot, and another encampment. There were also flames in this encampment, but they were not the bright, contained ones of the army’s forces. These were scattered throughout the clearing, and as they neared, Khadgar realized they were wagons set alight, their contents strewn out among the dark human forms that were tossed like children’s dolls on the sandy ground of the campsite.

As before, Medivh passed over the campsite, then wheeled high in the air, banking to make a return pass. Khadgar followed, the young mage himself leaning over the side of his mount to get a better look. It looked like a caravan that had been looted and set ablaze, but the goods themselves were scattered on the ground. Wouldn’t bandits take the booty and the wagons?

Were there any survivors?

The answer to the last question came with a shout and a volley of arrows that arched up from the brush surrounding the site.

The lead gryphon let out a shriek as Medivh effortlessly pulled back on the reins, banking the creature clear of the flight of arrows. Khadgar attempted the same maneuver, the warm, false, comforting memory in his head telling him that this was the correct way to turn. But unlike Medivh, Khadgar was riding too far forward on his mount, and he had insufficient pull on his reins.

The gryphon banked, but not enough to avoid all the arrows. A barbed arrow pierced the feathers of the right wing, and the great beast let out a bleating scream, jerking in flight and desperately attempting to beat its wings to get above the arrows.

Khadgar was off-balance, and was unable to compensate. In a heartbeat his hands slipped loose of the reins, and his knees slipped up from the sides of the gryphon. No longer under tight control, the gryphon bucked, throwing Khadgar entirely free of its back.

Khadgar lashed out to grab the reins. The leather lines whipped at his fingertips and then were gone into the night, along with his mount.

And Khadgar plummeted toward the armed darkness below.

Four

Battle and Aftermath

The air rushed out of Khadgar’s lungs as he struck the ground. The earth was gritty beneath his fingers, and he realized he must have landed on a low dune of sandy debris collected along one side of the ridge.

Uneasily the young mage rose to his feet. From the air the ridge looked like a forest fire. From the ground it looked like an opening to hell itself.

The wagons were almost completely consumed by fire now, their contents scattered and blazing along the ridge. Bolts of cloth had been unwound in the dirt, barrels staved and leaking, and food despoiled and mashed into the earth. Around him were bodies as well, human forms dressed in light armor. There was an occasional gleam of a helmet or a sword. Those would be the caravan guards, who failed their task.

Khadgar shrugged a painful shoulder, but it felt bruised as opposed to broken. Even given the sand, he should have landed harder. He shook his head, hard. Whatever ache was left from Medivh’s spell was outweighed by greater aches elsewhere.

There was movement among the wreckage, and Khadgar crouched. Voices barked back and forth in an unfamiliar tongue, a language to Khadgar’s ears both guttural and blasphemous. They
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were searching for him. They had seen him topple from his mount and now they were searching for him. As he watched, stooped figures shambled through the wreckage, forming hunched silhouettes where they passed before the flames.

Something tickled the back of Khadgar’s brain, but he could not place it. Instead he started to back out of the clearing, hoping the darkness would keep him hidden from the creatures.

Such was not to be. Behind him, a branch snapped or a booted foot found a chuckhole covered by leaves, or leather armor was tangled briefly in some brush. In any event, Khadgar knew he was not alone, and he turned at once to see…

A monstrosity from his vision. A mockery of humanity in green and black.

It was not as large as the creature of his vision, nor as wide, but it was still a nightmare creature.

Its heavy jaw was dominated by fangs that jutted upward, its other features small and sinister.

For the first time Khadgar realized it had large, upright ears. It probably heard him before it saw him.

Its armor was dark, but it was leather and not the metal of his dream. The creature bore a torch in one hand that caught the deep features of its face, making it all the more monstrous. In its other hand the creature carried a spear decorated with a string of small white objects. With a start Khadgar realized the objects were human ears, trophies of the massacre around them.

All this came to Khadgar in an instant, in the moment’s meeting of man and monster. The beast pointed the grisly-decorated spear at the youth and let out a bellowing challenge.

The challenge was cut short as the young mage muttered a word of power, raised a hand, and unleashed a small bolt of power through the creature’s midsection. The beast slumped in on itself, its bellow cut short.

One part of his mind was stunned by what he had just done, the other knew that he had seen what these creatures could do, in the vision in Karazhan.

The creature had warned the other members of its unit, and now there were war-howls in return around the encampment. Two, four, a dozen such travesties, all converging on his location.

Worse yet, there were other howls from the swamp itself.

Khadgar knew he did not have the power to repulse all of them. Summoning the mystic bolt was enough to weaken him. Another would put him in dire danger of fainting. Perhaps he should try to flee?

But these monsters probably knew the dark fen that surrounded them better than he did. If he kept to the sandy ridge, they would find him. If he fled into the swamp, not even Medivh would be able to locate him.

Khadgar looked up into the sky, but there was no sign of either the Magus or the gryphons. Had Medivh landed somewhere, and was sneaking up on the monsters? Or had he returned to the human force to the south, to bring them here?

Or, thought Khadgar grimly, had Medivh’s quicksilver mood changed once again and he had forgotten he had someone with him on this flight?

Khadgar looked quickly out into the darkness, then back toward the site of the ambush itself.

There were more shadows moving around the fire, and more howling.

Khadgar picked up the grisly trophy-spear, and strode purposely toward the fire. He might not be able to fire off more than a mystic bolt or two, but the monsters didn’t know that.

Perhaps they were as dumb as they looked. And as inexperienced with wizards as he was with them.

He did surprise them, for what it was worth. The last thing they expected was their prey, the victim they had unseated from its flying mount, suddenly to manifest at the edge of the campfire’s light, bearing the trophy-spear of one of their guards.

Khadgar tossed the spear sideways on the fire, and it sent up a shower of sparks as it landed.

The young mage summoned a bit of flame, a small ball, and held it in his hand. He hoped that it
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limned his features as seriously as the torch had lit the guard’s. It had better.

“Leave this place,” Khadgar bellowed, praying that his strained voice would not crack. “Leave this place or die.”

One of the larger brutes took two steps forward and Khadgar muttered a word of power. The mystic energies congealed around his flaming hand and blasted the green nonhuman full in the face. The brute had enough time to raise a clawed hand to its ruined features before it toppled.

“Flee,” shouted Khadgar, trying to pitch his voice as deeply as he could, “Flee or face the same fate.”

His stomach felt like ice, and he tried not to stare at the burning creature.

A spear launched out of the darkness, and with the last of his energy Khadgar summoned a bit of air, just enough to push it clearly aside. As he did he felt faint. That was the last he could do.

He was well and truly tapped out. It would be a good time for his bluff to work.

The surrounding creatures, about a dozen visible, took a step back, then another. One more shout, Khadgar reckoned, and they would flee back into the swamp, and give him enough time to flee himself.

He had already decided he would flee south, toward the army encampment.

Instead there was a high, cackling laugh that froze Khadgar’s blood. The ranks of the green warriors parted and another figure shambled forward. It was thinner and more hunched than the others, and wore a robe the color of curdled blood. The color of the sky of Khadgar’s vision. Its features were as green and misshapened as the others, but this one has a gleam of feral intelligence in its eyes.

It held out its hand, palm upward, and took a dagger and pierced its palm with the tip. Reddish blood pooled in the clawed palm.

The robed beast spoke a word that Khadgar had never heard, a word that hurt the ears, and the blood burst into flame.

“Human wants to play?” said the robed monster, roughly matching the human language. “Wants to play at spells? Nothgrin can play!”

“Leave now,” tried Khadgar. “Leave now or die!”