The Legend of Asahiel: Book 03 - The Divine Talisman (18 page)

“Please, my lord. I beg you reconsider.”

“…once I have mounted this dragon’s head atop my palace wall.”

H
ORNS BLARED AND BELLS TOLLED,
trying vainly to steal the dragon’s attention. Perhaps the beast could not hear them over the raucous din of its ongoing assault. Or perhaps it was too clever to be lured by their trap. Whatever the reason, it seemed in no rush to respond to their desperate summons.

Galdric held steady at the head of his assembled regiment, resisting the urge to sally forth against the beast. While he truly believed that no creature was invulnerable, he knew he would need every advantage available to him if he was to bring this one down. And that meant remaining here, upon his chosen battleground. If he was patient, the dragon would find him.

Easier spoken than done. For while he hunkered there in that walled courtyard, with twoscore Castleguard and the squat, angled face of the palace at his back, soldiers and civilians alike were being slaughtered like gnats in a chaotic bloodbath. Even if they managed to slay the dragon, Atharvan was lost, its squares and streets teeming with Illychar. Survival would be difficult, escape nearly impossible.

But neither much concerned him in that moment. His sons were en route with the others underground, as safe as he could make them. All that mattered now was the challenge before him. At worst, he meant to buy his people time with a valiant last stand. At best, to become a legend.

For this was no mere diversion, but the ultimate battle between man and beast. One final chance to prove his strength and gild his legacy as perhaps the greatest hunter his people had ever known. An opportunity to make both his forefathers and his progeny proud—with a display of courage that would cause even his fair Deliah to smile in her tomb.

The trace of a smile pulling at his own lips vanished as a sudden explosion rocked the ground beneath his feet. Peering through the open portcullis of the palace courtyard, he had a clear view of the King’s Mile, a sloping avenue that fell away at the foot of the palace. Lined with guildhouses, cathedrals, and other stone structures of timeless magnificence—and filled now with the rubble of a bell tower at the end of the row.

A pair of riders tore frantically around the corner of the collapsed structure, whistles blowing. Galdric did not need to see their faces to witness the terror etched there. Shattered blocks rained about them, amid splintered beams and mangled iron struts. The forward rider ducked his head, and his lathered mount bore him through. But the trailing steed turned its hoof on a bouncing stone. Both horse and rider crashed and tumbled headlong upon the cobbles.

Before either could recover, the dragon was upon them, its black bulk emerging from the broken bell tower and plugging the breach at the bottom of the King’s Mile. While its mighty arms gripped a pair of buildings on either side, its great neck lashed out. The rider was flung against a near wall with bone-shattering force, and fell limply to the side. The horse, which tried to rise on its broken leg, was shredded.

Still the remaining rabbit blew his whistle, charging hard upon his courser. There was no further need, Galdric wished to tell him, but the soldier was clearly panic-stricken. The dragon hastened its pace, its horned shoulders gouging the buildings to either side, its wings spread above the rooftops. Paving stones cracked and buckled beneath its clawed feet. With the creature’s shadow falling over him like a cresting tidal wave, the soldier bore down upon the palace gate. Galdric feared the man had forgotten about their trap, and might inadvertently expose it too soon. He even considered closing the portcullis, to force the rider to avert. He need not have bothered. For the rider remembered himself, and at the last moment yanked hard upon his mount’s reins, just before entering the courtyard.

Unfortunately, he was too late. The dragon would not be denied. With a serpentine thrust, its head lunged after them. The stone bailey blocked Galdric’s view, so the king did not see what exactly became of them. But the whistle stopped, and blew no more.

Now that both rabbits had been silenced, the dragon turned its attention to the bells and horns that rang from the palace itself. Galdric signaled for quiet, and within moments the clangor had died to echoes. In the relative stillness that followed, the sounds of pain and slaughter throughout his city became ever more acute. Yet none of these was more keen than the crackling snarl of the beast before him.

It looked in on them from above the bailey with eyes like livid coals. Galdric peered deep into those flaming embers—as he had so many other wild beasts. It knew it had been baited, and that knowledge gave it pause. Though several of his men shifted nervously behind him, most held fast through either discipline or terror. That they had not yet scattered was surely another clear warning that something was amiss.

When the dragon began sniffing, Galdric feared their ruse was up, the trap wasted. His mind raced, given over to his own bestial instincts—to what he would do in the creature’s stead. It would take to the air. It would circumvent the courtyard by winging in from above.

He was still calculating an appropriate counter when the beast surprised him. There came a human cry—a command from an unseen source—though he could not make out the words. The dragon responded by rising up and beating its wings, roaring in challenge. It came forward then, not over the wall, as he feared, but through it, as he hoped. Galdric tensed. A fitting end, he reminded himself, no matter the outcome.

Blocks and mortar crumbled. Winches and chains and the spiked iron grate, hefted high, snapped apart and fell away. The dragon tore it down
like waves would a ridge of sand. A few pieces tumbled into the sludge that awaited, but the beast seemed not to notice. Galdric could not help but marvel at the creature’s sheer power and unrestrained tenacity, and knew suddenly that he had not given nearly enough thought to this course.

But he refused to run. Though awed, never in his life had he bowed before a physical challenge. He would not do so now.

In a final, frenzied burst, the dragon punched through the palace gatehouse, shrugging aside the cascading remnants. The courtyard awaited, dusty and leaf-strewn. Once more, the beast hesitated, scanning the empty battlements before lowering its head and sniffing at the earth. As it did so, Galdric saw something he hadn’t noticed before.

There were riders upon its back.

Their presence surprised him. Before he could even wonder what to make of it, however, the one in front—a human—shouted and kicked his heels as if spurring a horse. The dragon hissed, but strode forward, eyes narrowing at those assembled upon the palace steps.

One breath, Galdric thought, and it could destroy them all.

Nevertheless, he held his plumed helm high, daring them on. He hoped the beast or its chief rider might somehow recognize his significance. He prayed they would not back down.

His defiance had the desired effect. The dragon bristled and growled. Its stride had just begun to lengthen when the first foot sank abruptly through the false layer of dirt and leaves and into the black sludge beneath. The creature easily kept its balance, but by the time it looked down to see what it had stepped in, the second foot splashed down. When the first did not immediately pull free, the dragon’s weight and momentum caused it to pitch forward. When it reached out to halt its fall, one hand and then the other became stuck in the mire.

“Now!” Galdric roared.

He wasn’t sure they had the beast, but he could not afford to hesitate. Even before he had donned his armor, his men had been ordered to raise the tar gates and flood the courtyard. A defensive mechanism implemented by his great-grandfather, who had nearly lost the palace not once but twice to civil riot. By harvesting thousands of buckets of the sticky mineral pitch from a natural seep within the city, and by hollowing out a vast section of the main courtyard, the elder king had crafted a trap certain to stop any mob in its tracks. It took time to trigger, of course, but the buried conduits in which the bitumen was stored were kept heated to encourage flow. Once the sticky substance had pooled, nothing was getting through.

Or so his engineers assured him. None could know, for until now it had never been used. Galdric only wished his great-grandfather were alive to see for himself how effective his unique—and costly—sludge pit really was.

Though it was, perhaps, too soon to tell. The depth of the tar was more than twice that required to entrap the strongest ogre. But even this was insufficient to fully cover the dragon’s toes. Given the breadth of its clawed feet,
and with all four legs ensnared, the creature indeed seemed unable to pull free. But if it were to gain some kind of leverage…

Galdric’s men, according to his command, were not waiting to find out. Boulders and missiles rained down upon the beast from the suddenly swarming battlements. Soldiers and armaments alike, hidden within turrets and covered trenches, had emerged in full force. The dragon, caught below, was at their mercy.

The beast roared and bucked, but could not quite tear free. It surely could have, had it focused on one limb at a time. But that required patience, and the dragon’s rage was all-consuming, leaving it to thrash and squirm and draw heavy strings of tar that simply sucked it back down again. Its neck and tail whipped and swayed violently, but neither could reach the enemies that surrounded it.

Its head shot forward then, to snap at those upon the palace steps. Galdric recoiled. Its breath was like the wind from a funeral pyre; the snap of its teeth rattled his bones. He remembered his signal, though, lowering his raised arm and crying out. His Castleguard responded. From the shadowed portico, a volley of iron-tipped spears flew past, launched by the Hornet’s Nest. The widow-maker ballista was twenty feet wide, its missiles loaded in three staggered rows. Threescore heavy spears in all, fired with enough force to penetrate an oak eight inches thick.

The dragon grunted as they peppered its face. Most of the spears were deflected. Some splintered against iron ridges and knobs of bone. A few managed to barely penetrate the softer hide around lips and throat, to dangle like spines from barbed tips.

The beast blinked, then threw its head back and roared. Most of the clinging spears fell away, unbloodied. Galdric had hoped for far greater damage, but had not been foolish enough to rely on it. Nor was he truly dismayed by the failure of his soldiers upon the battlements, whose continued strikes did little more than fill the courtyard with debris. Having witnessed a measure of the dragon’s power, he would not have wagered the outcome of this battle on strength of arms alone. His entire purpose was to antagonize the beast, that he might spring his final trap—the one on which everything depended.

Sensing the dragon’s fury, he gave the command to displace, and was glad he did. For the creature had had enough. Its head lowered as before, only this time it spewed a river of flame into the breach from which the Hornet’s Nest had fired, to reduce the stinging battle engine to cinders and molten metal. Galdric nearly smiled. The weapon’s certain loss had been a necessary casualty. To reach it, his enemy had stretched its neck across the chopping block. Time for the axe to fall.

Another signal, relayed via spotters above to those unseen below. He did not see the pins released, the hasps unlocked, the braces removed. He did not see the hammer blows that drove the loose wedges of stone, the supporting columns that toppled, nor the counterweights and pulleys that screamed as one set
rose and another fell. But from outside, he heard the groans, felt the shifting of forces, and raced to join his men within the nearest flanking alcove.

From that sheltered position, he had a clear view of the palace face as it sheared away from the rest of the structure. Thousands of tons of steps and arches and colonnades, of corbels and trusses and bas-relief, rigged to collapse. All became one giant avalanche of granite that slid now into the courtyard, burying the dragon to its shoulders beneath a mountainous cairn.

A cloud of dust billowed skyward. The dragon’s wings flapped desperately, stirring airborne grit throughout the courtyard. Galdric squinted behind a shielding arm. He could scarcely see. But then the flapping of the wings subsided, and his men above the ramparts raised a heartfelt cheer.

There was no time for celebration, the king knew. Perhaps the beast’s neck had broken. Or perchance it would suffocate under all that rubble. But he wasn’t counting on either, easier possibility to end his troubles. They still had to find a way to capitalize on their temporary advantage.

He emerged cautiously from the alcove. The creature continued to writhe, its tail to switch—proof that the dragon was not yet dead. Would that he had tar enough to immerse the beast, or time and sappers enough to bring down the flanking walls and complete the burial mound. Alas for options he did not have.

“Lines and anchors!” he shouted, and his men above and below scrambled to obey. Ballistae launched heavy ropes across the yard, at the end of harpoons that others hurried to stake into the earth and bury with stone. More soldiers appeared from bunkers within the walls, lugging chain. With luck, they could create a net large and strong enough to weigh the rest of the monster down until he could find its vulnerability.

A gargantuan effort, for with every shift and twitch and restless wingbeat, anchors would snap and men would go flying. The others kept at it, though, doubling and tripling the lines, wrapping them around blocks for greater leverage. A race they had little chance of winning, Galdric noted, despite their overwhelming numbers. But the only chance they had.

“Sire, look!”

Galdric turned. Through the choking haze, a crimson glow, centered around the dragon’s foremost rider—the human. A radiance that seemed to emanate from a blade gripped—

The king felt a flutter in his chest, and for a moment his breath failed him.

“Archers,” he whispered.

His captain-at-arms relayed the command, bellowing and gesturing. Within heartbeats, a fresh rain of fire hammered down upon the dragon’s back, aimed at its tethered passengers. Though strapped in place, they remained elusive targets—like aiming for a man’s little finger. The beast they rode continued to flex and jostle erratically, the shifting spines acted as shields, and a random wingbeat would deflect waves of arrows at a time. In addition, the wielder of the Crimson Sword seemed to know precisely when to dodge or recoil to avoid a would-be strike.