The Legend of Asahiel: Book 03 - The Divine Talisman (35 page)

“Come,” she managed. The voice sounded strange and distant, as though it belonged to someone else. “Take me to my grandfather.”

Her companion, who had been speaking so readily mere moments ago, did not respond. Annleia had to turn her own back to the window, blocking the other’s view and staring her in the face, before Saena so much as blinked.

“My grandfather,” she insisted again, quietly.

Saena nodded.

Her chamberlain sputtered a protest, but they brushed him aside. The cor
ridor was much like the streets outside, with runners and pages and officers and servants dashing in either direction. Saena hesitated, but Annleia pushed her out into the flow, where she finally seemed to remember herself. They swam upstream at first, against the thickest of the currents. Her chamberlain followed at her heels, begging that they remain in her suite until His Lordship called for her. Annleia ignored him.

Lorre was not in his map room, where Saena claimed to have left him before setting forth to answer Annleia’s summons. The troll sentry warding the chamber only stared at them blankly, but a passing runner claimed to have seen His Lordship heading down the east stair, toward the armory.

Saena led them in that direction, though they found themselves pinched in the narrow, winding well amid a crush of others heading to or from that castle region. While squeezing her way downward and trying not to fall, Annleia prayed that she was not too late, wishing now that she had told her grandfather more of what she knew—and needed—while she’d had the chance.

They found him with his back to the doorway in one of the lower war rooms, surrounded by a pack of his highest-ranking officers. Their muster around the great oaken table broke as Saena entered, and once more Annleia and her guide were forced to writhe past a wave of mail-clad bodies. Amid the press, she saw Dyanne and Holly, they who had been the first to share what they knew of Torin’s journey to Aefengaard, and who had bade her speak with Saena—who had remained with Torin when they had left him—to learn even more. The Nymphs nodded at her and Saena on their way out.

Lorre himself remained, sharing a last-minute word with one of his generals while a giant fitted him with a rippled backplate and helped him buckle it in place.

The general looked at her, a clean-shaven lad, all bulging muscles and youthful confidence. They had not yet been formally introduced, and though she’d heard many a maid whisper his name, she could not seem to recall it just now. He offered her a grim smile regardless.

Lorre turned and caught sight of her. His frown deepened. “You have your orders,” he told the general. “Any questions?”

“None, sir.” The warrior saluted. “It will be done as you say.” He bowed to the women as he took his leave.

“You just missed the latest report from my spotters,” Lorre said, shifting in his cuirass as he adjusted its straps. “Our dragon bears riders.”

“It’s him, isn’t it.” Her tone was without question.

“You knew he was coming here.”

“I had cause to suspect.”

Lorre’s seamed face darkened. “I’ll not ask how.”

He thinks me a witch
, she realized.
A caster of charms and spells
,
not to be trusted.

The warlord looked to his giant. “My blade.”

“You cannot kill him,” Annleia blurted. “You
must
not, I mean.”

“I spared him once already,” Lorre snapped. “If this is how he repays me, I’ll not do so again.”

“He is Illychar. He must not simply be slain. If I am not allowed to poison—”

“I know not what elven curses you came here to weave, but I want no further part of their magics and their misdeeds.” With his sword in place, the warlord pulled on his studded leather gauntlets. “Or was it not they who unearthed this abomination to begin with?”

Annleia kept her tone and gaze steady. “Do as you will with the dragon—as you
can
. But if you would truly purge your lands of this
elven
scourge, you and your men must leave Torin to me.”

“Torin?” Saena gasped, as if just now realizing who they spoke of.

Lorre picked up his helmet and tucked it beneath an arm. “You are not my captive,” he reminded her, turning heel to the war room and setting off to join the sally. Though crowded by his retinue of giants, she and Saena fell in quickly alongside, like minnows chasing sharks down the narrow hall. “If you would deal with him before I do,” the overlord added gravely, “then I suggest you do what you can to reach him first.”

K
ILLANGRATHOR STALKED THE
B
ASTION, LEAVING
ruin in his wake. Bodies lay strewn amid a wreckage of broken merlons, shattered weapons, and mangled siege engines. Great blocks of granite and limestone cracked beneath the dragon’s scarred feet. To one side, a soldier crawled toward the battlement’s edge, chasing the lower half of his torso. When a brush from the dragon’s tail sent the man’s legs over the edge, the soldier stopped, peering helplessly at his mutilated body’s weird, gruesome descent.

From atop the dragon’s back, Itz lar Thrakkon savored the smell of carnage around him: the stench of bowels and brains and bloody meat being exposed to the salty air. Moans and screams sang in his ears, while the rains pattered, the winds shrilled, and the sea groaned. The goblins behind him screeched their approval, painted with dust and grime, speckled with shreds of flesh and splinters of debris. The battle-lust was upon them, and the day’s slaughter had only just begun.

Ahead lay the city itself, a walled hive of insects waiting to be crushed. A handful of soldiers stood before the gatehouse at the intersection of Bastion and city wall, clinging to their toothpick weapons with wide eyes and petrified muscles. Too stubborn to run, perhaps, or too frightened. It mattered not which, Thrakkon reflected, as Killangrathor bore down upon them.

Before they reached that tiny tower, a bray of horns turned their attention to the south. From the city’s arched gateway streamed a black procession of troops, thick as a locust swarm. Killangrathor looked upon them and snarled. A bold counter meant to draw their attention from the city itself, Thrakkon decided. These were undoubtedly Lorre’s armies, and Lorre, as he recalled, was a crafty one. Perhaps they should ignore this bit of bait.

Yet he sensed the dragon’s hunger as it continued to glare upon that growing horde, the tower ahead all but forgotten. The beast could scarce refuse such an audacious challenge. Thrakkon smirked at the dragon’s fury, and at his own caution. No ruse or strategy would help the warlord this day. Let the city stand for now. Walls could not turn and flee.

He squeezed his knees against the ridge of the dragon’s back and jerked them in a southerly direction, as if prodding a horse rather than a creature some thirty times its size. But Killangrathor was ever responsive, and did not need to be urged twice. His tail swept toward the gatehouse as he spun, swatting those assembled and tearing a low gash in its stone face. With a bone-rattling scream, he then leapt from the ravaged Bastion and into the air, wings spreading to catch the wind.

A
NNLEIA JUMPED WHEN THE HOLE
opened in the stone wall before her. The troops massed ahead of her flinched as well, many crying out in shock as the tip of the dragon’s tail ripped through like a bolt of black lightning. Even their general recoiled, ducking reflexively behind his massive shield as debris from the rift rolled and clattered around him.

“Steady!” he shouted.

She could feel the weight of the dragon’s movements beyond the gate. Claws scraped, stones split, and when the creature roared, the wall shook and the floor shuddered. Annleia closed her eyes, then forced them open again, clutching a spear in one hand and her wellstone in the other, taking comfort as its edges dug into her flesh.

With a final crunching, grinding sound, the beast was gone, its weight and shadow no longer there. A call bellowed down from the watchtower. “Clear!”

The general grimaced at his troops. “Sound the sortie.” Then, to the tower, he yelled, “Raise the gate!”

An outer portcullis lifted, the inner doors unbarred and flung back. The general was the first through the breach. Gilden, his men had called him, and the name rang in Annleia’s memory as that uttered by all those heartsick maidens. His men followed dutifully, bristling in their blades and armor. For a moment, Annleia forgot how to move, weighed down by her borrowed mail and helm, feet rooted by her fear.

Then she was being pressed from behind, and that impetus carried her forward. Outside, she was greeted by clouds of grit and a wind-driven rain. Her stomach churned at the devastation, at a battlement littered with bloody, broken rubble. Most of those who had survived the dragon’s initial assault did so groping and writhing, begging their brothers for help or the gods for mercy. Here a man lay with mashed limb, there another with entrails leaking from his sides. Farther west, toward the sea, the damage only grew worse.

She moved toward the parapet, dodging bits of wreckage as she stepped out of line, eyes searching. The dragon was winging south, a low-flying thunderhead amid rain and mist. An army awaited it upon the plains, sallied forth from the city’s main gate. Madness, she thought, as she listened to the anguished cries all around her. Her grandfather couldn’t hope to—

A barrage of missiles began streaming out from the city wall and its outermost ward—launched by catapult and ballista and mangonel. Just like that, the dragon was under heavy attack as it flew through a hail of boulders and spears and buckets of burning pitch. Most missed their mark, sailing high or low or wide. The rest pelted the beast’s hide, but did little damage that she could see. A boulder smashed against its face, drawing an angry hiss, but the creature flew on, undeterred.

With wings spread wide, the dragon fell shrieking upon her grandfather’s host, legs leading like the talons of an eagle. Already, that host was scattering, splitting down the center and bleeding away at the edges. The terror of
those soldiers was palpable. Their screams were like needles in Annleia’s ears, and twisted in her stomach like bits of shattered glass. Orcs, she realized, and shivered with pity.

The dragon roared in turn, frustrated by their cowardice, fighting to catch them all as they sheared off in groups before scrambling in all directions. A gout of flame lit the sky, coloring it fierce shades of yellow and orange. For a moment, rains appeared as fire and clouds as coals, flickering down upon the frantic masses.
Run!
Annleia urged silently.
Run!

A horn blew at her feet, loud enough to near startle her over the edge. The last of Gilden’s men were racing down the steps and ramps along the Bastion’s southern face—those that hadn’t been damaged beyond use. Lord Commander Bardik had led a similar sortie through the Bastion’s lower hall, to emerge now from the central gate. Together, both regiments were forming up, their backs against the towering wall. No more than a thousand in number, yet calling the dragon on.

The monster had heard their summons, and had whipped around to face them across that league-long stretch of coastal plain. The swarm of orcs had already been routed. Annleia doubted now that they could have been anything but a diversion—a feint used to lure the enemy along that strafing line of siege engines. Perhaps this company she had quietly fallen in with meant to do the same. Doubtless, her grandfather was testing the creature’s strength and aims, buying time for the bulk of his army to mobilize. She wondered if he’d been watching as she had, and seen the same results. She wondered if he had any notion at all of how to even slow the beast.

Hissing contemptuously at the fleeing orcs, the dragon took again to the skies. For a moment, Annleia thought it meant to fly the same course, and weather the same assault it had before. But as the first missiles flew, the creature veered into the teeth of that storm, skimming low upon the curtain wall to shatter stone, smash siege engines, and mutilate the bodies of those who operated them. A sustained flameburst turned a line of catapults into giant candles, leaving men to wail beneath drippings of cinder and molten iron.

A second battery took aim. Before the dragon reached them, all six fired at blank range. This time, the beast actually seemed staggered by the barrage.

It recovered much faster than the soldiers manning the catapults could reload.

Grinding its jaws, the dragon scattered the nearby soldiers with a flogging display that tipped two of the massive catapults on their sides. It grasped a third with its feet and hoisted it over a courtyard teeming with soldiers. Those beneath its shadow scurried for cover, trampling one another in an effort to clear a path. Annleia winced as the engine crashed among them, crushing scores, and reducing the catapult itself to splinters.

Then the monster broke free, to take aim at the heart of their little northern phalanx. Now was her chance. General Gilden and his men—they had nowhere to run. To the east lay the city wall; to the west, the reefs of the sea. They might spread themselves upon the plain, but the dragon would only fly
circles until it had killed them all. If she did nothing to help them, their end would come soon.

But what power was she to use? She could not imagine any she might draw upon that would do more than tickle that dragon’s flesh. She’d seen what little use the powerful siege engines had been. Were she able to harness the strength of a hundred swords all at once, would she even be able to scratch it?

A rumble of thunder turned her gaze to the heavens, where lightning flashes danced amid the clouds. Perhaps she could summon a bolt to—

Too late, she thought, as the dragon finished its hawklike descent, roaring in challenge. Rather than clear its path, the host led by Gilden and Bardik surged ahead to meet it. Crouched at the edge of the parapet, Annleia could only gape as the two collided, watching knots of men fade to screams beneath the creature’s bulk. She expected it to take flight after that, and for a moment, it reared up as if to do so. But this company refused to run, its members charging the beast from all sides.

Amid a sea of blades, the dragon hunkered down and took up the attack.

The slaughter was more terrible than she had feared, beyond anything she might have envisioned. Men’s armor became as silk and lace, for all the good it did them, their heavy shields like parchment. With tooth and claw and horn and tail, the dragon ripped through their scrambling ranks or sent them flying like dandelion spores. If a man thought to evade an attack, he was too late. Bodies were trampled, hewn, hurled aside. Their mashed remains filled the craters of the dragon’s footprints, or remained pinned like ornaments upon its horns, teeth, and claws. There was no time for the beast to preen itself, for there were too many enemies before it, too many more to be slain.

When she thought she might retch, Annleia looked away, her gaze trailing to the south. There, from the arched mouth of the city, yet another army was sallying forth. She saw horses this time, and men so tall they could only be giants. Behind this vanguard came the hulking shapes of catapults twice the size of those now burning along the city’s inner rim. The heart of her grandfather’s force, she supposed. Gilden’s foray was little more than another distraction, as she’d feared, allowing Lorre the time he needed to mass his own troops. A fine job the warlord had done in tempting the dragon back and forth across the field, but the games were done, and no force he might muster could possibly make a difference.

Another thunderclap tugged at her gaze, but she ignored the temptation. Any lightning she summoned now would strike Lorre’s soldiers as well. And it was far more likely to harm
them
than the dragon, to say nothing of the man she had come to claim.

She looked for him, then, having all but forgotten her purpose in even standing there at the edge of that maelstrom. The dragon moved quickly, snapping left and right with the swiftness of a striking serpent. She could not count the number of those strapped to its spines, let alone examine their faces for one that matched Torin’s description. She looked only for the Sword of
Asahiel, for the crimson glow attributed to it in legends. If Torin wielded it, surely he would have drawn it by now.

But she did not spy it, only the frenzied thrashings of an invincible beast beset by a diminishing cloud of gnats. It left her to question Lorre’s lookouts, Necanicum’s strange prophecy, and her own decision to be here. It left her to wonder at the madness of a world fast slipping away.

Upon the wall she fought
,
and beyond it she waited
,
when her power was filled…

But how? If she lacked the power to stop the dragon, how was she to drive Torin beyond the wall? And if she
did
find the strength to defeat the beast, what power would she possibly have left?

The cries of battle matched the tempest in her head.
Two fields he planted.
Had her own people already fallen? Rain lashed her cheeks, flooding her eyes like tears. The thousand or so below had been reduced by half, yet still they pressed on, clambering over the deadfall of their comrades, shouting as if to give themselves strength. Why could she not find her own?

A hand clutched at her, so sudden and so tight that she cried out and dropped her spear. An Illychar, surely, come to put an end to her misery.

It wasn’t. Only a wounded man. One of those crawling about in front of the gatehouse from which she had emerged, at the junction of Bastion and city wall.

“Help me,” he pleaded.

But he was beyond it; she sensed that at a glance, even before she realized that the severed leg he thrust at her was his own. Were it not for the tourniquet about his stump, he would already be dead. Even so, he was dizzy with blood loss, his eyes already glazed. The greatest mercy would be to draw from him what small life remained, to absorb his last strength and apply it toward the greater cause.

Yet if the hundreds who had already perished had been unable to thwart the beast, what would a few beats of this dying man’s heart win them now?

Then it struck her, that which she must do—that which she must
attempt
. For it seemed certain to fail. She couldn’t possibly draw enough to make a difference. If she
could
, trying to contain that power would likely destroy her. And yet, it was the only course that made sense.

She bent to the soldier, but found him unmoving, staring at her from beneath a bloody brow. She closed his eyes with a brush of her hand before standing tall. Others were moving upon the battlement, picking through the rubble for those who might be saved. One who was dragging a fellow soldier called to her for assistance, but she pretended not to notice. There wasn’t time. The dragon was nearly finished here. She had to do her part before it flew away once more to assail her grandfather’s throng to the south.