The Dragons Of ArborChapter 17 The Anvil of the Dragons
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Duke Boulet stamped snow from his boots and stared hard at the fortress spanning the valley ahead. It was a grim place, grey stone walls and battlements lined with wicked looking spikes, and it had been a long journey to reach it, here at the heart of the Mistral Peaks. A long, hard, cold and hungry journey, but the Duke and his men had not wavered. The king’s scouts had identified this place as the lair of the monsters who had preyed upon his people for months, and Duke Boulet would put an end to their depredations once and for all.
“Shall I sound the attack, your grace? The men are eager to see justice done.” Sir Guiot Kaplan, Boulet’s hulking second in command, addressed his lord from the back of his warhorse. Boulet held up a hand.
“A moment, Guiot. Something isn’t right here.” Boulet scanned the battlements again, and then the ranks of evergreen trees which pressed close down the side of the valley “Where are the defenders, Guiot? I see no forces on the battlements, not even a watch.”
Guiot grunted a laugh “They’re probably huddled behind those walls, too afraid to face us in honourable battle! It will make the assault all the easier.”
Boulet did not reply. Guiot was a good man, and a fine warrior, but his zeal for bringing righteous slaughter to the foe could make him imprudent. Boulet in contrast, was the very soul of prudence. He could all but feel the trap closing around them, and he would not send the thousand men under his command charging blindly to their deaths.
He was about to summon his scouts when the iron-bound gates of the fortress began to swing open. Boulet squinted. The distance was great, but he had sharp eyes. A lone figure was walking through the gates - a bent-backed crone swaddled in mouldering robes, leaning heavily on a gnarled cane, her skin a mass of warty growths.
The crone walked slowly towards them, apparently unconcerned by the great host of soldiers before her. When she had hobbled perhaps a hundred paces from the gates she stopped, and began to chant.
Her voice should not have reached the army so clearly, but it did, as sharp and clear as if she was standing right at Boulet’s ear. It was a voice that did not match the figure’s wizened appearance at all. It was high, clear, proud and hauntingly beautiful. Boulet did not know what language she used, but even so the sounds themselves carried meaning - of warm love and scalding pleasure, of the thrill of the chase and the glory of the kill, of the beauty of creation and the red joy of destruction.
As the crone chanted, bright blue sigils began to form in the air around her, as if her words themselves were taking shape. The air around her seemed to ripple and shift, and Boulet blinked to clear his gaze. The crone was gone. In her place stood a tall, lithe aelven woman, skin nearly as pale as the snow around her, dark hair flowing free in the wind, clad only in diaphanous dark blue robes despite the chill. Even from here, Boulet thought he could see a cold smile on her lips. Her chant continued, the words coming faster, her voice shifting to become more beautiful, and more terrible.
The ripples in the air around her pulsed, then rushed forward, racing towards Boulet’s army in a bow-wave of pressure, snow puffing up around the invisible force. Boulet took an instinctive step back, expecting some sorcerous blow, but when the spell there was no crunch of impact, just a strange, sharp pressure in his head. He glanced back at the men assembled behind him...and hissed in alarm. For the briefest moment, instead of well-disciplined men at arms in bright tabards he saw leering, sinewy monsters snarling and crouching. It was only a moment, and when he looked again he saw his men once more.
The pressure in his head increased. He shook it hard, trying to clear his thoughts. Some foul illusion, designed to demoralise his forces. It would not work. He looked up at Guiot and snarled “Slay the witch!”
Guiot gave a grim nod, set his lance, and charged towards the elf. Two dozen more knights broke ranks and formed a wedge behind him, intent on ending the witch and her fell magics. They thundered across the snow towards her, and Boulet gave a savage smile.
The woman did not seem concerned. She stood calmly before the charge, still chanting, blue runes swirling around her in a thick cloud. It almost seemed now that the ceaseless chant had an edge of cruel laughter to it.
The air around her pulsed and rippled again. Guiot galloped ahead, fearless and noble, his lance levelled. Twenty paces from her the ripples passed over him and his knights. Guiot was gone. His horse was gone. In their place was a huge, hunched, humanoid figure. It was looking down in apparent confusion at the long bone club clutched in the hand which had held Guiot’s lance.
The aelven woman waved a hand towards the Guiot-thing, an almost-negligent gesture. Arcs of deep purple light burst from her fingertips towards the monster, and where they touched the creature it was unmade, great bleeding chunks blasted from its hide.
Boulet turned away as the rest of the knights came into range of whatever illusion surrounded the sorceress and were transformed in turn. Whatever powers she had, she could not stand against an army. He drew his sword, and gestured towards the lone figure.
“Charge!” he bellowed, and his soldiers roared in response as they began to run. This was not an ordered, careful advance. This was a mad rush towards justice and vengeance, and Boulet could see the anger and righteous indignation etched on the faces of his men.
Boulet charged with his men, leading from the front. He was halfway to the witch when a thunderous roar echoed from somewhere behind the fortress wall.
Then all hell broke loose.
The woods to either side of Boulet’s army were moving, suddenly alive with hideous, slavering creatures charging at his men. Even as they turned to fend off this new attack, another roar sounded and a serpentine shape rose from behind the fortress walls ahead. The great black scaled dragon beat its wings for a moment, hovering in the air, before swooping towards the monstrous forms of Guiot’s knights, seizing a hulking creature in each claw before rising skywards again.
The sorceress barely moved as the hundred-hand length of dark scaled dragon passed within touching distance of her. Her chant rose, impossibly, in volume and power rippled out from her again. As it passed over his troops their appearance was once again transformed, from proud men-at-arms to pale, savage things clawing at their opponents with ragged nails or striking with crude clubs. The forces that assailed them changed too. Where Boulet had seen misshapen monsters, he saw pale aleves in viciously spiked armour, some riding great reptilian beasts the size of a horse, others aiming compact crossbows which fired hails of cruel bolts. Amongst them stalked strange tree spirits, creatures with the shape of women but skins of vine-wrapped bark.
It was too much. Too impossible. Boulet sank to his knees in the snow, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. He pressed his hands to his eyes, trying to block out the madness unfolding around him.
The snap of leathery wings made him look up, to see the dragon diving towards him, wings folded like a hunting bird. It was close enough now for Boulet to make out a figure sitting in an elaborate saddle on the beast’s back, leaning to one side as it gripped the pommel with one hand, the other steadying a long, steel-tipped lance.
Boulet tied to rise, to hurl himself to the side, anything, but the dragon was closing impossibly fast. He had a fleeting vision of a vast amber eye nested in black scales, of dagger teeth in a serpent mouth, blurring past a bare foot from his head. Then the cold tip of the lance punched into his chest, and he was hurled from his feet, darkness closing around him.
When he opened his eyes he was lying on his back, a cold ache throbbing in his chest. He struggled to raise his head, and saw the broken length of lance jutting from his body. He raised his hands to tug feebly at it.
His hands were wrong. Where he should have seen bright steel gauntlets stamped with his family crest, he saw withered claws, the knife.like nails long and crusted with old blood. He tried to form words, but his mouth felt wrong too. He felt sharp, broken teeth cutting at his lips as his mouth worked.
There was a dull thump nearby, and Boulet managed to raise his head a little further. The dragon had landed before him, curls of dark smoke leaking between its fangs. The figure on its back vaulted lightly from the saddle, casting aside the broken haft of his lance as he did so.
Boulet watched as the dragon rider walked slowly towards him. Another aelf, judging by his height and the finely-sculpted features. The alef was clad in plate armour, although he wore it lightly, and a few strands of dark hair had come loose around the rim of his helmet. Twin duelling scars marked his left check, and he watched Boulet with eyes the deep blue of glacier ice.
The alef drew a sword from his side as he approached. As he reached Boulet he stopped, regarding him for a moment with a level gaze.
Boulet’s mouth worked. Nothing made sense. He had come here to fight monsters, not aelves. He was a Duke of the Blood, not some...some twisted, clawed abomination. He forced painful words out through his unfamiliar mouth.
“Sorcery…” Boulet rasped, in a voice he did not recognise “Not...monsters...some….illusion….”
The elf stood looking at him for a moment longer. Then he raised his sword, and a cool smile pulled at his lips.
“These are the Mistral’s, vampire.” the aelf said “We’re all monsters here.”
The sword flashed, and darkness claimed Duke Boulet for the final time.
***
Ylvan watched in distaste as the ghoul king’s head rolled away, staining the snow with a trail of thick, black ichor. He could almost pity the thing. The deluded creatures were the most degenerate of the vampire strains. He knew a little of their ways. Of the hallucinations that made them believe they were something other than abominations, and the way they forced that belief into the minds of the cannibal wretches and hulking mutants that followed them.
The death of their leader would shatter that hallucination for the rest of the horde, especially when it had already been frayed by his sister’s sorcery. Indeed, as he looked up he could see his forces making short work of the survivors, the cold one knights and crossbowmen of his army working with the dryads of their Sylvaneth allies to put down the last of the ghouls. A fine day’s work, all things considered.
Yvlan knelt for a moment, using handfuls of snow to clean the worst of the vampire’s foul blood from his sword. As he began to rise his keen ears picked out the sound of footsteps drawing close through the snow, even over the ebbing din of battle.
Bree
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