Holt was woken roughly.
“Time to get up,” Brode said.
Bleary eyed, Holt struggled to a sitting position, feeling like he’d been yanked from a deep sleep. The world was gray again; clouds hung low as though trying to press down upon the land.
Around him the garrison was already in motion; soldiers were geared and forming ranks, the camp followers and those remaining to guard it were already repacking the wagons.
“Why didn’t you wake me earlier?” Holt asked, his words hoarse from a parched mouth. He wondered how he had not woken up by himself with all this activity around him.
“I felt you and Ash could use the rest,” Brode said. “He’s grown again.” Ash yawned widely and stretched until he reached about ten feet from tail to snout. His wings had formed, although they were comically small in proportion to his body. He was still some way off flying. Yet he was large
enough now that a child might ride him into battle.
Holt rubbed at his eyes. “What do you want us to do?” He stood up, swayed from the rush of blood from his head, and met resistance from Brode’s hand pressing into his chest.
The old rider wore a coat of chainmail, with armored vambraces on his forearms and greaves on his legs. Not as heavily armored as a full knight; Brode clearly favored agility. His special rider’s sword had cut through thick tree branches with ease, and Holt imagined Brode weaving deftly through a battle, carving through the scourge.
“Pack up,” Brode said. “We’re moving.”
Their march was swift, taking the main road east. And it was quiet. A tense silence gripped them as they stepped ever closer to battle.
Smoke rose in a pillar farther to the south-east. High rolling hills rose behind it, and a ringing wind echoed across the land.
Ash froze, his whole body going taut.
“The scourge are close.”
“We must be near Midbell now,” Holt said. His ill-fitting chainmail coat weighed him down, but he was thankful for it.
“I can hear their screeching,” Ash said. He snaked his head at an angle impossible for a human and sniffed at the air. “And I can smell their filth.”
Holt took a deep breath and let it go slowly. He had to stay calm. Brode and Talia would handle this.
“Come on, Ash. We need to keep up.”
The army turned off the road, heading south.
Time passed in an odd manner for Holt. Each step seemed to take an age, and yet all too soon they arrived at the lip of the land and gazed into the plain below.
At the foot of the Howling Hills, the town of Midbell was aflame on one side. The fires were black and evil, the same wicked magic that had reduced the Crag. Yet the walls were not taken. A writhing mass of creatures assailed the town, while stingers circled overhead like poisonous vultures. The shrieks of the scourge carried, even to Holt’s human ears.
Orders were called. The troops assembled into tight formations. Horns blew.
Holt watched it unravel in a haze of uncertainty. What was he supposed to do?
Brode found him. “Stay here with the baggage train. And stay safe.” Panic gripped Holt. “What if you don’t come back?”
Brode didn’t skip a beat. “You can’t think like that.” “But—”
“Enough. Right now, Talia needs me more than you do.” He left without another word.
Holt searched for a sign of Talia but could not see her. Then Pyra swooped down overhead, landing in a thunderous crash in front of the
garrison. The dragon stretched her neck and roared, louder and more savage than Holt had ever heard a dragon bellow before.
A challenging call. Pyra was ready.
Upon her back, Talia steadied herself, then turned to face the men and women gathering behind her. She drew her rider’s blade, and the red steel flickered even under the gray morning light.
“Soldiers of Feorlen today we… we—”
Some part of the swarm answered Pyra’s roar, crying out in a pitch high enough to break glass. Talia’s hesitation drew out into too long a pause.
Holt felt everyone waiting for her, to roar in her own way and give them courage that a dragon rider of the Order was at hand.
When she didn’t, Brode rode out to save her, with Alexander Knight by his side. He had his own green blade held high.
“Come with me and crush this swarm!” Cheers answered him.
“Fight,” Brode called. “Fight!”
More cheering, clashing metal and stamping feet. And then the army was off, marching to meet the swarm as the bugs and ghouls peeled away from the town walls to face the new threat.
Battle was now inevitable.
Holt remained where he was, doing as he was told for once but feeling useless all the same.
“There are so many of them,” he said aloud. “Can they even do this?”
“They do not need to kill them all,” Ash said.
“What do you mean?” Holt asked, taken aback. He hadn’t expected an answer.
“I have… memories,” Ash said, faltering a little as though it were hard for him to recall. “Such great swarms. The land covered in their green blood. Always one we look for. The queen that controls them.”
“You mean that one of those creatures down there is actually… in charge?”
“I think so. If enough of the scourge are killed, the queen reveals itself.
Kill the queen and you diminish the swarm.”
“How will they know which one to kill?” At least from this distance, all the scourge creatures looked so similar. No one monster stood out.
“The queen will come to challenge our strongest warrior.”
“Talia is our strongest fighter.”
“Yes. She must win the day for us.”
Holt blew out his cheeks. “No wonder she was nervous.” Not that he felt any better and fidgeted with his hands. He felt so useless just standing here but without training there was little he could do.
Across the plain, the garrison prepared for the final charge. The cavalry split into two wings, one moving to either flank except for two horsemen who held back behind the main body of infantry. Judging by their armor, these two figures were the Knight Captain and Brode.
As the infantry trudged on, a division of archers held back, planting their feet into the earth and readying longbows. The front ranks of infantry began to lower spears and tighten ranks, becoming something like a hedgehog with steel tipped spines.
It all looked seamless and well drilled to Holt.
“Maybe I’m worrying over nothing,” he thought aloud.
“There is much knowledge on how to defeat the enemy,” Ash said. “And this is only a small force.”
Holt nodded and sighed in relief. He’d let his nerves get to him. Brode wouldn’t have let them partake in any adventure too perilous.
“They come where the most people are,” Ash said. “And against strong walls they are crushed like wolves trapped inside a cave.”
Holt nodded. Even commoners knew the rhymes and stories.
“Talia and Pyra will take this queen bug,” Holt said. “Pyra’s fire will see to it.”
“Fire is their fear,” Ash said sagely.
Right on cue, Pyra bellowed again and leapt into the air, beating her wings furiously to take her higher. A group of stingers swooped around and made for her. High above the approaching ground forces, the first stroke of the battle fell. Pyra bathed the stingers in fire. Singed bodies dropped from the sky before Pyra clamped her jaws upon one that had avoided her breath. On the ground, the streaming scourge forces crashed into the garrison’s spear formation. The soldiers held. Archers loosed, and Holt understood why Pyra had flown so high, as arrows sailed over the brunt of the fighting
to hit the back ranks of the enemy.
Holt watched transfixed as the battle unfolded. He tried to keep tabs on Brode and Talia; the princess being easy to follow but not so much Brode who had vanished into the melee. Distant as it was, he could hear little other than a general cacophony of noise, broken by the occasional roar from Pyra.
Ash could hear far more. Feel more.
Holt sensed it over the bond. Ash’s very being whimpered even if the dragon showed no outward sign of distress.
“Hey,” Holt said, crouching down. “It’ll be all right. Like you said, Talia will defeat the queen and—”
But Ash snorted, growled fearfully and stepped back even as Holt reached out to him.
“So many of them. I want to fight but I… I…”
Their bond burned, causing Holt to gasp in pain as images raced through his mind. Ash’s memories of the Crag came to the fore. Memories of smoke choked air, blistering heat, shrill cries and the smell of death. Ash’s fear was far greater than Holt’s own. It was a fear akin to a much younger child, and that was what Ash was in truth. Barely a month old, and yet necessity was forcing rapid growth and danger upon him.
Even though the memories were not his own, Holt found it hard to overcome them.
“Ash, it’s okay. Talia and Pyra will keep us safe.”
Yet Ash seemed too far gone. He whimpered for real this time and slinked off to the safety of the baggage train where physicians were already preparing for the wounded that would arrive.
Holt hesitated to follow. For once he was torn whether or not to join the dragon and stood dumbfounded in the no-man’s land between the camp and the soldiers fighting and dying in the distance.
Before he could decide, another glass shattering shriek carried across the battlefield and a fresh wave of the enemy emerged from a valley of the Howling Hills. This group was much smaller than the main force, yet at its center was a creature of remarkable size. Larger even than Pyra, it stood upright upon two legs with a sickly light reflected off its shell-like exoskeleton. And it moved at speed.
It looked nothing like the swarm queen depicted in the painting at the Crag. Rather it seemed to Holt to be an enormous flayer; fast moving bugs that slashed in broad strokes with razor sharp bladed arms. Pyra swooped down to meet the beast.
Before Holt could consider it further, the pull across the dragon bond became too much to resist. He wrested himself from observing the battle and ran for Ash, finding the dragon hiding under a weapons cart and shaking like a traumatized alley cat.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay.” Holt reached out a hand for Ash to sniff and find. Ash pressed his snout into Holt’s palm and the scattered, wild beating of the bond calmed. But not by much. Holt gulped, unsure what he could do to help. “What happened to that fierce dragon who helped me move the giant table in the kitchens?”
Ash growled but said nothing.
“And when I trained with Master Brode you told me to prove them wrong. Where’s that dragon gone?”
A fresh tremor ran down Ash’s spine and through his tail.
“I’m not ready. Not ready to fight them.”
“We won’t have to fight them—” Ash froze; his whole body went stiff. “Holt, the scourge are close.” “What?”
“They are coming fast.”
“How can you tell?”
But before Ash could say anything the remaining soldiers guarding the baggage train called out to each other.
“Scourge approaching!” “Ready yourselves!”
Holt ran out to see for himself. This couldn’t be. The scourge were drawn to the densest collection of people – to cities and armies. Their swarms didn’t think strategically.
Yet the moment Holt returned to his previous spot, and looked across the battlefield before Midbell, he saw the truth for himself.
A line of shambling ghouls had broken off from the main swarm. Scores of them. They moved at speeds no human could maintain if alive. And they were heading right for Holt and the baggage train. Worse still were the stingers flying above them, survivors of Pyra’s initial assault.
Holt searched desperately for the purple dragon, but Pyra and Talia were pursuing the giant flayer and had not seen the splinter force.
More scourge separated from the main host and flanked the infantry, heading for the exposed archers. No one had thought they would be endangered. The light cavalry of the garrison had committed to an attack already and couldn’t disengage quickly enough.
The scourge forces – the supposedly mindless, animalistic, force of nature – were outmaneuvering the garrison.
Holt’s heart pounded so hard he thought his ribs would crack.
The soldiers nearby drew their swords, though they stood half-heartedly, as lost and confused as Holt. This wasn’t supposed to happen. No one had trained them for a situation like this.
Civilians screamed as they realized what was coming.
Holt’s body reacted before his mind did. He ran and was back at Ash’s cart before he could properly think.
“We have to go!”
Ash scurried out and clung to Holt’s side as they fled. Now screeches of the scourge mixed with scraping steel as they engaged the soldiers. With so few defenders, most of the ghouls sped past into the baggage train.
Holt ducked as buzzing overhead signaled the arrival of a stinger. The wasp buzzed on ahead, swooping down upon a lone soldier caught unprepared; its great sting piercing chainmail as though it were butter.
Ash wailed, his breath came ragged and his shame was palpable across the bond. At least they would be together when the end came.
As they neared the back of the baggage train, Holt ran past the wagon containing his, Brode’s and Talia’s supplies. He caught himself, wheeled about, intending to fetch his father’s recipe book if he could.
“Keep running,” he yelled, not stopping to see if the dragon kept going or not.
Before he reached the wagon, a ghoul lumbered in front of him to block his path.
What this person had been in life, Holt could not say for sure; a man judging by its size. A ragged tunic hung torn and limp from its bony frame. Perhaps it had been a farmer or a farmhand, for it carried a bloody sickle. Its pale, lidless eyes fixed upon Holt and the ghoul opened its rotten mouth and screamed.
Holt came to a halt and tried to force his panicked breathing to calm. He reached for Ash’s core, but it was no use in this panicked state. Drawing his sword anyway, he held it just as Brode had taught him, bracing himself with his left foot forward.
The ghoul ran at him, its arms flailing. Yelling in defiance, Holt stepped forward on his right foot and struck down hard. Steel bit deep into the exposed flesh of ghoul’s shoulder. Green blood spurted from the wound. It crumpled.
Barely registering that he’d made his first kill, Holt continued onto the wagon. Frantically he searched his sack and pulled out the recipe book. He’d only just taken hold of it when bony fingers clamped on his leg in a vise like grip and pulled.
Holt was heaved bodily backwards. His world spun. Now flat on his back, he realized he’d dropped both the recipe book and his sword. He tried reaching out for his fallen weapon, but his fingers found only grass.
“Ash…” he said, dazed.
The dragon bond seared but then a new ghoul appeared over Holt like a slavering hound, its breath hot and foul. It pressed a knee onto his outstretched arm. Pinned like this, he doubted the strength from Ash’s magic would have saved him.
Time slowed as the ghoul raised one arm that ended in a sharpened bone – it needed no other weapon.
’Boy!’ Ash cried.
A white streak hit the ghoul in turn, cutting off its howl of triumph.
Holt gasped for air, rolled over, grabbed his sword, got to his feet. Ash raked at the ghoul with his talons and Holt dashed over and plunged his blade into the ghoul’s belly.
The creature shrieked, and Holt realized he’d not broken through the ghoul’s developing chitinous hide. He struck again, as hard as he could, and his time drove the blade through the weakened gap in the ghoul’s armor.
Holt stepped back and looked upon the dead woman’s face. It had been a woman once, who knew how long ago. Its skin was gray now, lifeless and tinged the same sickly green that had almost taken the blacksmith’s daughter.
Ash came to Holt’s side and roared, not as menacing as Pyra had been but it was his most fearsome yet; wild bears would have bowed in his presence.
“I will fight,” Ash declared. “I will fight if you will.”
Holt glanced around. It was naught but carnage and death: soldiers fighting desperately in pairs or alone; women face down in pools of blood; ghouls biting into the necks of the fallen.
To their right a set of wagons blew apart into splinters, as a bull-size beetle with a hammer-like head stampeded through. A juggernaut.
Ghouls. Stingers. A giant flayer and now this. Holt passed beyond mere fear. And with his blood up, he became numb to the terror.
“Talia and Brode wouldn’t run. We won’t either. I’ll fight.”
Ash roared again and Holt felt the dragon bond flare hot in his soul, a blazing fire in the darkness. Its outer edges pushed a little farther, expanded the bond a fraction more. Holt concentrated, gained a glimpse of Ash’s core and reached for it—
But another ghoul lunged at them. Ash grabbed the ghoul by the leg and felled it, allowing Holt an easy kill. Quick as it was, Holt lost his grip on Ash’s core. It was like trying to grasp a greased-up doorknob at the edge of reach.
Ahead of them, a pair of soldiers disappeared into a blaze of black fire and collapsed dead in a burnt heap. A ghoul of sorts, although thinner, with longer limbs and enlarged hands cut off the spell of fire channeling from its hands. It swooped down upon the bodies of the soldiers, presumably to bite them and spread the blight.
Rage gripped Holt. These creatures must have been responsible for burning the Crag. Those flames seemed a terrible way to die. He tried to clear all of that from his mind, focusing instead upon drawing on magic from Ash’s core.
The scourge caster got up from the fallen soldier and fixated on Holt. Its bloody mouth opened wide in anticipation and it began to gather dark magic between its hands.
“For life,” Holt cried, as the heroes did in the songs, and charged toward the ghoul.
The black ball swirled.
Holt forced everything else from his mind. There was only the bond, there was only the bond. He no longer felt his pounding feet. His inner reach flailed once more, falling short.
He tried again.
The ghoul’s magic peaked. It pulled back, ready to launch—
Holt made it. He breathed in the light of Ash’s core, heard a flurry of the dragon song loud and racing. It snapped power into his limbs, sharpened his senses, cleared his head of the daze from his injury.
Yelling from the effort, Holt’s feet carried him the remainder of the distance in an eye blink. He struck his enemy with such force that he cut deep through the chitinous armor on the first attack.
Momentum carried him forwards, but enhanced balance kept him on his feet even as another ghoul came, then another. Life narrowed into the next
second, the next threat, the next desperate move. All the while Ash was by his side, mauling ghouls with sheer ferocity as Holt knocked them aside.
Magic flowed across the bond. All he felt was the grip of his sword; all he smelled was acrid scourge blood; his only thought was to not let any of them pass. He would stop them. Speed and power made up for his lack of training, but with every swing his arms ached more, and the light of the core dwindled.
He didn’t know how long it would last, nor how long his bond would hold up. He’d only be able to draw upon less than a quarter of the core at most before it frayed.
His vision began to darken from the effort, and he knew the end was close.
A blur of brown hair and steel rushed into view. Hooves beat and dozens of horses charged past, riding down straggling ghouls.
Holt blinked and looked at the rider above him. It was none other than the Knight Captain himself. Alexander Knight raised his visor and called orders to the other cavalry around him.
“Full retreat,” he cried. “Knight Captain, sir?”
The captain didn’t seem to register Holt.
“Three riders, take that juggernaut – give the civilians time.” “Knight Captain!”
Alexander looked down now. “Young rider, you should flee too.” “What about Brode and Talia?”
“They said they would cover the retreat.” “But if we kill that massive flayer, we can—”
“I know full well how to defeat a group of scourge,” Alexander snapped. “But this is no ordinary swarm. We’re broken. It’s done.”
“But—”
Holt’s words died in his throat. The Knight Captain clanked his visor back into place and rode off. Streams of foot soldiers arrived from the battlefield now, half fighting half-running as they fled. Pockets of resistance gathered for a last stand only to be surrounded in moments.
Dragon roars and baleful screeching drew Holt’s attention south. Pyra had engaged the great flayer, and it looked like Talia was still riding on her back.
The flayer had a torso that rose up like a praying mantis, with mandibles at its mouth and scythe-like arms ending in pincers. One of these blade arms stabbed down hard enough to send up torrents of earth.
It was all Pyra could do to dodge the blows. She must have been injured or she would surely fly. With every step she gave ground – drawing closer to the baggage train – and the rest of the garrison retreated around her.
He saw no sign of Brode.
Holt knew he should run as well – he’d been doing just that minutes ago. But something kept him in place. He was a rider. Talia, Pyra and Brode were out there and needed him.
Ash’s core had been growing faint before Alexander Knight had arrived and it stayed low, but it was still there. Greater strength still pulsed in Holt’s veins.
“We help them,” Ash said, his voice deepening.
Perhaps that was why the core had dimmed; perhaps Ash had tapped into it himself? Holt could think of it in no other way but there was an aura to the dragon now; a power radiating that made nearby scourge wary. Ash pulled back his lips revealing sharp white teeth and a forked tongue and was far more menacing for it. Between the gaps in his fangs, a purplish-white energy crackled. The same light that had cured Ceilia.
Brode said that extreme circumstance might hasten his development. If this battle wasn’t an extreme circumstance Holt didn’t know what was.
The rout of the garrison and the ghouls chasing them made a scene of total chaos.
Holt placed a hand on Ash. “Can you find your way through?”
“Lead the way.”
Holt drew in a deep breath, knowing this was mad, then charged toward the titanic duel between Pyra and the scourge queen. Soon Holt was close enough to feel the ground shake with every strike and stamp of the flayer. It shrieked in frustration as Pyra dodged yet again and then proceeded to bathe the flayer’s leg in fire.
“Holt, get out of here!”
Brode. Brode was yelling at him.
The old rider had been thrown from his mount and his armor was caked in red and green blood.
Before Holt could answer, Pyra lunged forward and clamped her jaws around the flayer’s charred leg. She bit hard, almost straight through. The
flayer threw back its head, braying with pain, its great black eyes bulging. At the same time, it swung its pincer at an awkward angle, bludgeoning Pyra hard in her side. The blow knocked Pyra aside but, still with her jaw clamped hard, she tore the leg free. Howling in agony, the flayer backpedaled, granting Talia and Pyra a moment.
Pyra stumbled and leaned upon her good side. A rip in the sinew of her left wing meant she couldn’t easily escape.
This was a fight to the death.
“Come on then,” Brode cried, gesturing for Holt and Ash to follow him. Talia stood upon Pyra’s back and sliced at the pincers of her foe. Her blazing red sword bit into the flayer’s armored carapace. It reared back,
raising both pincers for a combined strike Talia could not counter.
We’re not going to make it, Holt thought, although what they would have done once there, he didn’t know.
Talia must have felt the same. In two quick bounds, she ran up Pyra’s neck and leapt off her dragon’s head. Screaming, she gripped her sword in both hands and angled it down so that when she reached the flayer’s chest her blade dug deep.
For half a moment she hung there, suspended above the ground, and then her weight began to pull the sword down. The flayer wailed as the sword cut a neat line down through its armored front, exposing softer, saggy gray tissue beneath and drawing a torrent of green blood.
But it wasn’t enough.
Though badly wounded, the flayer did not collapse.
Talia landed badly, losing her grip on her sword and fell splay-limbed beneath the beast.
Still running, Holt came across a discarded spear by the side of a fallen soldier. He picked up the spear before he’d really thought it through.
“Get back,” Brode called, but Holt was determined now.
The dragon bond shook dangerously. He didn’t have much power left. But with the last ounce of his enhanced strength, Holt jumped over Talia’s prone form, landed, and struck true, pushing the spear head into the gap in the flayer’s armor. But he wasn’t tall enough to force it in deep.
Holt let go just before the flayer reeled back. He’d bought a few extra seconds. That was all.
A dragon roar shook him. He expected Pyra must have clambered to her feet, yet when Holt turned, she was still stooped and in pain. Another roar
vibrated his chest and Ash bounded ahead to stand between him and the flayer.
The very air around Ash shifted, shimmering as though a heat haze in the distance. His roar was deep and guttural, as bestial as any mature dragon. More white light gathered at the dragon’s mouth. As though freshly challenged, the flayer now looked to Ash as the threat, raising its great pincers for the attack.
“Let go of the power,” Ash said.
Holt didn’t question him. Closing off the flow of magic was certainly easier than opening it. He cut it and the music mid-beat, and Holt went completely deaf. He collapsed, feeling as weak as though gripped by a fever and his sense of Ash’s core vanished as though it were a candle blown out. What had he done?
In the darkening moment before his eyes closed, Holt saw the energy gathering at Ash’s mouth solidify then blast out in a thick beam of light. It struck the flayer’s exposed flesh and flared silver as it burned through.
Then Holt’s eyes closed over.
He hit the earth and knew no more.
