Tate was already walking away from the dazed Albrecht and Wallens, his thoughts on a distant time. Three fingers traced the scars beneath the whiskers on his cheek. Now he knew why the dragon at Shalimsha had seemed so familiar. The witch-woman from the ambush . .. Tate didn't under shy;stand magic well enough to explain how it could be done, but he was certain the human fighter was now a vengeful, black dragon. It was obvious from the message that she hadn't for shy;gotten their encounter, either.
A muscle twitched in Tate's wet cheek. The dragon's quest was nothing compared to the knight's: to avenge his friend, Wolter. She was a worthy adversary as a dragon, he mused, recalling the battle at Shalimsha.
He found it all very curious how their paths had crossed and recrossed.
He wasn't a man to believe in omens, but if ever he did …
The Knight of the Crown felt a sudden, overwhelming desire to pray to his patron, Kiri-Jolith. He'd spent little time in temple since the battle at Shalimsha. Tate told himself he was too busy reorganizing troops and bolstering morale to devote one of every seven days to inactive prayer.
The truth was, without the old knight to steel his resolve, Sir Tate's interest in rising to the Order of the Rose had waned. In a secret corner of his soul, Tate had even dared to wonder if Kiri-Jolith hadn't abandoned him first.
As the lord knight picked his way through the sleeping bodies in the courtyard, he couldn't help thinking that many were taking their last mortal rest. The thought propelled Tate faster toward a long overdue talk with his god.
Chapter 22
Maldeev was feeling confident. The highlord sat apart from his four black dragons, who waited restlessly for daybreak on a rocky cliff west of Lamesh. He knew that when the sun crested the horizon to the east, Salah Khan would issue the order for the ground troops to advance on Lamesh's south wall. The sec shy;ond he saw the knights' attention devoted there, Maldeev would lead the dragons in an attack on the west wall. It was a plan the highlord was certain couldn't fail.
The pace of the assault had gone from boring to breakneck in one long night. The draconians, under Horak's watchful eye, had chopped down trees that the ogres turned into makeshift bridges for fording the moat and ladders for climb shy;ing crenelated walls.
Maldeev had flown to this vantage point with the dragons late in the night. Though the steady downpour was an uncomfortable nuisance for the highlord, it seemed to act like a mental balm for the black dragons. They'd dropped into sleep after foraging for food in the mountains farther west.
Wound as tight as a spring, the highlord had been the first to awaken, though he wasted no time in rousing the others to draw a crude battle diagram in the dirt. The plan had changed little from the one drawn up at a war council of officers and dragons the day before the march north. Truly, the only alter shy;ation was to the role of the dragons, and that was as obvious and simple as the dirt in which Maldeev had drawn it.
"Whoever built Lamesh obviously did not consider aerial attacks," the highlord said. "It must have been built during the time your kind was banished from Krynn."
"Technically, we still are," Khisanth interjected mildly. "The Dark Queen's return to Krynn is the point of the war, isn't it?"
"Yes, I guess so." Maldeev's eyebrows raised unpleasantly at being openly addressed by a dragon other than Jahet. Per shy;haps Khisanth had presumed too much from the highlord's willingness to let her respond to the knight's emissary the previous evening. Maldeev had had the messenger slain instantly by Jahet. The highlord had intended the riderless horse to be his answer to the request to let women, children, and old men go free. But Khisanth had insisted that she'd fought the leader of the knights and knew just what response would shake him. Maldeev had allowed it, seeing no harm.
He stood, stretched, and looked again to the sky, which was starting to show signs of dawn between the swollen rain clouds overhead. "Prepare yourselves. It's nearly time."
Atop Jahet, Maldeev was to lead the dragons. Volg and Horak would direct their ogre and draconian troops forward in the initial southern charge, so Lhode and Shadow would pick them up on the battlefield after the dragons joined the fray.
Since Khisanth had no rider, she stood by, almost idly watching Maldeev pull on the last of his war attire, a pair of tight leather gauntlets that flared at the wrists. He pulled something from a small bag tied to his waist and held it to
the light. It was a plain gold ring topped by a smooth, flat cir shy;cle of onyx. At length, Maldeev placed it over the gloved index finger of his right hand.
"New ring, Maldeev?" Jahet asked idly as the dragon shrugged to adjust the ornate saddle he'd tossed up between her wing blades.
"Yes," the dragon highlord said quickly, withdrawing the band almost self-consciously. "Andor insisted I take along a protective ring." He saw Jahet's interest stir. "He is my dark cleric, after all-if s his job to think of such things. I only took it to humor him. You know how I hate magic-didn't even want Andor near this battle." With a shrug, Maldeev wiggled the ring from his gloved finger.
Jahet shook her head slowly. "You already know what a mistake I think his absence is. Wear the bloody thing, Mal shy;deev," she prompted. "What will it hurt? It just may come in handy." Maldeev jammed the black-and-gold ring over the gloved index finger. Jahet looked satisfied, though she won shy;dered at this new, acquiescent side of her soul mate.
"Jahet," Maldeev called to his dragon, tipping his head to indicate that she should turn her ear to him. The highlord whispered briefly, and Jahef s face lit up.
"I'll ask her," she said to the highlord. The ranking dragon turned to Khisanth. "Maldeev has suggested, and I concur, that you ride as our wing dragon." She looked intently at her friend. "This is offered to honor your solo value, Khisanth. If s not an order."
The younger black dragon felt pride swell in her breast. "It would be my honor," she said. Maldeev nodded once and strode away to mentally prepare himself for battle.
"Stay close to us, Khisanth," Jahet whispered to her sud shy;denly, with the highlord out of earshot. "I sense a reckless shy;ness in Maldeev I've never seen before, as if he believes he can't lose…."
Khisanth nodded. She heard a distant noise and cocked a sensitive ear to the west. A trumpet. . . the knights had sounded the alarm.
"Fly!" cried Maldeev. Jahet dropped her left shoulder to the ground. Using it as a step, the highlord bounded into the saddle and swung his broadsword over his head thrice. Jahet sprang from the ledge, covered the short distance to the ravine below the cliff, and arched into a dive, Khisanth in sync at her left side. Pulling up short just above the gurgling, waterfall-fed reservoir at the bottom of the ravine, Jahet pre shy;pared for ascent.
Not even a feeding frenzy would have stirred Khisanth's senses as much as the thought of what they were about to do. She felt that old, familiar bloodlust in her veins. The dragon drew on that energy for speed, summoned every drop from the farthest reaches of her body to propel her skyward in stunning opposition to the waterfall pounding earthward.
Khisanth crested the cliff face beside Jahet. One hundred knights stood on the walkways between the double crene shy;lated walls, bows in their hands. They were poised in profile to the dragons as they fired arrows down upon the attackers to the south. Khisanth opened her jaws to loose a primal scream that split the humid morning air. The knights spun around in unison at the nerve-shattering shrieks of four bloodthirsty dragons. Most froze, bows dropping uselessly from many a hand at the sight. How she loved the look of panic she caused in the eyes of men! She smirked at the sight of the humans in their knightly finery, trembling in her shadow.
Khisanth kept Jahet locked in the corner of her right eye. The ranking dragon banked left slightly to address the lim shy;ited forces on the cliff wall, compelling Khisanth to hook as well. While Maldeev sliced heads from shoulders and Jahet breathed acid, Khisanth angled herself to the southwest cor shy;ner. Lowering her shoulder just slightly, she swept a fifty-foot stretch of wall clean of fear-struck knights with the edge of her wing. As she swerved away, she grasped the last man in the line with her claws and flung him screaming over the cliff to the ravine below. At a nod from Jahet, they climbed quickly in unison to prevent attacks against their bellies,. They dived again into the frenzied throng, scattering men like chickens.
On the opposite wall, Lhode and Shadow were carrying out a similar maneuver. Neither dragon had ever fought in a battle before, but they had practiced this sort of coordinated attack many times on the drill fields and walls of Shalimsha. But those drills had been against dummies, never against a determined enemy. And Tate's knights, while not as pre shy;pared for this battle as they might have been, had spent months licking their wounds after the defeat at Shalimsha and devising ways to fight dragons.
Neither of the two inexperienced dragons expected any shy;thing like what awaited them on the northern wall. After fly shy;ing straight up the cliff wall and blasting acid down the length of the northern rampart, they looped and formed a line, Lhode ahead of Shadow. They raced down the wall picking off the dazed and injured survivors with their claws, wings, and tails. At the end of the wall was a bastion, which they had to swerve to avoid.
Lhode approached the bastion and turned away. Shadow followed, keeping her eyes on Lhode. But as she passed the stone tower, eight men with thick iron grappling hooks ran from the doorway and flung them at the beast. Most of them missed, but two snagged the front edge of the dragon's left wing while a third cut into her leg. Heavy chains anchored the hooks to the walls of the castle. Almost instantly Shadow hit the end of the chains and was flipped tail over head. The chains snapped under the terrible impact, but the dragon tumbled over the wall and fell outside, crashing into a throng of Maldeev's men who were crossing the moat at the base of the east wall.
Immediately archers who had fled the walls at the drag shy;ons' appearance rushed back out and poured arrows into the thrashing monster below them. Rocks pelted down and thumped off the dragon's scaly hide. In her frenzy to regain use of her wings, Shadow crushed dozens of panicking men of the Black Wing, toppled their ladders from the wall and destroyed the makeshift bridges they had thrown across the moat.
Seizing the opportunity, a group of knights and men-at-arms threw open a sally port on the eastern wall and charged out. The attackers there were already in disarray, and this sudden counterattack scattered them back into the town. Twenty knights and sergeants armed with twelve- to sixteen-foot spears rushed toward the thrashing dragon while others held off the enemy soldiers.
Even with these long weapons, the attackers had to get well inside the dragon's wingspan to be effective. A dozen or more were crushed or dismembered by Shadow's flailing wings and tail. But the dragon was impeded by the moat and driven to near panic by the shower of stones and arrows from above.
Slipping inside the reach of her thrashing wing, one knight drove his spear into the dragon's neck. Shadow screeched and belched acid to dissolve the weapon's shaft. But before she could win free, two more men rushed forward and plunged their pikes into the great beasf s heart.
A tremendous cheer rose from soldiers on the wall as Shadow's body fell slack. Her slayers simply let go of their weapons and rejoined the rest of the sortie party as they fell back inside the castle.
Jahet and Khisanth were circling away from the castle when Shadow was snared by the defenders. Their first inkling that something was wrong came when Khisanth spotted Lhode flying by himself, trying frantically to catch up with the two other dragons and the highlord.
"Take us over the eastern wall to see how Salah Khan fares," ordered Maldeev, oblivious of events there.
The dragons climbed briefly to get above the archers in the castle and to better survey the battlefield. Maldeev flew into a rage on seeing the mauled body of Shadow lying in the moat along the eastern wall, amid the wreckage of that attack.
In the wake of Shadow's death, the castle's defenders were solidly in control of the battlements. Pointing with his mace, Maldeev indicated one section of wall for each dragon to attack: Lhode to the north, Khisanth to the east, and Maldeev and Jahet to the south.
Wheeling in unison, the dragons circled the castle once before diving again into the heartened defenders. It seemed that wherever their shadows passed, men felt the fear of burning death. When the dragons' screams reverberated from the walls, those warriors with faint hearts dropped their weapons and ran for shelter. The ones who stood their ground were swept away, others who sheltered behind the battlements were burned and suffocated by acid.
Broken ladders and piles of dead ogres and stone-hard draconians beneath the southern wall testified to the bitter shy;ness of the escalade. Khan had voiced concern about the dra shy;conians being the ones to lead the charge-if they made it to the top and were killed, the baaz would turn to stone and crush anything beneath them on a ladder; a dead kapak would similarly shrivel his fellow troops with acid.
But now that the dragons had cleared the ramparts, ogre and draconian forces clambered freely up and over the walls. Flaming arrows arced overhead and into the courtyard, not discriminating friend from foe, though they did little to the brutish ogres or machinelike draconians.
A lone, anguished cry suddenly cut through the din of battle raging in the inner ward. Khisanth looked up. Her eyes narrowed upon spotting the knight she'd been waiting for. The visor of his helmet was open, showing his face clearly.
Tate showed no signs of fear, only rage. The knight shook his fist skyward, then turned unexpectedly and darted into the arched doorway to the citadel's main keep.
Startled, Khisanth's first instinct was to chase him down and obliterate him from the face of Krynn, once and for all. But something felt wrong, and she realized what it was- she'd lost sight of Jahet. Almost too late, she spotted the dragon and her highlord nearby, locked in close combat with a handful of sword-wielding knights who had put their backs to the southeast tower wall and were now fighting des shy;perately. Jahet was in no real danger, but she couldn't close with one knight without others attacking her.