Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [137]
"Owden, close it!"
"Ca…"
That was as much as the harvestmaster could say before he tumbled forward and pitched headlong into the portal. The hole closed with a sharp hiss, leaving Tanalasta alone on her side of the room and only Clagi standing on the other.
The palace's ghazneth bell started to ring through the window.
40
"Gods above watch over us," Lareth Gulur murmured, watching the huge red dragon settle on a hilltop four miles or so away. The farm fields between it and a wandering brook not far below where they stood were covered in a cloak of moving goblins. "Earfangs, the scourge of men's knees. I never thought they'd get this far."
"If we don't stop them," his superior grunted, "they'll be at the gates of Suzail tomorrow-and yon Devil Dragon'll be coiled around the towers of the palace."
Gulur shuddered. He had a new and better-fitting breastplate because a valiant Purple Dragon had died fighting the dragon the night before, but his helm was the same old dented one that had cradled his brains for a decade. It's hard to salvage a helm when a dragon's swallowed the head wearing it whole, but gore can readily be washed off a breastplate if it's fresh enough. The thought made him glance down, involuntarily. When he looked up, Hathian Talar was regarding him with a grim smile.
"Just try and stay out of its jaws until Vangerdahast does his work," Talar said. "Then you'll see what a red dragon looks like falling ready-cooked out of the sky."
Gulur looked up at the gathering gray clouds, and shuddered. "Like something to stay out from under?" he joked weakly.
Talar gave him a hollow laugh, clapped him on the shoulder, and strode off down the tense line of waiting men, all on foot. Goblins meant no horses. Their hooves might claim half a dozen or more, but the animals always fell, and fell hard, losing the lives of their riders to swarming goblin blades. Goblins ate horses and, for that matter, men. Fingers and toes, he'd heard, were delicacies. Along with other things.
Goblins he could handle, given swords enough, though he'd never seen this many goblins before, and knew from the tales of the older soldiers that so many had never before swarmed into Cormyr to take the field against any army. It was the dragon, though, that none could stand against. With flame, claw, and spell it-no, she, they said-smote the most valiant knights and the shrewdest battlemasters, sniffing out war wizards whatever their disguise and rending them to pieces.
She seemed to know Cormyr better than the oldest veteran Purple Dragon scouts and know magic better than any war wizard. She was a very "devil among dragons," as one mage had choked, viewing the dismembered bodies of his three apprentices. The Devil Dragon it had been to the realm from that moment on, the name spreading across farms and barracks like sunlight in the morning. And there she was, only a few lazy wing beats away.
As Gulur squinted across the fields at her, the red dragon suddenly raised her head and looked, he thought, right back at him. He could see the glitter of one of her eyes.
"Gods defend me!" Gulur gasped, turning his head away with an effort. Even as he drew a sword that didn't need to be drawn and looked along its length in an entirely unneeded examination-a length that trembled more than he cared to admit-he could feel the fell, cold weight of the dragon's gaze upon him.
A trumpet blared, calling each man to arms. Gulur lowered his visor and saw to his lacing. Hathian came down the line again offering murmured courage and warnings. A small gap in the lowering clouds fell across the field, and the sun shone warm and bright upon the hill where they stood. Gulur looked around at this small corner of fair Cormyr for what might be his last time, and drew in a deep breath. The goblins were across the brook and toiling up the hill. It wouldn't be long before the call to charge came.
* * * * *
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