Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [141]
When he looked up, it was to see perhaps sixty men still standing around him or sitting wearily on the ground, some groaning from their wounds.
The field below the hill was knee deep in dead goblins. They were heaped head-high in some places. Still, a fresh wave, a thousand strong or more, was trotting out from behind the hill where the dragon lay sprawled at ease.
"That's it," someone said quietly. "We're doomed."
"What?" someone else growled. "And not have a chance to take some of these home to Malaeve so she can try her recipe for goblin stew?"
No one bothered to laugh, but there were a few silent smiles as men took up blades and worked aching arms in slow swings, waiting for death to come up the hill and snatch them down.
"For Cormyr," someone whispered, almost as if it were a prayer.
"For Cormyr," a dozen throats muttered in response. With something like wonder, Ilberd discovered that his own voice had been one of them.
* * * * *
Somehow they'd withstood that wave, the exhausted and blood-drenched few on the hilltop, though one lionar lay twisting and sobbing, his guts on the grass around him, pleading to someone-anyone-to cut his throat and end the pain.
King Azoun took a flask from his belt and put it to the man's lips. The healing potion did not close the grisly wound, but the pain faded from the warrior's face, and the king put one arm around his shoulders to help him stand. They were standing together grimly, knowing how little time they had left to live, when the thunder began.
Men looked up at the scudding gray clouds, racing across the sky as if in haste to be elsewhere but as endless as the swarming goblins. No lightning split that sky, and no rain fell. Could the dragon be working a spell? Or was this the work of the royal magician?
Ilberd glanced along the hill at Vangerdahast, who'd lain on his stomach murmuring spells and reading scrolls aloud for most of the day. He'd been wreaking great havoc among distant goblins but took no part in the hewing on the hilltop. If the strength of Cormyr on this hilltop shrank to any less, the young swordlord thought grimly, the wizard might not have any choice about fighting with blade and boots when the next wave came.
The thunder deepened, becoming a steady sound, and louder. The Devil Dragon was on her feet now, twisting around to look behind her. She sprang into the air with a ripple of powerful shoulders, great batlike wings beating once before she plunged down in a pounce on something out of sight, behind the hill.
Someone near Ilberd muttered, "The elves, come again? That can't be…"
The thunder swept around the hill, driving a red foam of shrieking, spitted goblins before it before they were trampled and ridden down. Purple Dragon banners flapped above the riders. They raised their swords in a shouted salute to the king, then they crashed into the goblins between the hills.
"Gwennath," Azoun said quietly. "Thank all the watching gods-Tymora most of all-that I've a marshal who knows when to disobey orders."
"She's emptied High Horn!" a war captain bellowed joyously. "See the banners-they're all here!" He burst into unashamed tears, not caring if half the world saw his mustache dripping.
A figure in black armor rode at the head of that thundering mass of knights-a figure that raised one slender arm to Azoun as the riders swept past up the valley, driving the helpless goblins before them.
Azoun returned the salute, and laughed in delight.
He was still laughing when the gigantic red dragon swirled into view around the hill, clawing and biting as she roared past mere feet above the heads of the High Horn cavalry, and plunged down on the front ranks of the galloping Cormyreans, biting and clawing.
When she rose from the confusion of rolling, screaming horses and shouting men, jaws dripping with gore, the dark-armored figure