Death of the Dragon - Ed Greenwood [90]
Alusair snarled as she saw a black orc blade burst through the mail of the Purple Dragon ahead of her. As the man sobbed and started to fall, she ran right up his back, binding the blade that had slain him in his ribs, and with the toe of her boot secure on his belt, rose on high to stab down over him, driving her blade down with both hands into the throat of the orc who'd slain the man.
The orc squealed, and the sound he was making became deeper and wetter. He stopped trying to wrench his sword free and sat back onto the trampled ground to die. The orcs all around were roaring at Alusair and straining to reach her with their curved black blades. She roared "Death to you all!" right back at them as her perch fell dead to the ground under her. The dragon's talons stabbed ineffectually at the air where she had been moments before, raking a bloody toll on the orcs instead of the fighting princess of Cormyr.
The shout came raggedly to her ears in an instant's lull in the almost deafening clash of arms: "Rathtarrrr!"
She spun around as she rose, slashing blindly out behind her in case any overbold orc was springing at her back and looked to where she'd thought that shout had come from.
She was in time to see Guldrin Hardcastle go down.
"Rathtar!" she cried, pitching her voice high and shrill to cut through the grunts and roars of orcs and the curses and groans of men rushing together all around her.
A head turned-darkly handsome, as sullen as ever. Rathtar Hardcastle was killing his share of orcs with his resentment borne before him like a shield. He was just one of scores of young, handsome noble wastrels baffled as to what they must do to get the respect they felt Faerun-or at least the court of Cormyr-owed them.
A sort of hope kindled in his eyes as Alusair beckoned him with a jerk of her head, already a stride past him as she cut down an orc with brutal efficiency.
"Come!" she snapped, pointing with her blade as the gape-jawed orc fell away from it.
Rathtar sprang to follow, almost stumbling in his eagerness. When he regained his footing, he found seven orcs or more lumbering into Alusair's path. The Steel Princess never slowed, her blade singing back and forth as if it weighed nothing and the snarling, stinking orc bodies it cleaved were made of feathers or mere shadows.
The man who did not yet know he was mere breaths away from becoming the Hardcastle heir swung his own blade with enthusiasm. This was something he could do, some way he could prove himself as every bit as much a bright hero of Cormyr as those old and grizzled men in medal-bedecked uniforms who limped sagely around the court, staring disapprovingly at anyone younger than themselves. Why, when he…
The last orc fell away under Alusair's savage charge-gods, what a woman! Rathtar was more than a little afraid of her, even with her shapely behind waggling inches in front of his nose and the sleek line of her flank rippling as she turned to dart her sword tip under a struggling Purple Dragon and into the snarling face of an orc the dragoneer was grappling with.
She was leading somewhere, for some glorious task, no doubt. Rathtar Hardcastle was going to be recognized at last, was going to be-
Alusair spun suddenly, almost casually striking aside Rathtar's lowered blade as he almost ran it through her, and clapped him on the shoulder just as he'd seen her do to a hundred weeping or pain-wracked Purple Dragon veterans.
"Yours," she murmured into his ear, and her lips brushed his cheek for just a moment as she spun away, murmuring, "I'll stand guard."
It felt like his cheek was burning, where her lips had been. Rathtar reached up almost wonderingly to touch it as he stared down and suddenly, chillingly, knew what this was all about.
His older brother Guldrin, as large and slow-witted as ever, was staring up at him with eyes