“Stand alert there!” Palthainon called to his warriors, some of whom had settled to the ground as they waited for orders. “We’ll cross here. No rest until we’re all on the other side.”
“Perfect, you fool,” whispered Porthios. These troops, already ragged with weariness, would be denied a chance to rest before they marched into the ambush. The outlaw leader found himself wondering how Palthainon had earned his reputation on Ergoth. Perhaps it was true that all of his battles had involved attacks against peaceful villages, brutal raids with the primary objective of taking slaves.
The first of the Qualinesti started awkwardly along the makeshift bridge, and now events really did move beyond Porthios’s control. He had set his ambush, given his troops orders, and there was no way to countermand those instructions without revealing himself to the enemy across the waterway. The outlaws were to wait until half the city elves were across the stream. Then they would attack with lethal volleys of arrows, killing most of the hapless invaders before they even knew that battle had been joined.
After several volleys of arrows, the biggest of the outlaws were to fall on the survivors with cold steel, while the rest of Porthios’s force would race back to their griffons and sweep against the remaining Qualinesti from the air. Probably some of the elves on the far side of the river would escape, but the carnage over there would be savage as well. And it served Porthios well to have a few survivors make it back to the city. He wanted the Thalas-Enthia to think twice before they sent another army after him.
The first elves to cross the bridge collapsed in exhaustion on the near bank, while others slowly, painstakingly made their way across. They made no attempt to spread out, to scout the thick woods on the far side. Instead, they were all too grateful to have the chance to rest and to be momentarily beyond the range of Palthainon’s temper and authority.
Porthios looked down at his bow and arrows. He had four steel-tipped shafts ready to shoot, and he pictured each of them puncturing elven flesh, drawing elven blood and piercing elven hearts. He felt sick to his stomach, suddenly horribly reluctant to fight this battle. Alhana had been right after all. It would be a great mistake, an unspeakable tragedy, to lead his countrymen into battle against their own people.
But already the first company of Palthainon’s three units had crossed the stream, and the elves of the second were starting to pick their way across the bridge. At any moment, the first arrows would dart from the trees, and the killing would begin.
When he heard the shouts of alarm from Palthainon’s elves, Porthios at first thought, with perverse relief, that his ambush had been discovered. “Run, you fools!” he whispered fiercely, certain that the Qualinesti would race back across the stream and he would have an excuse not to commence this butchery.
But he quickly realized that Palthainon’s troops still had no clue as to the outlaws’ presence. Instead, the Qualinesti were pointing toward the northern sky. Those troops on the opposite bank were running along the stream, heading for the cover of the nearest copse of trees, a quarter-mile downstream. The elves who had already crossed were standing, staring upward, trying to discern the cause of their comrades’ alarm. Then, with shouts of dire panic, they turned and dashed into the woods, falling and tumbling among the outlaws who lay there in ambush, too panicked even to react to the surprise.
Yet the ambush never occurred, for now the elves of Porthios’s force could see the sky, and none of them cared to raise a weapon against the Qualinesti. Instead, they could only stare, knees turning to jelly, eyes goggling from their heads, as they watched a wing of blue dragons soar downward. The dragonawe permeated even into the woods, and Porthios felt his own bowels grow loose as the massive serpents swept past.
Even so, he had to admire the military precision of their flight. Each dragon was ridden by a mounted knight, and the creatures flew wing tip to wing tip, a dozen of them spanning the full breadth of the wide clearing. Ignoring the elves who had crossed the stream, the serpents dived in pursuit of the Qualinesti who fled along the far bank of the gorge.
Lightning spat from their gaping jaws, blasts of powerful fire that tore elves into pieces and threw up great clods of dirt from the ground. The explosive volley was repeated with ruthless cruelty, changing the pastoral meadow into a scene of carnage, nightmare, and death. The thunder of the deadly attacks reverberated through the trees as dozens, then scores, of Palthainon’s Qualinesti were cut down.
Finally the dragons landed in the midst of the fleeing elves, and the slaughter was tremendous, horrifying, unreal. Jaws snapped, crushing warriors between daggerlike teeth. Wyrms pounced and clawed, tearing other elves to pieces. Knightly riders stabbed with their lances, chopped with their swords, and shouted in glee as the helpless Qualinesti were mercilessly butchered and harried from the field.
All during the massacre, one dragon flew overhead, its rider trailing a pennant, a banner bright with the colors of a five-headed wyrm. Porthios knew that these dragons were part of an army, and that the army fought in the name of Takhisis. Queen of Darkness.
And he knew that war had come once more to Krynn.
“Ah, yes, the blues,” said Aeren. “Their coming was not welcome in any part of the forest.”
“But surely they are not hateful to you. Do you not all serve the same Dark Queen?” asked Silvanoshei.
“Bah,” Aeren said scornfully. “I’ve always hated blue dragons—not as much as I hated elves, of course, or the serpents of gold and silver and their other metallic kin-dragons, but I hate blues nonetheless.”
“Why?” asked the young elf.
“They’re forever currying the Dark Queen’s favor. And they’re too precise, too willing to give up their freedom to answer their goddess’s call. Once, as a young wyrmling, I was seared by the bolt of a blue’s lightning breath. I still have the scars,” the dragon stated sternly.
“I know they came to the forest and the city. Did they come to your lair?” asked Silvanoshei.
“Not at first, but I knew the blues had come with every intention of taking my new territory away from me. My first clue was an acrid scent carried by the southward breeze, a hint of char and ozone reminiscent of a nearby lightning strike. I emerged from my lair to watch the blues from the shelter of the leafy forest. I saw them fly over in precise formation, four ranks of five dragons each.
“Even worse was the sight of the long banner that trailed from a lance borne by one of the riders. The five-colored heads of evil dragonkind, here worked in a pattern around a white flower that looked like a death lily, could only mean that these serpents were flying under the sanction of Takhisis, the Queen of Darkness.”
Chapter Eleven
The Siege of Qualinost
“My lord Speaker, the dragonarmies have come again! We must flee!”
“Stop... speak a little more carefully.” Gilthas sat up in bed, looking at the excited Kagonesti slave who had burst into his bedchamber. “What’s this about dragonarmies?”
“They have come. The Blue Wing returns!” cried the slave, an elder male who had been a part of the migration westward thirty years ago.
By now the young Speaker was fully awake. He climbed from the bed and went to look out the window. Qualinost, to all appearances, was a city in peaceful slumber. The sky was clear, and he saw no sign of any dragon or other attacker. He turned on the slave, irritated at being so rudely awakened.