"Laurana gave the order. The silver dragons breathed upon the waters; their maws gaping wide, their lungs pulsing with the most potent and deadly of a silver serpent's horrific attacks: a blast of icy frost that casts its chilling grip across everything that lies in its path and magically penetrates the target, sapping every vestige of heat. It is an attack that will drive life from mortal limbs, kill fragile leaves even as the force of the blast shatters the brittle rock into frosty dust. It will turn water, instantly, to ice.
"Once and then again, each dragon expelled his powerful breath. The Vingaard River froze solid in its bed. A belt of ice, extending to the bottom and anchored firmly in the great rocks of the river bed, dammed the river's flow. As the pressure of surging water rose, waves poured over the top of the frozen barrier and the dragons breathed again, building the ice dam higher and higher.
"The channel behind this bottleneck was much wider than the choke-point, and much deeper. The waters of the Vingaard gathered there, swirling and tossing, surging over their banks and spreading outward. Although the lake thus formed expanded steadily, the wall of ice — thickly built and firmly centered in its frame of granite bedrock — held back the pressure.
"Below the dam, the mighty Vingaard began to dwindle to a trickle, seeping between sodden banks. Fifty miles north of the Narrows, downstream of the dam, the Army of Solamnia reached Margaard Ford at nightfall, to find the water still too high to cross safely.
"That night the brass dragons returned with word: the dragonarmies were on the march. The Red and Blue Wings had joined forces with the powerful reserve wing, which must have been marching northward from Sanction for weeks, concealed by the crest of the Dargaard Mountains and the clouds beyond."
Indeed, Excellency, we know from dragonarmy records that Ariakus had put the formation into action weeks before — even preceding the defeat at the High Clerist's Tower. Although initially the Emperor himself commanded this formation, by this time in the campaign, command had been turned over to General Bakaris.
Now the entire force advanced under a swarming flock of blue and red dragons — the mightiest of evil dragonkind — bound to destroy the Army of Solamnia. To the captains of the knights, who received these reports with their backs to an apparently impassable ford, the news must have seemed dire, indeed.
Nevertheless, the Golden General met her captains there and told them they would cross in the morning. We have no record of their reactions, but surely any misgivings they held faded away as the river level fell steadily during the night. By dawn, the ford was a collection of puddles spotting a smooth, gravelly path. The Army of Solamnia marched across it in a matter of hours, while copper dragons kept watch over the advancing wings of the dragon-armies.
The spying copper dragons dived and circled on the horizon, evading the blues and reds that frequently soared out to drive them away. Finally, Bakaris realized that such futile skirmishes only tired his dragons needlessly. He decided to conserve their strength and allow his enemies to maintain their airborne spies in peace.
Bakaris managed to avoid the mistakes of the other commanders who had thus far faced the Golden General. He maintained the concentration of his forces during the advance, refusing to be distracted by anything except his goaclass="underline" the Army of Solamnia. He marched with considerable speed, making record time for even the normally fast-moving draconian forces. And he wasted no time deploying for battle when the enemy was at last located.
His skill, determination and, of course, the size of his force, made him a very dangerous opponent. He drew close to Laurana's army with shocking speed. By dawn, the morning after the Army of Solamnia had crossed the Vingaard, the advance elements of the dragon wings were visible on the horizon to scouts on dragonback. The dragonarmies would reach the dry ford sometime around the middle of the day. The captains heard the reports of the vast numbers of the enemy and were dismayed. Defeat seemed inevitable.
But Laurana had a final element to her plan, a part she kept secret to the last possible moment, fearing enemy spies. Some of the hidebound knights — who refused to recognize an innovative tactic until it all but knocked them out of their saddles — must have guessed what it was. Still, concern grew through the camp as dawn passed into full daylight. The battle was six hours away, and no barrier stood between the armies — yet Laurana retained all of her dragons in the camp.
Mellison relates that the captains gathered privately, muttering with concern as the sun rose steadily into the sky. They had just agreed that Sir Markham should go to the general when Laurana surprised them by calling them to her tent.
"I'll be leaving now, for a short time. I'll be taking most of the dragons with me."
The knights were certainly astounded by this pronouncement. If any of them mustered the wits for a reply, it has been lost to history.
"I'll leave you the silvers and the coppers. Form a line of defense along the riverbank. By tonight, we'll have opened the road to Kalaman… or to the Abyss."
The knights argued vehemently, but the Golden General held firm. She seemed unusually somber — perhaps even severe — as they watched her mount Quallathon. Gilthanas stood beside her and clasped her hand for a moment. Then, turning toward the army of metallic dragons around her, Laurana signalled with a wave of her hand. The great flight of brass, bronze, and gold dragons sprang into the air. The morning sun flashed on their wings as the monstrous serpents soared aloft, riding the updrafts. Lifting themselves above the trees, they bore south, along the line of the empty riverbed below.
Shortly after, from the riverside entrenchments, the dragonarmy came into sight. Bakaris proved as aggressive on the battlefield as he had been in the march. His dragons — massive waves of red and blue serpents bellowing their challenges through the skies — slashed into the silver and copper dragons protecting the Army of Solamnia. Gilthanas and Silvara, together as always, fought in the great aerial melee. He wrote to Porthios.
"I saw a dozen good dragons fall in the first pass, wings seared off by fiery breath, wounds gaping in their flesh, ripped by the lightning bolts of the blue. Silvara wheeled sharply, ducking below the crackling lightning bolt spit by a great blue dragon. I raised my lance, tearing the wyrm's wing as it whirled past. The two dragons met with a brutal crash, slashing at each other with rending talons as we plummeted toward the ground.
"The dragons split apart at the last instant, both of them torn and bleeding. Silvara struggled to regain altitude. I lost sight of my enemy in the chaos of the smoky sky, but drove my lance through the belly of a small red that attacked us from overhead. Mortally wounded, the dragon and its doomed rider plunged to earth, bellowing smoke and fire in a spiralling trail."
Yet such victories were rare. Gilthanas saw many corpses of silver and copper sprawled across the landscape below. Finally, after a half hour of savage battle, the elf was forced to accept the grim truth: the good dragons had lost this fight. More than half of them had perished.
Hellish fireballs spewed by the red dragons continued to erupt. Crackling bolts of lightning spit by the blues still crisscrossed the skies, rending copper wings and scorching scales of silver. The numbers made the outcome inevitable, and ultimately Gilthanas and Silvara were forced to order the surviving good dragons to retreat.
During the course of the screaming fight in the sky, Bakaris's ground troops quickly reached the bank of the ford. Hordes of goblins and hobgoblins, mounted upon howling wolves, immediately charged across the dry passage.
Sir Markham, commanding a large force of the knights, watched them approach. He writes: "The frenzied din of the snarling canines and their equally vociferous riders rolled across us — a cacophony of chaos. They rushed forward with astonishing speed, splashing through the shallow pools that were the only remnants of the onceflooding Vingaard."