Don’t get too excited, said Jet. Jax doesn’t look like he needs the help.
Unfortunately, that was true. The wyrm was huge enough to dwarf the other three rampaging across the battlefield, and his pale yellow eyes blazed. Griffons wheeled and beat their wings, trying to stay away from him and above him while their riders shot their few remaining shafts as fast as they could draw and release.
Many of the arrows glanced off Jaxanaedegor’s scales. Others stuck-but only in his hide, without piercing what lay beneath. One, however, drove deep into his brow. In response, he spat a stream of vapor that engulfed the marksman and his mount. The two plummeted together.
Aoth hammered the dark orb with blasts of fire, six detonating in succession quick as the beats of his racing heart. The blasts flung vampires through the air and even tore a couple apart. But the talisman remained intact.
He decided he needed to get close to the thing. He hated to abandon his men to fight Jaxanaedegor by themselves, but if they could distract the wyrm and survive for just a few moments, maybe they’d be all right.
Jet wheeled. When he was behind Jaxanaedegor, he swooped.
For a moment Aoth thought the undead green truly had lost track of them. Then he felt Jet’s jolt of alarm and looked up. Growing larger by the moment, Jaxanaedegor seemed to fill the sunless sky. His claws were poised to catch and tear.
Jet lashed his wings to change course. Then he furled them and dropped like a stone into the leafless upper limbs inside the bubble of darkness.
Branches cracked beneath the griffon and his rider, and bashed and raked them as they fell through. The punishment was like enduring a beating and a tumble down a staircase at the same time. But at least a creature as huge as Jaxanaedegor couldn’t pursue them down into the treetops.
At least not in solid form. Aoth had hoped the dragon would veer off, set down outside the copse, then reenter at ground level. Instead, he dissolved into mist. Aoth caught a whiff of the putrid-smelling fumes. It nauseated him and made him feel dizzy and weak.
Aoth judged-or perhaps merely hoped-that he’d have a few moments to act before Jaxanaedegor floated to the ground and turned solid again. Then Jet slammed down hard. Aoth felt the flash of pain as an aquiline front leg snapped.
I’m all right! the griffon snapped. Go!
Gaunt, pale figures rushed them. Jet gave Aoth just enough time to swing himself out of the saddle, then sprang to meet the vampires. His beak slashed and bit, and his good foreleg clawed to devastating effect. Yet even so, creatures pounced on him and clung, gnawing and tearing with their fangs.
As before, Aoth couldn’t linger to help. He dashed toward the tripod. Another vampire ran in on his flank. It had a poleaxe with what appeared to be grimacing faces mirrored in the blade, although there was nothing outside the steel to cast the reflections.
The creature struck. Grunting with effort, Aoth parried with his spear, then thrust it into his opponent’s heart. Since he couldn’t leave it there, he used a bit more of his rapidly dwindling power to draw flame from the point, sear the organ, and so keep the vampire from getting right back up again.
That cleared the way to the black globe. He rattled off a spell to ensure he struck hard and true. Meanwhile, wisps of mist coiled together and congealed into a wedge-shaped head. Jaxanaedegor leaped forward, clearing Jet and his frenzied foes in the process.
Releasing every bit of force still bound in the spear, Aoth drove the weapon into the talisman. The orb shattered, and sunlight stabbed through the naked branches overhead.
Jaxanaedegor was lifting a foreleg to strike when the radiance caught him. At once his immense scaly body charred and smoked, and he jerked in agony. Backpedaling, Aoth thought, Burn, you whoreson! Die!
But the latter was too much to hope for. Mastering his pain, Jaxanaedegor snarled words of power and vanished. Magic had translated him through space, no doubt to somewhere dark and safe.
Aoth pivoted toward Jet. The lesser vampires actually had burned to death, and-still alive despite a dozen gory bite wounds-the griffon stood on three legs amid smoldering drifts of ash.
“Can you get me back up into the sky?” asked Aoth.
“Oh, why not?” Jet replied. “What’s one more painful test of strength at this point?”
Feeling guilty-but only slightly, because he knew how hardy the griffon actually was-Aoth climbed back into the saddle. Jet limped out of the trees, accelerated, lashed his wings, and flew. The sellswords above them cheered, and their mounts screeched. Aoth acknowledged it by brandishing his spear.
Until a prodigious roar drowned out the acclaim. At the other end of the battlefield, from behind the earthwork at the top of the rise, Tchazzar soared upward in dragon form.
Bigger even than Jaxanaedegor, he annihilated the zombie dragon with a flare of fiery breath that nearly engulfed Gaedynn and Eider as well. Then, wings beating, he climbed.
One of the enemy reds tried to do the same. But Tchazzar gained the high air, then plunged at the smaller reptile like a hawk diving at a pigeon. He seized it and ripped it apart with fang and claw.
By that time, the other enemy red was fleeing north. Aoth thought it had enough of a head start to escape. But Tchazzar snarled, and Aoth felt a charge of supernatural coercion in the noise. It made his head throb even though it wasn’t directed at him.
The lesser red flailed, then labored onward clumsily like it was carrying an enormous weight or its muscles were cramping. As a result, Tchazzar had no trouble overtaking it.
When the enemy red turned to fight, it regained its agility. Either Tchazzar had contemptuously restored it, or that particular curse could only afflict a fleeing victim. The Threskelan wyrm found rising air, soared, then dived as Tchazzar had hurtled down at his comrade.
The war hero spat flame. Which should have had little or no effect on a fellow red. Yet it blasted chunks of flesh from his foe’s skull and burned or melted its eyes in their sockets. Aoth winced to imagine the heat and force required.
Tchazzar then flicked his wings, got out of the way of the blind, maimed wyrm, and seized it as it plunged by. He held onto it for the heartbeat it took to bite its head off, then let the bloody, burning pieces fall.
After that, he turned his murderous attention to an unfortunate company of kobolds. But he couldn’t attack everyone at once, and so a fair number of the enemy would get away to regroup later.
For, the Firelord knew, Tchazzar’s warriors were in no condition to pursue them. Somehow they’d averted complete destruction while waiting-and waiting-for the self-proclaimed god to make his move. But they’d taken a brutal mauling.
NINE
16 KYTHORN, THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
The Market Floor echoed with the fast, complex clatter of the victory drums, and dancers leaped and whirled to the rhythms. Khouryn reflected that dragonborn could be remarkably nimble for such a solidly built people, although in the present circumstances they weren’t always nimble enough. Many dances involved simulated combat with live blades, or tossing weapons into the air and catching them, and some folk watched from the sidelines with freshly bandaged hurts to attest to a fumble.
He and Medrash tried to slip past one such celebration, convened beneath a platinum and purple banner of Bahamut. But someone recognized them, and people clustered around to shake their hands and press wooden cups of wine and apple brandy into them.
Khouryn supposed it made sense. Thanks to the mounted charge and the other tactics he’d introduced, he and Medrash had emerged from the recent battle as heroes. Unfortunately, so had the leaders and warriors of the Platinum Cadre, and people-including many of the cultists-had a tendency to see all the innovations as parts of a greater whole. Especially since Medrash and Patrin had both proclaimed themselves the exotic sort of champion called paladins and fought side by side to save the vanquisher.