The enemy spears glinted against the sun, their black tips winking, lowering to meet them. To left and right three hundred riders fanned out, three hundred knights and lords and men-at-arms all armoured and armed with cold bare steel. Behind followed another line, and another, a thousand heavy horse to shatter the siege, punching through the lines like a fist. Amron thrust the Frostblade aloft, and let it catch the glow of the sun. Light shone out, bright and brilliant, and colour spread like a sunburst upon the field. The enemy soldiers turned their heads from the sudden glare, shying away, and into them the cavalry stormed.
The crash and clangour of steel on steel rang out, the thunder of ten thousand hooves. Men were trampled and smashed aside. Riders swept blades left and right, hacking and hewing; others went flying from the saddle, caught by pike and spear and bolt. Behind them followed the rest of the riders, two thousand strong, and the men afoot, swordsmen and spearmen, axemen and shieldmen, men with pikes and men with maces, bowmen, archers, crossbowmen to the rear, flying their arrows and bolts.
The Agarathi spearmen were falling before them like winter wheat beneath the scythe, crushed by the fury of the charge. The lines were smashed and broken. Beyond, tens of thousands more swarmed the field, spread across an open tract that led to the city walls several hundred metres away, framed by the snow-coated downs.
The outer bulwark had been breached, Amron Daecar saw, the battlements blackened and burnt, men lying dead in their droves, ballistas broken, flaming, catapults smashed and shattered. The fighting was ferocious where the walls had come down, toppled by dragonfire, opening gaps into the city. The enemy horde crowded in their thousands, trying to fight their way in as the Strand host held them back. Dragons circled like vultures above, slithering through plumes of dense black smoke that belched up from the squat stone towers, plunging and diving, savaging men with fang and claw.
My city, Amon thought, racing harder, faster.
“Blackfrost!” he bellowed, “Blackfrost!” as he led the riders on, cutting into the meat of the enemy host, sweeping the Frostblade left and right. With one great swish he sent a thousand arrows of ice cutting into the foemen before him. With another a blanket of frost fell upon them, slowing them, freezing them, and his riders ran them down. Behind him his men cheered out his name. Ahead the enemy shrank back in fear. A great screech pierced the sunlit skies. “Dragons!” bellowed the Ironfoot. “Brace for dragons! Dragons!”
The warhorns blew their warning, three blunt blasts, short and low.
“Arrows!” called out Lord Mantle, leading the Oloran host. “Spears! Prime spears!”
Flights of reeds and quarrels stormed skyward from behind them. Spears shot upward into the cerulean blue, thrust by the arms of Bladeborn men given strength by their bond to the steel. The first dragon to near was a small one, fleet and thin. It twisted through the hail of arrows, spinning, diving, but a spear caught it in the wing. The webbing tore, fluttering, and the dragon screamed and fell. Two more spears plunged into it, at shoulder and neck as it came crashing down into the bulk of the army below who swarmed it like wolves on a kill.
A second dragon followed behind, bigger, a thick bulky brute. It snapped its jaws and tried to gush flame, but its furnace fires would not catch in the bitter cold. A roar of rage bellowed and down it came, sweeping through a clot of Rothwell men, talons grasping and tearing. More spawn of the fire god followed, divebombing like seabirds, one and then another and then another, ploughing through tracts of northmen in leather and steel. They plunged and rose, plunged and rose, pulling men to the sky to rain down upon the host in a deluge of blood and bodies.
By then it was chaos. The riders charged onward; the foot spread wide. The Agarathi horde screamed their warcry and pressed. Ten thousand puffs of breath filled the air, snorting from mouths and maws and nostrils, and steam rose from the tops of heads to mingle into a great cloud. Atop Wolfsbane, Amron rode forth into the jaws of the enemy strength, leading a charge of his bravest and best; Sir Taegon and Sir Torus and Rogen Whitebeard in his dark grey armour and black cloak, bitter Sir Bryce Coddington and biddable Sir Reginald Hightree, the Varin Knights Quinn Sharp and Marcus Flint in their rich blue Varin cloaks. The Ironfoot veered west with his Grave and Ironmoor men; Lord Mantle charged east with the Olorans, his bat-like cloak flapping in his wake. Sir Harold Conwyn and Sir Lambert Joyce were with the foot, leading the Green Harbour forces.
“For Vandar!” Amron bellowed. All around him, thousands of Agarathi swarmed. He cast the Frostblade to the air once more. Power thrummed through it, so fierce it seemed to tremble and vibrate in his grasp. The cold, the snow, the ice enlivened it. The air sparked and glittered in a hundred hues. A shroud of icy barbs and bolts gathered and coalesced, hardening, sharpening, and he swung down and forward in a mighty arc. A score of soldiers flew backward off their feet, peppered with spikes and daggers of ice. Again, Amron thought, as he swung. Again, again, again.
Men fell before him. His knights spread out. Some stayed ahorse, charging and swinging. Others leapt off the backs of their steeds to hack and cut the Agarathi down on foot. The Giant of Hammerhall bore warhammer and greatsword at once, rampaging through the host as the Hammerhorse stampeded at his side, monstrously heavy in his godsteel barding. Whitebeard too was on his feet, a whirling black menace with Sir Bryce at his side. Amron glimpsed young Tyrstan Spencer in his gilded armour, bright as a beacon, wheeling about on his horse. The boy had gotten himself separated from his men and the Agarathi were scrambling to pull him down, several dragonknights rushing toward him with their tall black spears primed to thrust and stab.
“Rogen!” Amron bellowed. “Help Sir Trystan.” He flung a hand.
The ranger dashed off, and Sir Bryce rushed to follow. There was a roar behind him and Amron jerked the reigns, tugging Wolfsbane around. A dragon filled his view, jaws agape as it plunged toward him. Amron swung the Frostblade upward at once, sending a spray of icy spears into the dragon’s jaws. The beast’s roar cut off abruptly as they pierced the soft meat and muscle inside his mouth, cutting deep. Another swing of his blade and a thicker, longer spear shot forth to plunge into the beast’s neck, sending it reeling down to crash into the battlefield, scattering men and mounts as it gouged a rut into the muddy wet earth.
Men roared out Amron’s name. The air filled with the strains of, “Daecar! Daecar!” More of the leathern beasts were coming, too many to count. Amron peered across the battlefield. The enemy were still thronging at the breaches across the walls. Some looked to be battling their way in. How bad had Styron’s host suffered? They were meant to come pouring from the gates when the enemy turned to meet Amron’s charge. They’re weakened, the king knew. It’s all they can do to hold the Agarathi at bay.
A sudden fear engulfed him. Lillia. If they break through…
“My lord!” shouted a voice. Sir Torus Stoutman came riding up to Amron’s side, knocking men out of the way on his small barded horse. The dwarfish knight was armoured head to heel in steel, his great thicket of a beard poking out from beneath his faceplate. He raised a finger and pointed. “That one’s for you, Amron.”
Amron looked over. A huge dragon was hurtling their way, much bigger than the one he’d just slain, the largest brute on the field. Forest green scale armour with horns in shades of red and vermilion. A barrel chest, strong wide wing arms, webbing rippling pink against the sun, veined in blackish blue. It had a classic look, a fearsome beast of strong proportion, near as large as Garlath and Malathar. Amron knew him as Angaralax, and his rider as Axallio Axar, the finest young dragonrider to appear since the end of the last war. He had been there, at the Battle of King’s Point, the day Drulgar and Eldur came. Second in command to Ulrik Marak, Amron knew. Now their leader. “AXALLIO AXAR!” he called.
Amron raised the Frostblade in challenge. Angaralax gave out a resounding roar in response. Axar ripped out his blade and lifted it against the blue skies, his green and red cape fluttering in the wind. Amron could not hear his voice from here, but those raised blades were a sign. He glanced at Sir Torus Stoutman. “Torus, fight your way to the city. Clear the breaches so Lord Styron can join us. Take Sharp and Flint and their men.”
“Aye, my lord.”
Stoutman rode off, hollering and calling for the two Varin Knights to go with him. At once a host of riders hundreds strong was mustering another charge, cutting their way toward the walls as hundreds more followed afoot.
Amron vaulted down from the saddle. “Do what you do best,” he said to Wolfsbane, smacking him on the armoured rump with a ringing clang of steel. The beast reared up and kicked out. His neigh was loud and long, Wolfsbane’s version of a roar, and off he charged, swinging his head side to side as he stampeded through the battlefield.
Amron turned. Men were starting to clear away as they saw Angaralax approach. That was like the last war too. Bladeborn and Fireborn meeting in honour-bound combat. There were too few proper Fireborn riders left for that, but Axallio Axar was one such man. Amron favoured him for that. He stepped forward, encrusting himself in a thicker layer of ice, shining like a sculpture, a glitter of iridescent dust sparkling about him. The Frosblade was thrumming in his grasp, exultant. It thirsted for dragon-death and was having its fill.
“Axar!” the king roared, raising the blade once more in salute.
Angaralax thumped down to land upon the earth before him. The world gave a shudder, puddle water rippling, a hot wind rising to stir the king’s cloak. A broad space was opening around them, men racing away to battle elsewhere. Amron had flashbacks of the Battle of Burning Rock. The same had happened that day, with Vallath and Dulian, though he’d only had eyes for his foe. He would give Angaralax and Axar the same respect.
“Amron Daecar,” the rider called. He was a burly man, strong like his steed, with a ledge of thick brow protruding over his eyes to leave his gaze in shadow. His dragonscale armour was a dark pine green, his hair short and beard shorter, both black as a raven’s wing. His voice was thick and blunt.“Marak was meant to kill you at King’s Point.”
“He tried.”
“Did he? I saw your duel from the air. There was more talking than fighting. You have become soft men.”
“And you are here to do what he could not?”
Axallio Axar gave a firm nod. “I should have been given that honour from the start. I asked the Father and the Founder, but Marak took it from me.” He scowled. “Lord Eldur chose poorly that day. Now Marak has fled, and left you to me.”
Fled or dead? Amron thought. He still did not know. “Are we fighting or talking?”
The comment rankled the younger man. “This is how it is done,” he called out, in a bitter shout. “Is that not so, Daecar? Some talking at the start. Then the fighting. It was so with Dulian, yes. I have heard the tales of how you taunted him that day, before you crippled him and killed half his soul. They call it mercy here, but no. It was cruelty. Evil. You are a villain, Amron Daecar.”
Amron did not care to listen to the man’s meaningless bombast. He knew what had happened that day. He knew it was not mercy, as they said. He threatened to kill my sons, he thought. Those words could not be spared. “How old are you, Axallio?” he asked.
The man grunted and lifted his chin. “Four holy turns.”
Thirty-two. The number eight was sacred to the Agarathi. Some called it a holy turn, the passing of eight years. “Just a boy, then.”
“A boy who has ridden Angaralax for a dozen years,” the Fireborn snarled at him. “Our bond is unbreakable, you will see.” He leaned back in the saddle, as though to prove it, and Angaralax reared up high, pausing to stand tall with wings outstretched before smashing his bulk back down. The earth trembled. Smoke drifted out through the dragon’s teeth. Amron did not quell. The dragon was formidable, there was no doubt, but he’d faced Drulgar now. A child, he thought. That is all the rest are. “Marak and Garlath. Ven and Malathar. Not even Dulian and Vallath can match us.”
Amron doubted it. “Are you afraid, Axallio?” he asked.
“Afraid? Of you?” The man laughed aloud. “I fear no one, Daecar. Nothing. You may hold this god-shard, but that is nothing to me. Gather them all. Reforge them. I still would not quiver. Varin’s heir or no, I hold no fear of you.”
The man was lying. Amron had fought enough Fireborn to know that. “I will give you one chance. Fly home, leave this land, join the rebellion against your master. Do this and I will spare you. Do it not and you will die.”
