The Legend of Vanx Malic: Book 02 - Dragon Isle (20 page)

The pack fidgeted on the ground and then shot up toward them. It went right into Orphas’s outstretched hands. This caused the archers to gasp in awe and fear, and afterward they showed no small amount of unease.

“I guess I was wrong, Quazy.” Orphas hefted the bag with a dry snort. It looked as though it weighed very little. “We’ll definitely be hungry while we wait. Do we really starve these men so?”

Around them, as far as the eye could see, in every open space and avenue, in every market square and garden-yard, ogres bashed and smashed and wandered about in packs. What was once the realm’s most formidable outpost had been reduced to little more than rubble.

In the distance they could see the myriad longboats and trawlers out in the bay ferrying the common folk to safety. It was a bitter relief. Quazar also noticed that the king’s personal banner wasn’t flying on his ship’s mast. Knowing old King Oakarm, the man was probably down in the caverns helping the people get away. The fact that the king wasn’t secure, though, made his duty all the more important. If Ravier Oakarm died, then Russet was the King of Parydon. At all costs it was his, Orphas’s, and the soldiers’ duty to keep the prince alive.

As we sail across his sea,

we honor Nepton’s crown.

For if you cross old Nepton,

the waves will take you down.

– A sailor’s song

A
group of ogres that hadn’t been distracted by the wizards’ magic didn’t deviate from their search for the demon statue that haunted their dreams. They roamed the stronghold’s corridors searching the rooms for the object of their desire as if it were the only thing that could sate their hunger.

The demon Raxxteriak had selected the more intelligent beasts while visiting their minds in their sleep, though intelligent isn’t how the demon would have described any of them. They were animals: primal, instinctual, and with little capability for logical decision making. They didn’t even consider splitting into groups and trying to cover two or three rooms at a time. They didn’t keep track of the turns and crossings they made in the halls, either. More than one room was ransacked several times over. All the while, most of their kindred raged in the outbuildings, stables and utility sheds.

Other ogres decided to explore the stronghold as well. In the ladies’ tower, where a decent amount of stitching took place, and bolt upon bolt of cloth was stored, a fire was started when the ogres knocked over candles that had been left burning. Built as a place to harbor the women in safety when the stronghold was under siege, it had no windows on the lower floors. The tall, cylindrical building soon filled with smoke. It leaked out of the upper vent windows, but nowhere else. Many of the ogres suffocated from the thick, noxious fumes of the silk, velvet, and blistering paint as it burned. The smoke began to roll out of the lower doorways into the courtrooms and meeting halls, filling that portion of the stronghold with an acrid stench as well.

The duke’s trial had been about to get underway when the great western gate was breached. It would have been a crowded affair. In an attempt to spare King Oakarm from the pressing crowd that usually accompanied such an assembly of frontier folk, the biggest room Dyntalla Stronghold boasted had been chosen. Coll’s statue had been carried down to the makeshift open-roofed hearing room in preparation for the event. Dyntalla’s ballroom sported a high vaulted ceiling with open sky-panels and suites with balconies that opened up both on the dance floor and on the giant forested park outside the room. Beyond the park was the silvery expanse of Dyntalla Bay.

With the people of Dyntalla not having many occasions to hold a true ball, the room was rarely used. It was used mainly on Yule’s Night when the children of the area came and lit a candle for Saint Crimson and made merry mischief on the ballroom floor.

The windows were all closed, but the heavy curtains that usually hung over them had been taken down and racks of folding chairs were pushed against one wall. The vast space was filled mostly with moonlight refracted to a soft golden hue by the haze of fire smoke that was seeping in from the doorways.

When the exploring band of ogres burst into the cavernous space and saw the bright half-moon shining on them, a pair of them howled out in delight. The others saw the object that had been in their dreams and started to topple it. None of the ogres, though, saw the other thing that was in the ballroom with them. Its hide was so slick and black, its movement so silent and imperceptible, that they didn’t even know they were being attacked until Gallarael had opened the guts and throats of at least half their number.

Raxxteriak watched on, peering through the eyes of the dying ogres to see what was happening. This blackened she-beast was as fierce as any of the ogres and obviously far more intelligent. She continually taunted them, drawing them into single combat before acrobatically crawling, climbing, and cartwheeling over them, ripping flesh and gashing vital areas as she went.

What was worse was that he couldn’t seem to get one of the few recovering creatures to pull out of its battle lust back into the dreamy urge that lulled them there in the first place.

The three remaining ogres were circling the dark thing now. Swirls of moonlit smoke roiled in the wake of their every move. Two of them were smart enough to keep her between them, while the third waited for her attention to be drawn.

Raxxteriak held back, jumping his vision from corpse to corpse, and back again, trying to get the best view of what was transpiring.

Gallarael launched herself at one of them and slashed with a raking claw, thus providing the opening for which the third ogre had been waiting. He came charging with arms closing like pincers to tackle the deadly foe.

An ear-splitting screech erupted, and a blurring shadow shot straight up from where she’d just crouched. The ogre’s arms closed on thin air and it went into a sliding tumble across the blood-slicked marble floor. By the time it gained its feet and turned back, there was only one of its kin left facing the creature. The other was writhing on the floor, howling and trying to reach back at the deep, bloody furrows running down its spine.

There was a moment of confusion and even fear when the demon’s essence managed to get through to the beast. Without another moment’s hesitation, and while the last of its companions was being ripped to bloody shreds, the ogre charged across the floor and shouldered over the statue of Coll.

There was no loud crash or sound of breaking stone, no muffled thump of Coll’s body striking the floor. Only a shadow of what Coll had been touched the tile and it was rapidly changing into something far more intimidating. Seeing this transformation, the ogre that had toppled the statue fled like a frightened deer.

Gallarael hissed at the thing the statue had become. It was ogreish in size and build, being well-muscled and over ten feet tall, but that was the only resemblance the demon had with the mountain creatures. Its head was bald and short-spiked yellow horns jutted from each temple. A larger single horn curled out and over its head from the base of its skull. Its skin was an angry red, and its bulging forearms were covered in gauntlets formed from some skeletal creature whose horny form fit perfectly around the demon’s wrist. It wore a long cloak and a loose-fitting vest made of some brownish-yellow-scaled creature’s hide. A codpiece of the same scaled material was strapped over its substantial groin by a wide leather belt from which dangled an assortment of twisted bones.

Its three toes and one heal nub were tipped with finger-length claws that were as black as jet and chipped at the tiles as they grasped the floor. The claws on its hands were as long as daggers.

The demon wasted no time lashing out at Gallarael. She tried to jump away from his grasp but she didn’t see the tail wrap her ankle and jerk her violently to the floor. She struggled to get loose, for every instinct in her entire ferocious countenance told her to flee this new monster, but she couldn’t break the grip.

The demon opened its fang-filled maw and bellowed out a hoarse laugh. “Maybe I’ll find time to breed you later, bitch. Right now I’ve a wizard or two to reap my vengeance upon.” He dropped her and before she hit the tile he kicked her halfway across the slippery floor. Her breathless body slid to a stop while a pair of wide, leathery wings opened up from under the cloak the demon wore. It started into a headlong run across the tiles. Half a heartbeat later, the only things left to show that it had even been there at all were a few bloodied claw prints and the icy cold residue its grasping tail had left on Gallarael’s skin.

After the explosion in the nearby building shook the wizard’s tower, Darbon helped Matty into Trevin’s sickroom and then barricaded the door with all he could find. The action had not only spared them from the exploring hordes of ogres that had been roaming the floors of Quazar’s domain, but from Gallarael’s deadly fury as well.

Trevin was still unconscious and had taken on a deathly grey pallor. Matty wasn’t much better off, but at least she was alert and somewhat mobile. Though hours had passed since the explosion, Darbon didn’t dare unblock the door. There were still beasts randomly roaming around. It was dark, and even if they got past the creatures, he could think of no real destination for them. The best they could do, he figured, was stay there and hope that somehow the kingdom’s troops regained the stronghold.

“Look,” Matty said weakly from the window she’d just unshuttered. “Half of the city is out in the bay.”

Thinking that she meant the sea was engulfing Dyntalla, Darbon went to see for himself. An audible sigh of relief escaped him when he saw what she was trying to convey.

Under the bright half-moon, two longboats were easing out toward a flotilla of ships. Barges, schooners and fishing trawlers of all sorts were bursting with people.

Darbon looked down at the body-strewn yard a few stories below them. Over by the stronghold’s main building he saw a ladder, but it was twisted and broken. The crumbled section of wall on the other side of it wouldn’t be easy to get over, not with the scattering of ogres still scavenging the dead. He doubted whether Matty could make it down, much less Trevin. Maybe he could go get help for them? If he could make it to the shore, he could swim out to the flotilla. Or maybe they could just…

The fluttering of wings overhead sent a chill of fear through him. His first thought was that it was a dragon, and he pulled his head quickly back inside. He decided the sound had been too insubstantial, too small to be a dragon, yet it was far too large to be any bird he could think of.

“What was that?” Matty asked in a hiss.

“I don’t know.” Darbon eased his head back out and looked up. Red flesh, dull yellow scales, and a long, twitching tail were attached to something sitting on the sill of the floor above theirs. A deep, throaty growl accompanied the sight and ice seemed to slide down his spine. He pulled his head back in a rush and almost bowled over Matty. He carefully swung the shutters closed. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s perched just above us.” What he didn’t say was that it radiated malice like a forge fire radiates heat. Searching the room, he was glad to find Trevin’s sword. He only wished he knew how to use it.