The beast was an enormous blue lizard with big frilled ears and a spike on its snout. It moved in a glittering haze that also shrouded the creature on its back. The rider was a kobold with a single enormous azure scale seemingly grafted in the center of his chest. The scale flickered repeatedly, like lightning was flashing inside it, and pus seeped around the edges.

The blue lizard crashed into the front ranks of the spearmen. Dipping and tossing its head, it caught sellswords on its horn and flung them into the air. At the same time, small lightning bolts leaped from its massive body to sear one soldier, then another. The men so afflicted danced spastically in place, and the kobold howled with laughter.

Aoth wondered why this terror was only entering the battle now. He was lucky it hadn’t shown up earlier, before the balance tilted in the attackers’ favor.

He rattled off words of power and hurled darts of light. They vanished when they touched the seething aura. Other griffon riders loosed arrows. The shafts broke on contact with the haze.

Still laughing, the kobold raised a length of blue metal. Lightning crackled from the tip and burned into a griffon. The beast dropped, then spread its wings and arrested its fall. Plainly injured and struggling, it flew beyond the walls, no doubt looking for a safe place to set down. Aoth couldn’t tell if the man now slumped on its feathery neck was still alive or not.

Meanwhile, the stormlizard went on bulling, rending, and trampling its way through the lines of spearmen. Aoth decided its master might not have waited too long to unleash it after all. If somebody didn’t find a way to stop it, it could still win the fight for Threskel.

He cast a rainbow from his spear. Each colored beam had the potential to smite the reptile in a different way. None of them pierced its halo.

“There’s no way to hurt it except close up,” said Jet. “Of course, then the halo burns us. But I’m game.”

“Wait.” Aoth rattled off charms of protection against lightning in particular and hostile magic in general. He activated tattoos with similar functions. “There. That might help. Now yank the kobold off the beast’s back.”

Jet poised his talons and swooped.

The kobold twisted and pointed his wand. Jet dived even lower and streaked along mere inches from the ground. Aoth ducked, and lightning crackled over his head.

Jet lashed his wings and bobbed back up to the kobold shaman’s level. Aoth aimed his spear, just in case the griffon’s claws somehow missed the target.

Then, faster and more nimbly than Aoth had imagined it could move, the stormlizard spun around and reared up onto its hind legs like a horse. One of its forefeet struck at Jet.

Through their psychic link, Aoth felt his mount’s determination to swerve and avoid the blow, and then the shock when it hit him anyway. They lurched off balance and nearly tumbled over, and the griffon fought to stay right side up and regain control of his trajectory.

He managed the former but not quite the latter. He jolted to earth amid a scatter of dead orcs, and momentum pitched him off his feet.

Fortunately, Aoth could feel that neither the stormlizard’s claws nor slamming into the ground had hurt Jet badly. Mostly they’d made him angry. He drew breath to let out a screech and plunge back into the fight.

“Wait!” Aoth snapped. “Pretend you’re hurt. Stay here. When they’ve forgotten all about you, then come at them again.” He swung himself out of the saddle.

As he started to run, he saw that the stormlizard had resumed tearing into the spearmen. No doubt realizing that even if they avoided the jabbing horn, the flares of lightning would sear them where they stood, the sellswords were falling back, their ranks disintegrating.

“That’s right!” Aoth yelled. “Get clear! Leave it to me!”

Charging his spear with destructive power, he poised himself in front of the stormlizard. He was close enough to attack it-close enough too that the kobold would have difficulty casting spells at him past the enormous blue reptile’s head.

Which was good as far as it went, but it also put him within easy reach of the stormlizard’s horn. It surged forward and tossed its head, and the spike nearly caught him even though the creature had done exactly what he expected.

Still, he did sidestep the blow and riposted with a thrust. His spear leaped through the sparkling haze without difficulty and stabbed the stormlizard in the face. It roared, and he grinned. He’d finally hurt the thing.

The trick was hurting it enough. Over the course of the next several heartbeats Aoth inflicted several wounds on its snout and jaws, but the superficial punctures only made it more eager to rend him. And he couldn’t get past the tossing, jabbing horn to attack a different part of its body.

Meanwhile, lightning leaped repeatedly from the stormlizard’s body to his. At first he couldn’t feel it. Then it stung like insect bites. His protective magic was wearing away.

Trying to line up a shot, the kobold leaned from side to side. He slashed the wand through a zigzag pass and started a lengthy incantation. Aoth inferred that while lightning was the shaman’s favorite weapon, he knew other magic as well and had decided now was the time to use it.

Then Jet hit the kobold like a bolt from a ballista. His talons pierced the scaly little body all the way through, and his momentum whisked the corpse off the stormlizard’s back, all in the blink of an eye.

Enraged by Aoth’s stabbing spear, and his refusal to stand still and let himself be gored, the stormlizard didn’t even seem to notice its rider was gone. It just kept striking at the man on the ground.

Jet streaked in, plunged his claws into almost the exact spot where the kobold had sat, clung, and ripped away scaly blue hide and the muscle beneath with his beak. The stormlizard bellowed and rolled, trying to crush the griffon beneath it.

But Jet beat his wings and sprang clear. And when the stormlizard flopped over, it exposed its underside. Aoth willed fresh power into the head of his spear, charged, plunged it into the spot where he judged the beast’s heart ought to be, and instantly yanked it out for a second thrust.

Hot blood sprayed and spattered him from head to toe. He swiped the blinding gore from his eyes.

Just in time to see the stormlizard heave itself around, and its horn rip upward. He tried to jump away. The point caught him anyway and flipped him through the air to smash down on his back.

His chest ached, but when he looked down he saw the horn had only grazed him. It hadn’t breached his mail to cleave the flesh beneath.

And that had been the stormlizard’s final effort. Now it simply lay shuddering, more blood pumping out in diminishing spurts and its shimmering corona fading. One final arc of lightning crackled from the tip of a claw to the ground.

At that same instant, an idea popped into Aoth’s head.

He had no idea why. He’d resolved to concentrate solely on the assault, and he had. But apparently without him even being aware of it, some buried part of his mind had kept on worrying at his other problems, and now it was making a suggestion.

It was a suggestion he couldn’t take if his men still needed him. But when he glanced surreptitiously around, that didn’t appear to be the case. There were no more stormlizards coming out of the tunnels, and in general the Brotherhood seemed to have things under control. In battle, few things were ever absolutely certain, but he was willing to gamble they could carry on without him.

Smelling of singed feathers, wings rustling, Jet landed beside him. “Why aren’t you getting up?” the familiar asked.

Because, Aoth replied, speaking mind to mind, I’m horribly wounded. Don’t you see all the blood?

It’s the lizard’s blood. Its horn just bumped you.