Wind screamed. Either scooped from the ground or simply conjured out of nothing, sand battered Balasar. It stung his eyes, forced its way into his nostrils and mouth, and choked him.
Blinking and spitting, he covered up with his shield, then peeked over its rim as soon as the blast subsided. Through a stinging blur of tears, he saw the brown creatures rushing him, one a scuttling stride or two in advance of the other.
Turning back and forth, he pretended he couldn’t see them at all. Then he lunged and cut at the head of the one in the lead the instant it came close enough.
The brown creature’s body dissolved in a puff of sand, and the sword swept through the grit. The sand leaped several paces away, where, swirling, it congealed into solid flesh and bone once more.
The trick startled Balasar, but not enough to make him lose track of the second sand thing, which had scrambled around him to strike from behind while its comrade had him distracted. He whirled and shifted his shield, and claws rasped across its surface. He riposted with a chest cut, and the creature collapsed. It was reassuring to see that the things couldn’t evade every attack by dissolving into dust.
He whirled back toward its partner. It cocked back its apelike arm to hurl more sand. Balasar spat frost at it.
Its staggered and pawed at the rime suddenly encrusting its blunt-snouted, lizardlike face. Balasar rushed it. It wiped the ice off its eyes just in time to see the slash that sheared through its throat.
Balasar looked around. The sand things had proved tougher than anticipated, but, frenzied, spewing their breath weapons repeatedly, the members of the Platinum Cadre were making short work of them. He judged that in a few moments, everyone should be ready to race on to the real fight up ahead.
Then a huge black bat slammed down on the ground-not plummeting, but almost. A split second later, the life went out of its eyes. Mangled and burned, it had plainly given the last of its strength to save its rider from a fatal fall.
For a moment Balasar thought it a valiant effort wasted, because the big dragonborn slumped into the saddle looked as dead as his steed. But then the fellow groggily lifted his head, revealing the square gold studs pierced into the green hide under his eyes. The rider was the vanquisher himself.
His trappings and armor charred, as was, no doubt, some of the flesh beneath, he fumbled with the straps holding him in the saddle. Then something else, something bigger even than a Lance Defender’s mount, thudded down on the ground.
Like Tarhun’s bat, the crimson reptile had shredded wings, with arrows embedded in various places where its halo of fire had yet to burn them away. It might have trouble returning to the air. But judging from the way it immediately headed for the vanquisher, each step igniting grass and weeds, it still had plenty of fight left in it.
Alas, Tarhun didn’t. He managed to unbuckle the last of his straps, dismount, and lift his greatsword as high as his chest. Then he collapsed.
Patrin had three brown opponents alternately trying to flense the flesh from his bones with their talons or scour it off with blasts of sand. Still, as he pivoted to and fro, he glimpsed the maimed bat’s plunge to earth and all that followed. He saw Balasar sprint to interpose himself between the huge red beast and the sprawled, motionless Tarhun.
No lone swordsman, no matter how skilled, was a match for such a behemoth. Patrin decided he had to help, and quickly. He’d held off using Bahamut’s gifts, saving them for foes more formidable than his current adversaries, but now he reached out to the Platinum Dragon for aid.
Power thrilled along his nerves. It simultaneously seemed to descend from above and to well up inside him, a sensation impossible to describe to anyone who hadn’t experienced it for himself.
Patrin whirled his sword in a circle, and brightness-or the pure, rarefied idea of it-exploded from the blade. The light became a spinning horizontal wheel of glowing glyphs with himself at the hub. Assailed by their holy Power, the summoned creatures shrieked and floundered backward.
He didn’t know how badly he’d hurt them, nor did he care. Someone else could finish them off if need be. The important thing was that they didn’t have him tightly surrounded anymore. He ran toward Balasar and his enormous foe.
Flames leaping from its jaws, the crested, wedge-shaped head at the end of the long neck struck like a snake. Balasar managed to sidestep and land a cut three times. But on its fourth bite, the reptile caught the edge of his shield in its fangs. It used that hold to pick him up, whip its neck, and fling him to the side. He slammed down hard and slid, and the beast strode on toward Tarhun. Either it innately understood that the dragonborn monarch was the more important target, or its summoner had so instructed it.
Fortunately, Patrin judged that Balasar had delayed the beast just long enough for him to place himself between the reptile and Tarhun and play the same role his comrade had played. But as he put on a final burst of speed, as he neared the huge creature and saw it even more clearly, doubt suddenly assailed him.
It had nothing to do with fear for his own survival, although obviously that was uncertain in the extreme. Rather, it involved the essential nature of the creature he was about to challenge.
He’d noticed that all the beasts the giant shamans summoned with their crystal globes shared certain characteristics with dragons. All, even the brown, hunched sand things, appeared reptilian. Some possessed acidic spittle or poison breath.
Still, the fiery beast was different. Patrin didn’t think it was a true wyrm, but it was so like one that he wondered if, despite all the manifest reasons to do so, it could be right for a champion of the dragon god to oppose it.
But his uncertainty only lasted a heartbeat. Then came a surge of supernal strength he hadn’t even requested, and with it clarity. He often asked Bahamut for guidance. For once, the god had chosen to provide it, assuring him without the necessity of words that it was, in fact, his sacred duty to battle creatures like the one that loomed before him.
When the reptile struck, it was like a tree or tower falling at him. He leaped aside, which saved his life, but didn’t spare him from the blistering heat the saurian radiated like an oven. Grateful that at least at the moment flame didn’t shroud the thing’s entire crested head, he stepped in, shouted the name of his god, and cut.
Guided by Bahamut’s Power, Patrin’s sword found a place where the creature’s scales overlapped imperfectly. As a result, the stroke bit deeper than any of Balasar’s efforts. The creature jerked its head high. Hot enough to scald, blood showered down. Patrin twisted away to protect his face.
Unfortunately that meant he’d looked away from his foe, and instinct immediately screamed that he’d made a mistake. He sprang from the shadow of the immense foot hurtling down to crush him. Something-the tip of a claw, he realized-snagged the back of his surcoat and started to yank him down onto his back. But then the purple garment ripped instead. He reeled, then caught his balance.
As he turned, the ruined surcoat slid down low enough to hinder the action of his arms or even trip him. It was on fire too. But he didn’t have time to rid himself of it, because his foe was already striking at him again.
He leaped aside, then hurled more of Bahamut’s Power. Silvery light flared from his sword to splash across the side of the reptile’s head. Its neck twisted as it oriented on him once again, but it moved more slowly than before. The god’s Power had robbed it of its quickness.
Patrin tore the tattered, burning surcoat off his body, then dashed past the creature’s head to its body. He thrust, seeking the enormous heart that had to be beating somewhere behind its armor of scales.