Grappling, snapping with their fangs, slashing with their claws, lashing with their tails, the two wyrms rolled over and over together. Their snarls, grunts, and the thuds, crashes, and tearing sounds as their attacks landed were deafening.
Aoth had found it difficult to keep his feet before. It was impossible now. He bounced around like a pea in a barrel tumbling down a hill.
The noise and punishing bumps made it almost impossible to think. Still, he realized that at the moment, the greatest danger to him was Tchazzar. Already damaged by Eider, Jet, and Aoth’s own efforts, sections of Alasklerbanbastos’s ribs were snapping and crumbling by the moment. If the red dragon smashed completely through, the blow could easily pulverize Aoth as well. And if Tchazzar spat another blast of fire, it would roast him in his cage.
He had to get out. He cast around and saw that one of Tchazzar’s strikes had broken away more bone and slightly widened the breach through which he’d entered. That was one tiny particle of luck, anyway.
He’d need both hands to reach the hole. With a pang of regret, he let go of his spear, gripped sections of rib, and alternately climbed or crawled, depending on the attitude of Alasklerbanbastos’s body at that instant. Lightning crackled from bone to bone, piercing his shoulder in its transit. His teeth gritted and his muscles knotted until the flare ended.
When he reached the hole, he had to judge the speed and direction of the entangled dragons’ movement and pray it didn’t change. Because if he emerged at the wrong moment, their weight would come smashing and grinding down on top of him.
He made his best guess, swarmed out, and jumped. He landed hard. Wings-some bare bone, some sheathed in crimson hide-flailed against the ground, and tails whipped through the air. The storm of motion was all around him, and he was sure something had to hit him. But nothing did, and then the dragons rolled farther away.
He ran to put even more distance between them and him, just like everyone else was doing. Jet plunged down in front of him. “Get on!” the griffon rasped. “I’ll take you to the healers.”
Suddenly feeling weak and dizzy, Aoth clambered into the saddle. The straps buckled themselves. “Not yet. I need to see what happens.”
“You need-”
“I said, I’m going to watch.”
Jet screeched in annoyance, lashed his wings, and carried his master aloft.
As he did, Tchazzar broke Alasklerbanbastos’s various holds on him, got his feet planted, and struck, all in a single blur of motion. The red dragon’s fangs closed on the dracolich’s neck, right beside the head.
Aoth grinned, because it was a shrewd tactic. The grip would keep Alasklerbanbastos from using his own teeth or his breath.
Flames leaping between his fangs, Tchazzar bit down hard. Aoth saw the effort manifest in every bunched muscle down the length of the war hero’s body. Surely in another moment his teeth would clash together, and Alasklerbanbastos’s head would fall away from his body.
But the dracolich roared words of command. Several tendrils of power leaped from the empty air above Tchazzar and stabbed into his body. The magic was shadow dark, not bright, but it crackled, twisted, and smelled like lightning.
Tchazzar leaped out from under the evidently excruciating effect, but he had to let go of Alasklerbanbastos to do it. The dracolich’s skull dangled from his neck like a half-broken twig at the end of a dead branch. But it was still attached-and, with a succession of little jerks, it started to hitch back into its proper position, even as chips of bone floated up from the ground to patch the cracked, gnawed vertebrae behind it.
Then, at last, Jaxanaedegor plunged down on top of his master. Another green wyrm followed, and then a red. Tchazzar lunged to join them.
The four dragons ripped into the dracolich like a pack of starving wolves assulting a deer. Alasklerbanbastos spat all the lightning he had left-then, roaring, struck and clawed with all his might. It wasn’t enough. Gradually his foes bit, smashed, and wrenched him into such a scatter of broken bone that not even magic could go on putting him back together.
Aoth relished every moment of it.
Skuthosiin told himself he wasn’t tiring, nor weakening from blood loss. In his former life he’d been a Chosen of Tiamat, and he was still an ancient wyrm. No horde of scurrying little dragonborn could bring him down.
Although admittedly, it wasn’t just dragonborn. Acting through his champion, Torm himself was striving to kill Skuthosiin. But that didn’t matter either. Because, his paladin gifts notwithstanding, Daardendrien Medrash was as tiny and fragile as the rest of his kind. Skuthosiin only had to score once with his fangs or claws to tear the wretch to pieces.
To that end, he slashed with his forefoot. Medrash jumped back. But perhaps he too was tiring, because he didn’t recoil quite far enough. Skuthosiin didn’t connect with his body, but the tip of one talon snagged the top of the swordsman’s battered heater. As it jerked free, splitting the top half of the shield in the process, it yanked Medrash off balance.
Skuthosiin struck like a serpent.
Scrambling faster than should have been possible for such a squat, short-legged creature, Khouryn Skulldark knocked his comrade aside. Now he was under Skuthosiin’s jaws. Well, that was all right too.
Except that at the last possible instant, the dwarf hopped to the side, and Skuthosiin’s teeth clashed shut on empty air. Then something slammed into the side of his head.
Or at least it felt like a simple impact. But as Skuthosiin reflexively heaved his head high, he realized Skulldark had actually chopped him with his axe. The weapon was still buried deep in his flesh, perhaps even in the bone beneath, and the wound gave a first excruciating throb. Skuthosiin snarled.
Something else snarled back, close to his ear. Or perhaps it was a breathless but savage laugh. Dangling, Skulldark still clung to the haft of the axe. Either he’d been too surprised to let go of his weapon when Skuthosiin lifted his head, or else he’d chosen not to.
Clinging to the axe with one hand, Skulldark drew a dirk with the other and stretched his arm to the limit, trying for Skuthosiin’s eye. Unable to reach it, he plunged the knife through hide and into the flesh beneath.
Enraged, Skuthosiin lifted his claws to swipe both the dwarf and his weapon away. Then white light blazed before him as, seeing his distraction, Medrash charged his sword with divine Power, rushed in, and cut at the base of his neck.
Balasar darted in beside his clan brother and slashed with his own blade. So did Tarhun-Skuthosiin hadn’t even noticed his arrival on the scene-swinging a greatsword bloody from point to guard. Spearmen jabbed, and mages hurled bright, crackling thunderbolts and fire.
Skuthosiin toppled sideways. It was impossible, but it was happening anyway.
He struggled to get back up again, but merely thrashed and writhed. As his vision dimmed and his body went numb, even those useless convulsions subsided.
He hoped that when his head smashed against the ground, it had smashed Skulldark as well. Or that he’d pulped the dwarf during his death throes. But then he saw Skulldark sitting a few yards away, bruised and bloodied but alive. And watching him, no doubt to make sure he was really finished.
After a futile attempt to spit poison in the sellsword’s direction, Skuthosiin decided that he truly was. He watched worthless giants flee into the night, heard dragonborn start cheering, and then knew nothing more.
FOURTEEN
7-14 FLAMERULE THE YEAR OF THE AGELESS ONE (1479 DR)
Kassur Jedea was a skinny, graying fellow in his middle years. But he looked older. Aoth, leaning on his spear-which rather to his amazement he’d recovered intact from the midst of Alasklerbanbastos’s scattered, shattered bones-his burns, scrapes, and bruises aching despite the healers’ prayers, ointments, and elixirs, wondered if the nominal monarch of Threskel had looked so elderly a tenday earlier, or if he’d aged all at once in anticipation of what was about to happen.