The Confliction (Book Three of the Dragoneers Saga) (Dragoneer Saga) Read online

  I can’t fly, Lemmy said. I need to be let off near where Jenka and I crept up…here. He pointed out the place on the map he’d drawn.

  “If we leave after I eat, I can get you there, and toss this map to Herald before it all begins.”

  “We’ll leave together,” Jenka said from the doorway. His hair was a tangled mess, but he was moving about as if he were well rested and ready for what was to come. “We’ll keep the sky clear and get Zahrellion back this day, with or without the witches and the rangers.” His tone conveyed his conviction well. “We’re going after one of our own.”

  “No sense in me coming all the way down then,” Marcherion called from a place high up on the stair. “Crystal is here. All five dragons are on their pads and waiting.”

  “Let’s go get the white dragon her rider back then.” Aikira dropped a clanking satchel on the floor, then started pulling gear out and strapping it to her lithe body.

  Rikky was ready, so he went to the kitchen and found a pot of stew made from roasted elk, but now he was too excited to eat. While he waited on Jenka and the others, he forced a few bites down and was thankful for the sustenance.

  Jenka followed Rikky and Lemmy, who were both riding Silva. The pewter dragon landed near the temple, and Lemmy slid off, just as the battle broke out elsewhere. Jade landed and Jenka slid to the ground, too.

  “Lemmy, you take care of her as best you can,” Jenka pleaded.

  Lemmy dropped his eyes in a look that Jenka took as ashamed. It stunned him when Lem reached over and put his hand on his shoulder.

  I deceived you most of your life, and I failed to keep your witchy mother alive at the keep, Jenka. Lemmy had tears in his eyes. I won’t fail you again, my good-hearted friend, the half-elvish mute voiced into the ether, before he turned and disappeared into the not so empty orchard.

  “Mount up!” Rikky yelled as Silva darted in a flap-stepping run to meet the band of orcs and trolls that a huge whip-bearing ogre was driving at them.

  Jenka turned and started toward his mount. Jade leaned down in anticipation, and Jenka saw for the first time a ferocious looking dragon instead of an awkward young wyrm before him. Jade was eager for battle.

  This observation was further reinforced when Jenka mounted and was nearly whirled off of his bond-mate backwards. There was no running start, no two hop-stepping lurches this time. Jade took to the sky in one powerful leap.

  Silva sent a blast of molten liquid goo over most of the trolls that were at the fore of the charge. The potent stuff steamed in the crisp early morning air. The ogre’s whip lashed out at Rikky, the tip snapping to a hot, crackling pop just inches away from his face. Silva banked away and Jade was there diving on the collared ogre as the whip recoiled to lash out again.

  Jenka drew his sword and held on to his dragon. He sent a streaking pulse of emerald Dour at the ogre, but because his shoulder smarted, the blast went wide and destroyed an old pine in a shower of needles, snow, and flying splinters. The rush of Dour he was feeling was immense, almost debilitating at first, but he gathered himself for a second pass as Silva dove in again.

  Rikky raised his hand, and a glob of shimmering magic drew in and collected on his fist. Jenka knew that Rikky’s dragon tear was clenched in that hand. He worried that his young friend would drop it as he swept around and stayed out of the range of the ogre’s whip. Rikky threw his arm forward and slung the globular goo at an orc that looked like it might be moving toward where Lemmy had gone. The huge beast was knocked hard to the ground. Raw exposed meat that started pink, but quickly flooded scarlet with dark blood, stained the snow around the floundering creature.

  Jenka was coming at the ogre again. He sent a blast from his blade right at the thing’s chest. The sizzling whip came out of nowhere and caught him across the lower back. Jade took most of the lash and scooted forward in the sky like a dog tucking from a booted foot. Jenka’s pain was incredible, but he gnashed his teeth and turned in his seat to see how bad his dragon was wounded. He was relieved to see that only a few scales had been blackened. There was no open wound.

  When his eyes found the ogre again, he was fortified with some primal victory rush. His emerald Dour had blasted a hole big enough to crawl through in its chest. It lay there, still, in a splatter of gore-stained, steaming scarlet snow. The other orc and several trolls were moving after Rikky. It was clear that Silva was leading them away from Lemmy and the temple.

  Jenka gathered himself and rubbed at his stinging lower back as he scanned the sky. He saw Crystal and Blaze over the temple’s main yard, wreaking havoc with blasts of ice and fire, and he saw colorful displays of druidic power ripping through the air around them. Mindless trolls, some with antlers, were all forming a knot around the heavily outnumbered men on the ground. Then he saw Golden and Aikira destroy a lashing ogre near where the King’s Rangers were trying to storm the low wall around the temple itself.

  For a brief moment, Jenka felt relief and thought they might actually have a chance to sack the undefended place. Then he was reminded that defenses weren’t always made of mortar and stone when an impossibly fast whir of turquoise energy pulsed into Blaze and sent the big red wyrm floundering like a tumbling cat through the air. The world was then filled with a multitude of deep, angry buzzing sounds as a dozen or more Sarax came dropping out of the cloudy sky to join the fray.

  Chapter 10

  Aikira swept around from the ogre she’d just ruined and moved to defend Blaze. The big red dragon was fighting to right himself without throwing March. Of the Dragoneers, Marcherion was the best rider. Having ridden across continents and oceans on the neck of his fiery wyrm, his legs were strong enough to keep him clamped in position. Aikira envied his strength. She didn’t envy Rikky, though. As Silva carried him away from the temple, a Sarax dropped down right on top of them.

  Silva’s powerful wing thrust pushed them just out from under the thing. The silver wyrm even managed to crack the alien in its stumpy head with her tail. Aikira let out her breath, then was forced to turn away as she was engaged by not one, but two of the freakishly agile creatures.

  “Look out!” Jenka yelled as Jade carried him directly across Aikira’s path. Right over her shoulder, then just over her head, hot streaks of emerald Dour magic erupted from Jenka’s sword. The blasts impacted the two Sarax. Both of them went limp in the sky and started to tumble. Jenka didn’t have time to twist around and get the Sarax that was right on Silva’s tail, so Aikira urged Golden after them.

  From the ground, just inside the temple’s head-high wall, a huge blast of prismatic energy erupted. The druids lobbed glassine blue spheres of destructive force. Where the deadly orbs impacted in the orchard, small craters were blown into the ground, and splintered fruit trees exploded into the rangers who were creeping through.

  Nearly a dozen ogres came crashing in from the east and loped like a pack of huge green dogs into a group of trolls gathered round a collared one of their kind. The collared ogre split one of them wide open with a lash of its lightning whip, but the others tore into it savagely. Aikira turned her head before her stomach could empty. There was a Sarax just ahead of her. To her and her dragon’s surprise, it whirled around in a seemingly impossible stall and ripped a trio of gashes across the yellow-scaled wyrm’s snout.

  Golden lost her equilibrium for a moment and did an awkward spiral loop that whipped Aikira’s chin into her chest. At least I got it off Rikky’s tail, she said to no one, just before the Sarax kicked her right off of her dragon’s back.

  When it didn’t see her falling, the Sarax hovered in confusion for a beat.

  Aikira surprised the thing when she pulled herself up from the hold she had on its leg. With all the strength she could muster, she rammed her dagger into the soft spot in its chest. As she hit the trees, she let go, but not before a massive pulse of hot static power exploded through her. She shot through the trees into a snow-laden branch. Then, in a shower of powder and pine needles, she went back-spinning down and dis
appeared into a drift.

  Jenka drove a Sarax carrying an electrified rod right under a stream of Blaze’s molten spew, then slid over the battle, holding on as Jade banked and curved around the colorful magical missiles. There were a few other Sarax carrying the lance-like weapons, too, but they were at the fringes of the battle. Jenka saw several blue-robed druids kneeling in some archer-like pose. They sent forth high arcing globes of explosive power. Jade twisted out of the way of a red-robed druid’s warbling flow, but the thunderclap of its forming nearly ruptured his and his rider’s eardrums.

  Mysterian and a few of her old witches started running toward the breach the rangers had made. Jenka found this odd until he figured out Mysterian’s cunning. When the druids saw the witches converging, they all moved to guard the widening opening that Herald and his men were holding. Other witches had shielding spells cast over those particular rangers. And even more witches were behind them, sending deadly lime-colored streamers of power into the temple yard.

  Mysterian, and the three witches running with her, suddenly shifted form. The old women leaned forward as they loped along and morphed into long, sleek wolves. As soon as the druids were committed to their position at the breach, the dark, slavering wolf pack darted away in a completely different direction. They leapt over the modest wall in another area and disappeared into the hedge maze that surrounded the druids’ exterior altar.

  Jenka lost the witch-wolves after that. He saw that Marcherion was using his bow well, but was running out of arrows. Then the huge wooden doors to the temple came open, and four gargantuan ogres, standing as tall as the Sarax, came storming out. As he urged Jade up to avoid them, one of their crackling whips snapped at Jenka’s cheek. His skin didn’t break, but his eye felt like it had been poked and started to water terribly. He grew angry then, and had Jade come banking around hard. The pulses of Dour from the teardrop in his sword’s hilt didn’t kill the ogres instantly like it did the Sarax, but the one he hit first probably would have wished for instant death rather than be scorched to ash where the power touched it, and nowhere else.

  Jenka pulled clear of it all and came back around, intending to get another of the spell-enhanced monsters. Over the din, he heard Herald call out in pain. Squinting through his blurred vision, he heeled Jade where he wanted him to go. He saw the circle of King’s Rangers forming around their fallen leader. One of the druids’ exploding globes had shattered a tree near the old bastard, and now he was full of wooden shards. He was wallowing in a growing pool of bloody snow and barking out orders to the shocked men. Then the witch that was shielding them was snatched from the ground by a swooping Sarax.

  Jenka looked up to find a score or more of the alien things swarming down over the remaining rangers. One of them jabbed a fleeing ranger with its long shocking weapon. There was brilliant flash of yellow and the man fell limply, losing all form, as if his bones had just been turned to water.

  Jenka went to defend Herald’s fallen body, and saw that Rikky was leading two of the Sarax away from the battle. Then Jenka found himself looking into an open maw of triangular teeth and savage intent. He put his hand on the Sarax’s snout and managed to push himself away from its mouth, but a raking claw caught him across the chest. His shoulder armor saved him from being torn in half, but it didn’t stop him from having his abdomen slashed. Hot blood spilled down his crotch and made Jade’s scales slippery. The wyrm nearly faltered when the same Sarax caught the side of his tail stalk in its maw. It chomped a bite right through skin and scale.

  Jenka couldn’t hear them, but he could see men yelling and witches screaming as the Sarax finally descended into the battle and started feeding.

  Rikky was scared. There were dozens of Sarax in the sky and only Jenka seemed to be able to do anything substantial to them. Rikky cursed fate for not allowing him the time to better learn how to use the power of the tear Silva had cried. He did have his bow, but it would do little good against this enemy. He knew something had to be done, though, so he had Silva make a sharp turn in the sky and started back. They went right past the two Sarax that were chasing them. Rikky and Silva were back over the temple before those two were even fully turned around.

  He couldn’t believe what he saw, and it inspired him. He clenched his dragon tear tightly and started blasting at everything in the sky. Jenka was doing the same thing. Sarax were falling like autumn leaves, but there were so many of them that it mattered little.

  Rikky blasted this way and slung magic that. He and his wyrm twisted, turned, and dodged a hundred razor-sharp claws. He could see that the rangers and witches on the ground were overrun with Sarax, trolls, and whip-lashing ogres. To Rikky, it looked like they were getting routed. Then he saw Jenka slump over limply, a long string of goopy blood dangling from his boot like a kite tail.

  Chapter 11

  Marcherion was in a fix. Blaze was big, and the bitter climate sapped something from him. The five Sarax that were swarming him were able to literally fly circles around him. The fire wyrm’s scorching breath had them wary to attack near his head. This allowed March to loose his arrows unhurried. He was down to three, though, and now two as he just missed the eye of one of the bastards with his shaft. Blaze was trying to outfly them with sheer power, but it wasn’t working. Whenever he pushed his wings down, one of the foul aliens would disturb the flow of his thrust while another darted in underneath, causing Blaze to reflexively tuck to protect his soft underbelly.

  Jade was landing, and Jenka looked to have bled out in his seat. Aikira was buried in a snow drift a half mile away in the woods, probably dead from the violent shock the dying Sarax emitted, if not frozen to death. Rikky looked about to be caught in a swarm of the things, too. March didn’t know what to do. He decided that if Rikky and Jenka could throw magic with the power of their teardrops, then he could, too.

  He reached into his thick fur-collared riding cloak and pulled out the dragon tear medallion he wore. As the first Sarax sank its teeth into Blaze and took a bite, a power that seared Marcherion’s spine erupted up through his chest and out of his eye sockets. Twin rays of cherry energy cut across two of the Sarax. The white gold medallion was glowing, not the dragon tear mounted in it. March let it dangle, somehow knowing he didn’t need it in his hands. Only a small portion of the force flowing through him was from the tear. The white gold, and the symbols etched in the medallion formed of the stuff, held a different sort of power: a power that was raw and unrefined by generations of inherent understanding. He turned his head to seek out another Sarax to attack, but he was suddenly ripped from his seat. Skin-puncturing claws gripped him tight, and he was taken down to rocky ground so hard that he felt his legs snap when he impacted.

  Jade landed easily. Jenka was limp and slipping from his seat, and he knew it, but it was all right because he was only inches from the deep, drifting snow the green dragon was wallowing in. When he slid off, Jenka was shocked back into full consciousness by ice falling into his collar. His lower gut was open, but his gizzards had only ballooned out a bit because the slice was vertical, from just above his button to the bottom of his cage. He unshouldered his sword belt while lying mostly submerged in powdery fluff. He held the hilt and used the power of his blade to try and knit the wound closed, but he couldn’t do it.

  Rikky was the healer.

  Not for the first time, Jenka’s ears were ruined. They throbbed with the thundering beat of his pulse. He hated that he couldn’t hear anything other than that infernal, buzzing drone. He wanted to reassure Jade. He wanted to hear Jade’s reassurance, too.

  He pulled the sheath from its belt and held it in his teeth as he cinched the buckle tight around his middle. Once he’d recovered from the pain, he stood with his sword drawn and found a small band of trolls, some with antlers, some not, trudging toward Jade through the snow.

  Jenka took out an ivory-antlered creature with a blast of emerald Dou from his sword, but then he was in close combat, swinging. He diverted a surely lethal claw, and the
n he hacked deeply into a troll. All the while he feared spilling his insides. Jade’s roar sounded like it was coming from a hundred leagues away, but Jenka still heard it. He ran another troll through, but was knocked aside when Jade thrust his head at one of the vermin. Jenka didn’t see it coming at him from the side, but his dragon saved him.

  A filthy clawed foot raked across Jenka’s middle, causing him to cry out. He whirled with his sword and sliced one of the already wounded trolls open, but another of them rained a trio of powerful hammer-fist blows into his face. Jade latched onto the troll with his teeth and slung it away.

  Jenka looked up with just enough time to see a knot of hungry Sarax converge on Rikky and Silva in the sky. That view was eclipsed by an open maw full of bloody razor teeth. As those jaws snapped shut in a steamy whirl of alchemical breath, something yanked hard on Jenka’s leg and dragged him down into the snow. The loose powdery fluff caved in over him as he went. Jenka couldn’t believe the Sarax missed him. With his arms outstretched and dragging behind him, all he could see when he opened his eyes was pure white snow.

  Rikky felt Silva lurch from the pain of the first bite and he cried out in anguish over it. He’d had his leg eaten by trolls, and he was trapped in a cloud of worse things now. He didn’t want to die, nor did he want his dragon maimed, but there was nothing either of them could do. There were dozens of Sarax. One of them got a hold of Silva’s neck. Rikky threw a blast of Dour magic at it. It let go, but there was a semicircle of dashed gashes left. They instantly started spilling blood.

  A claw raked Ricky’s back. As he leaned forward and hugged his dragon tightly, he felt Silva shudder again. Then they were falling, not flying. The next think Ricky knew, something spewed freezing cold liquid all over him. His dragon was suddenly writhing in the sky like a hurled snake. Rikky found himself plummeting from a great height toward the mass of massacred rangers below.