Dragon Champion (Age of Fire #0)

“The horses come. Loose, loose!” a dwarf called.

Blowing smoke obscured Auron’s view, and still another explosion made the dwarves duck, upsetting the aim of the crossbowmen. The commodore must have held some of his weapons against this moment, for the towers suddenly doubled their fire. Flame and iron rained onto the line of horsemen.

“Watch the riverside. Some are crossing,” a deep voice from the southern river-tower boomed.

“Every dwarf to the north wall!” Djer shouted. He stood on a barrel to see the attack, still with a pipe in his hand. “Let the towers take care of the river.”

Some of the attackers came off their horses, running forward with ropes and hooks. Others fired curved bows from their wheeling mounts. Arrows struck home among the dwarves; the riders were better marksmen on horseback than the dwarves standing still. Another pig exploded, this time frightening horses as well as dwarves. A few of the latter jumped off the wall and ran for the nearest tower. The towers were sending their missiles toward the river now, holding back the attack by the men who had crossed the river.

A wagon lurched over, spilling a dwarf as it was dragged from the wall. Horses of the Ironriders pulled at the wheels with ropes and hooks, hauling it out of the barricade by main force. More horns sounded from the attackers, and another rain of steel from the commodore’s tower felled horse and man alike among the pullers. The wagon stopped ten paces from the wall, and riders with spears and curved swords spurred their mounts toward the gap.

Djer jumped from his barrel and grabbed two dwarves running for the towers toward the gap. “Fill the breech!” he yelled, waving dwarves over from the other walls. But the archers were riding all around the dwarves’ triangle now; the dwarves at the other walls worked bow, crossbow, and sling to keep them off. Each side traded shots; dwarves to either side of Djer toppled, sprouting feathered shafts. With a cry a body of horsemen—all fur cape, pointed hat, and long, black-feathered spear—charged the gap. Auron caught a wild look of fear in Djer’s eyes as he stood alone at the breech without even a shield, working the lever of a crossbow.

Auron roared. His call rose above the clamor, not the sound of dwarf, man, horse, or even swine. Perhaps a lion could make a sound like that, but it would lack the trumpet quality of Auron’s length of neck. He dragon-dashed straight for the gap and the charging horses, griff extended so his head resembled the point of a battering ram—Djer would not face the raiders alone. Once he was alongside his friend he loosed his foua, spreading a long arc of liquid flame on gap and tipped wagon alike. The superheated wood exploded with a crackling fshoosh.

A horse and rider braved the inferno; Auron turned his head toward them. His fire struck the horse on the forequarters, melting away skin and muscle, and the beast crashed headlong in its death. Its rider, also aflame along his arms and face, flew forward to land in a horrid writhing heap. Other horses shied away from the flames, turning at the last moment to run along the walls, their riders desperately striking at dwarf heads along the barricade.

Auron stood in the breach making a show of lashing his neck and tail with mouth open and battle fans extended, enlarging his head. Another wild rider, cape flying out behind, jumped the flaming wagon-trek-tow with a moon-white horse. He held a kitelike banner in a muscular arm, the sharp end pointed for Auron’s breast. Auron’s neck muscles convulsed, but only sour gas came up his fire channels. Something twanged behind; a crossbow bolt buried itself in the man’s broad chest, and he toppled backwards off his horse. The beast danced around Auron, away from the flames and into the darkness of the dwarf compound.

“Reload this!” Djer barked at a dwarf beside him, handing over the crossbow that had felled the banner man. He ran over to the man and picked up the banner, holding it like a spear, and stood beside Auron.

“The fire was a shock for them. I knew you would not fail me,” Djer said grimly.

Arrows arced overhead. “Build up the bonfire,” Auron said. “Have your dwarves throw barrels, anything on it. The horses don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it much better,” Djer said, coughing in the smoke blowing their way. “But we’ll do it.” He shouted orders, and dwarves ran up to throw anything they could lay their hands on, making a blister of fire around the gap in the wall.

The Ironriders charged again, braving the fire of the towers. The horses turned away at the last moment. Some of the riders, in their battle fury, jumped off their mounts and fought the dwarves on the walls with fist and dagger, but were met by a wave of hard-armed push-pull dwarves, released from the towers to aid the fight on the walls. A third charge broke almost as soon as it started, when the first missiles from the towers rained down on the front ranks.

By the time the sun was two diameters off the horizon, it was over. Across the river, looted barges and warehouses, wagons and stalls burned, putting an inverted mountain of black smoke into the spring sky. Djer retrieved the white horse that had bolted past Auron and rode up and down the walls like a horseman-born, his stumpy legs gripping the beast’s back as the man’s saddle dragged from its belly. He still pointed with his pipe as he shouted.

Auron found himself shaking as the riders retreated. The Ironriders still blew horns and whistles defiantly, covered by archers who let it be known that they were leaving at their own pace, still fighting—a dwarf who stood up to jeer fell with an arrow through his cheek; he lived but never shook his fist at anyone again—as they quit the field.

The commodore received a trophy of battle as he passed among the wounded dwarves. It was a green, kite-shaped standard stretched tight on a narrow crossbar. Stitched in black was a figure of a man with arms held out, pointed up from his shoulders as if he were trying to fly, surrounded by a golden circle encompassed by the limits of his hands and feet. It was no small feat of workmanship, especially in the intricate weaving of the golden threads. They were braided into the circle like a maiden’s locks. Perhaps they were a woman’s hair, at that.

So my old enemy has followed me even here, to the other side of the world. “Which Steppe King bears that banner?” Auron asked.

The commodore raised an eyebrow. “I’ve not seen that one before. The figure isn’t in the style I’ve seen among the Ironriders.”

“I’ve seen it before,” Djer said. “When I worked the Varvar coast as a tradesdwarf. Meant ‘Dwarves aren’t welcome.’ ”

The commodore shrugged, but Auron saw wide eyes narrow behind his face-mask. “Perhaps the Ironriders copied it.”

“Were the others driven off, as well?” Djer asked.

“The barbarians on the other side of the river fared better. They came for pillage, not murder. How they got over the mountains without warning is beyond me. An unexpected feat of generalship for the Ironriders.”

“Whoever he was, his men fought well,” Djer said, stroking the gray-white horse’s mane in thought.

“They lost. History won’t remember them. If he wasn’t killed here, his head is probably already on the steppe. The steppe men don’t care for leaders who take them into defeat.”

Auron thought of the rider’s skilled attack: the exploding swine, the horsemen pulling apart the wall, the archers who felled the long row of dwarves lying in a hallowed wait for the pyre. The terrible, bloody determination of man, he thought. Will it outlast dragons and dwarves?

The dwarves of the Chartered Company were some of the few to leave Wa’ah with most of their purchases intact. The barbarians, who melted away as quickly as they appeared, had pillaged both ends of the Golden Road, leaving many the poorer and unhappy with the suerzain.

The towers rarely stopped on the way back, with spring fodder more readily available for the wraxapods, but they did rest at the Iron Temple.

Auron rode as a passenger on the return trip, looking out of the forward tower’s slow-moving cupola at a countryside of unrelieved horizon. According to the dwarves, they traveled through the steppe at its most beautiful, when a riot of yellow and blue broke out across the sward.

“It seems good earth,” Auron said to the commodore. The treads of the traveling towers churned up rich black soil. “Why are the lands so empty?”

“The Ironriders are nomads. Wherever their horses can run, they claim, and they don’t take to settlers. Some of the patches of trees you see were once planted settlements, but those elms might as well be gravestones. We have some success with them because we travel, as they do.

“The Iron Temple where we will stop marks the grave of the last king to subdue them. Tindairuss was his name, of the land of . . . Oh, the name escapes me. Back then the Ironriders rode under Ju Ain K’on, which means ‘bloody hooves.’ He slaughtered and stole and expanded the lands of the Ironriders to the very falls of the Falnges. Tindariuss and the riverside elves suffered their depredations, and he formed an alliance of those victims of Bloodyhooves. That dragon you mentioned, NooMoahk, figures into the tale somehow, but since I heard it from the lips of an Ironrider, I don’t know that I trust the details. Tindairuss won many victories, and for a while his men settled the steppe, but he grew old and fell ill. Even before he died, his sons fought with his brothers over the kingdom. The queen sided with one son, but he was assassinated. The kingdom was divided into a confederation for a time, but now their lands are a few overgrown walls of stone. The usual story with men. Many joined with the Ironrider clans. I can only imagine what Tindairuss would think of his blood riding with his mortal enemy. The Iron Temple must quake with his anger.”