Wanda's Dirge Page 3

  Mordred glanced over at the mayor nervously. Then he grinned broadly. As with all things in life, the mayor had greeted death timidly. As silent as a dormouse, the mayor had passed, upright in his chair, eyes glazed, staring meekly off into space. No one had noticed the quiet man. Mordred laughed.

  Chesskiss was a plant, indigenous to southern Amaral and northern Bannathyr. It was a delicately petalled bloom that possessed blossoms of a deep purple. Each flower contained twenty-four fluted petals and a blood-red heart. The stem and leaves were a striking green; the stem was smooth, and the leaves each appeared as though a shapely woman had just bent over at her waist. It was those petals and leaves that he had brewed for his guests, and had laced throughout the beverages tonight. Their toxin blocked the body’s will to breathe, slowing breaths until you fell suddenly into a permanent sleep. It was too slow a poison for combat, bust most surely more reliable than a blade, if one had the time.

  The creamy white roots of Chesskiss was what he had chewed upon, and ate in copious amounts. There was some neutralizing effect between the two components. When combined, the toxin simply left you dulled to pain, and perhaps a little drowsy. But most importantly, Mordred mused, it left you alive.

  Rising from his chair, Mordred strode to the courtyard. The stench of the befouled dragon reached his nostrils. His hands had tied their scarves around their faces while they desperately tried to clean up the offal.

  Mordred strode up to the ramparts of Cairnhold. Gazing over the tundra marsh, he rose his hands to the skies and invoked the ritual that he had painstakingly worked on out of the Malefecorum’s pages. Even though the artifact itself was not here, the knowledge he had gleaned from its dark pages still graced his mind and he had managed to master the early works from within it. For nearly an hour, he braved the biting north winds. Well after his throat had been worn raw, and his hands had lost all feeling, Mordred was rewarded. Rising out of the preserving and icy waters of the bleak battlefield arose his macabre army. A blindly obedient force of fearless and tireless troops. All were combat veterans. All were bound to him. He laughed triumphantly. He would show King Corr not to trifle with him! Clapping his hands together and furiously rubbing his arms, Mordred tried to get the circulation flowing again, as he retreated back inside.

  It was time, after all, to awaken his guests.

  Chapter 2

  “She was just waiting to transform into the Flowwevite sister that we all came to know and love.”

  -Eulogy given by Ser Crallick Oakentree

  Nearly a ten-day after his fateful dinner, Mordred found himself in the capital of Amaral, Wyvernhold. Everything about the capital was mammoth. The broad avenues were over-wide. The curtain walls and gates were monstrosities of engineering that almost begged to be assailed. What Mordred fond to be truly vulgar in its self-indulgent pomposity, was the arrangement of the districts of the city. In total, four curtain walls encircled the city. The outermost wall bordered the outside of a ring of farmland. Each of those walls supposedly represented an aspect of the spirit. This was to have the effect that the renounced ex-slaver-king believed that the people he ruled were the soul of his kingdom. Idiot.

  The castle itself was a six-tiered affair. The gates were sized to allow dragons to walk through, as though they were commoners that had come to petition the king. Any dragon would wish to fly in and out of any place it wished to. Idiot. As mighty as all the stone masonry was, there were too many miles of walls and too few soldiers to defend those walls. Dragons did help with maneuverability. However, when one was considering the siege defense of a city, maneuverability shouldn’t have to be a concern. Again, the good king, Corr, was an idiot.

  Mordred strolled along the flagstone-paved avenues. He had left his carriage outside the outermost walls, for what he was about to do might have endangered his men. His appointment before the king wasn’t until that afternoon. Mordred had thusly decided to enjoy the brilliant sunshine, and walk to his appointment. As he strode through the streets, he felt that the weather matched the façade of Wyvernhold; if not Amaral in its entirety. Even though the weather appeared warm and inviting, there was a bitter chill in the air that the sunshine could not mask. Likewise, for all the appearance of strength and grandeur in Wyvernhold, there was a hollowness and fragility that could not be ignored.

  In the middle class, or maybe mercantile ring of the city, he paused in a square to watch a swarm of children squealing with joy as they romped around a massive wood dragon. Mordred believed the wyrm went by the name of Goo. The dreaded beast seemed to have developed a soft spot for children. Mordred scoffed. It would have served each parent justly if they had gone to the market to find all those children digesting in the gullet of the dragon, who at this moment, was gently swaying his tail to and fro as about ten children hung on to the waving beam. Idiots.

  It was shortly before noon when he walked under the gatehouse of the first castle wall. A firedrake and an older earth dragon shared the guard duty with riders, who seemed as uninterested as their mounts.

  The earth and fire dragons had an interesting contrast to their morphology. There was a lean, serpentine look to the red-coloured firedrake that was bedecked in clearly defined and rough-edged scales. The earth dragon, however, held smoother, and more rounded lines, reminding Mordred of a bear covered in shite.

  Mordred nonchalantly strolled under their watchful eyes. Idiots.

  He walked across the far-too-wide bailey. The yard was ridiculous; you could fit an army in between each of the walls of the castle, with room to maneuver. Mordred understood that the oversized construction was to accommodate Bradwyn’s draconic cavalry. Nonetheless, this was a severe tactical hinderance when one was trying to defend a castle from besiegers. Chuckling to himself, Mordred wryly thought that such distances did have the merit of placing the main keep out of range of surrounding war machines. Mordred had to concede, perhaps, that this one grace made the construction not quite so idiotic.

  Five walls, a drawbridge, and a stairwell up a steep cliffside had Mordred finally entering the courtroom of King Bradwyn Corr. There was a decisive fatigue to his muscles and disposition after the hour-long tedious climb. He collected himself, and approached the herald.

  The herald, clad in the red and gold livery of King Corr, received the scroll of title from Mordred with a polite bow and a smile. Then he turned to face the assembled court. He attended the goings-on with only the pretense of understanding. What he was observing, in truth, was the pace and meter of the conversations. At a juncture in which he felt that there was a suitable enough lull, the herald raised his youthful voice.

  “Oyez! Oyez!” Then he paused, waiting for pale ovals to turn towards him, indicating he had their attention. Once this was achieved, he bellowed in a clear, tonal voice, “By your majesty’s leave, it gives me great pleasure to announce the arrival of Lord Mordred Bligh, Lord of Cairnhold, Master of Scale and the surrounding county, Hero of Eastland Pass. Honoured lord of Amaral.”

  The herald then waited for the king’s caller to respond down the length of the ridiculously massive courtroom. A distant bellow soon echoed the length of the chamber. “Lord Bligh is bid welcome, and approach.” The reptilian lisp belied the speaker as a lizardman of some sort, Mordred guessed.

  Mordred began the long plod down the uncarpeted length of the hall. Most courtrooms held luxuriant carpets to impress their guests; but not here, the draconic attendance forced the King to pave his throne room in flagstone. With every footfall against the hard, unyielding stone, Mordred’s mood darkened. At long last he reached the throne, with the human king resting upon it. Idiot.

  King Bradwyn Corr was a fairly large man. He had yet to succumb to the ravishes of noble life, and maintained most of his lean muscle mass, though there was a little padding beginning to show around his paunch. He was clad in a gold plated mail, with a golden crown that was appointed with ruby stonework. A red tabard covered his torso. There was a greatsword, Wyrmbane, by his side, and he wore a red leather scabbard. King Corr was flanked by his dragon-queen, a fire dragon who had, somewhere along the line, learned the ability to shapeshift into a humanoid form. On King Corr’s other side was a heavily-armoured figure. The gender was unidentifiable due to the ornate plate armor.

  There was a small scattering of petitioners before him. Small indicated the number only, as there was a full-grown, sixty-foot-long death dragon among the petitioners. Idiots. Mordred felt his ire rise as he was forced to wait his turn, behind commoners and an overgrown lizard.

  Half an hour later found Mordred on the edge of his patience, listening to the dragon plead his case to join the Amarallan draconic cavalry. He had apparently tried several times before, and failed to attain entry.

  “Your majesties,” the shadowy dragon was saying. “I am a loyal and vicious fighter. I will slay many living souls in your honour. Let me enlist in your rolls.” There was an urgent, underlying threat in the great beast’s tone that it might have thought was imploring. Idiot.

  The interesting thing about death dragons was their scales, teeth, claws, and eyes. Their general morphology was unimpressive, looking nothing more than a slightly bulkier fire dragon. The colouration was intriguing, though. The scales were a matt black that seemed to drink in the light. Their claws and teeth were equally black, although they had just the slightest polished finish to them. The dragon’s eyes were a dull grey with a black iris, which gave the illusion of an all pupil eyeball, rather than the slitted pupil that was commonplace among dragons. Deep purple gums and tongue lent to the image of a cavernous maw. The scent of carrion that wafted from the beast’s mouth added the finishing touch to the sinister image.

  “I do not need to carry a rider to serve,” the beast was saying.

  This mewling
beast’s plaintiff beseechments were causing Mordred’s temples to drum with frustration.

  “Your last rider perished when you breathed in training,” the serpent queen said softly.

  “It’s not my fault!” protested the temperamental beast. His volume increased slightly in the echoing hall. The life-draining syphon that was the dragon’s breath-weapon had radiated from its mouth. This had caused unforeseen collateral damage to a proposed rider. “I don’t need a rider!” he reiterated boldly.

  King Corr rose a gauntleted hand. This gesture seemed to placate the beast, somewhat. “I understand you wish to serve me. I thank you for that. Truly.” The king smiled broadly. “It is not that I feel you require a rider to control you. Nay, that is the opposite of why we have riders paired with dragons in the cavalry.” He nodded. “You do know why we pair dragons and riders?” He allowed the dragon time to think and respond.

  A despondent sigh reverberated through the great beast. “It is to represent the allegiance between the draconic and the mortals, and to show their equality and friendship.”

  Pleased, King Corr smiled. “Yes, exactly so.” Then, raising his hand to thwart the dragon’s opening mouth, the slaver-king continued, “It is in that spirit that I find myself moved by your earnest desire to serve me. We shall re-enlist you in our army. Until we can find you a safe manner in which to carry a rider, we shall employ you as an advanced scout. That way, the absence of a rider may, in fact, help you with your missions, rather than hinder them.” King Corr intensely gazed at the petitioner. “Does that serve your needs, my loyal friend, Pallbearer?”

  Rearing back on its haunches, the dragon, Pallbearer, roared its joy to the ceiling far above them. Mordred furrowed his brow in contempt. The pathetic, weak king couldn’t even stand firm on his military policy. Idiot.

  “Excellent,” King Corr concluded. “Horathyr, take the sealed orders to the cavalry commander.” He took a quill from a small desk at the side of his throne, deftly penned the appropriate commands, rolled the parchment, and sealed it. He then handed it to the mercurially quick and diminutive air drake.

  “Yes, quick to the commander!” Horath, proclaimed loudly as he clutched up the offered scroll. Then he flew up to the death dragon’s head, “Come along, it’s time to put you to good service!” The two then began their egress from the throne hall.

  As the two lizards withdrew, the heavily armored thing to King Corr’s side announced in a decidedly reptilian timber: “Now to petition your majesty, Lord Mordred Bligh.”

  About time, Mordred thought petulantly. “Your majesty,” Mordred dryly declared, with only the slightest due diligence of a courtly bow to accompany the pleasantry.

  “Ah, my dear Mordred, what news from Scale do you bring?” King Corr grinned quite obliviously as he benevolently welcomed him, as though this were a social call, rather than a formality. Idiot!

  “King Corr,” A small amount of venom laced his voice. “I find myself the bearer of great tidings. I find that your rulership of Amaral is suspect, your legislation cumbersome, and your conviction laughable. On these grounds, as the representative of Scale and the surrounding lands, I hereby declare the secession of that realm, and demand your recognition of our sovereignty.”

  Silence greeted the simmering Mordred.

  King Corr tilted his head slightly to the side. He remained silent.

  “Well?” demanded Mordred.

  King Corr snorted a laugh. “Oh, I’m sorry, I was waiting for the punchline of your funny little story.”

  “I do not jest,” Mordred stated coldly. Idiot.

  “What, in particular, have you found so disconcerting about my husband’s rule?” the serpent-queen asked with a rather unmistakably cold edge to her voice.

  Scornfully, and directed at the queen, Mordred flayed out. “Well, his deviant interracial preferences, for a start.”

  Bradwyn’s hand reflexively moved towards his sword, before he caught himself. There was a waiver to his voice, under the threatening growl. “I strongly suggest you keep this between us, unless you wish this to become uncivilized in a hurry.”

  Mordred sneered. “Or you’ll what? Prove my correctness in your lack of commitment to policy? Might I remind you of your first law? No Amarallan may harm another Amarallan citizen? Shall you have yourself executed for your temper? I think not.”

  The sibilant reptilian voice from the plate armor filled the deepening silence. “He wouldn’t have to. I would happily sacrifice myself for their safety.”

  A devious glint flickered in the former slaver’s eye. “Oh, I think that wouldn’t be necessary,” Bradwyn Corr sneered. “I think he suggested he was seceding I could grant his request and then…”

  “…then I would be a foreign dignitary,” the cocksure Mordred interrupted. “That would be a dangerous precedent to set. What would the other ambassadors think?”

  “Get out of my sight,” growled King Corr.

  “I take it then, that we shall see each other again on the field of battle?” Mordred demurred. “You may wish to reconsider your position for future trade relations. The dwarves of the Dragonspine Mountains acknowledge my rulership. Perhaps you should as well?” Mordred turned his back on the King without so much as a ‘by your leave’ and began to unceremoniously stride away.

  “I do not recognize your sovereignty, you upstart piece of shite!” seethed King Corr.

  Mumbles echoed around the hall as he made his dramatic egress. Mordred deduced it was the courtiers trying to calm their tempestuous king. The lot of them, fawning idiots.

  Chapter 3

  “I recruited her off the streets because I needed a specialist with her particular skill-set. And no, not her former profession’s skill-set.”

  -Eulogy given by Ser Crallick Oakentree

  Marley’s life had simplified since he had received that nasty blow to the head during the pitched battle of Bloodbath Bay. He now wore at his side the cutlass that had once rent through his skull to embed itself into his brain. Aside from getting intensely painful headaches, he enjoyed a simple tranquility. Everything appeared to him as free and easy, and beautiful; never horrific, never scary, never ugly. It was through these child-like eyes that he beheld the craggy coast of the peninsula and the port-capital of Marahaven as it broke the monotony of the oceanic horizon. “Home,” he whispered, almost reverently. Then, remembering his game with the dwarf captain, he cried out jubilantly, “I spy with my wee eye, land ahead!!”

  Crallick was leaning against the rail in the forecastle of The Flamerunner, lost in thought. He was staring absently across the ruby-dipped waves of the sunset-kissed ocean. The dulcet rise and fall of the bow lulled him into a trance-like recollection of the earlier days of his career.

  The rolling fields were covered with scarlet wildflowers. Crimson rain drenched the leaves and left the dark soil sodden. An orcish corpse crashed to the ground, entrails leaving a fetid wash at its side. Crallick’s boot unceremoniously stove in the thing’s tusk. Quickly stooping, Crallick wrenched it free with a wet pop. As he rose, hefting his flamberge back to his shoulder, Crallick rallied his men to his side.

  “To me! To me!”

  Crallick pointed into the burning village, “The beast is there. We’ll set up the ballistae with defilades of fire into the town square.” He glanced meaningfully at his three siege specialists. Twin dwarves and a southern tanned orc all nodded their understanding and then dashed off without the need for another word. They had been fighting together now for three years. They knew what was expected of them and they knew their jobs. Crallick focused his attention on five ‘tani-blooded archers. “Skirmish at range from the houses. Do whatever you have to do to bring this beast down. Just don’t get killed. You’re a lot less useful to me dead.”

  A newer Vitani scout looked at his Mortani mentor with some confusion. “What’s he mean, less useful? Wouldn’t we be useless?”

  The Mortani smiled a venomous grin at the recruit. “No dear, Crallick would still be able to use your corpse as bait for the thing.” She then laughed at the recruit’s obvious discomfort.