Authors: R.A. Salvatore
The fierce Chezhou-Lei came on again, slashing his sword across, and Pagonel flipped a somersault right over the blade, then skittered out to the side before the warrior could reverse with a deadly backhand.
Or at least, he started to.
Wan Atenn’s sword came flashing back, and Pagonel dropped suddenly, right below it, then came up fast, launching a series of punches at his adversary, and taking
a left hook on the shoulder and a kick to the knee in response from the skilled Chezhou-Lei.
The two fell back defensively, then came on again, like powerful mountain rams crashing together, head to head. They exchanged hits and kicks, and Wan Atenn drew first real blood, scoring a minor hit across Pagonel’s upper arm with his fine sword, but taking a punch to the face in return that nearly dropped him to the stone.
“You fight well,” Pagonel congratulated.
“Spare me your worthless insults, dog!” the Chezhou-Lei cried, and in he crashed again.
After another vicious flurry, the two fell back, and Pagonel looked on curiously as a wry grin spread over Wan Atenn’s dark face. The Chezhou-Lei started forward, but stopped suddenly.
Pagonel sensed the movement behind him, and knowing his terrain perfectly, he instinctively leaped up, tucking his legs under him, spinning as he went.
The slash from the second Chezhou-Lei, standing beside the boulder behind Pagonel, missed cleanly, but the mystic knew that it hardly mattered, that the distraction was a fatal turn against the imposing Wan Atenn.
Indeed, as Pagonel came down, Wan Atenn leaped ahead, his sword held in two hands over his head, aimed for a strike that could not miss, that could not be blocked by the mystic, and that could not fail.
The Chezhou-Lei roared in victory, coming in strong.
And then he got hit, and hit hard, across that face, the blow staggering him to the side, dropping him headlong off the boulder. He thought it was a punch, and only realized as he fell away that he had been shot with an arrow.
“S
cold me not about honor!” Brynn Dharielle cried, drawing out her sword and leaping atop the boulder beside Pagonel.
“Scold you?” the mystic yelled right back, leaping down onto the newest opponent, driving the Chezhou-Lei back with a series of snap kicks and short punches. “I was going to thank you! I will scold you for coming down here after all is through!”
The Chezhou-Lei warrior turned and ran off, and Pagonel went in fast pursuit, back toward the main fighting.
Brynn started to follow, but heard the movement behind her and realized that Wan Atenn, the man who had killed Ashwarawu, was not yet dead.
So she waited, her back to him, baiting him up onto the rock.
Then, as he leaped up at her, she spun about, Flamedancer slashing hard against his thrusting sword, turning it harmlessly aside. Brynn had to shake away her distraction, though, for her arrow remained in place, stuck through Wan Atenn’s cheek, half-buried into his face!
“Do you remember me as well?” Brynn asked, falling into her proper
bi’nelle dasada
stance, her lead, right foot perpendicular to the anchoring left, her right
arm extended, slightly bent at the elbow, and her left arm bent out and up behind her. Perfectly balanced.
“Should I?” the Chezhou-Lei replied, his voice slurred and barely decipherable, for he could hardly move his torn jaw. “You are no Jhesta Tu, but merely a cowardly dog who shoots from afar!”
“And stabs from in close!” Brynn corrected, coming forward with a suddenness that surely surprised the warrior. He spun his sword in to intercept, but was too late, and fell back a step at the end of Brynn’s vicious blade.
Wan Atenn tried to keep the growl of pain from his throat. He wanted to hurl another insult the diminutive woman’s way, but he didn’t dare to speak, didn’t dare show her how profoundly her stinging thrust had stolen away his breath.
He found his balance, though, and his breath, and came on with sudden ferocity, his sword working marvelous circles side to side, up over his head, even around his back, working from hand to hand, stabbing out and retracting suddenly, only to flash back in at a different angle.
But Brynn, with her forward-and-back balance of the elven sword dance, stayed out of reach, and realized almost immediately that her style was superior, that the Chezhou-Lei, for all his skill, was moving in ways that
bi’nelle dasada
could surely defeat. He was better than Dee’Dahk, but he fought in the exact same style. And that style, with weapons spinning up high and to the side, had little defense against the snap thrusts of
bi’nelle dasada
.
The ranger held her countering thrusts, wanting to find the best opportunity to score a single, fatal hit.
“You would be less impressive without an arrow sticking through your jaw,” she did say, if only to spur the already wild warrior on even more viciously.
Let him make one mistake …
T
he scene before him was surely one of misery, of men and women writhing in agony or clashing together like rabid animals, but Pagonel was neither surprised nor deterred.
He kept up the chase of the Chezhou-Lei, and when that man crossed past a comrade, who turned to engage the charging mystic, Pagonel simply leaped over the two of them, spinning as he descended to catch his primary opponent in a headlock, landing and snapping his arms down hard.
The crunch of bone in the man’s neck did bring a grimace to Pagonel’s face, but hardly distracted him. He stepped back suddenly, ahead of the other’s thrusting blade, and that second Chezhou-Lei, knowing he was overmatched against this supreme Jhesta Tu master, backed steadily.
Pagonel did not follow. He turned and sprinted to the side, to join Master Cheyes, to anchor the Jhesta Tu line. A score of mystics were down, some obviously dead, but more than fifty were still fighting, against only around half that number of Chezhou-Lei.
The battle seemed in hand, and the Jhesta Tu masters nodded to each other
grimly, with satisfaction.
But then the teeyodel horns began to blow, and the charge of soldiers, hundreds of soldiers, began—the Jacintha garrison moving hard to encircle the mystics, and to cut off the escape route to the stairs.
Pagonel and Cheyes saw it immediately, and called for a retreat to those stairs, with each going to a nearby wounded companion, scooping him up, and starting the retreat.
But Pagonel looked all about and knew the truth: they wouldn’t make it.
T
o an onlooker, their movements would seem nothing more than a furious blur of wild energy, with the Chezhou-Lei’s sword spinning like the fans of a favored Behrenese toy, rocking back and forth in front of him, warding away the sudden, and ultimately efficient, thrusts from the elven-trained warrior.
Brynn kept every strike measured, confident that she could defeat the man, that he, with his heavier blade and more exaggerated movements, would have to tire before she did. As soon as that magnificent curving blade of his slowed, she would find her opening, thrusting her fine and slender sword through to a seam in his armor, and into his chest.
But not yet, not until she had him worn down enough that she could be certain he would not, in the last moments of his life when her sword was inside of him, score a wicked hit against her. She thrust in measured strikes and skittered back, always turning, turning, to keep enough of the large and flat boulder behind her for her next retreat.
She scored a stinging hit on Wan Atenn’s forearm, then another into the opposite shoulder, but those strikes only seemed to spur the man on even more ferociously.
Yes, it was moving along exactly as Brynn desired.
And Wan Atenn recognized that, as well, and then he surprised the young warrior woman, for as she retracted her blade after one teasing thrust, beginning yet another short retreat, the Chezhou-Lei performed a brilliant spinning charge, his feet stepping and turning in perfect balance, his sword going around in a complete circuit along with his torso.
Brynn saw an open stab at the man’s back, and knew she could inflict a serious, perhaps even fatal, wound. But she knew, too, that Wan Atenn accepted that inevitability, and that she was out of room to retreat, so suddenly. As hard as she might stick him, that terrible Chezhou-Lei blade, worn from years of battle—and that wearing only making the remaining wrapped metal even sharper—would come around, and hard!
So Brynn stayed her hand, refusing the opening, and brought her blade in front of her vertically instead.
Around and ahead came the warrior, his rushing, horizontal sword meeting Brynn’s weapon at midblade, forcing Brynn’s sword backward, forcing Brynn to bend backward. With the new angle, Wan Atenn’s blade slid up above Brynn’s
head, locking both swords.
But Wan Atenn, heavier than Brynn by a hundred pounds, was more than willing to force the contest into a close-in battle of strength. He bulled ahead, holding back her sword with his own, his left hand coming up to launch a devastating punch.
But then Brynn’s blade erupted into blazing fire, and the Chezhou-Lei warrior halted, even fell back a bit as he threw the punch.
And Brynn came forward and down, lifting her left hand up and around to grab the hilt beside her right, and to get her pulsing powrie shield up to block the punch.
The woman went forward more, pressing hard against the unyielding Chezhou-Lei blade, and then she dipped, just a bit, and her blade tip slipped free, and all the momentum from the hold shot it forward and down, creasing the helm of Wan Atenn, splitting the man’s skull and driving down deeper. She even felt it crack through the shaft of the arrow that was still stuck in the stubborn warrior’s face.
Brynn let the sword’s fires flicker out, and saw the Chezhou-Lei’s hateful eyes staring back at her, from either side of her blade.
The light disappeared from those dark orbs.
Before she could even consider how she might extract her blade from the split skull, Brynn heard movement behind her, and knew she was helpless.
T
he remaining Chezhou-Lei were more than happy to pull back from the slaughter, stumbling and scrambling to the waiting ranks of the circling Jacintha soldiers.
Pagonel and Master Cheyes worked furiously to organize their remaining fighters in defensive positions about the wounded. There was no way they could hope to get to the stairs, no way they could hope to get out of the tightening ring of spears and swords.
“And so the Chezhou-Lei refuse to do battle fairly,” Master Cheyes remarked with obvious disgust. “And so I am not surprised! But history is written by the victors,” he lamented, “and so our fall will be spoken of as a grand Chezhou-Lei victory!”
“Brynn will bear witness,” Pagonel said grimly. “She must.”
B
rynn yanked and spun, bringing her sword to bear, but it drooped as her jaw inevitably dropped.
“Juraviel,” she gasped. “Cazzira.”
And then she nearly fell over altogether as another familiar face, this one of a terrible foe, rose up between the pair. She knew that face, unmistakably, though when last she had looked upon the mighty dragon, that head had been ten times as large.
“Come, and be quick!” Juraviel cried out to her. “The Behrenese soldiers have your companions trapped!” He motioned for Brynn to move between him and Cazzira, while the dragon turned about.
“Right onto his shoulders,” the Doc’alfar instructed, and Brynn, after a single incredulous look, lifted one leg and then the other over Agradeleous’ strong shoulders, and with pushing from both elves, fell into a seated position atop the humanoid creature.
Almost immediately, Agradeleous began to change, began to grow, and though the dragon fell to all fours, Brynn did not slip lower toward the ground. Cazzira leaped atop the growing beast behind her.
In moments, Brynn Dharielle found herself astride a full-sized dragon, straddling its neck!
“How are we …” Brynn stammered. “What …”
“There is a time for chatter, and this is not it!” Juraviel explained from the ground, and he held Brynn’s bow aloft, then leaped up, his small wings bringing him to Cazzira’s side behind the still-stunned ranger. “Many soldiers have come against your friends, and without help they are surely doomed!”
“D
ie bravely and try to find a Chezhou-Lei to take with you to the afterlife!” Pagonel told his warriors as the ring of enemies, hundreds of skilled soldiers, closed in.
The Jacintha soldiers lifted their spears and swords and cried out to charge, but even as that communal howl began, it was drowned out by a single voice, as mighty a roar as the world of Corona had ever heard.
Agradeleous the dragon swooped past, a line of his fiery breath immolating the Behrenese line that was blocking the mystics from the stairs to their mountain home.
Brynn sat astride the neck, her own fiery sword held high, while Juraviel fired off his own bow behind her, taking down yet another surprised and horrified Jacintha soldier.
Any in the Behrenese line whose legs did not freeze in sheer terror beneath them, broke ranks and fled. Pagonel and Master Cheyes, not taking the moment to question the unexpected turn, gathered their warriors and collected up their wounded and rushed for the stairs. Pagonel and Master Cheyes fell behind the retreat, ready to do battle with any soldiers or Chezhou-Lei coming in pursuit.
But none were. The Behrenese fled before the wrath of the dragon, before the fiery glory that was mighty Agradeleous.
The dragon banked a steep turn and came in hard again, a second fiery blast melting down more soldiers. He caught yet another man in one powerful claw, lifting him from the ground and crushing the life from him, and swept aside several more with his crushing tail.
And so began the day of horrors for the fleeing Behrenese, pursued from on high by the mighty beast and his three riders.
Some soldiers got out of the area, but Agradeleous came in pursuit, and when the startled villagers that had been rounded up by the fierce Chezhou-Lei spotted the confusion and the dragon, they too cried out in terror and began to flee.