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Two soldiers had brought large drums to the center of the wide clear space, according to the sorceresses’ commands. The women knelt, each facing a drum. With open palms and half-petrified hands, they began pounding a loud beat that resonated across the hushed army. The drumming was only part of the summons, though. They released their gift, and Utros could feel it tingling through his own body. Because of the scar and skin he had sacrificed to the spell, he and all dragons were joined by an invisible bond. Ava and Ruva sent the thrumming call through that bond, like a plucked string on a musical instrument.
Utros felt a lurch inside himself, like a trout struggling against a fishline, and then a surge of exhilaration. He knew the dragon was there, knew it was coming. He could feel the sheer power, the ancient reptilian strength, a creature whose very existence was tied to the bones of the world.
Ava and Ruva continued pounding the drums. The magic sparked like lightning through the air, cowing his thousands of soldiers. He no longer thought of the fires that had scorched the grass hills, or the separate armies he had dispatched on their own missions of conquest. All that mattered was this moment, this place, and the dragon that answered his summons.
With a thrill of never-forgotten fear, Utros recalled the wild silver dragon that he had captured long ago. That debacle should have made him terrified of dragons, but the general did not accept terror. He did know respect, however. With the bond through his skin, through the scar, Utros would command such a beast.
He heard a mutter of anticipation. He could feel the approaching dragon before any of his sentries caught sight of it. Ava and Ruva hammered the drums, sending loud reverberant thumps into the air and across the valley, like the frantic heartbeat of a doomed man.
The women stopped abruptly, sitting back on their heels and looking at the sky. Utros spotted a winged shape flying impossibly high, no more than a gray fleck against the blue. He felt it tugging against the bond, and then he saw the huge wings, the long sinuous neck, the lashing barbed tail.
Hushed gasps and outcries of amazement rippled across his countless soldiers. Once he sent the dragon against Ildakar, Utros wanted his entire army to attack as well, but even with his regimented tactical mind, Utros couldn’t worry about details of the military operation. Not now. His awe was too great.
The dragon swooped in, indomitable and unbelievable. It was far more ancient and much larger than the wild silver dragon he remembered from long ago. This one was a gray dragon that radiated unbelievable age, immeasurable wisdom, and the bile of anger that twisted back through the magical bond, lashing at the general’s heart.
With a bellows whoosh of hot air and a pounding of great weight, the dragon landed heavily before General Utros. Ava and Ruva stepped back from their drums as the general faced the creature. “You are mine,” he said.
The dragon’s head was as large as a horse cart, its jaws so wide and powerful they could snap a bull in two and swallow it in a single gulp. The yellow eyes burned with an inner fire, and smoke curled from its nostrils. Remembering the burn of the acid flames the silver dragon had spat at him, Utros knew this massive creature could incinerate him with a single breath.
The dragon’s deep voice rumbled like a storm. “Why did you summon me from Kuloth Vale?” The black forked tongue lashed out like a weapon.
“I am your master,” Utros said. “I command you to fight for me and my army.”
The gray dragon curled its wide serpentine neck. “I am Brom, and I have no master.”
In response, the general tugged on the magical bond, watched the dragon twitch in surprise. Ava and Ruva worked a spell, muttered incomprehensible words, and jabbed in perfectly synchronized motions. Brom flinched as if they had pierced him with hot slivers of metal.
“I am not yours to command!” Brom retorted. “I guard the bones of my ancestors.” Smoke boiled out of his mouth and flickers of flame curled in the back of his throat as he spoke. “To my knowledge, I am the last of my kind.”
Utros pressed his hand against the golden half mask. “You have a new loyalty now, a new mission. I call upon our bond. Fight for me. Attack and destroy Ildakar.”
Brom thrust his great wings into the air, flapping twice with a burst of wind that forced Utros to anchor himself to keep from being blown flat. “I will not.”
Utros stood firm. “You must! I command your service.”
Ava and Ruva worked their magic, unleashing what they had planned so carefully. Utros had not expected the gray dragon to resist so fiercely, but the twin sorceresses were surprisingly strong. They struck hard with the magic that connected them.
Brom roared, thrashed his head from side to side, and belched a long ribbon of flame into the air. Ava and Ruva wore malicious, defiant expressions as they jabbed magic daggers of pain into Brom’s brain.
“You will obey me!” Utros said again. “I command you to attack Ildakar.”
The sorceresses continued to inflict agony, and the huge gray dragon shuddered as if struck repeatedly by lightning. Though Brom struggled and his yellow eyes flared with hatred and resistance, he finally lowered his immense head toward the ground in submission before the general.
Utros smiled with half a face.
CHAPTER 63
The avalanche that had thundered beneath Kol Adair had erased the ancient roads, so the expedition from Cliffwall took several days to pick their way around the debris and search through the rubble. Scouts climbed up mountainous slopes, worked their way through the tumbled ice chunks and boulders. They had to find a route suitable for the horses, and the path was so narrow the mounts had to go single file, plodding over the rocks.
They also searched for survivors from the annihilated army, to interrogate if nothing else.
In the avalanche path, they climbed over mounds of ice and rubble, discovering countless broken bodies. The deadly snow had buried the army, crushed their bodies, smashed and suffocated them. At the edge of the ice field, Zimmer’s scouts dug out one of the bodies that had been partially exposed in the shifting snow. “Look, General!”
The ancient soldier had been crushed
in the falling glacier. His neck was broken and his face was slack, his eyes open. Verna stared curiously at the dead warrior. “He looks so pale.” She had seen corpses many times before, and they always had a grayish pallor, but this one’s skin seemed unnaturally white.
Bending down, Renn poked at the dead soldier’s cheek. “It’s hard and stiff.”
“Probably frozen,” Oliver suggested.
“I don’t think so. It is skin, but tougher, as if partly stone.”
Zimmer looked down. “They still bleed, and they still die, but they might be more difficult to kill. But we have fought difficult enemies before.”
Renn brushed more snow away to expose the dead man’s chest armor. He sat back, disturbed. “That flame symbol. This man definitely belonged to the army of Iron Fang, just as the scouts thought.”
“Emperor Kurgan,” Verna said. “I have read the histories.”
“The histories don’t tell the entire story, because the great General Utros brought an army of hundreds of thousands of soldiers to lay siege to Ildakar.” Renn poked the leather armor. “As I’ve told you, our great wizards turned them all to stone with a petrification spell, but something must have awakened them.” He ran his fingers along his patchy beard. He had not shaved since they departed from Cliffwall, claiming that the whiskers would keep his face warmer. “Maybe only this part of the army came back to life and marched away from Ildakar to seek some other home in the mountains.”
“And we killed them all,” Amber said, sounding shaken. “We don’t even know if they were an enemy.”
“They were,” General Zimmer said, looking down at the fallen soldier. “Ten thousand soldiers could not have been on a peaceful mission.” He shook his head again, looking at the jumbled field in the aftermath of the avalanche.
Working her way up among the blocks of ice, wading through the loose snow, Verna came upon another half-buried figure, and she was startled when he stirred, groaned. “This one is alive! Dear spirits.”
