The Confliction (Book Three of the Dragoneers Saga) (Dragoneer Saga) (8 page)

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.

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 disappeared 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.