The Soldier's Tale (3 page)

Mallister grunted. “Wolves wouldn’t make a
sheep disappear without a trace. They’d leave bones. Wolves don’t
drag sheep off to their lair to eat it.”

There were any number of creatures that
kept lairs and dragged victims off to be devoured. Of course, the
sort of creatures that did that would also break into the fortified
houses to devour the people within them.

“Cattle thieves, then,” I said. “Making off
with the cattle in the dead of night.”

“Sir,” said Romilius, sitting straight in
his saddle. I had taken out my ill temper on a few of the new
recruits who had been lax about tending their horses, but Romilius
had been diligent. “If they are cattle thieves…what will we do with
them?”

“Hang them,” I said. “The Dux doesn’t
tolerate brigands. If they want to steal, they can go steal from
the Mhorites, not from honest men of Andomhaim. If we are dealing
with bandits, they’ve probably built themselves a little nest
somewhere in a ravine or one of the ruined villages. If they’re
stealing cattle, eventually they’ll get bolder and start attacking
villages and freeholds. We’ll find them and teach them the error of
their ways.”

Primus bade the irate freeholder farewell
and rejoined us.

“Did he run out of complaints, sir?” I
said.

“Eventually,” said Primus, “but he did have
some useful information. He’s been talking with his neighbors. All
the disappearances have been around Mhazulask’s Hill.”

I knew the place. It was a hill a few miles
west, named for some old Mhorite warlord who had met his end there
a century past. It was also home to a ring of black standing stones
raised by the dark elves in ancient times, and those were bad
places. Dark magic lingered within those rings of standing stones,
and the Mhorite shamans could use those circles to augment their
spells. The dark power also sometimes drew things like urvaalgs or
ursaars or even worse creatures.

“Bad sign, sir,” I said. “That’s not a good
place. Perhaps we should return to Castra Durius and await a
Swordbearer.”

“We have a Magistrius,” said Primus.

“We do, sir knight,” said Mallister, “but
this Magistrius would also prefer the aid of a Swordbearer.”

Primus considered for a moment. “No. We’ll
press on. We have our orders, and if this was a creature of dark
magic, it wouldn’t stop with stealing cattle. Optio, prepare to
make for Mhazulask’s Hill.”

“Sir,” I said, and I gave commands to the
men. It took a bit to get the recruits into order, but soon we rode
west.

We reached Mhazulask’s Hill by late
afternoon, a grim, barren fist of rock that rose out of the
surrounding pine forests. Atop the hill stood a ring of black
standing stones, and I felt a faint queasy sensation as I looked
them, which wasn’t pleasant combined with my headache.

“We’ll camp at the base of the hill,” said
Primus. “Optio, select four groups of four men each. They are to
scout the area and report back. No man is to go off alone, and if
the scouts encounter any foes, they will return at once. We…”

“What the hell is that?” said one of the
new recruits, his voice rising with fear.

I turned, my first impulse to rebuke the
man for speaking out of turn. Then I saw the terror on his face,
saw his eyes widening as he groped for his sword. I turned again,
looking for what had frightened him so much.

Then a shadow swept over us, and I looked
up.

There was a reason whoever had stolen the
sheep and pigs hadn’t left any tracks. The stolen cattle hadn’t
been carried away.

They had been flown away.

The wyvern fell from the sky like a
green-scaled thunderbolt.

The creature was enormous, its body the
size of an adult ox, the limbs heavy with muscle and equipped with
razor-edged talons. Its wings spread like the sails of a ship, and
fierce yellow eyes glared from a head crowned with a bony crest,
its thick neck long and serpentine. Its greenish-black scales
looked as tough as steel, and the wyvern’s long, thick tail ended
with a barbed stinger glistening with black slime. A wyvern’s
poison was lethal, and could kill a strong man in moments.

“Scatter!” I shouted, but it was too late.
The wyvern swooped over us, and its stinger plunged into one of the
new recruits, punching through his armor to sink into his flesh.
The man screamed, yellow foam bubbling from his mouth, and he fell
from his mount, thrashing and moaning. The wyvern snatched another
man from his saddle, its talons closing around his head and
shoulders. I aimed a hasty sword stroke at the wyvern as it passed,
but my blade rebounded from the thick scales on its hind limbs. The
wyvern soared into the sky, dragging the screaming recruit with it,
and then it twisted its claws. The man’s headless corpse tumbled to
the ground, blood spurting from the ragged stump of his neck.

The wyvern let out a brassy cry of rage and
circled around for another pass. We didn’t dare run. The great
beast had claimed Mhazulask’s Hill as its lair, and it would regard
us as intruders. Wyverns were not magical creatures, and were not
immune to normal steel. Of course, with its thick scales, claws,
fangs, and that venomous tail, it hardly needed to fear normal
steel.

“Bows!” roared Primus, pointing with his
sword. “Bows, quickly, quickly!” The men-at-arms scrambled for the
short bows slung from their saddles, putting arrows to the
strings.

“Aim for the wings!” I said, sheathing my
sword and raising my bow. “The scales are too thick! Aim for the
wings!”

Mallister cast a spell, white light flaring
around his hands, and that light jumped from his fingers to sink
into the men-at-arms. I had seen him use that spell before. It was
a magical ward, armoring us in protective spells. It wouldn’t stop
a wyvern’s talons or fangs, but it would make us harder to
kill.

“Release at my command!” said Primus. He
sheathed his sword and took up a javelin, preparing to throw it as
the Roman legionaries in Vegetius’s book had done.

The wyvern swooped lower, coming down for
another attack. I felt the hateful weight of its serpentine yellow
eyes, and its fanged mouth yawned wide to unleash another brassy
bellow of rage. Thankfully, wyverns could not breathe fire the way
that a drake could, though that barbed stinger was just as lethal
as a fire.

“Hold!” I thundered as some of the new men
shifted away, their eyes wide and their faces wide with terror.
“Hold, damn you!”

“Now!” said Primus, drawing back his arm to
throw the javelin. “Release!”

I raised my bow and released, and a volley
of arrows shot towards the descending wyvern. About half the arrows
missed, but a quarter struck the wyvern’s flanks and neck,
rebounding from the thick scales there. My arrow slammed into the
wyvern’s right wing, punching a hole through the leathery flesh,
and four or five other arrows hit the wings. Primus’s javelin
struck the left wing and caught in it. The beating motion of the
wyvern’s wings pulled the javelin’s weight down, ripping through
the thin flesh, and the wyvern let out a scream of rage.

The impact also caused the wyvern’s left
wing to collapse, and the creature crashed into our midst, laying
about with its claws and talons, its stinger-tipped tail driving
forward like a whip. Three men died in the space of an instant. The
wyvern bit off the head of a recruit, the skull making a horrible
crunching noise in its jaws. It talons shredded through the tabard,
armor, and ribs of another recruit, and the man simply fell apart,
his innards landing in a pool of blood upon the ground. The stinger
punched into the chest of a veteran, and the man collapsed writhing
to the ground, yellow foam bubbling around his mouth and nostrils
as the venom ate its way through his flesh.

It all happened so fast there was no time
to react.

“Go for the head!” I shouted, yanking my
sword from its scabbard. I took a swing at the wyvern’s head,
aiming for its neck. I hit the neck, and my blade bit into the
thinner scales there. The wyvern roared, its bone-crested head
slamming into me. It struck me in the belly like massive club of
barbed bone. The impact didn’t penetrate my armor, but it did knock
me from my feet and send me sprawling, the breath blasted from my
lungs. For an awful moment I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe,
couldn’t even blink.

The wyvern surged toward me, its jaws
yawning wide. It would bite off my head. The creature’s vile
breath, a mixture of rotting meat and an acidic tang, filled my
nostrils.

So that was how I was going to die. Guess
the drink wouldn’t do for me after all.

The wyvern’s mouth shot towards me, and
then its head jerked to the side, the creature screaming with fury.
I glimpsed a blur behind its head, and I saw Romilius straddling
the wyvern’s thick neck. The wyvern jerked its head back, and
Romilius bounced a bit, but he was simply too heavy for the wyvern
to throw him off with a flick of his neck.

He also had an axe in his hands, which he
brought down once, twice, three times. On the third blow I heard
something snap in the wyvern’s head, and the blade sank to the
handle in the creature’s skull. Its entire body heaved, its
serpentine neck snapping back with enough force to send Romilius
sprawling, the axe still buried its head.

Then it slumped motionless to the ground,
its yellow eyes still staring at me, its massive wings twitching a
bit.

For a moment no one spoke.

I got to my feet, picking up my sword.

“Optio,” said Primus, breathing hard. “You
are uninjured?”

“Just a bit bruised, sir,” I said, my
frozen mind starting to work again. “You, you, you.” I pointed at
three of the new recruits. “Get our horses. The damned wyvern
spooked them off.” I pointed at two of the veterans. “You two.
Check the wounded. Magistrius Mallister, if you can do anything for
them…”

But he couldn’t. The wyvern had left
poisoned men, headless men, and the one poor fellow who had been
opened from throat to groin, but it had not left us with any
wounded men.

I put the recruits to work getting the
horses organized and preparing the slain men for transport back to
Castra Durius for burial. They’d had a nasty shock, but work was
the cure for that.

Hell, I’d had a nasty shock. I wanted a
stiff drink, but that wasn’t happening for a while, so I went to
work.

“A bad business, sir,” I said to Primus as
the men went about their tasks.

“It could have been worse,” said Primus,
shaking his head. “A wyvern. God and the saints! If I’d even
suspected, I would have set out with a stronger force. A wyvern
hasn’t been since this far south of the Wilderland since
Ardrhythain founded the Two Orders. Still, it could have been
worse. When I was a young man, I rode with some knights of
Coldinium in a hunt for a wyvern. The beast turned the tables on
us, and slew half our party before Sir Corbanic could land the
killing blow upon the creature. Speaking of that. Romilius!”

The young man hurried over. “Sir
Primus.”

“What on earth possessed you to start
hacking at the damned thing’s head like that?” said Primus.

Romilius hesitated. “It…seemed the thing to
do at the moment, sir. I figured the beast might not be able to
lift its head if I pinned its neck, and it was about to bite off
the Optio’s head, sir.”

“Indeed it was,” I said. “You did
well.”

“Aye,” said Primus. “We’ve lost good men
today, but we would have lost more of them if not for your quick
thinking, Romilius. Well done!”

A cheer rang out, and to my surprise the
men-at-arms had been listening to us. Romilius looked around,
embarrassed. It was the first time the boy had earned the accolades
of his peers, but I suspected it would not be the last.

My head still hurt, and getting knocked
over had not helped. God, but I wanted a drink.

###

We returned to Castra Durius, and the slain
men were interred in the catacombs below the fortress with full
honors, the Dux’s own priests presiding over the burial rites as we
commended the men to the Dominus Christus. The day after that, Dux
Kors held a feast to celebrate the wyvern’s defeat. Sir Primus
Tulvan had been in command, so he received a reward. Romilius, as
the man who had struck down the wyvern, received a purse of gold.
Romilius insisted that the gold go to the widows and families of
the dead men, which so pleased the Dux that he gave the gold to the
widows and the orphans and instead rewarded Romilius with a new set
of armor, a new sword, and his choice of horses from the
stable.

After, I retreated to my favorite watch
tower to drink, and this time both Mallister and Romilius came with
me.

“Have a drink on the Optio, lad,” I said,
passing him a wooden cup. “God knows you earned it. If you had been
a little slower, I would be asking St. Peter for admission to the
kingdom of heaven.”

Romilius gave the cup of whiskey a dubious
glance, shrugged, and lifted it to his lips.

“Don’t drink it all at…” I started.

Romilius swallowed the entire thing in one
gulp. Mallister winced. About a heartbeat later, Romilius’s face
turned bright red and he started coughing, and I gave him a few
slaps on the back.

“Mother of God and all the saints!” he
wheezed at last. “That’s strong.”

“I’m friends with the miller in the town,”
I said. “Man has his own still, lets me buy direct from him.”

“I think the monks could have used this to
strip the paint off their walls,” said Romilius, blinking tears
from his eyes.

“Probably,” I said.

“And you drink this every night?” said
Romilius, astonished.

“No, not every night,” I said. “Never in
the field. Only on nights when I don’t have duty the next day.”

“Is it because…” said Romilius, and then he
shook his head.