Selik, of course, would not be returning to Balaia. Those who murdered Dordovan mages in cold blood suffered a similar fate themselves.
But slowly, it had all begun to unravel. The fool Gorstan had failed to take ship at Arlen. The battle had gone the wrong way. Worse, The Raven had stolen the vessel. And they hadn’t settled merely to the chase; unbelievably they had managed to steal Erienne from beneath Selik’s idiot nose.
Even that, though, shouldn’t have been too bad because in the sky now was a new beacon that only the blind could miss. Navigating the legendary treacherous shallows would be difficult but then that was what the long boats and masted skiffs were for.
Yet now The Raven had called on their pets and his fleet had been badly hit. However, the dragons were not as invincible as Vuldaroq had believed. They had no fire, that much was plain. And their bodies had proved vulnerable to spells. They just needed to be correctly focused.
Vuldaroq stood waiting with thirty mages. Their preparations had been fortunately unbroken, the ship unmolested as yet but heading away from the desired direction. But there would come a time and Vuldaroq had bade those ships closest to be ready as he was.
And the chance would come very soon.
The Dordovan Tower Lord watched the three dragons tearing the heart from the Chaser, saw the masts fall, the wheel deck disappear in a hail of splinters and the ship savaged in the water as the third beast tore at its rudder.
It was an unequal struggle with each of the dragons being as big as the ship. They were a staggering size and bulk, toying with it like a plaything. And when they had wrecked it, they’d turn to another. Vuldaroq would not let that happen.
He pointed to the thrashing waters at the stern of the Chaser.
‘There. The most injured one,’ he said to the ranks of mages behind him. ‘On my command.’
The dragon bit and tore, the hull sluicing back and forth. With a wrench, the rudder came clear and the boiling waters calmed. The dragon had dived.
‘Wait,’ said Vuldaroq. He scanned the sea in front of them, the heavy waters, white-capped and angry still as the storm pounded away. Yet there they were. Ripples at odds with the seas, moving away from the crippled Chaser. ‘Wait.’
The dragon broke the surface forty yards distant, scales glinting wet, wings powering its body out of the water, its belly exposed for a few precious moments.
‘Aim high. High. Now!’
He jerked down an arm though they wouldn’t have been watching. The IceWind, the single product of all thirty mages, howled away.
The dragon climbed fast but not fast enough, the spell catching it on the lower belly and along the length of its tail. An unearthly screaming wail tore from its mouth, a sound that rose above the roar of the wind and the crashing of the waves.
Vuldaroq watched it still climb but its tail could no longer balance it and the IceWind gouged into its flesh. Slower and slower, the wings beat. It angled its head down on its slayers, long neck curling down, tipping its body over. Its eyes glinted, another bellow, answered by the others, escaped its mouth and it fell from the sky.
He’d been disoriented under water and had surfaced too near the enemy, and now Hyn-Kaan couldn’t drag in his breath. Where the spell had struck, his whole lower body was numb, alien to him; his scales were cracked with cold and his flesh burned like it was on fire.
He called to the Kaan and entreated the Skies to keep him though he could never now return to Beshara. It was to be a lonely death, far from the Brood ancients, far from peace. His great body shuddered, his mouth gaped and his wings swept at the air but drove him no further. Hyn-Kaan’s energy was spent, his mind registered the slowing beating of his heart and the deep cold spreading up to his chest.
He sucked another breath into his tortured lungs. In his final moment of clarity, he knew there was one more thing he could do.
The cheer from the deck was cut short.
‘Oh dear Gods,’ muttered Vuldaroq. He rounded on the mages. ‘ForceCones now. Linked spread. I want that reptile bounced. Do it!’
Feverish muttering rose from the deck, the mages kneeling for stability as they prepared. The dragon barrelled on in, neck outstretched but wobbling, wings beginning to ripple but determinedly spread, its angle steep but true. It would hit the ship. They only had a few heartbeats.
He felt a movement in the mana. ForceCones flashed out, invisible barriers anchored by the casting mages, a desperate attempt to deflect the beast as it hurtled right at them.
Hyn-Kaan struck the wall of ForceCones, his massive bulk slapping them away, catapulting mages from the deck or crushing their bodies into the rails.
‘Run!’
Anyone that could already was, fore or aft, scattering from the point of impact. Men jumped into the sea and the helm spun the wheel, the ship lumbering into a turn.
Too late.
The dying dragon smashed head first into the vessel, catching it square, just below the level of the main deck. The impact was enormous, echoing out over the ocean. The huge body slammed in amidships, breaking its neck and driving its shoulders straight through the hull. The ship shuddered, whipping sideways and down, pitching some men into the turbulent sea and knocking every other over.
Wood and timbers exploded up and out, the main mast was chopped at its root to slap on to the ruins of the deck and bounce into the water. The dragon’s wings tore rents in the weakened hull, buckling back as they went, the frozen tail shattering as it struck.
Its back broken, the ship collapsed in on itself, Hyn-Kaan’s body coming to rest amidships, dead weight dragging the vessel down.
Above the noise of splitting timbers and rushing water swallowing the ship, the screams of the injured and trapped, doomed and pleading for help, was a wailing cacophony, smothered by the ocean that sucked them all down.
Slipping away on the ShadowWings he had prepared as he ran, Vuldaroq flew close to the waves to a sister ship, shaking and terrified, fearing what might fall next from the storm-filled sky.
Sha-Kaan’s bellow of rage and grief tore the silence that followed. He and Nos-Kaan sliced through the heavy skies, entering the water where Hyn-Kaan and the ship had gone, wings tucked in, bodies like great bolts, seeking their lost brother.
And he was dead when they found him, tangled in rope and wreckage, his carcass slipping gently deeper. His head, with eyes glazed, pointed skywards as he went, his slack, broken neck graceful with the support of the sea which bore him down so carefully.
Sha-Kaan turned, pulsed Nos to follow him and drove back up to the surface, breaking into the air, his wings thrashing, his mind ablaze, his brother lost after so much hardship on Balaia, his life taken by man. There would have to be revenge.
But as he soared up to just beneath the clouds, neck coiling round, his head searching for the next enemy, one man saved him from himself and his anger.
No, Sha-Kaan, said a voice in his mind. They’ll kill you.
And he looked down again, saw the massed mages on the decks of the surviving ships and knew that Hirad Coldheart was right.
The Calaian Sun ploughed on, riding through the wreckage that was strewn across the sea. Sail cloth, baggage, broken timbers, ropes and lines. Bodies. Dozens of bodies. All rippling on the swell, the rain still pounding down.
The Kaan had scattered the Dordovan fleet. Only three ships still sailed and they were all angling away from the battle, north and west. Two mortally damaged vessels subsided into the ocean, their surviving crew frantically lowering any boats they had left and leaping into the sea. A third was also in serious trouble, its sails and mast fragments dragging in the water, its deck tilted at a crazy angle while waves crashed across it, battering the helpless crew.