Milton Puddleswirth, an apprentice magician who, until tonight, believed he had a long if somewhat frugal future ahead of him as a crafter of small spells and clever devices, carefully placed another fire pot in the bucket of the catapult. He touched his torch to the wick, causing it to sputter and smoke before glowing ominously red.
"Set!" he yelled over the din of shouting men and twanging bows.
The soot-speckled soldier on the other side of the heavy machine pulled the rope to release the catch. The catapult's arm snapped forward with a resounding thud, sending the projectile arcing into the night.
Milton had designed the fire pots himself. They were more chemical than magical—basically just grooved clay pots filled with a mixture of soft tallow, alcohol, and a dash of volatile powders—but they worked. He knew he wouldn't want to be hit by one.
The young magic user didn't bother to look to see where it landed. Since they couldn't reliably aim, there was little point. Besides, peeking over the wall would be dangerous, not that crouching behind it was free of peril. The attackers were disturbingly adept at climbing the walls, using their tough short claws to secure a grip on the stones. Startled defenders would sometimes find greenish heads emerging between the merlons close enough to smell their fetid breath. Most were beaten back with sword, halberd, or fist, plunging them to their deaths, but more still came.
Milton, with help from the other man working the catapult, cranked down the long arm to prepare for another shot while he tried to ignore the worrying sound of a battering ram beating on the gates below. A clash of metal and a scream somewhere off to his left suggested that one or more of the attackers had managed to get over the wall.
Rising between lulls in the sounds of battle came a rumble like thunder, but it was different, less abrupt, and no lightning pierced the sky. What could it be now?
He chanced a quick peek over the wall. Smoke rose from the fires set by friend and foe alike. The flames held no allegiances. Right now, they remained outside the walls, so they hampered the attackers more than the defenders. Smoke and darkness impeded his view, but a quick glimpse revealed nothing that might explain the odd sound.
He shrugged, took the last fire pot from the basket near his feet, and placed it in the catapult's bucket.
"Set!" he cried after lighting it, and another shot was fired.
A hunched figure in a hooded brown apprentice's robe, carrying a bushel basket in both arms, waddled toward him along the wall walk.
"Gorbo!" Milton said. "You're just in time."
The robed figure set the basket down slowly. The flickering illumination from the torch Milton used to light the pots revealed a pinkish snout below beady black eyes shadowed by the cowl. It was a face only a very nearsighted mother could love—from a distance. Milton had had Gorbo since he was a pup and appreciated his companionship. He was like a big kid, really, a very big, very ugly kid, but he tried to be helpful, and he seemed to enjoy the simple jobs Milton gave him.
"No more after this," Gorbo told him. "All gone."
Milton did not know what he would do once the fire pots ran out, but he could worry about that later—if there was a later. He was holding a sleep spell for emergencies, but based on recent experience, he was not sure how well it would work. He desperately hoped he would not be in a situation where he needed it.
"How's Mari?" he asked.
"Okay. She's hiding in the basement, like you said."
"Good. You'd better join her. Keep that cowl up. We don't want any misunderstandings, do we?"
"No, boss. Don't want my head bashed by a soldier either."
He turned to leave, but stopped abruptly and pointed to a spot above the burning buildings outside the walls. "What's that?"
Milton followed the direction of the pointing finger and saw a distant light in the sky slowly growing larger. It certainly wasn't lightning. Dragons? It could be dragons. He sincerely hoped not. Dragons were never good news. Even the relatively benign ones could be insufferable and demanding. A gold one had graced them with its unwelcome presence about a decade ago, when Milton was still a young boy, and it had appropriated an entire wing of the palace. It had asked first, of course, but who in his right mind is going to refuse the polite request of fifty-foot-long magical beast with potentially lethal breath? It stayed for two months, dispensing sage wisdom and impractical advice, which mostly involved telling people what they were doing wrong. It left after consuming most of the gems and pearls in the city, leaving the city dwellers poorer but no wiser—and with a great deal of toxic dragon poop to dispose of.
"Probably more bad news," Milton said. It had been a no good news kind of a day, and he saw no reason for it to change now. "Get back to the workshop and keep your head down. Tell Mari…, well, just tell her to keep her head down too."
"Okay."
"And bar the door after yourself."
"Okay."
"And don't open it for anyone you don't know."
"How can I know I don't know them unless I open door?"
Gorbo could accomplish many tasks without complaint and seemed eager to please, but he was sometimes an infuriatingly slow learner. Milton decided it would take too long to explain, so he changed his instructions.
"Don't open the door unless Mari tells you to."
"Okay."
Gorbo sidled back toward the stairs, and Milton glanced again at the mysterious light in the sky. Further contemplation of what it might be would have to wait. He could do nothing about it regardless of what it was, and he had far more immediate problems.
He loaded another fire pot, and the catapult fired again.
After a few more shots, a different sound, more of a roar than a rumble, prompted him to risk another peek over the battlements. Now, that's strange, he thought. His capacity for fear hadn't quite peaked yet, but it would take something more personally intimidating than this to make it rise much higher.
A circle of seemingly magical light swept across the overrun town below. It briefly illuminated attackers holding torches and various types of weapons swarming between the buildings. The Laughing Goblin, a pub he and Mari had lunched at only three days before, was ablaze. He hoped the pub owner had made it inside the walls before the attack. He liked the fat old man, and he made a great shepherd's pie.
Milton gasped as the fast-moving source of the strange light and sound pierced the dark cloud of heavy smoke rising into the night sky from the burning buildings. Orange and red firelight reflected off the thing's huge white belly as it banked on stubby, triangular wings. His jaw dropped. If it was a dragon, it was not one of those that appeared in Master Ferman's Manual of Mystical Monsters. For one thing, it was bigger—much bigger.
Its passage overhead had a disruptive effect on those below. The fighting did not stop, but several attackers turned away from the walls, and many of the defenders stood and stared at this new and unknown apparition. Milton watched bemused as the flying whatever-it-was circled the walled city like a vulture over a corpse. He did not like what this implied.
A scratching sound drew his attention just in time to dodge the claws reaching toward him. His grasp on the torch tightened with near panic as he thrust it at the helmeted head rising over the parapet. A sizzling of coarse hair and a squeal followed as the invading creature lost its grip on the stone.
Standing here armed with a torch waiting for more of them to crawl up seemed like an incredibly unwise idea. Even if he had a more purpose-built weapon, and knew how to use it, hand-to-hand fighting was not what he was cut out for. He wasn't a warrior. He was a magician—well, he would be, probably, some day, maybe. Whatever his future held, he must first make it through tonight.
He crouched next to the basket with the remaining fire pots. The catapult wouldn't help against those already at the walls, and the man who had been working it with him seemed to have found somewhere else he needed to be anyway. Milton considered running, but that wouldn't help if the invaders got inside, so he grabbed one of the pots, lit the wick, an
d lobbed it over the wall. A surprised scream and scrabbling of claws suggested this was a good move, so he did it again, and then several more times.
A sudden shout arose from the southern wall. He tossed the last of the flaming pots over the side, hoping that whatever excited the men on the south wall represented a positive turn of events. When he looked in that direction, he saw what prompted their reaction, but whether it was good or bad, he still didn't know.
The underside of the huge flying beast was now glowing white, brighter than the noontime sun, brilliantly illuminating a wide area around the wall. It must be magic, extremely powerful magic. The radiant light should prove especially disturbing to the attackers, being creatures more comfortable with darkness and shadows. This classified it as a welcome development from Milton's point of view, at least for the moment.
Some quick-witted officer shouted to the archers to fire another volley. Now that they could clearly see their targets, this made good sense. Bows twanged in response. Not knowing if the huge flying thing represented a new threat or salvation, the archers wisely targeted all their arrows at the forces below. Apparently none wanted to risk antagonizing the newcomer. Milton agreed with their act of discretion. He earnestly hoped no one on their side did anything to annoy it.
What kind of magic is this? Milton had never seen such a powerful light spell. This was truly one amazing and fearsome creature. He didn't think it was a dragon, and it certainly wasn't a bird. But it must be some kind of predator, and it was undoubtedly magical. Despite his dread that it might soon consume them all, he could not help feeling impressed.
The creature continued to circle, slower now, as Milton watched in stunned fascination. With a roar like an enraged red dragon, flames suddenly erupted from its belly. Milton's breath stopped and his knees turned to jelly at the sight of such awesome power. He wasn't the only one. Another look over the wall proved that the attackers had seen enough. They were in full flight. Milton understood their reaction, but he had nowhere to run.
The mysterious visitor shuddered and then swiveled until it hung almost motionless in the air just outside the main city gate. With what sounded like the last explosive effort of a thousand constipated ogres, it settled on the pavement of the wide courtyard in front of the gate, which was often used for assemblies and as an open-air market. Bright light still beamed all around it, but otherwise it seemed to be resting. Around it lay the bodies of many of those who had been attacking the city, bits of their armor, weapons, scaling ladders, and an abandoned battering ram, all casting long, eerie shadows in the unnatural illumination.
Milton anxiously waited for it to do something—spit fire, smash the gates, speak…. But it didn't. After successfully routing the attackers, it seemed content to rest quietly, completely ignoring the walls of the city and the people trembling behind them. On the list of its possible actions, this one was right near the top of Milton's favorites.
Now that the strange flying behemoth was motionless, and the possibility of immediate death no longer distracted him, Milton could make out details. The thing outside stretched easily twice as long as an adult dragon from nose to tail, but its body was far more bulky. Stiff wings sprouted from its sides with a total span of only about two-thirds that of its length. Letters and symbols marked a skin of dirty white, but he saw nothing that looked like eyes or a mouth, although it did have rounded bumps in a few places. Milton had no idea what those might be. The end pointing nearest the gate could be its nose, which gave him the feeling that it was waiting to see what the people inside would do.
Curiosity overruled caution, and he leaned over the wall to get a better look. Upon closer examination, he thought it looked more like a device than it did a creature, but who could build such a thing? And why?
He didn't know, and of all the other people he knew well who also probably didn't know, he knew of only one who might have a remote idea.
He raced along the wall walk, easily avoiding the men crowding along the battlements to stare at the thing below. When he got to the stairs, he noticed an officer in a sooty red jacket and tattered gold braid.
"Have you seen Ferman?" Milton asked him.
"The mage?" The officer scratched his short beard. "I think I saw him down by the east gate."
"Thanks."
Milton ran down the stone steps, almost tripping over a carelessly discarded spear. Breaking his neck now would be ironic, not to mention painful, so he continued his rush with more caution.
The stairs ended at the perimeter road that ran along the inner edge of the walls. It was only a short jog from here to the main gate.
He turned to his left and headed down the narrow road, hopping over rubbish and dodging around the people rushing back and forth in his path. The road suddenly widened, but his progress toward his destination slowed. A thick crowd of soldiers clustered around the gate casting nervous glances at one another.
"Excuse me. Excuse me," Milton repeated as he pushed his way through the armed men as politely as he could.
When he got to the closed gates, he found the man he was looking for lowering his magical staff. The old man's pointy hat and black robe, embroidered with silver moons and stars, marked him as one of the city's senior mages. He was also Milton's tutor.
"Master Ferman!" Milton called.
The magician turned and regarded his apprentice with some bemusement. "Ah, Milton. Good timing, my boy. Very good timing."
"What? Well, yes. Thank you. What is that thing out there, Master?"
Ferman stroked his long gray beard with an air of deep contemplation. "Ah, well, that, my boy, that thing out there is a…. It's nothing for you to worry about, and now is not the time for lengthy explanations, in any case. I need to make a report to the king and discuss this situation with the other senior mages. That thing is out there, and we're in here. That's the important point at the moment. I need you to stay here and use your budding magical prowess to help make sure it stays that way, if you see what I mean.
"But what can I—?"
"No time to discuss it. Don't worry. It will all be fine. I just cast a Hold Portal spell on this gate."
"And that will keep it out?"
"Hah! That it will. Nothing is getting through that gate for at least another fifteen minutes. Just do your best until I get back."
"How long will you be gone?"
"Oh, probably not more than half an hour or so. So, you see, not a problem, right?" He patted Milton on the shoulder. "There, that's a good lad."
Milton watched the retreating form of his mentor as he strode away, waving his staff from side to side to encourage the soldiers to make a path for him.
‘Magical prowess?' What could he do if the thing outside decided it wanted to be inside? All he had ready was a sleep spell, which, if it worked, might be powerful enough to send a pixie with the flu down for a short nap.
He turned to the reassuringly thick, ironbound doors and put one eye to a tiny peephole. Since the gate was thick and the hole tiny, he could not see much other than a metallic foreleg and the bottom of the curved nose of the object facing him.
"What's it doing, now?" one of the soldiers nearby asked nervously.
"Nothing, as far as I can tell," Milton whispered. "It's just standing there."
"Maybe it's sleeping."
"You think we should attack it now, while it is?" said a younger man next him.
Milton peeked through the spy hole again. Standing there on its oddly spaced legs, the thing was easily over half as high as the city walls.
"No. I don't think that's a good idea," Milton said, turning around. He recalled the light and the flame he saw coming from the strange thing not long ago. "Actually, I think it's a very bad one. It might be guarding the gate for us," he said, not believing it for a minute. "But maybe it just wants to rest. I think we should let it and just wait for Master Ferman to return."
~Chapter 5~