The Shining Wyrm

10.7

Jewel weathered the arrows, she spat wyrmflame recklessly and widely. She tried to rally the soldiers around her.

And for the most part she simply occupied the efforts of the opposing Weird of Fortification and kept the soldiers too frightened to close with her.

Her jaws snapped in the air before them. Her tail cracked over their heads.

She could hear dying.

Screams of men and horses piling on top of one another in her ears from all directions and distances.

She could smell their sweat, blood and organs spilling

The places where armies were meeting stank of pierced guts and many of the bodies laying on the ground yet breathed and still cried.

Jewel tried to think about the wheat harvest. Tried to remember how scared she had been and how inconsequential and normal it became.

If she could learn to weather the screams of the fields she could overcome this.

She needed too, Father needed her too.

Just a bit longer here in the melee and then they would give the signal and she could launch herself into the air.

Join the wheeling shapes in the sky.

Get above the stink and the screams of the ground.

Kraok was making a solid showing on her left.

Bromthil pairing well with him on her right.

Amidst, behind and ahead of her the levy and other footmen moved.

Stepping in to stab with a spear, or planting their feet and taking shots with arrows.

Jewel’s presence and size drove back retaliation. Her wings and coils offered shelter and protection.

And Tsulogothulan’s workings held firm for the men of Viznove and their horses. Falling away into sucking mud and bog for all others. And shooting up from the waters around them were more dangers than simply ill footing or suffocating mud. There were lashing reeds that shredded open the first few layers of cloth armor and cut jagged gashes into unprotected skin. Strange squirming shapes that struck unarmored legs or shins and set those unfortunate enough to dare to intrude too deeply into the Bog Weird’s domain with shakes and wailing pain.

Jewel’s presence and her childish blasts of white flame intermixed with the bog that surrounded her was keeping the men of Rochford safe.

Their only injury so far was one of the younger boys who was caught before Jewel could intercede a wing or flank to block the stray arrow that struck his thigh.

Tsulogothulan had slapped something sticky, black and according to the Weird purifying onto the wound. It stunk of sulfur but stopped the bleeding of the wound even after the arrow was torn free and even let him stand in spite of what should have been agonizing pain.

His elders still had him move back into the middle of the formation near Jewel, where the uncertainty of his stance would be less of a liability.

He smelled a bit off now as far as Jewel was concerned, but she had too many other things to worry about.

She had to hold on and wait for her signal.

Just had to-

Zephyrvam’s cry from on high and behind her filled Jewel with relief so strong her scales trembled in waves down from her head to her tail and made her mane stand on end all along her spine.

Finally!

She took in a heavy breath and let her wyrmfire course properly through her coils and wings.

One flap was already driving her upwards.

Two more and she ascended three times her length in altitude.

In a dozen she is already rising up over the battlefield, drawing ineffectual if stinging pricks of arrows on her scales.

As she rose Jewel could see the lay of the forces of Viznove, Zhekhedge and Thurzó. Or at least she assumed that was them. But there was so much confusion. If not for the banners she had come to know along the march it would be impossible to discern anything in the writhing tangle of fury. Bouts curdling up and down the valley.

The works of sorcery just further complicated it all. What she had once thought of as soft whispers spoken in silence beneath things had been raised up into a torrent of near shouting on all sides.

They clashed and overwhelmed the now distant screaming and whimpering of the men and beast injured or harried on the battlefield.

Without that distraction it made the desperate, violent, angry pleas spinning up and down the line even sharper and clearer to her.

Jewel rose and as she did two Gryphons moved to rake her with claws and beak. She spun before even fully recognizing that it was an enemy act. Muscle and flame twisting as Father had trained her too.

Her reflex letting off the gentle flashing burst of light on each and sending unaccustomed Gryphons screaming and wheeling up and away into the sky erratically.

That was a mistake.

She was not supposed to hold back like that now.

This was a real battle!

Father on Zephyrvam finally swept past her with a flight cant of greeting. Praise despite her letting instinct rule her and fail to follow through with her flame.

Her Father was too kind.

Looking over all the writhing lines and formations all the order of the march and the offering of battle was lost.

The only sense left was where sorcery met sorcery and no man dared to cross. But everywhere else Knights made charges, archers attempted to form ranks on whoever had the wrong colors. Footmen and Levy bundled and bunched together then dived into each other and lost all coherence.

In places Jewel (and she suspected the men below) did not even know if they were fighting friend or foe.

It was chaos and even up here she could still hear as a murmur the suffering and anguish, all mingled together. Man and beast alike dying, fearing, bleeding.

It was like the butchery of a wheat harvest all over again.

She had to be strong.

Jewel could feel Euewyn’s familiar voice on the wind around her and Father. She could see the other Gryphon Lords and Riders spinning and struggling now. How they were outnumbered by the forces of Thurzó.

There were four trying to harry and bloody Cloudspear and count Fiebron just now!

Jewel looked around, she could not tell where she should go, what she should do.

The noise, the blood, the chaos of everything under and around her.

There was none of the clarity or assurance the histories had made about battle.

Even in the air she was unsure of where or how she should proceed.

Gryphons wheeling up into the sky drew her eye.

Unfamiliar and making for a dive.

Two more were sweeping high and towards her after it.

The crumpled form of one of the Riders that she had traded riddles with had just crashed into the ground so hard that feather, bone, blood and earth fountained and then barreled over horse and men alike with the pinwheeling corpse.

Jewel tried to focus, to still herself, to listen as her Father had taught her, to push harder. She could see Father flying in position above her, taking height for his own strike, positioning where at least one side of her attackers would prefer to ride.

She tried to push the sounds and scents of death away. Like she had when she was young.

It was much harder to ignore the suffering of men than that of wheat and grass and other crops.

But she had too.

The first of the enemy fliers was diving towards her.

The second and third close behind.

Father and Zephyrvam were not diving to intercept them with an arrow or claw.

That was her task.

Jewel mustered her flame, she focused to try and keep it mastered. To watch and see them as they speared towards her. One from the front, the other two coming at her from the left and right.

Denied a full rear flank by Zephyrvam’s threatening presence.

Euewyn’s autumn winds were around her but not buffeting or interfering.

Jewel reached out and felt the currents in the wake of the diving Gryphons.

She willed her own flame in answer to them up her throat. Shaped it as she had not when she had rebuked the last strike.

Held the presence of it in her mouth with more to spare bundling and coiling up behind in her throat.

The Gryphons closed and though the speed of the dives from all three devoured leagues in a moment it all felt so slow.

Jewel thought of how she had missed her chance at this when the Terror Boar closed.

How it had cost the simple footman Gimletson his life.

How a knight she had not even known the name of but traded wit and jokes with just a few days ago was thrown broken and certainly dead in the roiling chaos below her.

How it was the acts of those closing with her.

How they harassed Fiebron even now across the sky from her.

Jewel waited until it was too late for them to turn from their course.

And then she breathed without restraint.

Pushing Wyrmflame from her mouth and throat in a sharp spear. Lancing out and across the sky hard and fast before barely any of it could catch and burn in the air.

Three Gryphons move to pass and rake claws and beak over her coils one right after another.

Set to close and cross paths in her body.

Her neck twisted from left to right.

The air bursts open with the stink of petrichor and thunder.

The still smoldering wings and one head of the Gryphons fall past her.

Eyes widening in shock, beak opening in silence.

Tumbling in the air.

Of their bodies and riders only ash swirling past her wings remains.

Jewel stared.

She looked around.

Her coils were tense, ready for another returning pass.

But...

There is none.

She had struck and now her opponents were no more.

Just gone.

Faster and more utterly than even wood.

Not even time for them to make their dismay known

Even wheat under sickle had more chances to cry then three Gryphon Knights had.

That was-

Jewel had read of many battles but none had been like this.

She felt like she was being smothered in the quiet of the sky and the cries from below. In the stink of her own thunderous scent and the blood and sweat of man and horse rising on the summer winds.

Zephyrvam had to call to draw her gaze as she just hung in the air flapping her wings like an absolute fool leaving herself open for another strike.

But none of the enemy fliers were moving to close with her. Steering clear of Jewel and her Father.

She watched them circling, recognized their flight cant as they flailed in confusion and panic of just what they had witnessed her do.

Signaling Danger.

Sky Death.

Lightning.

Unseen/Uncertain.

Her Father’s steed had to call again to get her to turn to him once more.

What was wrong with her?! She was in a battle!

Why was she so addled?!

Focusing hard, pushing the sound and smell of everything away Jewel looked at her Father and held her gaze there.

Saw at last the flight cant he was making. Read his gesture and the subtle extensions of them in Zephyrvam’s wings.

The point of a hand/finger. The emphasis of a tilted wing.

The facing of a beak.

Jewel replied with her own arms and wings in affirmation and then spun high to gain altitude.

She had practiced this before.

She knew what she had to do and he had told her where to do it.

Jewel was a dutiful daughter.

She would perform as her Father ordered.

It was easy.

She had done it many times before.

Wyrmdoom.

Across many fields much like this one.

So why was it so hard to focus this time?