The Last Dragoon

The color of the men, the color of the ground, the color of the whole world, was crimson. The carnage was so utter, so complete, that even the sky began to weep bitter, bloody tears. Horses screamed to the heavens as their riders were tossed to the ground and trampled by the press of men who themselves were licked with steel tongues. Soldiers who’d been bolted into armor at dawn relieved themselves on the line, churning their excrement into the muck at their feet.

Men formed walls of sharp points and charged the grisly fortress in the center. It was a hillock of the dead, upon which we few stood behind walls made of our shields, armor, and those that had passed before. Trumpets sounded, and their call was our doom.

The Pashites no longer called for our surrender. There was no need. They knew our answer was edged in steel. We would already be vanquished if the dead of both sides had not provided such a barrier to our enemies, and ended the charges of the heavy cavalry.

Brogan, Altar Master of the Monastery, grunted stoically as the point of a spear pierced his battered breastplate, taking him just below the heart. He, like me, had lost his helm ages ago, and so I saw the resigned look he cast me quite clearly. He nodded, silently passing me all the massed oaths and obligations of our entire order. Then, tenacious as a wyvern, he screamed, “For King Silinus, and the Ivy City!” and, thick beard and warlocks flying, plunged onto the spear from the parapet of corpses, crushing two men, braining another with his axe, and piercing himself front to back. The enemy recoiled from him even as he thrashed and expired. Cowards.

His death bought King Silinus Alisades and I just a handful of seconds to breathe. I glanced around, cursing the hair that had come out of the beaded braids gathered at the back of my head. I felt the crushing weight of inevitability when I looked about and confirmed that I was, indeed, the king’s last Dragoon. My eyes met his and I nodded. It was clear he already knew.

I would have bowed, but I had to turn, leading with a vicious hammer swing that permanently and fatally mated one attacker’s skull with his helmet. I kicked him off the pile and shouted over my shoulder, “We have failed you, my liege, and I shall bear witness to the Dragoons’ final dishonor.”

“You have fought valiantly, Reinhart. There is no dishonor in you or your kind,” Silinus yelled, graciously.

I blinked back tears and grappled with my personal sins. “But you shall die here, Sire!”

He smiled sadly at me. “And thus have my own victory over fear. How could I do less than any one of you? How could I live to be ransomed knowing who would rule my– Beware!”

An enemy knight drove his massive destrier up the pile, and my private pain exploded in an inarticulate roar of rage. Like a fist of iron, the war hammer flew across my body and savaged the side of the warhorse’s head. The beast reared silently, already dead, and rolled backward and down over half-a-dozen men, crushing footmen and riders alike. Another few seconds of peace was my reward as the attackers fell back from the collapse of horse and rider.

Across the forest of spears on a grassy knoll, I saw a group of enormous silk banners, the boy-emperor of Pashus. I embarrassed myself by shouting with the mouth of a sailor, “There is that bastard whoreson!”

The sun slashed through the clouds for an instant, turning the falling rain into golden curtains. The boy was resplendent in ornately enameled armor, his helmet in the shape of a dragon hammered out of gold, and his many banners and honors flying at the end of a small army of page-borne lances. Hangers on and generals sat on magnificent horses on either side.

That was the beardless wretch who had invaded Wisteria. It was for him that all this blood was spilled. It was because of him the Dragoons were all but gone. In the face of the incalculable misery, he reached down and plucked a proffered pear from a pile of fresh fruit offered up by a servant. He carelessly took a bite. The sun hid from this callous display, then he made a gesture.

“SHIELDS!” King Silinus shouted, a refrain picked up and repeated with fear and incredulity. The enemy heard, too, and sought to escape, but tripped over one another as the Pashite arrows darkened the sky into night. Those who had shields raised iron bound wood against the sky, but many pikemen and spearmen had none. The storm pushed the heavy arrows in every direction. Though we stood helpless with arms raised against the bodkin hail, our enemies could not take advantage. They were struck down by the same baleful wind unleashed by an uncaring emperor.

My teeth ached as I clenched them, tears stinging because they were so full of hateful salt from the deepest parts of my soul. I was unaware that aloud I growled, “I would throttle that sprout. I would chain him and parade him up every circle of the Ivy City, milord.”

Like a crack of thunder, the king’s words startled me. “Do it, then.”

I turned, and an arrow skipped along the edge of my shield, but was deflected by my thick thigh armor. Still, I stared at my king, heart beating with the power of a cathedral’s bell gone mad. Silinus smiled ruefully, and repeated, “Do it, Reinhart. Go and capture Emperor Philip the Fifth of the Pashites. Die carrying out my last order and win a place of honor for yourself in the afterlife. This is the only parting gift I can give you now.”

I could only stare.

He shook his head. “A king should never have to repeat an order to a Dragoon, Matthias Reinhart. Go with my blessing, for the glory of war will certainly buy you peace in your last moments.”

I rubbed the wrist of my shield hand. There hidden under steel, stains, and blood, lay a silken kerchief perfumed with a woman’s scent. I felt my sin begin to burn in the fires of my undying oath of love. My heart beat so fast in my ears the percussions stopped being independent things, and instead became one, continuous sound. The rain of iron and shaft dwindled into a drizzle.

“Yes, your Majesty,” I said, the words coming out of me as an oath. That’s when I turned to the edge and leapt.

I massed almost three hundred water-weights of hardened muscle and bone. With shield, armor, hammer, and sword, I was far heavier. I had trained since childhood, holding blade, hammer, axe, and lance. I have ridden hundreds of horses, I have slept, and leapt, and tumbled in more armor than most men have seen in a lifetime. Every day, every single day, had led from birth to this one moment where I unleashed every fiber of my being as a steel-skinned engine of destruction. I roared like an animal as the Pashites scrambled to get footing, the dead and dying writhing underneath them.

I pounced.

The sword is a noble weapon, with a long history. In comparison, the hammer is brutish, ugly, but supremely effective. It crashed into mail, shattering bone. It smashed into plate, deforming and mangling limbs. The wicked raven’s beak on the back punctured thick helmets and hooked shields. The top spike split open metal like the business end of a spear. In my hands, it did all of this, and more. My mind went blank, and my heavy, tired limbs felt far away as the fires of my righteous fury burned like dragon’s blood. I was filled with the power of death, and my touch brought it to all enemies within reach.

A dozen footmen fell, gambesons rent with the power of my blows, when two heavily armored knights came forward. I hooked the shield of the first and pulled him into the second, kicking forward viciously. My hammer slammed into the faceplate of the first as I stood on the back of the second. More soldiers staggered into my hammer, flung backwards as my private island struggled uselessly against the torrent of excrement filled, bloody mud that flooded his helmet and suffocated him. By then I was a dozen steps and half-a-dozen men along, thrashing about like a monster.

A footman grabbed my shield and tried to pry it away from my body, exposing me to a deadly thrust, but a mighty heave pulled him back. I used him to absorb the strike as I killed his kinsman with a blow to the shoulder that turned his bones to shattered glass.

I was coming out of the bloody morass churned into a froth by the feet of thousands of dead men. I was facing fresh troops, and should have died, but no matter how their sergeants and captains called for them to charge, my endless roars, my blood-soaked armor, my flying Dragoon beard, and clattering warlocks struck a deeper fear than any whip could manage.

And though some stood, they died. And though many broke, they died. This was my home, my land, and it filled me with the zeal of the truly mad.

Trumpets blasted brassily against the clouds, and the crowds parted, some dropping spears and fleeing outright. Yet it was the terrible rumble in the ground that alerted me to the coming gallants. Two lines of five armored horsemen rode the largest natural born equine mounts of all creation. They came at a full gallop, determined to stomp out my ember of resistance under the doleful eyes of their emperor.

But I wasn’t done.

Their plan began to crumble the instant they entered the battle lines, the central three of the first line slowing, horses behind crowding those in front, forcing the knights to raise their lances out of the combat. The horses on either flank sought to spread out to catch me fleeing, and ground their own soldiers under their hooves, tripping the horses and breaking the line. They lowered their lances, but only the center could take clear aim, the two on either side could not for fear of clipping the ground and turning them all into a broken, screaming tangled heap of horses and men.

For my part I had only one course, only one path set to me by my king. It lay through them.

I hurled my hammer with all my might, catching the left-of- center knight, tumbling him, the horse behind, and the horse to his right. I stepped into the clear space left by the tumbling mounts and scooped a long spear from the ground. The center knight sought to track in on me with his sharpened point as I swung my spear like a giant quarterstaff. The thick end caught him in the chest, knocking him from his horse. The horse reared, and the knight behind barely had time to stop before I adjusted my grip on the shattered haft and drove the sharp point into first his leg, then his groin, and lastly into his chest. The champions on the far side continued their charge, but became mired in the muck beyond as they tried to turn to run me down. By the time they were even ready to try, I had the reins of my latest victim’s horse in my mailed fist. With one hand I dragged the already dead cavalier from his peaked saddle, and swung my massive weight into his place.

It was only an instant before I dug my heels into the mount’s bloody flanks and we charged for the knoll. The horse was confused, despite training it was afraid, but it knew a skillful rider and it obeyed.

Trumpets screamed again, flags fluttered in the dark rain, lightning cleft the sky, and thunder blotted out all sound right above our heads. Arrows came down on every side, they glanced from my shoulder plate, slapped off of my thighs and sought to slither into my flesh. One cut a burning streak as it entered just behind my neck, glanced off of the inside of my back plate, and drew a bloody line down my back. I swore at the burning distraction and lashed the horse to go faster, right hand snatching my thick, heavy broadsword from its sheath. I held the lion head on the hilt up high, and again I gave birth to an animalistic cry that was completely swallowed by another clap of thunder. Men on all sides acted as if the hellish snap issued from my throat and scattered.

The horse charged onward.

The world slowed, as if caught in amber. Already the emperor’s party was shattering into an ineffectual tangle. Too many servants, too few soldiers, they were tripping over one another. Trumpets bleated mournfully as two generals peeled from the crowd and tried to shoo the servants, pages, and standard bearers clear to allow them room to fight. Pashites were not cowards, nor fools, but at their heart, their leader was their emperor. What he was, they all were. Calm, and even disdainful, at a distance, as I cleared the rain of hastily shot arrows I saw his eyes flare with shamelessly expressed fear.

The boy was merciless. He was calculating, cunning, and cold. But he was no man, no warrior. He had no backbone. I rode at him like a predator pouncing on prey, and his last two shepherds closed in on me from either side. The first brought his lance into play, but I parried the point uselessly to the side. He tried to discard it and draw his own sword when my blade ground up the wooden shaft, bounced off of the flared hand protector, and entered his armpit point first. The palm-width blade severed muscle and pulverized bone, ringing off of the inside of his pauldron. I barely yanked it free when the next warrior met me with sword in hand.

He was older, crafty, gray-haired and closely shorn, as helmetless as I. He met me only a dozen man-lengths from his emperor, and it was clear he was every bit the man his leader was not.

I stood in the stirrups, almost coming out of my saddle as the lion head sword came from behind in a vertical arc. Every ounce of muscle, every bit of speed, every iota of momentum focused on the edge as the nobleman lifted his own blade to parry. He cried out, “For the honor of my–”

And my sword shattered on his midway down, the forward half, freed of the hilt, continued to travel and split the general’s face in two. I rode through the arterial spray at full speed, broken weapon tumbling from my impact-numbed hand.

The emperor was already trying to escape. Two boys, even younger than he, went down under his massive beast’s shod hooves. I mowed down two more, heedless of their lives and deaths as I focused on the last order, the very last order, my king would ever give. Great though the mounts were, they could not clear the field of flesh and long poles, and I leapt from the saddle.

Hands hardened by thousands of days of battle clamped onto the fancy flanges of his armor and we both tumbled to the fresh turf. My thick fingers grasped the leather belts that held his flamboyant dragon helm in place and parted them. The armor went flying, and my dagger was in my hand, point digging into the nose of His Glorious Personage, the Dawn of his People, the Awesome and Reverent Emperor of Pashus.

“YIELD!” I screamed at him, feeling the power of my voice shake the heavens and the earth, rattling the boy’s bones.

“I yield! I yield!” he said, weakly, trying desperately not to look at the glittering edge of the blade.

I yanked the dagger free and turned the emperor to face his troops. “TO THEM! TO THEM!”

My hand on his neck was all that held him up, and he slumped in midair as he screamed like the child he was, tears beginning to stream and snot following closely. “YIELD! YIELD!”

His words carried on the battlefield better than any trumpet. The rain eased and became a thin spray, the lightning and thunder retreated. I shook from head to foot as the enormity of the last ten minutes struck me. My path was a carpet of broken bodies and blood, a river of devastation wrought by my pure rage and an Oath to a most Holy King Silinus Alisades. The savagery, the power, the impossibility of it all glowed as if a divine finger had moved pieces across the board.

The army of Wisteria, whittled down to a mere three hundred men by the massed army of the Emperor of Pashus, stood victorious over a hundred times their number. Slowly walking down the fort of corpses, head held high as the sun peeked out to catch his golden circlet, my king smiled at me. He touched me like a son, words failing him as the light of victory fully blossomed upon the bloody field. Our tiny band cheered, and it was the sound of Wisteria’s salvation.

And, inside, my hidden sin scoured my soul.