He had won! He was commander now. His heart still thudded with the quick pulse of battle, of exhilaration and pride. His wounds burned. His shoulders ached. He was stumbling from exhaustion, but he didn’t care. His ears rang from the shouts and toasts to his new title: Commander Laronnar.
He spread his arms wide to embrace the coming night, the coming battle. Now all he had to do was find the green-eyed wizardess who had helped him win the duel. He could make good use of such power.
In the darkness of the sky above him, a dragon circled, once, twice, then swooped low and landed with hardly a sound. Not his fierce blue dragon with its black button eyes. The commander’s dragon, Char.
A savage, treacherous creature, all grace and power, malevolence and majesty, Char had been ordered to partner with Dralan by the Dark Queen herself. The huge creature lifted its feet gracefully, stepped across the muddy street.
Laronnar watched the dragon warily.
Had she come to congratulate him? Or kill him? Suddenly gone was the pulsing exhilaration of battle, the joy. His breath caught in his throat.
Across her shoulders and chest, Char wore an elegantly tooled leather riding harness and a saddle decorated with braid and gleaming jewels. A band crisscrossed the broad, scaly expanse of her chest. In the center of it, embossed in metallic threads in five colors, was the symbol of the Dark Queen, a five-headed dragon.
“It was a fair fight,” he croaked. He swallowed visibly, but no moisture came to ease the dryness in his mouth and throat. He went to one knee before the huge creature. “Ask any of them! Don’t kill me!”
“Death.” Char rumbled deep in her broad chest, her voice both bantering and sarcastic. “Is this what you expect in return, Laronnar? I said I would help the one who would help me.”
Laronnar lifted his gaze. He stared into sly, shining eyes, as emerald as the spring grass of the plains. He smelled spice and smoke. He forgot his fear of being crisped where he stood.
“You-!” He gasped.
“My lord?” She took one huge step forward and lowered her left leg, extending it for him to climb up.
“It was you!” he exclaimed, then realized he was staring at her with his mouth foolishly agape. He took a steadying breath. “It was you who helped me! You who-”
She inclined her head. Yes.
“Why?”
“Perhaps I was tired of Dralan. Perhaps I thought him too … honorable,” she said softly.
The sweet malice in her tone sent a shiver, half fear, half pleasure, down Laronnar’s spine.
“Perhaps I judged you more worthy.” The huge dragon turned her head side to side, regarding him as one would examine some species of bug under a light.
Laronnar stretched to the limit of his height and bowed, never taking his eyes from the dragon. “Thank-”
Char’s snort halted the formality. “The man who fights on my back must be merciless. Without scruple. Without honor. So fiendish even his own mother would hesitate to turn her back on him.”
She leaned down, craning her thick neck until her glowing green eyes were level with his. “Be warned. I have ambition to be more than the leader of a small company in my mistress’s army. You will go the way of Dralan if you fail me.”
Laronnar settled his helmet down over his head, snapped the faceplate into place.
He stepped up onto Char’s thick foreleg and vaulted into the saddle on her back. “We have a battle to win!”
With a thrust of her powerful legs, Char leapt into the sky and spread her enormous wings to catch the crisp salt air.
Proper Tribute
Janet Pack
“Weak-minded human.” Bronze dragon Tariskatt’s scathing baritone boomed in Lyndruss’s ears the moment the muscled warrior slogged onto the muddy field where Sky Squadron mounts awaited their riders. The scaled beast scented the air, making clear he found a distasteful odor in the rain. “Drunk again.”
The war against Takhisis and her minions for domination of Ansalon was approaching its zenith. All fighters of all stations had answered the desperate call to arms. All races fought, if not side by side, then army beside army. It was a time when even a hand scythe was welcomed as a weapon. A good dragon and rider team was invaluable, especially if the pair had as much battle experience as did Tariskatt and Lyndruss. Unfortunately, their hatred for each other reached as deep as the roots of the Kharolis Mountains did into the heart of Krynn.