Page 152 of Dragon Champion (Age of Fire 1)

AuRon heard their petition for war and gave the blighters his aid, fulfilling his feudal promise. He started a great fire in an empty grain pit, and the blighters thrust their oiled blades into the fire until the air was filled with the sharp tang of heated metal. Then the warriors sang songs and took oaths before jumping through the flame. Only a few failed in the feat. AuRon circled above his “fireblades” as Unrush led his soldiers south, bearing before them poles mounted with the sun-whitened skulls of their foes. Red banners sewn from the sashes of the men hung down, with dreadful runes dyed into the blood-colored cloth.

They sang as they marched (to the beat of drums so long they had to be carried by three blighters):

In fighting lust

our blades we trust.

To herd and hut

The way is shut.

While Umazheh stand

with spear in hand

and blood that runs

from Umir’s sons.

Uh-rah! Uh-rah!

Battle will try!

Arrows will fly!

Foekind will die!

Uh-rah! Ur-ri!

The men camped on a hilltop within a circle of cut-down trees, the branches facing the forest trimmed and sharpened into obstacles. AuRon watched them from above, hanging silently in a cloudy evening sky, deep in memories of battles and wars handed down from his fathers or pieced together in NooMoahk’s library. He drifted on the jungle updrafts and counted their numbers before flying back to tell Unrush that the men had two spears, at least, to his one, and war machines besides.

“Then we must have the humans attack us,” Unrush said, after consulting with his chieftains.

AuRon knew how the men would array themselves for battle. “The men will attack with bow and missile-machine. When they’ve done their killing from afar, they’ll come in to take the heads of those who are left.”

“Then we run?” Unrush said over the discontented mutterings of his warriors.

“No. We’ll use the dark to make one Umazheh take the guise of five.”

AuRon had the blighters cut torches and issue them to each warrior. The moved quickly and quietly by night and surrounded the invaders out of the south. Each group lit a sheltered fire once they were in position. AuRon flew circles around the camp, guiding the blighters until he judged them in position, then he drifted above the camp. When the deep dark of predawn cast the night even blacker, and tiny flickers of hidden campfires showed the blighters to have completed their encirclement, he adjudged it time.

A humid dawn shrouded the fireblades’ battle-trial, softening the bird-haunted trees and giving their oiled weapons a deceptively soft glow.

“Umazheh!” AuRon roared from the sky, his call echoing across the jungle.

The blighters thrust their torches into the fires and spread out, waving one in each hand as they moved from tree to tree. Trumpets in the men’s camp sounded the alarm, and the humans ran to their breastworks. The sight of the seemingly endless torches moving between the trees would have unsettled AuRon; what it did to the men far from their homes, he could hardly imagine.

But AuRon did not let them join their comrades standing guard at the edges of the camp. As they streamed from their tents and leantos like a host of scurrying white-headed ants, AuRon dived from the sky with a roar. He plunged down and swooped over the camp, loosing his fire on the war-machines of the men. Rope and wood burst into angry orange flame. The war-machines became horribly animated as the ropework burned away, flinging bits of smoking metal into the sky, or lurching about and collapsing as the great bent timbers came free.

He saw a grand tent, its entrance arched with elephant tusks, on his second pass, and wheeled with wing-tips cutting tent ropes to set it alight—along with the man standing before it shouting to his comrades.

AuRon flapped into the air, ruin in his wake, and noticed an arrow through his arm and a dull ache in his neck. He rolled over in the air and felt a second arrow buried where his neck joined his shoulder. Fighting fury pulsed hot, and he began a stoop to dive and smash and kill—no, he’d just take more arrows that way. He turned and came in low over the burning war-machines, keeping clear of the well-disciplined array of archers ready with another volley. He grabbed a burning war-machine in his saa and, flapping his wings madly, managed to pull it into the air with him. He ignored the painful licks of flame until he hovered high over the archers.

The bowmen dropped their arms and scattered as the burning ballista fell among them.

AuRon arced up and folded his wings, turning in the air as he plunged to earth. Just before impact, he opened his wings and beat them so hard a windstorm beneath him tore tents from their moorings. He grabbed up a man and flung him shrieking toward the burning commander’s campsite.

The turbaned men, helms now fastened above their head-wrappings, gathering in knots of spear-wielding hunters, advancing on AuRon from behind tightly locked shields.

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