The Soldier's Tale Read Online Free Page A

it would make us harder to
kill.
    “Release at my command!” said Primus. He
sheathed his sword and took up a javelin, preparing to throw it as
the Roman legionaries in Vegetius’s book had done.
    The wyvern swooped lower, coming down for
another attack. I felt the hateful weight of its serpentine yellow
eyes, and its fanged mouth yawned wide to unleash another brassy
bellow of rage. Thankfully, wyverns could not breathe fire the way
that a drake could, though that barbed stinger was just as lethal
as a fire.
    “Hold!” I thundered as some of the new men
shifted away, their eyes wide and their faces wide with terror.
“Hold, damn you!”
    “Now!” said Primus, drawing back his arm to
throw the javelin. “Release!”
    I raised my bow and released, and a volley
of arrows shot towards the descending wyvern. About half the arrows
missed, but a quarter struck the wyvern’s flanks and neck,
rebounding from the thick scales there. My arrow slammed into the
wyvern’s right wing, punching a hole through the leathery flesh,
and four or five other arrows hit the wings. Primus’s javelin
struck the left wing and caught in it. The beating motion of the
wyvern’s wings pulled the javelin’s weight down, ripping through
the thin flesh, and the wyvern let out a scream of rage.
    The impact also caused the wyvern’s left
wing to collapse, and the creature crashed into our midst, laying
about with its claws and talons, its stinger-tipped tail driving
forward like a whip. Three men died in the space of an instant. The
wyvern bit off the head of a recruit, the skull making a horrible
crunching noise in its jaws. It talons shredded through the tabard,
armor, and ribs of another recruit, and the man simply fell apart,
his innards landing in a pool of blood upon the ground. The stinger
punched into the chest of a veteran, and the man collapsed writhing
to the ground, yellow foam bubbling around his mouth and nostrils
as the venom ate its way through his flesh.
    It all happened so fast there was no time
to react.
    “Go for the head!” I shouted, yanking my
sword from its scabbard. I took a swing at the wyvern’s head,
aiming for its neck. I hit the neck, and my blade bit into the
thinner scales there. The wyvern roared, its bone-crested head
slamming into me. It struck me in the belly like massive club of
barbed bone. The impact didn’t penetrate my armor, but it did knock
me from my feet and send me sprawling, the breath blasted from my
lungs. For an awful moment I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe,
couldn’t even blink.
    The wyvern surged toward me, its jaws
yawning wide. It would bite off my head. The creature’s vile
breath, a mixture of rotting meat and an acidic tang, filled my
nostrils.
    So that was how I was going to die. Guess
the drink wouldn’t do for me after all.
    The wyvern’s mouth shot towards me, and
then its head jerked to the side, the creature screaming with fury.
I glimpsed a blur behind its head, and I saw Romilius straddling
the wyvern’s thick neck. The wyvern jerked its head back, and
Romilius bounced a bit, but he was simply too heavy for the wyvern
to throw him off with a flick of his neck.
    He also had an axe in his hands, which he
brought down once, twice, three times. On the third blow I heard
something snap in the wyvern’s head, and the blade sank to the
handle in the creature’s skull. Its entire body heaved, its
serpentine neck snapping back with enough force to send Romilius
sprawling, the axe still buried its head.
    Then it slumped motionless to the ground,
its yellow eyes still staring at me, its massive wings twitching a
bit.
    For a moment no one spoke.
    I got to my feet, picking up my sword.
    “Optio,” said Primus, breathing hard. “You
are uninjured?”
    “Just a bit bruised, sir,” I said, my
frozen mind starting to work again. “You, you, you.” I pointed at
three of the new recruits. “Get our horses. The damned wyvern
spooked them off.” I pointed at two of the veterans.