“Who’s there?” Isolde called, fingering her bowstring nervously. From the dark recesses of the great cavern came the sound of steel scraping along the flagstones. Isolde took a deep breath and readied herself to face more of the terrifying bone soldiers that had attacked Lambley. If only Rider and his troop were here, she thought, or her father... Her father, who she had seen just once in five years, and who had now left her alone again in this dark dungeon.
“Hold your fire,” said a voice from the shadows, “I mean no harm.”
Isolde’s kept her bow held high, ready to fire, but the muscles of her arms relaxed a little.
“Come out of the shadows, friend, if friend you be,” she called.
There was shuffling sound and from the pool of darkness across the huge room, a shape emerged; two men, one standing tall and strong, supporting the other who staggered under his wounds and left a trail of bright red blood on the floor behind him.
“My name is Tal, Captain of the Holy Knights of Dawnshire,” said the uninjured man. He was tall and young - perhaps twenty-five - with a shock of long blonde hair hanging down over the burnished steel epaulettes of his armor. His breastplate was covered in a tattered, blood-smeared tunic bearing the golden emblem of his order. “Quickly, my comrade, Sergeant Fallow, is gravely wounded. Help me staunch his wound.”
Seeing the uniforms of the men, Isolde shouldered her bow and ran over to help. She dropped to her knees as Tal lowered his comrade gently to the floor and tore a strip of cloth from his tunic, which he bundled into a tight ball and passed to Isolde.
“Press this against the wound,” he told her, then suddenly, as he stared at her, a glimmer of recognition passed across the Captain’s face. “I know you, child,” he said, narrowing his gaze, “You are Isolde, are you not? Daughter of Belloc, the Ice Mage.”
Isolde opened her mouth in surprise, but said nothing.
“Don’t be afraid,” Tal continued, as he examined the sergeant’s body for more wounds, “Your father and I are firm friends. We have fought side by side many times in the war against the Dark Lord.”
“War?” asked Isolde, “What do you mean? Until today when the bone soldiers razed my village, I thought all of Midgard was at peace.”
“If only that were so,” said the Captain, gravely, “Our centuries of peace are at an end. The Dark Lord, once consigned to legend, rises again. He will not rest until he has conquered every kingdom.”
“What nonsense!” snorted Isolde, “I may be a woodlander, but my people’s home is not so very remote. If war loomed, we would have had news. Our archers would have been called to duty by the Elders of Luxis.”
“And were it not for your father’s work, they would have been,” said Tal, “Belloc is a powerful mage. He used his magic to hide your village from the Dark Lord’s spies, and keep his infernal army at bay. Until today, it seems, his plan worked.”
“But why?” asked Isolde, “Why would he seek to hide the truth from Lambley?”
“To keep you and your brother safe, of course!” said Tal, “You are his only daughter.”
Isolde felt anger rise in her throat. She knew that her father meant well, but how dare he shield Lambley from the events of the world by wrapping her in a cloak of ignorance? If the villagers had known of the danger they faced, perhaps they would have been better prepared to defend their home against the bone soldiers.
“I’m not a baby,” she said through gritted teeth, “I don’t need protection.”
“No. No, you’re not,” said Tal, “But your father knows this. He sees great promise in you, Isolde. I see it too. There is a light behind your eyes that comes from him. He kept you safe only long enough for you to realise that promise before joining the battle yourself.”
Isolde’s mind swam with questions, but before she had a chance to speak again, there was a crash from the far corner of the cavern, followed by the ominous sound of marching soldiers.
“Not my men,” said Tal, as Isolde shot him a questioning look.
Isolde unsheathed the dagger that she kept on her thigh and peered into the gloom. As she stared into the shadows, a ripple of blue flame flared up in a spot on the floor a few yards from where she crouched. And up, out of the ground, rising slowly with a broad shield in one clawed hand, and a long, steel spear in the other, came a grinning bone soldier. Tal, still tending his fallen comrade, grabbed her by the arm.
“I must tend to Sergeant Fallow or he will surely die, Isolde Hart,” he growled, “You say you’ve met these bone soldiers before?”
“Met, fought and beaten too,” said Isolde, “But not without my father’s help.”
“Your father’s blood runs in your veins, Isolde,” said Tal, “And a greater power even than his. You will learn more in time. For now, it falls to you to hold these hellborn warriors at bay.”
Isolde rose to her feet, dagger and bow at the ready. More skeletal soldiers were rising out of the ground. Two… three… four… five...
“Then I’ll send these bastards back to their unholy master, one splinter at a time,” she said, and with a nod to Captain Tal, and an arrow drawn, she charged.
*
They were few in number, compared to the troops that had overwhelmed Lambley, but with nobody to watch her back, Isolde knew she would have to make every shot count. She took careful aim at the closest soldier’s neck where it joined the base of his exposed skull, and fired. His head flew off, landing somewhere in the darkness behind him, and the rest of him collapsed into a pile of lifeless bones. The others kept coming, and Isolde kept firing and reloading until there were just three left. They spread out a little in front of her, as if planning to attack on her flanks, and advanced steadily.
There was no way Isolde could take them all before they reached her. By the time she had fired and strung her bow twice, the third soldier would be on her. She looked from one to the other, searching for any sign of weakness in one of soldiers. She would shoot the others and take on the weakest with her dagger in hand-to-hand combat. But there was nothing to distinguish them. The grim, skeletal warriors were quite identical and their movements were perfectly coordinated, as if they were puppets controlled by a single hand. Isolde thought fast, searching for a way to avoid drawing her dagger, which would be little use against the spears and swords of her attackers. She drew three arrows from her quiver and spread them between the fingers of her left hand, then she drew her bowstring, stretching it back as much as her strength would allow, and let all three fly at once.
The first arrow found its mark, severing the middle soldier’s neck and sending limbs and ribs rattling to the floor. The arrow on the left hit home too, lifting its target’s grinning skull from his body so that he too collapsed, lifeless, on the ground. The arrow on the right was wide of target. It missed the soldier’s neck and lodged in the joint of his right shoulder. He didn’t acknowledge the hit; he just kept coming, bearing down on Isolde as she felt behind her for another arrow… But her quiver was empty!
Isolde cursed her aim and drew her dagger, ready to fend off the last of the soldiers as best she could. He was right on top of her now, one or two more paces and they’d be fighting. Isolde muttered a prayer and gripped the wooden handle of her dagger hard. The bone soldier opened his mouth in a silent battle cry and lifted his sword. His arm fell off. It clattered to the flagstones, still holding the sword in its bony fingers. The soldier didn’t even seem to notice. He charged at Isolde as if he still had his weapon. She sidestepped him as he lunged forward, then shot out a foot and booted him as hard as she could from behind. He toppled over and Isolde brought her boot down hard on his neck. His split as it hit the stones and spun across the floor as his body collapsed into a loose heap.
Isolde ran around the room to each of the fallen soldiers, gathering her arrows and replacing them in her quiver. She was about to return to Tal when a sound like booming footsteps caused the breath to catch in her throat.
“Thunder,” she told herself, though she knew that was wishful thinking, “It’s just thunder. A thunder storm in a dungeon. Nothing weird about that.”
Slowly, she turned on the spot until she faced the direction of the noise, which grew deeper and more deafening as it came ever nearer.
“Okay. Not a storm. I don’t know why I bothered putting these away,” she sighed, pulling two of the newly sheathed arrows back out of her quiver and advancing cautiously towards a vast open doorway on the far wall of the cavern.
*
The arch of the doorway was as taller than any tree Isolde had ever seen, and the room beyond was larger still than the enormous cavern that she came from. At the far end it seemed to drop away into an abyss, as if the whole of the Underworld was laid out, just beyond the limits of this strange dungeon. It was brighter too, with huge torches dotted around the walls, and a crack in the floor through which she could see the deep red glow of molten stone. The thudding footstep noise had stopped for the time being, and she cast her gaze nervously about her, wondering what the commotion had been. The light cast long shadows on the walls and glinted off the bright, bronze armor of an enormous statue. Isolde approached it, wondering at the craftsmanship of the enormous sculpture. She craned her neck back to stare up at the dog-headed sentinel figure, with his enormous sickle-headed weapon, and jewelled eyes that glowed like the lava that flowed under the cracked stone floor of the chamber. An ancient god, perhaps, or the carved guardian of some long forgotten treasure. And then it moved.
Isolde fell backwards, startled, and landed on her behind with a heavy thump. The dog-headed giant dipped its head and grinned down at her, showing rows of pointed teeth. Then it hoisted its weapon and bore down fast, the booming footsteps - they had been footsteps after all - shaking the very ground where Isolde lay.
She scrambled to her feet and darted out of the sentinel’s path. She hadn’t a chance, she knew, if she came within reach of the huge creature. One swipe from that evil looking weapon would cut her in two. Even a glancing blow from such a foe would send her flying. Her best bet was to keep moving.
She zig-zagged around the room, passing quickly through the pools of light cast by the flaming torches on the walls and pausing briefly in each patch of shadow to draw and fire another arrow at her colossal enemy. Her aim was true, but still most of her arrows bounced uselessly off the sentinel’s armor.
“It’s no good,” Isolde said aloud in exasperation, “I need a closer shot.”
She sprinted in a broad circle around sentinel until his back was too her. His size made turning slow and, as he lumbered around to face her, she darted right up to him, and threw herself into a long slide so that she wound up on her back between his feet, staring up at his long, wolf-like jaw.
“For Penrick,” she hissed, and eased her fingers on the string.
Her arrow shot straight upwards and lodged in the soft, unguarded jaw of the dog-headed giant. He roared in pain and clutched at the wound, dropping his huge weapon with a clatter, so that Isolde had to roll quickly out of the way to avoid being cut in half. She righted herself and fired again and again into the beast’s exposed neck. His roar became a hideous gurgling choking sound as his throat filled with blood and he shook as if overcome by sudden cold. One last arrow from Isolde’s bow plunged through the giant’s left eye and pierced his brain. His arms fell to his sides and his jaw dropped open. He staggered back two shuffling paces, and then his legs gave way beneath him and he crumpled to the floor, dead.
*
Isolde knelt to catch her breath. That had been too close for comfort. She wondered how Captain Tal and his wounded sergeant were doing and was about to turn back for them, when a voice rang out from below the lip of the floor on the other side of the chamber, where it fell away into the impossible abyss. It was laughing.
“Ha ha ha ha ha!”
It sounded like the sort of laugh a mountain might have, if mountains could talk; like granite slabs being smashed together. For a moment, Isolde squeezed her eyes tight shut, afraid to find out who such laughter belonged to. Then she shook her head, grasped her weapon tightly once more, and turned towards the rumbling, rasping laughter.
From the depths of the chasm beyond the chamber’s edge came a leathery, whooshing sound; the beating of enormous wings. And up from the abyss - slowly, as if hoisted up on an invisible pulley - rose a creature that could not be real. For surely, Isolde thought, they were the stuff of legend; monsters invented by man to scare the children. Not real. Not here. Not now. And yet here it was, looming ever larger before her, rising up on vast wings the colour of the night sky and throwing back its horned head to laugh at her. A dragon!
“Well, well. You’ve done well to keep your head, child,” said the dragon, its voice reverberating around the dungeon like cannon fire, “What a pity your fight ends here.”
And surely it would. How could a mere girl with a bow and arrow fend off a mighty dragon? Isolde racked her brains for a way out, but found none. So be it. If she was going to die, she’d go down fighting. She glanced upwards and called out to the rocky ceiling above her.
“Father, I’m sorry,” she said aloud, “I don’t think I’m going to live long enough for the promise you saw in me.”
The dragon laughed again as she drew an arrow and pulled back her bow. She must have seemed a puny sight to the behemoth before her. But as she released her grip to fire, something strange happened.
It started in her breast; a warm feeling like getting into a hot bath that spread outwards, making her fingers and toes tingle. Her arrow soared into the air and, as it flew, sparks of strange energy flickered and flashed along its shaft. It hit the dragon square in the throat and he rolled back his eyes and screeched. His huge wings flapped clumsily and he wobbled in midair, thrown off balance by the unnatural, unexpected force of Isolde’s shot.
“Magic!” the dragon roared, “That’s cheating! I’ll burn you to ash you impudent insect!”
And, regaining his balance mid-air, he opened his mouth and belched out a ball of white-hot liquid fire that spread across the ground where it hit. Isolde leapt out the fireball’s path and rolled to safety. The dragon reared up and spat out another. Isolde sprung to her feet and jumped out of its path again, stringing her bow with an arrow as she ran. She fired. The arrow lodged in the dragon’s scaly chin and he howled in pain again and sprayed the ground in front of her with a jet of fire that illuminated the chamber like the midday sun. But still, Isolde knew, the fight was hopeless. She was running low on arrows again. And, even if she had caught the mighty creature off guard, she could not hope to finish him off with her feeble weapon before one of his gigantic fireballs hit its mark.
One arrow left. She drew it from her quiver and touched the goose feather fletching to her lips for luck. The dragon curled back his long neck and inhaled a huge breath, ready to let loose an inferno.
“To Hell with you,” said Isolde, and fired. The dragon reared up and opened his mouth but as he prepared to scorch her with his fiery breath, the air beside Isolde fizzed and crackled and swirling blue portal appeared, just like the one that had carried her from Lambley to this subterranean realm. From out of the portal stepped a blonde-haired knight in armor of polished bronze and blue steel. He held out a hand to Isolde and spoke.
“Chosen One! Follow me if you want to live!” shouted the knight, holding out his arm and beckoning her towards him.
Isolde head was bursting with questions, but she knew there was no time to waste. Whatever lay on the other side of the portal, it had to better than a deathblow from an angry dragon. She ducked into a low run and ped, head first into the portal, which snapped shut behind her.
