Flight to Dragon Isle by Lucinda Hare

onslaught on the spawning pools reverberating like an earthquake. Tons of rock fell into the steaming water, rich with minerals that nursed the young hobgoblins in spring.
    Galtekerion flinched in the tepid waters of the deep hibernation pools as the thunder of battle pounded overhead, the sounds magnified by water; but he held his warriors back.
    ‘They will use their cave dragons supported by the Bonecrackers to clear the combs,’ the Warlock had revealed, ‘and drive you into their mounted brigades and Marines deployed on the beaches. And beyond them cloaked Imperials will make sure none make the safety of the sea.
    ‘Hold your experienced warriors back,’ he commanded the Hobgoblin Warlord. ‘Give them all available food to keep them strong. Sacrifice the old, the young, the weak. Do not let them know – their flight will be all the more convincing. Let them blunt the blades of our enemies, weaken their arms.’
    Galtekerion’s eyes glowed in the depths. The plan unfurled as the Warlock had foretold.
    ‘Flame! Flame!’
    Leaping and screaming, poorly armed hobgoblins poured out of the caves to be met by a withering wave of dragonfire that vaporized the ice and turned the sand to glass.
    As the smoke cleared, bugle notes rang out, and the SDS Commander unleashed his heavy brigades.
    ‘Charge!’
    Line upon line of Cuirassiers smashed into the closely packed ranks of hobgoblins trapped between the cliffs and the Imperials.
    ‘Hold the line! Keep in formation!’
    With savage joy, the Magma dragons pounded the hated hobgoblins into the sand beneath taloned toes tipped with barbed sheaths, whilst they struck out with their heads to seize limbs and sever heads with a single bite. Their armoured riders used their lances again and again, a swift jab, withdrawal, another, then another, leaving bodies piled in the frozen black sand. But the tide of the hobgoblins kept coming, and soon the SDS cavalry were utterly exhausted.
    ‘Fall back! Fall back to the transports!’ the bugles cried.
    Streaming forwards in their wake, the desperate hobgoblins slammed into the waiting Marines’ shield wall, ten ranks deep.
    ‘Stand your ground!’ Sergeants cried as the first battlespells arced overhead. ‘Stand your ground, lads!’ But as the hour of the Stroppy Capercaille and dawn tinged the horizon, the heavily armoured trolls of the Marines, too, fell back to their waiting transports and battlegalleons, and Imperials supported by Frost Dragons entered the fray. Purple flames blossomed across the shoreline and the hobgoblins faltered. The battle seemed lost.
    ‘Hide in your deep hibernation pools where they cannot reach you. Let them think they have cleared the combs,’ the Warlock commanded Galtekerion, ‘then rise up about them. Slaughter them and their cave dragons in the combs where the Imperials cannot support them. Then drive those that survive out onto the beaches. Wait until they have landed their dragons to deploy fresh troops and airlift their injured, wait until the dragons are on the beaches and rocks, and then strike! Release the razorbacks!’
    ‘And you, Lord?’
    ‘I will unleash the Abyss upon them …’
    Galtekerion shuddered as the taint of the Maelstrom swirled darkly about the Warlock like smoke. Who was this sorcerer who sought the dark rule of the maelstrom?
    ‘The trollsss are retreating, Lord, to the transports as you sssaid they would.’ the hobgoblin warrior was young and could not understand why the WarLord had not attacked, why so many hobgoblins lay dead. ‘The Imperialssss have decloaked and have taken to the field.’
    Galtekerion signalled his bodyguard. ‘It issss time.’ He bared his fearsome teeth. A horn wailed its grating command as Galtekerion and his heavily armed warriors kicked for the surface of the hibernation pools. Webbed feet and powerful thigh muscles propelled them swiftly towards the flame-licked surface above. A hundred thousand hobgoblins shot up and out of the