Flight to Dragon Isle by Lucinda Hare Page B

withdrawing under cover of their Dragon Lords onto the already crowded beaches, when carnage erupted about them.
    The ice around the transport ships rose up and cracked. It was as if the rocky shoreline were moving beneath the marines’ feet, tumbling them into the sea, where hobgoblin suckers pulled them down and down. The large midnight-skinned creatures that surged up were the stuff of nightmares. Sickly green sorcery played and crackled about them as they surged out of the sea, hobgoblins clustered like barnacles between their barbed flanks. The beasts hissed like snakes, dark smoke to engulf the fighting commandos and hobgoblins alike.
    ‘Hostile dragons! Hostile dragons!’ the panicked cry sowed disbelief amongst the SDS.
    ‘Alpha Wing – down, down, down!’ the Earl ordered, throwing in his last reserves and bringing Stormcracker round. ‘Hostile dragons on the shoreline!’
    He lifted his staff and bolts rained down on the Razorbacks, driving the creatures back into sea.
    ‘Kill them,’ Galtekerion urged his warriors forwards. ‘Kill the Dragon Lordsssss firssssst, then the resssst are yourssss to feed on. Ssssweet dragon flesssssh … man flesssssh …
    Boom … boom …
    Arrows and darts rained down on the SDS thudding into shields and piercing armour. Sabretooths and Adders fell first to the black breath, and then the heavier Magma dragons slowed and fell. Only battlemages and Imperials remained standing amidst the ranks of hobgoblins, immune to their dragons’ fatal dark sorcery.
    ‘We have them. The Dragon Lordssss will die!’ Galtekerion threw in his champions. In the deep waters, canyons and combs, dragon drums beat furiously.
    Boom … boom … boom …
    ‘DeWinter! DeWinter!’
    The staff in the Earl’s hand writhed and took on new form, burning a blazing circle of fiery golden death about him. Bolts sizzled out across the battlefield, striking a full score of Razorbacks, vaporizing a thousand hobgoblin warriors that clung to their barnacled hides. But the creatures they rode roared and barely lost their stride; they seemed to drink in the power of the staff, their mouths gaping wetly in slavering delight as they fell on SDS dragons. The Earl’s eyes widened. Nothing should have withstood that battle spell save an Imperial, the last of the dragons with magic of their own. This was no natural born creature; this was spawned in the Abyss, given life by dark sorcery.
    KKKKKKKKkkkkkkkkkkrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaakkkk kkkkkkkk!
    Stormcracker charged at three Razorbacks who were blocking the retreat of injured commandos. Sorcery coruscated about the Earl and his dragon, a golden nimbus of energy: a Dragon Lord revealed in his full power. The great Imperial rose onto his hind legs and came down on a Razorback, snapping its spine. A second Razorback’s neck was broken by his lashing tail which cleared space for marines and commandoes to gain the safety of his back, and the SDS Commander stunned the third with a powerful bolt, leaving his Bonecrackers to finish it off.
    ‘Sssssssssuround them. Use the netssss. Bring them down!’ Galtekerion cried.
    All about the battlefield the Dragon Lords were extracting their troops, but even the mighty Imperials could not fight such overwhelming odds. As the dragons set down to pick up their troopers, hobgoblins swarmed up their wings and legs too, overpowering them.
    Rage and dragon flames erupted across the battlefield as first one SDS Imperial was overwhelmed by sheer numbers, then a second and a third, roaring its defiance even as it drowned beneath choking slime. Stormcracker was struggling to keep his wings free of the never ending assault when a huge hobgoblin leaped out of the heaving throng, a juvenile imperial tooth hung about his neck.
    ‘Mine, he isssss mine …’
    Climbing onto the backs of dead comrades the hobgoblin leaped at the SDS Commander, bringing a huge sword down on him. It ricocheted off the Dragon Lord’s defensive nexus, but the force of