A World of Death || ASOIAF Gamer Fic

Arthur burst out of the doors of the White Sword Tower into the courtyard and put two fingers to his lips and let out a loud whistle.

Quiet came.

The pale horse emerged from the shadows of the stable archway at a dead run, her hooves striking sparks off the cobblestones as it crossed the courtyard in a few powerful strides and skidded to a halt beside him. Arthur grabbed the saddle horn and swung himself up onto its back in a single motion. He did not need to kick. He did not need to pull the reins. He simply leaned forward and Quiet understood.

The pale horse launched into a gallop.

They tore through the gates of the Red Keep and plunged down Aegon's High Hill into the streets of King's Landing. As he looked around however it seemed the city was coming apart at the seams.

He saw Gold Cloaks sprinting toward the walls and pushing past the Smallfolk who poured out of their homes in their nightclothes, dragging children by the arms and clutching whatever they could carry. A woman stood in the middle of an intersection screaming the name of a child Arthur could not see. An old man sat against a wall with blood running from a cut on his scalp, staring at nothing while people streamed past him.

A flaming stone the size of a horse crashed into a building two streets ahead with a sound like the world cracking open. The structure folded inward on itself in a shower of sparks and burning timber that sent a plume of fire billowing across the road. Quiet did not flinch. The horse veered left without breaking stride, finding a narrow alley Arthur would not have seen on his own, and threaded through it at full gallop while burning debris rained down on the rooftops above their heads.

Another stone struck somewhere behind them and Arthur felt the impact through Quiet's hooves. The screaming was everywhere now, coming from every direction at once.

Arthur had never been in a siege before, he'd never been in a proper battle. Despite how much death he'd already seen, this still managed to shake him to the core.

Quiet wove through the pandemonium with a skill that Arthur did not have, had she been a normal horse he doubted on his ability to make it where he was going in one piece. The horse jumped a collapsed market stall without slowing, swerved around a knot of panicking smallfolk, and thundered down the Street of Steel toward the southern walls where the bulk of the bombardment was landing.

Arthur could see the wall now.

The great curtain wall of King's Landing rose up ahead of him in the orange firelight, its battlements crowded with the silhouettes of archers and Gold Cloaks scrambling into position. He pulled Quiet to a halt near the base of the wall and vaulted from the saddle. The horse immediately backed itself into the shadow of a nearby building and stood there, while Arthur turned and grabbed the nearest Gold Cloak by the shoulder strap of his armour.

"Who is in command here," he demanded.

The man's eyes were wide and his face was streaked with soot. "Prince Duncan, Ser. He took command the moment the first stones hit. He is up on the wall."

Arthur nodded and released the man. "Get these civilians off the streets. Anyone who is not holding a weapon needs to be anywhere but here. Move."

The Gold Cloak stumbled off at a run.

Arthur turned and took the steps of the wall two at a time, his armour clanking with every stride. The stairway was a tumbler of bodies moving in both directions, Gold Cloaks rushing upward with bundles of arrows and barrels of pitch while wounded men stumbled downward with blood on their faces and the dazed look of men who had never been under bombardment before. Arthur shouldered through them without stopping, pressing himself flat against the inner wall whenever a knot of men came down too fast, and kept climbing.

He reached the battlements and emerged to where the true battle was happening.

The wall here was wide enough for ten men to stand abreast, and every foot of it was occupied. Archers crouched behind the merlons with their bows strung and their quivers at their hips. Gold Cloaks in half-armour huddled behind the stonework as stones whistled overhead and smashed into the city behind them. Sergeants moved along the line shouting orders that were barely audible above the crash of each new impact.

Arthur turned left and moved along the wall at a crouch until he found them.

Prince Duncan stood behind the largest merlon at the centre of the section. He had traded the fine doublet from the feast for a full suit of plate and mail, and a great helm hung from a hook at his belt. Beside him stood Ser Gerol and on Duncan's other side Prince Lewyn crouched with one hand braced against the wall, his eyes scanning the bay below.

Duncan looked up as Arthur reached them and something that might have been relief flickered across the prince's face. "Arthur." He clasped the knight's forearm briefly. "I was not sure you would come. After our last conversation, I would not have blamed you for staying in the holdfast."

"I will not stand by and watch the city be sacked," Arthur said flatly. He dropped into a crouch beside the prince and looked out through a gap in the battlements. "Who is attacking us."

Duncan shook his head. "We do not know. The flags they are flying are pure black. No sigil. No insignia. No colours. Nothing we can identify."

"How many ships."

"We have counted at least forty. Possibly more behind the first line. They appeared out of the darkness less than an hour ago and began firing before anyone on the walls had time to light a signal fire."

Arthur's jaw tightened. "How is that possible."

Before Duncan could answer, boots pounded along the wall behind them and a young messenger in a Gold Cloak's half-helm skidded to a halt and dropped to one knee. "Your Grace." The boy was breathing hard. "As you commanded have been sent to every local lord within riding distance. Stokeworth, Rosby, Hayford, Duskendale. The message instructs them to muster whatever forces they can and ride for King's Landing at best speed."

"Good," Duncan said. "What about the fleet?"

"No word yet, Your Grace. We cannot reach the harbour. The fires are too thick on the waterfront."

Duncan sighed but then dismissed him with a nod and the boy vanished back along the wall.

Arthur turned to the prince. "How many men do we have to defend the city."

Ser Gerold answered before Duncan could. "Around two thousand Goldcloaks with some household guards from the lords currently in residence ans a handful of knights." Ser Gerold said. "The walls are long and we are spread thin. If they land in force we will not hold every gate."

"Does anyone know how they managed to get this close without alerting anyone," Arthur pressed.

Duncan shook his head grimly. "I have sent a raven to Dragonstone. But if a fleet this size passed that close without the garrison raising the alarm..." He left the rest unspoken, letting the implication hang in the air between them.

"Then either Dragonstone is compromised," Arthur finished quietly, "or it has already fallen."

A high whistling sound cut through the noise.

"DOWN," Gerold roared.

All four of them threw themselves flat against the walkway as a massive stone block crashed into the wall thirty feet to their left. The impact was enormous. The entire top section of wall bucked and shuddered under them. One of the merlons shattered into fragments and a Gold Cloak who had been crouching behind it was hurled backward off the wall entirely. Arthur heard the man scream once before the sound cut off.

Duncan hauled himself back to his feet with dust in his hair and blood from a small cut above his eyebrow. He seized the nearest sergeant by the arm. "Get those wounded men off the wall. I want fresh archers up here now. Send word to the reserve companies behind the Dragon Gate. I want two hundred men ready to move wherever they are needed most."

The sergeant nodded and ran.

Ser Gerold had moved to the edge of the battlements and was staring down at the bay with narrowed eyes. The ships had crept closer during the bombardment, close enough now that Arthur could make out individual figures moving on their decks.

"Archers," Gerold bellowed. "NOCK."

Along the wall, dozens of bowmen rose from behind the merlons and fitted shafts to their strings.

"LIGHT."

Each archer dipped his arrowhead into one of the small fire pots that had been placed at intervals along the wall. The tips caught fire snd stayed lit despite the wind.

"DRAW."

The bowstrings creaked back in unison.

"LOOSE."

A sheet of fire rose from the wall and arced out over the black water . The flaming arrows climbed into the night sky like a hundred falling stars, reached the apex of their arc, and came hammering down onto the decks and sails and rigging of the nearest ships. Arthur watched as three arrows punched into the canvas of a ships mainsail and the fabric caught almost instantly.

"NOCK," Gerold roared again. "LIGHT. DRAW. LOOSE."

A second volley climbed the sky.

The ships were close enough now to answer. Arthur heard the snap of bowstrings from the enemy decks a heartbeat before the first wave of return arrows came screaming up and over the battlements. Most of them clattered harmlessly against the stonework or sailed overhead into the city beyond, but a few found their marks. A Gold Cloak three men down from Arthur grunted and crumpled as a shaft took him through the gap between his gorget and his helm. Another arrow punched through a wooden shield and the man behind it staggered back howling with the point lodged in his forearm.

Arthur was beside Duncan when he saw the glint of an arrowhead racing towards them, it only took half a second before he realised it would embed itself in Duncan's neck.

Arthur's mind screamed.

[The World]

Time froze.

The arrow hung in the air six inches from him. It was heading for the precise point where Duncan's neck met the collar of his gorget, the one inch of exposed throat that the prince had left uncovered when he turned his head to shout an order.

Arthur reached out and plucked the arrow from the air.

Time snapped forward.

The sounds of battle crashed back over him like a wave. Arthur stood with the arrow in his fist, the steel tip an inch from his face, the fletching still warm. Duncan was staring at him with wide eyes.

"What... how did you..."

"You are welcome, Your Grace," Arthur said tightly as he snapped the arrow in half and tossed the pieces aside.

Duncan's hand went to his throat, his fingers touching the exposed strip of skin where the arrow would have entered. The colour drained from his face for a moment and then returned. He swallowed, and then nodded. "Thank you, Arthur."

Ser Gerold had seen the whole thing. The Kingsguard moved to Duncan's side with a face like carved stone. "Your Grace. You need to pull back. You are too exposed up here. If that arrow had landed we would be carrying you off this wall in a coffin."

Duncan started to shake his head but Arthur cut him off. "He is right. You are the Hand of the King and the ranking member of the royal family in this city. If you die up here the entire defence collapses. Go down and direct things from the base of the wall. You can still command from there. You cannot command from a grave."

Duncan's jaw squeezed together and the stubbornness flared in his eyes for a moment, the same stubbornness Arthur had seen at the harbour when the prince had insisted on coming along. But this was different. He could see that. Another volley of arrows screamed over the battlements and two more men went down, and Duncan flinched at the sound in a way that told Arthur the near-miss had shaken him more than he wanted to admit.

"Fine," Duncan said through his teeth. "I will direct from the gatehouse. But I am leaving you in command up here, Arthur. Hold this wall."

Arthur nodded. "I will hold it."

Duncan clasped his shoulder, and then moved at a crouch along the wall toward the stairway with Ser Gerold close behind him, the Kingsguards white cloak streaked with soot and dust as he shepherded the prince off the exposed rampart and down to safety.

Arthur turned and looked out along the wall.

He was in command.

The thought landed in his stomach with the weight of an anvil and for a handful of heartbeats every doubt he had ever carried reared up inside him at once. He was not a commander. He was a boy from Harrowfield who had been a knight for approximately four hours. He had never led men in battle. He had never given orders that other men's lives depended upon. The Gold Cloaks along this wall were veterans, most of them older than he was, and the idea that they would listen to some freshly-minted—

Something shifted.

It came from somewhere behind his ribs, somewhere deep in the blood. It was not a thought and it was not an emotion and it was not anything he could have named with words. It was more like a door opening inside his chest. He looked out at the wall full of frightened men and screaming and he simply knew what needed to happen.

[Crown of Command]

Arthur straightened to his full height behind the

battlements and his voice came out with an authority he had never heard in it before. "Archers," he called, and every bowman within earshot turned to look at him. "I want staggered volleys. Odd numbers fire on my command. Even numbers nock and hold until I call. We fire in waves, not sheets. I do not want a single moment where this wall is not putting arrows into those ships. Sergeants, call out your sections."

The response was immediate.

There was no hesitation. No questioning glances. No resistance from men who had been doing this longer than he had been alive. The sergeants echoed his commands down the line, the archers sorted themselves into group, and within seconds the first staggered volley was climbing into the sky while the second group was already drawing.

Arthur felt it settle into him like armour over his shoulders. He moved along the wall issuing orders with a clarity that surprised even himself. He shifted archers from sections where the enemy fire was lighter to sections where it was heavier. He identified the three ships that were doing the most damage with their catapults and directed concentrated fire onto their decks. He ordered fire pots brought up from the stores below and had them positioned at intervals along the most vulnerable stretches of wall.

Llewyn crouched beside him behind a merlon during a lull in the incoming fire, and Arthur noticed the Dornishman's hands were shaking slightly where they gripped the pommel of his sword.

"First battle?" Arthur asked quietly.

Llewyn managed a crooked smile that did not quite reach his eyes. "Is it that obvious?"

"Only to someone who is also terrified." Arthur looked at him with a grin.

Llewyn let out a breath that was half laugh and half prayer. "You are not exactly reassuring Arthur."

Another volley of arrows came screaming over the wall. Both of them pressed flat against the stone until the shafts clattered past, and then Arthur was up again, moving along the line.

"FIRE AT WILL," Arthur roared down the line. "Independent volleys. Pick your targets. I want every arrow in a sail or a man. Nothing wasted."

The wall erupted in a continuous stream of fire arrows that lanced out over the water. Two more enemy sails caught fire. A third ship began to list its mast burned enough for it to fall. Cheers went up along the wall as the burning vessel began to drift sideways into its neighbour.

Then a Gold Cloak at the far end of the section cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed the words Arthur had been dreading.

"THEY'VE LANDED. BEACH SOUTH OF THE MUD GATE. HUNDREDS OF THEM."

Arthur was at the wall's edge in an instant. He looked down and his stomach dropped. The enemy had run a dozen longboats aground on the narrow strip of shore south of the Mud Gate. Men were pouring out of them in a dark tide, hundreds of them, armed with swords and axes and round shields, their armour a mismatched collection of mail and leather and plate.

Sellswords...

All of them.

Arthur turned from the wall and cupped his hands to his mouth. "Archers, keep firing at those ships. Do not let up. Sergeants, I want every man who is not holding a bow to form up at the base of the wall on the south side. NOW."

He turned and took the stairs at a dead run and burst out onto the cobblestones at the bottom where a cluster of Gold Cloaks were already gathering with drawn swords and the wide eyes of men who knew what was coming.

Arthur drew Sunset.

"GOLD CLOAKS," he roared, and two hundred faces turned toward him. "They have landed on the beach south of the Mud Gate. Hundreds of them. More coming. If they get past us they are in the streets and the city falls."

"We are going to sally out. We are going to hit them on the beach before they can form up properly and we are going to push them back into the water. Stay in formation. Do not break ranks no matter what happens. Fight for your city! Fight and we win!"

He turned to Llewyn, who had followed him down the stairs and now stood beside him with his sword drawn and his knuckles white around the grip.

"Are we really doing this," the Dornishman asked.

"We are really doing this," Arthur confirmed. "Stay on my left. Watch the flanks. You are going to be fine."

Arthur turned to face the Mud Gate.

"OPEN THE GATE," he bellowed. "GOLD CLOAKS, WITH ME."

The great bars were hauled back and the gate groaned open. Arthur Pendragon charged out onto the beach at the head of two hundred men. The enemy was still forming up when the Gold Cloaks hit them.

"KILL THEM ALL!!!" Arthur shouted as he reached the first line of invaders three strides ahead of everyone else. A tall man in a black surcoat swung a heavy axe at his head and Arthur ducked the blow so cleanly that the axe whistled over his scalp close enough to scrap his helmet. He came up inside the man's reach and drove Sunset into the gap between the man's mail and his belt. The blade punched through leather and muscle and bit deep into the organs beneath. The man made a thick wet sound and folded forward over the sword. Arthur ripped the blade free and the man's intestines spilled out onto the sand as the body crumpled.

The Gold Cloaks crashed into the enemy line behind him with a sound like thunder hitting an anvil. Shield met shield. Steel rang on steel. Men screamed and swore and grunted as the two lines ground together on the beach, the sand beneath their feet began to turn dark and wet.

Arthur fought at the very tip of the wedge. A swordsman came at him from the right with a fast lateral cut aimed at his ribs. Arthur parried with Sunset's crossguard and the hidden blade shot out from his left forearm and punched through the man's throat before the swordsman even registered that Arthur had a second weapon. Blood sprayed in a hot arc across Arthur's breastplate as the man went down clawing at the wound.

Two more replaced him immediately. The first swung a mace at Arthur's helm. Arthur sidestepped and the mace head buried itself in the sand beside his boot. He grabbed the weapon's haft with his left hand, yanked the wielder forward off balance, and drove Sunset down through the top of the man's shoulder. The blade sheared through the collarbone and sank halfway to the man's sternum. Arthur planted his boot against the dying man's chest and kicked him off the blade.

The second attacker lunged with a short sword aimed at Arthur's gut. Arthur twisted sideways and the thrust skidded along the surface of his breastplate in a shower of sparks. He caught the man's sword arm at the wrist, torqued the joint hard, and felt the elbow pop out of its socket with a crunch that was audible even over the roar of battle. The man shrieked and dropped his weapon. Arthur silenced him with a backhand slash across the face that opened him from jaw to temple.

"HOLD THE LINE," Arthur roared over his shoulder. "PUSH THEM BACK. PUSH!!!"

The Gold Cloaks responded. He could feel it behind him, the surge of momentum as men who had been fighting scared suddenly rushed forward. His voice carried over the clash of weapons, the screaming of the dying. The men around him pushed harder, drove deeper, forced the enemy back toward the waterline one step at a time.

Prince Llewyn fought on his left flank. The Dornishman was quick and his bladework was good as it usually was, whatever fear he carried he had buried it deep enough that it did not showl. Llewyn parried a heavy overhead chop from a man twice his size, sidestepped the follow-up, and opened the attacker's hamstring with a cut that dropped him screaming to the sand. Arthur met the next man in line with a thrust that punched through the man's shield and into his chest.

The beach was a hellscape now.

Bodies lay everywhere, crumpled in the shallow waters and sprawled across the wet sand. The water at the tideline had turned a dark ugly red that foamed pink. Wounded men crawled through the carnage or lay where they had fallen, but Arthur still waded through it.

A massive man in heavy plate came at him with a two-handed greatsword, the blade sweeping in a horizontal arc that would have cut Arthur in half at the waist. Arthur dropped to one knee and the greatsword passed over his head close enough to clip the top of his helm. He came up under the man's guard and drove Sunset up through the gap beneath the arm, where the plate was weakest. The point found the armpit and sank to the crossguard. The man's eyes went wide and his mouth opened, blood poured out over his chin and he dropped the greatsword and fell sideways into the surf.

Three enemies rushed him at once.

[The World]

Time froze.

Arthur was already in motion when the stillness took hold. The three men hung before him, one mid-swing, one mid-thrust, one raising a shield. Arthur stepped to the left and repositioned himslef and his blade.

Time snapped forward.

Sunset carved through the first man's neck in a spray of crimson. The hidden blade punched into the second man's eye. Arthur's boot caught the third in the centre of his shield and sent him staggering backward into two of his own comrades.

The effort of using the World hit him like a hammer to the skull. Exhaustion roared through his body and his vision swam for a dangerous moment, but [Dragonheart] pulsed in his chest and the panic that should have followed the exhaustion simply never arrived. He gritted his teeth and kept fighting as hard as he could.

"THEY'RE BREAKING," one of the Gold Cloaks screamed from somewhere behind him. "THEY'RE FALLING BACK. PUSH. PUSH."

It was true.

The enemy line had buckled and the men at the front were trying to retreat toward their longboats but the men behind them were still pressing forward, and the result was a crush of bodies that made coordinated fighting impossible. Arthur pressed the advantage ruthlessly. He drove Sunset into the press of men and killed one after the other like he was a farmer harvesting wheat. A slash across one man's throat. A thrust through another's belly. A pommel strike to a third man's temple that dropped him cold. Every movement flowed into the next, his body operating at a level that felt almost frightening.

Eventually the enemy broke. It happened all at once, the way these things always did. One moment there was a battle. The next moment there was a rout. Men threw down their weapons and ran for the longboats, splashing through the shallows, scrambling over the gunwales, shoving each other aside in their desperation to reach the oars.

"ARCHERS," Arthur bellowed up at the wall. "THE BOATS. HIT THE BOATS."

Flaming arrows rained down from the wall and punched into the retreating longboats. Three of them caught fire almost instantly. Men leapt from the burning vessels into the water and thrashed toward the larger ships further out in the bay.

Arthur stood on the beach with his chest heaving and blood running down his armour in streams. He'd taken on a few wounds since the beginning of the fight, but it didn't matter, the beach was theirs.

Llewyn staggered up beside him, his armour dented and his face splattered with blood that was not his own. The Dornishman looked down at the carnage around them and then back at Arthur with something that was equal parts awe and horror. "That was the most exciting and terrifying hour of my life!" He said while panting.

Arthur drew a slow breath through his teeth and pressed the back of his gauntlet against the cut on his forearm where the blood had begun to flow freely again beneath the steel. The pain was a distant thing, muted by the hammering of his heart and the strange ringing that always followed a fight, he pushed it aside before turning to face the men who still stood around him.

"Everyone back to the gate," he called out. "Regroup inside the walls. I want the wounded carried first, and I want a count of every man we have left. Move now, do not linger."

The Gold Cloaks began to stir, some of them helping comrades to their feet while others retrieved weapons from the sand or pulled cloaks from the dead to wrap around men who were shivering from shock and cold water. The tide had come in slightly during the fighting and the edges of the battlefield were now lapped by shallow waves that ran pink as they washed over the bodies lying at the waterline.

Arthur had turned to say something else to Lewyn when the sound hit them.

It came from out over the water.

It was not thunder. It was not the crash of a catapult stone or the splintering of a hull or the roar of a fire catching on a sail. It was something else entirely, something that rolled across the surface of the Blackwater Bay like a physical force and slammed into the walls of King's Landing hard enough that Arthur felt the vibration in the soles of his boots through the wet sand beneath them.

*ROAAAAAARRRRRR*

The sound was so enormous that it seemed to press down on the air itself, flattening the flames on the still-burning longboats and sending a ripple through the water at the shoreline. It rolled up and over the walls of the city and echoed off the stones of the Red Keep and came back again, and by the time the last of it had faded into the night every single man on the beach had stopped moving.

Arthur stood perfectly still.

A hundred Gold Cloaks stood perfectly still.

Llewyn Martell stood perfectly still.

The silence that followed the roar was absolute in a way that silence had no business being on a battlefield. No one spoke. No one moved. No one breathed. The only sound was the soft lapping of the waves against the shore and the distant crackle of burning ships.

They stared out into the darkness of the bay.

Llewyns voice broke the silence in a whisper that was barely louder than his breathing. "Arthur." The Dornishman's face had gone the colour of old parchment in the firelight. "What was that."

Arthur opened his mouth to answer.

*ROAAAAAAAAARRRRR*

The second roar was louder than the first.

It was even closer.

It came from somewhere in the darkness between the beach and the fleet, somewhere in that stretch of black water where the firelight did not reach, and this time Arthur could feel it in his chest, a deep resonant vibration that pressed against his lungs and made the plates of his armour hum against one another.

Arthur seized control of himself before the paralysis could take root. "BACK," he roared at the men on the beach, his voice tearing through the stunned silence with every ounce of authority that he could pour into it. "Everyone back behind the walls NOW. Do not stop, do not look back, MOVE." He spun toward the wall and cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed upward at the battlements with enough force to crack his voice. "ARCHERS. FIRE ON THE SHORELINE. EVERYTHING YOU HAVE. LIGHT UP THE WATER. I WANT TO SEE WHAT IS OUT THERE."

The Gold Cloaks on the beach broke into a run.

There was no shame in it and no hesitation. Yhe hundred or so men who were left and had just fought a pitched battle on a bloody beach turned and sprinted for the Mud Gate with the kind of speed that only genuine animal terror could produce, the wounded being dragged along by their comrades, weapons and shields clattering as men stumbled over bodies and debris in the dark.

Arthur held his ground.

He stood at the waterline with Sunset drawn and his feet planted in the wet sand while the men retreated behind him.

The archers on the wall obeyed.

A hundred flaming arrows rose from the battlements in an arc and came hammering down across the beach and the shallows and the dark water beyond. They struck the sand in clusters and burned there like small campfires, casting light that overlapped and spread until the entire shoreline was illuminated. Other arrows flew further, plunging into the shallow water where they hissed and steamed, and further still into the deeper water beyond where they sank beneath the surface and died, and further still into the hulls of abandoned longboats and the wreckage of smashed oars.

And then a cluster of arrows, perhaps a dozen of them, flew further than the rest and punched into the side of something enormous that was being towed slowly toward the shore.

It was a barge.

A massive flat-bottomed vessel, wider and heavier than any of the warships in the fleet behind it, its deck enclosed by high wooden walls that rose nearly twenty feet above the waterline. Two heavy chains ran from its bow to a pair of galleys that were pulling it forward through the water.

Arthur stared at the barge as the firelight crawled across its surface.

The barge was perhaps two hundred yards from shore now and closing fast.

*ROAAAAAAAARRRRRR*

The third roar exploded out of the barge itself.

The wooden walls of the vessel blew outward in a shower of splintered timber and bent iron as something inside it threw its full weight against the enclosure and shattered it like kindling. Planks the size of doors flew spinning through the air and crashed into the water on either side. The two galleys towing the barge lurched sideways as the chains went taut and then slack and then taut again, the oarsmen aboard them scrambling in visible panic.

And then the thing inside the barge stepped out onto the ruined deck and into the light of the burning arrows.

Arthur's blood turned to ice.

It stood on two massive hind legs that ended in talons the length of swords, each one curved and black and sinking into the deck of the barge deep enough to punch through the planking. Its body was lean and muscular and covered in scales of a deep mottled grey.

A short serpentine neck rose from its shoulders and swayed slowly from side to side, crowned by a wedge-shaped head with jaws that could have closed around a horse and rider together.

Two enormous wings unfolded as it spread ots arms out.

Arthur's eyes widened.

"DRAGON!!!!"

(AN: Damn... seems like the battle was going well but ya know how it is. A dragon is now on in the battle.... Or is it a dragon? Why was it being transported by boat? Where is its rider? All questions to be answered next time. Anyway hope you enjoyed.)

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