The Fireborne Blade by Charlotte Bond

Author:Charlotte Bond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

TWELVE

THE DEMISE AND DEMESNE OF DRAGONS

Figure 26.A.II. The Armour of Sir Wragg, Knight of the Little River

In the 725th year since the Reckoning, Sir Wragg traveled to the demesne of the Malice. It is unclear what happened within the marsh caves, because not only did Sir Wragg take no mage orbs, but once the Malice died, the magic holding back the marsh water from its caves dispelled rapidly and its lair was flooded.

The villagers described to Distinguished Mage Levis how the ground had shaken so violently that many items of furniture fell to the floor and, in one case, a chimney collapsed. It is unclear whether this was due to the Malice’s demise or its fight with Sir Wragg.

An eel man called Artur braved the stormy sky the next morning to catch eels for his pot, and he saw something glinting and steaming in the distance. Upon discovering it was Sir Wragg, grievously injured, Artur hauled the knight back to the village. He did this to much personal detriment since he lost two fingers in the process.

A physick was called from a nearby town, and he arrived just in time to witness Sir Wragg die. His written report, shown to the writer of this chronicle by Lord Mendive (Sir Wragg’s father) reads as follows:

Even before I reached my destination, I could hear the poor boy’s screams of agony. It was as if the marsh itself was crying out in sympathy. Upon attending the patient, I noted that his armour had three large and half a dozen small holes in it. The edges of the holes were blistered and bubbling, and I decided that the knight had come into contact with some acid that was eating away the metal. As the armour dripped onto his skin, that too began to bubble and burn. In two of the three holes, I could see down to his ribs.

I urged the villagers present to help me get his breastplate off him. While I wished at the time that they’d taken Sir Wragg’s armour off already, I am now convinced that doing so would not have saved him; the acid had eaten too far into him. I understand that none of them tried to do so after they saw how acid had gotten onto Artur’s own skin and badly burned two of his fingers.

With their help, and the aid of several eel glaives and iron pokers, we managed to lever off the armour with no harm to ourselves but with great damage to the metal implements where they touched the acid. After examining the wounds, taking note of his humours, finding the young man pale, and being unable to find any way to remove the acidic spheres of armour from his wounds, I realised I could do nothing more for the poor boy except ease his passage to the next life. I gave him some opiates to ease the pain, but that gave him only a few minutes’ respite before the acid ate through to his lungs and he suffocated.

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